(Actually, the text on this vintage Spanish postcard reads “kisses and their consequences.” Don’t say you haven’t been warned though…).

The above illustration is from the humorous student-run magazine at Cornell University, The Cornell Widow. (Of course “she” is referring to the movement against U.S. imperialism begun by Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino…).

Long Branch, New Jersey

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) was a left-leaning American writer best known for her wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, she rose to considerable acclaim—both for her literary output and as a critic in such venues as The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair, and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table.

Her pointed witticisms and satirical aphorisms live on…

+  +  +

The first thing I do in the morning
is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.

Women and elephants never forget.

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

If you want to know what God thinks of money,
just look at the people he gave it to.

The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity.

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I’m under the table,
after four I’m under my host.

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.
(when asked to use “horticulture” in a sentence)

The best way to keep children at home
is to make the home atmosphere pleasant,
and let the air out of the tires.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

They sicken of the calm, who know the storm.

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

Her big heart did not, as is so sadly often the case, inhabit a big bosom.

Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.

Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

I had heard (and written) about the enigmatic cartoon character Zé Povinho—the wildly popular “Portuguese everyman” created by the artist Bordalo Pinheiro in 1875, portrayed as a poor, somewhat passive-aggressive peasant known for flipping irreverent hand-gestures to uppity-ups in positions of privilege and power… so it was a delight to have the chance to visit the ceramics factory founded by Pinheiro here, and to view hundreds of his original drawings, maquettes, and signature ceramic creations. (Although the factory closed, sadly, in 2009 with the laying-off of over 100 employees, one of the kind women working in the retail shop made an exception and allowed Miguel and I to view the private museum collections).

Photos (from the top): Zé Povinho giving his classic salute (Pinheiro’s original piece); “The walls have ears…,” from the factory’s private museum; Zé Povinho as an installation piece; aside from the ubiquitous porcelain vegetables and cabbages the area is known for, the most popular object in any of the souvenir shops is ceramic penises*—ranging in size from baby’s pinky to a lumberjack’s forearm (and larger), including many cleverly attached/concealed on figurines of every description (and gender, for that matter), with the “members” in question “activated” by the pulling of a string—here a sweet little old lady shows off a small selection of the phallic wares she peddles in the local market square and from a tiny shop below her home; and, a few of the sculptures outside of one of Caldas da Rainha’s several sculptural museums (I’ll likely plan a return visit in the future to take these in).

*The tradition of making ceramic penises in Caldas da Rainha is said to have started when King Dom Luis, who ruled from 1861 to 1889, suggested that local potters “make something more interesting.” :-)

Victoria, British Columbia

If you’ve visited this/my blog in the past, you probably already know that I’m somewhat of a fan of unusual and vintage ephemera, oddball ideas, and assorted graphic juxtapositions and eccentricities… so of course I was happy about the serendipitous encounter I had today with an engaging and creatively stimulating online collection of “wacky” imagery.

Enjoy, eh?

“Breaking News” from the Huffington Post…

Thanks, Gregor, for the timely and ironic link…

(at the risk of disastrous consequences all around)

(They can be such jokers at times…)

Kabul, Afghanistan (from today’s online New York Times)

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan. (more here)

While I have my doubts that PowerPoint can actually make you stupid, I’d agree that it’s a great tool—in an arsenal of many others—that can readily help portray your stupidity… although in the case of the USA and the coerced “Coalition” still fighting in Afghanistan, that seems to be a foregone conclusion.

Thanks to friend Marie-Aline Oliver for the link.