Entirely unrelated to history, but if you have two minutes of time you're just dying to shoot in the face, You Touch My Hands for Stupid Reasons is currently the delight of the von Luckner household.

Benjamin Disraeli is known to most as a Prime Minister of Great Britain and moulder of the Conservative Party. But before all of that he was the dandiest dandy in Dandytown. A few quotes from his letters home:

"To repose on voluptuous ottomans and smoke superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection... and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb; this is, I think a far more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies."

"Yesterday, at the racket court, sitting in the gallery among strangers, the ball entered, and lightly struck me and fell at my feet. I picked it up, and observing a young rifleman excessively stiff, I humbly requested him to forward its passage into the court, as I really had never thrown a ball in all my life. This incident has been the general subject of conversation at all the messes to-day!"

And, of course, my favorite:

"I have also the fame of being the first who ever passed the Straits with two canes, a morning and an evening cane. I change my cane as the gun fires, and hope to carry them both on to Cairo."

And now I realize that I wanted to talk a bit about Thoreau's beans today, but I suppose that will have to wait. Beans ARE a dish best served cold...

- Count Dolby von Luckner

"I need to ask The Count about the color of Benjamin Disraeli's coat." is a sentence I hadn't ever counted on uttering before this episode came along.

The Count's advice was to "pick a dandy color and go with."

So, since I just finished reading Going Postal, I went with gold.

--Geoff