Time Traveller’s Guide to:

Time Shenanigans Notice:

Time Agents! Be advised that time traveling with sailors from the USS Constitution is strictly forbidden!

Whoever keeps abducting confused seamen from the 1800’s and stranding them in the present needs to stop IMMEDIATELY!

The sailors are confused! They are annoyed! They are refusing to go back to their own time period and we don’t know what to do about it!

The first time it happened in 1907, we took steps to transform their beloved old Ironsides into a ‘museum ship’. We told the public it would be staffed by ‘modern sailors’ with ‘historical uniforms’. In reality, only half of the sailors aboard were born in the modern era. The whole ruse existed just to give these time-lost sailors a familiar berth.

Happily for us, it worked! It kept them concealed, but comfortable. It afforded them the dignity they deserve as Navy personnel, despite all their contracts expiring a century ago.

We all agreed that this would be a temporary measure, just until we got them back to their own time. Now imagine our horror when MORE sailors kept showing up!!

We currently have 75 officers and enlisted serving aboard the USS Constitution; we can barely keep track of what era they are all from anymore. Some of them think we’re still fighting the War of 1812, some of them are trying to finish the 1840’s World Cruise, some are baby-faced Millenials…it’s just a MESS.

We are still struggling to get them all home, but that’s a challenge too…wormy hardtack and dying of syphilis don’t really compare to modern MREs and not dying of syphilis.

Please, whoever is doing this…please stop.

V/r,

Agent Kay

As of 1919, the adorable and very huggable Fugain Dog is officially extinct. Time Agents looking to adopt one of these warm and cuddly living scarves need to visit the Yahgan people of South America PRIOR to 1919.

Keep in mind, these are NOT typical dogs, which are descended from grey wolves. These fuzzy friends are descended from the culpeo, also called the Andean fox or the zorro. Paradoxically, they are neither true foxes nor do any of them wear tiny masks and fight crime.

At the very least, will one of the Agents responsible for the 1800’s please make sure that we preserve at least ONE decent taxidermy specimen of the Fuegian Dog before they go extinct? The current selection is…less than ideal.

V/r,

Agent Kay

Attention all Time Agents! The purported ‘Mrs Tea’ tea maker formerly sold by Mr Coffee is NOT from our timeline! If you see one, DESTROY IT ON SIGHT!

We believe this tea-making abomination originated in a timeline where the USA lost the Revolutionary War. In that timeline, coffee bean imports were taxed to death, both to bolster British tea sales and to squash patriotic fervor. The coffee industry never recovered.

It appears that a working Mrs Tea unit from that unholy timeline was planted in a Health-O-Meter development laboratory by nefarious time criminals.

Well-intentioned Mr Coffee employees reproduced the design and sold THOUSANDS of copies, contaminating our timeline all throughout the mid 1990’s!

Thankfully, by 1998 the Time Agency had halted production and purged as many units as possible, but we have reason to believe that additional units are still lurking in pantries and cabinets across the US. The investigation is ongoing.

Anyone who might have information related to this case should contact Agent X immediately.

REMEMBER! If you see a Mrs Tea unit, destroy it IMMEDIATELY. Timeline hygiene is everyone’s responsibility.

V/r,

Agent Kay

Timely Notice:

The management office wants to clarify that Agent X’s ghostly, nearly transparent 1940 Pontiac touring sedan is definitely NOT the famously missing Ghost Pontiac.

Absolutely not. Definitely not the Ghost.

Definitely a different car. Besides, Agent X’s Pontiac has glowing Neothane tires, and the missing vehicle’s tires are white.

Now, management would appreciate it if we could all stop calling the police to report the rediscovery of a long lost auto icon.

These reports are unsubstantiated and hurtful. So hurtful, in fact, that every time the cops show up Agent X has to abruptly leave work for a mental health day.

We will just have get comfortable with the fact that, while the breathtaking 1940 Ghost Pontiac may never be found, it is surely in the hands of someone who loves it. Maybe even someone who tenderly washes it with ammonia-free cleaner in the Time Agency parking lot every Friday afternoon. Maybe.

V/r,

Did you know that sweatpants were invented just around a decade after the Titanic sank?

Émile Camuset created them in the early 1920’s for his sports equipment company, the Le Coq Sportif. By the 1932 Olympic Games, sweatpants were everywhere!

Worn by icons like Eddie Tolan, legendary track and field sprinter and the first Black athlete to win two Olympic gold medals:

And the unstoppable Babe Didrikson Zaharias, a sporting polymath who excelled at track and field events, basketball, baseball and golf. She also took home two gold medals in 1932.

Sweatpants’ popularity exploded during the 1960’s fitness boom, and they’ve lived rent free in our closets and hearts ever since.

A hundred years after their invention, let’s celebrate our humble sweatpants!

Iconic. Comfortable. Highlighting assets while covering a multitude of sins.

V/r,

After decades of darkness, a spark of interest!

The tragic story of the SS Eastland has been liberated from the dark annals of forgotten history by an intrepid scholar!

Three cheers for Ask a Mortician! HUZZAH!!!

V/r,

In 1981 the US government had 560 million pounds of cheese stored in 150 warehouses and caves around the country!

The program owner, Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), offered each state 30 million pounds of cheese for welfare, Social Security and food stamp recipients. Many tons went toward school lunch programs.

This Tuesday, time travellers of all types are advised to stop off in the 80’s and enjoy a 5 lb brick of the most generic cheese in existence.

V/r,

This is a health warning for Time Agents visiting soda fountains and apothecaries between 1868-1930! Be extremely cautious!

While citric acid is a safe food additive in some eras, from the Reconstruction era through the Great Depression it contains dangerous quantities of LEAD.

In this era, citric acid is made in containers sealed with lead soldering, which would probably be fine if the acid itself wasn’t made from concentrated lemon juice.

Now I know…the urge to hop to 1890’s and enjoy a tart lemon soda at a Victorian era chemist’s counter is overwhelming. But!! There are safer, sanity-saving alternatives.

Instead of taking chances with citric acid, consider a sparkling phosphate soda! Delicious, tangy and completely free of toxic metals. You’ll be saying, “Yum!” instead of dying prematurely of kidney damage and nervous system derangement.

Phosphate sodas are this era’s safe sipping choice! Now, don’t be afraid of the chemically sounding name, this is nearly the same harmless phosphoric acid found in modern Coca Cola, balsamic vinegar and pickles! It will not erode your bones!

Try a tasty hot or cold phosphate soda in all the popular flavors of the era:

- Lemon

- Cherry

- Chocolate

- Angostura

- Egg

Thank you, and be safe!

V/r,

Agent Kay

It has come to our attention that certain individuals have been using their time travel privileges for ‘personal projects’.

(i.e. growing bonsai trees in outrageously photogenic places for future Instagram clout)

This is NOT an appropriate use of agency resources! Beside the wasted time jumps, what are the original timeline inhabitants going to think? That fairies are real? That life is infinitely more delicate and resilient than the human mind can comprehend?? Absolutely NOT.

Unapproved escapades like these can lead to aesthetic confusion among local populations and possible discovery of the Agency.

Do NOT let it happen again!

V/r,

To whichever Time Agent keeps trolling historians with, “Yes! We Have No Bananas”, CUT IT OUT.

It has popped up way too many times, it is NOT a coincidence!

It wasn’t funny when the original showed up in 1923.

It wasn’t funny when protesters sang it during the Outdoor Relief Protests in Belfast in 1932.

It wasn’t funny when people memed it in the 1940’s as a WWII rationing slogan.

It still wasn’t funny when it became an Satanist-anarchist symbol in 2041.

If it pops up one more time, strict disciplinary sanctions will occur! Do NOT lose your time travel privileges over this meme!

V/r,

All time travellers heading to 1896 should be advised that just because X-ray technology EXISTS, does not mean it has been PERFECTED.

Yes, this fascinating new technology was rolled out for patient use remarkably quickly. No, that will NOT spare you a great deal of the old poke-and-hope method of finding your shrapnel and sneakily concealed bullet fragments if you should wind up hosting them.

Please see the attached case study for details: