F.W.H. Myers, whom spiritualism had converted to belief in a future life, questioned a woman who had lately lost her daughter as to what she supposed had become of her soul. The mother replied: ‘Oh, well, I suppose she is enjoying eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn’t talk about such unpleasant subjects.’
— Bertrand Russell, “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish,” 1943
A puzzle by Polish mathematician Paul Vaderlind:
Andre Agassi and Boris Becker are playing tennis. Agassi wins the first set 6-3. If there were 5 service breaks in the set, did Becker serve the first game?
(Service changes with each new game in the 9-game set. A service break is a game won by the non-server.)
New York architect Edwin Koch had a brainstorm in 1939 — he proposed a teardrop-shaped “hurricane house” that could rotate like a weather vane. “This amazing dwelling would revolve automatically to face into the oncoming storm, meeting it like the wing of an airplane and passing it smoothly around its curving sides toward its pointed tip,” explained Popular Science.
Electricity would enter through one of the circular tracks on which the house turned, and water and sewage pipes would be connected via swivel joints at the axis of rotation.
Koch had planned the house for hurricane zones, but the swiveling feature could prove useful in any climate: “Merely by selecting the desired push button on a central control board, the entire house may be rotated to face rooms toward or away from the sun or to point bedroom windows toward a cooling breeze.”
“I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.” — Francis Bacon
One day [A.J. Conant] asked Mr. Lincoln how he became interested in the law. ‘It was Blackstone’s “Commentaries” that did it,’ said Mr. Lincoln, and then he related how he first happened on the books. ‘I was keeping store in New Salem, when one day a man who was migrating to the West drove up with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it, but to oblige him I bought it and paid him, I think, half a dollar. Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all about it. Sometime after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel and emptied its contents upon the floor. I found at the bottom of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone’s “Commentaries.” I began to read those famous works, and I had plenty of time, for during the long summer days, when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were few and far between. The more I read’ — this he said with unusual emphasis — ‘the more intensely interested I became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read until I devoured them.’ …
— Ida M. Tarbell, Selections From the Letters, Speeches, and State Papers of Abraham Lincoln, 1911
Writer Harry Mathews experimented with a bilingual vocabulary he called “legal franglais.” He compiled 425 words that are spelled identically in French and English (aside from accents and capitals). Examples:
Mets attend the sale
Mets attend thé salé
If rogue ignore genes, bride pays
If rogue ignore gênes, bride pays
As mute tint regains miens, touts allege bath
As muté tint regains miens, tout s’allège, bath
If emu ignore bonds, mire jars rogue
If ému ignore bonds, mire jars rogue
Roman delusive gent fit crisper rayon
Roman d’élusive gent fit crisper rayon
Because, ideally, the words should have no meaning in common, it’s hard to find reasonable settings for these utterances. Ian Monk proposed this example:
Il ne faut pas rôtir les oies mais plutôt les mâles de l’espèce, et en grande quantitê.
When it was Fred’s round, he told the landlord to grab their pint glasses and serve him and his three companions forthwith.
SEIZE JARS POUR FOUR.
One can attempt the same thing preserving sound rather than spelling. In Alphonse Allais’ verse, entire lines are pronounced the same:
Par le bois du djinn, où s’entasse de l’effroi,
Parle, bois du gin, ou cent tasses de lait froid.
And, combining these two ideas, one can compose a sentence that looks like French but sounds like English. Stopping before a monkey’s cage, François Le Lionnais exclaimed, “Un singe de beauté est un jouet pour l’hiver!”
Miss Mildred West, whose duties on the Alton [Ill.] Evening Telegraph include the writing of obituaries, has been taking a week’s vacation. And, for the first time in the memory of her fellow workers on the newspaper, a week has passed with no deaths being reported in this city of 32,000. Normally, ten occur every week.
— New York Times, Sept. 1, 1946
Winston Churchill faced an awkward moment in 1954, when Parliament unveiled a portrait on the occasion of his 80th birthday. The ceremony took place before a crowded Westminster Hall, and no one present, one observer said, “will forget the idiosyncratic nonsound with which a thousand people stopped breathing when the canvas was revealed.”
The painting, by Graham Sutherland, was a decidedly modern take on the octogenarian statesman. “Its chief defect was that it looked unfinished in as much as his feet were concealed in a carpet that seemed to have sprouted a dun-coloured grass,” wrote Studio editor G.S. Whittet. “The artist had obviously been unhappy about them and they had been painted over since it would have been impossible to ‘cut off’ his legs below the knees without radically altering the proportions and placing of the picture on the canvas.”
One MP called the portrait “a study in lumbago,” and Lord Hailsham said it was “disgusting, ill-mannered, terrible.” Churchill accepted the gift with a measured good humor, but privately he muttered, “It makes me look half-witted, which I ain’t.” After the unveiling, the painting was never seen again — shortly before Churchill’s death, his wife had it cut up and burned.
See Immortalized.
Letter to the Times from the Dean of Canterbury, Feb. 5, 1970:
Sir,
A few days ago I received a communication addressed to T.A. Becket, Esq., care of The Dean of Canterbury. This surely must be a record in postal delays.
Yours truly,
Ian H. White-Thomson
“2 Poems,” by Tom King, from The Oulipo Compendium. I don’t know why these are so charming, but they are:
This Is Jist Ti Siy
by Tim King
I hivi iitin
thi plims
thit wiri in
thi icibix
ind which
yii wiri pribibli
siving
fir briikfist
Firgivi mi
thiy wiri diliciiis
si swiit
ind si cild
Thos Os Jost To Soy
by Tom Kong
O hovo ooton
tho ploms
thot woro on
tho ocobox
ond whoch
yoo woro proboblo
sovong
for brookfost
Forgovo mo
thoy woro dolocooos
so swoot
ond so cold