In 1953, the Albany Times-Union published a set of “Lucky Safety Cards.”  If you got the right number, you won $5000, which I suppose taught children about the numbers racket.  Hans and Fritz were probably not the best spokesmen for safety and obedience.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Unfortunately, Jules Verne’s nephew, Gaston, was mentally ill. In 1866, Gaston tried to murder Verne, leaving his uncle lame for life. While recuperating, Verne wrote a sonnet in praise of morphine. I don’t blame him.

A LA MORPHINE

 Prends, s’il le faut, docteur, les ailes de Mercure
Pour m’apporter plus tôt ton baume précieux!
Le moment est venu de faire la piqûre
Qui, de ce lit d’enfer, m’enlève vers les cieux.

Merci, docteur, merci! qu’importe si la cure
Maintenant se prolonge en des jours ennuyeux!
Le divin baume est là, si divin qu’Epicure
Aurait dû l’inventer pour l’usage des Dieux!

Je le sens qui circule en moi, qui me pénètre!
De l’esprit et du corps ineffable bien-être,
C’est le calme absolu dans la sérénité.

Ah! perce-moi cent fois de ton aiguille fine
Et je te bénirai cent fois, Sainte Morphine,
Dont Esculape eût fait une Divinité.

Verne’s ardent admirer, Raymond Roussel, also rhymed “piqûre” and “Epicure” (in both Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique and Les Noces). Did he know Verne’s sonnet?

For my translation,  I kept Verne’s rhyme scheme, although with only masculine rhymes; and followed the usual practice of rendering alexandrines as iambic pentameter.

TO MORPHINE

Take if you must, physician, Hermes’ wing
To hasten to me your narcotic prize!
The time has come to tender me that sting
That floats my hellish sick-bed to the skies.

I thank you, doctor! Though my treatment bring
Long days I’d find oppressive otherwise,
Your precious balm is there, a fitting thing
For Gods, which Epicurus might devise!

I feel it circulate, it penetrates
My soul and body, calm now permeates
Me: this is blessed rest, unqualified.

Ah! Needle me a hundred times, and, yes,
A hundred times, Saint Morphine, I will bless
You, whom Asclepius would have deified.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“The Great Composers” was like “Authors,” but with music.  This particular edition was published by Merrimack Publishing, as “an exact replica of the antique original.”  I enjoy Weber’s music, but I must admit I’ve never heard “Euryanthe.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“To be popular, one must show interest in persons and things that do not interest one and simultaneously conceal the interest that one has in persons and things that do interest one.  One must always side with the prejudices and emotions of the person one happens to be with, however idiotic…

“One must be humorous but never witty, interested but never enthusiastic, complacently bored but never tired.  When one is with one’s intellectual inferiors, one must agreeably reduce one’s self not to the level of these others, but below that level, that they may have the comfortable feeling of being at complete conversational ease.  One must be privy to the trick of flattering another person’s vanity by contradicting what he says and then allowing him to convince one that he is right.  One must pretend to take lightly what one feels about most profoundly.  One may be original in manner, but never in thought.

“I am able to negotiate all these things, but I decline to do so.  Among the many millions of persons in this fair land, there are not more than a dozen at the very outside, who, known to me personally, interest me personally in the slightest.  The rest, so far as I am concerned, can go chase themselves.”

(From The Autobiography of an Attitude, 1925.  Posted by Doug Skinner.)

This one is more of a card game about children than for children.  Applying humorous interpretations to infants’ grimaces is a publishing staple; here all of the captions are about card-playing.  The result was used to promote a Buick dealership in Greenfield.  The world boasts many Greenfields; thanks to search engines, I can tell you this one was in Massachusetts.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

We haven’t mentioned it before, but there is an Ullage Group channel on YouTube.  So far, we’ve been posting some of the films of John Keel that we’ve been restoring.  The latest, a home movie of him performing magic tricks sometime in the ’60s, can be seen here.  And the tribute site continues at johnkeel.com.

There is now also a Doug Skinner site, an online catalog of my work.  You can see that at dougskinner.net.

Plans are afoot for the next event; we’ll let you know.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“3D Trading Cards” were such a lowball timewaster that they carried no date, copyright, or indication of publisher.  They came in a little cardboard holder that touted them as “DIFFERENT” and “EDUCATIONAL.”  I do like to think of the kids peering at stereo photos of the Pyramid to the Sun God.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

the template plate: after the meal, the food leaves a decorative pattern on the tablecloth

ptomato

a rocking table

equinox: we measure the equality by the night

I hope the cops
Don’t spot my schnapps

nightlight/daydark

bookletlets

a broadcaster’s error: “The Governor is scheduled to aggress the group.”

pestilence, war, death, family

temporary topiary

It isn’t raining rain, you know, it’s raining water damage.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Attention: we have another “Old Maid.”  This one is a 1975 offering from Western Publishing.  It uses the same artwork as one of our earlier examples — but a different Old Maid.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

flat spoons, for easier packing and shipping

“I’ll say,” he said.

Now you see it, now you’d rather not.

write a piece of music for an instrument that doesn’t exist

two negatives make a positive: crossed minus signs make a plus sign

a broadcaster’s malapropism: “casting aspirations”

palaminomony

Did you see that little face
Peeping from your bouillabaisse?

windows with reducing lenses, to make the surroundings seem more spacious

What’s the right answer to this question?

Oranges and lemons
Say the bells of St. Clemens
Lemons and oranges
Say the bells of
uh

(Posted by Doug Skinner)