Author Archives: seisiminger

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Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “Win or lose, the king and his pawns retire to the same box.”—Iraqi proverb “Second place is the silver bruise.”—The Wordspinner  CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—3/26/12—Like everyone else, I come from a mixed clan of winners and losers, but perhaps no one in the family understood defeat better than my [...]

Skip the B.S.  By Skip Eisiminger “Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life.”—Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)  “When the state stubs out a life in its hand, the light grows dimmer all over the land.”—The Wordspinner (D-South Carolina) CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—3/19/12—Though their beloved innocent writhed on a cross for six [...]

Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “I am a proud non-reader of books.” —Kanye West, promoting his latest booklet “In Bunraku . . . the chief reader holds out the text and bows to it . . . .” —Susan Sontag  CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—3/12/12—I do not own a Kindle, Nook, or iPad, and I [...]

Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger  “If she’s beautiful, she’s unfaithful; if she’s faithful, she’s ugly.”—Voltaire “A perfect translation is impossible; yet absolutely necessary.”—Anonymous  CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—3/5/12—Cervantes compared the translation of a classic work to the back side of a tapestry: pale, dusty and knotted. Indeed, the difference between the original and the imitation [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger “Lightning rods interfere with God’s vengeance.”—Anonymous 18th-Century Churchman “Good heavens! The postilion has been struck by lightning.”—French phrase book for English language students, c.1880 CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—2/13/12—Standing on treeless knolls surveying the sky, Greek priests would not have been surprised to learn that the planet Jupiter has ten [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger “Your parents’ love is expressed in your life; their love for you is expressed in your name.” —The Wordspinner “The hand God deals you represents determinism. The way you play your cards represents free will.” —Norman Cousins CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—2/6/12—The Romans used to say, “Nomen ist omen” or, [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger “Take no counsel from your fears.”—Stonewall Jackson “Take the counsel of your fears.”—American Proverb CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/30/12—If the creator has ever visited this planet, I have a good idea of where and when that was: England, 1943. My father still tells a story that he heard from an [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger Wearers of “legible clothing” are the ignorant feigning success.—Paraphrase of Paul Fussell Bumper stickers add “more to our humor than to our rancor.”—Robert Samuelson CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/23/12—Many years ago, I was heading north on I-85 toward Greenville in some pre-Christmas traffic. I was in the right lane, driving [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger “The Lord is my chauffeur—I shall not walk.”—Bil Keane “For the night cometh, wherein no man can [walk].”—Thomas Carlyle CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/16/12—A friend of a friend said that when he started teaching 40 years ago, he taught six days a week, but he soon changed to a five-day [...]

Skip the B.S.  by Skip Eisiminger “It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.”—Woody Allen  “Many who have their death gene cut out want it restored on getting the gout.”—The Wordspinner CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/9/12—One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons drawn by Mick Stevens features a lemming doing a [...]