Walt showed up late for the card party at the senior center. He blamed it on his poor memory, which seemed to be growing worse with age.
“You know, I used to have that problem too,” said his friend Stan. “But then I went to a memory clinic, and they taught us some really great techniques, like visualization and association, and I haven’t had a problem since.”
“That sounds like just what I need,” said Walt. “What was the name of the clinic?”
Stan’s mind went blank. He thought and thought, and finally he said, “What do you call that flower with the long thorny stem?”
“You mean a rose?” said Walt.
“That’s it!” said Stan. Then he turned to his wife and said, “Hey Rose, what was the name of that memory clinic?”
It’s cold out and I’m thinking of warm, maybe tropical music.
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three would be those,
Yet hat in the plural would never be hose,
And the plural of cat is cats, not cose.
We speak of a brother and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.
Let’s face it,
English is a crazy language.
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger;
Neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren’t invented in England.
We take English for granted.
But if we explore its paradoxes,
We find that quicksand can work slowly,
Boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea, nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing,
Grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends,
But not one amend?
If you have a bunch of odds and ends
And get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught,
Why didn’t preachers praught?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables,
What does a humanitarian eat?
Sometimes, I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?
Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down; in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
Where did this strange language come from and why do we speak it?
‘Cause we don’t know another, I guess…
Stay Safe…
Today is the birthday (in 1918) of Patty Andrews, one of the Andrews Sisters. Throughout their career they sold over 75 million records. This was a 1941 hit for them.
Nothing in English starts with an N and ends with a G.
Wife: We just ate, why are you making pancakes?Me: They’re for the dogs.Wife: Why are you making pancakes for the dogs?Me: They don’t know how.
Bigfoot is sometimes confused with Sasquatch.Yeti never complains.(This was an abominable joke.)
We’re putting together an expedition to capture the legendary Sasquatch.If we’re successful, it’ll be no small feet.
The doctor asked if I’d like to be knocked out with anesthesia or with a canoe paddle.It was an ether/oar situation.
My gym membership costs $120 a year.That’s pretty steep considering it’s $60 a visit.
Why do bagpipe players always walk while they play?They’re trying to get away from the noise.
Applicant: Shows up 45 minutes late for an interview to be a cable installer.Interviewer: “You’re hired.”
and this…
‘The Blue Danube’ (An der schönen blauen Donau, Walzer, Op. 314) by Johann Strauss II had its first performance in 1867. Here is a wonderful performance by The Vienna Philharmonic on New Years Day in 2011 along with some beautiful dancing.
I recently finished reading ‘Night Boat to Tangier’, a novel by Kevin Barry. I enjoyed it. On the face it’s the story of two aging Irish criminals – Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond – sitting in the ferry terminal in Algeciras waiting for Maurice’s daughter, Dilly, who may be going to or from Tangier.
Maurice and Charlie accost a young man who they think might know Dilly, casually terrorizing him in search of information on the woman’s whereabouts. They strike up a conversation with two other women whose English skills aren’t quite developed. And they drown their sorrows at the station’s bar: “It is a tremendously Hibernian dilemma — a broken family, lost love, all the melancholy rest of it — and a Hibernian easement for it is suggested … we’ll go for an old drink.”
The book is interspersed with flashbacks to their younger years when they were both friends and rivals, running drugs between Morocco, Spain and Ireland. “But the money no longer is in dope. The money now is in people. The Mediterranean is a sea of slaves. The years have turned and left Maurice and Charlie behind. The men are elegiacal, woeful, heavy in the bones. Also they are broke and grieving.”
It does recall a bit another work by an Irish writer – Waiting for Godot – but this one is brightened by Barry’s wonderful gift for dialogue which I admired again and again as I read the book. It’s both grim and compassionate and I felt a bit of compassion for Maurice and Charlie as I read the book despite some of the awful things they had done.
The book is filled with memories of their early days in Cork, in London, in Malaga and more, often in a drug and alcohol-induced haze. They truly are, at the end, broken men.
“Is there any end in sight, Maurice?” Charlie wonders.
“This is the great unfortunate thing,” Maurice reckons. “We might have a length of road to go yet.”
The book was longlisted for the Booker Prize and was a NYT ten best books of the year in 2019 and was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. You should read it if only for the wonderful dialogue. Here’s the NYT Review.
As you know, I like to post about artists on their birthdays, but the birthdays are not known for every artist. Such is the case with Kitagawa Utamara who was born sometime in 1753 and was one of the most highly-regarded designers of the ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings. He produced a wide variety of prints but is best know for his portraits of beautiful women and in particular the courtesans of the Yoshiwara District of what is now Tokyo.
He also produced a wide variety of nature studies and books of insects as well as historical subjects and erotica. He is one of the few ukiyo-e artists to attain fame throughout Japan in his lifetime.
In 1804 he was arrested and manacled for fifty days for making illegal prints depicting the 16th century military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Hideyoshi and his five wives viewing the cherry blossoms at Higashiyama -Utamaro 1802
Much of his work was around courtesans or Geishas. One of his more popular series depicted the 12 hours of the day for the Geishas.
Ino No Koku – The Hour of the Dog
(A courtesan sits on a scarlet felt rug at about 8 in the evening. She bends back to speak to a young servant while she writes to a patron. Before her is a tobacco tray decorated with lacquer.)
Chusingura – Utamaro 1802
Later in his career he began elongating the head and necks of his subjects in his prints in a very distinctive style.
The Courtesan Ichikawa of the Matsuba Establishment from the series Famous Beauties of Edo
One of the things that really interests me about Utamaro is the influence that he and others of his period had on the French Impressionist movement. ‘Japonisme’ is the term used for the popularity and influence of Japanese design on the art and architecture in Western Europe following the forced reopening of trade with Japan in 1858. Here are some examples:
The Coiffure – Mary Cassatt 1891Portrait of Pere Tanguy – Van Gogh 1887Madame Monet en costume Japonais, 1875 – Claude MonetGustav Klimt, Lady with fan, 1917/18
Japanese gardens also became popular. Claude Monet modeled part of his garden after Japanese elements such as the bridge over the lily pond which he painted numerous times. In his ‘Water Lilies’ series, by detailing just on a few select points such as the bridge or the lilies, he was influenced by traditional Japanese visual methods found in ukiyo-e prints.
Utamaro also did a few paintings. This is one of his earlier paintings and is in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.
Shinagawa no Tsuki, Utamaro, hanging-scroll painting made with coloured inks on paper, c. 1788–1791
Utamaro made more than 2000 works of art. If you want to see more you, the Sackler Gallery in Washington has some. There are also lots of images in Wikimedia HERE.
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