A melancholy poem from Bed Bug. LORD BEDBUG Lord Bedbug crawls upon his throne Of spattered sheets and spotted ticking, Where he commands the nightly pricking That makes our vital force his own. Ah, have you now seen Bedbug plain? And has he used you for his feeding, And stuffed his gut with all the […]
Entries Tagged as 'L'
Lord Bedbug
November 28th, 2023 · No Comments
LOGO + LOGO = LOGOS
October 5th, 2023 · Comments Off on LOGO + LOGO = LOGOS
Some capitalist theology.
Let’s Not Hit Each Other
March 15th, 2023 · Comments Off on Let’s Not Hit Each Other
Let’s Not Hit Each Other is now available from Black Scat Books! This collection by the incomparable Alphonse Allais includes a flying whale, an inflatable colonel, telepathic snails, a summer crime, the insularization of France, missionary parrots, an amphibious herring, twin cousins, and proposals for billboard dogs, deodorized urine, calming the sea with varnish, and crossing […]
Loves, Delights, and Organs
March 6th, 2022 · 2 Comments
My new annotated translation of “Loves, Delights, and Organs,” by Alphonse Allais, is now available from Black Scat Books. Allais was a peerless humorist whose wild imagination, and fascination with technology and language, made him a favorite of Alfred Jarry, André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Umberto Eco, and generations of writers. The Pataphysical College named him […]
Lasciate l’ombre
October 29th, 2021 · Comments Off on Lasciate l’ombre
A setting of part of Il Vendemmiatore, by Luigi Tansillo, which I encountered quoted by Giordano Bruno in his dialogue La Cena de le ceneri. The part I set is: Lasciate l’ombre, ed abbracciate il vero; Non cangiate il presente col futuro. Io d’aver di miglior già non dispero; Ma per viver più lieto e […]
Let’s Ridicule the Nightingale
June 3rd, 2020 · 1 Comment
The nightingale is obviously a loser, since it makes no money from its song. Let’s all join in and ridicule it. The complete song can be found in The Doug Skinner Songbook.
Logic and Rhetoric
January 15th, 2020 · 2 Comments
A few entries on logic and rhetoric, from the Scat Noir Encyclopaedia. ALLITERATIVE METONYMY: A rhetorical device in which a noun is replaced by an associated noun beginning with the same letter; for example: It’s a digestion eat digestion world. ANAPHORIC APOSTROPHE: A rhetorical device in which a person not present is addressed repeatedly; for […]
Let’s Not Leave the House Anymore
February 3rd, 2019 · 3 Comments
A cheerful little song about antisociality. I often performed it in the ’90s, with Carol Benner playing a lively pizzicato obbligato on viola.
Lunch on Mount Kazbek
April 22nd, 2018 · Comments Off on Lunch on Mount Kazbek
Here’s another excerpt from my collection The Snowman Three Doors Down. In this story, the eagles discover that Prometheus is open for business. (For the rest, please buy a copy of the book.) LUNCH ON MOUNT KAZBEK Zeus looked on with satisfaction as Kratos, Bia, and Hephaestus chained Prometheus to the face of Mount Kazbek. […]
Long Live Life!
November 20th, 2017 · Comments Off on Long Live Life!
Long Live Life is now available! It’s my seventh translation of the peerless French humorist Alphonse Allais, a favorite of Surrealists, ‘Pataphysicians, and astute readers everywhere! This is the first publication in English of the master’s 1892 collection, Vive la Vie! — stories culled from the pages of the legendary Bohemian paper Le Chat Noir, […]