Thanks to the Presurfer and Daily Fix blogs for showcasing our interactive Breathing Circle.

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.)

 

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.

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.

While geometers continue to puzzle over "squaring the circle," Prof. Oddfellow has circled the square with an interactive mandala for four-square breathing.  Tackle stress, anxiety, or panic attacks.  Click the image to load the page.

WAXING CRESCENT (PROGRESSIVE)

"How long can this punctuated phase be maintained?"

—Aat Brakel, People and Organizations Interacting

 

Q: Why can't we see peels of thunder?

A: Because they're the same color as the sky. —Jeff Hawkins

Lloyd Wright's mountaintop memorial to Emanuel Swedenborg in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

"Somebody should write a book on how to walk and not dislocate joints."
—The Western Druggist, Vol. X, 1888, p. 182.

"If the right word doesn't come to you, leave a blank."
—The Little, Brown Handbook, 1995

Photo by wellurban.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Inspired by this piece by Gary Barwin.

 

 

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

The woodlands at Portmeirion, Wales.

WAXING CRESCENT (FUTURE)

"A tiny rounding crescent turns into a semicolon."

—Eva Müller-Zettelmann, Theory Into Poetry (2005)

 

Descanso Gardens, La Cañada, California

One derogatory term for glam rock is "hair band."  Yet all bands are "hair bands."  Even buzz-cut Sinead O'Connor was a hair band, for "Thesis and antithesis are inseparable, like an object and its shadow" (Pavel Aleksandrovich Florenskiĭ, The Pillar and the Ground of the Truth, 1997).

"There is need that somebody should write a book for grown folks entitled 'How They Are Making a Baby of Him.'"
—Sunday Afternoon, Vol. 3, 1879, p. 283.

Which is funnier: Tears or laughter?

Clue:  This is according to the book Love and Other Games of Chance

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

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

 

 

The Campanile at Portmeirion, Wales.

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.

NEW

The semicolon's inky side is facing the reader. The semicolon is not visible, except during thick clouds of ignorance which eclipse literature. The illuminated side of the semicolon faces away from the reader, like a moody child. This means that the reading lamp, reader, and semicolon are almost in a straight line, with the semicolon in between the reading lamp and the reader. The semicolon that we see looks very dark, like holes in the face of a mask.

 

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Inspired by and dedicated to literary rapscallion Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

"Somebody ought to write a book tracing in detail the workings of an aristocratic landowning tradition in present-day English social life."
—John Boynton Priestley, The World of J. B. Priestly, 1967, p. 188.

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

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.

The UNESCO kite.

"It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: If we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal."
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

 

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.'"

 

The woodlands of the Portmeirion peninsula, Wales.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Photo by rickyli99. See also our whimsical atlas of blank maps.

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

"There should be a book about the river, about the grasses and weeds, the flowers of the banks."
—The Fiddlehead, 1945, p. 117.

"Any word can be the right word, if used in the right place."
—X. J. Kennedy, An Introduction to Poetry

The Portmeirion estuary, Wales.

 

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt comments:

"Your car will come in, inevitably." —Ship and Pilot

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

Yes, you may . . . on one condition:

"you must swear that you will never more play for money." —"On Chess," The Saturday Magazine, 1841