#runcible

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

One of the best h the wings a time lord can be is a weird side character who kind of sucks

[52booksproject]

Book 18 Nonsense Books

Lucky me! 827 was my random Dewey number and that's (Non-North American) English humor. I had any number of Pythons, Douglas Adams, or P.G. Wodehouse to choose from, but the books in this category weren't on any online catalog since technically the last twos' novels weren't included. I saw Edward Lear's Nonsense Books and decided to go for those since I knew they were available on Project Gutenberg for free, being old enough to be public domain. While on Gutenberg I also considered going for a William Makepeace Thackeray essay on English Humorists, but a quick glance showed it was going to be a long, dry lecture just to get to the punchline that the upright, respectably brought up Dean Swift wrote a treatise under the pen name "Dr. Shite".

So Edward Lear it was, and if the name sounds familiar but you can't place him he's famous for having written The Owl and the Pussycat and introduced the word "runcible" to English. (No, nobody uses it, except some people call a spork a runcible spoon, which from his illustrations isn't what a runcible spoon is, but word inventors can't be choosers.)

Nonsense books is 4 books of Lear's poems, illustrations and the occasional prose story. It starts off with some limericks which is always nice, unfortunately Lear hasn't quite mastered the form. In nearly all 200 or so of the limericks that appear in the book the last line is just a small rephrase of the first line

There was an Old Person of Buda, Whose conduct grew ruder and ruder, Till at last with a hammer they silenced his clamor. By smashing that Person of Buda.

So, being used to more sophisticated limericks that make use of the whole poem, that was a little disappointing to read. Many make very clever use of the 4 lines they do have though.

There are also fake botanical illustrations of fantastical plants that are cool and interestingly enough a lot of callbacks to previous stories and poems. There's also a pretty funny story of a gentleman at a party declaring Lear didn't exist and that his book dedicated to Edward, Earl of Derby's child relatives proved the Earl himself had written it. Lear burst his bubble on that one.

BEST LINE: "the whole party from the boat was gazing at him with mingled affection and disgust"

SHOULD YOU READ THIS BOOK: If you're looking for some whimsy it's available for free and Owl and the Pussycat is always a good read. There does seem to be some disregard for animal life played off as humor maybe? Oh, and one or two of the limerick's caricatures are racist, so that sucked.

ART PROJECT: In all but one of his Alphabet books (he had 5) Lear uses the Persian King Xerxes as his X, so here they all are colored in along with a couple other illustrations

[askgiegueandcrew]

Runcible, are your PSI abilities separate from Brave’s? Or is it that you share a pool of available PSI energy?

[uschi-the-listener]

Mess

the best things in life life itself

will be messy

birth cooking sex art

creating feasting becoming

let the juice drip down your chin

lie panting towel under you sweat

forget to notice paint and clay sawdust plaster chips the juicy bits left over from something rather than nothing

revel in it we're all runcible

[takoratakoratumble]

Happy Solstice! I've been a bit quiet of late but here's a throw back from a couple of years ago. #winter #solstice #wintersolstice #art #illustration #doodle #drawing #runcible #nature #moon #sun #early #shortestday #watercolour #experiment #UK #illustrated #bristolart #tbt #throwback (at Easton, Bristol) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6VgoXsh6Ks/?igshid=1cnl31sfrwx0f

[askgiegueandcrew]

I wonder if there's anyone else onboard?

Saral: The other are, uh-

Saral: They’re harder to talk to…

(Max and Dirge, Runcible and Brave, Dot and Spot, Gizmo and Cog, Vale and Defuse, Ruuck and Pon, and Seedpod are all open for asks!)

[takoratakoratumble]

A spooky offering for todays #inktober prompt: Ghost #art #illustration #doodle #drawing #runcible #ghost #spooky #watercolour #experiment #stuartsempleblack #culturehustle #black #inktober2019 #strange #odd #quirky #handdrawn #bristolart #UK (at Bristol, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/B37a_f1hSL2/?igshid=l9dok9ukeux1

[takoratakoratumble]

Tread was todays #inktober prompt so here's a fancy millipede treading all over the place! #art #illustration #doodle #drawing #runcible #insect #nature #fancy #millipede #gold #chain #gemstones #tread #inktober2019 #strange #odd #quirky #handdrawn #bristolart #UK #illustrated #drawingaday #dailydraw https://www.instagram.com/p/B3103LfB4z7/?igshid=xckenz9s761s