Posts filed under “Books & Literature”
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
THE LANGUAGE OF PASTRIES.
Napoleon. I hurl defiance at your winter climate.
Baklava. The world of the ideal is the only true reality.
Croissant. Your birthday card contained three spelling errors. Could you please resend?
Chausson aux pommes. My music is influenced by the literary works of the great Russian novelists, but with apples.
Paszki. To me the phonetic values of letters are meaningless.
Danish. Our system has detected anomalies originating from your computer. (Alternatively, I am a pretentious croissant.)
Lemon Tart. The person to your right has designs on your luggage.
Cruller. And shall they not be crulled?
Fried fruit pie in a box at the convenience store. Your attentions are unwelcome.
YOUR TERRIFYING THOUGHT FOR THE EVENING.
A generation is now entering adulthood whose members cannot remember a time when comic books were not taken seriously as an art form.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
DANIEL BOONE, EPIC HERO.
Dr. Boli has on more than one occasion pointed his readers toward bad poetry. He would like to make amends now by giving you an epic poem based on the life of Daniel Boone—and one published while the late Mr. Boone was still alive. It takes a completist view of its subject, as you may see from the argument to Book I:
Immediately subsequent to the transformation of Chaos into order, and previous to the creation of light, the Angels who superintend terrestrial affairs assume their stations…
As you might expect from a tale of Daniel Boone, the backwoods action never lets up—starting with the very first sentence, which we reproduce here:
When first their dark and yet untravel’d rounds
Through the inane expanse of pristine Night,
The planetary conglobations roll’d;
Before the great eternal’s sacred eye,
Upon the gloom of the sidereal orbs,
Their pure-beam’d, time-enduring splendors flash’d;
Ere on Attraction’s mystic centre pois’d
By the Almighty’s sun creating hand,
The blazing ball that lights our solar sphere,
From the ecliptic-zone his radiance pour’d;
When from their chrystal palaces in Heaven’s
Unmeasure’d heights of bright and cloudless day,
Th’Angelic Spirits view’d Creation’s God,
Along th’unresisting void of space,*
In numberless succession, rolling worlds;
From their celestial ranks they bade descend,
To rule the vast machinery of the globes,
Supernal hosts with holy power endued.*A mistake by the printer; the rhythm requires “the unresisting,” not “th’unresisting.”
Yes, sir! Nothing whiles away the dullness of a long winter night in the Shenandoah Valley like a rip-roaring tale of adventure. Here is The Adventures of Daniel Boone, by Daniel Bryan.
Dr. Boli is now looking for an excuse—any excuse—to use the phrase “planetary conglobations” in a sentence.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
A WORD FROM THE PUBLISHER.
As President and CEO of Thaddeus Olsen Publishers, I am proud to announce today that work has begun on the new Traditional American Version of the Bible, expected to be completed some time next week.
In keeping with our commitment to traditional American Christian values, the TAV will be the first translation of the Bible supported by product placements.
Capitalism is, of course, God’s favored economic system, and the work of the translation committee must be paid for. Product placements provide us with the funding to ensure quality work, without resort to the shoddy and exploitative Indonesian translation sweatshops that produced (for example) the New American Bible.
No American will object to a few additional beatitudes, and good American companies with wares to hawk will be delighted to hear their products endorsed by Christ himself.
Perhaps even more effective (and thus available at a correspondingly higher price) is our negative endorsement plan, in which you may choose to have your competitor’s product denounced by your favorite Old Testament prophet. Imagine the drop in sales as customers remember Jeremiah’s stirring words, “Woe to you, O buyers of Cleanse-O! How long will it be before you are made clean?”
There is still plenty of room for endorsements. All this week we are having a special sale on genealogies in I Chronicles.
But you must act now. Do not allow your competitors to monopolize the attention of the sincerely religious. Call the Thaddeus Olsen Product Placement Office today and assure your product a place among the elect.
——Yours sincerely,
Thaddeus Olsen IV
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
ANNIVERSARY WEEK.—In honor of the forthcoming eighth anniversary of his Celebrated Magazine on the World-Wide Web, Dr. Boli is reprinting some of the most notable articles, stories, poems, and advertisements of the past eight years.
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