It Happened

Forfar 5-East Fife 4, Scottish Second Division, 22 April 1964.

Sixtus the Fifth

Our favourite papal name. This man is the Forfar 5-Fife 4 of popes.

Grow Your Own Hair

All genuine book titles:

Handbook for the Limbless
Motor Cycles in a Nutshell
Scouts in Bondage
Harnessing the Earthworm
Do Snakes Have Legs?
Fish Who Answer the Telephone
Coma Arousal
How to be a Schizophrenic
Teach Yourself Alcoholism
Cameos of Vegetarian Literature
Sex After Death

(from Russell Ash and Brian Lake, Bizarre Books)

Raise Miniature Humans...

A small ad from Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library (left). Others include:

Be Popular Meet Girls Play the Sackbut

Feudalism: The Socioeconomic System That Ruled the Middle Ages is Back and Better than Ever

50% Off Your Next Purchase of a Graduate Degree

Genuine Roman Crucifix

Joke Utterings

Fetus Balloon

The Mystery of the Charity of Steven Gerrard

Belter of a fifty-fourth minute header
gone in. The spirit of Shankly is born anew.
Even Vladimir Smicer wakes up. Dida
stood no chance. 3-1. Are you watching, Man U?

(25.05.05)

[continues ad infinitum]

Icy Grammar

'Icy grammar in a rocking chair' (Ry Cooder, '3rd Base, Dodger Stadium')

Ry Cooder fondly remembers his high school English grammar, which he has left on a rocking chair by an open window. When he picks it up the following morning he finds it's covered in ice. His grandmother ticks him off for his foolishness.

Sloth

‘My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of branches, and fall out of trees.’ (Douglas Adams)

My Local

The Whalebone.

In Moby-Dick Melville describes the skeleton of a sperm whale washed up on the north sea coast and claimed by the Lord Paramount of the Seigniory of Holderness: ‘Sir Clifford’s whale has been articulated throughout; so that like a great chest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his boney cavities – spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan – and swing all day up on his lower jaw. […] Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence a peep at the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the echo at the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled view from his forehead.’

Does a good pint of Hoegaarden.

Disliking It

"I, too, dislike it," are the immortal beginning words of Marianne Moore's poem "Poetry", and they seem to me to be the only possible credentials for a poet and a reader of poetry. I sometimes wonder if there are any poets who "like" it, and whether I would like them.

(Michael Hofmann, Poetry September 2005)

Waiting

Que faites-vous? Je m'attends. (Cioran, Cahiers)

Stupidity

“Il n’y a que la bêtise humaine qui donne l’idée de l’infini.” (Renan)

Diarrhoea

“It’s very difficult to get rid of diarrhoea once it starts.” (Colm Tóibín, The Blackwater Lightship)

Iceland, Natural History of

Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus:- 'Chap. lxxii. Concerning Snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island'. (Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson)

Fleas

Adam
'ad 'em

Till Eulenspiegel

Speaking of arses: Till Eulenspiegel's appearance on a 16th century pilot of How Clean is Your House comes to an unfortunate end.

Woodcut from Peter Sloterdijk's Critique of Cynical Reason, a volume close to our heart. And our loo.

Look at This

Here’s a poem from Forward Prize-winning Helen Farish’s collection Intimates, and Georgiasam’s tribute.

Look at these
Seeing you makes me want to lift up my top,
breathe in and say Look! Look at these
I've kept them hidden till now
under loose shirts, Dad's jumpers.

Suddenly I'm offering them
like a woman ready to mate.
I'm holding my breath.
Don't tell me not to.

Look at this
Seeing you makes me want to pull down my stretch pants
breathe in and say Oy! Look at my arse
I’ve kept it hidden until now
under the back of my hoodie, these kecks.

Suddenly I’m offering it
like a drunk mooning a schoolbus.
I’m holding my nose.
Don’t tell me what to do with my arse.

Enturbulated Theta

Are you a pre-clear enturbulated theta? Maybe you should read this Scientology glossary and find out.

http://www.scientology.org/wis/wiseng/gloss.htm

Here is the entry for 'Q and A (noun).'

The practice of asking a question about a pc’s answer, i.e., the auditor asks a question, the pc [pre-clear, i.e. non-Scientologist] answers, the auditor asks a question about the answer. This is the chief auditor fault, as it is giving session control over to the pc. The auditor following only the pc’s lead is giving no auditing and the pc is left on “self-audit.”

Here is a wrong example of auditing:
Auditor : “How are you?”
Pc : “Awful.”
Auditor : “What’s wrong?”

Here is a right example:
Auditor : “How are you?”
Pc : “Awful.”
Auditor : “Thank you.”

{End quotation}

Here is a Georgiasam example of auditing:

GS: “How are you?”
Auditor: “Awful.”
GS: “IT'S YOUR FUCKING FAULT GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY GO WHIMPER YOURSELF TO DEATH IN THE CORNER YOU DESPICABLE PIECE OF HUMAN FUCKING JET-TRASH. And here are some complimentary Tom Cruise tickets.”

I Hate the Human Race

Like Harold Pinter, Adrian Mitchell writes fairly rotten poetry. Here is a verse from his fairly rotten poem 'Human Beings', winner of the fairly rotten 'Poem for Space' poll, which makes it 'the [fairly rotten] poem that people most want to send into space in the hope that it will be read in one hundred years’ time' (readers' views on which [fairly rotten] poets, rather than poems, deserved to be fired into outer space were sadly not canvassed):

we all start human
we end up human
human first
human last
we're human
or we're nothing

Adrian Mitchell adds: 'Human Beings is a poem for peace. It is about the joy of being human, but that doesn’t mean that it’s against animals or alien beings. When it goes into space and it’s read by aliens, I’d hate for them to think that it’s anti alternative life forms.' Consider the Venusian counterattack called off then. For the moment.

Hallelujah! (The Nobel Prize)

Hallelujah!
It works.
He impressed the shit out of them.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

(Not including Pinter's poetry then,
which isn't much cop.)

Now I want George Bush to come over here
and kiss him on the mouth.

(The early plays are all right though.)

Struwb

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling: Yes, the Streebs originally hailed form Iceland – or Norway, as it was then, and what is now modern Denmark. Streeb is in fact a corruption of the original Norsk name Struwb.

Ludovic Kennedy: Does that have any meaning in Norsk, in fact?

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling: It means Struwb in Norsk. It’s almost impossible to translate, really. It basically means a sort of wooden bucket with two holes in it. Underwear, really – wooden underwear, which is the only sensible way to deal with the cold Norsk summer. You just take off your underwear, set it on fire and huddle round it for warmth.