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Apparently, cutting out the faces of ex-boyfriends dates back to the mid-1600s. (Actually, this an intermediate plate from when Cromwell's head was replaced with Charles I's. See the before and after of Pierre Lombart's engraving here.)
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“When your boat comes in, the rapture will begin!” —Elsie Kendall
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This collage refers to new evidence of " mirror matter" that fills the universe. The foreground photo is from the wrongfully-canceled comedy series Arrested Development.
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Over at an English tutorial website, we're delighted to see our rainbow bookcase illustrating this sentence: "I need to sort out my books."
See a larger version of this photo at flickr.
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WAXING CRESCENT (PROGRESSIVE)"How long can this punctuated phase be maintained?" —Aat Brakel, People and Organizations Interacting
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Q: Why can't we see peels of thunder? A: Because they're the same color as the sky. — Jeff Hawkins
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Lloyd Wright's mountaintop memorial to Emanuel Swedenborg in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
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“I will come on board when your boat arrives.” —Office of Naval Records
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which word is funnier: moist or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
Clue: This is according to a book on gender differences entitled I’m With Stupid
Answer: Moist (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Gene Weingarten and Gina Barreca, I’m With Stupid (2004), p. 171
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The woodlands at Portmeirion, Wales.
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WAXING CRESCENT (FUTURE)"A tiny rounding crescent turns into a semicolon." —Eva Müller-Zettelmann, Theory Into Poetry (2005)
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Descanso Gardens, La Cañada, California
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* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction. |
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“When this dredging is done, your ship will come here.” —Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors
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The Campanile at Portmeirion, Wales.
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I was thrown into some sort of strange loop while watching the Pet Shop Boys "Pandemonium" concert. Neil Tennant was lip-synching a duet with Dusty Springfield. The dearly departed Springfield appeared in the form of a massive projection. Not only was she not present (except in spirit), but she was lip-synching, too, as her filmed footage wasn't of a live performance. There was Neil Tennant, "pausing" his lip-synched stanza to make sonic space for the projection of a deceased woman to lip-synch her own pre-recorded chorus. I was left . . . well . . . speechless.
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Who is funnier: Karl Marx or the Marx Brothers?
Clue: This is according to James Agate
Answer: The Marx Brothers. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: James Agate, A Shorter Ego: The Autobiography of James Agate (1945), p. 202
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Prof. Oddfellow dons 3D glasses to witness the wonders of three D's.
June writes:
Devilishly delightful and delicious!
Gordon writes: Wow! The moment of illumination, captured. And dig those crazy glasses.
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Thanks to the New Straits Times for recommending our One-Letter Words: A Dictionary and noting that it features "More than 1,000 surprising — and revealing — definitions of each singular letter in the English alphabet; everything from 'a per se' to 'a hypothetical explosive.'"
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“I have been enjoying the view, watching your ship come in.” —Mary Ellen Evans
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The woodlands of the Portmeirion peninsula, Wales.
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which is funnier: satiric or non-committal humor?
Clue: This is according to a scholar of Henry Fielding
Answer: non-committal humor (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: John Hames Peereboom, Fielding Practice (1984), p. 36.
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: Gary Barwin suggests that death's favorite punctuation mark is the exclamation point: "the jot, a single moment, its long black robe fluttering behind." We suggest that death's second favorite is the question mark.
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His eyes were an improbably vivid sky blue, not made for looking outward but for steeping themselves in the cerulean essence of dreams.
—Bruno Schulz, “The Republic of Dreams”, The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, 1934; translated by Celina Wieniewska.
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* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research. |
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Is There an "X" in "Especially"?(our guest post for The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar) Jeff Stone is perfectly correct in colorfully noting that "there's no freakin' X in the word 'especially.'" Yet we can't help fondly remembering those centuries when the word "expecial" meant "singular" or "exceptional," as in the context of accessories designed "to meet the expecial needs of the physician" ( Brooklyn Medical Journal, Vol. 8, 1894) or European colonists in the Potomac being advised not to expose themselves to the danger of the Tuscarora War of 1711 "without expecial necessity" (James Rice, Nature and History in the Potomac Country, 2009). Our favorite context for the word "expecial" is, of course, the world of algebra! Back in 1919, a textbook entitled First Course in Algebra embodied "an expecial effort to connect the elements of algebra in a clear and forcible manner with the affairs of every-day life." If any field is qualified to put an X in "especially," it's algebra!
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SONG: Invisible
ARTIST: Alison Moyet
ORIGINAL LYRIC:
You don't have the time
and you won't spend a dime not even to call me
ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION:
You seek to estrange and can't find the change You give me no quarter
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* Payphones used to take dimes, but now they take quarters. Isn't
it time to update song lyrics to reflect the realities of
inflation? Alas, it's vastly easier to rhyme the word "dime" than
the word "quarter," but here at Inflationary Lyrics Headquarters we
have risen to the challenge. Please join the fun and share your
own inflationary lyrics, with both the "before" and "after" versions! |
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which number is funnier: four or five?
Clue: This is according to the book Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain
Answer: Five, as "odd numbers are always funnier.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Christopher Hart, Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain (1998), p. 107
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Yes, you may . . . on one condition:
"you must swear that you will never more play for money." —"On Chess," The Saturday Magazine, 1841
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Original Content Copyright © 2019 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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