John Groth cartoon

I have always had a particular admiration for the cartoonist - one who can create a world in a few lines, what a South African artist has called the highest poetry, and then, to add a line or two that perfects it.  More than this, I admire a person who can take a dark subject and see the funny side without scoffing at anyone's pain... In the New Yorker magazine, during World War Two, there were cartoonists who did that so effectively.  John Groth is one of them.

Extraordinary Tales

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1987), Argentinian Nobel laureate, and Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999) took great delight in making a collection of writings gathered from a bewildering variety of sources, called Extraordinary Tales (1967).  Here we see that dark sepia mystery again - the strange thoughts, feelings and encounters that humans hide in their ribs, writings that stick in the memory, imponderables.  

EUGENICS
A lady of quality fell so deliriously in love with a certain Mr Dodd, a Puritan preacher, that she begged her husband to allow her to use the marital bed for purposes of procreating an angel or a saint;  but, permission having been granted, the birth was normal.
                                  -  Drummond, Ben Ionsiana (c. 1618) 

NOSCE TE IPSUM
The Mahdi and his hordes were laying siege to Khartum, defended by General Gordon.  A few of the enemy passed through the lines and entered the city.  Gordon received them one by one and indicated a mirror where they might see themselves.  He thought it was only right that a man should know his own face before he died.
                                  -  Fergus Nicholson, Antologia de espejos

THE DREAM OF CHUANG TZU
Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly and, when he awoke, did not know if he was a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming he was a man.
                        -  From Chuang Tzu (1889), by Herbert Allen Giles

                                      

Source

Source of image unknown

Comrade no more

BEIJING:  China's bus drivers and ticket sellers have been urged to leave communism behind, with a new training manual instructing them to call travellers "sir" or "madam" instead of "comrade", state media reported yesterday.

    Older Beijingers, a few of whom still wear "Mao suits" that were once a virtual uniform for China's hundreds of millions of citizens, will be exempt from the new ruling.

    "Old comrade" is listed as the final possible choice of address for elderly travellers, but it comes after "elder master" and "elder sir".

    A newly released manual for Beijing bus staff suggests forms of address ranging from "student" to the plain "passenger" for younger travellers, for whom comrade has a different gloss, as a slang term for gay.  -  Reuters. 

    Can we hear George Orwell, author of "Animal Farm", saying from his cloud, I told you so?

Source

Cape Times 1/6/2010

L I F F

This book is an experience in the Absurd.

And an extract...

Source

See above

Airy Travel

This afternoon I called Air XYZ, a well known leading airline.  I didn't have much time and was hoping for quick service.  After I had dialed the number, I was relieved to hear the following ...

          In our past-paced world, we know that time does count.  Choosing Air XYZ 
          not only gives you more frequent schedules worldwide,  and a better connection
          to Europe and beyond.   We also give you a global network that is unsurpassed.
          Your call is important to us.  Please continue to hold...

           Then she said it again -

            In our fast-paced world, we know that time does count.  Choosing Air XYX... 

            She said this 42 times in a row.  In the background there is a kind of chanting pop    
             music.  Leading up to the 42nd time, the whole thing begins to feel like a shamanistic
             chant, except that her voice is so business-like.  Clear.  Articulate.  

             In our fast-paced world...  time... 

             I wonder again, with Ian Lee, whether words mean anything or whether they don't 
             mean anything today.   At times I feel I am clambering about in the syllable 
             structures of her words, inside them, through the vowels, over the consonants.

             In our fast-paced...
       
              Maybe the experience, in an obverse way, was teaching me to reject being seduced
              by The Next Thing and to Move into The Moment and Stay There... 

               In... 

              I'll call them again at a different time, but - just maybe - they've been infiltrated by         
              Zen practitioners who teach people by hypnotic mantras to resist The Next Thing. 


Will
22 October 2012
Paradox Box bluewill7.blogspot.com

           

Transition in South Africa

                                  

  We are not going soft on the ANC.  In fact, the ball is on the other foot.  -  National Party Director of Information Mr Con Botha, Weekly Mail, July 21 1989.

Security

In the town of Fish Hoek, on the Coast of False Bay, Western Cape, the local police station can have peace of mind:  they are protected by the security service Chubb.  It must be nice to know.

Source
Image by Will

Madness, like a 'bus

From a Zimbabwean newspaper: While transporting mental patients from Harare to Bulawayo , the 'bus driver stopped at a roadside shebeen (beerhall) for a few beers. When he got back to his vehicle, he found it empty, with the 20 patients nowhere to be seen. Realizing the trouble he was in if the truth were uncovered, he halted his bus at the next bus stop and offered lifts to those in the queue. 

Letting 20 people board, he then shut the doors and drove straight to the Bulawayo mental hospital, where he hastily handed over his 'charges', warning the nurses that they were particularly excitable. Staff removed the furious passengers; it was three days later that suspicions were roused by the consistency of stories from the 20. As for the real patients: nothing more has been heard of them and they have apparently blended comfortably back into Zimbabwean society...

Source

Joenative.com

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Jailhouse Rock: musings

I wonder how many people, smitten in the blast of Elvis's vein-splitting rock, actually experienced the lyric as a ballad.  It seems that most receive the song as an "unspeakable mix", as one commentator put it  -  we need words to this music, but we only hear them in fragments and we really don't care, not in that white-hot intensity.

The lyric has a setting, characters and a punch-line  - it's intriguing, funny and absurd.  Its irony comes from the Blues tradition and the song is largely in the 12-bar form.

That a warder, who is usually a control freak, should throw a wild party in a prison cell block, is unlikely.  The gallery of characters is rich -  Spider Murphy, Little Joe, the drummer boy from Illinois, Number Forty-Seven, Number Three, Shifty Henry, Bugsy and the hip warder himself who cajoles the sad sack into grabbing a wooden chair if he can't find a dancing partner.  

The ultimate absurdity  -  rock music like this has a greater freedom, Bugsy seems to imply, than making a prison break!  

The song, perhaps more from its elemental force than the crafting of the lyric, embodies one of rock's greatest concerns, what one writer called "keeping a free head".  

Jailhouse Rock

                                                                       Elvis in 1957

The warden threw a party in the county jail. 
The prison band was there and they began to wail. 
The band was jumpin and the joint began to swing.  
You should've heard those knocked out jailbirds sing.  
Lets rock, everybody, lets rock. 
Everybody in the whole cell block  
Was dancin to the jailhouse rock. 

Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone,  
Little Joe was blowin on the slide trombone. 
The drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom, bang,  
The whole rhythm section was the purple gang.  
Lets rock, everybody, lets rock.  Everybody in the whole cell block  
Was dancin to the jailhouse rock. [ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/e/elvis+presley/jailhouse+rock_20048652.html ]
Number forty-seven said to number three:  
You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see. 
I sure would be delighted with your company, 
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me. 
Lets rock, everybody, lets rock.  
Everybody in the whole cell block  
Was dancin to the jailhouse rock. 

The sad sack was a sittin on a block of stone 
Way over in the corner weepin all alone.  
The warden said, hey, buddy, don't you be no square. 
If you can't find a partner use a wooden chair. 
Lets rock, everybody, lets rock.  
Everybody in the whole cell block  
Was dancin to the jailhouse rock. 

Shifty Henry said to Bugs, for heavens sake,  
No ones lookin, now's our chance to make a break.  
Bugsy turned to shifty and he said, nix nix,  
I wanna stick around a while and get my kicks.  
Lets rock, everybody, lets rock.  
Everybody in the whole cell block  
Was dancin to the jailhouse rock.


Sources
Songwriters: LEIBER, JERRY / STOLLER, MIKE

(Words & music by Jerry Leiber - Mike Stoller) 

Image:  en.Wikipedia.org

Two drawings by Steinberg

                                          The journey between two points

                                              Certainty



Source
Saul Steinberg, The Labyrinth, 1973 

The Theory of Relativity

                                   Which means PUSH 

Source

Image by will 

Meet thy tobacconist

Source
Chinese cigarette box 

Weakness

Source

Ian Lee: The Third Word War. Thames and Hudson. 1973.

The sex mirror

I can't imagine why the English call condoms french letters, while the French call condoms capote anglais... Who do we see when we look into the mirror? 

Sauce

Anonymous

Image: topnews.in

Voltaire

                 

It is said that, on his deathbed, Voltaire was approached by an anxious priest who urgently told him, "Renounce the devil."

Voltaire replied, "Now is not the time to be making enemies."   

                                                                                                                                               

 Source of image
metmuseum.org                                                 

Trompe L'oeil

Trompe L'oeil, or the art of deception, has a long history.  It is taken to absurd levels in this example from Paris.

         
Source of images
http:///www.39GeorgeV.org                                              

Mickey Mouse

1933   Mickey Mouse banned in Nazi Germany.

1936   Mickey Mouse banned in the Soviet Union.

1937   A Mickey Mouse comic strip banned in Yugoslavia because it depicted a revolution against a monarchy.

1938    Mickey Mouse banned in Fascist Italy.

1954    Mickey Mouse banned in East Germany as an anti-Red rebel.

Source:  Robert Hendrickson:  The Literary Life and Other Curiosities {Penguin Books, 1981}

                                          
                                          Mickey Mouse on Hollywood's Walk of Fame   

Source of images
en.wikipedia.org  

R o a d

Source of image 
Photo by will 

Another paradox

EVEN A HERETIC MUST BELIEVE IN SOMETHING 

IF NOTHING MORE

THAN THE TRUTH OF HIS OWN DOUBT 

                                                         -  Barack Obama

    
Source of image
candacesalima.blogspot.com                                                  

S e m p e

 

Source of image

The New Yorker Cartoon Album 1975 - 1985

Hans-Georg Rauch

The art of Hans-Georg Rauch (1939-1993) is intriguing as it is painstaking.  Here are three of his comments from the collection Die schweigende Mehrheit published in 1974.

Source of images
Die schweigende Mehrheit, Hans-Georg Rauch.  Rowolt 1974                                                                       

Pawel Kuczynski

These caricatures by Pawel Kuczynski (born 1976) show some of the absurdities of the life we're living on this planet.  Some are trenchant.

                                                                       
Source of images
en.paperblog.com
dailypicsandflicks.com

John F. Kennedy at the Berlin Wall

It is certainly a blessing that John F. Kennedy did not make his Ich bin ein Berliner speech in Hamburg.  It is odd though, that no one alerted him to his idiomatic faux pas:  he should have said Ich bin Berliner.  Ein Berliner refers to a local pastry:  at that crucial moment in the Cold War, the President of the United States was actually saying I am a cookie.

                                                                         Kennedy at the Berlin Wall in 1961


Source of image
en.wikipedia.org

Shadow photography by Alexei Bednij

Source of images

featureshoot.com

xaxoc.com

smashingpicture.com

ufunk.net

Andreas Smetana, artist

Source of images

Unable to trace specific publishers

The Cogitatin' File

Cogito ergo Z O O O O O O   O   M!

I think; therefore I am, I think.

I drink; therefore I am   (Philosopher Song, Monty Python)

COGITO  ERGO  BOOM!

Je pense;  DONK! (ouch) je suis. 

I SING.  I DANCE.  I AM    -   Songhu, African poet.

SENSIO;  ERGO SUM

DUBITO;  ERGO SUM

COGITO OGRE SUM   (Ian Lee)

Je suis; donc il y a pensée   

I AM BECAUSE OTHERS ARE    -    Ubuntu, African wisdom

Poems by will

the hill

I infect you

with affection, you

receive my infection with love

you love him and infect him, he

infects her with affection, she

infects me -

we carry our cross

we roll our rock

a case of

Sisyphus’s syphilus

for a hippie  (1960s)

drop in sometime

to find out

it’s still in

to drop out

metaphor

funny how real shit

is the least shit

of all shit 

paradox
men are mad
hens are sad
'cause they're not men 

Messerschmidt

In 1781, German author Friedrich Nicolai visited Messerschmidt at his studio in Pressburg and subsequently published a transcript of their conversation. Nicolai's account of the meeting is a valuable resource, as it is the only contemporary document that details Messerschmidt's reasoning behind the execution of his character heads. It appears that for many years Messerschmidt had been suffering from an undiagnosed digestive complaint, now believed to be Crohn's disease, which caused him considerable discomfort. In order to focus his thoughts away from his condition, Messerschmidt devised a series of pinches he administered to his right lower rib. Observing the resulting facial expressions in a mirror, Messerschmidt then set about recording them in marble and bronze. His intention, he told Nicolai, was to represent the 64 "canonical grimaces" of the human face using himself as a template.   {Source:  Wikipedia}

          Messerschmidt set portraiture into another dimension.  That of the absurd. 

Sources of images

Unable to trace the origins of the

images 

The Dog-People

What will they say of our view of the world in 700 years' time?  
Here is an extract from The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, published in 1360.

After that isle men go by the sea ocean, by many isles, unto an isle that is called Nacumera, that is a great isle and good and fair. And it is in compass about more than a thousand mile.  And all the men and women of that isle have hounds’ heads, and they be called Cynoceptales.  And they be full reasonable and of good understanding, save that they worship an ox for their God.  And also every one of them beareth an ox of gold or of silver in his forehead, in token that they love well their God.  And they go all naked save a little clout.  They be great folk and well-fighting.  And they have a great targe [shield] that covereth all the body, and a spear in their hand to fight with.  And if they take any man in battle, anon they eat him. 

Source
Quotation and image from
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, edd. Denny and Filmer-Sankey.  Collins, London. 1973. 

John Lennon

John Lennon (1940-1980) produced two books which, as I remember, were largely jottings he had done as a teenager.  One was "In his own write" and the other "Spaniard in the works".  

Here is an extract from the introduction of one of the books: 

About The Awful
I was bored on the 9th of Octover 1940 when, I believe, the Nasties were still booming us led by Madolf Heatlump (who only had one). Anyway they didn't get me. I attended to varicous schools in Liddypol. And still didn't pass -- much to my Aunties supplies. As a member of the most publified Beatles my (P, G, and R's) records might seem funnier to some of you than this book, but as far as I'm conceived this correction of short writty is the most wonderfoul larf I've every ready.
God help and breed you all.  

I remember too, the moment in the Beatles' first movie Hard Day's Night when, in a train compartment with the four of them messing around, a rather pompous old, bowler-hatted man expresses his indignation for their apparent lack of respect for him.

"I fought the war for the likes of you," the old one says, haughtily.

Lennon answers, "Aren't you sorry you won?"  

Source
John Lennon, Spaniard in the Works. Penguin. 
Image -  johnlennon.com

P a r a d o x e s

The Thing

This song from the early 1950s remains cryptic, tantalising and absurd.  I sometimes wonder whether it wasn't an anti-nuke protest.  It might also refer to the subversive nature of self-knowledge.  It was written by Charles Randolph Grean and sung by Phil Harris, among others. 

The boom-boom-boom was done with three strikes on a deep drum...  

While I was walking down the beach one bright and sunny day

I saw a great big wooden box a-floatin’ in the bay

I pulled it in and opened it up and much to my surprise

Ooh, I discovered a boom-boom-boom, right before my eyes

Oh, I discovered a boom-boom-boom, right before my eyes

I picked it up and ran to town as happy as a king

I took it to a guy I knew who’d buy most any thing

But this is what he hollered at me as I walked in his shop

Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom, before I call a cop

Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom before I call a cop

I turned around and got right out, a-runnin’ for my life

And than I took it home with me to give it to my wife

But this is what she hollered at me as I walked in the door

Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom, and don’t come back no more

Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom, and don’t come back no more

I wandered all around the town until I chanced to meet

A hobo who was looking for a hand-out on the street

He said he’d take most any old thing, he was a desperate man

But when I showed him the boom-boom-boom, he turned around and ran

Oh, when I showed him the boom-boom-boom, he turned around and ran

I wandered on for many years, a victim of my fate

Until one day I came upon St. Peter at the gate

And when I tried to take it inside, he told me where to go

Get outta here with that boom-boom-boom and take it down below

Oh, get outta here with that boom-boom-boom and take it down below

The moral of this story is if you’re out on the beach

And you should see a great big box and it’s within your reach

Don’t ever stop and open it up, that’s my advice to you

‘Cause you’ll never get rid of the boom-boom-boom, no matter what you do

Oh, you’ll never get rid of the boom-boom-boom, no matter what you do

Source
artists.letssingit.com/phil-harris-the-thing 

Judgement Day

Cape Town airport shuttle ...  

Source
Photo by will