DJ Misc

The Magpie’s Gazette

2010-11-08T01:06:52Z

“Cosimo . . . learned the art of printing and began to print some pamphlets or gazettes (among them The Magpie’s Gazette), later all collected under the title, The Biped’s Monitor. He had brought into a nut tree a typographer’s table and chase, a press, a case of type, and a crock of ink, and he spent his days composing his pages and pulling his copies. Sometimes spiders and butterflies would get caught between type and paper, and their marks would be printed on the page; sometimes a lizard would jump on the sheet while the ink was fresh and smear everything with its tail; sometimes the squirrels would take a letter of the alphabet and carry it off to their lair thinking it was something to eat, as happened with the letter Q, which because of its round shape and stalk the mistook for a fruit. . . .”

—Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees, 1959.

Ottimo Massimo

2010-11-07T17:59:33Z

“From the ash tree where he was crouching, Cosimo began to whistle . . . and call, ‘Here, come back here, Ottimo Massimo, come back here, where are you going?’ but the dog did not obey, did not even turn; he ran on and on through the field until nothing could be seen but a distant dot like a comma—his tail—and even that vanished.”

—Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees, 1959.

Billie Holiday

2010-11-05T16:01:27Z

If the moon turns green

2010-11-05T15:43:57Z

“If the moon turns green

And rivers began to flow upstream

This is all a crazy dream

I wouldn't be surprised

’Cause anything can happen

If you can fall in love with me”

—“If The Moon Turns Green”, words and music by Paul Coates & Bernie Hanighen, recorded by Billie Holiday in 1952.

the gray cat piddled in the white cat’s eye

2010-11-03T01:36:21Z

“Oh the gray cat piddled in the white cat’s eye,

The white cat said ‘Cor blimey!’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I piddled in your eye,

I didn’t know you was behind me.’ ”

—from I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, 1992.

bottle green

2010-11-03T01:33:08Z

“A nip for new,

Two for blue,

Sixteen

For bottle green.”

(punishment for wearing new clothes)

—from I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, 1992.

This is the night of Halloween

2010-11-03T01:30:53Z

“This is the night of Halloween

When the witches can be seen;

Some are red and some are green

And some are the color of a turkey bean.”

—from I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, 1992.

Black currant, red currant

2010-11-03T01:27:33Z

“Black currant, red currant, raspberry tart,

Tell me the name of your sweetheart.

A, B, C, D . . .”

(skipping)

—from I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, 1992.

Roses are red

2010-11-03T01:20:04Z

“Roses are red,

Violets are blue

The shorter the skirt

The better the view.”

—from I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild’s Pocket Book, edited by Iona and Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, 1992.

a black and rotten heart

2010-11-02T21:10:12Z

“What began the afternoon as a piece of tree ended it as the rib of a ship
It was backbreaking work and subject to cruel disappointment. The crosscuts might reveal a black and rotten heart. The old sayings about men and women, that their hearts were black or rotten, come from this disappointment and exhaustion.”

—William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, 2005.

the gundecks

2010-11-02T18:17:30Z

“During most of the quarter millennium in which sailing warships were the principal instrument of state power abroad, the gundecks, where the bulk of the crew gathered to fire the cannons, were painted red, so as not to show blood.”

—William Bryant Logan, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, 2005.

a Saffron Walden

2010-10-24T15:24:17Z

“SCOBIE’S COMMON USAGE

Expressions noted from Scobie’s quaint conversation, his use of certain words, as: . . .

Mauve, meaning ‘silly’, ex.: ‘He was just plain mauve when it came to, etc.’ . . .

Saffron Walden, meaning ‘male brothel’, ex.: ‘He was caught in a Saffron Walden, old man, covered in jam.’ ”

—Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar, 1958.

he wrote for preference on black paper with white ink

2010-10-22T14:07:00Z

“Amaril was an original man in his way and a bit of a dandy withal. The silver duelling-pistols, the engraved visiting-cards in their superb case, clothes cut in all the elegance of the latest fashions. His house was full of candles and he wrote for preference on black paper with white ink.”

—Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar, 1958.

Attempt it

2010-10-17T16:14:32Z

“Come, I am always saying to Tarquin. There are still new universes to be inhabited, if you have the authentic disease and the courage. Come, drop down with me to the limits of the photic zone. Let us construct out of the sensitive bodies of this twilight race our new systems that we talk about all day long. . . . At a hundred fathoms fish like silver bullets. Under the viscous scalp itself phenomena like Porpita and Ianthina, blue smoke in water. At three hundred rufus, brick, claret. The violet flesh of pteropods, wicked, wicked, wicked. Here is a philosophic reality whose terminology is lying there, complete but unused. . . . Yes, beyond the territory of those remote tribes we only live in illuminated names: the pycnogonids, the nudibranchs, the brittlestars, the chitons, the crinoids, and the penatulids—away beyond these into that region from which we are going to receive the new myth.

Attempt it, I am always saying to that sallow bastard, attempt it.”

—Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book, 1938.

Shape of an M

2010-10-16T16:08:51Z

“She lies down and arranges her legs like compasses. But of course you know? Do you know? Shape of an M. I have never seen anything so obscene in my life.”

—Lawrence Durrell, The Black Book, 1938.