Which is Badder?

The Flu?

OR

The Floozy?

I have the flu right now, and it's bad, but I've never had a floozy, so I really can't judge, though from the two images above, well, I'll let you decide . . .

Inequality?

Inequality

The textbook I use asked  students to think of any quality they respect and admire, so I repeated the request, which got some muttering, e.g., "I don't respect and admire inequality," which made me realize that:

"Any quality" sounds like "inequality."

Which I then explained, to the general relief of all, and the assignment continued . . .

Brother KimoNoZe Speaks . . .

Nose Glasses Stand-In

for

Brother KimoNoZe

"The sooner you get behind, the more time you have to catch up."

(I heard that already, too, to  the tune of Aanma.)

Hermann Hesse Reads a Poem on Life

Hermann Hesse

My wife went to a one-day meeting of experts on German language and literature this past weekend and returned with handouts of the sort one always receives at such gatherings. In one booklet, I saw Hermann Hesse's poem "Im Nebel," and I noticed a point to point out, but in searching the internet for a copy of the poem, I found many discrepancies, until I happened upon a site on Hesse that had him reciting the poem, and in that way did I get a true copy, which you see below, along with a link in the title to Hesse reciting the poem:

Im Nebel

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Einsam ist jeder Busch und Stein,
Kein Baum sieht den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.

Voll von Freunden war mir die Welt,
Als noch mein Leben licht war;
Nun, da der Nebel fällt,
Ist keiner mehr sichtbar.

Wahrlich, keiner ist weise,
Der nicht das Dunkel kennt,
Das unentrinnbar und leise
Von allem ihn trennt.

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Leben ist Einsamsein.
Kein Mensch kennt den andern,
Jeder ist allein.

The thing I noticed was that "Nebel" written backward spells "Leben." Is that significant? I do not know.

Old Shoe Wisdom

Peerless Shoe

If the shoe fits, wear it . . . unless the other shoe is naught.

Celestial Witticism Nr. 42

Lightning Sparking in the Heavens

Google Images

Prenuptial Agreement

A marriage made in heaven to plans drawn up in hell.

(Not my marriage, of course, and not yours either, just those other ones.)

A Brief Line or Two on Knausgaard . . .

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Wikipedia

The writer Garth Risk Hallberg - in a NYT review ("Pathways to Perception," September 23-24) of Karl Ove Knausgaard's Autumn - informs us that in the six-volume autobiographical novel My Struggle:

Knausgaard's abandonment of literary conceit is itself a literary conceit . . .

But then adds:

. . . albeit one of a higher order.

The review of Autumn is also mostly positive, and this entire blogpost would make more sense if I could provide a link to the review, but there seems to be no online version . . .

The Iceman Cometh . . .

Ice Cream 'Truck'

Remember those days of yore when the ice cream man came down your street in his truck - actually a van - playing some simple children's tune over a loudspeaker to announce his arrival as five or ten kids came running with pocket change for popsicles?

Something like that happened this morning on our street, minus the music, and the truck was not a  van, but merely a cart. Alas, no child came running, either, and the ice cream man soon continued on his not-so-merry way.

There is (as Malcolm Pollack once observed) a sadness under the surface of life . . .

En-Uk, parroting Mama, . . .

. . . offers . . . apparently . . . a parrot:

Parrot Offered Here
En-Uk Sequoya Hwang

What sort of parrot? Nuh, dyuh, I dunno. Maybe the rigor mortis kind used on Monty Python in a sketchy skit concerning a recently deceased parrot?

Arrival of "Crow"

Crow

Sun-Ae Hwang

I really like this sketch of "Crow," whom I'm treating as a real crow with A.P.T.I.T.U.D.E. Or maybe A.T.T.I.T.U.D.E. Or A.L.T.I.T.U.D.E. Something highfalutin, anyway . . .

A Reader's Progress Report . . .

Collected Verse

Brother KimoNoZe reports:

PS Enjoying Radiant Snow. Nice work.

Good words to hear from an erudite, literary fellow like Brother KimoNoZe.

Gypsy Scholar as Brother AgNoZetic

Gypsy Scholar in 1984

Photo by Mike Smith . . . maybe

Yes, that's really me under those furry glasses and that Groucho Marx nose, as you surely already recognize, for even these elements of disguise cannot prevent the true, shining radiance of my great and glorious, big old pleasure-domed head of ugliness to poke through!

The year was 1984, which we were celebrating daily in honor of George Orwell. I even flew in from San Francisco, California to Dallas, Texas, where I was picked up in one of the NoZe limos and conveyed to NoZe headquarters for this Waco event, and you see that I made a good decision, else such joy would have had to have been restrained!

Assuming, of course, I would have had such joy if I hadn't attended.

By the way, that fellow over my left shoulder is my brother Tim, who drove all the way down from the Ozarks just to drive the NoZe float!

Birds do it, bees do it, even constipated fleas do it . . .

My Uncle Harlin spent the last decade and a half of his life going birdwatching nearly every day - "birding," they call it - and these feathered bipeds do have something fascinating about them, probably their ability to fly (most of them, anyway), a capability that fascinates us bipeds of the featherless sort.

My wife is now getting into birds, not yet birding, but finding birds online and drawing them, as below:

This first one's an Eastern Oystercatcher, but I don't know what this second one is:

Is it a fat little wren? I don't actually think so. What do readers think? Feel free to comment.

The Tangle Dance?

Tangled

Google Images

It takes two to tangle? Or just one long one? (As in photo?)

Actually, the word is "tango," which is probably from the Niger-Congo language, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary (compare Ibibio tamgu, "to dance").

As for "tangle," it has an interesting history:

mid-14c., nasalized variant of tagilen "to involve in a difficult situation, entangle," from a Scandinavian source (compare dialectal Swedish taggla "to disorder," Old Norse þongull "seaweed"), from Proto-Germanic *thangul- (source also of Frisian tung, Dutch tang, German Tang "seaweed"); thus the original sense of the root evidently was "seaweed" as something that entangles (itself, or oars, or fishes, or nets).

Perhaps these two words can tango . . .

"Works like a charm!"

Charming

That's what they say. But the meaning? Well, if it works like a charm, it doesn't work at all.

Brothers of the NoZe Persuasion

NoZe in Re-Rehab

This time, they mean it!

As Brother KimoNoZe has wisely observed:

"The sooner you get behind, the more time you have to catch up."

Try it sometime!

"Am I gonna have to cut that head thang off?"

Didn't I warn you about bedwetting?
(Next time, use the Jihadi John!)

Let the punishment fit the rime: Beheading for Bedwetting!

A NoZe for Satire: Question and Answer with the NoZe Brotherhood

NoZe Brotherhood with its Homecoming Float

Baylor Line Foundation

Most readers know that I attended Baylor University as an undergraduate and that I joined an anti-fraternity fraternity known as the NoZe Brotherhood, which was recently (September 6, 2017) asked by the Baylor Line Foundation about the role of such a 'fraternity' at Baylor, and what follows is part of the answer offered by the NoZe:

We view ourselves as a gadfly, sitting on the wall observing all of Baylor. Sometimes a story pops up or a comment gets traction, and like flies to honey (or honeys to someone's fly), we go straight at it, making a fuss, drawing attention, and starting a conversation. We don't always have solutions, and we don't think that's our role either. Simply put, we seek to be a loud, obnoxious voice among many on campus. Often we consider our opinions and views to be the best ones and many times that isn't the case, but so long as we maintain this outlet of nonsense and satire we will continue spouting off and spurning the administration[, as we have been doing for several decades now, apparently] . . . . The view that current Brothers have of the past is shaped by the legends, folklore, and police reports that have been passed down from generation to generation from Exiles (alumni). Every Homecoming we'll have a couple trickle in, having escaped the confines of their hospice care, and they'll regale us all night about "the good ol' days." Since we started our underground resurgence following the alleged bridge burning back in the 60s, our approach has roughly stayed the same: get kicked off [campus], hide for a while, come back quietly, build up our confidence, become arrogant, and get kicked off again. We imagine this cycle will continue for quite a while, at least until the icecaps melt and the oceans die.

The rest of the response is too long and integrated for excising by Gypsy Scholar, so go and read it already, at this place online: "A NoZe for Satire."

Give me back the Berlin Wall . . .

DMZ

Good fences make good neighbors,the DMZ between North and South Korea, for instance.

If you follow my meaning long enough to catch my drift . . .

Lives of Drifting Washed Up

Drifting

He who hesitates is lost before he hesitates, not because he hesitates, but because he is already lost before he hesitates, and drifting is a lifelong hesitation.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow . . .

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow is another day that never comes.

It waits for us somewhere between zero and 24 hours away, so if it will not come to us, we must go to it, but how do we get there?

Unofficial Google Motto: "Diversity is Our Ethnicity!"

WWW

Wikipedia

It takes all sorts to make a World Wide Web.

Grind till Ground

NoZe to the Grindstone

Google Images

Don't let the bastards grind you down! Make them grind you up instead.

Every Dog?

Dog Days

kynádes hēmérai

(κυνάδες ἡμέραι)

Wikipedia

Every dog has its dog day.

Empty Maritime Vessels?

Empty Vessels? Too Quiet.
Google Images

Proverb: "Empty vessels make the most noise."

Jeffery: "NOT IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT, THEY WON'T!"

Have Gun . . . Will Travel With Sword Aboard

Sword

He who lives by the sword dies by the sword, though not very often, more often these days of gunshot wounds.

Stronger than Dirt

Dirty Game?

Google Images

Don't trust anyone over-dirty - unless it's honest dirt!

Shifting Paradigms?

Think So?

Google Images

Great minds think alike rarely when thinking.

The Extra Mile

Extra Mile

Google Images

Go the extra mile and get out of here!

Locked and Bolted?

Bolt?
Google Images

Superfluous

No use locking the stable door after the horse has bolted it shut.