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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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William Burroughs on the importance of [literally] letting go: I saw a picture of a balloon suddenly and unexpectedly soaring and some people still holding onto the ropes connected to the balloon were suddenly jerked into the air and most of them didn't have the survival IQ to let go in time. Seconds later they are sixty, a hundred feet off the ground. Those who didn't let go fell off at five hundred or a thousand feet. A basic survival lesson is: Learn to let go. ... Suppose you were holding one of those ropes? Would you have let go in time. which is, of course, at the first upward yank? I'll tell you something interesting. You would have a much better chance to let go in time now that you have read this paragraph than if you hadn't read it. Writing, if anything, is a word of warning. LET GO!
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 Jeff writes: Very true, and I have the fat lip to prove it.
Prof. Oddfellow quotes: "'Frankly, this is not cojones, this is cowardice,' she exclaimed — a line that outraged straitlaced diplomats." —Thomas Lippman, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy
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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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* 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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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Who are funnier: Germans or Russians?
Clue: This is according to an expert on Chinese history
Answer: Russians. The Germans are “less humorous than the Russians, less witty than the French.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Edward Harper Parker, China, Past and Present (1903), p. 323. --- Jeff writes: Hey, anyone can be funny when he's full of wine, or vodka. Not so easy with a mouth full of liverwurst. But less witty? I think not.
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Here's our virtual version of the age-old flower-petal game. Pluck the daisy petals to see if the object of your affection loves you back.
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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 :: Letter Grids |
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This puzzle grid asks, "Is there life on marshmallows?" The grid contains several big words. Can you find them?
• 7-letter words: 27
• 8-letter words: 7
• 9-letter words: 1
All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.
Click to display solutions
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7-letter words: |
• aileron • ammines • fainest • famines • filters • holster • inshore • insoles • limners • mailers • milters • miterer • neolith • rerisen |
• reshoes • reshone • reshows • resoles • retinol • samites • samlets • senhors • senores • snorers • stereos • tensors • theines |
8-letter words: |
• ailerons • filterer • miterers • retinols |
• roseries • sawhorse • senhores |
9-letter words: |
• filterers |
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Christine shares: I had a dream recently where I looked out of the window, and saw there were six moons, each at different phases of the moon's cycle. As I gaze up at the night sky, I see the stars stretching across it, and then bursts of colour, like celestial fireworks. I wonder how I've never seen this before, and feel filled with wonder at the world. Christine's dream reminds us of our strange dream recounted here, and of our semicolon's dream of a double moon. --- Samar shares: This reminded me of the dream that I had probably last week or so. I saw that I was on the highest building in the world and I didn't know what the time was ... evening or early morning ... it was still dark with tinge of blue ... and I saw the world round ... clouds enveloped the whole world ... and suddenly the moon in the sky fell down ... it was something that scared me a lot.
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If you have a strange dream to share, send it along! |
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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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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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Did You Hear the One I Just Made Up? |
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If a tree falls in the evening, but no one hears about it until the morning papers come out, is it pulp fiction? (Inspired by literary rapscallion Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.)
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
Inspired by and dedicated to Jeff. Jeff writes: How perfectly appropriate in Light of the evening's conversation regarding lightning, and the need for protection against the Brigand that is electrical Charge.
Clearly, you are illuminated!
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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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The colour of her costumes change from white in the carefree beginning, to grey when the forces of tragedy gather momentum, until at last sable black with all its dark meaning appears. First, in an all- black velvet dress and large black hat that she wears for her journey to the country. Then, when it seems that she is to be happy, white again in cannily picturesque lawn dresses with only a black cloak to remind you her fate is sealed; black again after her renunciation — shimmering black net with sequins, but black. For her death, so that you are not too miserable and may find solace in something, a white gown, ecclesiastical in feeling with its monk’s cowl, sending you to religion, there to take courage to bear it. —Cecilia Ager, Camille, 1937. From American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now, edited by Phillip Lopate, 2006.
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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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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which is funnier: Tom and Jerry cartoons or ambassadors trying to out-dance and out-gobble one another at parties and conferences?
Clue: This is according to an author of speculative fiction
Answer: Ambassadors trying to out-dance and out-gobble one another at parties and conferences. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Emerald, Revolution, the Greatest (2006), p. 463
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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"The One God can wait. The One God is TIME. And in Time, any being that is spontaneous and alive will wither and die like an old joke. And what makes an old joke old and dead? Verbal repetition." — William Burroughs, The Western Lands
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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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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.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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* 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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Last Dustbunny in the Netherlands |
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William Keckler suggests that: A painting is just a solidified dust bunny. A poem is definitely a sonic dust bunny. . . . Dust bunnies are cosmic. Even our Milky Way Galaxy is a big dust bunny. See his full discussion here.
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Monsieur Lapin de Poussiere writes:
William Keckler is a sick puppy.
And a sonic dust bunny himself.
But he loves this.
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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We were gobsmacked by this astonishing review of our interactive adventure "100 Ways I Failed to Boil Water":
I found this at Craig Conley's site. I can see I'm going to have to allow myself some serious play time with this blog.
Conley is the type of genius I like--where there's room for charm to co-exist with the genius, and where part of the expression of that genius is charm.
Plus, his type of genius is always producing things, not talking about producing things or lamenting not producing things or explaining why it is not producing things.
I would negatively contrast him with the MENSA guy who poisoned his neighbor and her family who was featured on TRU TV's Forensic Files the other night. MENSA seems to exist only for creeps, boors and bores. Hey, I was invited to join MENSA AND the Triple Nine Society (the next decimal point over, which presumably gives the Society the right to piss on MENSA members) because I qualified after a superevil intelligence test they gave me when I was a (t)wee lad, and I had the good sense even then to realize patting oneself on the back is a waste of time. Besides, there are much better places to pat oneself if one must, indeed, pat.
When they told me how remarkable my intelligence score was, I knew one thing instantly....I was going to have a lot of brain cells to kill.
And I am proud to say, several decades later, that I have accomplished that goal.
See? Attainment over patting.
Okay, enough of a detour into Me-ville.
Many of the things Conley creates are fun and engaging and smart and poke reality in its stomach or give reality a "Hurt's Donut" on the back of its neck.
I'll share a lighter piece with you.
Here is "100 Ways I Failed to Boil Water" by Craig Conley and some other guy who is not Craig Conley.
I was trying to think who Craig reminds me of today, and I think I decided he's a bit Sal Mineo, a bit Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode, a bit Jon Cryer in the golden years and some other people who haven't yet emerged from the shadows where people are used to compose other people.
In other words, he's good people.
And he's also himself. Obviously. If you visit his blog, you'll see just how much he is himself. Trust me.
I am enjoying some dried papaya chunks right now and they are heavenly.
I like to talk about food.
Food is, like, epistemological. Almost. Lots of things are "epistemlogical...almost."
Gertrude Stein thought food was VERY epistemological in Tender Buttons.
Conley's blog also features a great series of visual puzzlers where a little "something something" is used to cipher out various celebrated literary moments in English and in other languages. BLOG search ABECEDARIAN (see my blogroll) for Basho's celebrated frog poem if you want to see what I'm talking about. These images take literary touchstones and force you to re-examine what's going in the representation by thinking about it visually. I can't explain more.
For once, I am at a loss for words. It's rare with this mouth, but it happens.
This is weird, because there's a Jungian synchronicity in my search terms today where somebody searched "death is not something." I think I'm remembering that correctly.
I remember that striking me as very French. But then there's Wittgenstein with his "The moment of death is not lived through." Which is just as funny, actually.
When is philosophy not funny, really?
I guess when it leads to death camps or things like the Soviet terror state under Josef Stalin.
Here. Enjoy a very funny confessional....
Failure has never been so amusing.
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which word is funnier: child or kid?
Clue: This is according to the book Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain
Answer: Kid, as it is “zippier sounding” (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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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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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com. |
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"When a new mode of imagining erupts into literature, it dislocates the rhetoric of its time, and is of subtler stuff than that rhetoric—'the infinite arrives barefoot on this earth,' says Hans Arp." —Christopher Middleton's introduction to Jakob Von Guten by Robert Walser--- William Keckler writes: I love the Hans Arp quote. Or was it Jean Arp? It must be hard to live in Alsace-Lorraine where one never knows one's true name or nationality.
Binary human beings should make a comeback.
I'm fairly certain one of my favorite poetry presses in America, Burning Deck, published Mr. Middleton's own poetry, as well as some of his translations. Unfortunately, I don't own those books, though I probably own a hundred other titles from that awesome press run by legends Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop.
I think it's cool to see you zero degrees of separation away from them with this post, Craig!
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
In honor of the Scottish band Simple Minds and lead singer Jim Kerr's resort hotel in Taormina, Sicily. --- William Keckler writes: Loves it. I've loved Simple Minds since a wee lad, and used to drive to distant towns to get imports. Imagine how different life was in the 1980s. Just unfathomable to think now. No ABE.com to find that rara avis book in fifteen minutes; we would have had to roam to the ends of the earth to find it, and poked our head in every tiny bookshop (and good look with the hours!) No illegal downloads of every song ever recorded. Go find a record ship that stocks imports or can order it for you. Wait a few weeks then drive a hundred miles. I think I can now officially be Grumpy Old Man who (Dana Carvey's character) talking about walking miles through the snow to get to school and having to eat my own arm to sustain myself on the journey.
Sparkle in the Rain was my favorite. Just gorgeous mastering, that record. But I love the earlier, avanty stuff too. Empires and Dance is an awesome album. Singles like "Changeling" have incredible quantum shifts in them!
I think they gave more than the name to my favorite band of all time, the Cocteau Twins. How can Robin Guthrie's shimmering and chiming guitar not be somewhat influenced by how Simple Minds turned the guitar into a decadent instrument.
They achieved such a "large" sound on Sparkle in the Rain, grand without slipping into the grandiose ever.
There, I've "blown your comment box all up" as the kiddies say.
Comments are supposed to be one or two sentences.
The decaying corpse of Miss Manners will surely be after me tonight like a bad Raimi flick.
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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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The poet W. B. Keckler, of Sanskrit of the Body fame, called us a "logolater" (an idolizer of words), noting that logolaters "are the unicorns of the linguistic kingdom." Keckler is qualified to make such a statement, as "poetry invented the unicorn, the centaur, and the phoenix. / Hence it is true that poetry is an everlasting Ark" (Delmore Schwartz, "The Kingdom of Poetry"). --- Double You Bee writes: My Dear Oddfellow, I collect Tamagotchi. Nobody wants them anymore and they thrive in thrift stores like your century flower. Especially the stuffed ones. Many of them are uncircumcized and can be worked in and out of a pouch they zipper down into. Their necks are Tamagotchi prepuces. They are known for their dearth of facial features which may be, alas, the future.
Now I will believe there are unicorns.
They lay their heads upon the laps of virgins.
Why are there no unicorns near me?
"They flee from me that sometime did me seek..."
Poets invented the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix because they are the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix.
Alas.
Also, they exist to say alas.
Alas.
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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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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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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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Which word is funnier: motel or hotel?
Clue: This is according to the book Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain
Answer: Motel, as it is “low rent.” (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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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.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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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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If you have a strange dream to share, send it along! |
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A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from 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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Which word is funnier: person or guy?
Clue: This is according to the book Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain
Answer: Guy, as it is “funny sounding.” (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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* 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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Did You Hear the One I Just Made Up? |
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Sleepy Hollow: the legend of a wraith horse. (Thanks, Mike!)
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The great secret the hedonists keep to themselves: "that time allows pleasure, not money." (Anthony Marais, Delusionism.)
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Athanasius Kircher invented the "polydyptic theater," "in which about sixty little mirrors lining the inside of a large box transform a bough into a forest, a lead soldier into an army, a booklet into a library" (Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler).
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Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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What is funnier than a sudden outspoken declaration of the truth?
Clue: This is according to scholar Northrop Frye.
Answer: Nothing. “In our world, there is the proverb ‘children and fools tell the truth,’ and the Fool’s privilege makes him a wit because in our world nothing is funnier than a sudden outspoken declaration of the truth.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986), p. 111.
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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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"The point is this: not that myth refers us back to some original event which has been fancifully transcribed as it passed through the collective memory; but that it refers us forward to something that will happen, that must happen. Myth will become reality, however skeptical we might be." — Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
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A slash of Blue — A sweep of Gray — Some scarlet patches on the way, Compose an Evening Sky — A little purple — slipped between — Some Ruby Trousers hurried on — A Wave of Gold — A Bank of Day — This just makes out the Morning Sky. —Emily Dickinson
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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 © 2019 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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