Wilson
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2 – A world-class, screaming tautology, as “the final analysis” is, and may be defined as “that point at which all resolves into X or 0.”
3 – The difference between a diplomat and a lady:
When a diplomat says “yes”, he means “maybe.”
When he says “maybe,” he means “no,”
And if he says “no:” he is no diplomat.
When a lady says “no,” she means “maybe.”
When she says “maybe,” she means “yes.”
And if she says “yes,” she is no lady.
In which we learn that, at least in two instances, “maybe” exists but as a fiction of the self-delusive.
4 – “Things equal to themselves are equal to each other” (Grace Heisenberg, overheard).
5 – The payoff, punchline, or the resolution of his thesis was, of course, lost in the Fire at the Stop ’n’ Shop, but has been posited (Jacob Cohen, Mars and the Asteroids) thusly:
There does, of course, exist a real-life exemplar of “doors within doors.” It is the kitty door.
Greind, although trapped for eternity in endless space,* most certainly knew of its existence, for it appears on the cover of Item #21260-2, the Comic, Mr. Natural, found on the Bookshelf. The omission of the possibility mars his otherwise excellent tome. “Doors within doors” refers, and must refer, to the Kittyport’l®. And, as assuredly, its absence bespeaks a (conscious or no) psychotic antipathy to the feline,A or, to put it in its best possible light, a prejudice against cats.B
A – See also Hooray for the Digestive Tract! (R. Digest Publ., Niceville, N.Y.), from which we quote:
… the slap of the waves alongside the dory. “The wind’s shifted,” he thought. “No, it’s definitely backing east.”
He raised himself upon his elbow. Slowly, wincing at the pain. He looked down at the blackened flesh, the desiccated, salt-encrusted scab which ringed his wrist – his wrist, which for seventeen years had been chafed by the manacle.
“Better to die out here,” he thought. “Far better.” He was unaware that he’d spoken the thought aloud – so used was he to solitude. But spoken aloud he had, and his speech drew the attention of the sea mew which had – for one day? for three? perched on the gunnel tantalizingly just out of reach.
“Oh, stuff a sock in it,” the sea mew drawled. “Whaddaya want, egg in your beer? ’F you can’t stand the heat, keep out of the kitchen.”
“Go and eat garbage!” the man screamed. “Pose for eighth-rate holiday painters. I am not at all sure you are not a dream.”
“Fuck you,” the sea mewA1 said. “Shove it up your ass.”
The man lapsed back into what he profoundly hoped was delirium; for he found himself at an amateur production of what even his derangement could not but identify as The Sound of Music, by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Al – For a further treatment of the sea mew, see J. J. Audubon, Birds of the Atlantic Corridor.
A very fat lady carrying a BrownieA2 squeezed in front of him. “I didn’t know;” he thought, “the World held that much Calico …”A3
B – What does the above say of the author’s “felinist” omission of the possibility that the pet door might accommodate a ferret?*
A2 – See ‘The Best Christmas Present of Them All’.
A3 – The Calico appears again, of course, in Rybecki’s Dream: Night Two – The Mud on the Spikes Explained.”A3A
A3A – It does, indeed, but as the name of Rybecki’s cat. Has this writer no self-respect? That is the answer I am left with. Either that or brigands burst into his house and chained him to the toilet, or threatened to kill his maid unless he penned a stupid and spurious note. Is our life not complex enough, without this wilful “muddying of the Waters”?A3A1
A3A1 – The editor responds: “Yes, ‘Calico’ was the name of Rybecki’s cat. And Waters was the name of his butler. But do I jump all over you, you stupid shithead? (From “This Correspondence Now Must Cease”, Bongazine All-Rybecki issue, fall ’09.
* Aren’t we all?
* Or, more to the point, a dog.
1 – Oft quoted as the “False Anagram Pastiche,” for the last two “ND” lines, its celebrity is, of course, “a shuck,” as “Denial,” rightly, belongs as the last word in the second to last line; and, plus which, even if not, so what, as what could it mean that there was a poem the last two lines of which began with the letters “ND”? So what? Anyone could write one. Look here:
Get out of bed.
Go to the head.
Now blow your brains out.
Dead, dead, dead.
You get my point?
1 – Tales of the Old Wrangler.
2 – “Ode to the Missing Page,” in D. Wheeler (ed.), The World’s Worst Poems (Bobbs, Merril, 2021).
3 – Ibid.
4 – Subhead obituary, “The Death of Bennigsen,” New York Times.
5 – Not a convincing argument – we could be; it might be boring, but we could be …
6 – The “necessary term” was, of course, a password of the early Clubs. It was identified, by them, with the “Missing Page,” and there is some evidence that it described a super- or infra-cabal of initiates dedicated to a reconstruction of the Joke Code. This is generally accepted as its earliest verifiable use.
7 – Walt Whitman, “O Cocksuckers”, Bongazine, no. 232, “All Whitman” issue: “Lost, Lost for All Time …”
QUESTION: If lost for once, might we not say, “lost for all time”?
ANSWER: No. As in the case of if you lost your car keys and you didn’t know where they were* and, then, later on, you found them.
Scottie Grootch, Eugene, OR.A
A – It is notable that the Redactor took this prime example of “Rogue Responsa” to heart sufficiently to respond. We here reprint his “Letter to Scottie”:
Dear Scottie,
Thank you for your interest in my work. I am touched and pleased that you took the time to write.
Forgive me if I infer from your handwriting and syntax that you are not “fully grown to Man’s Estate.”
Do you have a dog?A1 What kind?
What sort of things do you like to do “for fun”?
Write and tell a lonely old man, would you?
Greind
Al – “If so” missing? Deleted?A1A
A1A – Missing, yes. But how remarkable that its Canine? How touching, how dear. How absence is merely noted in passing. For does it† humanizing – “Do you have a dog? What not bespeak a longing, no, a hunger for the kind?”
* Redundant.
† Its absence
1 – The quotation is found in the second book of Jane of Trent, in chapter 5, “Chet Seeks Comfort.” For a fuller understanding of the quotation, and its, to our mind, unaccountable – affection is hardly a strong enough word to the pre-Riot mind – I will make bold to remind the reader of one slim volume found on the Shelf in the Capsule: Beef Encounter, with its stained and dog-eared pages, bespeaking not only its place in the heart of Greind, but his enduring love of literature.
2 – “Well, hello,” the old man said, “and who might you be?”
“I, I’m Billy,” I responded. But as I looked at his eyes, my certainty fled. Who was this “Billy”; what was “I,” and what was this once essential, now obviously absurd, separation between sentient beings? Were we not all Part of the One? And was this knowledge not my joy, as I sloughed what I had, mistakenly, understood as my personality, and knew, at once, the Greater Thing?
“Do you like country music?” he said.
“I don’t know, sir,” I said. “It very much depends on the artist.” And then the moment was gone.
3 – Cf. A Ream is a Wish Your Heart Makes, op. cit.
1 – Carl Rogers, Go to Your Room, op. cit.
* Generally accounted “the world’s most useless motto.”
2 – T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pails Full of Wisdom.
* But who, then, for the love of Christ, is “Chet
”?
1 – And absolve.
2 – How secret could it have been, with the servants all around the whole time? See T’aint Easy Being Rich by “A Gentleman’s Gentleman” (Viscount Hault, 15th Earl of Kent).
* Too true
1 –“Hold on to yer seats!”, Bongazine, Halloween issue, October 2012.
2 – Wilson.
3 – The Redactor was, of course, [indecipherable].
4 – Omitted from this edition are the Editor’s Acknowledgments, and the “notorious” reference to “Bootsie in the Royal Navy,” which can be found as a footnote to the errata insert in the unbound galleys of the author’s Yo Ho Ho: Banned, Burnt and Discredited: Smut of the Sea (Progress Publishing House, Neopalatinsk): “Is anybody there … is anybody there … is anybody there …?”A
A – The rest of the transmission was, of course, but the persistence of the carrier tone, the “three bursts of sound,” and, then, what that age had come to call “The Silence.”
1 – Meaning uncertain. Poss. astrol.?
2 – The (disputed) passage continues:
Oh, but, oh, we’re happy. …! Why complain? Then let us sit down a while. I don’t regret coming at all. (He rummages in his sack.) Would you like an apple …?
* The phrase.