ragbag readers’ favourite stage directions

who knew that my brief breech of the proscenium would cause so many of you to send me erotic poulets filled with your own favourite stage directions? who knew that stage directions were a thing that a *regular* person had a favourite of? who cares? thanks to 4 anonymous ragbag readers (or people that pretend to read it), today’s post has written itself:

from shakespeare’s titus andronicus:

• Enter the empress’ sons, with lavina, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravish’d

from shakespeare’s much ado about nothing:

• Enter Prine, Leonato, Claudio and Jacke Wilson

the only problem is that “jacke wilson” is not in this scene nor in the play at all. from wagner’s götterdämmerung:

• The flames immediately flare up so that the fire fills the whole space in front of the hall and appears to seize on the building itself. Horrified, the men and women press to the very front of the stage. When the whole stage seems engulfed in fire, the glow suddenly dies down, so that soon all that remains is a cloud of smoke which drifts away to the back of the stage, setting the horizon as a layer of dark cloud. At the same time the Rhine overflows its banks in a mighty flood, surging over the conflagration.

from ring lardner’s [dadaist drama] i gaspiri:

• The curtain is lowered for seven days to denote the lapse of a week

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beckett bonus: the stage directions for beckett’s ghost trio specify that the door leading to a room stage right should be ‘imperceptibly ajar’.

peculiar elizabethan stage directions

• enter hieronimo; he knocks up the curtain
• hell is discovered
• volpone peeps from behind a traverse
• eugenius discovered sitting loaded with many irons; a lampe burning by him; then enter clowne with a piece of browne bread and a garret root
• a couch discovered with the duke on it
• enter lopez at a table with jewels and money upon it, an egg roasting by a candle
• exit orestes dragging clytemnestra’s body
• enter gloucester and buckingham in rotten armour, marvelous ill-favoured
• haughty, centaur, mavis, mrs otter, epicene, trusty, having discovered part of the scene above
• enter giovanni and annabella lying on a bed
• nuns discovered singing
• dashing of brains heard within

and of course, the always-intriguing cue from the winter’s tale

• exit, pursued by a bear

the japanese are such an interesting little people

in his treatise on bromides, burgess lists 47 trite remarks used by the narrow-minded. he says:

It is not merely because this remark is trite; it is because that, with the Bromide, the remark is inevitable. One expects it from him, and one is never disappointed. And, moreover, it is always offered by the Bromide as a fresh, new, apt and rather clever thing to say. He really believes, no doubt, that it is original—it is, at any rate, neat, as he indicates by his evident expectation of applause.

he calls these phrases bromidioms. perhaps the single shiniest bromidiom of our time is <ahem> “that’s what she said.” here are a few from burgess’ time. it’s a gas to see how little things have changed in the intervening one hundred years:

• “I don’t know much about Art, but I know what I like”
• “It isn’t money, it’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing I object to.”
• “Why aren’t there any good stories in the magazines, nowadays?”
• “The Japanese are such an interesting little people!”
• “The Salvation Army reaches a class of people that churches never do.”
• “It’s bad enough to see a man drunk—but, oh! a woman!”
• “It’s a mistake for a woman to marry a man younger than herself —women age so much faster than men. Think what she’ll be, when he’s fifty!”
• “It isn’t so much the heat, as the humidity.”
• “I’d rather have a good horse than all the automobiles made.”
• “I’d rather go to a dentist than have my photograph taken.”
• “You can live twenty years in New York and never know who is your next-door neighbor is.”

something that happened

here we have a list of original titles of famous books. some of them are absolutely mindboggling. would alice in wonderland have done as well at the boxoffice this last weekend if it was still called alice’s adventures underground? is there something appealing about catch-22 that catch-18 lacks? would anyone have ever purchased gone with the wind if it were instead published under the gooferific title, ba ba black sheep?

• incident at west egg · the great gatsby
• stephen hero · portrait of the artist as a young man
  
• the sea cook · treasure island
  
• first impressions · pride and prejudice
• all’s well that ends well* · war and peace
• alice’s adventures underground · alice in wonderland
  
• the last man in europe · 1984
• tenderness · lady chatterley’s lover
• elinor and marianne · sense and sensibility
  
• the summer of the shark · jaws
• catch-18 · catch-22
• ba ba black sheep · gone with the wind
• a jewish patient begins his analysis · portnoy’s complaint
• the various arms · to have and have not
• bar-b-q · the postman always rings twice
• something that happened · of mice and men

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*or according to seinfeld: war, what is good for?

the 14 different types of animals

while we are on the subject of odd systems of classification, we should visit jorge luis borges’ bizarre taxonomic scheme in “the analytical language of john wilkins.” here, borges cites a fictional chinese encyclopedia which divides all animals into the following categories*:

(a) those that belong to the emperor
(b) embalmed ones
(c) those that are trained
(d) suckling pigs
(e) mermaids
(f) fabulous ones
(g) stray dogs
(h) those that are included in this classification
(i) those that tremble as if they were mad
(j) innumerable ones
(k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s-hair brush
(l) etcetera
(m) those that have just broken the flower vase
(n) those that at a distance resemble flies

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*if this post were a pop-up video, the following bubble would now pop into place: mad philosopher, michel foucault credited this passage as the impetus for his book the order of things.

the ugliest english words

perhaps you are wondering what the yin to the yang of beautiful german words is. it’s ugly english words, duh. way back in 1946—when joe davis was slamming his way to his 15th consecutive world snooker championship—the national association of teachers of speech (nats) organised a contest to determine the ten ugliest words in english. they are:

• crunch
• flatulent
• gripe
• jazz
• phlegmatic
• plump
• plutocrat
• sap
• treachery

drumroll please: the ugliest english word was determined to be cacophony. no offense, nats—but don’t you think that it’s just a little too convenient that the worst-sounding word in english means “having an ill sound?” what is your favourite noun…let me guess…is it noun?

the most beautiful german words

in october 2004—when the boston red sox were homerunning themselves to becoming the champions of world baseball—the goethe institute and the council for the german language were conducting their own little competition. their goal was to determine the most beautiful german word based on over 20,000 entries. here are the leading contenders.

• lebenslust - zest for life
• erdbeermund - voluptuous lips
• teufelsbraten - rascal
• wolkenkuckucksheim - cloud cuckoo land
• glueck - happiness
• liebe - love
• mitgefuehl - compassion
• pusteblume - dandelion
• sehnsucht - longing
• vergissmeinnicht - forget-me-not

the real star of this list is obviously wolkenkuckucksheim. apparently, it means an “unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect,” which makes it close in meaning to the english bizarro world.

drumroll please: the german word judged to be the most beautiful was habseligkeiten which refers to the paltry belongings of an almost penniless person. now go forth and use these words to write philosophy.

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source here.

the 20 most common dreams among college students in 1958

what is your favourite flavour of family feud? the al from home improvement one? the j. peterman one? for my money, it is and always has been the louie anderson version.

let’s roleplay. let us suppose that you are a fairly attractive girl-nextdoor type from a fairly typical american family and i am louie anderson, a comedic giant. i saddle up to you like a disoriented bear just reëmerging from hibernation—a tide of titillation washes over your supple flesh. with the irresistible breath of yesterday’s cheese curds and in the voice of fran drescher, i ask you, “what do college students in 1958 dream about while asleep?” i have rocked your world. take a moment to compose yourself and respond.

here are the answers:

20. killing someone
19. seeing oneself as dead
18. failing an examination
17. fire
16. being nude in public
15. being smothered
14. being inappropriately dressed
13. snakes
12. swimming
11. finding money
10. being locked up
9. a loved one is dead
8. being frozen with fright
7. eating
6. arriving too late
5. sexual experiences
4. school, teachers, and studying
3. trying repeatedly to do something
2. being attacked or pursued
1. falling

we are done roleplaying (for now) so i will point out—if you haven’t already pieced it together—that the dreams dreamt in 1958 are the same dreams dreamt by you, me² and louie anderson today—and will probably be the exact same dreams dreamt in the future by our great great cyborg grandchildren.

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1. from “the universality of typical dreams” by griffith, miyagi, and tago (1958).
2. conspicuously absent from this list is my reöccurring dream where i assassinate muammar al-gaddafi by sneezing my tooth fillings into his carotid artery.

misc portmanteaux deux

if there is one thing metallica fans like us know, it’s that metallica is a portmanteau of metallic + replica. speaking of portmanteaux, here are a few that i have been dreaming up since posting the first list exactly 400 days ago*.

• fauxtest: (faux + protest) when one pretends to object but secretly consents. as in: “i know that you actually want to see the latest rom-com with that curvy starlet, stop fauxtesting.”
• nonline: (not + online) the opposite of online, a synonym of irl. as in: “i have over 400 online friends but only six nonline ones.”
• femine: (feminine + famine) a dearth of females (cf. sausage party)
• purityrannical: (puritanical + tyrant) of the nature of a religiously and politically conservative authoritarian figure
• bar-b-coup: (barbecue + coup) to override your vegetarian friend’s crappy suggestion to meet up at a nasty falafel joint and instead reroute the party to a bitching bbq spot.

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*this is the second post in the misc portmanteax series. posts in this series publish themselves every 400 days. the next post is scheduled for release on february 6, 2011 at which point the mayan gods will have eaten the earth for fourings.

deceptive animal names

• a titmouse is a bird
• a prairie dog is a rodent
• a fisher cat is a weasel
• a walking stick is an insect
• a geoduck is a mollusk
• a sea horse is… hold on here, wtf is a sea horse?

anywaysies: i invite you to add to this list as you encounter other deceptive animal names throughout your life. a groundrule: animals with half-deceptive/half-straightforward names like bird dogs, catfish, and trouser snakes are not of interest to me (with regard to this particular pursuit).

marginally related: deceptively named pennsylvania colleges.

know your foods that end in -tine

• a là florentine: a dish characterised by a bed of spinach on which the principle ingredient—topped with a mornay sauce—sits
• ballotine: a stuffed meat dish (cf. turducken, geoducken, etc.)
• clementine: a citrus fruit hybrid of a tangerine and a seville orange
• galantine: a forcemeat wrapped in skin, poached, and usually served cold in aspic
• gratiné: a dish served with a browned crust of breadcrumbs or cheese
• langoustine: a small lobster used in paella
• ovaltine: the malty beverage that slakes grandma’s unquenchable thirst (see also: a manhattan)
• tartine: an open-faced sandwich
• saltine: the official cracker of the game called cracker