“Apostrobe” by yours truly

“You’re a creep!” “Who’s in too deep and needs some sleep.” “You do.” “But don’t make a peep. I’m gentle as sheep. Have promises to keep, like drinking this beer. Oh please, come near. Don’t be queer. Let’s be clear. My reputation won’t smear. We have nothing to fear. Our problems are mere…So don’t disappear. Here, here. There, there. Where, where?”

“On Onan(im)ism” by yours truly

“To the loo pal. While you’re there, I’ll just toot my own horn.” “Masturbation is a sin!” “It is? You can’t win. Good thing you can still masturbate. Even if everyone hates you and berates you and no one dates you. But not if the world  also castrates you.” “That is wrong. There’s a dating website for eunuchs. I hear it’s a lot of yucks but lacking in f—s. Be careful or it will take all your bucks.”

“Female Psychology” by yours truly

“Is it true women get pap smears because they hate their fathers?” “No, that’s a scurrilous rumor… on second thought, it may be true, that son of a b—!” “So perhaps you really hate your paternal grandmother.”

In other news…

What song is Willie Nelson singing in the afterlife? “To be old again /
I just can’t wait to be old again”

Overheard:

“You’re an old man!” “I bet you say that to all the boys.”

Scurrilous rumors:

“M—‘s slept with a lot of men. I have only with a few.” “Who knew?” “Now you do.” “Good for you, McGoo. Did it make you go blind or lose your mind?” “No. What you look for is what you find.” “Well, life is kind.”

On being unpopular:

What does a pariah say at a party? “Kaput’er there pal… What? No takers?”

Update:

If Dr. Seuss had been raised Catholic…

Oh, the Places You’ll Go, Including HELL! If You Don’t Stop that Filthy Habit. Don’t Worry Though; Habits Are Machine Washable (the Nuns Won’t Tell You That).

“Singapore Swing” by yours truly

Why Western men have trouble picking up local women in Singapore:

“Hello J—-, I’m a student of history. What are your thoughts on the position of missionaries in your country? I know it is controversial. What lions do in the privacy of their bedrooms is their business, if no one is hurt. We live in a post-colonial world, and the past is the past. You may be wishing I had taken a pass.”

“J—-, have you ever read the short story ‘Araby’? What do you think of what the boy does? What if I were the boy and you were the girl? What would you think of that? Would you approve of it? Would you, maybe, even enjoy it?”

“On Ireland” by yours truly

“Wow, Kathy Ireland is hot. I’d like to visit her country. There must be a lot of tourism there. I’d be glad to pay the costs of travel and accommodation. I could tell her about the Plough and the Star, with her as the star.”

“Three of a Kind,” by yours truly

“That is relatable.” “I don’t like the word relatable.” “Well, its use is debatable.” “Relatable meet debatable. Maybe you are datable and even inflatable, then mate-able.”

“Are you in your right mind?” “No, my wrong one. I have a mind for every day of the week. Examine my wardrobe and decide which suits you best, if any.”

You’re being monitored constantly and your behavior is repugnant, but whatever you do, don’t be paranoid.

“Kids Say the Darndest Things” by yours truly

“I plan on flying to Bangkok.” “Heard that joke before and would prefer to go to Bangpusy anyway.” “There is no such place, and that would make you a woman.” “No, that would make me a man. Thank you, Thailand. Childhood was hell.” “‘Hell is for Children'” “And I’m leaving. So long, hell. Until next time.” “Well, you’re wise beyond your years.” “But sadly not wise between my ears and still too young to drink beers. Here’s to youth. If only this were vermouth.” “What you’re saying is uncouth. You’ll need a wife named Ruth.” “Ah, marriage: the fountain of…” “What you say is sooth.” “I may be loosing a baby tooth.” “That bites. Put it under your pillow during nights.” “Party’s over. Turn out the lights.” “You’ve stumbled into the truth.”

“What bothers people most is your sanctimony.” “Last night I gave your Mom my sancti-money and she was sancti-moany for hours. If I were you, I’d be bothered too.” “Here have an h’orderves. The knuckle sandwich is tempting.” “That would be pre-empting. But thanks for the chat. I don’t feel sanctimonious anymore.” “You’re not welcome. The bill’s in the mail.” “Hmm, I’ll need to check.” “Enough of this dreck!” “Don’t worry. It’s not a plank or even a splinter; it’s a speck. And please don’t always want the last word.” “W—-”

Here’s a joke: Guess what? You’ve got the clap. Bravo! Outstanding performance (I hear sometimes it was standing too).

“Lucky Seven,” by yours truly

1. Poetic pickup line: Who’s the lucky guy? Would you give me a try?.
2. When people say, “your life is over,” you can reply, “no sir, my wife is Rover, a real dog.”
3. When people say, “I oughta KILL you!,” you can reply, “Then I’d have to BILL you, and it would be expensive.”
4. “They’re stone-cold killers like you.” “No, that rock was d— hot. Like your Mom.” “Careful, I could kill you too.” “But then you’d have to tell me.”
5. “You’ve had your say. Now scoot-along.” “Don’t you mean ‘hop-along’? Scooters are too expensive. Next you’ll be letting me eat cake.”
6. What do Albert Elujah’s friends call him? Al Elujah.
7. American schizophrenics going through remission should change their currency to pesos, euros, or relevant currency before sending it to their home countries.

On Russia, the Life magazine I’m reading has an entry for “The Bloody Kremlin” that notes Vladimir Lenin was almost killed in a shooting in 1918 after speaking at the Hammer and Sickle factory. Lenin never fully recovered and had a series of strokes that killed him in 1924. “Though his body is now creepily entombed in Red Square in front of the Kremlin Wall,” surrounded by victims of his revolution, his ghost is thought to prowl the site.

The magazine entry notes Ivan the Terrible also died of a stroke and that his ghost can still be seen. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin also died of a stroke as he drifted into paranoia in old age, and his ghost is also reputed to be there. Whether the ghosts are “real” doesn’t matter, the entry says, quoting Anton Chekhov that “man is what he believes.”

I was in college when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. One of the books at the time about the phenomenon was called “The God that Failed.” I have said before in this blog series that communists are often well-intentioned but not practical. That is also my assessment of the Democratic party’s electoral campaign with the Biden/Harris ticket. They aren’t literally communist, but they have some similar utopian ideas.

Read another entry in my LIFE magazine, this one about Mexico. Near Mexico City is Xochimilico, an isolated island within a lake. “Though it might seem like any other island at first, as you move closer you’ll start to see the dolls. Yes, dolls,” the magazine says.

A few thoughts. I think Western culture has a lot of doll motifs in horror. Chucky from the comedy/horror movies, Annabelle from those movies, the male mannequin in the “Boy” movies, and “Dead Silence.” As a teenager, I made a bad joke about a woman I liked that she was a “sex doll,” and it was one of the reasons the relationship failed.  Graham Greene is one of my favorite writers. As I recall his ex-wife became obsessed with dolls and small houses after he left her.

The magazine entry mentions that a caretaker of the Mexico City island found a drowned girl in a nearby canal and was “haunted by the girl’s restless spirit.” The idea of Ophelia from Hamlet drowning herself and Virginia Woolf drowning herself comes to mind. Apparently visitors to the island bring dolls with them to add to its collection, “including a wild-haired Barbie.”

In related news, the following is from the Poetry Foundation web site:

I suppose numeroligists would have a field day with today’s date. Two entries on hauntings in our northern neighbor Canada. I asked a neighbor in DC I tried to date if she would like to live in any other country, and she said Canada.

Montreal has a haunted hospital called The Old Royal Victoria, which the Life magazine  says is “looming over the city.” It has been there more than 122 years. I have heard that asylums are so carefully protected because they are trying to keep people out, not to keep them in.

Farther west, Canada has the Banff Springs hotel with “sweeping views of the Bow Valley.” I visited my older brother in the Colorado Rockies in the late 1980s with a casual school buddy. I don’t know. Mountains are very beautiful, but skiing on some of the steeper slopes scared the c— out of me. And I don’t even really like driving on hilly roads in the Appalachians.

Any pre-Halloween blog series needs a reference to E.A. Poe.

In one of the most famous benders in literary history, Poe left Richmond, Va., for Baltimore, Md., on Sept. 27, 1849, by train. He was found about a week later incoherent and drunk in a Baltimore tavern. By Oct. 7 of that year he was hospitalized and muttered the last words, “Lord help my poor soul,” then died, according to Life. Now a museum, E.A. Poe House in Baltimore is where the writer lived in the 1830s and reputedly haunted by his “poor soul” or those of others. One of my early teachers said the problem with the mentally ill was that they partied too much.

On New Orleans from the same Life magazine: it is noted apartment rentals in the city advertise as “haunted” or “not haunted.” It claims the port city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain is “the most unearthly  urban enclave in the United States.” The entry speculates it has something to do with “its multicultural mix of spiritual traditions: Native American, French, Spanish, Creole, Cajun, and–not least–voodoo, an amalgam of African religions and Catholicism.”

Cemeteries in N.O. are generally built above ground, “leaving restless spirits to roam the steamy streets.”

Beginnings and endings. This Side of Paradise begins with the sentence, “Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait , except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worthwhile.” It is the first sentence of the novel, and it might display an anti-maternal sentiment and possibly anti-woman tendency. In Irish literature, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett each had fraught relations with their mothers. Beckett remarked something like, “the best mother has no children,” and blamed his mother for giving birth to him. I have a complex relationship with my own but love her for giving life.

The last lines of Paradise are: “‘I know myself ‘he cried, ‘but that is all.'” It might sound solipsistic and just plain wrong, but also true on a level. Ancient Greek philosophers recommended “gnothi seauton,” or “know thyself.” And it can be difficult to follow such a simple imperative.

This novel was actually more popular in its time than The Great Gatsby, which is now considered the better critical/literary success. The introduction to the Everyman version says Paradise is a “qualified success” and “remains a seriously underrated novel.” It is questionable whether fiction writers get better and more refined over time or just drift off into mediocrity as they get older. Fitzgerald barely made it into middle age, so it is hard to say.

“An ImPerfect 10; Film at 11” by yours truly

1. If and When sitting in a tree / K – I – S – S – I – N – G / First comes love; then comes marriage. / Then comes If in a baby carriage. / Or is it When? Take a WhIff and decide.
2. “You suck!” / “Yes, but I still like to f— / Guess I’m s— out of luck. / At least we have pluck. (Note: we should all feel lucky after each bowel movement; consider the alternative.)”
3. There’s something I’m forgetting. / It’s that my vocation isn’t babysitting.
4. Don’t say it if it’s merely witty, / Only if it also makes life pretty.
5. Define Florida: Hellter Swelter (to me, but not my dear parents).
6. “Child molesters can still have healthy sex lives.” “Yes, if they can have sex with children without breaking the law, getting castrated, or being killed.” (Disclaimer: This may not go over so well with some audiences. Not advocating pedophilia. Please take it in context.)
7. She said, “I want a husband who is just like my Dad.” He said, “Why? Is Dad dead? I hear dead men don’t wear plaid, and I do. So good-bye.”
8. It’s disputable / That we’re inscrutable. / We live in a house ill-reputable, / But if the noise gets too loud, it’s mutable.
9. A gay manifesto: doctors used to consider homosexuality a mental illness because it was good for their business.
10. If Thomas Mann’s wife Katia were mad at him in English: “If you say so Mr. Man…if that is your real name!”
11. You don’t need to go, but Toodle-Oo anyway. Take a left to the loo.