Author: Sysadmin

“Cold” by yours truly

“You know the French have a saying that ‘revenge is a dish best served cold.'”

“Good. I have a very heat-averse tongue.”

 

“Pun Talk with Dr. Pun” by yours truly

“Have you ever done pun-nilingus with a  woman?”

“Pun-ssibly, but it is none of your pun-sness.”

“What about pun-sturbation?”

“We have spoke of this before. It is pun-ssible that I have.”

“Who is your favorite fictional child character?”

“Punky Brewster.”

“Are you a pun-ophile?”

“No, certainly not. I am only sexually attracted to fully adult women. They must be at least over pun-teen.”

“Your answers are pun-versive. You need to go back to pun-iversity and get pun-edjucated. You are making me pun-gry once again! Be careful. I could pun-ch you, then pu(n)t you through the window!”

“Pun-fenestration? I believe I shall leave. Pun-bye.”

 

“Pun-stellation” by yours truly

“If you need to relax, don’t drink a lot of pun-ze, just go outside and look at the stars in the sky, the pun-stellation.”

“Pun course. Pun idea.”

“Pun the way, who is your favorite author?”

“Edgar Allan Pun.”

On three quotes and two more brief poems

“Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.” –Mark Twain

I heard a reading by a famous poet a few years ago, where she said something like: “I have great fear but even more desire.” I have heard a former U.S. Marine who became a public therapist saying that he was actually very scared on the job  when in the military.

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day a separate life.” –Seneca

I say each day is a blessing, no matter how much pain you may be in. There was a song from the 1980s by the Austrian pop band Opus called “Live is Life.” It may seem like circular logic, but it is true.

“We were not sent into this world to do anything into which we can not put our heart.” — John Ruskin

For some reason, this brings to mind Sigmund Freud’s concept of cathexis, which, as I understand it, means that any activity you do with energy and diligence originates from eros.

“Pun-creation” by yours truly

“What is your view on pun-creation?”

“Well, it is very pun-portant. Children are the pun-ture.”

“But what about over-pun-pulation?

“Adam Pun-this was punn-ibly wrong. The world does not have a pun-pulation crisis.”

“Pun-lectrocution Chair” by yours truly

“You should know you may be sentenced to death by pun-lectrocution chair. It could make stand on end what’s left of your hair.”

“That sounds like a pun-mare, very pun-ful.”

“Yes, consider what happened to the killer Ted Pun-dy in Florida. He was pun-lectroculated repeatedly before dying.”

“The thought is quite pun-ful.”

“Don’t worry too much. It might just be a fatal pun-jection.”

 

More on Lord Jim

This comment is mainly from Joseph Conrad’s “Author’s Note” to his novel. He said it started as a short story, but in the tradition of men “swapping yarns” late at night, it expanded into a full novel. Conrad had been a commercial sailor, and the men on ships must have told each other stories to relieve the boredom. He speaks jokingly of “a glass of mineral water of some sort to help the narrator on.”

On the distinction between a short story and a novel, at least one critic has called Joyce’s novel Ulysses an extended short story because it only deals with one day’s events, and another critic says the novel shows that “a single day can be an epic.” The Coors have a song called “In One Day,” and the Ancient Greek dramatic structural unities held that immediate events of drama should only transpire within 24 hours as in Oedipus Rex.

But back to Conrad’s novel about a man trying to escape from past shame… He remarks in his preamble note to the novel that one reader objected to the story being “so morbid.” The title character moves to Southeast Asia to escape a shameful incident, falls in love with a local woman there, gets involved in a familial dispute, and is shot to death. Conrad says the novel is not so much morbid but about “lost honour.” He ends his note with the most famous line of the novel: “He was one of us.”

“Go” by yours truly

“You now have a national criminal record.”

“I prefer that to your condition. I can die with a mostly clear conscience whatever the law says. I don’t know where you will go after death but have a sneaking suspicion because you are complicit with Sadism and blatant dishonesty from your co-workers.”

“I don’t care!”

“Clearly, you do not.”

“You are virtue-signaling.”

“Is there anything else to signal?”

Thoughts on some quotes and two comical poems

A few more Devil’s Dictionary entries from Bierce:

“White, adj. and n. Black” This is another entry from the book that seems cryptic to me. He may be talking about the human race apparently originating from Africa: a fact, a static thing like a noun. Bierce fought in the U.S. Civil War. He may be saying here that “white-ness” is a cultural construction and better described as an adjective that qualifies a fact, like “black-ness.” The movie The Commitments has a line that the Irish are “the blacks of Europe.” The novel it is based on uses cruder language; I think the screenwriter was prudent to change it.

“Wit, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.” This entry brings to mind Oscar Wilde, who was very witty but may have been “too clever by half” and died a decadent and early death. Humor is often at odds with authority and literal meaning.

 

“Pun-ic Attacks” by yours truly

“Sir, do you realize your punning has led to pun-demonium? The CDC has declared it a pun-demic. There is punning in the streets.”

“I am sorry, but I have pun-ic attacks sometimes when in pu(n)blic and involuntarily make puns that can’t be undone.”

“I could pun-ch you again.”

“Please pu(n)t that out of your mind. In would be a P(un)yrrhic victory: you would win the battle, but I would head for the door. Anyway, I need to go now because I have an ancient-history lesson on the Punic Wars.”

“Pun-ounciation” by yours truly

“Sir, you need to work on you pun-ounciation.”

“Yes, my voice is very pun-otone. It is why I could not learn Chinese, trouble with the four tones.”

“Words should be s-(p)un-g, not just said.”

“Do you think I am as crazy as Mao Tse (T)pun-g?”

 

 

 

More on The Great Gatsby

The novel deals with communal error. Gatsby cannot put his youthful romance with the now-married Daisy Buchannan behind him and pursues her in a stalker-esque way. But other characters contribute to his fate; there is complicity, and Daisy’s husband is vain, jealous, and vengeful. From the middle of the text when Gatsby and Daisy first reunite on his Long Island estate:

“Gatsby got himself into a shadow and , while Daisy and I talked, looked conscientously from one to the other of us with tense unhappy eyes.  However, as calmness wasn’t an end in itself, I made an excuse at the first possible moment. Gatsby: ‘where are you going?’ Carraway: ‘I’ll be back.’ Gatsby: ‘I’ve got to speak to you about something before you go… This is a terrible mistake.’ Carraway: ‘You’re just embarrassed, that’s all. Daisy’s embarrassed too.'”

The driving error of the novel is Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy, but almost all the characters contribute to the tragedy at the end of the story.  I think this is why the novel is considered one of the best in the U.S. It is true to life. Almost everyone has “blood on their hands,” and the ones who don’t are often idiots.

 

“Punn-sylvania” by yours truly

“What part of Punn-sylvania are you pun: Puns-burgh or Pun-a-delphia?”

“I am from the pun-th of the state.”

“Oh, Pun-scranton?

“Well, it is a small town in the pun-th.”

More on Stephen King’s The Institute

This is going to get graphic and gross again, but as a horror writer, King often deals with this.

From the midpoint of the novel: “He crumpled the paper, went into the bathroom, and dropped the note into the bowl as he lowered his pants… He would have loved to believe there was at least no surveillance in la maison du chier, but he didn’t quite believe it.”

The novel has to do with imprisonment. I have been imprisoned recently. Holding cells don’t even have bathrooms, just a toilet in a small room and a tap for water to drink. They don’t even have real beds in my experience. For someone with nerve damage or who is sensitive, that is torture. If left there for more than 24 hours (and I was left there for days on end), sleep is impossible. And sleep deprivation is a kind of torture because you develop extreme headaches from it.

There is legally permitted torture in the U.S. Yes, real criminals need to serve their time, but “thought-crime” people should not even be touched by police, let alone put in inhumane jail conditions. They should only be warned that their behavior is considered inappropriate by some others and maybe frisked, if police think they are crazy and have guns on them. Even handcuffs can be torture.

On two sayings

“Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” –Saint Francis de Sales

From Wiki: “Saint Francis de Sales (French: Saint François de Sales) (August 21, 1567– December 28, 1622) was Bishop of Geneva and is a Roman Catholic saint. He worked to convert Protestants back to Catholicism, and was an accomplished preacher.” One of the hardest things for many people in life is achieving calm, especially when environments are hostile or just difficult. I think different people gain calm in different ways, and we have to respect each other as long as we are not breaking the law.

“Repartee, n., Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of North American Indian.” — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Not sure what Bierce meant with the reference to Native Americans other than they were rightly bitter in his time about how U.S. authorities treated them. But the earlier part of the comical definition is true. I have been accused of being passive aggressive, even though I am not physically violent at all as an adult. But my words can be feisty when it seems like the environment is going crazy. “Sticks and stones…”

On a work in progress

Just got the draft manuscript and book cover back from my publisher for the book I plan to release this summer.

The front cover provisionally has a work of surrealist art that is true to the content of the book. It is a kind of fantastic painting of a woman’s face. From Wikipedia: “Surrealism was a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dada. The movement is best known for its visual artworks and writings and the juxtaposition of distant realities to activate the unconscious mind through the imagery. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes…”

As a grad student, I read that the problem with surrealism is that it can be amoral or immoral because it allows your subconscious almost free reign (see Salvador Dalí). But I think the piece of art on the cover is appropriate in a way because the planned book contains a few risqué jokes and poems and some sensitive topics in brief essays.

“Pun-theist” by yours truly

“Sir, it is my conclusion that you are a pun-theist or at least very pun-religious.”

“I do sometimes pun-der: what’s the pun-t of it all?”

“So you want to make some pun-se out of your life?”

“Yes, that would be pun-derful.”