I Found a Penny Today, So Here’s a Thought |
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"Good is stronger than Evil, if you take it on its simplest terms and set yourself to forget the horror! It's mad to refuse to be happy because there's a poison in the world that bites into every nerve. After all, it's short enough! I know very well that Chance could set me screaming like a wounded baboon — every jot of philosophy gone! Well, until that happens, I must endure what I have to endure!" —John Cowyer Powys, Wolf Solent
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Scanning a 1939 volume of Daily Tar Heel, we noticed references to:
- pink elephants
- golden fleece
- ghost writing
- cindermen
- phantoms
- mermen
- wolfmen
- wolves
- devils
- grail
- imps
Alas, they turned out to be sports-related, mostly. Oh, there was even an animated snowman named "'Frosty' Snow, Jr."
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Deobfuscating Homophonic Em-dashes
The classic em-dash is called Auntie Em, not after Dorothy’s guardian in Kansas but rather Emily Dickinson, famous for short lines of poetry punctuated with long lines of ink. We hear the skeptical community protesting that the em-dash predates Emily D., but of course her poetry is timeless and the issue to moot. (It’s widely believed that Emily’s hyphen remained intact throughout her life.) If two em-dashes occur in a row, the first is the ante-em. As a line connects two points, the absence of a line is the colon (two unconnected dots): the anti-em. Thespian Tilda Swinton has nothing to do with any of this. Nor does the vocalized Enya.
Gary Barwin replies:
It’s true that I’ve sometimes felt the need to make my poems as dashing as Emily’s, dashing them off like with the insouciance of Little Hyphen Annie, endashing them with em-dashes as if crossing a t (the verb form of which is crossingaty, and the noun, crossingatification.).
Sometimes, however, my hopes are dashed and I must employ a total ellipse of the moon…and realize that only Pluto has three moons and Pluto is not in fact a planet so my Plutonic relationship with the ellipse must be omitted and instead when it comes to my poem, I must planet better in terms of space.
And the name of the em-dash between birth and death, where all of one’s life sent(i)ence takes place? In memori-em.
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This book appeals to a wide group of people. Those who like interesting cocktail recipes, those with an interest in traditions, and those who appreciate good design. If you're not one of these types, then surely you know someone who is. Give them this book as an inexpensive, and unexpected, present. I've already purchased six copies! —Gordon Meyer
Here's a toast to the dead from the book. The text reads:
This toast was passed down to us from the Omar Khayyam Society, 1921:
To those who have passed beyond the veil that hides the Infinite, and solved the last great mystery of life. In enduring memory of these friends and comrades we annually, with humble and contrite hearts, in solemn appreciation of the glorious beauties of their lives, speak the seven hundred-year-old lament of Omar in FitzGerald’s magnificent rendering:
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest, Have drunk their Cup and Round or two before, And one by one crept silently to rest.
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The introduction to Puffs and Mysteries (a.k.a. A. B. Has Returned, 1855) is addressed to the "mythical multitude of readers," since few ever read prefatory matter. "What no one thinks of reading is of course beyond criticism," so the author safely fills paper while going to very little trouble.
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One of these ladies is wearing an imposter designer label. (Insert your own "fake news" joke. Having earned a degree in journalism, we bemoan the current degradation of the media. Granted, the press has never in history truly been free; it has always been a propaganda engine, but traditionally there was at least a pretense of objectivity. As La Rochefoucauld famously said, "hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue." Now it's bare-faced bias. Disgusting!) From Lustige Blätter, 1917.
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"The love that caught strange light from death's own eyes" —Algernon Charles Swinburne.
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"Esoteric students everywhere understand that California is one of the occult eyes of the world, because it still retains the magnetism of prehistoric times, never having been visited by the ice ages or flood, and only in recent geological reckoning being partially purified by fire. Its Sanscrit name is Kali (time) and purna (fulfillment)." From Yermah the Dorado by Frona Eunice Wait, 1897.
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From literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:
Entomologically speaking, there are antennae on an ant. But etymologically speaking, there is no ant in antennae.
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Page 124 of 169

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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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