The Reformation of Wolfshausen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.