Author Archives: Xenomanes

On the thermodynamics of conscientiousness

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It was too late for a clever retort.
It was too late for a clever retort.

Take it as a given that the Harried Ainu have more words for entropy than we have words for the Hairy Ainiu.

And given that if they spoke as clearly as do you and I, they wouldn’t have such a miserable existence, 

Then let me recite one episode from the transcripts collected by D. , one of the first western theologists to try to straighten out the heathens. 

We were pennies from heaven on our honeymoon. I put a drop in the tank at Leadville. A dollar on the horses in Black Diamond. I almost caught Morton’s halitosis as I was getting too big for my britches.

Was the season of the crickets in the hard drive.

What to Say When Someone Farts

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Michael Gilleland
Laudator Temporis Acti

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 115 (tr. Alan H. Sommerstein):
What sound, what scent has been wafted to me, unseen,
from gods, from mortals, or from both together?

Ennius, Annals 451 Skutsch (tr. E.H. Warmington):
And the trumpet in terrible tones taratantara blared.

Titinius, fragment 20 Ribbeck:
Meanwhile a stinking breeze assaults the nose.

Vergil, Aeneid 3.228:
An awful sound amid foul stench.

Dante, Inferno 21.139 (tr. John D. Sinclair):
And he made a trumpet of his rear.

William Shakespeare, King John 5.2.117:
What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?

John Milton, Paradise Lost 1.236-237
A singéd bottom all involved
With stench and smoke.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Orpheus,” lines 35-37:
What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,
But more melodious than the murmuring wind
Which through the columns of a temple glides?

Man’s favorite spurt

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Madame Mac Méod (future Mata Hari) éxécutant des danses brahmaniques dans la bibliothèque du Musée Guimet de Paris *13-3-1905

This is the behind-the-scenes account of the deeds of one Harvie Winestein, late of Hollywood, one among the many who shall be renamed maneless, though that thought trigger the hairs in your fundament. 

Man’s favorite sport, according to valedictorians, is knocking up the better half. Legend has it that Winestein proved this to the nth degree. But legends have a half life.  We now know less than we used to, and are forced to invoke fuzzy logic and high-school chemistry.

Setting out in the tub of our redemption to do the autobiography of this Harvie, also known as Shaggy Dog, and the Creature of the Black Habit, we met with a headwind to choke a horse. The best we could muster was to cover our asses as the ice closed in. 

When Harvie was casting for Been Her, he let out so much line that his leader got entangled, and the backup tripped on their shoelaces. 

World Tour

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His wife travelled with him to exotic locales to reenact scenes from the great books, according to the decision of the wise ones, western as well as eastern.

It was in the fall of the year that the Hairy Ainu abducted Saint Pocahontas, as she and her retinue made their way along the route now known as the Scallop’s Gonad. It was a major victory for the Ainu in their battle against Saint Peter, who had been sent by the devil to put a twist on things.

The victory celebrations went beyond the believable as you can imagine.

Xenomanes didn’t arrive until  festivities had petered out. There were few survivors. Their divergent versions of shed little light.

Road to Damascus

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How Jimmy became the most popular boy in town

How the devil did Saul Paul get into the gospels? He showed his hand when he put away childish things. But except you become as little children, said the son of god, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Where there’s heaven, there’s hell. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Can you say exactly who you are?

Try to judge man as a hole. Not just what sticks up out of the ground. And judge woman as half and half. Not just what’s out of site. Nurse your wounds and doctor her figures. 

Wait. I thought I heard something. 

No, it was just a digger on the graveyard shift, whistling in the wind. 

Yes. I heard something.

No, it was just a worm turning the screw.

The Spas of the World

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Odd jobs for your phonograph

In his grand tour to seek solace for what he deemed his preternatural itch, Panurge visited the spas of the world . Under the patronage of Pantagruel, his entourage comprised Xenomanes the navigator, Canute the archbishop of Cannes, Broomhilda the matriarch of Brest, Walloon of Bedford Stryversant the countdown of Monty Cristo, Jasper John the planter of seedy evacuations, and the farmer who shall remain nameless whose brother had just died. Not to mention the concubines and dancing girls.

Words of the High One

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They all want the same thing Santa, my ironing table

As the official organ of the department in charge of the security of the fatherland, mother fucker, we have been assigned the credentials by good god almighty — bow you head and bless yourself — to root into your fundamentals, just to see if there are any hints of deviation. 

First off we would like to sound out your frequencies. Could you hum along to this recording of the dispatch of the tattooed man by the hairy woman.

Watch what the webcam shows. He was first on the scene and on her like an amoeba. “If you can’t join ’em, lick ’em,” he said, half in jest, but half not. Join ’em with an em dash and an en space. Lick ’em lickety split, first across the post.

As you may be well aware, all the serious critics of our project have disappeared. We make no bones about it, they were but small potatoes. Those who rooted around have also disappeared. Are there any further questions?

He was busted looking at dirty pictures. He chanced upon the girlie magazines in the gutter outside the maternity ward. He who jeopardized his family jewels now seeks a handout. 

Virology

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The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses’s classification includes fifteen taxa: realm, subrealm, kingdom, subkingdom, phylum, subphylum, class, subclass, order, suborder, family, subfamily, genus, subgenus, and species, to be applied for viruses, viroids and satellite nucleic acids.

Snow White and the Seven Samuri

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What to do about a dirty mind? A mind in the guttural sense of the mud. This was the marching order, for the king had sniffed a pox in the wind.

We launched on D-day, as is written in the Book of Hours. When the H-man cometh and women deliver. T minus ten seconds.

She posed as the model for the figurehead of my ship in the year of our lord, I got to scratch my head.