Cold weather is here; now is the time to relax in a comfortable chair with a hot beverage.  May we recommend the Ullage Group Toddy?  It’s a simple drink: ginger tea, honey, and brandy.  We cannot guarantee that we were the first to combine those ingredients (ginger and brandy are, after all, soulmates), but we recommend it anyway.

The best results come from real ginger and real honey.  However, if you’re lazy (and laziness and toddies do go together), you can easily substitute ginger-honey crystals.  These convenient packets are available both with and without sugar; I prefer the unsugared, but you may differ.  My favorite brandy is mirabelle, made with the tasty little plums from the Lorraine; but ginger and honey overpower all other flavors, so I suggest spiking the cup with something less pricey.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Parker Brothers put out the “Quiz Kids Own Game Box” in 1940, based on the popular radio show.  It contained a variety of educational games: a map puzzle, anagram tiles, a board game, and several card games.  These cards seem to come from some kind of number game.  Unfortunately, the rules are missing from my copy, so you’ll have to make up your own.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Why are people so fond of positivism? Do they really trust their own senses and intellects?

I have another anecdote that shows my sister’s personality. She was a committed member of the Daughters of the American Revolution; when I mentioned that I thought they were wrong to bar Marian Anderson from Constitution Hall, her response was swift and hostile: “You don’t understand. Segregation was the law. They were upholding the law.”

toxic exotic

Another watershed: I just heard a radio commentator mention the discovery of Moses in the bulrushes, not as a passage in the Bible, but as a scene in the movie The Ten Commandments.

I hope that your amanuensis
Was counted in the latest census.

loggers with lagers

Did reports of angels, devils, gods and heavens come from elders with senile dementia? I also suspect that many folktales began as people simply telling their dreams.

Take back my plateful:
This dinner’s hateful.

One of life’s dirty little secrets: accomplishing something doesn’t necessarily accomplish anything.

The hippo’s mouth is very wide,
But it’s not safe to sit inside.

Does it never occur to Biblical literalists to read stories as parables? Parables are, after all, an ancient genre of religious instruction.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Gather around, students of “Old Maid,” I have another specimen.  It’s a 1968 version, from Milton Bradley.  The choice was difficult, but I’ve picked “Go Go Gertie” as particularly representative of the year.

And here’s the Old Maid.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I don’t know much about Prince Robert de Rohan Courtenay.  He was, apparently, a familiar figure in Greenwich Village in the ’50s and ’60s; he claimed a number of grandiose titles, and was said to live in a cheap residential hotel around Times Square.  His name shows up in accounts of parties and funerals (he attended, for example, the services for Joe Gould and Hobo Dan O’Brien).  He was photographed by Diane Arbus, and featured in a portfolio in Harper’s Bazaar (November 1961).

I found some bits about him in an old issue of the Bowery News (#68, December 1960), and offer them here for those who, like me, are intrigued by the often overlooked history of New York City’s bohemian eccentrics.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The old game of “Authors” was given a different twist in “Bible Authors,” published back in 1895 by the Zondervan Publishing House.  Samuel, Moses, Christ, and others (14 in all) are celebrated in these gray, but lushly ornamented, designs.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

a narrative in which adjectives are used as nouns, and adverbs as verbs

psnack

A blood orange is more appetizing than orange blood.

Possible project: pinback buttons of fruits and vegetables.

a hell-bat with a bell-hat

newscaster flub: “nobody should be reported” for “nobody should be rewarded”

making things whole / making holes in things

Why not uni-task?

The odium of sodium

There’s nothing like a hurdy-gurdy for making a hurly-burly

Do not reject your intuition:
It’s simply part of your condition.

(Posted by Doug Skinner. The sketch is by Wilhelm Busch.)

“Easy 3’s” — a 1959 confection from the Ed-U-Card people — offers a somewhat startling design.  A variety of familiar cartoon characters are depicted in black and white, trisected, against bright color backgrounds.  Once you assemble three of a kind, you can piece together your cartoon pal, much as Isis did Osiris.

The selection of characters is a mixed bag from various King Features strips: Jiggs, Beetle Bailey, Felix, Henry, Dagwood, Wimpy, and Olive Oyl.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)

Dreams are often no better than reality; but do offer variety.

The role of the internet has changed. It used to promise diversity: people with unusual or specialized interests could find one another. Now it quantifies popularity.

The proof was in the pudding, but the dog ate it.

Did you really feed that troll a
Slice of bread and gorgonzola?

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Once you’re dead
No more you

forgive-me-not

What a lovely thing is salad!
Let us praise it, in a ballad.

rong

Our culture is based on conformity and competition, and people are not at their best when they conform and compete.

Here’s a project by a pundit:
I won’t be the one to fund it.

Pease porridge hot, cottage cheese cold.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

What could be jollier than a rousing round of “Bible Action,” a 1994 game from the All Church Technical Service, in Fayetteville, AR?  There were two decks, one per Testament; as the booklet says, you can also combine them “to form a much larger and somewhat more difficult game that includes all Bible books.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner.)