Yah I don't post much, hardly ever but I do read here and I'm glad that I did today.  This is an outrage and I can't believe that anyone would be a part of it or that it's even legal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Something should be done about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, Dolly, I was hoping that someone would get it.  It's a pretty lame joke, but it was the best I could do on short notice, having forgotten to prepare anything ahead of time. 

Having confessed before to being a great target for pranks, I almost bit.  Then, thought better of it, and did a little Googling.  For fun, go ahead and Google "The Case of the Dead Astrologer" to see just how far "Mr. Bickerstaff" was willing to go to in order to plague one of his rivals.  I also confess that I totally forgot my English Lit. history and now have re-learned something I should have known.

 

Juds, if that was short notice, we had better beware "long notice"!      Annie 

Yeah, old Isaac and I go way back!  Clearly, Swift didn't subscribe to the notion of "just getting over it," and we have the wonderful story of one of history's lesser know obsessive revenge scenarious.  Anyone else, not feeling like doing the research that Annie did, can find a nice, concise explanation of Swift and his issues with Partridge here, at Wikipedia:

 

 

Perhaps it is just me, but I have always loved that they both had avian surnames.  Swift and Partridge, not Bickerstaff.  However, I really like that name, as well.  My guess is that there are many pranksters who use his name for all manner of curious projects.  I'm not all that bright and I am surely not the first to do so.

I just actually read the Wikipedia article and found a cool link on the bottom of the page to a place called the Museum of Hoaxes.  You might want to take a look there.  Although the link is to a page about Bickstaff, you can go to the bottom of that page and click on "Home" where you will find lots of fun articles and, especially, images.

Ooops, it is called "Main Page."  Anyway, I got the links to make it easier.

 

I found my account on www.neatorama.com.  It's full of pretty interesting and odd things.  And it gives a very nice and amusing account of Swift's difficulties with his cohorts and how he got back at them. 

 

Mr. Swift would not have responded well to the advice, 'Now, Sir, just move on!" 

Hey Juds (I guess you must hear people sing that to you that a lot) I really liked the joke.  For a few moments I thought that it was real but soon became suspicious of why you would post something like that and soon realized that you were spoofing us.    Clever.