Come (Back) Again?

Abscure Brutal Camera

Again against a gain against a gangster?
But butts abut a buttress!
Come cry quick a cripple creek.

Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman

"Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"

Great, witty quip by Mary McCarthy, but did she catch the devil from Hellman for it?

A German Joke: Will Cause Laughter

The German Joke

Interlocutor 1: Why is 10 afraid?

Interlocutor 2: I don't know. Why?

Interlocutor 1: Because 7 8 9!

Interlocutor 2: Oh.

Interlocutor 1: Why is 4 filled with fear??

Interlocutor 2: Because 1 2 3?

Interlocutor 1: No, idiot! Because 4 is a German!

Interlocutor 2: I don't get it.

Interlocutor 1: The number "4" is a German! Hence "Vier," which sounds like "fear."

Interlocutor 2: Okay, but why is 4 a German?

Interlocutor 1: Because it's the punch line dammit!

Interlocutor 2: Oh. Very funny. Hah-hah. No wonder they say German jokes are nothing to laugh at.

Poetry Break: Writer's Block 3

Block of Death

I'm still encountering Writer's Block, so I composed the 'poem' below to record it:

Writer's Block 3

I cannot call this poetry,
for writer's block has hold on me.
I scribble-scrabble nonsense verse,
but that just makes the problem worse.

Perhaps I ought to go to bed
and lay to rest my weary head.
Oh, I don't mean eternally;
I still have things I'd like to see.

Call this a poem if you dare,
but that won't get you anywhere.
The critics know it's doggerel,
and they will say: "Go straight to Hell."

If this case of Writer's Block goes on, I'll have a goodly number of poems to blame it for.

He who laughs last . . .

Joke?

. . . didn't get the joke.

As somebody once said . . .

Somebody There?

"The pears of . . ."

No, wait. Try again.

"The powers of a manx mind . . ."

Ugh. Try again.

"The powers of a man's mind are dreckly . . . tireckly . . ."

Again.

"The powers of a man's mind are directly propositioned . . ."

No! Dammit!

"The powers of a man's mind are directly proportioned to the quandary . . ."

No! No! No!

"The powers of a man's mind are directly proportioned to the quantity of coffin . . ."

Once again.

"The powers of a man's mind are directly proportioned to the quantity of coffee he drains . . ."

One last try.

"The powers of a man's mind are directly proportioned to the quantity of coffee he drinks."

Perfect. But next time you intend to quote somebody, have your morning coffee first!

Says who?

Will Jong-un get Trumped?

Who's the Weightier,

Trump or Jong-un?

Kevin Kim recently posted his skepticism about the up-coming NK-USA no-nuke talks:

[C]all me a yuge skeptic when it comes to the idea that Trump can succeed where others have failed. I'm reminded of Ellis, the doomed character in 1988's "Die Hard," who thinks he can negotiate with a killer and somehow come out on top because, hey - it's all deal-making. You might say that's disanalogous because Trump's the one [who has the desk] with the "bigger button."

I then staked out my position, basically conforming to Kevin's position, but querying whether Trump's the one whose desk has the bigger butt on it:

How can President Trump know that "he's the one with the 'bigger butt on'" his desk, compared to President Kim Jong-un? The North Korean president is grossly overweight, so his butt could easily cover more desktop area than Trump's. President Trump is likely assuming that his own far larger girth will translate into a "bigger butt on" area covered on his own desk. If such a test is to be undertaken, each of the two leaders had better come prepared with an ass-covering explanation for his loss, for one of the two men will of necessity lose in this bare-assed, butt-faced, bum-caked competition.

Well, we'll soon enough see the results of this up-coming arselogical contest . . .

Quixote as a Ghostly Charles V

I referred obliquely yesterday to the ghost of Charles V, so here's some more obliquity:

Don Quixote's names and actions hide a . . . secret. Following [the literary theorist, Tzvaten] Todorov, there is a double movement toward and away from the revelation [of that secret]. In the end, all that can be said is that the play of genre and narrative may point to a specific hidden mystery, one that deals with a clash of civilizations and the anxieties it causes the protagonist. This secret both complements and contrasts with the vision of a knight as a ghostly Charles V. Don Quixote as a new Charles is deprived of all power except that of the imagination as he rides through the genres. He personifies an emperor who upon abdication has become 'the ghost of all power.' While the emperor repeatedly walks the halls of the monastery thinking of his past achievements and hollow present, the knight rides through an impoverished Spain, seeking the power that Charles discarded, only to find visions less substantial than his emaciated body. It may be that his haunting is there to warn those who sympathize with the knight that the imperial pursuits of the narrative are flawed, that the secret must be revealed. (Frederick A. de Armas, Don Quixote Among the Saracens: A Clash of Civilizations and Literary Genres, 2011)

There. That ought to raise more questions and eyebrows!

The Ghost of All Power?

The Ghostly "Don Quixote"

Consider: "A countenance more in sorrow than in anger."

The word "countenance" means the expression on one's face, and we might wonder if the phrase is a reference to Don Quixote, the "Knight of the Woeful Countenance," but this in fact is a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet (1602), a scene in which Horatio (Hey, that's me!) describes the emotional state of the ghost of Hamlet's father.

But for now: "Knighty-Night."

This makes no sense!

A Male Dog is Not a . . .

Nor is this a . . .

I bitched because I had no shoes,
then met a man who had no feet,
which made me bitch still more because
he didn't worry over shoes.


Vocab Words:

Bitch

Poem

Student: "This is a very hard test, Teacher. Can we have more time?"

Teacher: "No, but I'll give part credit for being wrong."

Spilt Spelt "Spilled"?

Or Spilt Anything?

Is it: "No use crying over spilled milk." Or is it: "No use crying over spilt milk." But in either case, why no use crying? Should one rather cry over unspilled/unspilt milk? And what about spoiled or spoilt milk?

So much conventional wisdom to unpack . . .

Review of Vitasta Raina's Novella: Writer’s Block

Amazon Books

Vitasta Raina, urban planner and architect, lives and works in Mumbai, India, where she composed her novella, Writer's Block. The pun on block as "impediment" and block as "city unit" is intentional, and writers living in the block might or might not experience writer's block. Some do, some don't, but for the most part, the writers living there seem sufficiently ruly and productive.

But the city Chalet and its residents, the so-called charlatans, are about to undergo a crisis.

However, I don't want to reveal many plot spoilers. I will therefore offer a few thoughts. The story covers about 64 pages and focuses on the lives of eight writers, who are called "CAST," and distributes them across eight chapters (8x8=64), the last of which is titled, "While the Credits Roll," as if the novella were a motion picture. The first seven chapters are identified as "epiphanies," which would make them divinely inspired insights, and the subtitles read like a continuous poem of free verse style with occasional rhyme, as here on the first page:

I am if I choose to be
But I have no choice
In these million years of evolution
I have finally lost my voice (page 1)

The chapters are prose of native speaker quality, the sentences often of complex length, but nevertheless concise and clear. For example, here is a sentence describing a model of the city:

"Representing a city that in the last decadal cycle of the City Census estimated almost sixty percent of the inhabitants as parasite slum dwellers, the model displayed high rise residential estates, office complexes, shopping arcades, golf courses and a meandering network of transit corridors, flyovers and flyunders connecting the ends, the edges, the fringes and the cores of Chalet." (page 9)

The model is of an idealized Chalet, and mickle are the ways this city could be represented, extremes of poverty and riches, of asceticism and gluttony, of good and bad, of weak and strong, a list that could go on and on.

But the electricity abruptly stops working, and so does everything else, most significantly, the elevators. At that severe inconvenience, Chalet is turned upside down, literally, as the rich pour into the streets and the poor ricochet up to the penthouses. Still, life goes on, for most of the writers, who are stuck in the middle, neither rich nor poor, and Chalet goes on as well. This is all along expected as one reads this slender volume, but the details make for the difference, and for the unexpected.

Five Stars out of Five!

Lying to Women?

Lies?

Let me see if I understand this. You can lie to women, but not to men. Strange rule! And it's stated outright, as if the rule-maker doesn't care that women can read it, too. But maybe the rule-maker figured men wouldn't let women learn to read.

Or maybe it's all just a joke. The term "Lev." is obviously an abbreviation for "Levity," that funniest of all humorous Old Testament books.

You'll laugh your ass-embly right off of you . . .

Three-Hour Walk in Changing Climate

Lunar New Year: An Exhausting Three-Hour Lunatic Walk Along the Jungnang Stream as Climate Change Does Its Thing!

Snow Melting: Climate Change!

Brownland Ice Caps Melting: Climate Change!

Starving Emperor Penguins: Climate Change!

Human Excrescences to Blame for Everything: Climate Change!

Black Swan Turns White: Climate Change!

Ducks Fearful of Rising Tide: Climate Change!

As you see, climate change is so real!

(Yes, I'm joking, so don't conclude that I either affirm or deny Climate Change!)

Glasstire of Texas: No 'Reesponse'

Christina's Hairdo

Christina Rees is a gifted expert on art who heads Glasstire, a site dedicated to art in Texas, though the focus occasionally shifts to other states, such as Arkansas, where she once visited Crystal Bridges, in the northwest part of the state, and made a snarky remark about "hillbilly meth." Perhaps she was even making a clever, hidden pun on 'crystal' meth?

Anyway, several commenters (including me) called her on her cultural chauvinism (Texan attitude toward Arkansawyers?), but she never responded, and the other day, I saw my opportunity to be snarky about her current hairstyle, which you see above, so I wrote:

"Christina, while your beauty can rescue any hairstyle, don't hide your light under a bushel."

There's a biblical allusion there (Matthew 5:14–15, Mark 4:21–25, and Luke 8:16–18), which folks might or might not catch, and I thought I had made my snark humorous, but my remark seems not to have passed moderation - and I can't really fault Glasstire for nixing it since I didn't address anything of substance . . . or of substance abuse.

Still . . . I thought my remark humorous enough to post, which is why I post it here.

Kim Yo-jong (sister of North Korea's leader) talks with Moon Jae-in (South Korea's leader)

In a recent Olympic meeting, Kim Yo-jong and Moon Jae-in discuss North-South relations:

Moon: What I am saying is, you're not nearly so fat as your brother.

Kim: There is a reason for that fat.

Moon: Do explain.

Kim: As our beloved, great leader, my brother requires a certain, je ne sais quoi . . . heaviness.

Moon: Gravity?

Kim: Exactly. Gravity. Indeed, his job demands morbid obesity, the eventual sacrifice of his divine body for unification. It is a very grave requirement. Only a man of his enormous girth can be attractive enough to unify southern Korea with our northern system. You are aware of the inverse-square law?

Moon: Yes, that law partly explains my erratic behavior . . .

Dracula: A Ladies' Man Or A Lady's Man

Mina and Dracula

Foretaste of Gory Divined

That vampire guy always did have good taste in women!

(But is it true love this time?)

There's a Faceless Nose Somewhere . . .

Astonished
at
being
Noseless

Imperative?

Cut off your nose to spite your face.

(After a story by Nikolai Gogol)

(But nothing to do with The NoZe)

Ever More Obscure References . . . As Time Goes By

BFF

Shocked, Shocked!

Fly off the handle by the seat of one's pants on the wall.

Have you heard the one about the two Jews who . . .

Keiron Pim

Writing a review of three recent books on Jewish humor for the Spectator (November 25, 2017), Keiron Pim asks, 'Is Jewish humour the greatest defence mechanism ever created?'

I don't know if he ever explicitly answers that question, but he does offer a typical Jewish joke that puts things into perspective:

There's a long joke that Dauber and Baum tell in different ways, which in essence goes like this.

In the Pale of Settlement Moshe and Abram are walking down the street, kvetching about being too poor to eat, when they pass a church with a sign that reads: 'Convert and we'll give you ten roubles!'

Moshe looks at Abram and says: 'You know what, I'm going to do it,' and goes inside.

Twenty minutes later he emerges looking solemn, his head bowed. 'Well,' says Abram, 'did you do it? Did you get the ten roubles?'

And Moshe looks up at him and says: 'Why is it you people only ever think about money?'

Now, that's funny! Sublime wit!