Brightness Falls from the Hair

Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkes will devour;
Brightness falls from the air,

Thomas Nashe

People who know something (i.e., not me) seem to feel now that the famous line was a misprint, that the title above was probably what Nashe had in mind.

From Walker Percy's Message in the Bottle again (except for the picture). See also a nice article posted under the justifiably popular title "Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy" on God of the Machine.

What a shame.

UPDATE!
WARNING! If you click on the photograph, you will get a much clearer view. Don't do it.

The Critics Weigh In

More from Walker Percy:

Lord Kames had criticized the metaphor "steep'd" in Othello's speech

Had it pleas'd heaven
To try me with affliction, had he rain'd
All kinds of sores, and shames, on my bare head,
Steep'd me in poverty to the very lips

by saying that "the resemblance is too faint to be agreeable -- Poverty here must be conceived to be a fluid which it resembles not in any manner." Richards goes further: "It is not a case of lack of resemblances but too much diversity, too much sheer oppositeness. For Poverty, the Tenor, is a state of deprivation, of dessication; but the vehicle -- the sea or vat in which Othello is to be steep'd -- gives an instance of superfluity ..."

From Message in the Bottle

Mission to the Stars!

"For a while, earth TV could be watched, for about a month into the mission -- but as the ramjet accelerated, the TV action slowed in a Doppler effect, so that in old reruns of M*A*S*H, a favorite, Hawkeye and the nurses spoke in ever lower and more sepulchral tones and moved like dream figures walking in glue."

Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Percy, 1983.

The Fruit of the Carraway Tree

The Bible has much to say about bread, yet some in our society seem not to hear. Today's lesson: True rye bread is not some kind of foul black stuff with no seeds. That's pumpernickel or something; whatever you choose to call it, it is an abomination in his sight.

Listen to what scripture has to say. Leviticus 11:29-31. "I say to you, take the grains of wheat and rye, add the fruit of the carraway tree which is sacred, and bake this on your hearths. For rye without carraway is unclean to you and is an abomination."

Some bakers seem to believe that the LORD said "Make thou stunted tiny dry black square unswallowable loaves and never mind about the seeds." I ask them to beware. I ask them to heed the words of the LORD. I say to you O bakers, prepare a Christian (by which I mean Jewish) rye bread, with seeds ... or prepare yourself for everlasting agony in the Lake of Fire.

Conspiracy Brainwashing our Children

"This hilarious game brings out the funny in everyone."

(Want to bet? Check out the chilling background material here and here).

New! Spam!

The spammers have finally found my blog! I've arrived!

"Snerge" Etymology

Jack Vance used the word "snerge" (v., means "steal") in his novel Wyst. I think it might be a contraction and verbification of "synergy." (Used in the business world, "synergy" means "2+2=5.")

UPDATE!
AND, and, "snergery" = "theft," which, "snergery" sounds even more like "synergy." QED.

Bonus!

Tired of watching "Book TV" on CSPAN? Here's something more interesting.