persiflage

August 2, 2007

Have the courage of your own nakedness!
               - Peter Altenberg

PERSIFLAGE is very often updated on Thursdays but sometimes it isn't. Learn to live with disappointment.

Classifieds

I recently lost a tooth. It is sort of an off-white and made of a kind of enamel. If you find it please mail it to: The Tooth Fairy c/o Santa Claus, The North Pole H0H 0H0.
Having a birthday? Did you know that many famous people have also had birthdays? People like Warren G. Harding and Antonio Fargas? Know how they celebrated? They bought their friends drinks, that's how. Just something to bear in mind.
For Sale: one soiled and severely dog-earred copy of my old address book. Some pages missing. Most individuals no longer at the addresses or phone numbers indicated. Some kitsch value. $14 OBO. Box D.

Tips for Summer Living:

Tip #7:  Underwear can be binding and cause you to feel hotter in summer. Try making a little underskirt of moist towelettes. You'll feel fresh and clean!

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Want to be added to our email list for some odd reason? Just send us an email at persiflagemag@hotmail.com and write "Please add me to your email list as I am a glutton for punishment" in the subject line.

Lately I Have Been Missing...

Lately I have been missing. It is a strange thing to be missing. it feels, oddly, like not being missing. I thought, briefly, that I had been found but I was mistaken. I was only caught up in someone else's madness. It was a nice change but it was wrong. I see that now.

For the last two weeks I have been a "guest" at a facility dedicated to removing stupid ideas from one's head. Not all the stupid ideas mind you, that is not a task for one lifetime, but one or two pre-determined (not in the Calvinist sense) ones. In my case the idea that needed to be removed was my notion that I had had (that always looks wrong to me) a spiritual awakening.

My captors, I mean the fine and courteous staff at the Institue, determined that I was suffering from a severe delusion and upon my arrival they set about dissuading me of the efficacy of retaining said delusion. The cold baths were bracing.

Foolishly I, at first, resisted - clutching desperately to the notion that I had ascended to a higher plane, a place where matters of politeness, empathy, regard, compromise and accomodation could be discarded. I believed that only by being a hard ass could I be truly enlightened. I thought The Fountainhead was a good book.

Slowly, by means of an well-enforced regimen of cold baths and repeated blows to the cranium, the foolishness of my views became clear to me. As I was hung upside down and shaken vigourously I could actually feel some of my dopier misconceptions break loose and fall out my ears.

Somewhere in the middle of the second week I began to think that if someone really wanted to see (or possibly make) a movie starring Avril Lavigne then it was really none of my business. There was no reason to be enraged. There was no cause to get totally bent out of shape. It was a personal choice.

People should be free to make all the stupid choices they want. Now I have come, through a series of vigourous beatings and sustained stress positions, to see the wisdom of this. Of course, this doesn't mean I'm going to stop mocking them.

Hugh Briss
Prodigal Son

The Mystery

          I saw a pretty girl
          sitting on the bus.

          I smiled at her
          but the bus had past.

          Maybe she smiled back
          possibly not.

          Hard to say,
          really.

Frank Speeking

DEAR PERSIFLAGE

Dear Persiflage,
I am a boysenberry who enjoys hanging out with other boysen -berries in a small jar. Lately I have been hearing rumours about a giant metal blade that attacks groups of boysenberries and spreads them on toast. Should I be worried?
Sincerely,
Lance Newcome

Dear Mr Newcome,
Were I in your shoes (assuming you wear them) I would be working my way slowly but surely down to the bottom of that jar.
EW

Dear Persiflage,
I notice that the background photo for this week's PERSIFLAGE is a picture that came free on my Dell computer. Are you guys getting lazy?
Sincerely,
Larry Buttinsky

Dear Mr Buttinsky,
What do you mean getting lazy?
EW