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We're delighted to announce that the game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" has been reincarnated into a Zen version: " Moon, Fish, Ocean." Play online against the Blind Master (a.k.a. your humble server). Every hand combination tells a Zen poem through sign language. Then check out the book version, which whimsically explores the complete rules, scoring, history, and variations of the game. We're honored that our game inspired the visual poet Geof Huth to create a poem-word (or " pwoermd," to be precise): moonfishoceanGeof's poem then inspired a Finnish translation, by Karri Kokko: kuukalameriGeof explains that "'kuu' is 'moon,' 'kala' is 'fish,' and 'meri' (which appears to be a cognate of the French 'mer') means 'ocean.'" |
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The author of A Surrealist Dictionary [no longer online but archived by the WaybackMachine] once explained to us that "Words have begun to make up their own meanings, simply because they desire to be free and live their own lives, outside of normal human convention and assigned stereotypes." Here is a selection from the now-vanished dictionary: AARDVARK: The long, intricately shaped glass tube used in the distillation of a widow's veil.ABBREVIATE: An opiate derivative of tears.
ABLUTION: A rainbow reassembled inside a nightgown and used for starting fires.
AFTERBIRTH: A spark-yielding mist.
APHRODISIAC: Light given off between carnivorous plants as a form of communication.
AURA: A very dangerous species of moth attracted to human blood.
AURORA: Nocturnal animal similar to a jellyfish and noted for its high-pitched screams.
BICYCLIST: One of several long, white-haired creatures resembling Llamas that emit cooing, voice-like sounds.
BODICE: A prism used only in the dark as a weapon, and closely resembling a hunting knife.
BOAR: A vessel used for transporting reflections.
BREATH: Spoons repulsed by the geraniums.
CABAL: A very fast vehicle powered by cocoons.
CHAOS: A fleshy, succulant fruit - the seeds of which are often used as umbrellas.
CORMORANT: Chemical found in the human body during moments of contentment.
CORONA: A wind-powered honeycomb.
CORPSE: A luminous green flower that reflects the moon.
CUNNILINGUS: The sudden metamorphosis of a chair into a great bird.
DANCE: An invisible doorway in a wall to which sleepwalkers are invariably drawn.
DESIRE: The glow of bathing lunatics.
DIAMOND: Nocturnal animal similar to a jellyfish, but much larger and more ferocious.
DIVINING ROD: A dangerous device used to attract stars for digestive purposes.
DREAM: A dress to which the eyes of bicyclists are attached; robe worn by messengers.
EEL: The corners of a room where the walls meet the ceiling to form an escape route.
ELEVATOR: A soft, spongy mass that consumes its weight in gold.
EROS: A species of hunting dog with bright red feathers.
ESTROGEN: Wishbone used for rearranging constellations.
ETHER: Female reproductive organ.
FACULA: A large net used to catch enchanted stockings.
FEMALE: One of several species of fur-covered tripods used for stimulating rubies.
FLAME: A violin powered by the eyelids of sleeping girls.
FOETUS: Form of hysteria contracted while moving around in a solar eclipse.
GLANCE: A bitter tasting fungus often used for catching shadows.
GOWN: A joyful humming sound given off by spider webs during electrical storms.
GRACE: The art of luring ravenous dogs into a state of springtime.
GYROSCOPE: Human female milk-producing gland.
HEMOPHILIA: A very sweet herbal drug that causes spontaneous, undirected human flight.
HONEY: A sexual perversion involving a dolphin and a pharmaceutical cabinet.
HOCUS POCUS: The buzzing sound that characterizes a flaw in the universe.
HYPNOSIS: Music produced when a chrysalis and a flame exchange places.
INCENDIARY: An obscene gesture or position with intent to elude color by emitting an inky, jet black substance.
INCEST: A psychology of the body based on the oysters of space travel.
ISOSCELES: Insects that gather to form a doorway in a tropical forest.
LACONIC: A vanishing cream.
LOOM: A golden dust used for hypnotizing wolves.
LUNATION: The sound of tongues caressing before eating fowl.
MASOCHISM: Sparks given off by oyster-beds when the tides come in.
MENSTRUATION: The sound produced when rubbing two swans together.
MIRROR: The stillness preceding a flash-fire that never arrives.
NEGLIGEE: A fly-swatter similar to a bee's nest and used to fend off an attack of pianos.
NEBULA: A psychological condition in which the very essence of one's being feels constructed of sound rather than flesh and bone.
PLEASURE: A sundial that uses the wings of bats to attract forests.
SADISM: Moments during the vernal equinox when sunlight turns into honey.
SEX: A small white furry animal that attracts windows.
SHADOW: A hairless mammal that generates rainbows instead of saliva.
SOMNAMBULISM: A cleaning solution.
SOLACE: A large triangular oven in which fighting wolves surpass the speed of light.
SOLSTICE: The luminous blue fog surrounding a human body when the mind is elsewhere.
STARLIGHT: Liquid used to power a whispering machine.
SWIMMING POOL: A kind of mist secreted by pyramids when fending off an attack of vicious glow-worms.
VESTAL: Bright yellow flowers that grow out of mummies.
VULVA: Wind chimes that use the bones of children.
WHORE: Apparatus for telling the future; similar to a tuning-fork.
X-RAY: A sewing machine that uses sparks instead of thread.
YAWN: A species of seagoing plant.
YGGDRASIL: A golden frog that howls during the full moon.
ZOMBI: A glass slipper.
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I dreamed about my Aunt B last night. But I've always been closest to L (just ask any typist).
A costume designed in a workshop in experimental typography at Konstfack, University Collage of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. See this and others at RBG6.
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| Did You Hear the One I Just Made Up? |
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Greg Ross, proprietor of Futility Closet, showcased this 1903 patent for chicken spectacles. That's funny—I thought the inventor was doing it for a lark.
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Artist Jon Sasaki modified a subwoofer to vibrate a Ouiji pointer over a Ouiji Board, "spelling out the sinister directives that have been encoded in all popular music as subliminal messages." See a video of the device in action! |
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Piecing together the secret of the petroglyphs . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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A-OK Every day, more people are making more things "okay." Consider the following examples: The television character Adrian Monk made it okay to have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) The film Bonnie and Clyde made it okay to sympathize with murderers The Cold War and space race made it "okay to be smart" in America The actress and glamor model Pamela Anderson made it okay for a chick to be "wild, adventurous, reckless, kittenish" The film Deliverance made it okay to make fun of rednecks, backwoodsmen, and simpletons. However, comedian Jeff Foxworthy made it "okay to be a redneck" (source is in PDF format) "In his humble, brilliant simplicity, Dave [Thomas, the founder of the Wendy's restaurant chain] made it okay to be, well, just okay" Arquitectonica's Atlantis, a "tropical modernist" condominium in Miami, made it okay to "color outside of the box" The HBO show "Six Feet Under" made it "okay to laugh at, think about and talk about death and your dysfunctional family" The film Superman (1978) made it okay for Hollywood to adapt comic books The character Tracy Turnblad from John Waters' Hairspray (1988) "made it okay to be fat" Children's television icon Mister Rogers made it okay to be curious The famous collie Lassie "made it as much as many of us have always loved dogs” Prozac "made it okay to take a psychotropic drug" The HBO series Sex and the City "made the world safe for sluts, and Paris Hilton made it okay to hate them again" Balloon delivery man Don F. Cheeseman made it okay for a guy to drive a pink van (and don lingerie after a night of drinking) New York City "is so hip to walking, they've made it okay to eat en route" J. Mascis, of the band Dinosaur Jr., is the man who made it okay to rip a guitar solo in underground rock This is a post that I am "co-blogging" with Hanan Levin of Grow-a-Brain. Thank you, Hanan!
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I opened my eyes — and all the sea was ice- nine. The moist green earth was a blue- white pearl. The sky darkened. Borasisi, the sun, became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel. The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.
—Kurt Vonnegut Cat’s Cradle, 1963.
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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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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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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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  by DimrillHeavy and Weightless ColorsTo paraphrase a classic riddle, which weighs more: a pound of yellow feathers or a pound of red lead? Color may be a weighty subject, but the spectrum can't be gauged in terms of tonnage. The Swiss painter Paul Klee observed that color can be "neither weighed nor measured. Neither with scales nor with ruler can any difference be detected between two surfaces, one a pure yellow and the other a pure red, of similar area and similar brilliance. And yet, an essential difference remains, which we, in words, label yellow and red" ( On Modern Art, 1948). Klee was right—even though colors don't technically have weight, they can appear quite heavy and substantial or extraordinarily light and vaporous. [Read the entire article in my guest blog at ColourLovers.com.]
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Piecing together the secret of perfection . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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It was the night of the full moon. Flaring like a white- hot coin, so brilliant that it hurt one’s eyes, the moon swam rapidly upwards in a sky of smoky blue, across which drifted a few wisps of yellowish cloud. The stars were all invisible. The croton bushes, by day hideous things like jaundiced laurels, were changed by the moon into jagged black- and- white designs like fantastic woodcuts. . . .
‘Look at the moon, just look at it!’ Flory said. ‘It’s like a white sun. It’s brighter than an English winter day.’
Elizabeth looked up into the branches of the frangipani tree, which the moon seemed to have changed into rods of silver. The light lay thick, as though palpable, on everything, crusting the earth and the rough bark of trees like some dazzling salt, and every leaf seemed to bear a freight of solid light, like snow. Even Elizabeth, indifferent to such things, was astonished.
—George Orwell, Burmese Days, 1934.
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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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"We speak often of rhetorical questions, but never about another figure of speech of equal importance: the rhetorical imperative." — Geof Huth |
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Some people say / The Green River Blues ain’t bad, / Then it must not have been / Them Green River Blues I had.
—Charley Patton, "Green River Blues," 1929.
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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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Piecing together the secret of paradise . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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Q: "Who wants to play the ghost of Hamlet's father?"
A: "I."
First Person Ominous
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Q: "Who is impartial?"
A: "I."
First Person Objective
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Q: "Who feels invincible?"
A: "I."
First Person Omnipotent
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Q: "Who can bi-locate?"
A: "I."
First Person Omnipresent
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Q: "Who here can referee?"
A: "I."
First Person Adjudicative
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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 by atomicsharkMulticolored, MultilingualWhen we talk of colors, we can't help but be multilingual. Our pictorial world tour of exotic color names continues on through Italy, France, and Greece. [Read the entire article in my guest blog at ColourLovers.com.]
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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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Piecing together the secret of the one thousand cranes . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all around the walls, on one end a large shining map, marked with all the colors of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red — good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager- beer. However, I wasn’t going into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the center. And the river was there — fascinating — deadly — like a snake.
—Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 1899.
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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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Piecing together the secret of numbers . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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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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Piecing together the secret of the night . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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Piecing together the secret of the mystic triangle . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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| Did You Hear the One I Just Made Up? |
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Q: What do you call cryptic questions such as these: What is the sound of a kidnapped baby crying in Arizona? What was Barton Fink's face before he moved to L.A.? A: Zen Coens |
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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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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: FFIII writes: "I really wanted to get a copy of [ Professor Oddfellow's] Data Mining and The Depths of Madness for framing. I also liked How to Call a Bluff." A variety of archival-quality Professor Oddfellow prints are available from Zazzle, specialists in "infinite one-of-a-kind-ness."
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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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Negatives — positives . . . the hallucinatory play of black and white . . . I deduced therefrom, philosophically speaking, that white and black signs, and the inevitable antinomy of the ideas of the past, like ‘day and night’, ‘angel and devil’, ‘good and evil’, are in reality complementaries, a fertile androgynous idea . . . White and black, yes and no, it is the binary language of cybernetics, making possible the building of a plastic bank in electronic brains. White and black, it is the indestructibility of art- thought and hence the perenniality of the work in its original form.
—Victor Vasarely, 1965; quoted in Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s by John Houston, 2007.
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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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| Did You Hear the One I Just Made Up? |
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Piecing together the secret of the mystery . . .
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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Down the long road into Statesville, he walked toward a realm of gold, sunset had turned all the world to gold.
And next morning, he was on the great road again, walking into sunrise gold. The sun came up behind him like a big red full moon, a red that was full of yellow, a red orange warm gold that absorbed all the pinks and pale reds of the morning.
—Julian Lee Rayford, Cottonmouth, 1941.
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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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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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