Not-So-Random Insomniac Readings

Early this morning, in my night-before-work-after-three-day-weekend insomnia, I gazed at the bookcases in my room while recumbent in bed. Two of the cases are in arm's reach. I looked at the Circus/Freak/Sideshow/Human Eccentric section of my vast book collection, and reached for the five volumes at the far right of the bottom shelf. I flipped through them one by one until my eyes spied some sort of fun or weird factoid or passage, and wrote it down.

• "The Dalai Lama's full name is Getson Nwgang Lobsang Tengin Gypaso Sisun Wangyur Tshungpa Mapai Dhepal Sangpo." Seven Wonders of the World, Lowell Thomas, Hanover House, 1956, pg. 158 (actually, this one is misfiled; should be in the Exotic Travel section).
• "Unarian student Michael Leas explained to me that the Earth is the only planet on the Federation not yet advanced enough to join the rest of the galaxy. He went on to say the Space Brothers are scheduled to arive at the Unarius acreage in 2001, in 33 jewel-bedecked space ships..." "The Space Brothers Are Watching You," by George Bishop in Kooks, Donna Kossy, ed., Feral House, 1994, pg. 113.
• "For Mattie Turley, Ouija spelled tragedy. The girl said the board had instructed her to kill her father so thet her mother could marry a handsome cowboy." "The Wonderful Ouija Board," in Fads, Follies and Delusions of the American People, Paul Sann, Bonanza Books, 1967, pg. 142.
• "The world has already been turned topsy-turvy, not by Velikovsky, but by his opponents, when the 'charlatan' defends himself objectively and with restraint, while the leaders of the scientific establishment behave like ruffians." Charles Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained, Damon Knight, Doubleday, 1970, pg. 137.
• "Advertisers leaped on it, and for a while at the turn of the century trendy consumers could buy Radium Soap, Radium Flour, and Radium Boot Polish. Radon sodas and digestives in particular were popular among rich people until they started keeling over, their bodies racked and pitted with massive overdoses of radiation." "The Man With the N-Ray Eyes," in Banvard's Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn't Change the World, Paul Collins, Picador USA, 2002, pg. 71.

The pic above is actually of the top shelf of that particular bookcase, and houses some of my ReSearch publications, rock & roll books, and other assorted cultural stuff, including the fabulous AMOK book catalogs.