I once had a group of French citizens in my apartment.  They were showering Americans with invective, so I replied by mocking the French.  They all told me, with genuine indignation, how rude I was to so insult my guests.

Must I buy another bugle?
I should try to be more frugal.

There’s a thin line between a thin line and a thick line.

No matter how we squint and peer,
We cannot see the centrosphere.

There are no atheists in foxholes; they prefer fox-trots.

Many writers left no portraits; how satisfying to have no image of Marlowe, Lautréamont, or de Sade.

a flipbook of someone flipping a flipbook

eros-sore

a Gideon Bible loaded with sneezing powder

frozen roses

High above us floats a cloud;
We can’t float: we’re not allowed.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The debate over gay marriage is, perhaps, misguided.  Rather than extend the franchise, why not just scrap the practice?

I admit that I’m biased against marriage by observation of my parents.  It seemed to be an arrangement in which a male alcoholic slumped in a chair, binge-drinking and channel-surfing; he had a whistle around his neck to call an unhappy female, who waited on him in exchange for tantrums.  I affirm the right of consenting adults to pursue their own pleasures; still, I made a mental note to skip this one.

Not all marriages may be that dismal.  But the institution itself remains an incoherent mixture of unrelated elements.  The “traditional” marriage is, simultaneously, a commitment between two people to pursue a sexual relationship, and a legal contract about financial and medical rights.

The former is a private agreement, and is nobody else’s business, least of all the government’s.  The latter is paperwork, and the sexual activities of the signatories are as irrelevant as what they ate for lunch.  I’ve never seen what one had to do with the other.

Marriage was also often seen as a set-up for raising baby humans; and as a religious sacrament.  As far as the former goes, many couples pursue coupledom and contracts without benefit of brat; and, in turn, Nature pops out infants based on its own criteria of sexual attraction and fertility, with utter contempt for whether the breeders paid a clerk at a courthouse.  Religion is another matter.  Anyone who believes him or herself guided by a huge vaporous Imaginary Playmate is non compos mentis, and should be barred from legal responsibilities, parenthood, and dating.

The oft-expressed idea that marriage should be preserved because it is “traditional” is, simply, evil.  Just because humans have long done something doesn’t make it desirable; unless we are also willing to cherish, on the same grounds, such “traditions” as monarchy, warfare, genocide, rape, juggling, card tricks, genital mutilation, child abuse, and the full cornucopia of human folly and cruelty.

So, gays and straights alike, look forward rather than backward; and leave behind all of that claptrap.  You don’t need it; you have each other.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Animal Bird Fish” (Ed-U-Cards, 1959) offered a lovely deck of dignified depictions of various creatures.  I limit myself to one; I pick the parrot.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

If you want your work commercial,
Go for pseudo-controversial.

a musical phenakistascope: the notes move on the staff

a rodeo on the radio

Even as a child, I was baffled by the idea of Hell: how could fire hurt disembodied souls?

What a pretty puffin!
Polly want a muffin?
What a pretty quetzal!
Polly want a pretzel?

A stereoscopic panorama: the first image is viewed with the left eye, the second image with the right. The second image is then viewed with the left eye, and the third image with the right. The third image is then viewed with the left eye, and the fourth image with the right. And so on, for as long as desired.

Remember to look after you leap, too.

We constantly over-simplify history, people, and ideas. I’ve been reading the journal of the elderly Marquis de Sade; and am struck by his obsession with numbers, particularly 17 and 23. We could just as easily have given the name “sadism” to paranoid numerology.

I can’t see your stigmata; I’m astigmatic.

What exactly do you mean by “vague”?

With fork for fulcrum, spoon for leverage,
I’ll get that ice cube in your beverage.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Another “Hearts” has materialized — this one from Oriental Trading.  This time the fox is the jinx.  And if I were young, I would be a bit spooked by those eyes.

(Posted by Doug Skinner) 

You must not shred that pretty poster
And jam the pieces in the toaster.

a film in which the camera operator falls asleep

Summer is often called journalism’s “silly season,” because there are more stories about animals or forteana, rather than serious subjects like politics.

a musical pangram: a piece that uses every note of the keyboard once

a slot machine for wooden nickels

If you’re the bird that wakes up early,
Then you get all the hurly-burly.

It’s better to fall into a cesspool, than to have a cesspool fall into you.

One sentence sums up my sister’s personality. It was after the shooting of Amadou Diallo. I expressed my dismay that two plainclothes policeman had pumped 41 bullets into an innocent unarmed man in front of his building. She answered, with infinite scorn and condescension, “Well, they should shoot him if he’s out after the curfew.”

By the way, what about the carbon footprint of a server farm?

a choral quarrel

The morning and the afternoon
Deprive us of the stars and moon.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

“Mixies” — an Ed-u-Cards creation from 1956 — touted itself as the “card game of 1001 funny figures.”  Each card showed 1/3 of a person or animal, each from the circus; players could mix them up and admire the comical results; or collect sets of figures in a more conventional card game.  And, in either case, enjoy that distinctively ’50s graphic verve.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

a crossword puzzle in which each word is in a different language

I’ve often, when it comes to art, felt
You bore me with your mawkish “heart-felt.”
I’d rather hear the thoughts your mind thought:
Forget your “feelings”; get behind thought.

Dammit, Jesus; now I have to wash my hair in zinfandel.

a neglected form: bawdy haiku

Were mermaids only manatees?
Men make mistakes when sailing seas.

the internet: the CB radio of the future

We are not, physiologically, carnivores: we have neither the teeth nor claws of a predator; we lack the short intestine of a carnivore. Meat consumption, particularly at the usual American dosage, is linked to heart disease, colon cancer, diabetes, and other illnesses. Why, then, do so many proponents of “intelligent design” eat meat?

processionals of professionals

I would hate to be a stripper
Having trouble with her zipper.

You just think you’re being objective.

Needless to say, [deleted].

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Our eighth event, “Remembering Keel,” took place on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  We had somewhat of a small crowd, thanks to the World Cup (which we certainly didn’t anticipate when we reserved the space months ago).

Doug opened the ceremonial ullage: for this occasion, we chose John’s favorite drink, a diabetic protein shake. 

Lisa read a piece John wrote for his hometown paper when he was 15, and excerpts from some of his work for men’s magazines in the ’50s; and joined Doug in reading a brief proposal for a film, “Nudists from Outer Space.”  Doug read from a proposal for a sequel to John’s first book, Jadoo; Anthony read a bit from John’s novel Three Women.  Our guest, Larry “Ratso” Sloman, read another proposal John submitted to the National Lampoon when Ratso was editor.

The audience was also treated to a promotional song for Jadoo; a clip from one of John’s radio shows for the Armed Forces Network; a film from the ’60s, featuring John as a drunk in the Museum of Modern Art; and video interviews with George Kuchar and David Letterman.

Of course, the day before the anniversary of John’s death, my computer, printer, and scanner all stopped working.  But that’s to be expected.  That Keelian chaos can’t be stopped by something as paltry as death.

So thanks to all; and extra thanks to Anthony and to Geoff Brady for audio and video preparation.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)  

I’m happy to inform you that you can now savor that notorious lipogrammatical curiosity, Gadsby, simply by following this link.  Gadsby has long had an almost mythological status among linguistic buffs (and Oulipo fans); most of its original printing was lost long ago, but luckily a microfilm proof copy still sits in a public library (in California, I think, but I couldn’t find out).  And now you can study this oddity in a digital format, just by clicking that link — and fly off to a magical fictional microcosm, a world of words tightly bound by an unusual, arguably arbitrary, and disturbingly strict formal constraint.  Do it today!

(Post by Doug; thanks to A. A.)