And without getting too technical as to what does or does not constitute a landmass, I’d like to call attention to some lesser-known geographical entities.

Micronations rarely achieve international legitimacy, although for one day in 1958 the UN hoisted the flag of The Nation of Celestial Space and let it wave alongside those of the UN member states.

The Republic of Rose Island, situated off the Adriatic coast of Italy from 1968 until it was dynamited a year later by the Italian government, issued its own money and postage, and declared Esperanto its national language. Many people are familiar with the Principality of Sealand, another platform-based nation, in the North Sea.

Some micronations insist on historical legitimacy despite being currently virtual — often exiled to other continents, like the Duchy of Bohemia (currently located in Nevada). Others stake larger claims, such as entire continents. Antarcticland was founded in 1821 and, like most micronations, has established legal, legislative, and postal systems; however it also boasts its own national anthem and an Olympic Committee. Citizenship applications are currently available.

Micronations seemed to pop up like mushrooms in the 1960’s and 70s. Modern experiments in medieval fiefdom or the nation-state taken to its logical extreme, these entities were often founded upon libertarian principles — especially regarding taxes, which in most cases remain nonexistent. As demonstrated by Thomas More’s Utopia, however, the exercise of progressive values such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness commonly depends upon rather totalitarian or otherwise illiberal conditions. More often than not, and sadly, the best intentions of micronationality beget imperialistic aspirations, economic mismanagement at the deepest levels of government, commodification of cultural patrimony, and a notable distaste for freedom of speech.

My favorite micronations are neither virtual nor geological: real in their own way, apolitical, and very beautiful, they were brought to life by the philatelic imagination of the late Donald Evans.

(posted by Lisa Hirschfield)

This Old Maid, published by Milton Bradley (again, the date is scrupulously concealed, but it’s an old one) is notable for a guest appearance by the famous Dr. Busby.  “Dr. Busby” was one of the more popular card games of the 19th century; and, like “Old Maid,” went through many editions.  Some of the artwork in this “Old Maid” appears to have been simply re-used from the older game.

And here’s the Old Maid.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Let me add this image to my earlier remarks on cat food.  The caption reads “Rat on Toast — for Dinner.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

And current taste often brands the sonnet as precious, artificial, or old-fashioned.  Fair enough; although you could tar most American entertainment genres with the same handy brush.  Hollywood movies goosestep to the most rigid formulas human perversity could devise, but our fellow citizens still sit spellbound.

Sonnets are short enough to be punchy, but long enough to develop a thought.  They’re usually fourteen lines, but don’t have to be.  They lend themselves to many meters and rhyme patterns.  And to much variety, too: smooth artifice (Petrarch), lyrical intensity (Shakespeare), smut (Aretino), heresy (Campanella) — name your poison.

And, of course, to that constant fave, scatological blasphemy.  The following specimen, by Edmond Haraucourt, first perfumed the air in 1883.  Haraucourt was one of the original Hydropathes; he was a busy character.

For my translation, I chose the unfashionable option of keeping meter and rhyme.  This takes some paraphrase, but is, in some ways, truer to the original.

Incidentally, one of the virtues of the following is that it offers an alternative account of man’s origins.  I hope the atheists among you will excuse this dip into deism.

Philosophie: Sonnet honteux

L’anus profond de Dieu s’ouvre sur le Néant,
Et, noir, s’épanouit sous la garde d’un ange.
Assis au bord des cieux qui chantent sa louange,
Dieu fait l’homme, excrément de son ventre géant.

Pleins d’espoir, nous roulons vers le sphincter béant
Notre bol primitif de lumière et de fange;
Et, las de triturer l’indigeste mélange,
Le Créateur pensif nous pousse en maugréant.

Un être naît: salut!  Et l’homme fend l’espace
Dans la rapidité d’une chute qui passe:
Corps déjà disparu sitôt qu’il apparaît.

C’est la Vie: on s’y jette, éperdu, puis on tombe:
Et l’Orgue intestinal souffle un adieu distrait
Sur ce vase de nuit qu’on appelle la tombe.

Philosophy: A Shameful Sonnet

God’s anus opens to the void of space:
Though dark, it shines beneath an angel’s gaze.
God squats beside the skies that hymn his praise,
And from his gut excretes the human race.

A hopeful bolus, slime and sphincter both,
We roll toward the sphincter, keen to pass.
Grown weary of our undigested mass,
Our pensive Maker drops us with an oath.

A being’s born: hello! we cleave the air,
And disappear as soon as we were there,
As swiftly as a cataract we fell.

That’s life: we’re here, then plummet to our doom;
And then the rectal Organ breathes farewell
Upon the chamber pot we call the tomb.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)    

“Space Race” was published by Edu-Cards in 1969.  Among its scenes of outer space excitement was this doleful predicament.  I do hope they have a compass or something.

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

Cats and humans are different species, and have different diets.  Homo sapiens is a great ape, and, like the other apes, an omnivore.  We aren’t picky.  Nevertheless, the natural diet of cats tends to entrées not popular with the American consumer: rats, mice, small birds, insects, their own dead offspring, and other cats’ vomit.

Of course, some of these items are standard fare to other cultures.  (The subject of cultural food taboos is a rich one; I recommend Harriet Ritvo’s fascinating study of animal classification, The Platypus and the Mermaid.)  Americans’ taste in meats is mostly restricted to domestic ungulates, some poultry, and a changing roster of fish, crustaceans, and molluscs.  Rodents and insects, to be acceptable, must be blended into sausage filling, or masked by the brown and oily paste of chocolate or peanut butter.

Still, I’m struck by the fact that commercial cat food features little of the natural, locavore feline diet, and specializes in foods cats would not usually eat, like cattle and tuna.  I understand that it’s the homo sapiens that do the shopping, and that they wouldn’t buy “Roach ‘n’ Robin Feast,” “Rat Grill,” “Household Pest,” “Puke of the Litter,” or “Stillborn Kitten.”  Even tie-ins to popular cartoon characters like Tweety Pie or Mickey Mouse would probably do poorly.

And so a compromise is struck.  The American shopper feeds his cat only those foods palatable to both of them.  Perhaps this is because he eats much of it himself — which would explain why manufacturers add poultry seasoning to the turkey.

I’m a vegetarian, myself; but see no reason to impose my own preferences on anyone else — even when lectured at by intolerant burger buffs.  I certainly wouldn’t dream of forcing my own diet on another species.  But then, that’s why I’m up here in the ullage, finding fresh air where I can.

ADDENDUM

Has anyone seriously pursued the “cats and rats” idea?  In this model business, cats are butchered and fed to rats; rats are butchered and fed to cats; and the pelts are sold to discriminating furriers: clear profit with little overhead.  If this appeals to any of you entrepreneurs in this troubled economy, let me suggest that some rat parts could be set aside to test the market for locavore cat food.  I offer the brand name “Scaly Tales.”  Poultry seasoning and an attractive label might make it viable.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)  

If you’re still undecided as to how to celebrate your God-given American Freedoms – in this case, when voting next Tuesday – you’ve always got Politics Party Pun to choose for you. Yes folks, this is indeed “the biggest GAME in the world.”

Like a cross between, Old Maid, craps, dreidel, and gambling, this game involves matching images, throwing dice, and pure luck – plus it requires every player bring money to the table.

 The success of a candidate in part requires voters to distinguish the often tempting idealist treacle we are force-fed, from our own perceptions – based as they often are on what we can read between the lines of sound bites, robo-calls, glossy mailers, interviews, elaborately designed public spectacles, carefully scripted debates, and the spiels of bright shiny young people with petitions shrewdly deployed on every street corner. This is all we often get in the way of solid information; in this country free and democratic elections have been reduced, for the most part, into a barrage of massively expensive and shallow rhetoric, from which we remain unrelieved until Election Day.  Not surprising then that the candidate who raises the most, most often wins. And whatever the dark operations of contending political machines, election outcomes often do hang on simple luck, like chads.

So with all this in mind, why not get in the mood for D-Day with a little game of Politics Party Pun? The object is to match the head and tail of either an elephant or a donkey with each roll of the dice. An entire animal allows you to take the pot. Non-matching dice – say, an elephant head and a donkey tail – make you a “non-voter,” (appropriate penalties apply).  It doesn’t specify what two asses’ asses make you, but I shudder to think.

“Whatever you do, don’t tell Katharine Harris !”

In spite of what we learned in 2000, this game assures us that “You Can Win with Ballots … if You Vote.” Maybe this year.

Personally, I’ve always favored constitutional monarchies.

(posted by Lisa Hirschfield)

We continue our survey of “Old Maid” with this breezy deck from Somerville.  No date is given, as usual; I’d guess the ’40s.  The artist seems fond of triangular eyes, large ears, and pointed noses, giving all the citizens here a decidedly elfin cast.

And here’s the Old Maid.  From the look of that date book, she’s not a lonely one.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“In fact, Mr. Edison has now perfected, or announced that he is on the way to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for calling a storage think-tank.  This will enable a man to sit at home, and, with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal, so that when anyone says to him, ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ he can go to his valise and give him a piece of his mind.  Thus the man who has such wild and beautiful thoughts in the night and can never hold on to them long enough to turn on the gas and get his writing materials, can set this thing by the head of his bed, and, when the poetic thought comes to him in the stilly night, he can think into a hopper, and the genius of Franklin and Edison together will enable him to fire it back to his friends in the morning while they eat their pancakes and glucose syrup from Vermont, or he can mail the sheet of tinfoil to absent friends, who may put it into their phonographs and utilize it.  In this way the world may harness the gray matter of its best men, and it will be no uncommon thing to see a dozen brainy men tied up in a row in the back office of an intellectual syndicate, dropping pregnant thoughts into little electric coffee mills for a couple of hours a day, after which they can put on their coats, draw their pay, and go home. 

“All this will reduce the quantity of exercise, both mental and physical.  Two men with good brains could do the thinking for 60,000,000 of people and feel perfectly fresh and rested the next day.  Take four men, we will say, two to do the day thinking and two more to go on deck at night, and see how much time the rest of the world would have to go fishing.  See how politics would become simplified.  Conventions, primaries, bargains and sales, campaign bitterness and vituperation — all might be wiped out.  A pair of political thinkers could furnish 100,000,000 of people with logical conclusions enough to last them through the campaign and put an unbiased opinion into a man’s house each day, for less than he now pays for gas.  Just before election you could go into your private office, throw in a large dose of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fasten your button-hole to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be a gentle pull on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thought supply.  It would save time and money, and the result would be the same as it is now.  This would only be the beginning, of course, and after a while every qualified voter who did not feel like exerting himself so much, need only give his name and proxy to the salaried thinker employed by the National Think Retort and Supply Works.  We talk a great deal about the union of church and state, but that is not so dangerous, after all, as the mixture of politics and independent thought.  Will the coming voter be an automatic, legless, hairless mollusk with an abnormal ear constantly glued to the tube of a big tank full of symmetrical ideas fashioned by a national bureau of brains in the employ of the party in power?”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)    

I don’t know why westerns were so popular in the 1950s.  But they were; and those curious ephemeral artifacts, children’s card games, reflected the fashion.  This example comes from a miniature deck published in 1951 by Russell.  It’s called, with artless simplicity, “Wild West Game.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)