Your most humble and obedient servant: Table-Talk for December 26, 2008

I. Dzyd Brian revisits his teenage sonneteer self, and more:

An hour or two ago I dreamt that I and some coworkers were missing our top rows of teeth. On the bare gums in the tops of our mouths, we wore "reversible" dentures.

II. John Lennon's "paranoid close readings of some lyrics from Ram." (Via.)


III. Dzyd Andrew's Flaubert's Parrot :

I prefer to think that this newspaper was clipped in Manhattan, where the paperback was purchased by a wonderful bespectacled clean-shaven man. My dad lived in Manhattan at the time, and I lived with my mom across the Tappan Zee Bridge in Rockland County. I visited dad in 80s Bachelor Manhattan every other weekend, sometimes every weekend. I might’ve touched this newspaper when I was four years old!

(Also see: "an ouroboros of one's own").

IV. An interview with Jenny D. at the Columbia Political Review:

When I sign a letter “Your most obedient and humble servant,” is that a falsification of my relationship with the person to whom I have addressed the letter? What about if I ask my servant to say that I am “not at home” to visitors—is that safely perceived as a conventional “white lie,” or do I actually degrade my own truthfulness by practicing these forms of supposedly innocent deception?