"Cheesy" movies are not limited to Spaghetti Westerns.  Why not specify the type of cheese?  If the film simply stinks, it undoubtedly qualifies as a Limburger, Vieux Boulogne, or perhaps Gorgonzola.  If there are too many plot holes, call it Swiss Cheese.  If the film suffers from stiltedness, why not call it a Stilton?  Overly dry humor or wit suggests a Parmesan or Romano, while bland or insipid content might be called Buffalo Mozzarella.  A film made quickly and cheaply (even if glossily) recalls American Cheese, while overly mushy emotionality suggests Cottage Cheese.  And, of course, so-called "blue movies" would be Bleu Cheese.  Cheesy movies are often quite entertaining and good in their own way, in which case we might call them Gouda.

---

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt writes:

Today is the day to teach your brain to play!  We're pleased to announce the publication of our new puzzle book, Presumptive Conundrums: Rhetorical Math Questions (+ Answers).  It's been called our most surprising, thought-provoking, and laugh-inducing creation to date.  Take advantage of the introductory price at Amazon.com, or drop us an e-mail for a signed or review copy (our e-mail address is on this page).

"They marked the course of the stream, like lamps reflecting their own light from within."
—Emma Gelders Sterne, They Took Their Stand

Photo by Rune Guneriussen.

What is funnier than an outhouse?

Clue:  This is according to the author of a book on outhouses.

Answer:  Nothing.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Roger L. Welsch, Outhouses (2003), p. 114.

From the inimitable Tom Weller, author of the classic Science Made Stupid, comes this "minim" (the perfect answer to the maxim):

"A rooster flushed before either of us had any idea it was there."
—Steve Grooms, Modern Pheasant Hunting

Title page from 'La Costituzione Corrente Brevemente Considerata' by Pietro Orteschi, 1762.  Via BibliOdyssey.

"Somebody ought to write the story of the Texas towns that have died or seen better days.  There is a pathos about these modern Palmyras which often struggled to resist their fate."
—Harry Yandell Benedict and John Avery Lomax, The Book of Texas, 1916, p. 243.

What does our notorious field guide to identifying unicorns by sound have to do with polio, the sun, cyclopses, and the nature of Mystery?  Just ask sci/tech columnist Regis Schilken.

My hindsight vision isn't 20/20 but rather 20/2, like the hawk.

Certainty #49:

"The only certainty is cruelty."
—Stephen Gresham, The Fraternity, 2004

"Happiness writes white.  It does not show up on the page."
—Henry de Montherlant (1895-1972)  (via DJMisc)

Happiness also colors white.

"The Whisperer.  He can leave words ... the right words ... in the air just behind him as he glides through crowds in the markets." —William Burroughs, The Western Lands

 

"Bare reality: what a crook it sometimes is."  —Robert Walser, Jakob von Gunten

Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley were considered for roles in Disney's remake of The Parent Trap, but they were rejected because even identical twins have some differences.  (In this morphed photo, Natalie's face is on one side, and Keira's face is on the other.  Can you tell them apart?)

Lindsay Lohan ended up starring in The Parent Trap, only to be criticized for being too one-dimensional to play two roles.  (Thanks, June!)

Which is funnier: gonorrhea or syphilis?

Clue:  This is according to cultural critic Lee Siegel

Answer:  Gonorrhea.  “Gonorrhea is funnier than syphilis, but not anywhere near as good for a laugh as crab lice.”  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Lee Siegel, Love and Other Games of Chance: A Novelty (2003), p. 358.

"To be of service to somebody whom one does not know, and who has nothing to do with one, that is charming, it gives one a glimpse into divine and misty paradises." —Robert Walser, JAKOB VON GUNTEN

I dreamed I fell in love.

(Inspired by Gary Barwin, who writes: "And soon they will join in holy matrimony...")

Rear-wheel drive = cart-before-the-horsepower.

This is a page from our unfinished collection of writing prompts.  All such diagrams may be found in Professor Oddfellow's Forgotten Wisdom: Volume II.

Today's fine line is courtesy of Fred Turner.

There is a corner of the sea that is deep but not so deep that it’s black. It’s the blue of a blueberry, violet in its heart, though this blue allows light through its million unseeable pores. The hue is evenly painted but electric, a klieg light pushing through a gel of cyan. But invading this blue are clouds of inky purple, billowing clouds curling in small waves, and they grow from below, splitting the sea between light above and dark growing from below.
Turn it upside down and this was the sky above Riga.

—Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, 2002

Certainty #48:

"The only certainty we can possess is the aporia, the knowledge of the complete uncertainty, relativity, and provisionality of all knowledge."
—Patrick O'Neill, The Comedy of Entropy, 1990

Via Brilliantology.

In the song ""Where Your Eyes Don't Go," They Might Be Giants mention a filthy scarecrow that mocks one's every move:


Imagine our surprise to find an explanation of this filthy scarecrow in the astonishing novel Mercurius by Patrick Harpur:

Can't see the forest for Belize.

We applaud singer Deborah Harry for sidestepping one of the most tiresome, lazy, near-rhyme clichés to mar pop music.  Instead of imperfectly rhyming "girl" and "world," Harry boldly changes sex for a "boy / world" couplet:


(We acknowledge that "girl/world" is an echo of "mother earth," just as "man/hand" echoes the Spanish and Italian "mano," meaning "hand."  Regardless of the merits of half rhymes, "girl/world" and "man/hand" are contemptibly overused.)

"Someone ought to write a book on the influence of 'the undiscoverable factor' upon the course of human events."
—William Bennett Munro, Personality in Politics, 1924, p. 113.

Which is funnier: mammals or invertebrates?

Clue:  This is according to a guide to drawing comics

Answer:  Mammals.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Suck School of Comic Art, Suck.com, (Nov. 7, 1997)

Climate change research: glacial profiling? 

[Thanks to Mike!]

Certainty #47:

"Rebellion gives the only possibility, the only probability, the only certainty."
—Queen's Quarterly, 1893

Here's an all-consonant word that belongs in our dictionary of all-consonant words:

the HMMMMM theory of language: 


(via Social Fiction.)

 

The existentialist costume party was an embarrassment of Nietzsches.

"If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke—Ay! and what then?" —Coleridge, Anima Poetae, qtd. in John Livingston Lowes, The Road to Xanadu, 1927

Image from Magic Archetypes.

Here's a kiss and hug (X and O, in the shorthand of love notes), by way of the One Letter Words Quiz Deck by Pomegranate.

The hills are alive with the silence of signing
With signs they have signed for a thousand years

Collage by Spydrbyter.

Debussy had a secret for evoking a feeling of timelessness.

SPOILER: His secret is a pentatonic melody above two alternating chords.

[Thanks to Brent Hugh.]

I want a lavender Cadillac
Don’t want it green or blue or black
Just a lavender Cadillac

—“I Want a Lavender Cadillac,” Maurice King & His Wolverines with Bea Baker, 1952

Inspired by Anthony Burgess, who mentions "the ghosts of spices" in Earthly Powers.

"Only delight forgives what depravity has undertaken." —Robert Walser, JAKOB VON GUNTEN

We were delighted to stumble upon a seemingly absurd reference to "lengthy one-letter words."  The context was newfangled electric typewriters with overly-sensitive touch-response:


Of course, lengthy one-letter words add up to another passion of ours: all-consonant and all-vowel words!  Can you guess our definitions for mmmmm and zzzzzzzz?

 

Who is funnier: Milton or Shakespeare?

Clue:  This is according to a Milton scholar

Answer:  Shakespeare.  “Almost all men are less humorous than Shakespeare; but most men are more humorous than Milton.”  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Walter Alexander Raleigh, Milton (1900), p. 7.

Slow as sheep they moved, tranquil, impassable, filling the passages, contemplating the fretful hurrying of those in urban shirts and collars with the large, mild inscrutabilitiy of cattle or of gods, functioning outside of time, having left time lying upon the slow and imponderable land green with corn and cotton in the yellow afternoon.

—William Faulkner, Sanctuary, 1931

Dispossession is one-tenth of the law.

(Thanks, Mike!)

 

Certainty #46:

"The only certainty consists in exploratory laparotomy."
—John Blair Deaver, Surgery of the Upper Abdomen, 1908

The successful independent publishing house prides itself on an embarrassment of niches. 
(Thanks, Mike!)

"There are no words for it, at least in our words." —Julio Cortázar, "The Idol of the Cyclades," Blow-Up and Other Stories

True or False: Cat’s-eye glasses are funny, but not as funny as people think.

Clue:  This is according to a guide to drawing comics

Answer:  True.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Suck School of Comic Art, Suck.com, (Nov. 7, 1997)

Dreams that argue
with you
are the best kind,
Glacier or Iceberg.

—William Keckler, The Guidebook for Broken Coursers

"Who hasn't been let down?  But don't think that it's a system or a culture or a state or a person that does the letting down.  It's our expectations that let us down.  It begins in the warmth of the womb and the discovery that it's cold outside.  But it's not the cold's fault that it's cold." —Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

Jakob Lowenmeister writes: I was laughing out loud at this. One gets the horrible feeling you have hit up on a karmic truth. I also love your "fine line" series. They are divinely finical. They are like logical fitness tests, but with a poet rosewater atomized over them.

"Mysteries make one dream of unendurable bewitchments, they have the fragrance of something quite, quite unspeakably beautiful.  Who knows, who knows.  Ah—"
—Robert Walser, JAKOB VON GUNTEN

 

There is a red carnation in that vase. A single flower as we sat here waiting, but now a seven- sided flower, many- petalled, red, puce, purple- shaded, stiff with silver- tinted leaves — a whole flower to which every eye brings its own contribution.
—Virginia Woolf, The Waves, 1931.

"The squashed, glowing, magenta sun on a flat horizon is a sight not soon forgotten."
—Philip C. Plait, Bad Astronomy

Pictured above, a magenta sun by photographer Carlo Van de Roer. See his entire "Orbs" gallery. Did you know magenta isn't actually a color? But don't tell that to Deutsche Telekom, who has trademarked magenta (and not without controversy.) Racism often revolves around color, but in the Netherlands magenta "bites the hands that feed discrimination." Little wonder magenta has a bite, as the color is named after a battle. Photographer Carlo Van de Roer envisions a magenta orb at the seashore, like an eerie sun or diabolical beach ball. A magenta sun makes for a romantic spacewalk. Look for a magenta sun in the afternoon of a forest fire. On clearer days, a magenta sun ensures a magenta rainbow. The magenta sunset is best seen with man's best friend.

"The fisheye lens allows for photographic expression that challenges conventional views of the world."
—Four-Thirds camera lens catalog (pdf)

Photo source.

"To be of service to somebody whom one does not know, and who has nothing to do with one, that is charming, it gives one a glimpse into divine and misty paradises." —Robert Walser, JAKOB VON GUNTEN

Which genitalia is funnier: male or female?

Clue:  This is according to science fiction novelist Brian Wilson Aldiss

Answer:  male.  “Male equipment looks a lot funnier than those rather pretty little purses you women have.”  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Brian Wilson Aldiss, Forgotten Life (1989), p. 96.

"We are all like snowflakes."
—comedian Lewis Black

Image via Social Fiction.

This is a page from our unfinished collection of writing prompts.  All such diagrams may be found in Professor Oddfellow's Forgotten Wisdom: Volume II.

Certainty #45:

"The only certainty, and the only thing that matters, is that the sun once existed in the sky."
—Bradley J. Stiles, Emerson's Contemporaries and Kerouac's Crowd, 2003

The folks at The Random Forest took note of our Dictionary of All-Consonant Words, but we wonder which of the adjectives in the first sentence applies to our work.  (Or do they all?)

---

In this age of advertising, must even calligraphic ink be pitched as "refreshing" and "moist"?

Artwork by Shinichi Maruyama, via Graphic Hug.  See much bigger version here.

 

He woke up the next day with a feeling of incomprehensible excitement. The April morning was bright and windy and the wooden street pavements had a violet sheen; above the street near Palace Arch an enormous red- blue- white flag swelled elastically, the sky showing through it in three different tints: mauve, indigo and pale blue.
—Vladimir Nabokov, The Defense, 1964.