If the melon insists on having slices, it will end up eaten by families.

Boredom and idleness are, I think, the principal motives for devotion.  We only lift our eyes to the heavens when we have nothing to do or hope for on earth, and we only kiss holy images when we have nothing else to kiss.

Military officers are free to break their swords.

I pardon my children, as a condemned man pardons his executioners.

There are, as one knows, two ways to practice cannibalism: to eat human beings or to be eaten by them.

The ant economizes to assume alimentary security.  Such security consists of continual privation.

The idea of God dates exactly from the day when the quadruped — or quadrumane — felt the muscles of his buttocks hard and strong enough to permit a vertical position.  That day he looked up at the sky and feared it would fall on his head.  And, since he was not using his hands to walk, he clasped them together.

The sun is a cold globe, solid and homogenous.  Its surface is divided into square meters, which are the bases of long attenuated inverted pyramids, 696,699 meters long, their points one kilometer from the surface.

Liberty, equality, fraternity.  In other words: liberty for the strongest, to impose his fraternal, equal, and free principles on his subordinates.

The flag: something that hangs.

Drowned men seldom travel in schools, as fish do.  We can infer that their social science is still embryonic, unless we judge it simpler to suppose that it is their combativeness and military valor that are inferior to those of fish.  That is why the latter eat the former.

(Translated and posted by Doug Skinner)

“Dichter-Quartett” is an undated German edition of “Authors.”  I’ve chosen Adelbert von Chamisso, for his contributions to botany, and for the creation of Peter Schlemihl.  The other authors in this canon are: Ludwig Uhland, Joseph Victor von Scheffel, Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Rückert, Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, Ernst von Wildenbruch, Emanuel Geibel, Theodor Körner, Christoph Martin Wieland, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Gustav Freytag, and Ferdinand Freiligrath.  It’s an interesting group, many unknown to me.  Shakespeare is the only English writer, and, for some reason, the only to rate single name billing.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

An assortment of unusual instruments was featured in the July, 1952, issue of Music News.  Unfortunately, I have played only three of these.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I just heard a politician on the radio, saying that the election is not about fundraising, but about the heart and soul of the party.

Those aren’t really dioramas
They’re just holes in your pajamas

ouija scrabble: messages from spirits are awarded points by letter

The American diet: Yesterday I saw a man walking down the street with a slice of pizza in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other.

make instruments from instrument cases

Never underestimate
Man’s capacity for hate

I’m always happy to meet someone who hates math. By the way, can you give me two twenties for a ten?

When life gives you lemons, you save a dollar.

logo + logo = Logos

sh(a)red

We cannot trust our brain or senses:
Nature, much like Señor Wences,
Says all’s difficult for us —
Especially if we make a fuss
About our nervous system, which
Will, all too often, bait and switch.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  The illustration is by Benito Jacovitti.)

The following pictures are taken from the Fretted Instrument News, 1945-1949.  It was the “Official Organ of the American Guild of Banjoists, Mandolinists, and Guitarists,” “An Independent Bi-Monthly Devoted to the Advancement and Culture of the Romantic Instruments.”  It was particularly devoted to promoting “Fret Clubs,” amateur or school groups that played light classical selections on the romantic devices.  Accordions were often included in these ensembles, since “the accordion has now been accepted as an honored member of the romantic instruments’ family,” particularly since “it builds up crescendi, creates contrasts and new shades.”  All of this came before the folk music craze; the guitar was usually presented as a part of Spanish or Hawaiian culture.

Here are some of the ensembles.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This old edition of “Authors,” from the Fireside Game Co., was devoted to “Young Folks’ Authors.”  It was an interesting selection.  Joining Mary Mapes Dodge in the juvenile pantheon are Louisa May Alcott, Charles Carleton Coffin, Eugene Field, George Bird Grinnell, Joel Chandler Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Otis Kaler, Charles Kingsley, Howard Pyle, Ernest Thompson Seton, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Francis Richard Stockton.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

David Gold and I will join Marc Jacobson and Larry “Ratso” Sloman for their “Live Radio Hour” on Wednesday, May 2, at 7pm.  It’s at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, 126 Crosby Street, NYC, and it’s all about the history of Coney Island; David and I will contribute a song from the Island’s past. Further information and directions can be found here.

I didn’t mention it here, but I was interviewed about John Keel for a Disinfo Podcast.  Matt Staggs asked the questions; it can be found here.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Long Island Beyond the Pale” attracted a nice audience, on a rainy day in Red Hook — which is, of course, technically in Long Island.

We performed the ceremonial opening of the ullage with a bottle of Long Island Ice Tea, which our hostess, Lynette Wiley, said “tastes like high school.”

Anthony Matt unveiled the mess of myths, rumors, and sheer weirdness circulating about Montauk Point and the purported “Montauk Project.”

Doug Skinner talked about John Keel’s interactions with contactees and supposed androids in Long Island in the ’60s; Lisa Hirschfield joined him to read excerpts from a transcript of a phone call with a contactee.

Lisa Hirschfield investigated some Long Island legends, particularly “Mary’s Grave.”  Doug Skinner joined her at the piano for two old songs, “The Montaukers” and “Down in Oyster Bay.”

We then retired to the Jalopy Tavern for beer, talk, and stereo pictures.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The National Airlines “Jet-Deck” provided restless travelers with 28 puzzles and games.  The other sides of the cards illustrated different cities (all National Airlines destinations, of course), for a game of rummy.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I’m happy to note that one of my favorite literary hoaxes is online, which means that you can read it for free, instead of paying a lot of money for the rare original.  The Dance of Death (1877) is a remarkable polemic against the “filthy lust” of the waltz.  The author was “William Herman,” a pseudonym cloaking Thomas Harcourt and Ambrose Bierce.  The pseudonym was inspired by Harcourt’s prudish father-in-law, William Herman Rulofson, who encouraged the project.  The fact that Harcourt was not only mocking puritanism, but his wife’s father, makes it only tastier.  Bierce’s participation, of course, improved the quality of the prose.  Here it is.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)