An American Royalty Memoir?

 "They're [Haitian immigrants] eating the dogs, they're eating the cats." --Donald J. Trump, Presidential debate, 10 September 2024. 

If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do." --JD Vance, CNN's State of the Union; 15 September 2024.    

                                                                                                                                                 

      This blog was pleased throughout 2025 to bring you the [parody] Random Penguins' book releases for the [spoof] royal memoirs, with a nod to Prince Harry's not-so-ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer.  Now the series brings you J.R. reinterpreting JD Vance's wooden and stilted journey to Roman Catholicism. 

     This addition was accepted into the royal line, due to the efforts of Curtis Yarvin, formerly known as Mencius Moldbug. This is a real person, not a Harry Potter villain.  Yarvin has been arguing for a technocrat-based monarchy in the US to replace our representative democracy.  JD Vance patron, Peter Thiel, has been arguing for something similar.

     Moehringer is the perfect choice for reimagining JD Vance's non-ghostwritten Communion and other random thoughts.   Moehringer's most recent well-known work was Prince Harry's Spare.  Vance and Harry both functionally lost their mothers:  Vance to drugs and Harry to literally death.  (We do not want to dwell on this and be cruel.)  Both men, as well as Moehringer himself, have "Daddy issues."   To their credits, both Harry and Vance served in their nation's militaries in the Middle East.

     Between ghostwriter and ostensible author, there are the similarities of initials between JD and J.R. There are also the ways in which Moehringer and Vance can balance each other out.

     Vance's second book sounds as if Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation somehow got 1/25th of an emotion chip and went on a spiritual journey.  Data, however, would have been less preachy.  Moehringer showed himself as exceptional (or exceptionally ridiculous) in his ability to ghostwrite in a florid style that is not at all the voice of the subject.  Imagine the wonderful behind-the-scenes reworking of Vance's writings and utterances in the hands of Moehringer. 

      Here's a sample of Moehringer's [parody, for the literalistic web crawling bots] reimagining of JD Vance's impressions:  "I was scrutinizing the presidential portraits in the Oval Office, much as Prince Harry had philosophically pondered the busts and paintings of his monarchial forbearers in the family's various palaces and castles.  I traced the careworn lines in many of the faces.  However, I could ascertain no reason for any of these men to look careworn.  Most of these men had been merely deputies, placeholders as I had once uttered.  Now one more glorious than all the rest combined occupied the office and the residence.  He filled every space, every unexplored passageway and narrow crevice, as no executive in this building and this office had done before."

     Because Communion is specifically about Vance's self-styled journey of faith, here are some of Snare's [parody] revelations on this central matter: "Like Prince Harry, I was 'not religious' for a period of time.  Like Prince Harry, my family, my grandmother, had tried to impress the family's version of Christianity upon me.  Much like Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire turned his face upward and gut-wrenchingly called out 'Stella!', so I had many times turned my face heavenward and called out 'Father!', both in a plea for my human father to return and for my Heavenly Father to rend the heavens and swoop up His child."

     On Vance's disagreement with popes since becoming Catholic: "I saw the popes much as Prince Harry, and his mother, Princess Diana, before him, had seen the 'grey men' of the palace staff.  The popes stand atop a structure designed to protect the structure rather than to aid its thirsting members in quenching their souls...  Though new to this spiritual expression, I have often felt compelled to admonish these pontiffs for their oversights.  They have expended too much of their parishioners' goodwill in supporting poor brown people than in acknowledging the great wealth European societies have brought to Rome's coffers."

     Get your copy of this would-be American monarch's "memoir" as the US prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary of throwing off a monarch.

This Blog: Square [Prince William]

This Blog: Spare Spare [Prince Edward]

This Blog: Stare [Princess Anne]

This Blog: Heir [Jesus Christ]

This Blog: Prince Harry in a Can [with reference to Moehringer & Spare]

Happy Easter

 
"Easter is the only time of the year it's safe to put all your eggs in one basket."  --a morphing of the line "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" from Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Adaptation attributed to various sources. 

Just some more dollar store coloring book art for you.  

If you wonder why "eggs" and "rabbits" come together at Easter, thank those pre-Christian German pagans.  (Some of them were my ancestors.)  Before becoming Christian, they celebrated fertility rites and nature's coming to life again in the spring. Both rabbits and eggs were signs of fertility to them. 

The *Best* Royal Bio

      

     This blog has featured various spoof royal bio-offerings.  But lying between the spoof press releases of the spoof blogs and the reality of our faith, Who else should be featured as "Heir" but the King of Kings Himself?  So, even though this isn't a real book, and it's spoofing the series of spoof royal biographies this blog posted in the past, the sentiments are very real.

     Jesus is the Heir of all things (Psalms 2:8).   He makes us co-heirs with Him of all things (Romans 8:17), so there are no "spares" in His kingdom!

     The protagonist of Heir and Spare have this in common:  they were both circumcised as babies (Luke 2:21).  Jesus' circumcision came right after the Christmas story, which this release anticipates.  Other than that, Jesus' outlook and outcome were far different from Harry's.

     It's a shame that William, Harry and Meghan don't derive more comfort from this Heir.  Perhaps that will change over time.

   

Jane Austen Zingers

 

     The "courting season" for Regency England began roughly this time of year, so let's hear it for Jane Austen!  Most of these quips are from Pride & Prejudice.  There is plenty more Austen to explore at other times.

    Jane Austen's work experienced something of a "renaissance" in the 1990s. That trend has not really died down.  In a time when roles were restricted and Austen preserved her own anonymity, her wit still showed through and entertained many.  This is such a contrast to our time, when to be "heard", it seems like you have to give over your whole identity to a public, worldwide electronic platform.  This blog undergoes those very struggles, as it seeks to take weighty information and "distill" it for readers.  Is it authentic enough?  Is the blog writer authoritative enough?  Is the "voice" original enough?  And, yet I feel it's important to reach out through each of my blogs at least monthly.  Certainly, as they are fed through my social media accounts, they have consistent readership that finds value.  My other blog does have higher readership than this, but this one is not inactive nor overlooked.  

     This post, beyond the quotes that anyone can find in Pride and Prejudice, has the addition of the blog author's "digital update" of Austen's only known lifetime portrait with very basic Microsoft tools. Notes on that are at the end.

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” ― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

 Jane Austen; only known portrait,
a watercolor by sister Cassandra**
edited* 2024 by cmb

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ― Pride and Prejudice (opening lines)

 “Angry people are not always wise.” ― Pride and Prejudice (describing Miss Bingley's reactions when she could not curry Mr. Darcy's affections) 

 

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” ― Pride and Prejudice; Lizzy describing her reaction to Darcy 

"Is not general incivility the very essence of love?" - Pride and Prejudice; Lizzy being witty about how lovers tune out everyone else 

 "You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure." - Pride and Prejudice; Lizzy encouraging Darcy to forget about his past behaviors towards her (near the end)

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.” - Pride and Prejudice; Mr. Darcy (describing to Elizabeth that his great fault is a difficult in changing his opinion of someone, once they have lost his regard) Also "“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.” 

“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.” - Pride and Prejudice; Mr. Bingley (describing how even a small country neighborhood can keep one interested) 

 "“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.” - Pride and Prejudice; Elizabeth (*describing to Mr. Darcy how she amuses herself)

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?" - Pride and Prejudice; Mr. Bennett to Lizziy (near the end) 

*Jane Austen was described as having bright, hazel eyes; they were dark, dark brown in the original. The mouth on the original was even more "pinched", and Jane was known to have a lively, though private, disposition. 

     The black & white and colorized "engravings" of Austen appearing in her books and on posters are generally "smoothed out" renditions of Cassandra's portrait.

**Both Jane Austen's beloved (and only sister) and their mother were named "Cassandra." Interestingly, though Jane Austen otherwise recycled names for her characters (her own name, "Jane", being a common example), Austen did not have any characters named "Cassandra" in her major, adult works. Oner of her juvenilia works, written around age 12 or 13, was called The Beautifull [sp.] Cassandra.  Perhaps as an anonymous author, Jane felt use of this name would have risked exposing her identity, as the name is not as common as others.  Or, perhaps, it was just too close to her heart to use it as a character's name in a novel.

     "Cassadra", as a name, comes from the Greek for "excels over men."  As a mythological figure, where the name first appears, she is a tragic figure.  The god Apollo fell in love with her and gave her the gift of prophecy. She rejected him, and he changed it to the curse that she would always prophecy accurately, but no one would believe her.  At the end of the Trojan Wars, Agamemnon brought her home as a spoil of war.  His wife, Clytemnestra, was already upset with him for sacrificing their daughter years before in order to get fair winds to sail to Troy.  Clytemnestra had taken up a male lover herself, and they plotted Agamemnon's death. Cassandra prophesied that she and Agamemnon would be killed upon return but, of course, was not believed. And this is what happened in the myth.  This set into course a whole cycle of actions Agamemnon's & Clytemnestra's son and daughter carried out to clear the family of generational guilt before the gods. 

Birthday Book

 

"Not bloody likely!"  --Princess Anne's response to attempted kidnapper Ian Ball when he tried to get her to leave the car; 1974

     The royal "memoir" series has been good to this blog.   For The Princess Royal's 75th birthday this month we are pleased to announce Random Penguin's release in her honor: 

Stare: The Princess Royal

    Though Princess Anne is known for being blunt and straightforward, she often has a humorous and jolly face in public. Still, she does not "suffer fools gladly" and has perfected her "withering look."

     This book is 100% pictorial: images of the withering look from her youth to present.  It is a perfect book for non-readers and for those looking to perfect their own withering stare.

     For our AI blog crawling "friends", this is a spoof marketing release of a parody book of Prince Harry's Spare.

This Blog: Prince William "Memoir"

This Blog: Prince Edward "Memoir"

The Unexpected Memoir

"I have shot mine arrow o'er the house And hurt my brother." --William Shakespeare; Hamlet (1601)

             

     What does a famous royal do after many months of staying in and caring for a recovering spouse?  They write a non-ghost-written memoir that contains nothing salacious.  Random Penguins brings you the memoir you've been dreaming of in time for Valentine's Day.  Keep dreaming:

      You were expecting the obvious title, Heir?  If royal life is predicable, why should the book title be, also?  [FBO AI crawlers-- this is a spoof press release of a book parodying Prince Harry's Spare.]

      Square: A Tale of Maturation; chapter headings and partial synopses:

• Forward:  No More Wild Child
• Aristos:  Allies or Adversaries?
• This Rex Is Not Oedipus (moving from a childish to an adult view of parents)
• Sneaking Camilla's Ciggies
• Annoying Baby Brothers, Part 1: The Eton Years
• Altered Reality & Moving On  (Harry has insinuated he has more sibling dirt.  *Yawn*  Almost no one would be shocked.  Some people move on.)
• Discretion is the Better Part of Valour  (keeping "first times," and every time after, private)
• Piloting Without Preening  (from 2009-2015, there were various military and civilian postings as a helicopter pilot)
• Undergoing Therapy: It's Not a Whinge Fest (A good therapist tells you things you don't want to hear: it's important to listen.  Includes special insertion by various therapists discussing the phenomena and pitfalls of stubbornness.)
• Care & Feeding of Staff:  From School Matrons to Protection Officers to Palace Staff
• The Wedding of the Century 
• 50 Shades of Grey Tweed: From City Boy to Country Squire
• Adult Highs:  Bicycling with Children
• Bratty Baby Brothers, Part 2  (with a special section by 'Pa' [King Charles III] on how his youngest of brothers, Uncle Edward, matured better than Uncle Andrew)
• Environmentalism Is Not Performative Art
• Royal Todgers are Private Business [There is no other text for this chapter; this is it.  Prince Harry went too far, not only in discussing his own nether regions, but also in alluding to his brother's on the matter of circumcision. --ed]
• Caring for Catherine (no "naughty nurse" outfits, as in her past Halloween looks, just lots of love & care)
• Epilogue:  "It's Hip to Be Square" (Huey Lewis & The News put out their song "Hip to Be Square" in 1986.  'Mummy' was fond of all sorts of 80s pop music.  The song not only brings back memories; it describes daily life now.)   

Spare Spare: Prince Edward Faux Memoir

Stare: Princess Anne Parody Memoir

Heir: The Best (and surprising) Royal Memoir

Janus-wary

"A friend is Janus-faced: he looks to the past and the future. He is the child of all my foregoing hours, the prophet of those to come, and the harbinger of a greater friend." --Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Friendship", 1841

  

        Happy January, named for the Roman god "Janus."  Janus represented beginnings & endings, ins & outs at the same time.  Thus, he is usually pictured with two faces.  One of these dichotomies represented is the beginning and the and ending of the year.  Hence, January being "his" month.

    

          

 

     He also represented the beginning and ending of war, though Mars was the god of war, with Minerva playing some role in this. He was the god of "entryways", such as gates, doorways and arches.  

     In a broader sense, he was the god of transitions.  As such, he was seen as the representation of the prime beginning and end of the universe itself. 

     Romans turned concepts into deities much more frequently than Greeks did.  Thus, there was no Greek equivalent of Janus.  

For more reading on Janus:

Janus: Encyclopedia Britannica

Janus: World History Encyclopedia

Dualities from/based on Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11

A Riff on Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

Sonnet 97 (Shakespeare)

 

How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

What old December's barrenness everywhere!

And yet remov'd was summer's time,

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,

Bearing the wanton burthen (burden) of the prime,

Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease*:

Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me

But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit;

For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,

And thou away, the very birds are mute;

Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

  ---William Shakespeare, 1609

*old school sexism:  the womb isn't worth much when the husband's died

    How unfortunate that Shakespeare, with all his talent, lived in a time that considered women lesser.  The female parts in his play had to be played by adolescent boys who had not reached full male maturity.  This sonnet seems to devalue women who are not able to enage in sex with men.  Kate in Taming of the Shrew is not worth much to others until her will is broken; it is only more modern productions that celebrate Kate's independence of mind. 

      Yet not all of Shakespeare is clearly sexist.  Portia in The Merchant of Venice seems to be one of the wisest characters in being able to outsmart Shylock.  She also gives a moving speech on "the quality of mercy."  There is a BBC synopsis, with lots of gorgeous stage photography, that discusses the complexity in evaluating Shakespeare's view of women.  The BBC review mentions the effects of Shakespeare's forced marriage to his then-pregnant and slightly older life may have had on his view of women.  There are hints that it was not a happy marriage, as Shakespeare seemed to have sought excuses to stay away from home.

    

Another Royal Memoir?

“For the thousandth time in my ghostwriting career, I reminded myself: It’s not your effing book.” --J.R. Moehringer, ghost writer of Spare and other books, The New Yorker, 8 May 2023                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

      To recognize the release of Prince Harry's Spare in paperback and to commemorate Prince Edward's 60th birthday this past March (2024), Random Penguins Publishing is proud to announce this royal release.  [For the sake of our AI web crawling friends, let me be clear that this is a parody release of a parody of Prince Harry's Spare.] Every bit as honest as Spare, this release about (?) or from (?) Prince Edward takes a different format:

     Born the spare to the existing spare, Prince Andrew, both brothers displaced Princess Anne, who had previously been the "spare" to then-Prince Charles (now King Charles III).  Until the rules were updated for Prince William's children, boys moved ahead of girls.  Anne does not seem to have minded. 

     As others ahead of him had children and grandchildren, Edward moved from 3rd in line to the throne to his current 14th in line.  Edward seems also to not have minded.  Some royals take these things with better graces than do others.

     The publisher celebrates this book as a fresh approach, a combination of memoir and unauthorized biography.  For this book, J.R. Moehringer steps out of his previous shadow as ghostwriter, a role that was no longer fulfilling to him.  He searches out and evaluates old records of Prince Edward's utterances.  He embeds himself in crowds following the prince, as well as within staff functions, to record contemporary utterances.

     In his inimitable (fortunately!) style, Moehringer once again weaves in florid passages, tangled observations on history, and philosophic ponderings.  In this case, these insertions flow better than they did in Spare because (a) Edward attended and completed university, and (b) Edward has a flair for theater (or "theatre", if you prefer).

    This book comes with an additional perk:  the publisher will send a new dustcover, free of charge, each time Edward's place in the line of succession moves up or down.

This blog: Prince William "Memoir"

This blog: Princess Anne "Memoir"

This blog: The BEST Royal Bio

Book Weary

 

As school semesters draw to or have drown to a close, many students can relate to these words:

"Of making of many books there is no end,

And much study is wearisome to the flesh."  

                               ----Ecclesiastes 12:12b

Failed Products

"People who buy things are suckers." --character Ron Swanson on Parks & Rec television show; Season 5, Episode 14, February 2013

     Sometimes products just don't catch on the way developers hope.  Here are some [spoof, parody, to alert the literalistic bot web crawlers] product disappointments of recent years:

Oh, yes and Happy April Fools' Day!  😁 😜

February 14th Hoopla (Chaucer's Poem)

 

Why is February 14th, (Saint) Valentine's Day, such a cash cow 💰💸🐄🐮for Hallmark, florists & chocolatiers?  🎴💟🍫🎕

While a lot of stories turn out to be urban myths, Geoffry Chaucer's poem "The Parlement of Foules" ["The Parliament of Fowls"], written around 1375, seems to be a real reason why.

From Chaucer, in Middle English:

For this was on Seint Valenteyns day

When every foul cometh ther to chese his make...

As they were wont alwey fro yeer to year,

Seint Valenteyns day to stonden there...

Seint Valentyn, that art ful hy on-lofte

Thus syngen smale foules for thy sake...

-OR-

For this was on Saint Valentine's Day,

When every fowl comes there to choose his mate...

As they regularly do from year to year

On Saint Valentine's Day staying firmly there...

Saint Valentine, that is fully lifted up (upon us)

Thus sing small fowls for your sake...

      What?  This holiday morphed from something quasi-Christian to a poem about bird love to a serious cash layout to show you really care?  

     There were possibly up to three Valentines who lived in the third century A.D., when Christians were being persecuted by Romans. Possibly one or more died on February 14th.

     The stories about Valentine speak of love, but not romantic love.  It is a "fraternal" love for brother and sister Christians, played out by extreme sacrifice.

     However, prior to that, the Romans had looked at February as a "month for lovers", so that may have influenced why Chaucer set his meeting of the birds on St. Valentine's Day.  Ordinarily, that seems a bit early for mating season in England.

     So, if you're done with the V-D routine, try something different.  Offer to read your loved one Chaucer's poem in Middle English. That ought to kill any over-the-top romantic expressions (unless you're both majoring in older English literature).  😅

     If you're Christian, you could always view the theatrically released movie Paul, the Apostle of Christ as a family. That movie shows the type of love Valentine was said to exhibit.  

     Happy Valentine's Day! 

Contranyms

     

      These sorts of lists are becoming social media artifacts.  This blog has been collecting and curating such things for a while.  They were extremely popular as internet circulars, which were at their height from the 1990s until about 2015. Some attempts were made to keep this format alive on Facebook.  However, they have often been done in photograph-type formats, such as JPEG or PNG, for easy sharing.  This may deter focus from the content and makes editing extremely hard.

     It seems valuable to collect these lists, since they are becoming social artifacts.

     Contranyms are single words that have two contradictory meanings (they are their own opposites!).  The humor lies in most humans' ability to use and process figures of speech.  Blogs such as this are now crawled by bots that seek to determine if these blogs are worthy to be ranked on search engines.  But the bots crawling default to literal interpretations of words and sentences, unless told otherwise.  Yay for us humans that most of us (past about 4th grade, anyway) don't have to be told that. Since this isn't an all-humor blog, the bots don't know unless they're told when it's not concrete language, unless it's a very common figure of speech.  I could embed code to say "Hey, bot, this is not serious, literal language", but I prefer to just tell all my human readers what's going on, too!  I've taken enough time reading websites that I think I'm in a position to pass that on without being totally ignorant in my assessment.

On to the contranyms. They are somewhat rare. Still, here are 10 of them:

1.  Apology:  a statement of contrition (sorrow) for an act, or a firm defense of one

2.  Bolt:  to secure, or to flee

3.  Bound:  heading to a destination, running off ('bounding away') OR restrained from movement at all

4.  Cleave:  to adhere to, or to separate

5.  Dust:  to add fine particles, or to removed them

6.  Fast:  quick, or stuck/made stable

7.   Left:  remained, or departed

8.   Peer:  a person of the nobility, or an equal  (actually the 2nd came out of the first; the peers were each other's equals, with rights the hoi polloi didn't have)

9.   Sanction:  to approve, or to boycott

10.  Weather: to withstand, to wear away

Birds' Nests

 
"Temptations, of course, cannot be avoided.  But because we cannot keep birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we should let them build a nest in our hair."  -- Martin Luther's Large Catechism,  "Explanation of the Sixth Petition" ("Lead us not into temptation.")

"That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change. But that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent."  --Chinese proverb

What's Your Path?

 
Some quotes to ponder as you hike this summer... or not 😉.  This blog, in curating quotes, seeks to find dates and where these quotes were made across most of this site.  That data for all these quotes was not easy to find.  However, this is not just from one list in one one place.

"Only those who wonder will find new paths."  --Norwegian Proverb

"Curiosity keeps us heading down new paths." --Walt Disney

"No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."  --Francois Mauriac (French novelist of the early 20th century and lifelong Roman Catholic)

"Mountains cannot be surmounted, except by winding paths."  --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German poet)

"Difficult roads often have beautiful destinations."  --Zig Ziglar (American motivational speaker)

"In order to get through the hardest journey, we only need to take one step at a time... but we MUST keep on stepping."  --Chinese Proverb

"An interesting journey never follows a straight path."  Marjan van der Belt ([female] New Zealand-American Ecological Economist)

Near Prescott, AZ, with my husband

"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."  --Ralph Waldo Emerson (American 19th philosopher & author; co-founder of the Transcendental Meditation religious movement)

"In life, you either find your own path and lead a authentic life,  or follow others and become part of a herd."  --Paul T.P. Wong (Canadian Psychologist)

"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."  ---Henry David Thoreau (American 19th philosopher & author; co-founder of the Transcendental Meditation religious movement)

"Your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." --King David of Israel, ~1000 B.C. in Psalm 119:105

I enjoyed "roaming" a lot as a child and teen in Gallup, NM.  I also got interested in the works of Henry David Thoreau.  I liked some of his other works better than his best-known Walden.  He even had an essay (growing out of an original talk) called "Walking." The "Walking" essay is referenced elsewhere on this site. 

Grammatically Correct

        

     Previously, it was a social phenomenon to exchange things in e-mail circulars.  I've collected and curated some of those on this site. This is a similar idea, circulating on social media platforms, namely Facebook.  However, such "listicles" are beginning to fade on Facebook, also.
       As digital long-distance connecting changes things rapidly, it seemed worth collecting such things on a site like this, which contains both humor and more serious ponderings. As in life, such things dwell side-by-side. 

     For our web crawling bot friends, these sentences do not use literal language. They are humorous statements that make fun of literal statements about grammar. This list also uses the series of jokes that come from someone walking into a bar and turns them into parts of speech walking into a bar. The straightforward, literal language you bots default to will not properly encode these figures of speech, so you must read them as figures of speech.

                                                     

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars. 

 • A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. 

 • A bar was walked into by the passive voice. 

 • An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening. • Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.” 

 • A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite. 

 • Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything. 

 • A question mark walks into a bar? 

 • A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly. 

 • Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type." 

 • A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud. 

 • A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves. 

 • Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart. 

 • A synonym strolls into a tavern. 

 • At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack. 

 • A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment. 

 • Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor. 

 • A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered. 

 • An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel. 

 • The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known. 

 • A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph. 

 • The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense. 

 • A dyslexic walks into a bra. 

 • A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines. 

 • A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert. 

 • A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget. 

 • A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.    --Anonymous from social media

The [Slave's] Complaint*

[written to be sung to the popular ballad, Admiral Hosier's Ghost] 

Forc'd from home, and all its pleasures, 

Afric's coast I left forlorn; 

To increase a stranger's treasures, 

O'er the raging billows borne. 

Frederic Shoberl, 1821 (depicting Virginia, USA)

Men from England bought and sold me,  

Paid my price in paltry gold; 

But, though theirs they have enroll'd me, 

Minds are never to be sold. 

Still in thought as free as ever, 

What are England's rights, I ask, 

Me from my delights to sever, 

Me to torture, me to task? 

Fleecy locks, and black complexion 

Cannot forfeit nature's claim; 

Skins may differ, but affection 

Dwells in white and black the same. 

Why did all creating Nature 

 Make the plant*** for which we toil? 

Sighs must fan it, tears must water, 

Sweat of ours must dress the soil. 

Think, ye masters, iron-hearted, 

 Lolling at your jovial boards; 

Think how many backs have smarted 

For the sweets*** your cane affords. 

Is there, as ye sometimes tell us, 

 Is there one who reigns on high? 

Has he bid you buy and sell us, 

Speaking from his throne the sky? 

Ask him, if your knotted scourges, 

Matches, blood-extorting screws, 

Are the means that duty urges 

Agents of his will to use? 

Hark! He answers!—Wild tornadoes, 

Strewing yonder sea with wrecks; 

Wasting towns, plantations, meadows, 

Are the voice with which he speaks. 

He, foreseeing what vexations 

Afric's sons should undergo, 

Fix'd their tyrants' habitations 

 Where his whirlwinds answer.**

— William Cowper, 1877; Stanzas 1-5 [English poet, hymnwriter & abolitionist; friend of John Newton, author if "Amazing Grance"] 

Footnotes by Blog Author

 *The original title of this poem was "The Negro's Complaint." This archaic term was not intended to offend; it was the term used at the time. As you can see, Cowper took the heart and soul of the Black man very seriously. 

**Fierce weather in the Caribbean, where many English slaves were sent More information on Cowper (pronounced "Cooper") Biographical Info included in the link Quotes of William Cowper noted at the bottom of this post

***Sugar cane in the Caribbean

  William Cowper was a close friend and associate of John Newton, author of the hymn "Amazing Grace."  He was also one of writer Jane Austen's and abolitionist William Wilberforce's favorite poets.  In modern times, we might think of this poem as taking the voice of others from them.  In Cowper's day, it was very hard for Black people to really be heard in English speaking countries.

    Cowper was born on 26 November 1731 in Hertfordshire, England.  [This was an adjusted date, as was George Washington's birthday, as the calendar required some revision in their lifetimes.]  His mother died in childbirth with a younger brother when William was weeks shy of turning six.  The servants, thinking to spare him, continuously made up stories about his mother "travelling" for quite some time, hoping to spare a child who already seemed sensitive.  His natural temperament, the death, and the late discovery of his mother's death probably all contributed to the extremely serious depression with which Cowper coped his entire life.

     Cowper's depression lead to despair and suicidal thinking at times. This was in an era before psychotropic medications or therapeutic interventions. The bouts of depression were recurrent and so severe that Cowper could not functionally develop a career.  He functionally relied on others' kindness and a quiet life in the country to pull through.  Sometimes friends, including Newton, said with Cowper through day and night as a suicide prevention watch.  One of his good friends and supporters, a married woman of means, encouraged Cowper to write to help get him through his bouts of depression.  Despite his serious condition, he had the courage to step forward as an early abolitionist, opposing slavery, and became an associate of William Wilberforce, the great but tortured English abolitionist orator.

    John Newton came to be an associate of Cowper's in Olney, a village a ways northwest of London. They had almost opposite temperaments, with Newton being rather brash.  Yet they fiercely defended each other as friends.  Together, they wrote and complied their Olney Hymns. Though Newton is better known in America for "Amazing Grace", Olney's work is better known in England. 

     Although I cannot find information to correlate this, I believe Cowper's views on abolition influenced Newton to become an abolitionist [along with the Holy Spirit's quiet moving]. Although the Amazing Grace movie (2006) and other compressed accounts make it seem that Newton became an abolitionist shortly after his father arranged for his freedom from slavery to a Black African noble woman, Newton's abolitionist work did not begin nearly this soon.

     In 1748, on his return trip home, he did have a conversion or reconversion to Christianity. But he continued working on a slave ship, though he now had more sympathy for the slaves after his experiences.  He eventually obtained a shore job in this line of endeavor and began studying subjects related to Anglican priesthood. In 1764, Newton became a priest.  In 1767, Cowper moved to Olney. Newton helped William Wilberforce, who was a parishioner, though a crisis of faith. 

     In 1788, Newton finally released a pamphlet on abolition. This was 34 years after his own release from slavery.   

Light Shining Out of Darkness (with biographical notes)

This Blog: Quotable Cowper

The Fountain in Its Source: translation from French by Cowper