Author Archives: seisiminger

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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 [...]

Skip the B.S.  by Skip Eisiminger “Poke my bunny with a stick, Sir?”—Nick Downes “You’re a total sociopath, Ron. I like that in a man.”—Scott Adams CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1/2/12—Clemson students are often perplexed by Edgar Poe’s narrator in “The Raven.” Most of them have grown up in middle-class homes with one or two parents [...]

Skip the B.S. By Skip Eisiminger “In the pun, two strings of thought are tangled into one acoustic knot.”—Arthur Koestler “Puns are the droppings of soaring wits.”—Victor Hugo CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/26/11—It all began quite innocently. One day Gudrun “Goody” Greef, found herself browsing for lingerie at Bare Assets; a few weeks later, she was [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”—Exodus 22:18 Three hundred and nine years after five Salem women were hanged for witchcraft, they were exonerated by the governor and legislature of Massachusetts.—Various news sources, 2001 CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/19/11—Kia, the on-line “psychic witch,” invites visitors to park their broomsticks, [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger “When dueling was legal, we were politer.”—Anonymous “When dueling was legal, we were meeker.”—The Wordspinner CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/12/11—I almost caused an accident recently listening to Dr. J. Rufus Fears lecturing on Julius Caesar. Dr. Fears is one of the Teaching Company’s star academics, but stellar as his credentials [...]

Skip the B.S.  by Skip Eisiminger “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”—William Shakespeare’s Juliet “He said true things but called them by the wrong name.”—Elizabeth Barrett-Browning CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/5/11—Ever since the Christmas my wife and children gave me the Dictionary of Surnames [...]

Skip the B.S. by Skip Eisiminger  “Writing by hand makes you more apt to hear the inner voice.”—John Updike “Writing words by hand is a technology that’s just too slow for our times and our minds.”—Anne Trubek CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—11/28/11—A graduate school professor convinced me that if I really wanted to understand Emily Dickinson’s [...]