Waking Ambrose

TLP, Decider

2009-11-11T05:50:00.000-08:00

A morning is for glory,

Late morn for glory past,

When a man can sit upon his couch

And be thoughtful at last.

But quiet, cautious contemplation

Serves only as a provocation

To the kind of woman whose vacation

is spent spreading aggravation.

Do the Roosters out in Pennsyltucky

Arise to Lucy's crowing?

Do the clouds break when she thunders

And the winds gust when she's blowing?

Here in LA, the sky is brightening,

The weather's clear, the morals heightening.

The burdens of the times are lightening

But I won't relax while Lucy's tightening.

BOSSY, adj. Minutely gracious.

Cudgel

2009-11-10T05:03:00.000-08:00

CUDGEL, n. A medicine for external application to the head and shoulders of a fool.

2009 Update: A heavy club which, the likeliest weapon of Friar Tuck, has since obsolesced in favor of theology.

Coenobite

2009-11-09T04:38:00.000-08:00

COENOBITE, n. A man who piously shuts himself up to meditate upon the sin of wickedness; and to keep it fresh in his mind joins a brotherhood of awful examples.

O Coenobite, O coenobite,
Monastical gregarian,
You differ from the anchorite,
That solitudinarian:
With vollied prayers you wound Old Nick;
With dropping shots he makes him sick.
—Quincy Giles

2009 Update: A contemplative who leaves town and home in search of community.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

2009-11-07T04:57:00.000-08:00

Teil Vier-Und Vierzig

To hear Weirsdo telling this week's story, hide in the breadbasket.

To read this week's episode, watch from over in the haystack.

The story so far is here.

Eulogy

2009-11-06T04:21:00.000-08:00

EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.

2009 Update: A brief review of the virtues from a life well and fully lived.

Epigram

2009-11-05T04:59:00.000-08:00

EPIGRAM, n. A short, sharp saying in prose or verse, frequently characterize by acidity or acerbity and sometimes by wisdom. Following are some of the more notable epigrams of the learned and ingenious Dr. Jamrach Holobom:

We know better the needs of ourselves than of others. To serve oneself is economy of administration.

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.

There are three sexes; males, females and girls.

Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this: they seem to the unthinking a kind of credibility.

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.

While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both his.

2009 Update: Refined babble.

Those who seek shall surely find what they who lie unsought express in rhyme.

-Anonymous

Anthropogenic Global Whining

2009-11-04T05:33:00.000-08:00

Whether the science from gleaning of data

Is right that the world's getting warmer

Or the others are right that the science won't matter

If we cede all our plans to the former:

It's summery here in C.A. in November

And might be for Christmas, the worse.

So I'm starting my day, hoping to remember

To drive in to work in reverse.

DISCOMFORT, n. Heaven's first gift to the good and wisdom's middle curse on the industrious.

Excursion

2009-11-03T04:35:00.000-08:00

EXCURSION, n. An expedition of so disagreeable a character that steamboat and railroad fares are compassionately mitigated to the miserable sufferers.

2009 Update: A brief circular journey for the satisfaction of curiosity and the broadening of the mind. In the American midwest, a visit to the casino.

Experience

2009-11-02T04:42:00.000-08:00

EXPERIENCE, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

To one who, journeying through night and fog,
Is mired neck-deep in an unwholesome bog,
Experience, like the rising of the dawn,
Reveals the path that he should not have gone.
—Joel Frad Bink

2009 Update: The sensory engine that pulls us from mistaken to misunderstanding.

"What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song or wisdom for a dance in the street? No! But a pamphlet can be had for mutterings or a slow limp!"
-Blake

Happy Birthday to Eamon!

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

2009-10-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

Teil Drei-Und Vierzig

To listen, poke the bat ar right.

To read this week's episode, click the snow over Hessen.

The story so far is here.

Deshabille

2009-10-30T06:33:00.000-07:00

DESHABILLE, n. A reception costume for intimate friends varying according to locality, e.g. In Borrioboola Gha, a streak of red and yellow paint across the thorx. In San Francisco, pearl ear-rings and a smile.

2009 Update: Casual or careless garb. According to the lexicographer, the antonym for nudity.

And a very happy birthday to sister AP3. May Facebook fete you as warmly as the blogosphere remembers.

Dragon

2009-10-29T04:20:00.000-07:00

DRAGON, n. A leading attraction in the menagerie of the antique imagination. It seems to have escaped.

2009 Update: A genus comprising greater variety in character than either canis or barber. The key traits include a leathery and scaled hide, moral dubiousness, destructive expression and appointment as opposed to election.

Advice to my nephew, Eamon, before his second birthday

2009-10-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

Monday's your birthday, make of it the most.

Pull a toy under Murphy and feed him your toast

Bite your mom's ankle, spill your dad's beer,

Frustrate your brother til I hear him scream from here.

Put Bapu's camera into your juice.

Grab Ganny's flowers and pull each petal loose.

Some days are good and some days are bad.

The best days are days you make everyone mad!

EXPEDITION, n. A long and demanding mission, such as the journey from infancy to propriety or from the cradle to a vase.

Digestion

2009-10-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead-a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia. This brutal judgement is found in his pamphlet entitled Why Are Women Sickly (John Camden Hotten: London, 1870), a work that has elicited well-merited execration in seventy languages.

"Why are all our women sickly?"
Asks the famous Dr. Blenn.
That is answered very quickly,-
Our physicians all are men.

There is not in this wide world a pleasure so sweet as the vindication of lovely woman against unjust aspersion.

2009 Update: A contest between a dead and a living animal, resolved inevitably in favor of the vegetable.

Depilatory

2009-10-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

DEPILATORY, adj. Having the property of removing hair from the skin-a quality highly developed in the hand of a wife.

2009 Update: Apeciogenic. Causing the removal or absence of especially bodily hair, such as by the presence of ambition in the blood or estrogen in the home.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

2009-10-24T05:43:00.000-07:00

Teil Zwo-Und Vierzig

To hear my mom read, sit with Hilda Greulich at right.

To read this week's episode, take your seat in the pot.

The story so far is here.

Homicide

2009-10-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

2009 Update: Inverted nostalgia. Philosophy from the seed.

Heat

2009-10-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

HEAT, n.

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
His point; but this I know — hot words bestowed
With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
Crede expertum — I have seen them, child.
—Gorton Swope

2009 Update: The condition poets will call inspiring, construction crews perspiring, joggers respirational, surfers recreational, the sleepy soporific, and the chef prolific; as measured by a thermometer.

The Snail's Secret Secondary Source

2009-10-21T03:39:00.000-07:00

A weasel, down a forest trail,

Trotted past a lonesome snail,

"Whither thou?" the weasel asked

"To Rome, Modesto or Damascus?"

"I keep an atlas in my shell,"

The snail replied after a spell

"And every place I roam and wander,

Is annotated 'just up yonder.'"

"And does it tell, by signs or words,

The whereabouts of nesting birds?"

"No, let me make the caption clear

Each page announces 'leaves be here'."

"What waste of good cartography

To omit the sites that interest me!"

"My map of foliage, I find fine,

And copied once upon a vine."

The weasel darted on ahead,

To see where the forest trail led

While the snail, of his terrain assured,

Sauntered right up to a waiting bird.

ROADMAP, n. The landscape of the lost.

Hypocrite

2009-10-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

2009 Update: A man alleging hypocrisy.

Horrid

2009-10-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

HORRID, adj. In English hideous, frightful, appalling. In Young-womanese, mildly objectionable.

There was a pretty girl.
In the terror and the whirl
Of the tempest of her passion she was torrid!
But when moderately moved
By what she disapproved
She said, with gentle censure, it was horrid.

2009 Update: Punishable by exclamation.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

2009-10-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

Teil Ein-Und Vierzig

To hear Minka read, scratch Dietmärchen on the ears (click at right.)

To read this week's episode, sit down by Dürer's saint.

The story so far is here. Quick note on format, episodes will now begin with one of Luther's theses. For educational purposes.

Free-Will

2009-10-16T06:09:00.000-07:00

FREE-WILL, n.

A chip, in floating down a stream,
Indulged a gratifying dream:

"All things on earth but only I
Are bound by stern necessity-

"Are moved this way or that, their course
Determined by some outer force.

"The helpless boughs upon the trees
Confess the suasion of the breeze.

"The stone where it was placed remains
Till loosened by the frost or rains.

"The animals go here and there
As circumstances may declare.

"The influence they cannot see
Is clearly visible to me.

"Yet all belive they're governed still
By nothing but their solemn will.

"Deluded fools! I-I alone
Obey no forces but my own.

"Without or sail or oar, I glide
At pleasure to the ocean's tide.

"No pow'r shall stay me till I lave
My body in the salt sea wave.

Just then an eddy's gentle strength
By hardly half a finger's length,

His chipship drew aside. Said he;
"'Tis far indeed to reach the sea."

Now more and more, behold him swerve
Along the eddy's outer curve.

He says: "My joy in swimming's o'er
I'm half inclined to go ashore."

As still he sweeps his arc,
He adds: "The day is growing dark,

"But still there's time to reach, no doubt,
The point for which I first set out."

The circle was completed quite.
"Right here," he said. "I'll pass the night."

Nor ever once that chip suspected
That ought but he his course deflected.

Free-will, O mortals, is a dream:
Ye all are ships upon a stream.

2009 Update: The iron shackling each to his or her own failures, felonies and follies.

Fear

2009-10-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

FEAR, n. A sense of the total depravity of the immediate future.

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch-
Who'd rather pass than call.
Earl of Montrose

2009 Update: Panic at the mundane or its variations.

The Tragedy of The Commons Explained

2009-10-14T02:40:00.000-07:00

An open meadow, green and thick

Makes every shepherd wild

To gather his whole wooly flock

And graze the free land mild.

But where one herdsman tarries

The land will soon be full

Of other shepherds gathered

To deplore the price of wool.

And soon they bring their flocks and kin

To reap each blade, leaf, root and feather

And gather up to drink rum

And to predict the weather.

And once the lea has been stripped bare

And no-one's left for thanking,

The flock is left to starve or

Follow graziers into banking.

The tragedy's a common one,

Cultivated from these roots:

Too many open ovine mouths

Near surplus farmers' boots.

-Anatole Idyll

COMMONS, n. A pastoral resource held collectively in trust by the parents of malthusian libertarians.