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English Writer and Dramatist W. Somerset Maugham
Having just finished read Somerset Maugham’s On a Chinese Screen (1922), I was delighted to find this limerick mentioning him composed by Ogden Nash:
There was a young lady of Guam
Who peddled her charms, charm by charm,
Inspired, I suppose,
By the classical prose
Of W. Somerset Maugham.
As I wrote yesterday’s blog post about proofreading computer transcriptions of two Merriam-Webster dictionaries, I remembered that one way I entertained myself in the process was collecting weird words. Three from the 7th Collegiate Dictionary were:
Soon I started going farther afield:
That’s all I remember for now, but no doubt other examples will come to mind at a later point.
Time to Introduce New Sports for the Next Olympics
The 2024 Paris Olympics were a smashing success. The Chinese continued their domination of track and field, while the Americans took medal after medal in platform diving. For the next Olympics in my home town of Los Angeles, it’s time to consider some new events to mix things up a bit:
SYNCHRONIZED PIZZA DOUGH TOSSING. Let’s face it: Pizza has become an international food and is due for some recognition by the Olympics.
THREE-LEGGED MARATHON RACE. I’ve always thought that Marathon runners had it too easy. I mean the only difficult thing about the 42.195 kilometer (26.219 mile) course is doing all the decimal math in your head while running.
FACEBOOK FACEPLANT. Let’s acknowledge the role of social media in our lives by having a race during which the participants must complete a series of responses to social media posts while running.
UNDERWATER GYMNASTICS. On one hand, you have greater buoyancy in the water; on the other hand, you don’t want to stretch out your routine too long.
CLIFF DIVING. For lemmings only. You dive off a cliff into a net. You can have a number of heights: 100 meters, 200 meters … the sky’s the limit.
American Writer Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
He was one of the two greatest writers of fiction about the Civil War, the other being Stephen Crane. His short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” is one of my clearest memories from high school English. He also wrote some good horror stories, plus a book of sardonic definitions he called The Devil’s Dictionary (1906). As he wrote in the preface to that book: “[T]he author hopes to be held guiltless by those to whom the work is addressed—enlightened souls who prefder dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor and clean English to slang.”
I thought I would present a few of my favorite entries from The Devil’s Dictionary that I found particularly witty.
ABORIGINES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber: they fertilize.
ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.
ACTUALLY, adv. Perhaps; possibly.
COMFORT, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbor’s uneasiness.
EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.
FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
LIGHTHOUSE, n. A tall building on the seashore in which the government maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.
MONARCHICAL GOVERNMENT, n. Government.
PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.
In 1914, Bierce is said to have crossed the border into Mexico during that country’s revolution and disappeared. In 1985, Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes wrote an excellent book entitled The Old Gringo speculating what happened to Bierce during the fighting between Pancho Villa and the government forces of General Victoriano Huerta.
Dreck
On most days, I check the “Deals” section of the Amazon Kindle Store for titles I want to read and can get cheap. As I go through the list of titles, I encounter mostly dreck. I thought I would present a list of the most revolting titles from today’s deals. As they were obviously written with little attention to care, I thought it would be best not to italicize or boldface the titles. They barely even deserve upper case letters.
I know that most of these titles are destined for women readers; and I know that there is a male equivalent which is just as off-putting. It’s just that Amazon doesn’t feature them in their store deals page.
Giving a Boost to the Classics
According to the Oxford dictionaries, bumpf is defined as “written information, especially advertisements, official documents, forms, etc., that seem boring or unnecessary.” That certainly seems to be the case in Amazon Kindle’s store, where one can find the following “titles”:
It seems that some of these titles just needed a little help. I think that Jeff Bezos could probably make more money by applying the same principle to literary classics:
Let’s face it: People would read more if what we learned from Madison Avenue were put to good use.
Poet and Comic Spike Milligan (1918-2002)
Born in British India, Spike Milligan was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. He is probably best remembered for his role in “The Goon Show,” the British radio program that spawned much of British comedy for decades to come.
Here is a little sample of his work which I hope will make you laugh. He was a very funny man.
The Lion
If you’re attacked by a Lion
Find fresh underpants to try on
Lay on the ground quite still
Pretend you are very ill
Keep like that day after day
Perhaps the lion will go away.
I suppose I was always something of an unbeliever. Even when I was twelve years old and had to choose a confirmation name at St. Henry, instead of picking Michael or Joseph like all my classmates, I selected Alexander. When asked who was St. Alexander by my friends, I said it referred to Alexander VI, the notorious Borgia pope who was possibly the worst of the so called bad popes.
This evening, I was reading an amusing review of a book by Eliot Weinberger entitled Angels and Saints. Among the angels described are:
The saints could be even more outrageous. Anne Enright’s review in the New York Review of Books includes the following tidbit:
Many of the beatified were early Christian martyrs who were hard to kill, and the details of their deaths receive more space than the manner of their lives. (I will never find again those two Roman martyrs who died by being turned upside down while milk and mustard were put up their noses, nor check through the multiple volumes [of Butler’s The Lives of the Saints] to see if I dreamed this, which surely I did not.)
One saint to whom I regularly pray is …
Genesius of Arles
(France, d. 303 or 308)
A decapitated martyr, his body was buried in France but his head was transported “in the hands of angels” to Spain, where he is invoked as a protection against dandruff.
To this day, I wish I still had my collection of holy pictures of saints, which the pious Dominican sisters of St. Henry handed out to good students. (I was sometimes good.)
Trypophobia: Fear of Clusters of Holes
I am currently reading Kate Summerscale’s The Book of Phobias & Manias: A History of Obsession. In it are discussed an incredible array of things that frighten people. Summerscale takes it all very seriously, examining in each case when the phobia was first discovered and by whom and possible cures, when available.
Presented here are some of the stranger and less commonly known phobias, here more for their humorous side.
Koumpounophobia. Fear of buttons. Apparently Steve Jobs had this, which is why he always wore turtlenecks.
Pogonophobia. Fear of beards.
Telephonophobia. A fear of making or taking telephone calls. I sort of have this.
Triskaidekaphobia. Fear of the number thirteen.
Nomophobia. Fear of not having your cellphone on your person.
Aibohphobia. Fear of palindromes, such as “Able was I ere I saw Elba” or “Lewd did I live evil I did dwel.”
Hippopotomomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. An aversion to long words. The “sesquipedalio” means a foot and a half long in Latin.
This one is not discussed in the book, but I can string together Greek roots with the best of them. This is the most terrifying phobia of them all:
Enochlogynopogonophobia. Fear of being in a large crowd of bearded women.
Contrary to what some haters are saying, I am not only still the President of the United States, but also the best President this country has ever had. In fact, I am a better President than most of you deserve. You think you can convict me of a bunch of crimes the haters made up just to get even with me. It won’t work. I have been a perfect President, and everything I have done has been perfect.
Just look at my so-called mug shot. If you think you can have me convicted and put away, you are sadly mistaken. I will come for you: You are just the dirt under my fingernails!
So many weaklings who have worked with me have turned against me. Even my children, my wives, my lawyers, my political appointees, and women I supposedly raped. (Why would I have to rape any of them? They were attracted to me and gave their consent.) I am guilty of having been too perfect for the job.
Mess with me, and I will come for you. See who wins in the end, you pathetic losers! I have a 100% win record, and it will continue to be perfect.
There are millions of Americans who want to Make America Great Again (MAGA all the way!), and they will rise up rather than see me treated like dirt. See if it doesn’t happen!
I will bide my time and end up winning again. That’s what I’m all about. WINNING 100%
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