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* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com. |
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which are funnier: Ducks or dogs?
Clue: This is according to comedy expert Peter Bergman
Answer: Ducks. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Fred Goodwin, “The Infinite Mind: Humor” (1998), p. 8
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Silesius of Rhodes writes:
I could actually SEE the answer without highlighting it today! What is going on?!? Am I developing Super X-ray Vision? Without even having to pay for the glasses!
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: Today is International Swear Like Shakespeare Day. Here's our tribute:
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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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* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com. |
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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What is funnier: salmon or turkey?
Clue: This is according to comic filmmaker Mel Brooks.
Answer: Turkey. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Leonard J. Rosen, Writing and Reading Across the Curicculum (1988), p. 302.
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction. |
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* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com. |
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Shop window at the KaDeWe department store in Berlin. Photo by photosan0.
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com. |
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which is funnier: comic actor W.C. Fields “quiescent and smouldering” or “rampant and yelling”?
Clue: This is according to drama critic Kenneth Tynan
Answer: Quiescent and smouldering. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Kenneth Tynan, Curtains (1961), p. 355.
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Someone Should Write a Book on ... |
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"There needs to be a book that teaches students, simply, how to play the game, no matter what the idealogy of the school." — Maxine Weiss, Aug. 30, 2007.
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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We're honored that poet William Keckler crowns us the "best blogger and net presence. Period." Take in the extent of his full praise here. We couldn't be more humbled by this defining moment! Like Lyndon Johnson, we ask the social network for a mandate—not just to keep things going, but to begin.
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Silesius of Rhodes writes:
I believe it was the Emperor Nero who said, "Eat it up, baby. Lick it up." Amour-propre is, as Martha will remind us, a good thing. Kudos. I have compiled the largest library on conchology this side of Asia Minor, and has this Keckler creature deigned to acknowledge it? Hell nawl! Thalassic Ignoramus! Anyway, keep up the thaumaturgy and all that, Craig. You know how we philosophers like to be amused when we're not doing SERIOUS work. xo Silesius
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* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com. |
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Q: " Everything can't be Kafkaesque, can it? I ask myself this over and over, even though I know it's a rhetorical question." — William KecklerA: Yes, everything is indeed Kafkaesque, except at the antipodes, where everything is reversed.
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Silesius of Rhodes writes:
Gary? Shall we?
The coils of memory at the back of the exposed brain. In cross-section: ellipsis in the head. The triplet darknesses of recollection. The pins, the pining of nostalgia, the stab of regret. A world half-remembered like a hairdo of a goat at an almost-forgotten party, the barrettes and French-braided déjà voodoo of lives unburied, twilight-skinned, the zombie-like dusk of thought, neurons nostalgic for a future remembered. ...then forgotten before it has occurred.
Silesius of Rhodes says:
Zellweger voice: "You had me at 'deja voodoo'..."
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Guelmus asks:
Not the more hostile Italian? Translator / Traitor? Prof. Oddfellow responds:
Good point! By the way, I agree with Umberto Eco, who called translation "admirable treason."
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction. |
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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"Most secret of all is what's forgotten." —J ohn Crowley, Daemonomania
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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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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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What’s funnier than “the long, grave discussions that you hear after dinner about the genuineness of the wines”?
Clue: This is according to a nutritionist
Answer: Nothing (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Dio Lewis, Our Digestion, Or, My Jolly Friend’s Secret (1873), p. 316
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Luverly. If all the empty spaces in the universe ever got together, we'd be in real trouble.
But if these are anti-ellipses --anti-matter ellipses-- showing how what was not there in the first place was left out, then the universe would gradually fill with our memories of tomorrow, our recollections of the future, the words between the emptinesses that we chose to leave out, the not-deer of deer not howling, camouflaging themselves behind the trees that are not there. Silesius of Rhodes responds:
Optimism is a metaphysical disease. Poetry is the panacea sold in those funny little bottles. It's the alcohol in the panacea that does the real work. That's the generator of non-deer. The other stuff is closer to the coffee grounds of reality. Guelmus adds:
Deer that "howl" should be seen by physicians. Those might be lycanthropic deer.
Gary Barwin replies:
Or perhaps the deer should be seen by 'pataphysicians. They are ellipsistropic deer, and we, seemingly always forgetting, our gap-toothed minds filtering the metaphysical riches of the world, are ellipsanthropic. When I see language in need of a haircut, I want to loan my Occam's razor out. This gentleman clearly has a Mint, but I'm not sure anything is legal tender that's coming out. When a metaphysical ship sinks, the war amid the waves is usually between the wits and the witless. The witless miraculously survive, because the wits are engaged in diving for the meaning below the wreck, or looking for the mermaid Public Transportation System. And the deer in question does not seem the least bit "ellipsistropic" to me. The ellipsis has clearly been inflicted upon the poor creature by the antecedent pronoun in the grammatical (and likely erotic) scheme of some hyperbolic (probably 19th century) purple prosateur or prosateuse. Harumph. My Occam's razor, like some Gillette models <http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/14/news/fortune500/gillette/> has just the necessary five blades.
Silesius of Rhodes mutters:
You will find your answer here.
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Evening Promenade, or Sea Beach Costumes, Autumn, 1810. Via Bibliodyssey.
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Were Adam’s eyes the green of paradise? Did they open on the vivid green of the Garden of Eden? God’s green mantle. Was green the first colour of perception?
—Derek Jarman, “Green Fingers”, from Chroma: A Book of Color; quoted by Bruce R. Smith in The Key of Green, 2009
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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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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Inspired by and dedicated to William Keckler, who writes, "Very Honored, Professor! Merci!"
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com. |
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Dear Professor Oddfellow, I would not write you if a matter of the gravest concern and import did not daily and nightly press upon my chest and constrict my very breath like a "way-too- presumptuous-dude" incubus. A parrot-cormorant hybrid has been flying about my domicile recently...a horrible nuisance and eyesore. I notice that it casts no shadow, but that its echoes are doubled and sometimes even trebled, so I'm fairly certain this is a creature escaped from one of your books or incantations. It flaps from floor to floor and the only thing I could find which repels its natural and unnatural curiosity about anything I am doing (the beast has mastered the art of doorknobs with those claws!) is the sound of the homilies administered by one particularly pedantic minister down in Arkansas. As this homily only runs at three in the morning and lasts a scant three hours, I find myself deprived of rest the remainder of the day and night, and I assure you my villainy is suffering. If villainy needs anything, it is a good night's rest. I notice the bird has mastered several human languages and I admit that I have found it a help in my Icelandic studies. Yestreen it was declaiming one of the ancient Sagas, albeit in a rather monotonous delivery. Other nights it seems to be acting out some obscure Slovakian television drama or other, complete with laugh track. And worse fare. To call these raucous soundtracks vexsome would be meiosis, which I'm sure you know ( I say with no condescension whatsoever) is the opposite of hyperbole. Today it interrupted me as I was studying a dossier of medieval illustrations I have gathered providing definitive proof that many early martyred saints had begun attempts to blog. I had found clear illustrations of medieval blogging and was nearly ecstatic. Do you realize what a gift this will be to the Mother Church? I am attempting to write a monograph on the subject. I believe there is a blogging-Purgatory connection. People in Purgatory have been blogging for millenia, but we have been confusing these messages with spam! Rome must hear of this, and hear of this soon. Your parrot-cormorant hybrid (and I do believe it is yours) is a handsome creature and I admit to admiring your handiwork, but I was wondering if you might convince it through telepathy or other means that other nearby dwellings might offer more appealing symbiotic "digs." I thought it was a nice touch that the feathers have the ability to manifest images with a clarity to rival that of the flattest plasma television screen. Have you thought of marketing the beast along those lines? If you could somehow get the beast to articulate vocally in synchrony with the television program its feathers broadcast, you might be onto something. I confess I watched a documentary on the little-known St. Thisbe of Malta upon the creature's wings as the avian was slumbering on my second floor landing this afternoon. St. Thisbe was killed by an angry mob of theologians when he attempted to create the first God chain-letter spam. It was in the form of rocks that had Christian messages written upon them, which were to be passed on to twelve friends, who then had to copy the message onto twelve new rocks and spread the divine message to twelve friends each, etc. Here was proof of early faith spam! It was clearly too early. The plan backfired and St. Thisbe was stoned to death with his own spam rocks, once they were traced back to him. I found this incident memorialized in a little-known etching by Goya entitled (in Spanish): "Pass this on or burn in Hell for donkey years, you cursed widget of Satan..." Also, your winged beast thieves. Yesterday, I noticed three cupcakes, an edition of Balzac, a scatter pillow, a set of fingernail clippers and an invisibility amulet were all missing from the downstairs. Needless to say, it is that last theft which troubles me most. The prospect of an invisible parrot-cormorant with polyglossalaliac logorrhea haunting my dwelling is not one I wish to entertain seriously. Any assistance you can give me upon this matter will be greatly appreciated, and know that I remain, as ever, Yours in Logodaedaly and Phrenological Dodginess, Wilhelm
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which word is funnier: genius or smart?
Clue: This is according to the book Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain
Answer: Genius, as it is “more specific.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Christopher Hart, Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain (1998), p. 107
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Someone Should Write a Book on ... |
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"Somebody should write a book on bizarre cases of credit attribution!" — Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas, 1985, p. 358. ---
...but they should say that it was written by Francis Bacon or Jimmy Hoffa.
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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The streetlamp at the corner- store sways shadows in a big black dance, the store sign swings and creaks in the wind, leaves fly, apples thud to the ground in the orchards, the stars are blazing in the somber sky — everything is raw, smoky, and terrific. —Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City, 1950.
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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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Original Content Copyright © 2019 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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