Hal Johnson's Blog, page 22
April 18, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels
The weirdest, coolest, funniest,
filthiest novel you'll ever read

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Sheldon Mayer!
April 16, 2024
A garland of quotations LXIII
Perverts like this book. Do you?
A person wept the livelong night beside a sick man’s bed :
When it dawned the sick was well, and the mourner, he was dead.
•Sâdi, The Rose Garden (1258).
Put bunches of roses all over my coffin,
Roses to deaden the clods as they fall.
•“The Streets of Laredo” (trad.).
This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
•Young, Night Thoughts (1742).
At afternoon funerals wear a frock coat and top hat. Should the funeral be your own, the hat may be...
April 14, 2024
Terrible punning conundra
[My absurd, filthy, pun-laden novel Sudden Glory is only $0.99 on Kindle this week. Snap it up while “supplies” “last”! Test-read the first three chapters here.]
The conundra.
1. Q: Who boasts too much Gen X ennui
To order wings at KFC?
2. Q.: How are the sides of a triangle like Belle’s looks?
3. Q.: What kind of yams learn from painful experience to cultivate their garden?
4. Q.: Why do earrings fit into neutered kine on a jetty?
5. Q.: What is a Muslim’s favorite kind of anime?
6. Q.: What popular c...
April 11, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels

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Miller/Janson!
April 9, 2024
A garland of quotations LXII
It is supposed to be difficult to understand Hegel, but to understand Abraham is a small matter. To go beyond Hegel is a miraculous achievement, but to go beyond Abraham is the easiest of all. I for my part have applied considerable time to understanding Hegelian philosophy and believe that I have understood it fairly well; I am sufficiently brash to think that when I cannot understand particular passages despite all my pains, he himself may not have been entirely clear. A...
April 4, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels

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Ayers/Trimpe/Giacola!
(Thanks to Carlo Fortunato!)
April 2, 2024
A garland of quotations LXI
Review this book, get a free sketch
Every ornament of perfection, and every labour of love,
In all the Gardens of Eden, & in all the golden mountains
Was become an envied horror, and a remembrance of jealousy:
And every Act a Crime, and Albion the punisher & judge.
•William Blake, Jerusalem (1820).
Do they wear “new shoes”—in “Eden”—
Is it always pleasant—there—
Won’t they scold us—when we’re homesick—
Or tell God—how cross we are—
•Emily Dickinson, “What is—‘Paradise’” (c. 1860).
And already there is a si...
March 28, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels

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Swan/Klein!
(Thanks to John Wells!)
March 26, 2024
A garland of quotations LX
As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realizes that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.
•E. M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born (1973).
Rome rose with the idiom of Caesar, Ovid, and Tacitus, she declined in a welter of rhetoric, the diplomat’s “language to conceal thought,” and so forth. ¶The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country le...
March 21, 2024
Truly Wordless Comic Panels

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Simon/Kirby!