The Elements of Guile, by Bunkum and Tightwad

The following style-guide was written by my late professor Dr. Jenkins Bunkum at old P.U. The laws of Dr. Bunkum's class were both simple and inspiring; think for yourself, be yourself, and follow "my little book" or face summary expulsion and a kiss from the nine-tails. Ah, how we learned! Being the famous children's novelist that I am (humble author of Winona's Nest  and Kris the Ol' Pumpkin) I feel completely secure in revealing his secrets to style, writing, and academic hoodwinkery to the world. Your children have already purchased my books. I can pretty much retire on a big sack of money, mostly extracted from the pockets of tittering malnourished school-children who devour my literary pixie-sticks with the same manic ecstasy that they watch cartoon lizards fight robot koalas. I feel like Dr. Bunkum gave me both the impetus to deceive America's youth, and moreover, the technical skill-set to do so. Note that this is only a guide, and will give you access to mere technical proficiency. You'd have to be a real genius to write like me though. I was born, not made. - T.E. Tightwad.

Rule number 1) Omit needless concision. Excess is the bane of writing. One must be as concise as legally possible. When a police officer stops you, what do you think will get you off the hook: telling him your sob-story about the time Uncle Sordello smacked you with a baguette at the wedding, or answering with a simple "yes officer"? The answer is neither, especially if the question is "do you have any illegal substances on your person". The only language of the law, and it is the same with writing, is baksheesh. Accordingly the real first rule is to work-over your reviewers with gift baskets filled with exotic shampoos named after fruits, and exotic fruits named after diseases. This is the only way.

Rule number 2) Where, wear, weir, or ware? It is important to distinguish between homonyms. However, this is difficult. Therefore, simply avoid using any word that sounds like any other word. This will save you countless grunts of confusion when you are laying out your carefully crafted manuscript for the mongoloid reading public. Do not use homonyms in the vicinity of Conservatives; it affronts their vowel-u system.

Rule number 3) Omit needless letters. Wy bother with loz of uzlez leters? They mrly fil up prcius spac. B cncis.

Rule number 4) Never use a Latinate style when will do just as well a Saxon. Remember that English is a motley, disgusting language. It has absorbed the infected words of foreign influence much like an ingrown toenail, and with as much puss. Latin words are jargony, confusing, and slightly homoerotic. Always prefer the vigour of the Saxon tongue. No homo. Consider for example, the excess verbosity that comes with a penchant for Latino-Gallicism in writing with regards to the following phrase:

"The dirunal motion of bio-phospherescent quintillian has determined that luminescent prescience terminates intermittently; on the other hand, biopsy proliferates the idea that conscience dominates prosperously."

Now, would it not be a pleasant yuk to see how clearly that muddle becomes when we use a simple, basic, vigorous Saxon-based English instead? Observe:

"Brecht iG yog Taggetyme, cutty-open handfull longsee end whales-road and bloodhsield!!! Yagger can, ib  þrashug in stalemate yon gewinnen!!!"

Check-mate.

Rule number 5) The active voice is to be used. Nobody likes a passive-aggressive writer. Women find it repulsive; use a passive construction on a conjugal visit, and I guarantee you will be turned out from the boudoir like a bell-boy with stale bran muffins and a roving eye. But how does one tell the difference between the passive and the active voice? 


A good trick is to pretend that you are writing dispatches for some manly or war-like maneouvre. If it seems too polite or perambulatory for the battlefied, too verbose for getting the attention of your bandillero at the bull-fight, too forced and overwrought to convince to woman in your arms that it is you, you you who she must never forget, you with your deadly musk and devil-may care attitude, you who took that hill and with a half bottle of Chianti and cold spaghetti waiting for you in the rain as your only reward, if there is even the slightest hint of an extra syllable that, in the face of the Revolutionary Tribunal, you use with an incorrect and altogether aristocratic accent of the ancien regime, if, at the guillotine, your words to the crowd are a bit too windy and the guy in the front row screams "off with it already, mate!", if all this is true of the world of manly action, then it is the same for your prose style. 

A note on plagiarism - Do not plagiarize. Plagiarism constitutes the most heinous crime in all of academic Christendom. You will be expelled, tortured, beaten with blackjacks and thrown to the University mascot, Charlie the Insane Baboon, if you so much as incline your head towards a Wikipedia article without the proper citations. 

But what IS plagiarism? And how can you avoid it? Plagiarism is defined as using another's words or ideas without proper citation of your source. In fact, nobody can avoid plagiarism. Did you really think that idea up all by yourself? I'm pretty sure you didn't. You're what, 16? Yea. Even if you can't remember your source, that's plagiarism. Maybe you heard a bum say it on the curb. Maybe I said it. Cite us! When in doubt, cite! And cite properly. One slip up in your footnote, one misplaced comma, and you might as well have handed in a verbatim copy of Wuthering Heights as your final paper. You will be tried and shot fairly.

But that doesn't just mean you can cite everything you copy and call that a paper. Oh no, Mr. Joe. You have to put it in your own words. Did you invent the word "ambition"? No? Then who the fuck do you think you are, just bandying it around like that? Cite! And if you really want to use your own words, do so. Instead of the phrase, "MacBeth has overweening ambition", try "MacGrumbleboo hanks oblledingle clambakeism". See how far that gets you. Putz.

Les Bulletins d'un Grand Enthusiast #3 - Enfant du Soleil

May 8th 2012 - Enfant du Soleil

Painfully sunny: The weather of the last two days has been exceedingly bright. The author continues to tan easily.


Painfully grey: But today is muggy and grey. Such is the world.

A political man: The author, who desperately wants to describe his life in its proper political context, probably couldn’t manage it with his present vocabulary. He thinks anybody who uses directions like "right" or "left" to refer to politics is muddled up, since the only real directions are "up" and "down".

Distilling A Bottle of Morals from a Single Experience: He finds he’ll only give money to homeless people if he is walking by himself. This is not something he does or does not do out of principle, but only because (as far as he is qualified to speak to his own motivations) he 1) hates showing off 2) hates an awkward silence.

A History of Fools: The author doesn’t think the whole human race is crazy, just the baby boomers.

Societal Pressure: What has he to fear from society? The author wouldn’t put his finger on it in protest unless it was absolutely necessary, in order to save himself some reading time. However, he has been getting less reading done of late, and this largely due to "the economy".

The Run of the Mill: The author admits it’s a boring job but someone needs to run it.

Complexity: Speaking to reflection, the author thinks it’s healthy to glory in things, and unhealthy to dwell upon failure. But -- all significant action in the world has come about from a lack of confidence, that is, a need to prove by doing. The author thinks this thought will possibly help his generation from its own self-pity.

Les Bulletins d'un Grand Enthusiast #2 - May Day

May 2nd 2012 - May Day

Pis-en-Lit: The author is pleased to report that the dandelions are gathering in full force. He candidly admits that he has for a longtime held closeted pro-weed sentiments ; starting today he will stand by them in public solidarity, and will hopefully not trample too many in doing so.

The Future: Is still unpredictable, last time the author checked.

Novelty: When advice is given to him, the author, on rare occasions, will follow it... for the novelty of the thing.

Ebriosus: The author heard himself saying in conversation that when he is drunk, he adopts “completely the opposite personality” to his own. On reflection, he wonders about the order of causation regarding drunkeness and the polarization of personality type. But, shortly after, he stopped caring.

A sheer delight: On Sunday afternoon the author took a walk along the river. The wind was cold, frequent, and made the swollen river choppy with “whitecaps”. Like the Heron in La Fontaine's fable, he wasn't about to snack on just anything, but kept his beak in the air until he got to a real treat; he only stopped walking when the waves hit the rocks with noticeable emphasis. The path was empty, and he wondered at the neighbours for staying indoors. At the same time, a single other person in sight would have reduced to tinsel the effect of the whole moment. He thought he would call it sublime instead of beautiful because beauty comforts but the sublime has always got something terrible and cold in it too.

What is admirable: According to the author, a solid boredom without restlnessness is admirable.

The Hosses: He took another walk and saw some horses. The author envied them for their tendency to stand so still, until one of them looked at him funny.

Les Bulletins d'un Grand Enthusiast #1 - Lessons from the Front

 April 29^th 2012 – Lessons from the Front

• This bulletin established: The author has decided that his blog could use a more “personal” voice.  At the same time, he would like to keep a record of himself for his descendants to gloss over in due silence during their future (no-doubt "unpersonable") family mealtimes. A handwritten Moleskine journal is a bit too precious for him, so he has taken the public at large into his confidence by means of some Confessions with the added innovation of boldly publishing them:
• a)  before personally achieving anything of note that would give them interest
• b)  before his own death, in order to avoid public ridicule.

• Persons Act: Nevertheless, he finds the “first person” too intimate to be conducive to public objectivity. As for the “second person”, he believes it can only be used without histrionics by relationship columnists and traffic signs. The “third person”, however, has the unbiased pencil-case smell of the academe that the author finds irresistibly charming and is, in his daily life, less often met with than he would prefer. He has furthermore determined that egoism demands, before everything else, good formatting.

• Completism: The author apologetically begins his account “in media res”. However, a summary of his life to this point may be approximated by the reader who will approach his or her local reference librarian and request (with no irony): “Can you bore me, in print– before 1850?"

• The weather sucked: On the week of April 23^rd 2012 the weather officially sucked.

• Taking note: In an unexpected follow-up manoeuvre to an academic career built on illegible and be-doodled loose leaf pages, the author has established himself @ his place of work  as a master note-taker . He finds the art of note-taking is much like the art of drinking: just get it all down, keep track of your tabs, and the rest will fall into place.

• Chicken of the sea: This week the author indulged in beer-battered fish and chips, sushi, fish-tacos, Korean sea-food pancake, and some Swedish Fish gummies to top it all off. He supposes this is healthy, but intends to investigate the question more thoroughly when he has the time.

• Student riots: The author has taken note of the student riots in Montreal. He mentally urges them to stop being so immature about their "future", and asks them politely but firmly to “go home and blog about it.”

• The Revolution: The slated Revolution is looking more than ever to be a smashing success, especially among the ever growing contingent of clercs mécontents gathering steam (and not much else) in the National Capital Region. The author, however, has forgotten the date, and would appreciate if someone could forward it to him sometime in the near future.

• First passage, best passage: The most splendid thing he read all week was a passage from Stendhal's La Chartreuse de Parme, in which a sonnet about "divine love", written by the main hero, is described coldly and with a clinical level of detail in a straightforward paragraph. If, on the other hand, Stendhal had just stuck in a sonnet, the whole tenor of the chapter would have been ruined.

• Quotation of the Hour: “I know not what to call this, nor will I urge, that it is a secret over ruling Decree that hurries us on to be the Instruments of our own Destruction, even tho' it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our Eyes open.” – A slightly bitter Robinson Crusoe.

Doggerel for my Bloggerel

the ottawa mandarin's epitaph

here lies a civil servant after severance

(he lies, but isn’t dead – no weeping, him ).

the letter many feared, was his deliverance;

he’s earned 12 months (well paid) of sleeping in.

 the young

since his or her momentous graduation
the youth spends half their time on applications;
they spend a fourth lamenting for the nation
bewailing this our civic degradation;
the final fourth? what left for perturbation
except inglorious hours of ******bation.

the cbc

“here lies the cbc. you know,

 it was that channel

that would play The Monkees

 right after Friedrich Handel?”

the intern

at “internship the first” her sunny mantra

was  “i’m here to lend you guys a helping hand-ra!”

by number 2 she’s learnt rousseau’s refrain:

“man is born free, but everywhere’s in chains”.

by internship the 3^rd our marxist molly

has learned to sing “the internationale-ly”.

by internship the fourth, she hits the bottle

and traces slavery back to aristotle.

but number 5 rounds off the whole adventure;

she gets full time – in other words, indenture.

bloggerissimus

don’t know enough to write? i wouldn’t stress it;

the blogger knows much less than you AND says it.

the twitteratus

bit better than a blogger’s common sense

cause where the blogger rambles, he'll condense.

for twtitterspeak’s the scholar’s new best friend:

 “@Strunk&White: Well fuck. #ThisIsTheEnd”

staying informed

some say that journalism’s dead and gone

and so’s unbiased informay-SHI-un.

so it’s becoming needful, more and more

to pick up what you can from Jersey Shore.

(and here the english major up and groans:

“BS! we get our news from Game of Thrones!”)

prime minister

our pater patriae

who loves us muchy.

a sane and sober head

but kind of touchy.

whenever i address him

he gets grouchy;

i always mix “right honourable”

up with “duce”.

Epiprolomenadedlgung to an Introduction to a Grounding of the Question of Metaphysics

μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν

-Callimachus

The so-called study of Philosophy has, since the time of Diogoones of Goonesia, been a hoax. A grandiose and marvellous hoax, but nevertheless, a hoodwinking. It would take a perceptive, though annoying man to point out the rabbit cage beneath the magician's magic cape, and spoil the show for all the little children of the village. This is the intent and the power of my theory. However, I cannot hope to articulate this theory, or its solution, in so short a space as this mere proglomena permits. Trust me. It just won't work. I lined up for like six hours to get a longer parking permit and the guy just like, stared at me like I was a monkey peeing on his shoes. Apparently they're closed on Sunday for some brunch charity thing? I dunno. It just...It's been a morning, ok? Let's just try again.

Rather than waste the reader's time with endless minute arguments and necessary divagations, I have lighted upon another solution, more agreeable to everyone. That is the solution of this prologue. Namely, instead of writing a big book full of right answers, to write a small one, with no answers at all. This saves me the time of the writing; it saves the reader the time of the reading; it saves the printer the time of the printing; it saves the reviewer the time of reviewing; and most importantly, it saves posterity the trouble of worshipping my remarkable solution to every single problem in the entirety of western, eastern, northern, and even southern philosophy.

Let us then get the question afoot. "How is it..." --- Wait! But how is it possible to pose the question of Philosophy? Hold! Is it not, after all, a question of the very essence of quintessences? But just a moment. And who will pose the question of quintessences? How is that possible? Stop! Is that, after all, not merely a question of language? And in what tongue are we to pose the question of language? Mark this! Is it not a redoubling back on itself, like a Morbidus strip? Very well, but! And who then is there who can broach the needs of the double meaning of language and sign? Tittlee dee hee! Is it not question of reference? But what is the referent? Oh plop. Is it not rather different of the referent to refer to the referee? Is that a foul? Red card? Are you kidding me? No, you fuck off.

Thus we see the difficulty in going down the road to a true introduction to the proglomena to the problems posed by metaphysical speculation. At this point I would like to assure the reader that all of my philosophy is contained in this introduction. The true philosopher can already piece together, from the mere whiffs of my theory, like a good duck still in the oven, the delectable sensation of gobbling it up end to end with delicious honey sauce. Some say the sensation of waiting is better than the eating. So let it be with my grand philosophy. I call it a transvaluation of all values; because it gives YOU, the reader, the value. I have often flirted with the idea of naming it "Beyond Cut and Save; a Philosophy of Coupons".

Before the reader proceeds any further, I will outline the ideal philosophical programme for his upbringing (erziehung): our gentleman philosopher must spend his first 32 years studying the Complete Peanuts in painstaking detail. He may then skip the drolleries of Aristotle and Plato, and focus intently his next 7 years on the deep speculation of The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show. After that, he will be mad enough to steer his own course; stoppings at the cultural landing points of the delightful tales of Everett True and Mutt and Jeff will satisfy his aesthetic needs. He may then proceed to the rest of this book. 

We must now admit the incapacity of Western Philosophy to push beyond the beyond. It has been exhausted, worn out like an old trucker cap on Saint Hattermore's Feast Day. It is to the East, I hint slyfully, that we shall find our culmination. Having once opened a copy of Slauthier's rather sketchy18th century translations from the Sacred books of the Hindus, that is in their tongue, the Goonpanishads, I saw, on page xxi, the phrase Ego ego, sum sum, tibi tibi, tum tum. This astounding philosophy, the "I, I, am, am," is the most supreme example of mysticism and obfucscation the world has ever put forth. We are awed by its incomprehensibility as much as its inscrutability. Clearly something that makes so little sense on first reading must contain the kernel of all true philosophy and dodgy telemarketing salesmanship. The esoteric teaching of the inner sect is the supreme secret of the universe, which I really shouldn't have just laid out like that. That was kind of stupid, I admit. Damn.

It has been said and noted that all great minds are ignored during their own lifetimes. Accordingly, I will not rest until this book is ignored for at least fifteen years. If, during the twilight years of my life, while I am cooped up in some god-forsaken asylum forever silent to the world, a few hints of the earth-rending fame I am destined to appropriate might make themselves apparent in the form of well wishers and famous playwrights, I might condescend to nod a bit between spoonfuls of puree plum-baby mash. But nothing more. I insist that no one in the present generation enjoy this book. That many excoriate its contents as lewd, insane, incomprehensible, and corrupting. That children run screaming down the streets when they see it in the bookshop windows. Only thus will I be satisfied.

Night and Horses and Deserts and Camels and Scorpions and Dates and Palm Trees and a Jackal and Some Bugs

The Arabs have always been a people in love with poetry. Before the coming of Islam, in the period known as the Jahaliyya or “the time of the braying jackasses”, it is said that when a poet emerged in a tribe, all of its members would celebrate, howl, dance, drink, beat themselves with joy and dash their heads against volcanic rocks in the desert. Other tribes would send gifts of seasoned sand-lizard, and the sheikhs of the tribe would collectively toss all the eldest women into the air for hours on end while the children pelted them with gobs of fermented goat's cheese. For with the poet, and him alone, came to rest the made-up reputation and history of the tribe.

This love of poetic eloquence lasted well into the hey-day of the Islamic period. It is late in the caliphate of the Badassids, however, that the most beloved of all the Arab poets was born: Abu-Banal of Nablus. There is not an Arab alive who, despite how pragmatic, ignorant, mean, malaodorous, penny-pinching, or xenophobic he may be, will not quote, amidst a flood of tears and sobs, the opening lines of his “Ode to Adidaz”:

My Adidaz, walk with me through the halls and the song tents,
Funky fresh, no string binds your hair...

Abu-Banal was not without controversy in his own day, however. The life of a court panegyrist was always a perilous one, and yet for him the danger was quadrupled by his penchant for back-handed insults to his own patrons. Take for instance this line from his “Ode on the Victory of Keftah Al-Shukran, Governor of Egypt, Against the Greek Mongrels”:

All men say you are weak and doddering eunuch, that your cheeks

Are flecked with the spittle of lapdogs, and you know not the sword.

Were these Greeks not then defeated by a sissy? A brave man’s sword cuts but once

A sissy’s gash will cut you for the rest of days....

Note that although the convention was to address the patron as a lover with the masculine pronoun, Abu-Banal addresses Keftah in the feminine. He left his court shortly thereafter, pursued by a pack of hunting dogs and scimitars.

It is not only the patrons which caused Abu-Banal trouble. He was also an unstinting racist, a fairly decent misogynist, and a tribalist, who believed only in the traditional Bedouin virtues of bravery, eloquence, and stabbing. It was said that the Persian poet Va’ari Rumi In’Heer struck Abu-Banal in the face with his key at court after Abu-Banal recited him the following verse:

But what are Persian rugs good for in the desert?

Collecting sand, and beating them out never learns them.

Give me a hide of Camel hair

And I will smother Khorosani perfumes

With the true stench of the Bedu.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to translate the full effect of this verse. Indeed, much of Arabic poetry is more resistant than usual to translation of any sort; whereas even Chinese poems can be made into something pleasurable, if not quite accurate, Arabian penchants for allusion, obscure desert vocabulary, and quadruple inverted sentence puns make all attempts to Anglicize the stuff futile from the outset; consider the term ha’bool, which means exactly a desert antelope whose left leg is speckled in the shape of falcon droppings.

Yet such was the high eloquence needed to please the fierce courts of the Badassids. It was not uncommon for a city-born poet such as Abu-Banal to spend some few years of apprenticeship with his nomadic cousins; there he picked up the untainted accents and vocabulary of high poetry that only a race of sand-creviced brigands could come-up with; he also picked up a handy technique for keeping scorpions in his dishdash that would prove to more than once save himself from certain comfort.

Yet who could have suspected that the bravado of Abu-Banal’s war verses would be his undoing? Safely stuffing his face with baklaweh in the courts put Abu-Banal in a mood to compose belligerent verses. One could say that these came to bite him in the ha’bool like a misplaced scorpion. As he and several servants were crossing the desert, they were set-upon by an angry gang of bedouins whom Abu Banal had listed unflaterringly among others in his infamous “Ode to the Top Ten Gayest Tribes”.

Setting his camel to “flee” mode, Abu-Banal took off...But was stopped in his tracks by the eloquent appeal of his head servant, who so movingly chanted Banal’s own famous couplet right back to him:

I pity the fool who runs away from sword and spear and stabby things like a little girl

Especially when he’s outnumbered; by Allah such a one is truly a wuss. Seriously.

Considering the awesomeness of his own verses, Abu Banal turned around and charged the attackers, thrusting his sword and spitting scorpions left, right, and center. His last words were supposedly “By the balls of Iblis, that smarts!”

We append as epilogue a famous Qasida of Abu Banal’s, which draws on all the traditional romantico-bestial themes of the Jahili poets:

Wait a minute! Stop. I said stop! Kick the camel-y!

Just hold on a bloody minute. Here friends...

The spot was somewhere here I remember

Where the colocynth was bit, its bitter taste

Now makes me gawp like a weeping ostrich

Plunging its head in Ed-Dakhool’s  yummy sands.

Yes, ‘twas here where dots the twinkling sands

The poops of the lurgy-struck camels

I rode the wing of the scurrying ostrich

And met in the night my starry browed friend.

Ah, how sweet did her plump calves taste;

Her flavourish saliva will I always remember.

Her jaunts are still cruel to remember:

“Dismount, put your feet to the nightblack sands!

Is it only the ghoul’s wind you would taste?

Yet it was you who tickled the backside of my camel.”

Sotfly, softer still, they kill, the jokes of a friend

As a wolf  the cowardly ostrich;

The ride is long, and I am no fleet-flooted ostrich!

Yet this my horse is more like to remember;

He knows the desert ways better than I, my friends,

Or you yourselves, who suckled at the stars and sands.

Speak not of such-and-such a fine camel,

Nor of a bridle fitter to my mount’s taste!

Aches and weariness increase the date’s taste;

But halt again and behold the brother ostriches!

They flee from the lightning; Up rear the camels.

Let us settle between the rocks, for a storm to remember.

The djinn stir the unblinkable sands;

Have I not stirred your hearts, my friends?

I have sung to your taste, I, the ostrich,

My friends, grant me some camels!

Nothing better, on the sands, to remember!