the ragbag

pocky men’s because you know, as far as pocky goes, i...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:26:00 -0500

pocky men’s

because you know, as far as pocky goes, i prefer the variety that is specially formulated for my penisness.

is this a marketing thing (like luna bars and the dictionary of the khazars) or just another case of engrish?

baconian method it’s every philosopher’s favourite...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:09:24 -0500

baconian method

it’s every philosopher’s favourite parlour game and it’s sweeping the nation: six degrees of francis bacon!

from action philosophers #3 by fred van lente and ryan dunlavey (2007).

more here. also not to miss is this rendition of joseph campbell’s monomyth.

the end of an era (the 1300’s) friends, i knew this day...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:20:36 -0500

the end of an era (the 1300’s)

friends, i knew this day would eventually come and though i have been preparing for it mentally these last 5 weeks, nothing could brace me for the anguish i felt upon awakening this morning knowing that the archaic and provincial f-words series would soon meet its bitter end. i briefly considered word-blogging archaic e-words, but that seemed kinda arbitrary (plus: words that begin with e are lame).

[part the final: FOX-IN-THE-HOLE to FYLLOK]

FOX-IN-THE-HOLE. A type of game where boys hopped on one leg and beat one another with or pieces of leather tied at the end of strings
FOXY. Said of beer which has not fermented properly
FRAME-PERSON. A visitor whom it is thought requisite to receive ceremoniously
FRAM-WARD. In an opposite direction
FRANCH. To scrunch with the teeth
FRAZE. Half a quarter of a sheet of paper
FREAMING. Said of the noise a boar makes in rutting time
FREE-MARTIN. If a cow has twin calves of different sexes, the female is termed a free martin, and is said never to breed
FRENCHMAN. Any man of any country that cannot speak English
FRESCADES. Cool refreshments
FRIMICATE. To affect delicacy; to give one’s self airs about trifles
FRIPPERY. An old clothes shop
FRODMORTELL. A free pardon for murder or manslaughter
FROSLING. Any thing as a plant or animal nipped or injured by frost
FRUITESTERE. A female seller of fruit
FUCKWIND. A species of hawk
FUDDLE. To intoxicate fish
FUDGEL. An awkward child
FUGLEMAN. A person who directs the cheering of a crowd or mob
FULLAMS. False dice. There are high fullams and low fullams to denote loaded on the high or low number
FULLOCK. To jerk the hand unlawfully
FURCHURE. The place where the thighs part
FYLLOK. A wanton girl

now, if you will allow me a moment to vent my despair, i will excuse myself to a public place and fullock like a chronic masturbator on a benzedrine bender.

words wholly unrelated

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:44:00 -0500

cult & occult

the former is from cultus (worship). the latter is from occulere (to conceal). both are from latin and have dark, religious connotations.

for those curious, the name of the roguish american football squadron from indianapolis (as well as lando calrissian’s malt beverage of choice) comes from an old english word of the same spelling, pronunciation, and meaning and is therefore wholly unrelated to either cult or occult.

the adventures of papa and bill continued i feel that perhaps my...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:43:30 -0500

the adventures of papa and bill continued

i feel that perhaps my post from yesterday has lead to the belief that i am of the mindset that papa hemingway and bill faulkner were twins separated at birth. indeed, i do think this and if the rigorous application of statistics to the sublime can’t prove it, our only recourse is exhumation. let us grab some shovels together and get ourselves to work!

corrigenda

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:55:43 -0500

“An article… Saturday incorrectly stated the number of positions possible for the Rubik’s Cube. It is 43,252,003,274,489,856,000.”

the new york times
november 2, 1982

the adventures of papa and bill there are, as far as i am aware,...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:32:00 -0500

the adventures of papa and bill

there are, as far as i am aware, two famous literary disputes about length involving ernest hemingway. the first was with his buddy, f. scott fitzgerald over the length of his wiener. the second was a dispute with his adversary, william faulkner over the length of the words they chose.

faulkner fired the first shot saying, “hemingway has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” which earned the following riposte from hemingway, “poor faulkner. does he really think big emotions come from big words? i know all the ten-dollar words as he does, but i prefer the older, simpler ones.”

i decided to chart the longest words in each of their major works and see if i could draw a non-scientific conclusion. the longest of all words was faulkner’s cinderstrewnpacked, which only appears in the dictionary of made up words that william faulkner made up.

additional data: the average word length in these three hemingway novels is 3.85 letters; faulkner’s average word length is 3.88 letters, which is statistically the same. 1.08% of hemingway’s words were 10 letters or more whereas 1.56% of faulkner’s were.

conclusion: hype. the top two 20th century american novelists were engaging in a literary pillow fight so they could ride the gravy train of book sales for as long as the public would allow.

life ain't easy for a boy named...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:38:00 -0500

from time to time, my old pal—who is a resident in an undisclosable hospital in the great state of california—sends word of his latest escapades and i excerpt them here in lieu of actually writing anecdotes of my own.

Yesterday, I assisted in the delivery of a baby boy to a super hippie couple who probably haven’t seen the business end of a bic razor since they hit puberty.

I’m used to a fair amount of ridiculous hippie baby names (Sage, Sky, Rainbow, Chakra, etc.) but what they came up with was so far-fetched that if I hadn’t signed all the papers I would have thought it a farce.

“We really want to name this baby after the raw essence of who he is,” said the father.

Said the mother, “We are going to call him Mammal.”

emigre has finally released a mr eaves typeface and thus a new...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:15:00 -0500

emigre has finally released a mr eaves typeface and thus a new character is introduced in the exciting adventures of john baskerville & mrs eaves series.

also, this has allowed me to finally make use of the new sex position that i discovered a year ago.

previously.

audio books out of context #2 this is the second post in the...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:35:00 -0500

audio books out of context #2

this is the second post in the audio books out of context series. posts in this series premier exclusively on the ragbag every ¾(π²√5)² hours. the next post is scheduled for wide release on november 29th, 2009 at 4:53 (eastern standard time). by that time, the original of laura will have dropped online and in bookstores. should you have attempted to read it, please keep in mind that nabokov’s ghost will most likely attempt to eat your soul.

the previous post in the series was excerpted (rather rudely) from pillars of the earth by ken follet (1989). the proprietress of the alphalemon blog was the first to correctly identify this—for that, i bestow upon her my most sincere congratulations.

this morning: i lost two novels

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:21:00 -0500

from the journal of edmond de goncourt (1850?)

I have had happily confirmed the confidences of Gavarni on the economical manner in which Balzac dispensed his sperm. Lovey-dovey and amorous play, up to ejaculation, would be all right, but only up to ejaculation. Sperm to him meant emission of purest cerebral substance, and therefore a filtering, a loss through the member, of a potential act of artistic creation. “I don’t know what occasion, what unfortunate circumstance caused him to ignore his pet theory, but he arrived at Latouche’s once, exclaiming ‘This morning I lost a novel.’

indeed, a better euphemism does not yet exist.

addendum: i remember reading something similar about the equally kooky, george “nard dog” shaw—but i am in too much of a post-coital novel-losing stupor and thus am not able to find the reference.

the penultimate edition

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:07:00 -0500

you know how when you are grinding down forks and your house becomes dirty with all that dust? well, there is a word for that.

also: you know how when you (or your nurse) are rolling around in bed having a grand old time and then you (or your nurse) realise that you accidentally squished some baby (it happens to the best of us)? well, there is a word for that as well.

[part the fourth: FLUTTERGRUB to FOURINGS]

FLUTTERGRUB. A field labourer
FLYABOSTIC. Outrageously showy as in dress
FNASTE. To breathe hard
FOAP. To comb back
FOLE-LARGE. Foolishly liberal
FOMBLITUDE. A weak comparison
FOOT-ALE. A fine of beer paid by a workman on entering a new place
FOREGANGER. One who goes before
FORK-DUST. The dust made in grinding forks
FORKELYD. Wrinkled with age
FORREL. The cover of a book
FOR-LY. To overlay and kill a child as a nurse or mother sometimes does accidentally
FOR-SLEUTHE. To lose through sloth; to be spoilt from lying idle
FOR-SNEYE. To do evil slyly
FOR-SONGEN. Tired with singing
FOR-SWAT. Covered with sweat
FOR-SWONK. Tired with labour
FOR-TEACH. To unteach
FOR-ȜODE. Lost, forgot, or omitted
FORTH-RIGHT. A straight or direct path
FOURINGS. An afternoon meal taken at 4 o’clock

whiskey tango foxtrot for kicks: the next time that you are...

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:12:00 -0500

whiskey tango foxtrot

for kicks: the next time that you are making reservations over the phone with a maître d’, why not use the unhelpful phonetic alphabet to spell your name? as my former accordion instructor points out, “efficiency is the enemy of serendipity.”

r.i.a.a. affect booger naughty our r.i.a.a. over and out.

gratuitous portrait of my grandparents, bermuda 1953 i could...

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:47:00 -0500

gratuitous portrait of my grandparents, bermuda 1953

i could post old pictures of my old relatives 24/7/52.177457. but then, the ragbag would be reduced to little more than a ganan scrapbook. therefore, i resolved long ago to abstain from this activity the way that teenagers abstain from sexual contact.

but unlike the modern chaste teenager, i knew that i would eventually succumb to my vice. in the end, all it took was an email attachment from a relation of mine who just purchased a film scanner. my only hope is that there is some universal appeal to be found in this personal portrait of my grandfolks—be it the period eyewear, the brilliant kodachrome colouring, their enigmatic expressions, the 1950s bermudaness, my grandfather’s latin g-man vibe, or my realisation that my parent’s parents were probably hipper than i will ever be—that will allow you to allow me this momentary transgression.

thank you. i shall post a joke about flatulence forthwith.

words wholly unrelated

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:33:00 -0500

phase & faze

again, both words are pronounced the same and have overlapping meanings* (ie. “to stun”). the former is associated with stunning through the star trek weapon capable of producing laser beams of various phase. it draws this sense from the latin word phasis which describes the different aspects of the moon. the latter means “to disturb”. it comes from fésian, an old english word with the same meaning.

*this peculiarity is probably not as coincidental as it may at first seem. if certain words have the same pronunciation, their meanings are probably more likely to drift towards one another over time on account of confusion and wordplay.

the osbick bird aha! i knew that the drawing of the caladrius...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:50:00 -0500

the osbick bird

aha! i knew that the drawing of the caladrius looked familiar. the above image is taken from 2 pages of edward gorey’s the osbick bird (1972). because the osbick bird was clearly a fictional animal invented by gorey, it is not eligible for admission to the bestiary—though petitions in favor of its admission will not automatically be shredded without first giving them a cursory readthrough.

for bestiary: a caladrius (a bird that can predict if a sick...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:44:00 -0500

for bestiary: a caladrius (a bird that can predict if a sick person is about to die)

according to legend, if the caladrius looks into the face of a sick man, he will make a full recovery. if the caladrius looks away, he will die soon thereafter (the caladrius is like punxsutawney phil in this regard but with higher stakes).

the caladrius also possesses the ability to absorb the sickness and cast it into the sun (using the same technique that superman does with nuclear warheads in superman iv: the quest for peace).

overheard at the upper crust (a pizza franchise)

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:06:00 -0500

“…i’d rather have sex with a whac-a-mole machine.”

is this a nascent genre?

bonus: though a fellah said it, the phrase could work just as well for the dames.

defrocking your books it took me until pretty late in life to...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:14:00 -0500

defrocking your books

it took me until pretty late in life to realise that book covers, by and large, are tacky and more or less useless. using them to keep dust from your books is akin to using neon plastic to preserve your furniture.

there are surprises in store for the adventurous defrocker of a hardback book…gold and silver foil stamping! linen! typography! earthtones! what’s more: since the binding of books has been more or less standardised over the last 3.2 million years, the dan brown bestseller that you bought yesterday will harmonise with your grandmother’s edition of fanny hill when they are both naked together on your bookshelf.

added bonus: you can upcycle your discarded covers into fashionable outerwear!

more unsolicited advice on how to arrange your bookshelf can be found here.

more f-words from yesteryear

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:28:00 -0500

[part the third: FLAP-DRAGON to FLURT]

this week’s edition contains a mésalliance of both handy definitions (“a side of bacon”, “to laugh sarcastically”), balderdash™-style descriptions (“the person who puts the feather on an arrow”, “having a mouth like a flounder”), and suessian whimsy (flee flowns, flibberjibber, and flothery). enjoy:

FLAP-DRAGON. A small substance such as a plum or candle end set afloat in a cup of spirits and when set on fire, snatched by the mouth and swallowed. This was a common amusement in former times but is now nearly obsolete
FLAWPS. An awkward, noisy, untidy, and slovenly person
FLAZE. A smoky flame
FLEACHES. Portions into which timber is cut by the saw
FLEAMY. Clotted with blood
FLEE FLOWNS. The eggs of flies in meat
FLECK. a side of bacon
FLETCHER. An arrow maker. Properly the person who put on the feather
FLIBBERGIBBER. A lying knave
FLIGHT-SHOT. The distance a flight arrow would go, about a fifth part of a mile
FLIPPERING. Crying, weeping
FLIT. To move, especially at night to cheat the landlord
FLIZZEN. To laugh sarcastically
FLIZZOMS. Flying particles
FLOKE MOWTHEDE. Having a mouth like a flounder
FLOOD MARK. The mark which the sea at the highest tide makes on the shore
FLOP. the scrotum
FLOTHERY. Slovenly but attempting to be fine and showy
FLUMP. a heavy fall
FLURCH. A great quantity
FLURT. To snap the fingers derisively. Hence any satirical action or speech