Nice But Nubbly

In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate with his mouth—so! Till at last there was only one small fish left in all the sea, and he was the small 'Stute Fish, and he swam a little behind the Whale's right ear, so as to be out of harm's way. Then the Whale stood up on his tail and said, “I'm hungry.” And the small 'Stute Fish said in a small 'stute voice, “Noble and generous Cetacean, have you ever tasted Man?”

“No,” said the Whale. “What is it like?”

“Nice,” said the small 'Stute Fish. “Nice but nubbly.”

-Rudyard Kipling, “How the Whale Got His Throat,” Just So Stories

Jesus Saves

We've explored the patchwork of Americana
The curios and the burger plates
We got a blessing from the Queen of the Highway,
Paid attention to a sign that said "Jesus Saves"

-Terry Scott Taylor, "The Glory Road"

Religious Billboards

Maybe it's not "a belief in the power of brevity" prompting these signs. Maybe it's a panicky recognition that sometimes brevity is all you get: Tell us the meaning of life in no more than two words. If brevity is the soul of wit, perhaps desperation is the soul of brevity.

The people who write apocalyptic or consoling or hortatory messages on their houses and barns, or nail them to their fence posts, might well tell you stories, long stories if they had any opportunity at all to do so. They would weave for you tales of God's wrath or love, and of how their lives were transformed by the very knowledge that they now are pleased to share with you.

But they never get that chance. So they shout at us and draw large startling figures for us as we speed by. The writers stay put, or at least their signs do, while we zoom through town, nearly unrecognizable blurs who may not have sense enough to ask the only question that really matters: What must I do to be saved?

-Alan Jacobs, "Reading the Signs," First Things 176 (Oct. 2007), 25-28.

To the Hard of Hearing You Shout

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large startling figures.

-Flannery O'Connor, "The Fiction Writer & His Country," Mystery and Manners, 33-34.

St. Supercilia

St. Supercilia, born in Paris about the year 1400, was a maiden of remarkable erudition, who steadfastly refused to marry anyone who could not defeat her in open disputation. When the best scholars of all the universities in Europe had tried and failed, her unworthy father brutally commanded her to accept the hand of a man who, though virtuous, sensible, and of a good estate, knew only six languages and was weak in mathematics. At this, the outraged saint raised her eyebrows so high that they lifted her off her feet and out through a top-story window, whence she was last seen floating away in a northerly direction.

St. Supercilia is the patron of pedants. Her feast, Eyebrow Sunday, falls in Cacophony, between Lowbrow Sunday and Derogation Day.

-Dorothy Sayers, "Selections from The Pantheon Papers," The Whimsical Christian, 5-6.

Long on Diagnosis, Short on Cure

Now they were awful good at triage, that's for sure
But they were long on diagnosis and short on cure

-Don Chaffer

Man's Best Friend

Every boy should have a chicken.

-Daniel Pinkwater, The Hoboken Chicken Emergency

Saying Grace

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, those spiritual repasts—a grace before Milton—a grace before Shakespeare—a devotional exercise—proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen?

-Charles Lamb, "Grace Before Meat," Essays of Elia and Last Essays

Non Sequitur

“I understand that you are planning to enter the ministry. Is this your own idea, or have you been poorly advised?”

- Frederick Buechner (quoting a hostess), The Alphabet of Grace

The Voice in the Dark Room

“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice.
And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.
“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.”
Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.
“I really have no experience,” he began.
“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of Armageddon.”
“But I am really unfit--”
“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown.
“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don't know of any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.”
“I do,” said the other--“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good-day.”

-G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

If I Stand

If I stand let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can't, let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You
And if I sing let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
And if I weep let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home

-Rich Mullins

Marginalia

I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

-Billy Collins, from the poem "Marginalia"

Inscriptions On Flyleaves

I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages some one long ago has called my attention to.

-Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

Not Enough

"'Jim Morrison's Grave' asks the age-old question: Does artistry justify being a weasel?...Morrison left the world some intriguing music. As far as I'm concerned, that's not enough." -Steve Taylor

Vandalism of Shalom

...Shalom is God's design for creation and redemption; sin is blamable human vandalism of these great realities and therefore an affront to their architect and builder.

-Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It's Supposed to Be

Confession

I once bought a magic marker
The kind with permanent ink
I wrote down all my bad thoughts
I got ‘em all I think
In every bathroom stall
On every vacant wall
Highly classified information
Yeah I exposed it all

-Bill Mallonee, "Tokyo Rose"

Eeyore Finds the Wolery

So, in a little while, they came to the house which Eeyore had found, and for some minutes before they came to it, Piglet was nudging Pooh, and Pooh was nudging Piglet, and they were saying, “It is!” and “It can't be!” and “It is, really!” to each other.
And when they got there, it really was.
“There!” said Eeyore proudly, stopping them outside Piglet's house. “And the name on it, and everything!”
“Oh!” cried Christopher Robin, wondering whether to laugh or what.
“Just the house for Owl. Don't you think so, little Piglet?”
And then Piglet did a Noble Thing, and he did it in a sort of dream, while he was thinking of all the wonderful words Pooh had hummed about him.
“Yes, it's just the house for Owl,” he said grandly. “And I hope he'll be very happy in it.” And then he gulped twice, because he had been very happy in it himself.
“What do you think, Christopher Robin?” asked Eeyore a little anxiously, feeling that something wasn't quite right.
Christopher Robin had a question to ask first, and he was wondering how to ask it.
“Well,” he said at last, “it's a very nice house, and if your own house is blown down, you must go somewhere else, mustn't you Piglet? What would you do, if your house was blown down?”
Before Piglet could think, Pooh answered for him.
“He'd come and live with me,” said Pooh, “wouldn't you, Piglet?”
Piglet squeezed his paw.
“Thank you, Pooh,” he said, “I should love to.”

-A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

Clichés

Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.

-Umberto Eco, quoted by Alan Jacobs in Books and Culture

The Merchant of Venice (Abridged)

Bassanio's a noble who needs lots of lolly
To woo his fair Portia, a very rich dolly.
He fingers his buddy, Antonio, for ducats,
So Tony then chats up a chap who has buckets:
Shylock the usurer, Merchant of Venice
(Who's locally reckoned a bit of a menace).
Shylock says: 'Okay, I'll lend you a stack
--For a pound of your flesh, if I don't get it back!'
Bassanio gets rich. A party game's played:
Bassanio wins Portia (his pal gets her maid).
Tony's fleet's wrecked; old Shylock now pounces,
And stakes out his claim for T.'s sixteen ounces.
Portia's the lawyer (she's dressed as a man);
Bassanio's fooled (believe that if you can!).
'No flesh without blood!' the Duke's Court decrees,
So Shylock is screwed by a neat legal wheeze.
They grab all his riches (but spare him his fate):
Half goes to Tony and half to the State.
'Convert!' says Antonio. 'And then all your bread
Will go to your daughter when you are dead!'
(Shylock's young daughter has married a goy,
Instead of the right kind of nice Jewish boy.)
Shylock's persuaded. All ends well, in short,
And T.'s battered boats come safely to port.

-Ron Rubin, from How to Become Ridiculously Well-Read in One Evening

Perforation

Perforation! Shout it out! The deliberate punctuated weakening of paper and cardboard so that it will tear along an intended path, leaving a row of fine-haired white pills or tuftlets on each new edge! It is a staggering conception, showing an age-transforming feel for the unique properties of pulped wood fiber. Yet do we have national holidays to celebrate its development? Are festschrift volumes published honoring the dead greats in the field? People watch the news every night like robots, thinking they are learning about their lives, never paying attention to the far more immediate developments that arrive unreported, on the zip-lock perforated top of the ice cream carton, in reply coupons bound in magazines and on the "Please Return This Portion" edging of bill stubs, on sheets of postage stamps and sheets of Publishers Clearing House magazine stamps, on paper towels, in rolls of plastic bags for produce at the supermarket, in strips of hanging file-folder labels. ...Why don't I have any clear idea even now, after years of schooling, how the perforation of the reply coupon or the roll of toilet paper is accomplished? My guesses are pitiable! Circular pizza cutters with diamond tipped radii? Zirconium templates, fatally sharp to the touch, stamping paper with their barbed braillery? Why isn't the pioneer of perforation chiseled into the facades of libraries, along with Locke, Franklin, and the standard bunch of French Encyclopedists? They would have loved him! They would have devoted a whole page of beautifully engraved illustration, with "fig. 1's" and "fig. 2's," to the art.

-Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine