[The posts for this month are reposts from the site www.honotogroabemo.org, on which a host of hirsute individuals including yours truly would grow beards to raise money for breast cancer research. The site is defunct, but I thought I’d resurrect the game-related posts. This was originally posted on 2011-11-03.]

(Some days you just feel the need to toss a barrel at a mustachioed hero)

It’s early in the month still, but not so early that I can’t start working out to prepare for the manly contests to come. I’m sure lifting brewing equipment is exceedingly good for beard growth. I can feel my follicles straining as I type this.

Day Two’s Post featured me as Rich Uncle Pennybags, the mascot of Monopoly. Sans mustache, of course — it’s still early in the month. And really, I still have most of my hair.

Hasbro’s site still claims [or it did when this was first posted – Ed.] that Monopoly was originally designed by Charles B. Darrow, but the truth is a little more murky. The precursor to Monopoly was The Landlord’s Game, designed by Elizabeth Magie in 1903 as a commentary on the evils of the rent system. She even tried to sell it to Parker Brothers, but they turned it down. Effectively after that, the design was taken over by the public, which through years of house rules and board changes eventually evolved the game into what we would recognize as Monopoly. Darrow tried to sell the evolved version (which others designed, mind you) to Parker Brothers twice, but it was only when they took notice of his huge sales that they sought him out. They also bought up the rights to all the other versions of the game, including The Landlord’s Game (Parker Brothers was in many ways the Microsoft of their time). And thus the game designed for torturing younger siblings was released upon the desperate public of the Depression.