No Bile! is now available from Black Scat Books! This is my 8th translation of the peerless French proto-dadaist Alphonse Allais (1854-1905). This collection of what he called his “anthumous works” includes love stories, revenge stories, short-shorts, and unclassifiable prose, all affronting the reader with startlingly modern black humor, imagination, and wordplay. Among the highlights are “Absinthes,” an internal monologue about the effects of the Green Fairy; “Poor Césarine!”, a grisly tale of obsessive love; and “A Good Society,” which proposes collecting used matches for the poor. Translated, annotated, and illustrated by Doug Skinner. With six extra stories! Available from Black Scat Books or Amazon.

I also note Black Scat Books: A Bibliography, compiled by Grace Murray, and published by JEF Books (The Journal of Experimental Fiction). Black Scat has been going now for six years, under the editorship of the intrepid Derek Pell (aka Norman Conquest), out in the wilds of California. Available from JEF or from Amazon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I found this tear sheet in an old copy of Treasure Island. The header reads “The Red-Headed Periodical”; a search only yields one hit, as a subtitle to Ziff’s Magazine, a joke magazine published by William B. Ziff. So maybe that’s where it came from.

Here’s the recipe, for those summer parties.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

We have another edition of “Authors.” This one has no indication of date or publisher; it comes in a sober black box, with faint gold lettering identifying it as “The Game of Authors,” and promising “Playing Card Quality.” Each author is given a halftone portrait and a simple red border. The roster here, in addition to Lowell, is: Longfellow, Bryant, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Irving.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

My next translation of that peerless French humorist of the Belle Époque, Alphonse Allais, will be published by Black Scat Books this summer. This one is No Bile, from 1893.

My horror story in sonnets, “The Werechurch,” will make its appearance in Dagger Magazine this summer too. It may give you nightmares.

A choice selection of my drawings and other works on paper will be fastened to the wall of the Mothership, the multi-ineffable space Paul McMahon runs in Woodstock, at 6 Hillcrest Avenue. There will be drawings, comics, illustrations, scores, index cards, and rubber stamp stereoscopy. The opening is May 17, from 6 to 8, and everything comes down the 22nd.

Since I contributed to R. Crumb’s delightful magazine Weirdo, back in the day, I will be represented in Jon B. Cooke’s new book The Book of Weirdo, out later this year from Last Gasp.

My ukulele classes resume on Monday nights at the Jalopy Theatre, in Brooklyn. Uke I is at 7:00 and Uke II at 8:00.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This deck came to me incomplete, with no indication of title, date, or maker. The cards show Jumbo and other animals, including Billy Bear and Dr. Lion, in various games, recreations, and predicaments. I assume it’s from the UK, since they play cricket. In this card, Jumbo has apparently neglected his studies.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Another new verse form: the equiliteral tercet. Like its geometrical model, the equilateral triangle, it’s composed of three equal parts: three lines of three words, each with three letters. It need not rhyme, but these three examples do:

Old men say
Now it’s day
Cut the hay

Sty for pig
Fly for fig
Tie for gig

Did our cow
Get ill now
Why and how

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Snowman Three Doors Down is now available from Black Scat Books! It has 24 stories! It’s 246 pages! Hapless characters slog through tangled plots and formal constraints in this bracing collection. Will the Chromatologist find the shade of green that identifies the adulterous cosplayer? Will a group of tipsy scholars discover the secret to Ben Jonson and Thomas Nashe’s suppressed play? Will Gumball Gaffigan make it safely to Georgeville? And will Chicky and Chalky finish that snowman? Laughs and bewilderment await you! It can be found on Amazon, or from Black Scat Books.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Black Scat Books has released a free Peek-A-Book of “An Interview with Horace Ballantine,” from my upcoming collection The Snowman Three Doors Down. The veteran cartoonist has to contend with an interviewer who never heard of comic strips, and it’s not easy for either of them. You can download a PDF here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The “Davy Crockett Adventure Card Game” was published by Ed-U-Cards some time in the 1950s, probably around 1954, when Disney produced a TV miniseries about the politician with the funny hat. The game had two decks of 18 cards each, some with paintings of Crockett’s exploits, others with “Pictures of Davy Crockett based upon his real life portrait.” The pictures also look like Fess Parker, who starred in the show, but I suppose he also resembled the original.

In 1964, 20th Century Fox produced a TV show about another frontier hero, Daniel Boone, also starring Parker. Ed-U-Cards responded with a “Daniel Boone Card Game,” using the same artwork from the Davy Crockett cards. I often confuse Crockett and Boone; apparently it doesn’t matter.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

For anyone looking for new poetic forms, I offer the anagram rhyme. Instead of rhyming lines with words ending with the same phonemes, it uses anagrams. Here are four quadriliteral quatrains:

When Peter heard the church bell peal,
He shut his eyes, prepared to leap.
Priscilla, features drawn and pale,
Called out a final anguished plea.

This simple post
Is still the spot
Where Rover opts
To sniff and stop.

The farmer grimly spread his nets
Where he suspected rats would nest.
He didn’t like it when they sent
Their litters out in nines and tens.

The life of urban man is tame:
He earns his wage; he cheers his team;
He swigs his beer; he eats his meat;
He quarrels with his chosen mate.

And a duodeciliteral couplet:

Please spare us your enumerations
Of celebrated mountaineers.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)