Futility Closet

Jonathan Swift’s “Resolutions — When I Come to Be Old”:

• Not to Marry a young Woman.
• Keep young Company unless they reely desire it.
• Be peevish or morose, or suspicious.
• Scorn present Ways, or Wits, or Fashions, or Men, or War, &c.
• Be fond of Children, or let them come near me hardly.
• Tell the same Story over and over to the same People.
• Be covetous.
• Neglect decency, or cleenlyness, for fear of falling into Nastyness.
• Be over severe with young People, but give Allowances for their youthfull follyes, and Weeknesses.
• Be influenced by, or give ear to knavish tatling Servants, or others.
• Be too free of advise nor trouble any but those that desire it.
• Desire some good Friends to inform me which of these Resolutions I break, or neglect, & wherein; and reform accordingly.
• Talk much, nor of my self.
• Boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favor with Ladyes, &c.
• Hearken to Flatteryes, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman.
• Be positive or opiniative.
• Sett up for observing all these Rules, for fear I should observe none.

In today’s dollars, the Taj Mahal cost more than $500 million.
(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Nurse: Is anything bothering you?

Buddy Rich: Yes … country music!

Those were his last words.

Best entries in The Canonical List of Weird Band Names:

• Alcoholocaust
• The Ass Baboons of Venus
• The Couch Slugs
• The Dancing French Liberals of 1848
• Dick Duck and the Dorks
• Ed’s Redeeming Qualities
• Ethyl Meatplow
• Hell Camino
• Individual Fruit Pie
• Lavay Smith and The Red Hot Skillet Lickers
• Lawnsmell
• Mussolini Headkick
• Rash of Stabbings
• Stukas Over Bedrock
• Technosquid Eats Parliament

A few are designed to look good on a marquee, like FREE BEER AND CHICKEN and HORNETS ATTACK VICTOR MATURE.

On Aug. 10, 2003, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko became the first person to be married in space.

He was in the international space station, 240 miles over New Zealand, when he married Ekaterina Dmitrieva, who was in Texas.

Deaths of selected Burmese kings:

• Uzana (1254): Trampled to death by an elephant
• Minrekyawswa (1417): Crushed to death by an elephant
• Razadarit (1423): Died while lassoing elephants
• Tabinshweti (1551): Beheaded while searching for an elephant

Draw your own conclusions.

A samurai once asked Zen master Hakuin where he would go after he died. Hakuin answered, “How am I supposed to know?”

“How do you know? You’re a Zen master!” exclaimed the samurai.

“Yes, but not a dead one,” Hakuin answered.

A guy is sitting at home when there’s a knock at the door.

He opens it and there’s a snail sitting on the doorstep.

He picks up the snail and throws it as far as he can.

Three years later the guy is sitting at home and there’s a knock at the door.

He opens it and the same snail is sitting on the doorstep.

The snail says, “What the hell was that about?”

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Epitaphs, proposed by their owners:

Mel Blanc: “That’s all, folks!”
Jack Lemmon: “In”
Jackie Gleason: “And away we go!”
Spike Milligan: “I told you I was ill.”
Peter Ustinov: “Do not walk on the grass.”

Rejection letters sent to Henry James:

“A duller story I have never read. It wanders through a deep mire of affected writing and gets nowhere, tells no tale, stirs no emotion but weariness. The professional critics who mistake an indirect and roundabout use of words for literary art will call it an excellent piece of work; but people who have any blood in their veins will yawn and throw it down — if, indeed, they ever pick it up.”

“It is surely the n+1st power of Jamesiness. … It gets decidedly on one’s nerves. It is like trying to make out page after page of illegible writing. The sense of effort becomes acutely exasperating. Your spine curls up, your hair-roots prickle & you want to get up and walk around the block. There is no story — oh! but none at all …”

They didn’t seem to bother him. “Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else,” he said. “Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”