Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means “put down.”
-- Bob Newhart --

Have a great Tuesday!

Splash du Jour: Monday

So where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?
-- Christina Aguilera --

Have a great Monday!

It Seemed That Way: A Saturday Poem

It Seemed That Way

I can see how it seemed that way.
When I looked away, shutting my eyes,
did you see that part? My eyes shut?

What you said was so politically wrong.
No one knew this more than you
in the moment, wanting it all back.

But that same one, that same moment
was, for me, the very opposite
of regret. I searched in it for similarity.

Had to close the lids of me and ask
if I’d ever done anything half as gutsy.
Opening them, I saw yours, closed.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Mystery Solved [Sort of]

← This is a Bizarro© cartoon.
The creator of these cartoons is Dan Piraro.
On Tuesday’s Splash du Jour, I posted one of the Bizarro cartoons that, to me, was a hilarious satirical look at the future effects of global warming.
Then Kingmonkey commented about the stick of dynamite in the cartoon.
It’s there in the lower left hand corner, amid the waves.
I had not even noticed this dynamite. And then Merisi commented that she does not “get” the cartoon. So I myself wondered about it. [See my reply to both of them in the comments section.]
An incredibly astute reader of my blog then wrote back to me, having done some research on this Piraro character. Apparently, this recurrent stick of dynamite [we see it again, for instance, in the above cartoon, tacked onto Batman’s cape] is a secret symbol.
In an interview with The Houston Chronicle, Piraro explains about the dynamite, saying:
“It refers to my wife, who changed almost everything about my life instantaneously, like an explosion. Not just in sappy, sentimental ways, but philosophically. She made me aware of the plight of animals and the environment at the hands of our rabid consumerism, and I’ve not seen the world the same since.”

Wow.
I find it all quite interesting, and shall never again be perplexed about it.
I love Bizarro.
Piraro is the perfect successor to Gary Larson.

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Splash du Jour: Friday

I went to a restaurant with a sign that said they served breakfast at any time. So I ordered French toast during the Renaissance.
-- Steven Wright --

Have a great Friday!
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The Proof's In The "Ice"

Remember when Alice Munro said she was retiring?
As in, never going to write none more?
Well!
She was LYING!
She’s got to be one of the world’s greatest [of all time] short story writers.
I think I’ve read about eight or nine hundred of her stories.
A new collection, entitled Too Much Happiness is soon to be released.
Ten new Munrovian stories. Click → HERE.
Anyhoo.
Tonight’s topic involves autographs!
The ever-living controversy as to whether my own mysteriously signed “Selected Stories” contains an actual authentic Alice Munro signature.
The full story can be found → HERE.
So, to recap, a lot of people emailed me at that time, saying that this signature [shown above] in my book is not authentic.
Well, since then, in fact it was last night, I happened across yet another image.

OK, that signature was proxy-written by Alice Munro using the Margaret Atwood LongPen© System.
Now let’s be serious.
When you compare this autograph with the one in my own book, it’s obvious that I have an original over here.
Admittedly, anyone could forge that rounded-out “A” or the sort of wonky “M” or “nr”… but for me, the proof’s in the “ice” part.
How do you duplicate that?
It’s just not possible to be that... counterfeity.
I’ve got an original over here.
End of discussion.
If you want to argue about this, I must refer you to the title of Munro’s fourth book, from way back in 1978…
Who Do You Think You Are?

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

The story must be imagined so deeply and devoutly that everything in it seems to bloom of its own accord and to be connected, then, to our own lives which suddenly, as we read, take on a hard beauty, a familiar strangeness, the importance of a dream that can't be disputed or explained. Everything is telling you: Stop. Hold on. Here it is. Here too. Remember.
-- Alice Munro --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I once shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up.
-- Dean Martin --

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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The Worstest Word Ever

Do any of you have a word that you continually misspell?
Don’t you just hate it?
Generally, I am a fenomenally good speller…. but, umm… from time to time [← I’m avoiding The Worstest Word Ever© here…] one word will just trip me up and I can just never seem to get it right.
For me, that word is:
Occasionally.
Man I hate that word, occasionally.
And here is the weird thing. I’m spelling it correctly, above.
But tomorrow…. or even later tonight, if I had to spell the damn thing in a sentence, my spell-check feature would be catching it four or five times as I sought to correct myself again.
To me, there are at least nine or ten perfectly valid ways to spell occasionally.
One “c”.
Two “s”-s.
One “l”.
Ending in “ee”?
[Well, that lassed one, addmiteddly, I’m exxagerating a bit……]

What’s your Worstest Word Ever?
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Splash du Jour: Monday

I really enjoy having sex, and that’s offensive to some people. Women are the quickest to call other women sluts, which is sad.
I haven’t met a lot of men who’ve said, “You like having sex? What a dirty whore you are!” That’s because they wish their wives or girlfriends would have more sex with them.
-- Megan Fox, in a July 2007 interview --

Have a great Monday!
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The Evolution of Advertising

I once was a smoker.
Smoked over a pack a day, for like half a century.
My last cigarette was on November 26, 1984.
The full, in-depth, exciting as all hell story can be seen → HERE.
So I know what smoking is all about.
I do not speak of it in gest, whatsoever.
I know that quitting is difficult.
I tried to quit about 1800 times before something finally clicked.
The penny dropped.
This afternoon, at a whim, I just started clicking around on old old cigarette ads.
Googling.
It’s real neat to see the evolution of ads, in the cigarette world.
Smoking used to be this glamorous thing.
“She’d rather fight than switch!” [← Viceroy ad.] And all that jazz.
The Marlborough Man!
Like smoking is going to somehow help me rope a steer!

Check out that one retarded ad at the top of this blog, where some kind of “physicians” are sporting the cancer-sticks like they are candy!
Lucky Strikes are “toasted.”
Yeah!
Keep smoking them, and you will be “toast.”
It’s just funny, these ads.
And as with all things [even religion, friends] – there is an evolution. With science comes knowledge. Or maybe it’s the other way around?
With knowledge comes science?
Whatever.
The point is we now know that smoking is just plain stupid.
I am not saying that in any judgmental sense – don’t get me wrong.
I’m just saying that SUCKING SMOKE INTO YOUR LUNGS ON PURPOSE has got to be perhaps one of the stupidest activities that human beings have ever invented to do.
Think about it.
Your lungs.
Those things that want oxygen oxygen oxygen…. your blood cells, lying in wait for those precious molecules to arrive – and then you flick the lighter, or strike the match, and your lungs, down below, if they could speak… are just screaming, “Nooooooooo!”

So check out a few of these ads I have stumbled across.
Here’s a real doozy, again, from the fine folks at Lucky Strike©, circa 1940’s –

Yes.
Beware of that dangity irritation.
The irritation of rotting away on a hospital bed, the plastic oxygen thing over your shnozz, friends and family above this, as a horizon, but only during visiting hours.
Remember. You’ve got all night to see…. other things.
Things like – your past.

This next one actually cracks me up.

Raleigh©.
“COST NO MORE THAN OTHER POPULAR BRANDS.”
What the hell kind of an ad-campaign is that?
Please tell me that the guy that came up with this lovely slogan was fired the next day?
I mean, I could see if maybe these smokes were just as good as the next guy’s, and were CHEAPER or something [work with me here!] but -- the same price?
That’s the best you can do?
And again…. I am dying from the use of this product?
Sorry. You are not selling me.

Now see [oh, the power of science -- of knowledge -- of X-rays…] see, “Export A©”, [and almost every single other cigarette manufacturer out there] is finally having to put the blatant truth on their packaging.
And it’s high time.
Smoking is like sucking death into yourself, before you are ready for it.
And who is ever ready for it?

If you are a smoker, please quit, like I did.
Do it. QUIT!
It’s possible, I did it. Admit it, it’s literally killing you to not do it.
Secondly, if you know a smoker, and you like them, please forward this blog to them.

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Walter: A Saturday Poem

Walter

Not that Cronkite fellow, no.
Ivanhoe author? Guess again.
The cigarette/sailor guy, Raleigh?
The creator of Mickey Mouse?
My own middle name? → Bingo.

The Mall, drizzly mid-June evening.
I pass by the Hallmark display.
Slowing my pace, I am reminded.
There’s no address where he, more
famous than all of the above, is.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Splash du Jour: Friday

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
-- Salman Rushdie --

Today is Salman Rushdie’s [52nd] birthday.

Have a great Friday!

Colm Toibin's Brooklyn

Just finished, tonight, a terrific book.
Colm Toibin’s latest novel, Brooklyn.
My fourth-read Toibin book, and I have loved them all, including this one.
However… this one was different.
For a while I felt as though I was watching Little House on the Prairie! He is so laid back in this thing. I mean… Toibin is a dynamic writer, and it just seems that he is ski-ing down the hill sideways on this one.
UNTIL YOU GET TO ABOUT PAGE 180 [of a possible 262].
Eilis [← love that name] is this Melissa Gilbert-type character that moves from Ireland to America.
It’s the 1950’s [or thereabouts].
It’s not only that nothing eventful seems to happen, but it’s the style that seems to be so [deliberately?] downplayed.
Toibin is one of my favorite writers, really he is. I know that he can be as deep and elaborate as Ian McEwan. It seems that here in Brooklyn, though, he adopted a real down-played style of writing. And yet, it kept me interested.
At times, it was like he was reporting. It was downright Hemingway-esque in its unpretensious journalistic factitiousness. [← Does that even make sense?]
Tolstoyan reality, with Ernest at the keyboard.
But see. I LIKE reality. [And Hemingway, for that matter].
So I liked this book.
And as I say, from page 180 onward, it really picks up.
Several times I had to put the book down, think about my own life.
Wipe my eyes.
To me, that’s always a sign of a good book!

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Splash du Jour: Thursday

[Moishe] explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer....
"'And why do you pray, Moishe?' I asked him.
'I pray to the God within me for the strength to ask Him the real questions.'"
-- Elie Wiesel, Night --

Have a great Thursday!

Monica Ali on "Q"

Coming to you LIVE from the neighborhood Starbucks!
Well… my neighborhood, anyways!
And the Starbucks is in the Chapters bookstore, and I'm having a look at this new novel by British writer, Monica Ali.
← In The Kitchen.
Some of you may be familiar with her book Brick Lane which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003, and has since become a movie.
On Monday I listened to a terrific interview with the author, on the CBC radio program “Q” with host Jian Ghomeshi. Since then I’ve been waiting for the podcast to be available, and now it is!
If you would like to hear the interview, click → HERE.
Let it download for a few minutes and then click about a third of the way in, unless you want to listen to the preceding piece on transgenderism.
I was just fascinated with the amount of research that goes into the writing of a book like In The Kitchen.
It sounds like it would be an interesting read.
And if nothing else, just listen to Monica’s killer-wicked awesome accent, it’s to die for.
Have any of you read this new book [it’s only been out for a few days] or any of her others?

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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

I don’t like to kill flies, but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, “Whoa, I’m way too high!”
-- Bruce Baum --

Have a great Wednesday!

Splash du Jour: Tuesday

I never mind my wife having the last word.
In fact, I’m delighted when she gets to it.
-- Walter Matthau --

Have a great Tuesday!

My Mailbox Overfloweth

Today was a horrid day at work.
Quite…… pleasureless!
I can’t even talk about it.
So after work I went to Starbucks for coffee and started reading the new novel from Colm Toibin, Brooklyn.
Then I got home and had such a pleasurable surprise in the mailbox!
Well, aside from various bills [how do they find you so regularly?]… I received my brand new Harpers magazine and a parcel from Random House.
I love getting review-stuff from Random House.
So, about two seconds after taking the above snapshot I was already leafing through this beautiful beautiful new book from one of my favorite authors, Alain de Botton.

← The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
Wow!
I myself could probably write quite a book about the latter half of that title!
But of the former part, I’m afraid I know little!
This will be the sixth book by Alain de Botton that I have read.
If you have not yet discovered this author, I encourage you, oh do read him.
He is brilliant, witty, insightful, and several of his books [as this one is] are filled with photographs that serve as wonderful Sebald-like footnotes to his musings.
The guy is wonderful. I’m convinced he is a genius. I’ve corresponded with him several times, and he is always so gracious and humble. And wise.
I love Alain de Botton.
I love Random House.
I hate work.
I love my mailbox.

Find out more about this book → HERE.

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