Hal Johnson's Blog, page 20
June 13, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
To make you think, "Man, I am glad I am
not the main character of this novel!"
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Kane/Romita!
June 11, 2024
A garland of quotations LXXI
Arthur G. Hays: I do not think either of them are at all dangerous.
Richard M. Nixon: In other words, the Socialists and Communists are just as dangerous.
Hays: No; I do not say anything of the kind.
Nixon: Then what do you say?
Hays: I said that since I regard neither of them as at all dangerous, I think one is as dangerous as the other.
Nixon: Then you do say that one is as dangerous as the other.
Hays: Like zero is as to zero.
•HUAC hearings, 1948.
What would happen if we took...
June 9, 2024
The first occurrences of various events…
Contents:
•The first time someone yelled “look behind you” as a trick: ca. A.D. 1000.
•The first time someone got a wedgie: A.D. 96.
•The first time someone swapped urine to fool a drug test: 1176.
•The first time someone compared “shy” poop to a turtle’s head: 1573.
•The first time someone cheated by copying and pasting another’s work: 1200.
•The first time someone fretted about trees falling in forests making sounds etc.: C8 BC?
(As you may have heard, I was recently runner-up in a book review contes...
June 6, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
(My running-up (?) book review is up now on Freddie deBoer’s substack, so check it out!)
Thanks for reading Hal Johnson Books! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Wally Wood!
June 4, 2024
A garland of quotations LXX
What knowe I of the queene Nyobe?
•Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (ca. 1385).
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her?
•Shakespeare, Hamlet (ca. 1600).
What has Ingeld to do with Christ?
•Alcuin, letter to Bishop Hygebald (797).
The beginning of the end,
How was it recognized?
•Qu Yuan, Tian Wen (c. 343-c. 277 BC).
Are you alone insensible to the beams that descend from Helios? Are you alone ignorant that summer and winter are from him? Or that all kinds of ...
May 30, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
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Al Alvison!
May 28, 2024
A garland of quotations LXIX
The world was full of poetry and I was enjoying myself.
•Isaac Asimov, “Can You Prove It?” (1981).
The shepherd, who makes so pretty a picture carrying home the lamb, is only carrying it home for dinner.
•Robert Louis Stevenson, “Will o’ the Mill” (1878).
As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
•Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1773).
In the worst night of my waking fever, I remember well ...
May 23, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
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Sekowsky/Giordano!
May 21, 2024
A garland of quotations LXVIII
Roseberry to his Lady says,
“My hinnie and my succour,
O shall we do the thing you ken
Or shall we take our supper?”
Wi’ modest face, sae fu’ o’ grace,
Replied the bonny Lady:
“My noble lord, do as you please
But supper isna ready.”
•Robert Burns, The Merry Muses of Caledonia (1799).
Mr. Dryden, once at Dinner, being offered by a Lady the Rump of a Fowl, and refusing it, the Lady said, Pray, Mr. Dryden, take it the Rump is the best part of the Fowl ; Yes, ...
May 19, 2024
Weird Books part 2
(You know me: Always a bridegroom, never a bride. Anyhow, I got an honorable mention in the Vox poetry contest with a poem you can read here.)
This miscellany stands alone, of course, but part one, if you want more, is here.
•Nice Girls Do…and Now You Can Too! by Dr. Irene Kassorla (1980).
What “nice girls do,” it turns out, is have orgasms, and Dr. Kassorla is here to give you one as well (whoever you are). Turns out, if you’re having trouble achieving orgasm, it’s probably because of your inhibit...
