FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.

Roman gentleman to Roman lady: “You know, Marcella, I wouldn’t tell this to anybody else, but some days I dream of a distant future when nouns won’t decline at all.”

January 16, 2025. No comments.

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How would you handle yourself in these dangerous situations? A young lady flirts with you on the dance floor. How will you counter the blades she probably has concealed in her fan? A man tips his hat to you in the street. Has he just signaled his associates to go through with the ambush? Your host introduces you to a distinguished guest. Now there are two of them and only one of you. Your new lady friend brings you home to meet her parents. What fiendish trap has her mother hidden in the armchair?

January 15, 2025. No comments.

IN LEGAL NEWS.

The slander suit against artist Eli “Bonkers” Johnson was dismissed today in the Thirteenth District Superlative Court, in spite of the artist’s admission that he had spoken the words deemed slanderous by the plaintiff.

According to the suit brought by the Buckingham & Sanders Artist Pigments Corporation, Mr. Johnson had defamed the company’s product, and caused material harm, by stating at an artists’ conference that he “could not speak the name of that color without spitting.”

Mr. Johnson (appearing pro se) admitted that he had spoken those words, but argued that, in American libel and slander law, truth is a defense. In an unusual move, he invited Judge Ronald H. Gramophone to speak the name of the color in question. After three unsuccessful attempts to pronounce “Phthalo blue” without a considerable amount of spray, His Honor dismissed the case.

January 14, 2025. No comments.

NEWLY DISCOVERED FRAGMENT OF FINNEGANS WAKE.

James Joyce spent many years revising and rewriting Finnegans Wake. Recently the literary world was all aflutter at the news that a single manuscript page, left out of the final version, had been discovered in a locked desk drawer at the James Joyce Museyroom in Sandycove. Naturally this Magazine outbid all rivals for the exclusive privilege of printing this newfound fragment.

Inthis pilgrim age, travailing in travel, abroad aboard the SS Peter & Paul, circumpolambulating the sevensea Ossian, they put in and they pulled out at Banglelore (thricelegendary bizarre bazaar of every danglebangle), Ethiopia (Abyssinia, in all those old familiar places), Norfolk, Suffolk, Effolk, and Weffolk, till dazed they were and dazedagain (redazed) (redeezed) (rediced) (redosed) (reduced). Paleandwan, wanandpale were they, paleandpale makes paler, wanandwan makes tu. Hot Chestnuts for Everywan! Smiling at the grim ace, drinkingtheir sovereigntea, upmounted the shells higherly into a veritabobble ALP, a grievousgreat load of shells, but the Load ALPs them what ALPs themselves. Now, patience; and remember patience is the great thing, and above all things else we must avoid anything like being or becoming out of patience, you idiots. We reek-oh of Vico in

At the bottom of the page is a long and apparently critical scrawl signed by someone named Nola or Nora or some such name. Most of it is illegible, and what is legible is unprintable.

January 13, 2025. 5 comments.

PARADOXES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR.

You just missed it.

Gates’ Paradox: People know that Microsoft Windows will frustrate them, cost hours of lost work time every day, and eventually destroy their data, yet they still choose it as the safe alternative.

The Gasoline Fallacy: Gasoline prices are always posted in figures ending in nine mills, even though, logically, if such a convention were genuinely usfeul in marketing, it would have been adopted for every other product.

The Trolley Conundrum: Even though the streetcars run on a regular and predictable schedule, the answer to the question “When does the next car leave?” is always “Thirty seconds before you get to the stop.”

The Paradox Paradox: Intelligent readers will peruse a list of paradoxical human behaviors on the Internet and nod sagely, and then go back out into the world and continue committing all the same fallacies and absurdities.

Boli’s Disappointment: People know the punch line will not be a sufficient reward to compensate for the effort, yet they still read the joke through to the end.

January 12, 2025. 3 comments.

FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.

“Now, whatever you do, when you meet my mother, don’t use prepositions. My mother has strong opinions about prepositions, you see.”

January 11, 2025. 3 comments.

DR. BOLI’S LIBRARY OF LOST BOOKS.

No. 7.—Godefroy de Danielz: Universitas, sive de omnibus rebus libri quattuor milia undeviginti (The University; or, the Four Thousand Nineteen Books on Every Subject).

“The tree of knowledge has precisely 4,019 branches,” Godefroy wrote in the preface to his first book. “We begin with the root of all of them, which is the knowledge of God. And first, it is necessary to establish, for the sake of our argument, whether the root of the tree can be properly considered a branch for the purposes of our classification of knowledge. In order to have a properly considered answer to this question, it will be necessary to begin with an understanding of the structure of trees. In the first chapter of the first book, therefore, we shall examine the seed, which is the beginning of the tree and therefore the beginning of our inquiry as well. In the second chapter of the first book, we shall begin our examination of the question of how seeds come to be, and whether the seeds of trees of different kinds are properly subsumed under the heading of seed, or whether more than one εἶδος is indicated by an inexact application of the term seed. In the third chapter of the first book, the seed of the common stone pine of our southern regions is examined. In the fourth chapter of our first book, the seed of the Aleppo pine common in the Levant is considered in its relation to the seed of the stone pine, and shown to be similar but not identical. In the fifth—”

This is as far as the surviving text goes: only the first leaf remains, the rest having been used to line a litter box for Godefroy’s cat Anaxagoras. It is not known how far Godefroy had proceeded with his work, but it is noted that Anaxagoras lived for seventeen years after Godefroy abandoned the project and never ran out of litter.

January 10, 2025. No comments.