Introduction

INTRODUCTION, n. A social ceremony invented by the devil for the gratification of his servants and the plaguing of his enemies. The introduction attains its most malevolent development in this century, being, indeed, closely related to our political system. Every American being the equal of every other American, it follows that everybody has the right to know everybody else, which implies the right to introduce without request or permission. The Declaration of Independence should have read thus:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, and the right to make that of another miserable by thrusting upon him an incalculable quantity of acquaintances; liberty, particularly the liberty to introduce persons to one another without first ascertaining if they are not already acquainted as enemies; and the pursuit of another's happiness with a running pack of strangers."

2009 Update: The propagation of two new antipathies and three suspicions.

Tachyplanetera

At December's ebb, we mull and count

Our datebooks' recent pages

As the world completes an orbit more

And the mirror brusquely ages.

But why look back as new dawn breaks?

Why not look brightly out instead?

Toward our regrets next New Year's Eve

If we're not already dead.

NOSTALGIA, n. Analgesia applied to healed wounds.

Inadmissible

INADMISSIBLE, adj. Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.

But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

2009 Update: Unappealingly prejudicial.

Idol

IDOL, n. An imagine representing some object of worship. That the image is itself worshiped is probably not true any people in the world, though some idols are ugly enough to be divine. The honors paid to idols are justly deprecated by the true believer, for he knows that nothing with a head can be omniscient, nothing with a hand omnipotent and nothing with a body omnipresent. No deity could fill any of our requirements if handicapped with existence.

2009 Update: A physical representation of the profane- frequently composed with feet of clay, golden calves, the tongue of a press agent and a numbered verse.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Ein-und-Fünfzig

To hear this week's post, share Ludwig's mood on the right.

To read this week's episode, walk with Wilhelm, at left.

The story so far is here.

Argue

ARGUE, v.t. To attentively consider with the tongue.

2009 Update: v.i. To celebrate the bonds of affection, made loose by proximity.

Merry Christmas to all who pass this way. Forgive your uncles.

Authentic

AUTHENTIC, adj. Indubitably true- in somebody's opinion.

He ne'er discredited authentic news,

That tended to substantiate his views

And never controverted an assertion

When true, if it was easy of perversion.

So frank was he that where he was unjust

He always would confess it when he must.

"The Lawyer," 1750

2009 Update: Traditional, according to a previous revision. For example, fajitas, White Christmas and Waking Ambrose.

Merry Christmas Eve to you all.

Another Curmudgeonly Christmas

A little boy out in the cold,

Up on the great north plain,

Stood watch through a snowstorm

And stayed out in the rain

In hope of seeing Santa fly

And heaven's child reign.

The lad kept up his vigil,

Through changing Christmas breezes,

And made hopeful lists and prayer

In defiance of diseases.

He breathed soft words of thanks and praise

In between the sneezes.

By early dawn he heard some bells,

Like those rung through the ages

"I've been good the whole year long,"

The child coughed through fever's rages,

"Ho ho ho!," a flying elf replied,

"But now you are contagious!"

The little fellow was rewarded,

As the sleigh sped o'er night's vault,

With Santa's middle finger

And a fat elf's cursed assault:

"If Christmas spreads the pox this year,

It's little Dougie's fault!"

NOG, n. The blended deprivation of calf, chick and Australian.

Air

AIR, n. A nutritious substance supplied by bountiful Providence for the fattening of the poor.

2009 Update: The commodity most liberated by tariff or by trade agreement. An affordable source of foreign accord.

Abridge

ABRIDGE, v.t. To shorten.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for
people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.

Oliver Cromwell

2009 Update: 2 amend 4 modernity's sake, contesting vapidity with vacuity. To shorte.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Fünfzig

To hear Weirsdo read this week's episode, take a walk with Vater Karl.

To read this week's episode, follow the blessed baby into the bulrushed.

The story so far is here.

Lapidate

LAPIDATE, v.t. To rebuke with stones. St. Stephen, for example, was lapidated like a Chinaman*.

Lamented St. Steve,

What Christian can grieve

For the way that you came to your death?

For the monument fair

Of memorial stones

Was reared in the air

O'er your honored bones

Ere yet you'd relinquished your breath.

No doubt as your soul exhaled

You were thanked by resolution;

For the builders' design had failed

Except for your execution.

2009 Update: To blog at close range.

*A note on the language- Among the sects of humanity that Bierce was especially caustic towards were the anti-chinese populists of his era who lobbied in the halls of power to limit immigration and, alternately, committed acts of violence in the alleys of San Francisco. In one case, which might have inspired this definition, a Chinese woman was found murdered, of which Bierce wrote "The cause of her death could not be accurately ascertained, but as her head was caved in it is thought by some physicians that she died of galloping Christianity of the malignant California type."

All of which is to say, Bierce was a honky man of his time and I have intentionally omitted a few racist definitions. I included this entry out of confidence that he did not intend to insult Chinese people, but rather James Sensenbrenner who deserves it.

Logic

LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion -- thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore --

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

2009 Update: The most analytical form of reason, by which the capable human animal combines two assumptions into one irrelevancy. Logic is never as coldly precise as when it used to explain a failure of judgement, and judgement fails primarily due to distraction and, therefore, the Orange Bowl? Not too shabby.

Grinching tips for the recession

When money's tight in hardship's dark hour,

With gifts too dear for giving or snatching

It's hard on the merry and the dour

Here are hints to make grinching relaxing.

Plastic toys, you can break at home yourself,

Making young children feel justly like fools-

Blame the damage on a foreign-born elf

And translate the package to Magyarúl.

Under the Christmas tree, I'd try setting

Pretty boxes filled with wrapping paper.

Rather than tinsel, string chits from betting

And seal up the stockings with a stapler.

The spirit can flourish, broke though you've grown,

By spiking the eggnog with acetone.

-Brunhilda N. Tepes

CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENT, n. A decoration on a hook, symbolizing the season.

Lap

LAP, n. One of the most important organs of the female system -- an admirable provision of nature for the repose of infancy, but chiefly useful in rural festivities to support plates of cold chicken and heads of adult males. The male of our species has a rudimentary lap, imperfectly developed and in no way contributing to the animal's substantial welfare.

2009 Update: The foundation upon which ambition rests.

Libertarian

LIBERTARIAN, n. One who is compelled by the evidence to believe in free-will, and whose will is therefore free to reject that doctrine.

2009 Update: A political philosopher who would limit the government to the construction of roads, the enforcement of contracts and defense of the borders by happy accident. A utopia awaits the triumphant libertarian in which borders recede into the bedroom, grunted greetings grow into contracts and a highway is made straight not only through the desert but across every inch of national soil, extending to the depths of the ocean.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Acht-Und-Vierzig

To hear this week's reading, get anywhere near the young German woman knitting.

To read this week's episode, check inside the lovely bad knitted for Vater Karl.

The story so far is here.

Opera

OPERA, n. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes. All acting is simulation, and the word simulation is from simia, an ape; but in opera the actor takes for his model Simia audibilis (or Pithecanthropos stentor)--the ape that howls.

The actor apes a man--at least in shape;
The opera performer apes an ape.

2009 Update: A coincidence of sheet music with a libretto, typically tragic. The term derives from the Latin plural of OPUS, meaning "works" or is, perhaps, a durable misprint of "ONERA."

Oppose

OPPOSE, v.t. To assist with obstructions and objections.

How lonely he who thinks to vex

With badinage the Solemn Sex!

Of levity, Mere Man, beware;

None but the Grave deserve the Unfair.

Percy P. Orminder

2009 Update: To make a martyr or to make a satyr.

Half-man-half-beasts took up their seats

In the parliament of ancient Crete's

Under good King Minos' aegis.

The floor lay still, and what a thrill,

The King would sing in elden trill

"No law will e'er besiege us!

"So long as human source and rump of horse

Or goat-legs, with bull's heads, of course

Are joined two-in-one-creature-

The caucus lasts, and pretty fast

The opposition's votes are cast

Consensus "neighs"- a democratic feature!"

-Herodotus

Advice to my Nephew, Stevie, on his fifth birthday

Whenever you go dinosaurin',

At school, at home or someplace foreign.

The important thing is to select

The mighty lizard most correct

To roar and gnash in just the way you're feeling.

When locked behind your bedroom door,

Consider the great allosaur-

A giant mouth with giant tail,

Chomping leaves along the trail

And banging your head on the (forest) ceiling.

And when you're feeling wild and fleet,

The pterodactyl's pretty sweet

Hunting, tackling, and tearing clothes

Goes well with friends and knives for toes.

On the playground, none are more appealing.

But then there's days of youth or age

When nothing can contain our rage.

A mighty predator is due

And that T-Rex must now be you,

Tearing flesh at liberty

Scaring prey right up a tree-

A gnashing, thrashing, thick-skulled daemon

To pursue, subdue and chew on Eamon.

DINOSAUR, n. coll. A lumbering, unadaptable relic, such as an uncle.

Happy birthday, Stevie

Otherwise

OTHERWISE, adv. No better.

2009 Update: Inevitably.

Outsider

OUTSIDER, n. A person austerely censorious of that which he is unable to do or become. In commerce and finance, a member of the army of provision.

2009 Update: Every member of congress, each American journalist, the entire class of working people, any accountant, police officer, preacher, pundit, populist, layabout, roustabout, goldbrick, drunkard, teetotaler, academic, artist, manager, managee, social worker, malcontent, discontent, pollyanna, lama, rabbi, imam, infant, decedent, defendant, prosecuting attorney, judge, juror, executioner, monarchist, patriot, jihadist, bartender or, in the end, every individual member of the great global village of outcasts and separatists as well as their cats. All but the dog.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Acht-Und-Vierzig

To hear this week's reading, pull up to the warm fireplace.

To read this week's episode, sit by the candle.

The story so far is here.

Scarabee

SCARABEE, n. The same as scarabaeus.

He fell by his own hand
Beneath the great oak tree.
He'd traveled in a foreign land.
He tried to make her understand
The dance that's called the Saraband,
But he called it Scarabee.
He had called it so through an afternoon,
And she, the light of his harem if so might be,
Had smiled and said naught. O the body was fair to see,
All frosted there in the shine o' the moon —
Dead for a Scarabee
And a recollection that came too late.
O Fate!
They buried him where he lay,
He sleeps awaiting the Day,
In state,
And two Possible Puns, moon-eyed and wan,
Gloom over the grave and then move on.
Dead for a Scarabee!
—Fernando Tapple

2009 Update: A dung beetle touched with religion..

Seine

SEINE, n. A kind of net for effecting an involuntary change of environment. For fish it is made strong and coarse, but women are more easily taken with a singularly delicate fabric weighted with small, cut stones.

The devil casting a seine of lace,

(With precious stones 'twas weighted)

Drew it into the landing place

And its contents calculated.

All souls of women were in that sack —

A draft miraculous, precious!

But ere he could throw it across his back

They'd all escaped through the meshes.

—Baruch de Loppis

2009 Update: A French river which separates the dissolute from the industrious Parisian- a distinction too speculative to be made along any other course.

The Aesthete and the Chimpanzee, A Fable for Children

Once upon a time, an aesthete and a chimpanzee sat down for tea and a continental breakfast. In the course of the conversation, the topic of religion naturally arose. The aesthete argued passionately that the soul of religion itself is not faith but ritual. The chimpanzee listened intently until, perhaps bored with the lecture, she leapt onto the tea service and did a back-flip, demonstrating her intellectual elitism.

HAUTEUR, n. Speaker envy.

Self-Evident

SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else.

2009 Update: Contemporary.