I’m puzzled by the word “spiritual.”  I understand it as a noun, meaning a genre of vocal music.  But as an adjective, it has me stumped.

When I meet someone who spatters his or her sentences with it, I sometimes ask what it means.  She or he usually refuses, often with projectile hostility.  One woman retorted that since I read Darwin, I was incapable of nuanced thought.  This was a clue: perhaps it meant boorishness, or an aversion to defining terms.  I met similar responses from pseudo-skeptics, those odd folk who beat the drum so loudly for a “scientific investigation of the paranormal,” when I asked what they meant by “scientific” and “paranormal.”  “I’m not going to play that game,” was a typical reply.  This led me, then, to infer that “spiritual” referred to the same reductive anti-intellectualism so prized by pseudo-skeptics.  (Parenthetically, let me clarify that “beat the drum” is figurative; otherwise someone is bound to take it literally, and protest that he or she doesn’t even own a drum.  This may seem over-cautious, but it’s not.)

My dictionary here (a humble Webster’s Collegiate) defines “spiritual” as “of or relating to sacred matters.”  This is no help.  Sacred matters include fasting, feasting, asceticism, Christmas shopping, massacres, soup kitchens, the civil rights movement, the Ku Klux Klan, liberation theology, ethnic cleansing, self-immolation, heretic-lynching, scholarship, book-burning, celibacy, orgies, monogamy, polygamy, and, apparently, everything else humans do.  The definition is so elastic as to be linguistically useless.

But there is, fortunately, another clue: the etymology.  The word “spiritual” evelved from the Latin “spiritus,” meaning wind.  This makes sense.  Pythagoras forbade beans because they contain the spirits of the dead, who then seek release from our digestive tracts.  Then, too, the “joyful noise” of Psalm 100 becomes specific; “out-of-body experience” comprehensible; “inspiration” and “afflatus” no longer vague abstractions.  And “fundamentalist spirituality” is, no doubt, wind from the fundament.  “Flatulent” is as good a definition of “spiritual” as any; and flatulence, obviously, can accompany any of the above sacred matters.  And, like drum-beating, it can be taken figuratively as well. 

We here in the Ullage Group wish you a spiritual 2010.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)  

“Beat Your Neighbours,” from the English firm, Tower Press, offered pictures of motorists in this cozy style.  Curiously, the game itself had nothing to do with the artwork: you simply accumulated or discarded cards according to the instructions on “Put” cards. 

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

First, we apologize for the hiatus.  Hiatus happens.

Our next event, devoted to marginal and obsolete musical instruments, is scheduled for January 24th.  Details will follow.

As you may have noticed, holidays have reared their troublesome heads.  You can soothe the angst with Skinner holiday songs here and here.

We remind you that our tribute to John Keel can be perused at www.johnkeel.com.  That bibliography has spread, fungus-like, since you last looked.

And we wish you ullage aplenty in 2010!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

And we close our overview of “Snap” decks with a 1954 edition by Parker Brothers.  And quite stylish, too, in my opinion.  Snap!

 (Posted by Doug Skinner)

There are many reports of Alien Big Cats (ABC’s, as their devotees like to call them) in the fortean database.  This one, which I found in the French daily Libération (July 25, 1994), and passed along to the INFO Journal at the time, seems to have been overlooked.  I was unable to find a follow-up, explanation, confirmation, or debunking in the days that followed.  I rediscovered it in my files; and ran a few www searches, but turned up no mention of it.  I post it here for ABC buffs to ponder; and because I find a panther showing up on an airport security camera outside Paris such a haunting image.  I doubt that big cats do indeed prowl urban airports at night; but, if I had my way, they would.

WILD BEAST.  A feline freely roaming the airport zone of Roissy was filmed by a security camera Thursday night.  The animal, of adult age, resembles a panther or puma.  The alert was not given until the next day, when the videotape was reviewed.  Yesterday, the cat had still not been found.  As a security measure, the police of Seine-Saint-Denis recommend that windows not be left open in ground floor apartments.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This deck, “Animal Snap,” is another low-budget entry, with no indication of publisher other than “Made in Hong Kong.”  The cheap paper and printing give it, to me, a particular grainy charm.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I found this anonymous pencil drawing at a flea market.  There’s probably a story behind it; perhaps it’s just as well that we don’t know what it is.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The Western Publishing Company left posterity this aggressively cute version of “Snap.”  The colors are a treat, though.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

[As a postscript to our event about hoaxes, I’ll post this account of a memorable literary hoax that may be unfamiliar to American readers.  It’s taken from my article “Boris Vian for Anglophones,” on the life and work of that French writer/musician, in Strange Attractor Journal Two.] 

The war had ended, Paris was free, and nightlife was in full bloom.  A rather drab neighborhood, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, started sprouting nightclubs, mostly in cellars; jazz musicians, existentialists, surrealists, lettrists, and actors filled them with smoke and noise.  Vian, tall and pale, trompinette in hand, became a symbol of the scene: the “Prince of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”  Scandal-hungry journalists (“copy-pissers,” Vian called them) snapped photos of couples necking in the murky basements, and whipped up public outrage.

A small publisher, Scorpion, suggested that Vian translate a rousing American thriller.  He had a better idea: he’d write his own.  And so was born Vernon Sullivan, a young black American too racially and sexually daring to be published in the US.  In ten days, Vian cranked out a brutal novella, about a black man passing for white, who seduces and murders white women to avenge his brother’s lynching.  Dubbed J’irai cracher sur vos tombes (I Shall Spit on Your Graves), it was published as a novel by Vernon Sullivan, translated by Boris Vian.

A certain Daniel Parker, head of a “Cartel for social and moral action,” had already led a campaign against Henry Miller; now he targeted Sullivan.  As usual, the publicity only sparked sales.

Then, something unexpected intervened.  A salesman, Edmond Rougé, strangled his lover in a Paris hotel, leaving a copy of J’irai cracher beside her.  The press blamed the Sullivan smut; there was talk of banning it; and it became a best seller.  Vian was rumored to be the author, and the papers pissed copious copy about his career in the clubs.

Vian was grateful for the royalties — which allowed him to quit his job — but found himself in an increasingly difficult position.  He promised [his wife] Michelle that he wouldn’t admit his authorship.  Instead, he reinforced the hoax by producing the English “original” with his friend Milton Rosenthal, and by “translating” more Sullivan novels.  He also adapted J’irai cracher for the stage, under his own name; with the sex offstage, and the anti-racism front and center, he had a preachy show that pleased nobody and further entangled him in the scandal.

Rougé’s crime and Parker’s crusade eventually landed Vian in court, where he was compelled to confess that he was indeed Vernon Sullivan.  In spite of literary experts’ testimony, he was convicted of an “attack on public morals,” fined, and sentenced to prison.  The judgment was overturned on appeal, but the damage had been done: he was now branded a pornographer and hoaxer.  The joke had taken over his life.

[…]

J’irai cracher arose to haunt Vian one final time.  A production company hoped to turn the famous title into a movie; so Vian and Jacques Dopagne set to work on a screenplay.  It went through several versions, and even more production companies.  After being instructed that the script was too short, Vian sent off a thick typescript padded with absurdly detailed descriptions.  This brought his participation to a close, which was perhaps what he wanted all along, and the production passed to other writers.

The film was completed.  Vian attended a screening, and died a few minutes into it.  The symbolism has become a part of his legend; biographers disagree on whether he shouted a final insult at the movie.  At any rate, his heart had been killing him for years; friends recalled that he thought he’d never reach 40.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  For more about Strange Attractor Journal, look here.)            

Another “Snap” deck; and another based on nursery rhymes.  This one comes from Thomas de la Rue & Co., in London.  Like the frog, all depict delicately colored figures against crisp black and white backgrounds.  I particularly appreciate the distinctly froggy hands.

(Posted by Doug Skinner.  Thanks to Angela Alverson for this one!)