While standing in line, I saw a young woman wearing what looked like a "Layoffs 2005" t-shirt.  I thought, "Oh, how nice; she went from denial, to anger, to acceptance, to celebration!  She went from 'fired' to 'fired-up!'"  Then I realized that her purse strap was covering up the initial "P."

A surreally funny line from the British comedy series Attention Scum:

"My dog has no legs but he still chews bones.  How does a dog with no legs chew bones?  With a great deal of suspicion, I noticed."

"The Weekly Forecast"


Literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt's plays, stories, essays, letters, parodies, wordplay, witticisms and miscellaneous tomfoolery can be found at Monkeys 1, Typewriters 0. Here you'll encounter frivolous, urbane writings about symbolic yams, pigs in bikinis, donut costumes, vacationing pikas, nonexistent movies, cross-continental peppermills, and other compelling subjects.

--an excerpt from "Chance Abbreviation" by Ken Clinger.  Based in Pennsylvania, Ken is a prolific, visionary recording artist known as one of the "godfathers" of the underground home taping genre.

When I recite this quotation, I add a very pregnant pause before the word pumpkins, to build the suspense, and I pronounce pumpkins so as to maximize its spookiness, blowing it up in size with that initial syllabic "pump" of air.  It's great fun to utter pumpkin as if it's the vegetable equivalent of the boogey man!  With the right intonations (i.e., dead seriousness with an undertone of insanity, like you're "out of your gourd"), the word pumpkin can sound like a curse.  Spooky graveyards are so passé -- imagine the terror of having to cross through a frightening pumpkin patch on the way home at midnight!  The sound to dread, of course, is the *snap* of the vine (or "tendril," to those initiated), for then the ominous orange fruit with demonic flesh has broken free of its umbilic tie to Hell.  (Movie announcer voice:) This Halloween, prepare to get squashed!  Or, This Halloween, we're all plucked!

"I have a can of yams that I believe has been passed down from nomadic mother to nomadic daughter in my family for three or more generations." --ToastedSuzy's Posted Musings

Here's another mention of a can of yams dating back to the 1970s, still waiting to be opened.

The yam-shaped South Pacific island of Ambrym owes its name to Captain Cook, who anchored off there in 1774.  Ambrym means “here are yams” (ham rim in Ranon language).

Some yams are works of art:

Silence of the yams

A pregnant woman's "Self Portrait as a Yam"

I yam what I yam

Beached Yam

Beware the dragon, lest he eat your yams!

A still life with a yam, and another (including plant parts and dead animals)

New Guinea yam masks

Men carrying yams

Yams in a basket

Monochrome yams

Yam leaf collage

Yams in orange

Oiled yams

Pastel yams

Colored pencil yams

Little yams art collective

A one-act play entitled The Can of Yams was penned by the inimitable Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.

Doorway to nowhere

This doorway was just carved into the face of the cliff at the monastery

One well-used hidden door and another

A Doorway to nowhere and another

Doorway to The Universe, located within the Hayu Marca mountain region of southern Peru and about 35 Km from Puno, has long been revered by local Indians as the "Place of the Gods"

A dappled sunset shades this almost invisible doorway

Death’s Door, as depicted by William Blake

The Lizard King on Rotten

Door Knockers in Florence, in Pau, France

A single stalk of bamboo framed by a highly unusual Chinese doorway

Cars with gullwing doors

Combo Kennel and Concealed Pet Door

The Traditional House Under Threat?

This is a post that I am “co-blogging” with Hanan Levin of Grow-a-Brain. Thank you, Hanan, for the links you suggested!

I asked, "Are there any questions?"

And a voice replied:


And then I stopped talking.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

At lunch, I noticed that the new waiter at my favorite restaurant kept looking at me and smiling.  It was a lingering look, as if he wanted to say something.  But it wasn't until I was signing the credit card receipt that he worked up his nerve:  

"Are you ever in Wilmington?" he asked hesitantly, his eyes studying my face with equal amounts of boldness and terror.  His eyes reminded me of Don Knotts; I could see the mustered-up self-confidence begin to tremble under its own weight.

"No, never been there," I replied, wondering why he asked.  

"You look just like my friend Tom.  He lives in Wilmington.  He has the same hair style, same face, same ..."  He paused, looking me up and down.  "Same everything!"

I assumed that "everything" referred to my taste in clothing.

I chuckled, muttering something about needing to meet my clone some day.  But my mind was reeling from the UNSPOKEN question that the waiter seemed to be asking: "Are you my friend?  Are you Tom?"

The waiter kept staring at me with those Don Knotts eyes, as if still suspecting I was indeed Tom from Wilmington.  Deputy sheriff Barney Fife was determined to crack this case of false identity.

I got the hell out of there.

---

Later, the cashier at the hardware store bid me farewell with these words: "Have a sparkling day," spoken in a slow monotone -- a depressed drawl.  The words and delivery were so incongruous that it was all I could do not to laugh before I left the building!  Plus, it was the very first time in my life that anyone had wished me a "sparkling" day.

Ensnared


He offered me a chair.
Was it a snare?

He presented salty finger foods
and exotic beverages.

I said, "You tempt me."

He was looking for
companionship, security,

someone to take
out to dinner,

and then, perhaps,
yoga.
 
"Enticing," I admitted.

His daring fashion faux pas
were symptoms of an infectious joie de vivre.

But it was Eartha Kitty
who snagged me in the end.

I'm so glad I discovered this rare booklet.  Until I discovered it, I didn't know exactly why it was so important!  Nor how I could put the information to use! 

I know exactly where it will go on my bookshelves: after the beloved volumes Who & What and Where & When.

Now, if anyone ever asks me if I "have any questions," I'll have to say, "Well, yes and no!"

New Summer Course Offerings at the "Real World University"


Hmmm... I'd love to learn how to slander a celebrity and balance my checking account, but if I take Spanish Cognates then I won't have to buy a textbook!

The white cliffs of Dover, notable as a large natural chalk deposit, were originally connected by a land bridge to the Great Blackboards of northern France.
—Jonathan Caws-Elwitt, "What Passes for Science"

I accidentally scratched my left eye with my fingernail.  It wasn't a severe wound--there wasn't any blood or even tears, for that matter.  But the eye kept hurting, so I finally went to the eye doctor to have it checked out.  Luckily, the doctor said my eye was healing just fine, but the way he described the wound was intriguing.  Peering at my eye through his instruments, he said, "It's like I'm looking at a constellation of stars."  Apparently, there were some microscopic fragments of glass on my fingernail when I cut my eye (I can't imagine where they came from!), and they were twinkling at the doctor.  With my interest in astrology and the concept of the eyes being the "window of the soul," I found it fascinating that the doctor saw a star field in my eye.  Then he said something even more intriguing.  He described the tiny cut in my eye as a "comet trail," and he talked about how it was flying toward the corner of my eye.  I've been trying to analyze the symbolic significance of my diagnosis.  The left eye is traditionally associated with feminine insight.  A comet is traditionally considered a harbinger of some sort.  So does a comet trailing through my feminine insight toward my nose ("third eye" area) seem to announce a shift in my outlook?

The Lazy Novelist's Rough Draft

Chapter One

"Where have you been?"
"Oh, you know."
"Did you meet..."
"What's-his-name?  Yep, and that friend of his, Miss Thing."
"So what happened?"
"Don't get me started."
"I can just imagine it!"
"You don't know the half of it.  Words can't begin to describe what I went through with those two."
"You don't mean..."
"You read my mind."
"Say no more."

Walnuts take 60 years to grow, so every walnut we eat is a gift from a previous generation.