Is One Image Enough?

I think that sometimes one image is quite enough to fill a post ... unless ...

Don't you think?

Edith Sitwell - On Being Eccentric

As a kid in London, my family had a friend, the minor Bloomsbury Group painter, Eve Disher, whose 1940 work 'Still Life of Arum Lilies and Tulips' ...

Eve Disher - 'Still Life of Arum Lilies and Tulips' (1940)

... I bought not so long ago from an antique dealer in a small town in France.

One day at Eve's flat in Eccleston Square, Knightsbridge, the phone rang and it was Sachervall Sitwell - one of the famed eccentric sibling triumvirate of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell ...

... with Edith, a poet, being perhaps the most physically arresting of the three ...

Some of Edith's poems were set to music, most famously a series  known as 'Facade' which had an instrumental accompaniment by William Walton. And I recall going to a performance or reading of this work in my late teens.

All up then, I've always had a soft spot for the Sitwells (and eccentrics in general) and when I heard this 1959 interview with then Dame Edith Sitwell ...

 ... I was keen to share it round.

Hope you like it as much as I do.

Steven Wright – A Most Erudite Scientist

Steven Wright drifted across my radar a few days ago with …

I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates.

These are some more of his smuts that have appeared on my screen since then:

1 - A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory

2 - The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread

3 - Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

4 - If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

5 - Borrow money from pessimists … they don't expect it back

6 - 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

7 - 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

8 - All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.

9 - The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

10 - Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

11 - Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

12 - Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.

13 - Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

14 - If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

15 - The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

16 - The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

17 - Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.

18 - If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

Some of these have a distinctly Oscar Wildish flavour, like 10 and 12, don’t you think?

My favourites are 2, 3, 9, 10, 12 and 18 – which are yours?

Must Have Died and Gone to Heaven!

I don't think this represents a new direction for the blog - though you never know - but rougher and hairier seem to be doing again for me today - in the form of Jason Michaels!

Nearly exploded when I saw the first (butt) shot ... but to 'start at the very beginning' as someone rather wise once put it ...

 

The other guy is Damian Stone - as if it matters (well, to me at least)!