Paul Collins

@paulcollins

Author, Professor of English at Portland State, bewildered radio guest. Personal account. www.pdx.edu/english/profile/paul-collins

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Paul Collins@paulcollins· 19d

Longing for the days when a drummer could buy cymbals with great brand names like Borg, Krut, and Spizz

Photo of a Krut cymbal, presumably named for the sound it made in a Don Martin comic

Photos of a cymbal, proudly branded SPIZZ in large letters

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jul 15

I'd totally forgotten about Trump doxxing Graham in the '16 primaries

Screenshot from Grand Jury testimony by Lindsey Graham:

"Q. FROM THE YEAR 2016?

A. YEAH.

Q. OKAY. HOW OFTEN WOULD YOU SAY YOU SPEAK WITH FORMERPRESIDENT TRUMP?

A. WELL, FIRST, NONE. YOU ALL WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THIS?

THE GRAND JURY: UH-HUH.

SENATOR GRAHAM: OKAY. SO I LOSE, HE WINS. HEGAVE OUT MY CELL PHONE. I KNOW NOBODY REMEMBER THIS. BUT HE'S IN SOUTH CAROLINA, AND I'M POUNDING ON HIM,AND NOBODY'S LISTENING BECAUSE HE WAS NOT MY CUP OF TEA. SO HE GAVE OUT MY CELL PHONE NUMBER. AND ONE DAY, ALL OF A SUDDEN, MY PHONE GOES OFF AND I HAVE TO CANCEL MY NUMBER."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jul 11

Weirdly fascinated by this 1988 FBI report on coin-push carnival games

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jul 7

Might start signing all my emails like this

Photo from the preface of "The Daily Advertiser, in Metre" (1781) -- lines arrranged typographically to read: "I am, / Gentle Reader, / Thy Loving Friend, / THOMAS STERNHOLD. / From my Lodgings, at a Chandler's Shop, in Stonecutter-Street. Please to inquire for the thin Gentleman in a Tye-Wig and Boots. / N.B. I am removed from the Temple, on account of its being too far from Field-Lane, where I usually dine, except when I am confined at home, to intense study."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jul 5

This conundrum literally went all the way up to a cabinet minister.

Le Monde newspaper passage reads: “The same argument was made every time: a parachute or balloon flight is a leisure activity, taxed at 20%, not air transport, which benefits from a VAT rate half as high. "While not denying the interest of these services, they cannot be considered as passenger transport," wrote Economy Minister Roland Lescure in a letter dated May 28 to François Hollande, the former Socialist president and current MP, who had relayed the professionals' concerns.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jun 21

Mark Singer's obit reminded me how in 1990 Spy magazine sent 58 prominent people $1.11 checks for an unexplained "overcharge... for services rendered." 26 signed it. Then Spy sent 64¢. Half signed that. Then they sent 13¢. Two cashed it: arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, & you can guess the other.

Screenshot from the New York Times obituary for Mark Singer: "Mr. Singer sent a mock thank you to Mr. Trump for the publicity, which apparently bumped his book higher on the Amazon book charts. He also enclosed a check for $37.82, “a small token of my enormous gratitude,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump returned the letter with an all-caps note at the bottom, reading, in part, “MARK — YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER.”

Mr. Trump also cashed the $37.82 check, Mr. Singer later said. Mr. Singer framed a photocopy of it for his apartment."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jun 6

A retired colleague clearing her office just left me this great find from 1997. Portland State held a 24-hour marathon live reading of Moby Dick, & the readers included students, teachers, the owner of Powell’s, a US senator, Susan Stamberg, and -- pictured here -- Portland legend Darcelle XV.

Photo of a yellowed copy of the March 6 1997 issue of a college newspaper, the Portland State Vanguard. The front page story is headlined "Moby Dick Marathon Delights Melville Mavens" and features a large photo of Portland drag queen Darcelle XV reading at a lectern

Paul Collins@paulcollins· May 24

TIL in 1909 you could go to your corner candy store and buy licorice "Electric Light Wires." Also: licorice night sticks, licorice cigarettes, licorice pistols, and -- if you just didn't care -- a "Big Piece."

Ad by the National Licorice Company, of Brooklyn, in a 1909 issue of International Confectioner magazine. It lists about 2 dozen forms of "flexible licorice."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· May 21

A curious historical footnote on grade inflation: here’s a chart from Portland State’s 1973 yearbook tracking grade distributions from 1955 to 1971. The overall DFW rate doesn’t change too much, nor does overall ABC. But A grades double, and Cs drop by half.

Chart shows A grades increasing from 13% in 1955 to 28% in 1971; B grades from 27 to 29%, and Cs decreasing from 36 to 18%.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· May 16

“Shouldn’t I write more copy for the back of the dust jacket?" "Nah, let's go to the pub."

Back dust jacket of the 1979 UK edition of “Miss Marple's Final Cases,” left about three-quarters blank.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· May 2

And a MAP

Map of Portland with a section of freeway labeled “Where goslings jumped.”

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Apr 24

Looking up a 2006 journal article on the 15th century Chester play cycle, and spotted this absurd spike in their downloads, and at about the same time. Someone out there -- no prizes for guessing what industry they're in -- was ransacking scholarly databases.

A bar graph of monthly downloads spikes from near zero to over 800 in September.

Included in the graph is an abstract of the article: "If, as Peter Travis has argued, Expositors were incorporated in the Chester cycle in the early sixteenth century, what model did the reviser draw upon to construct them? I argue that the reviser could not have found a suitable template in cycle dramaturgy; rather, in bringing presenters into the Chester cycle, the reviser has adopted a technique hitherto found, in English drama, only in non-cycle plays - an innovation which is part of a wider pattern of rethinking cycle plays in the sixteenth century."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Apr 17

The studio door at Oregon Public Broadcasting is a delight:

Door with a sign reading “Studio 2D”; under the sign is a picture of Tootie from “The Facts of Life.”

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Apr 12

Much like the famed 1930 broadcast where the BBC ran out of news, it seems there was a day in NYC in 1922 when the downtown courthouse had nothing to do. The clerk, bored, searched over a century of records to see if that'd happened before. It hadn't. (I imagine it hasn't happened since, either.)

NY Times article for February 14, 1922. It reads: For the first time in its history Essex Market Court, Second Avenue and Second Street, formerly located at Essex and Ludlow Streets and other addresses in the neighborhood, and the oldest Magistrate's Court in the United States, was opened for business and formally adjourned, yesterday, without anything happening. There wasn't one case on the docket: no policemen, no complain- ants, no defendants.

After waiting a respectful length of time for something in the way of usual business to be brought in, the Court Clerk, Isaac Rice, twenty-one years on the job, browsed sleepily through court histories and documents of the past century for a similar state of affairs in the court.

Just how old the court was the clerk did not know. He had gone back 100 years and a little over, he said. But, anyway, Essex Market Court is usually one of the busiest in the city, averaging from six to seven hundred cases a day, and such stillness, such peace, could never have happened before, the clerk declared Magistrate H. Stanley Renaud officially adjourned court at 10:30.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Apr 6

Absolutely bonkers passage on biometrics in Donn Parker’s 1976 book “Crime by Computer”

Passage reads: “Another method was researched by a Japanese team which concluded that lip prints could be more easily recognized automatically than fingerprints. This would’ve resulted in people having to kiss their terminals to be properly identified. Another method proposed to IBM by a Canadian inventor consisted of using the unique shapes of peoples skulls to identify them. A person would put his head inside a helmet like device and mechanical probes would determine the shape of his skull if he was an imposter, then clamps could be applied to trap the person’s head inside the helmet.”

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Apr 5

So, it turns out the real-life Doctor Robert went on to put a book that looks EXACTLY like what you’d expect from a Dr who lost his license for speed prescriptions

The very 1982-looking paperback cover of “What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?” by Dr. Robert Freymann

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Mar 30

The solution to this is to then accidentally order 203 apes:

From Notes & Queries in 1862: a 1635 letter describes how a London merchant’s order for “2 or 3 apes” was incorrectly transcribed as “203 apes,” and now London is full of apes.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Mar 18

Spy novelist Len Deighton's passing reminds me he wrote a cookbook in 1965 (!) - and in comic strip form (!!). Writing about it years later in the Village Voice, I found it... surprisingly good? Also, whatever you think a Len Deighton cookbook would look like in 1965, the answer is: yes.

Cover for "Len Deighton's Action Cook Book," showing a slightly smirking Bond type, sleeves rolled up and with a shoulder holster, preparing pasta over a stove while an adoring model strokes his hair.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Mar 16

Portland Community College appears to be breaking the law. They posted a huge # of job ads today, including "substitute" language, w/o disclosing that their faculty's on strike. For instance, this ad: tinyurl.com/5n7aht2e Not ok. Oregon law doesn't let you recruit people to unknowingly be scabs:

Screenshot of Oregon, reading: ORS 662.215
Prohibitions on use of professional strikebreakers
restrictions on recruiting employees during strike

No employer shall:
(1)Knowingly utilize any professional strikebreaker to replace an employee involved in a strike or lockout, for the duration of that strike or lockout.

(2)Recruit, solicit or advertise for individuals to replace employees involved in a strike or lockout, for the duration of the strike or lockout, unless the employer gives notice to such individual that there is a strike or lockout at the place at which employment is offered and that the employment offered is for the purpose of replacing an employee involved in the strike or lockout, for the duration of such strike or lockout. [1975 c.645 §2]

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Feb 16

Delicious NEWARK CHIPS

1888 ad from the New Jersey Trade Review for "Newark Chips, a Delicious Addition to the Breakfast Table."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jan 25

Senator Byrd, opposing the Homeland Security Act in 2002:

Transcript: I am very concerned that 30 years from now, Congress will be
struggling to rectify the problems that we will be creating with hasty,
ill-considered enactment of the Department of Homeland Security. There
was all this rush, there was all this hue and cry that we ought to get
this done before Congress goes out for the August recess. The House
passed this bill after 2 days of floor debate and took off a week
earlier than the Senate did. Then there was the idea we ought to do
this by September 11.
What we need to do is to develop a product that works. We need to
have legislation enacted by Congress and signed by the President that
is right, not something that is hurriedly passed just to conform with
an artificial deadline on the calendar. How much harm could be done in
the meantime can be imagined. I am referring to damage to the rights
and the liberties that we hold most dear: civil rights, labor rights,
labor protection, civil liberties of all Americans. I am talking about
damage to our constitutional process. We can inflict damage upon the
constitutional process if we act in haste, and that damage perhaps
cannot be and will not be rectified for years to come. We must not
inflict damage on our constitutional processes.

Transcript: President Bush's proposed Department of Homeland Security is an
enormous grant of power to the executive branch. I hope that everyone
who hears me will understand that--an enormous grant of power to the
executive branch. It constitutes control of 170,000 Federal workers and
a huge piece of the Federal budget. It will mean a major change in the
governmental infrastructure of our Nation.
This may be for keeps. This may be the infrastructure that will last
through the lifetimes of at least some of us. And we cannot and must
not close our eyes to the threats that are involved here, by well-
intentioned people I am sure, the threats to the constitutional
processes that have guided this Nation for 215 years and should
continue to guide it in the future.
This Constitution is good enough to guide us through whatever
emergencies may confront this country. We must not cede this power,
power that the administration wants but not necessarily needs--but the
administration wants it. Let's stop, look, and listen and be careful
what we are doing.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jan 20

It sucks for an author to have a book come out head-to-head with a similar title — I remember, years ago, 3 or 4 narrative nf books on bees & honey all colliding with each other — but it happens. But from the same goddamn publisher? www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/b...

Screenshot of a passage from today's New York Times article on two books about Bernard Goetz, reading: "Williams was surprised to learn, a year into his research, that his Goetz book had company. But he added that the story is “incredibly ripe,” with plenty of angles. Thompson said she is “super excited to see how these books riff off each other.”

Executives at Penguin Random House did not mention any face palm moment when they realized they had acquired two books about the same niche topic, originally to be published on Feb. 10. Different imprints at the house, they noted, don’t coordinate with one another. (“Five Bullets” is from Penguin Press, “Fear and Fury” from Pantheon.)

“You always feel for the authors, above all, when you discover that two writers have spent a great deal of time and effort going down the same long road,” said Casey Denis, a senior editor at Penguin Press who edited “Five Bullets.” “I’ve no doubt the books differ in fascinating and important ways, owing to the individual perspectives they’ve brought to this subject.”

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jan 6

Looks like an eventual cutoff of federal loans may loom over some Oregon arts degrees, among others:

Screenshot from a searchable table in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "See Which Programs Are at Risk." 7 degrees are listed: American College of Healthcare Sciences associate degree in Alternative Medicine, Mount Hood CC associate degree in Psychology, Oregon State bacherlor in Visual and Performing Arts, PSU bachelor in Music, Western Oregon bachelor in Drama, Western Oregon bachelor in Fine and Studio Arts, Willamette U in Fine and Studio Arts.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Jan 4

Al Jazeera, last month, quoting a prof at Leiden University. Where, WHERE is this kind of clear explanation in the US press. www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12...

Screenshot of article text reading:

Is there any legal basis to US claims on Venezuelan oil?

No. International law is clear that sovereign states own the natural resources within their territories under the principle of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources (PSNR).

This means that sovereign states have the inherent right to control, use and dispose of their resources for their own development.

The concept of PSNR emerged after 1945 during the decolonisation of former European colonies. It was solidified by the United Nations General Assembly in a resolution adopted in December 1962.

Under this law, therefore, Venezuela owns its oil. It would be illegal under international law for the US to lay claim to it.

“A blanket claim of US ownership of Venezuelan oil has no credible basis in international law,” said Regilme.

“The more legally recognisable claim is narrower – namely demands for compensation tied to alleged unlawful expropriation of specific investments, which is the terrain of investment arbitration and enforcement litigation.”

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Dec 28

Always delighted/horrified to see in the for-sale listings how in 1975 you could buy drum kits upholstered in denim or — wait for it — faux leather.

From a for-sale listing on Reverb, a photo of a 1975 Slingerland drum kit upholstered in faux-leather.

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Dec 26

It's instructive, before reading the Times article, to look at the actual basis for J-1 visas, which is a very long way from working 12 hours a day in a hog farm and getting threatened with deportation.

From the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website: "The J-1 classification (exchange visitors) is authorized for those who intend to participate in an approved program for the purpose of teaching, instructing or lecturing, studying, observing, conducting research, consulting, demonstrating special skills, receiving training, or to receive graduate medical education or training.

In carrying out the responsibilities of the Exchange Visitor Program, the Department of State designates public and private entities to act as exchange program sponsors. J-1 nonimmigrants are therefore sponsored by an exchange program that is designated as such by the U.S. Department of State. These programs are designed to promote the interchange of persons, knowledge, and skills, in the fields of education, arts, and science."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Dec 24

Sometime since late October the FTC changed references to itself to the "Trump-Vance FTC." Settlement payment letters also refer to "President Trump's Federal Trade Commission." (Extra fun fact: this FTC suit was filed in 2023, during the Biden administration.)

Wayback Machine capture from the FTC website, dated October 29 2025: "As the result of the FTC’s actions, Amazon agreed to pay $1.5 billion to provide refunds to customers harmed by Amazon’s enrollment and cancellation practices for its Prime subscriptions. Amazon Prime customers that meet the eligibility criteria will receive refunds.

What was the lawsuit about?
According to the FTC’s lawsuit, Amazon:

allegedly enrolled tens of millions of customers in Amazon Prime subscriptions without their knowledge or consent
and made it difficult for customers to cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions.
As the result of the FTC’s settlement, Amazon is required to pay $1.5 billion for refunds to customers affected by its unlawful Prime enrollment and cancellation practices. Amazon is also required to pay a $1 billion civil penalty and cease unlawful enrollment and cancellation practices for Prime subscriptions."

Screennshot of current text on the FTC website. I have highlighted "Trump-Vance" wording: "As the result of the Trump-Vance FTC’s historic $2.5 billion settlement, Amazon is sending automatic refunds to millions of eligible Prime customers.

If you need help with your payment, please contact Amazon at admin@subscriptionmembershipsettlement.com.

What was the lawsuit about?
According to the FTC’s lawsuit, Amazon:

allegedly enrolled tens of millions of customers in Amazon Prime subscriptions without their knowledge or consent
made it difficult for customers to cancel their Amazon Prime subscriptions.
As the result of the Trump-Vance FTC’s historic settlement, Amazon is required to pay $1.5 billion for refunds to customers affected by its unlawful Prime enrollment and cancellation practices. Amazon is also required to pay a $1 billion civil penalty and cease unlawful enrollment and cancellation practices for Prime subscriptions."

Photo of letter sent by FTC Amazon settlement firm, referring to "President Trump's Federal Trade Commission."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Dec 24

Outstanding kid's inscription in a 1928 mystery novel, & I may have to get bookplates that say this

Photo of the hardcover of Harry Stephen Keeler's 1928 novel "Sing Sing Nights."

Photo of inscription inside the book, in a child's hand and covering the entire page, which reads: "BELONGS TO NONE OTHER THAN Pete DarasDi, so BeWare, bEWARE"

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Dec 11

Ezra Pound, the original comments troll

Martha Foley on working at the Paris Herald in the late 1920s, from her memoir "The Story of Story": "As the only woman in the city room, I became a maid-of-all-work. I reported (making sure I personally got to interview every book publisher who came to town, hoping some day they might want to publish me); I went through the French papers looking for items of interest to Paris Americans; I rewrote local, telegraph, and cable reports; I read copy and sometimes substituted briefly at the city desk -- and I censored Ezra Pound's mail. Daily the Herald received from Pound a letter or postcard, and some days both, laden with maledictions, obscene and scatalogical, upon persons and events reported in the paper, as well as upon the paper itself. I was instructed, if I found nothing printable, to toss them in the wastebasket, which I did with the great majority of his angry scrawls."

Paul Collins@paulcollins· Dec 9

A delightful description in here from 1925 of Harry Stephen Keeler's writing space, which includes blackboards of his novel plots coded with colored chalks, a massive wall of filing cabinets, and a pet rabbit named H.L. Mencken.