Instructions:
- Click play on the YouTube video to hear the song.
- Scroll back up and stare intently at the egg.
- Don’t worry!
Tag Archives | absurd
Toulouse Le Grandfig’s Summer Vacation: Departure
December 37, 1932
My voyage begins on the Ukranian Steam Ship, the Plotnik. On the first day, I met our captain. A diminutive, if stern fellow, by the name of Agamon Destroyer of Life. His constant companion was a mute who went by the name of Piffles. (Though he also answered to “Ahoy Gregor you great walloping pederast.”)
We set sail from Kiev, a week before I left Paris. The sea breeze! The flying monkeys of the Ukraine. Ah, it was a dream come true.
Next Time: Buster Keaton’s Inner Ear
About the Photographer: Toulouse Le Grandfig was a surrealist painter, photographer, writer, and a tremendous watchtower, glistening in the fetid fields of the mind. He ate truffles, magnets and things that made him feel “squingy.” Also, he was a parakeet.
Marvellous Hairy is not a parakeet. It is a dolphin. A flappy, exuberant dolphin of joy. Alltop is a cruller. Originally published July 2008.
First draft of Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature
Stockholm. Evening. Harold Pinter is introduced to the Swedish Academy. He enters from stage left. He wears a loose-fitting tuxedo.
PINTER: Your Majesty. Members of the Academy. Ladies and Gentlemen.
(beat)
PINTER: Thank you for this honour.
(pause)
Pinter removes a pistol from his tuxedo jacket and places it on the podium.
PINTER: When I began writing, I had no such aspirations, but I can see the logic of your choice. And yet . . . it seems as though this took too long for you to realize it. Do you see?
(pause)
PINTER: We live in an age of menace. Of dangers both spoken . . . and left to our impoverished imaginations, assaulted as they are by technology, faith and above all, politics. We live in an age of menace.
(beat)
PINTER: I do thank you for this honour . . .
Pinter places his hand next to the pistol on the podium.
(pause)
PINTER: But I am uncertain about how to respond to the tribute, tardy as it is …
(beat)
Pinter taps his fingers next to the pistol.
PINTER: Yes, we live in an age of menace. Of evil that is banal. Civilization itself, it seems, is a thin pretense. Language is used to obscure and distort reality. Because we fear it?
(pause)
PINTER: And so, tonight, I would have you all think about that.
(pause)
(pause)
Pinter taps fingers again.
(pause)