I have upon occasion been called a sarcastic smartass. Truth be told, I’ve been called that on many occasions by many people and I wear that mantle with pride. It probably will explain this post that concerns two of my all-time favorite people, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), two of the most famous smartasses in the world. History calls them humorists, rascals, and intellectuals but that’s just history being kind. They took biting humor and sarcasm to new levels and did it in such a way as to make people love and respect them. Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about that. Here’s a little personal information on Oscar with a collection of his quotes.
Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
“Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.”
Now for a little taste of Mark Twain. He was a good old down-home boy who had the ability to make politicians shiver in their boots and the rest of us to laugh at his humorous way of seeing things.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), best known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced”. Here a a few pearls of wisdom from Mark.
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.”
“A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.”
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
Back in my college days when I thought I knew everything but really didn’t, I had a professor once ask me what person living or dead would I like to sit down and have a meaningful conversation with. I can’t remember my answer but I’m sure it was stupid and meaningless because at that time I was totally clueless. If I could communicate with him now these two gentlemen would be my first and second choices. Better yet, I’d love to have them both sitting with me in a corner of a dark quiet pub sharing a bottle of brandy or bourbon and puffing on a cigar to discuss the state of the world or anything else they’d like to tell me.
Here’s a collection of really stupid headlines I rediscovered recently in my files. It still amazes me how much stuff I forgot I was saving for a rainy day. The more I dig around the more I seem to find. You can thank all of our many educated and skilled editors for their fine jobs in editing these gems.
Amphibious Pitcher Makes Debut
Forecasters Call for Weather on Monday
War Dims Hope for Peace
Death Causes Loneliness, Feeling of Isolation
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Statistics Show Teen Pregnancy Drops Off After Age 25
“Lady Jacks” Off to Hot Start in Their Conference
Utah Poison Control Center Reminds Everyone Not to Take Poison
City Unsure Why Sewers Smell
17 Remain Dead in Morgue Shooting Spree
Safety Meeting Ends in Accident
Best Man Left Bleeding After Being Hit by Flying Dildo
Everyone looks forward to eventual retirement. As I grew older, I thought I’d planned well but as always, there were problems. Here are a few paragraphs on how I made the transition from employed to retired. A distasteful divorce ruined my initial plans forcing me to start all over from scratch at age fifty. I wasn’t all that concerned because I never thought I’d live long enough to see retirement, but again I was wrong. The “best laid” plans never remain “best laid”. Once I passed the AARP senior citizen mark, I began to realize that I might just make it to retirement, so I’d better get off my ass and get busy, and I did.
I was able to untangle myself from my final job and walked away retired at sixty-two. For almost thirty-eight years my jobs required that I talk to an endless number of people. I was an interviewer, interrogator, investigator, and manager and a rough estimate would be approximately sixteen to eighteen thousand interviews and interrogations. I was sick to death of talking to anyone and promised myself to keep my social life (on-line and off) to an absolute minimum, and I did and still do.
On my first official day of retirement, I poured myself a large glass of champagne, went into my closet and began retiring most of my clothes into a pile in the living room slated for delivery to Goodwill. The first items that went into that pile were every suit I owned but one, every dress shirt I owned but two, and all of my thirty ties, twenty pairs of black socks, sport coats, all pairs of dress shoes but one, and seventeen pairs of dress pants. Anything remotely related to any employer I ever worked for were immediately discarded. My post-retirement wardrobe now currently consists of fifty assorted-t-shirts, ten pairs of jeans, eight pairs of sneakers, ten pairs of sweatpants, and assorted jackets and hoodies. I made it clear to my family that I only wanted outrageous rock group t-shirts for gifts, and they did me proud. I also had earlier upgraded my computer with an external hard drive and stashed away twenty years of information that went into storage for safe keeping. That first night I finished the remainder of the champagne, crawled into bed, performed a stretched out “X” with my body, and breathed the largest sigh of relief you could possibly imagine. I had finally reached the unreachable promised land.
You will all approach retirement differently and I wish you luck. Admittedly my way was a little over-the-top but that’s pretty much how I lived my life so why change now. My computer connects me to the world and my blogging began in 2007 and remains my preferred contact with all of the other humans on this planet.
There seem to be a few of you out there who continue to request a selection of down&dirty limericks. I’m feeling a little down&dirty myself today, so I’ll bow to the pressure and offer up a few.
Since we’re well into the middle of August already, I feel like I’m on another planet. These changes in the weather patterns are just too weird to try and explain. I’ve lived in Maine almost 24 years and I’ve never seen or experienced summer weather that would require using an electric blanket in July. It’s hard at times to celebrate a summer that we haven’t had yet but I’m sure next year will be just as effing great. With that depressing thought in mind, I feel the need to inject a little humor back into our lives. You’re welcome to come along for the ride if you like.
😁😅😂🤣
There was a man who had insomnia so bad he couldn’t even fall asleep when it was time to wake up.
It was an enormous funeral that was winding its way through the streets of the town, and, in every way, no signs of sorrow had been seen. A bystander, who had been away from the neighborhood for a while, nudged a neighbor. “Who died?” he whispered. “Big Angelo’s girlfriend, said the other.” Big Angelo’s girlfriend? But she was so young! What did she die of?” “Gonorrhea!” “Gonorrhea! But that’s impossible. No one dies of gonorrhea.” “You do when you give it to Big Angelo.”
I sat next to the Duchess at Tea.
It was just as I feared it would be.
Her rumblings abdominal
Were truly phenomenal,
And everyone thought it was me.
A man and a woman met on the beach, they fell in love with each other at first glance, and after three days, were married. The wedding night was just as successful as it could be, but when the woman awoke the following morning, she found her husband dressing. She asked, “Where are you going?” “Darling, we married so quickly I didn’t have a chance to tell you I’m addicted to golf. I’m afraid you’ll rarely see me. She nodded and said, “That’s all right, we married so quickly I forgot to tell you I’m a hooker.” The man smiled and said, “That’s nothing darling. Don’t worry about that because it’s easily corrected. You just need to hold the club like this . . . . “
Chemists are known for synthesizing some marvelous chemicals. There is the story that one synthesized an aphrodisiac for men that was so powerful it had to be swallowed very quickly to avoid getting a stiff neck.
And last but not least a short but interesting story about a visitor to the home of Pablo Picasso. The visitor remarked there were no Picasso’s on the walls. “Don’t you like Picasso paintings?” asked the visitor roguishly.” “Of course, I do,” said Picasso. “I just can’t afford them.”
I consider myself to be an avid reader, but many friends and family consider me an obsessive reader. I admit to reading a lot, but that obsessive description seems a little much. I’ve been an avid reader of just about everything starting at about age 4 and I’ve never lost my love of reading and books. I thought with the advent of the Kindle and the Nook and other electronic reading devices I’d be in heaven. What I didn’t count on was missing the feel of the books in my hands, their smell, turning the pages, and just how contented those actions made me feel. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle and I read it every day but it’s just not the same. Unfortunately for me I gave away a lot of my most favorite books when I bought the Kindle initially. Now I find myself looking to replace many of those books so I can sit on a quiet deck on a summer day and spend time reading my old friends. Today’s blog will be a few historical facts about books. Enjoy.
The art of printing was born with the first printed book, the Gutenberg Bible, and considered by many as the most beautiful book ever produced. 300 copies were printed, nearly 1300 pages each, 42 lines in Latin to the page. The Gutenberg Bibles remain among the most value books in the world.
Charles Darwin believes that the proposed first printing of this book The Origin of Species would be too large: 1250 copies. But the edition was sold out the very first day of its publication.
In 1814, when George Byron’s poem The Corsair was published, 30,000 copies were sold in a single day.
Kepler’s story Somnium, published after his death in 1630, is the first piece of authentic science fiction, as opposed to fantasy, because it was the first to try to describe the lunar surface as it really was.
The first collection of Aesop’s animal fables was put together 200 years after his death and included many that originated long after the Greek slave from Africa had departed this world.
Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) – a biblical scholar, professor of Oriental and Greek literature, and compiler of a Greek and Hebrew lexicon – wrote the exquisitely simple and easily remembered “Visit from St. Nicholas”:Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house . . .
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
The mistaken use of a word in place of a similar sounding one, often with unintentionally
amusing effect, as in, for example, “dance a flamingo” (instead of flamenco).
Today’s posting will be a shout out to all of those educators that spend so much of their time attempting to teach our younger generations anything. It’s a difficult job on the good days and it’s even worse on the bad days. I thought I’d list a selection of what are called malaprops taken from actual test papers and essays from some grade schoolers, high schoolers, and selected college examinations. These are things of beauty.
Women like to do things in circles, where they sew, talk, and do their meddling.
“Don’t” is a contraption.
Italics are what Italians write in.
The government of Athens was Democratic because the people took the law into their own hands.
Antarctica is like the regular Arctic, but ritzier.
He worked in the government as a civil serpent.
You purify water by filtering it and then forcing it through an aviator.
The doctor felt the man’s purse and said there was no hope.
The government of England is a limited mockery.
The first book of the Bible is a book of Guinness’s.
He was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great deal of non-fiction.
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I’ve been a fan of Isaac Asimov, for as long as I can remember. I’ve tried to read everything of his that I could find and have never regretted it. He’s one of the most prolific writers who’ve ever lived and is well-versed in virtually any topic someone would like to talk about. Over the years I’ve also discovered that he was one of the funniest writers as well and has written books of limericks and stories that were outrageously funny. I recently acquired a book of his from 1992 (the year of his death) titled Azimov Laughs Again. It’s a volume of funny stories from his life as well as some of his favorite jokes and limericks. Here are a couple jokes to help get your day started.
Mr. Ginsberg, age 83, went to the doctor for a complete examination head to toe. About halfway through, the doctor was called to the telephone. He said, “Mr. Ginsberg, this will not take more than a few minutes. Here’s a jar. While I am gone, go to the bathroom and place a semen sample in it for examination. Then we’ll continue. “A few minutes later, the doctor indeed returned, and there stood Mr. Ginsberg with the jar- totally empty. “Doctor,” said Mr. Ginsberg. “I did my best. I tried with my right hand, and I tried with my left hand. I even tried with both hands, but nothing happened. The doctor said soothingly, “Now, Mr. Ginsberg, don’t feel embarrassed. At the age of 83, it is quite common to be impotent.” Whereupon Ginsberg said, with towering indignation, “What do you mean, impotent? I couldn’t open the jar.”
Old Mr. Anderson and his equally aged wife were filing for divorce. The judge, eyeing them with astonishment, said, “How old are you, Mr. Anderson?” “Ninety-three”, Your Honor. “And your wife?” “Ninety-one”, Your Honor.” “And how long have you been married?” “Sixty-six years.” “Then why do you want to get a divorce now?” “Well, you know how it is, Your Honor.” We were waiting for the children to die.”
He has an interesting sense of humor and I freaking love it. Here’s a small add-on which is one of his favorite limericks.
I think it’s likely that some of you may have gotten the wrong idea with the title I used for this post. Twisted in this context does not mean heavily sexual or bawdy. These limericks are written specifically for children, and they are a cross between limericks & tongue twisters. As a kid I loved tongue twisters and at a very early age whilst sitting through a number of sessions to correct a minor lisp I had, tongue twisters were one of the exercises that we were permitted to do to help us get control of our speech patterns. I know it sounds stupid, but it was even more stupid when you’re the one who was required to do it. Enjoy!
😊😊😊
She saw a seesaw at sea,
A shawl she was wearing, was she,
The sea shrank her shawl,
Till it shrank her shawl small,
To the seesaw she saw she said “Gee!”
😁😁😁
Louise is pleased by cheesy chicken squeezed with cheesy cheese,
Squeezy peasy chicken cheesy served to please Louise,
“To other chicken, phooey!
Even Chinese chicken suey,
More squeezy greasy peasy cheesy chicken, if you please!”
😋😋😋
Hannah from Havana grew bananas in Savanna,
A bonanza of bananas that had grown in her bandanna,
These limericks were published in New York in 1965. They made their way into my hands via the Northside School Library in Rogers, Arkansas. The last date the book was signed out was on April Fool’s Day in 1967. From reading them I would guess many of them were written in Great Britain, but I’ll note the authors when I can. Enjoy!
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There was a young man of Calcutta
Who spoke with a terrible stutta,
At breakfast he said,
“Get me some b-b-b-bread
And b-b-b-b-b-b-butta.”
😯😯😯
By Robert Louis Stevenson
There once was an old man of the Cape,
Who made himself garments of crepe.
When asked, “Do they tear?”
He replied, “Here and there,
But they’re perfectly splendid for shape!”
😊😊😊
A small boy when asked to spell “yacht,”
Most saucily said, “I will nacht.”
So, his teacher in wrath,
Took a section of lathe,
And warmed him up well on the spacht.
😬😬😬
There was a young bard of Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When they said it was so,
He replied “Yes I know,
But I make a rule of always trying to get just as many words into the last line as I possibly can.”
