On Modern Life

More of those howlers:

...he may not be able to transgress his accumulation of knowledge...
Our overpopulation is a result of our indiscretion in spending.
The acceleration of progression is creeping along.
In economics, we hear a lot about planned adolescence.
They let their filth from our factories impregnate our lakes and rivers.
We live in a period of restless tranquillity.
Of course, everyone likes to see some blood split.
After all, we live in this doggy-dog world.
In the rat race of life, no one wants to be the ugly duckling

On Love and Sex

More from the "howlers" folder:

Women are one of the habits man has learned to enjoy.
A man must sell insurance different from the way he sells his love.
He satirizes a virgin wrench.
I like to go steady, because then I am always ready if anything big comes up.
When a boy is deeply involved with a girl, it becomes necessary to motivate her.
We are plagued by the eroticism of the soil.
"I am newly married and the question that confronts me now is 'Should I wear my rah-rahs to school?'"
Pepys and his wife often enjoyed erotic dishes and often dined out.
How much fun will a housewife be on her second honeymoon if all she does is worry about her children.
Marriage consoling organizations are established by churches and cities in order to save marriages 'on the rocks'

The (Un)reasonable Man

More from the "Howlers" folder:

The reasonable man goes through life in a comma.
An unreasonable man is one who fertilizes the world.
Self-scented is the name for the unreasonable man.
An unreasonable man is always a temtuous lover.
Society, a group of unreasonable men, let minority groups be scrapecoats.
The unreasonable man spends his money wisely before he earns it.

Howlers

My Sibling and I have been going through our father's papers with the intention of preparing them for archiving at his various universities. A folder entitled "Howlers" has surfaced. On literature:

The Rape of the Pope by Locke
Peachum is a downright scongrel.
Don Whan was a great lover.
Catch Her in the Rye
As the story opens, the heroin is seen...
Stephen discovers that Absalom has fathered an illegitimate child by the woman he married.
English took into its whore-house bed of words...
Life here can, as Shakespeare said, be compared to a baseball game.
I would agree with the author if he would only define is terms with my train of thought.
If it weren't for crime and violence, even the Bible would be reduced to a small pamphlet.
Stories of crime and violence take us away from the harsh realities of life.
The poem is a good example of the old carpet diem theme.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales would have been dull if he had left out the stories.
Hamlet helps me to cathart.

How Writing Groups Go Astray

Every writing group has its own peculiar character.

Bart turns into a bat and comes to the writing group at Alexis’s. Everyone but Stephanie realizes who the bat is; he perches on the back of the couch and squeaks. Later, Steve turns into a skunk and hides under the couch in embarrassment. Alexis tries to lure him out with a piece of cheese, but Bart eats the cheese. Bart insists on staying, hanging from the ceiling and sitting on the TV while Alexis watches, trying to persuade her to turn the channel to ‘Devil Girl from Mars’. Finally Stephanie brings lentil soup and he vanishes, leaving the apartment deep in guano.

Steve will leap out from under the couch and grab hold of Karla’s leg, refusing to let go until she lets him sleep in the bilge.

Some writing groups are more peculiar than others, of course. This was my third writing group. We often laughed uncontrollably about something called The Kitty Picture; just what The Kitty Picture was, I can no longer quite recall. I imagine it was a work of sentimental art retrieved from a garage sale, but perhaps I am mistaken and it appeared suddenly on a tortilla like a votive image of Elvis or the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Dragon Fails

For the most part, I have Dragon rather well trained to take dictation, but it does require proofreading, especially on people's names and on words like "suppurating" which have a way of appearing as more common words like "separating." Every now and then, however, something truly perverse emerges, like "we behave with unusual incompetence sadistically yet without to obviously changing our outward habits."

That was supposed to be "we behave with unusual and complicitous decorum yet without too obviously changing our outward habits."

Ancient Limericks

A lady who looked like a cat
Used to go out and sit on a mat.
She wondered quite soon
"Should I bay at the moon?"
And her neighbors all wondered at that.

A boy who resembled a dog
Used to play he was dead as a log,
Until one day his dad
Quite enough of him had
And made him get up and go jog.

There once was a monstrous big tanker
Who when pulled by a tug did not thank her,
So the tug said "You bitch!
You belong in a ditch!"
And straightaway stove her and sank her.

A beggar asked me for a dime;
I said "Here, go and have a good time!"
He said "Not on your life,
This all goes to my wife,
Who's locked up for committing a crime!"

Seen on Facebook...

"Nothing improves one's perpective faster than being suddenly incapable of reproduction. Made me feel better."
(Re a comment on the need to spay a rabbit)

Susie Bright, Dadaist

I daresay most people read Susie Bright's blog for the news on things sex- and gender-related, but that's not all you can find there!
See, for example, Susie's dream about having the Obamas over to dinner! Surrealists the world over are probably in a state of envy at this dream.
And the dadaist post on 1000 bunnies listening to Obama (be sure to click on her link to the full bunny collection!) I want Susie's bunny notepad. (Although the original artist stuck the bunny's scut in the middle of its back rather than where it belongs, so Orion and Calypso Spots would be perturbed about that.)

Barberini Faun Appears Unexpectedly in Pittsburgh

A colleague and I were recently (well, perhaps a month or so ago, but let's not quibble, I only just learned how to download photos from my phone) chatting in the Frick Fine Arts Library, only to find ourselves suddenly distracted by this:

We had thought that the Barberini Faun (aka Sleeping Satyr) was safely settled at Munich's Glyptothek.


But I guess not. Looks like he's had a haircut on the trip west. And gotten dressed. Too bad.

Illustrated Jocularity

For those who like old books, cartoons, and weird stuff in general, I recommend a look at the blog Wondermark!