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The Incredible Thread of Silliness

 
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 03:59 pm
Khlebnikov could be pretty silly too - this is one of his most famous poems:

Quote:
Invocation of Laughter

O, laugh, laughers!
O, laugh out, laughers!
You who laugh with laughs, you who laugh it up laughishly
O, laugh out laugheringly
O, belaughable laughterhood - the laughter of laughering laughers!
O, unlaugh it outlaughingly, belaughering laughists!
Laughily, laughily,
Uplaugh, enlaugh, laughlings, laughlings
Laughlets, laughlets.
O, laugh, laughers!
O, laugh out, laughers!

(Available in Russian, English and audio - do check out the audio ;-) - on his pages at a beautiful site on Russian poetry)

He also has webpages devoted to him here, on a site about Mayakovsky's circle. Just look at this use of language!

Quote:
Enormous arboreal monster, hanging
high with rump of shocking size,
grips a girl who fetched a pail of water,
rolling at him her cajoling eyes.
Diddled for a moment, she's an apple
on the branches of his shaggy arms.
Enormous monster - rather awful,
really -- lolls back and laps. Life has its charms.

A lot more morose still, but as concise as you get 'em, this:

Quote:
My bag breaks
and everything falls to the floor.
It occurs to me
the world is a grin that flickers
on a hanged man's dead face.
0 Replies
 
dagmaraka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 03:59 pm
I like Chlebnikov very much as well. I am not very much into poetry, but when it sounds onomatopoeic (?), I'm in. I like Majakovskij for the same reason, though my Russian is shamefully rotting as well. Didn't read much by Chlebnikov though, we had a thin collection of poems at home when I was a teenager - which is when I did most of the reading in my life anyway...
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colorbook
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 04:06 pm
Remember this from Disney's Cinderella?



Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo

Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put 'em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Salagadoola mechicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
It'll do magic believe it or not
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Salagadoola means mechicka booleroo
But the thingmabob that does the job is
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Salagadoola menchicka boola bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put 'em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi bibbidi-bobbidi bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 04:43 pm
Quote:

ahasuerus

Two Jews are walking down the street.
The first Jew asks the second a question.
The second Jew answers him.
The two Jews continue walking.
The first Jew who in the meantime has thought
. of another question asks it.
The second Jew answers him.
Sometimes this amuses them.
Sometimes it does not.
And so the two Jews continue walking.
They also continue talking.
Life, as you can see, is not always a bowl of cherries.



Istvan Orkeny - One Minute Stories
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 04:45 pm
To sample the sheer genius of Orkeny's existential silliness, read The Cherry Pit ... <smiles, grimly>

"And so, things came to an impasse. From time to time, all four would shout in unison, but even so, the problem persisted, and they stayed just as they were, one Hungarian on top of the other."
0 Replies
 
djjd62
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 05:52 pm
Laughing

and speaking of the pythons

Horace

Much to his Mum and Dad's dismay
Horace ate himself one day.
He didn't stop to say his grace,
He just sat down and ate his face.
"We can't have this his Dad declared,
"If that lad's ate, he should be shared."
But even as he spoke they saw
Horace eating more and more:
First his legs and then his thighs,
His arms, his nose, his hair, his eyes...
"Stop him someone!" Mother cried
"Those eyeballs would be better fried!"
But all too late, for they were gone,
And he had started on his dong...
"Oh! foolish child!" the father mourns
"You could have deep-fried that with prawns,
Some parsley and some tartar sauce..."
But H. was on his second course:
His liver and his lights and lung,
His ears, his neck, his chin, his tongue;
"To think I raised him from the cot
And now he's going to scoff the lot!"
His Mother cried: "What shall we do?
What's left won't even make a stew..."
And as she wept, her son was seen
To eat his head, his heart, his spleen.
And there he lay: a boy no more,
Just a stomach, on the floor...
None the less, since it was his
They ate it - that's what haggis is.
0 Replies
 
djjd62
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 05:54 pm
and one more


Port Shoem
by The
Speverent Rooner

I've a Gouse and Harden in the country
An ace I call my plown,
A treat I can replace to
When I beed to knee alone.
Catterfly and butterpillar
Perch on beefy lough
And I listen to the dats and cogs
As they mark and they biaow.
Yes wature here is nunderful
There is no weed for nords,
While silling by my windowflutter
Biny little tirds.
0 Replies
 
Seed
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 06:07 pm
write in this thread i will. read it you shall... in you, the post is strong it is.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 06:22 pm
Eletelephony by Spike Milligan (RIP)
 
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant-

No!  no!  I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone-

(Dear me!  I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)
 
Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;

The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee-

(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)
0 Replies
 
djjd62
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 06:47 pm
good stuff piffka, i always liked that verse
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 07:32 pm
I was looking for the Ogden Nash that we had read at our wedding, can't remember enough of it to find it. Some other good ones though.

Everybody Tells Me Everything
by Ogden Nash


I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

Sillier:

The Shrimp
by Ogden Nash

A shrimp who sought his lady shrimp
Could catch no glimpse
Not even a glimp.
At times, translucence
Is rather a nuisance.
0 Replies
 
ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 07:38 pm
Wow.
0 Replies
 
Letty
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 07:42 pm
In answer to Dorothy Parker's

Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses.

Ogden:

Women who wear spectacles,
Quite often get their necks tickled.
0 Replies
 
dagmaraka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 07:49 pm
nimh, *love* Istvan Orkeny. His phone booth short story is pretty funny too. I went to college with his grandson, Joszef, who babysat George Soros's kids. That is pretty silly in and of itself.
0 Replies
 
djjd62
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 08:08 pm
from alexander pope

epigram, engraved on the collar of a dog i gave to his royal highness

i am his highness' dog at kew
pray tell me sir, who's dog are you
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Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 08:12 pm
Thanks...

I like yours too. They are new to me, though the Haggis one seems awfully familiar. The Biny Little Tirds is especially funny.

Good ol' nonsense. The Russian ones that Nimh posted are a little harder for me to grasp... they're not so light.

Geez, Soz, Nonsense verse at your wedding? What a concept!
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sozobe
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 08:15 pm
We had two, one mooshy (Christina Rossetti? I forget) and one silly. People didn't get that the silly one was silly until a ways into it -- it starts kind of lugubrious and maudlin -- and were kind of looking at each other and wondering if they could laugh. Unforced, unhold-backable laughs are fun.
0 Replies
 
Piffka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 08:23 pm
I'm assuming these were written down somewhere....

<raises eyebrows wonderingly>

You're supposed to remember all those things about your wedding... it's the 'merican way, doncha know!
0 Replies
 
dagmaraka
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 08:27 pm
The Cataract of Lodore

'How does the Water
Come down at Lodore?'
My little boy ask'd me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he task'd me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon at the work,
There first came one daughter
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store:
And 'twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.

From its sources which well
In the Tarn on the fell;
From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills;
Through moss and through brake,
It runs and it creeps
For awhile, till it sleeps
It its own little Lake.
And thence at departing,
Awakening and staring;
It runs though the reeds
And away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade,
In sun and in shade,
And through the wood-shelter,
Among crags in its flurry,
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-scurry.
Here it comes sparking,
And there it lies darkling;
Now smoaking and frothing
Its tumult and wrath in,
Till in this rapid race
On which it is bent,
It reaches the place
Of its steep descent.

The Cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Striking and raging
As if a war waging
Its caverns and rocks among:
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping;
Showering and springing,
Flying and glinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound!
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its
sound.

... aand it goes on for a few pages, and the text widens as the stream of the river grows. i like those - sound/visual poems. rest is here
0 Replies
 
nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sat 23 Oct, 2004 08:28 pm
dagmaraka wrote:
nimh, *love* Istvan Orkeny. His phone booth short story is pretty funny too. I went to college with his grandson, Joszef, who babysat George Soros's kids.

Really? Small world, eh! Sometimes Central Europe just seems a big village ...

I really like Orkeny's short stories. Here's one more "one minute story" of his (they're all from the 70s or 80s):

Quote:

public opinion survey

The Hungarian Public Opinion Research Bureau has just conducted its first survey, the results of which have recently been made public. The question asked was: How do people see the past, present and future of the nation? In order to insure credible results, the bureau sent out questionnaires to 2,975 citizens of various social standings, ranks, professions and religious persuasions.

The questions were as follows:

1. Your opinion of the present regime is:
a) favorable
b) unfavorable
c) neither favorable nor unfavorable but a little improvement wouldn't hurt
d) I want to move to Vienna

2. Do you feel alienated?
a) I feel completely alienated
b) I feel almost completely alienated
c) I am, so to speak, pretty thoroughly alienated
d) from time to time I manage to see the Party Secretary

3. What are your cultural interests?
a) I go to the movies, ball games and bars
b) from time to time I look out the window
c) I do not even look out the window
d) I disapprove of Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book

4. Your philosophical orientation tends toward:
a) Marxism
b) anti-Marxism
c) science fiction
d) alcoholism

The results of the survey indicate that the people of Hungary hold the following views in common:
1. During the past twenty years, Hungary has been a paradise on earth.
2. Hungary is still a paradise on earth, except bus No. 9 tends to run behind schedule.
3. Hungary's future will be even brighter provided they add more uses to line No. 9.


Heh.
0 Replies
 
 

 
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