Friday, March 14, 2008

Nose

NOSE, n. The extreme outpost of the face. From the circumstance that great conquerors have great noses, Getius, whose writings antedate the age of humor, calls the nose the organ of quell. It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
There's a man with a Nose,
And wherever he goes
The people run from him and shout:
"No cotton have we
For our ears if so be
He blow that interminous snout!"

So the lawyers applied
For injunction. "Denied,"
Said the Judge: "the defendant prefixion,
Whate'er it portend,
Appears to transcend
The bounds of this court's jurisdiction."
—Arpad Singiny
2008 Update: The first acquaintance of a new friend.
There lives a young gal in Seacaucus
Half charm, also half proboscis
Every man there knows
"She has good taste in clothes
But smells too well, prob'ly, to frock us."
-Ophelia

 

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nose stuffy.

Eyes itchy.

Anonymous said...

Wind blows.
Curtains shake in the breeze.
Pollen flies.
I sneeze.

But I suppose it's worth it for the privilege of saying, first! Pft.

TLP said...

If you were creating humans, would you put a container of snot right up front like that?

Anonymous said...

For a moment there I read "to frock us" too fast and came up with something else all together.
A Nose is the only organ that grows as you get older...or so I am told...even though the evidence is right in front of me...I have a hard time believing that...do you think that is true?

Tom & Icy said...

nose - I follow its scents more than my common sense.

Anonymous said...

See TRISTRAM SHANDY, nudge nudge, wink wink.

mireille said...

Vernacular for a perfumer. One of the most famous: Jean-Claude Ellena, whose stages of development of the 2007 Un Jardin Sur Le Nil for Hermes was featured in a New Yorker article. xoxo

Mutha said...

Inka, Dinka, Doo

Admin said...

Your freedom stops where my nose begins!

Ariel the Thief said...

Ahmed, that's hilarious! Exactly what I was going to say, I just didn't find the words.

It's a shame Ophelia died before she could tell that pretty poem.

bvfyioxg - by the way, my folly friend, is that an ox in our garage?

Anonymous said...

interesting Bierce def--especially the part about devoid of smell. So not true

Kyahgirl said...

tlp, you are so funny! you made me laugh out loud at that one. You've gone and made all the creationists mad at you!

my nose is one of my favorite sources of pleasure! everythig smells interesting eh Doug, even cement, dirt, and sagebrush!

Anonymous said...

As a matter of fact, Pia, the human nose is, by comparison with most other creatures, almost devoid of the sense of smell.

This is an evolutionary coping mechanism, for the odor of human groups is said to be so foul that creatures with any sort of olfactory discernment run for the hills, in lieu of applying to an ineffectual EPA for relief.

According to some anthropologists, BO is the principal human attribute that permitted the survival and expansion of the species. Tool use be damned.

Jamie Dawn said...

Great definitions by both Bierce and Thee.

I have an ample nose that my family says I point towards them when I am angry with them.
'Tis true, 'tis true.
I also have a highly acute sense of smell which is kind of funny because my poor daughter has almost no sense of smell.

Doug The Una said...

Quilly, And for the privilege of not saying it in Haiku, whatever it costs me is worth it.

TLP, I would yeah. Just above the container of grievances.

Mo'a, I'm not sure if our noses get longer or our neighbor's concerns get fatter.

Icy, thanks for your $.02.

Weirsdo, I might have to. I don't like not getting that joke.

Mireille, how did I miss that? Which issue?

Jimmy Durante, Mutha! Good for you. "Frosty, the snowman..."

Mobashir, with a nose like mine I can afford libertarianism. Plenty of Lebensraum.

Ariel, I think your nose begins where Karma's mouth ends.

Pia, he was an optimist.

Kyah, most of them were born mad. Does that make TLP their creator?

Amoeba, I have a theory every anthropologist is a timid autobiographer. I may even publish.

JD, I would have said your nose is perky but regardless, it's interesting, though, that you have a musician son, a photographer/film-maker daughter and you can smell an Arkansawyer a mile away. I bet Mr. JD knows whenever you changed the recipe.

Minka said...

nose,n. it is said we Germans are recognizable by the shape of our nose. Does that mean under the magnifying glass, mine looks like a Bratwurst?
I am very concerned about this!
[only you could rhyme "Seacaucus" with "frock us" and not be charged with life imprisonment for poetic offence!]

Doug The Una said...

Minka, the jury's still out.

Anonymous said...

You've turned up your nose
at my three wee lines of prose,
now they will haunt you.

Anonymous said...

It's been a long time since I read the book, but I do remember that Stern manages to get the reader to think "penis" every time the word "nose" appears.

Minka said...

doug, the jury's still out...you think I can report for jury duty in your trial?

Doug The Una said...

Quilly, you threaten
With a curse from your dark heart
But nothing real new.

Weirsdo, I have a copy. I ust haven't opened it.

Minka, do I want you on my jury? It depends on the available penalties, probably.