"Arnott biscuits are holding hands and dancing around a fairy that is playing a violin.  A parrot is on a perch watching the proceedings."  Courtesy of the State Library of Queensland.

Today's card tricking oboe who improvises nonsense phrases is from The Martlet, 1974.  (Magicians, especially, will have noticed the extra joke embedded in this: how the oboe has cheated in his card trick.)  That last panel, with the nonsense phrases, touches upon an occult secret that modern stage magicians have now forgotten, to the detriment of their careers.  Nonsense phrases, like the babbled syllables of the Ancient Egyptian wizards, the priestesses of the Delphic oracle, and the stage magicians of old (when "abracadabra" wasn't a cliché) profoundly affect the brain by instilling an altered state of consciousness.  Dr. Raymond Moody recently published his findings on the influence of nonsense and further explained why he has clients read a page of a Dr. Seuss book as preparation for a mind-bending experience within a Psychomanteum (Moody's version of the Necromanteion of Acheron).  Yes, a magician (whether on stage or in an occult setting) who utters hocus pocus gives those present a more extraordinary experience, from within their own brains.  Though the oboe magician in the comic panel cheats at its own card tricks, it knows how to perform genuine magic.  See Magic Words: A Dictionary.

From Making Up with Mr. Dog by Albert Bigelow Paine and illustrated by J. M. Paine, 1901.

"Caricatura de Raphael Bordallo Pinheiro (1846-1905)," via Biblioteca de Arte da Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

From the University of the South's 1932 yearbook.

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1917.

We're sometimes asked what we mean when we identify an image as "our restoration."  As an example, here's the "After" followed by the "Before," from The Martlet, 1972.  The original scan was practically a silhouette, with most detail lost.  This is our tribute to a moose caught in his own suspenders, originally illustrated by Gord Moore.

From Washington & Lee's 1950 yearbook.

The pin brothers.  From Sandman Twilight Stories by Abbie Phillips Walker and illustrated by Rhoda C. Chase, 1918.

You've seen some really screwed up architecture, and here's why -- buildings can be on drugs, too.  From Woroni, 1980.

From Hal Roach's "Thundering Fleas."  From The Film Daily, 1926.

The 1920s slang "it's the berries" (meaning that something is impressive, desirable, fancy) was not, according to Steven D. Price, connected to the expression "the bee's knees."  That means that these "berries" were pollinated in an untraditional manner!  The speech bubble reads, "I guess I'm not the 'berries'?"  From Middle Tennesee's 1927 yearbook.