"We're like handshadows illuminated by stars, and the shadow on the wall, lit by a star, is really a shadow of what isn't us." —Gary Barwin

An illustration from a 1903 issue of Saturday Evening Post.

Dedicated to the Master of Masks, Jeff McBride.

An illustration from a 1908 issue of Metropolitan magazine.  The caption reads: "Silence, emptiness, and beside the bed, burning steadily, the lighted candle."

The DVD release of Anthony Newley's series The Strange World of Gurney Slade doesn't feature subtitles, so we took it upon ourselves to transliterate the following rather marvelous made-up words:

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook, for Navid Sinaki:

An illustration from a 1903 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.  The caption reads: "The vicar prodded most of the them with his stick."

An illustration from a 1912 issue of Metropolitan magazine.

"The sooner you catch yourself in the act of building your mental snowball, the easier it is to stop."
—Richard Carlson, The Big Book of Small Stuff

"This might surprise you, but I don' t really hate rap.  I like the fact that it tells a story.  I just can't sing it. It's not me—"
—John Nieman, The Wrong Number One

Years ago we quipped that John Venn traveled in many circles.

But as it's been too long since our last Venn joke, here's a new one:

John Venn's favorite way to waste time was running in circles.

(One might think these jokes write themselves, but the process is protracted and requires protractors.)

[A] very humorous series of essays, experiments and actual OBJECTS (?!) all addressing metaphysical ideas in literature--but in an EXTREMELY playful way.  I LOVE this book.

An illustration from a 1905 issue of Metropolitan magazine.

The opposite of hubris is hubrisn't.

(We're proud to claim "hubrisn't" as a Googlewhack.  Google's one other instance of the word is from a tweet.)

Before the advent of Internet porn:  an illustration from a 1908 issue of Life magazine.

An illustration from a 1912 issue of Life magazine.  The caption reads: "Sports of All Nations:  'Cut your Neighbor' or 'Freeze the Blighter,' the popular pastime of England.  The players endeavor to outstare each other.  It is played in twosomes, foursomes and then some.  The player dropping his H is disqualified."

This 1904 edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne is apparently really hot.

Our Caption: Yes, do take stock and leave the bonds.

(Illustration from a 1912 issue of Life magazine)

"The answer is simple: Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

—Nicholas Rescher, On the Nature of Philosophy

Here's how to test whether or not someone is a "which" or practices "which-craft" [sic]:

An illustration from a 1908 issue of Life magazine.

"It may surprise you to find out how much information there is about you on the Internet, even if you, yourself, do not participate in social networking activities."
—Information Security Management Handbook: Volume 5 (2011)

Jollification expert Bernie DeKoven highlights our oddest work yet — a book that transforms other books in surprising ways.  As we confabulated with Bernie:

The Dictionary Game (see also Fictionary) turns a serious reference book into a gaming generator; the dictionary is playfully transformed from a tool for decoding puzzling words into a puzzle-making machine, where whimsically fake definitions take the stage.  But could any book, spontaneously pulled off the shelf, be transformed into a playfulness machine?  Could one’s entire home library be a gaming center?  That’s the lofty goal of a new publication that offers, among other oddities, cut-out paper spectacles for seeing more than is readily apparent in any book.

Please note that our Machinarium Verbosus is a book for the few—the very few.  If it’s important to one’s psychological well-being that the machinations of the Universe be neat and tidy and wholly comprehensible by the human mind, then absolutely do not proceed with this book’s experiments.  Let this constitute a very serious warning: do not take these experiments lightly, as any one of them may induce an existential crisis.

An illustration from a 1911 issue of Life magazine.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

I dreamed I was the Berlin Wall, separating the independent clauses of East and West Germany.  But suddenly the clauses joined together.  I woke myself up.

Later that night, I dreamed I had a crush on a man who "speaks like a president, not always authoritative or anything but he can form sentences, complex sentences with beginnings and ends, subordinate clauses--you can HEAR his semicolons!"  Upon waking up, I realized this man was a character in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.  Up to that point, I had always agreed with Roger E. Axtell that "You can't say a comma or a semicolon unless you are Victor Borge."

An illustration from a 1908 issue of Life magazine.

photo by Cobalt 123

"'You can't have a fear of the unknown,' the artist/beggar Gabriel Fluke tells me, apropos of nothing.  'You have a fear of the known.  You have a fear of what you know.'"
—James S. Kunen, Diary of a Company Man (2012)

One hundred and thirty-four years before C. S. Lewis published a demonic exchange in The Screwtape Letters, we were invited to listen in on an Infernal Conference or, Dialogues of Devils (1808).

An illustration from a 1908 issue of Life magazine.

"This might surprise you ... but I guess I do understand, kind of."
—Amy Ackley, Sign Language

From the desk of literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt:

"Increasingly I find that I'm writing, not for myself, but so that an audience of readers might appreciate me.  I have progressed from narcissism to egotism."

"Must I shake hands with him?":  an illustration from a 1907 issue of The Canadian magazine.

Here are some great unused book titles from Raymond Chandler's notebooks:

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/01/12/a-gumshoes-library/

Hypnotism: an illustration from a 1916 issue of Cartoons magazine.

"Route taken by imaginary joke":  an illustration from a 1911 issue of Life magazine.

Overheard at lunch: "She calls a comforter a duvet and I want to kill her every time she does that."

It was a great (if chilling) reminder of how using the right word can prevent murderous impulses.

"The Unmasking":  an illustration from a 1912 issue of Life magazine.

An illustration from a 1904 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Her outstretched arms seemed to close upon something."

In the wee hours of January 17, 2013, I dreamed of writing to Larry Hass.  He had requested the template from a printing company that I use (full of cut lines and bleeding, come to think of it!).  I noticed on my laptop screen that the file of Larry's request had surprisingly disappeared once I'd printed out the template.  (Behest and fruition adding up to one, not two?)  As I began to handwrite a cover letter for the printout, I noticed that the paper was unusually fibrous (papyrus?), the back being somewhat smoother than the front.  Within mid-sentence (asking "Did you request this?" since I had no evidence of a request), I noticed that I'd inexplicably switched to the back of the page.  (When front and back merge, aren't we in Möbius territory?)  This happened twice, and I crumpled up the very crisp pages with divided sentences.  On my third try, I decided to begin on the smoother side to see if my pen would stay there.  (Apparently it worked.)  As I wrote, I was aware of three mismatched clocks.  (A fullness of time?  A three-in-one mystery?)  When I set off to mail the letter, my feet ran in place like Fred Flintstone.  (Motion/stillness? Point B indistinguishable from point A? "Modern stone age"?)  After I dreamed this, as I remained asleep, I lucidly recalled the details and dream-typed this transcript to Larry three different times, as if the message were so important that I mustn't forget anything upon waking!

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt coined a new oath or expletive: "Jumping dingbats!"  He explains: "I come by it honestly, having encountered a technical glitch whereby the fancy typographical divider known as a dingbat jumps one line upward in the course of file conversion, so that the text is now divided in the wrong place."

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

An illustration from a 1912 issue of Life magazine.  Text within the image:

"This might surprise you: Your brain is still growing."
—Mark Oestreicher, My Changes

Ludwig Wittgenstein suggested that memory cannot be said to communicate the past to us.  "For even supposing that memory were an audible voice that spoke to us—how could we understand it?  If it tells us e.g. 'Yesterday the weather was fine,' how can I learn what 'yesterday' means?" (Zettel, 40th Anniversary Edition, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe).

"I looked in":  an illustration from a 1905 issue of The Windsor magazine.

"'A rose is a rose is a rose,' but what is true of roses is not true of homicides."
—American Legal Injustice: Behind the Scenes with an Expert Witness

"She felt just like sitting on the rocks all day": from Miss Roberts' Fortune by Sophy Winthrop (1875).

An illustration from a 1904 issue of The Windsor magazine.  The caption reads: "Always that white baby hand called upwards through the earth."

Prof. Oddfellow stares at the sun while contemplating his options (invigorate the scalp or restore shine?).

Bitter feelings were in the little girl's heart (as we learn in Mrs. Molesworth's The Bolted Door, 1906).

Indeed, "Long before your children are capable of expressing their feelings in words, you see in them the exhibitions of pride, anger, revenge, selfishness, and other evil passions; and these 'roots of bitterness' are constantly 'springing up' at every subsequent period of life" (Joseph Cross, Headlands of Faith, 1856).

"Call it a hunch, or gaydar, or what have you."
—J.M. Snyder, It's All Relative (2011)


A still from the classic Young Frankenstein.

Our friend KC shared this dream from 1999:

I was with Craig C. and a few other people on an exploratory voyage.  It seemed like we were on a spaceship, but there wasn't much sense of it being that physical.  We were exploring different levels of reality, and discovered that to go from one level to the next higher, we had to place our attention on the sun of the nearest solar system, and once we focused on it, we would awaken in the next higher reality.  But each level was different enough that the technique had to be altered for each level.

An illustration from a 1905 issue of The Windsor magazine.  The caption reads: "Then the terrible thing happened."

Jonathan offers a zinger: ""She looked straight at me through her mono-lorgnette!"

Communing With the Buffalo Spirit:  an illustration from a 1907 issue of The Windsor magazine.

"Someone should write a book where the main character slowly falls in love with the reader."  (Source.  Thanks, Jonathan!)

An illustration from a 1904 issue of The Windsor magazine.  The caption reads: "Once more he placed the men, and once more they started of their own volition."

"What he saw reflected there, Christ alone knows." From Appleton's magazine, 1905.

An illustration from a 1903 issue of The Windsor magazine.  The caption reads: "I know I was not dreaming."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm looking for a strictly professional relationship."
—Kathleen Long, Silent Warning

Forty-four years before Doctor Dolittle talked to the animals, we learned that animals say such things as:

• He did it first.
• I wish.
• I don't care.
• Not my fault.
• What is that to you?
• I am as good as you.
• More, more.
• Why not?

Additionally:

(The Man's Boot and Other Tales; or Fabulous Truths in Words of One Syllable by Gertrude Sellon, 1876.)

An illustration from a 1907 issue of The Windsor magazine.  The caption reads: "A dull, unearthly glare surrounded it."

"The Fog Folk":  an illustration from a 1907 issue of The Windsor magazine.

"The answer is simple: word of mouth.”

—The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence (2012)

I dreamed again that I was in hell, forever separating the independent clauses of a compound sentence, as if they were young siblings fighting over space in the back seat of the family station wagon.

Later that night, I dreamed I was caught in traffic.

Upon waking, I was filled with the "immortal longings" that impel "every hyphen and semicolon," as discussed by William Stryon in Sophie's Choice.

"Somebody should write a book about the relationship between monotheism and monolithism."
—David DeBatto & Pete Nelson, CI: Mission Liberty (2006)

Imaginary Friend:  an illustration from a 1907 issue of The Windsor magazine.

"This may surprise you, but many people enter into volunteer work for self-promotion."
—Comrie Palme, Dying to Get There (2011)

"Always remember that theirs are bigger and need attention first."
—Telephony (1913)

An illustration from a 1903 issue of The Windsor magazine.

"The answer is simply, all of the above.”

—Reading John With St. Thomas Aquinas (2005)

An illustration from a 1903 issue of The Windsor magazine.

Did you know that buxom has both an obsolete and an archaic meaning?  Obsolete: compliant, obliging.  Archaic: lively, good-tempered.