Dr. Martin Savage Pickles

b. 1917 He arrives by Mexican armadillo, hog-tied and gagged. Due to his cataracts, he is wisely given a monocle. In the dark he is a wolf but in the morning he is a chicken.

Professor, Lecturer, Editor, Apologist. Accomplished chess player and expert amateur detective.

Ancient River

Hermann Wilde Essiggurken was born the son of a Swiss book-keeper days before the end of the First World War. Little Hermann escaped with his family to London where the family lived for a short time. Helga Essiggurken worked for the local Chancellor and Hermann's father Frederick worked in the labs for the English branch of a German company which in 1925 became part of the IG Farben cartel. Hermann shared the family's obsession with clinical atmospheres and love of research. His educational performance was exceptional even at the exclusive boys' school he attended, where he was the captain of the rugby team and president (and founder) of the Junior-Detectives Society.

The Wilde Essiggurken family returned home from church one morning to find that the Germans had lobbed a V2 on their simple home. Frederick got the proper paperwork and the whole family was transferred to America where they immediateley changed their name to the wonderfully inventive Savage Pickles. Hermann became Martin and Frederick became a spy. Helga kept her name and her shapely figure and passed the mornings working at the local Calvinist church doing simple office work and occassionally assisting with daycare. Martin entered American college ill-prepared for the brutish xenophobia of the local youth, especially during the war years, yet quickly gained their respect after displaying his high tolerance for pain. His years in the scrum had taught him how to use his head as a weapon unknown to the first bully who made fun of his accent. He studied Latin and wrote mysteries on the weekends.

Filament

Martin attended several prestigious academies before being tapped by the American government to work for them as director for a mysterious, as yet undeveloped program. The program never actually got off the ground but Pickles did make several important contacts, including several mid-level intelligence officers and most importantly, their bumbling secretary, Peter Fondle. They were dismissed from their government jobs when their superiors discovered that they had become drinking buddies with the tendency to mouth off. Pickles returned to teaching and Fondle returned to Harvard. Their paths diverged for a short time before they found themselves guest speakers at the infamous German School of Re-Design.

Blind Carbon Dating

After stints in Cairo, Savage Pickles met Von Fondle for an expedition at the paleolithic galleries in the caves of Chauvet-Pont-d'Ar. Occultic rumour has it that some sinister ritual may have been played out there but little evidence exists beyond the massive notes they were so fond of taking. It was not long after their manifestos on Paleolithic Psychology were written that Pickles' father was exposed as a spy, and Dr. Martin Savage Pickles found himself discredited and encouraged to exile, but was eventually given a working visa after living abroad as a guest of the ever-elusive Easton W. Wunderkidd, who he never met the whole time he stayed with him. Von Fondle took to calling him "Doctor Savage" which disgusted everyone.

Old, Tired

Professor at the University of Pawtucket's Quantum Ethics Department. With colleague Dr. Peter Von Fondle, he founded The International Council for Regressive Nonaterism in 19--. Known primarily as an "old bastard," his shock of white hair, tied in a loose top-knot, elicits chuckles as he rollerblades across campus to his classroom. Despite his oft comical escapades, he is universally loathed as a vicious reactionary and apologist for eugenics.

He is editor of the journal The Phrenologist's Strop.

See Also

• Macon Cornwall Grumfeld

Desiderata

His great uncle was "Slim Pickles" -- the founder and longtime spokesman for Slim's Pickles, a briny cucumber manufacturer out of Cleveland.

Martin could memorize famous speeches and mix them at will.

An avid collector of Nazi pornography, Dr. Pickles predicted the widespread use of bullwhips and riding crops as penile surrogates.