dennis scharnberg

“I want to pursue honesty,” declared Colin.  “I really do.  Not yet, though.”

Priscilla Onkers,  All About Edward.

Under what circumstances might “telling the truth” be regarded as a revolutionary act?

Desmond Urquhart, The Unsocial Sciences.

“Did you know that…?”  Of course, the rhetorical realm established by this expression is essentially a form of oppression.

Valery Datsuk,  Yielding in Plastic Strain.

Once we open the can [the unconscious], the contents go everywhere.  This cannot be confined to the “patient.”

Janora Ketch,  The Retailing of Dream.

The guitar strumming of Maybelle Carter—if there ever was a something (as opposed to a nothing), there it is.

Cedric Plumm,  Calpurnia’s Dream and Other Essays.

More things to do:

—Read a list of names aloud (very slowly).

—Roast wieners over a wood fire and eat them with bare fingers.

—Switch on four radios, each tuned to a different station.  Listen for one hour.

—Gulp three ounces of whiskey, then sit back and watch Charlie Chan in Cairo.

—Select nine items and paint them black.

Tessa Fielding and Constance Gogarty,  A Book of Lists.

[Peter Ashton Boole] led a rich and somewhat baffling life.  In his teens, he sailed the world as an able bodied seaman.  He ran a soap factory in India, founded and managed several small newspapers, climbed mountains in Tibet, published an influential pamphlet on color theory, fathered five children, had several of his paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy, and knew (and cavorted with) many of the luminaries of the turn of the century.  Perhaps if he had published more extensively he would be better remembered today.

Palmer Dove,  The Edwardian Moment.

And who are these followers of Theosophy?  They are, each of them, people who expressed a weariness with regard to the existing culture (science, technology, material well-being, traditional institutions).  And each in his own way found in “the esoteric” an exciting escape from that world.  There is something tedious here—something inherently ridiculous.  But in the case of Blavatsky (or even that of Crowley), the ridiculous operates in such a theatrical way and with such persistence that it can be fascinating.

Lionel Peale,  The Veil of Isis.

he Smothers Brothers

A Sandal in Bohemia

Andrew Tertullian,  Pandora’s Ponderous Puns.

Q: Who will save us from injustice?

A: Lawyers.

Quincy R. Booth,  Questions and Answers.