WORK
“We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired—as furniture sanders—we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone’s job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had a rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.”
—Miranda July
—from “Something That Needs Nothing”
—found in No One Belongs Here More Than You
WORD(S)
paraprosdokian /pair-ə-prohs-DOH-kee-ən/ noun. A figure of speech featuring a surprise turn or ending. A common rhetorical device in comedy exemplified by the one-liners of Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg and Woody Allen. From Ancient Greek pará (against) + prosdokía (expectation). Some examples of paraprodoskians:
“I haven’t slept for ten days…because that would be too long.” (Mitch Hedberg)
“If all the girls at Vassar were laid end-to-end…I wouldn’t be surprised.” (Dorothy Parker)
“There but for the grace of God—goes God.” (Winston Churchill)
“It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” (Woody Allen)
“If I could just say a few words…I’d be a better public speaker.” (Homer Simpson)
“The last thing I want to do is hurt you—but it’s still on the list.” (Steven Wright)
WEB
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Did you know Benjamin Franklin proposed a reformed alphabet for English? A brief paper by Nicola Twilley provides a lot of great information on Franklin’s creation, among others. And the optimistic, “has the time finally come?” conclusion—thanks to the Palm Pilot and digital fonts—is priceless.
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American Science & Surplus (I like the ampersand in the name; I'd like it even better in their company acronym) sells all kinds of—well—“incredible” stuff you don’t know you need. Yet.
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Today in 1915 Charles Hamilton Sorley—despite his youth one of the most important of the World War I poets—is shot and killed by a German sniper in Loos, France. Most of Sorley’s poems were recovered from his kit, though his body never was. The poems, such as ► “When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead” (read by Tom O'Bedlam) and “Such, Such is Death” speak for themselves. Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can also read Sorley’s letters (includes a useful biography).
WATCH/WITNESS
El Caminito Del Ray: The World’s Most Dangerous Walkway has re-opened (click through for more photos and nausea-inducing video). No thanks.
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Reader D. is spot-on, particularly in the last two sentences: “That’s an interesting piece about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I wonder, too, about what happens to Shakespeare’s language when they do that. Shakespeare’s plots were never much (copies of other people’s plays): it was the language and the wordplay that made them standout. I think of operas–I once realized while telling someone the plot of Tosca that it sounded silly. It was hard to convey why I liked it so much. It was the music, not the plot that carried the meaning and emotion. Shakespeare’s language is his music. Without it, the plays seem rather silly and overdramatic (maybe like our own lives at times?). Its his language that makes them transcend the plot into the spiritual, reminding us that it is the soul that really matters. I just don’t know about tinkering with his music.”
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My thanks to all in The Clamor who brought the typo in the very first line of the last issue to my attention. It’s not that they don’t happen occasionally, but in the very first line? [le sigh]
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