Plagiarism

Summer of ’99

In the summer of 1799, John Cummings, a 23-year old American sailor, crewed on a ship to France.

The Mountebank’s Nefarious Influence

Stationed there, he witnessed a mountebank pretending to swallow knives in a circus near Havre de-Grace.

An Astonishing Claim

The sailors returned to the ship after the show was over; most had had too much to drink that night.

While discussing the events of the night, particularly the knife-swallowing Frenchman, he made an astonishing claim.

Under the alcohol influence, he claimed to possess the same knife-swallowing skill.

He swallowed four knives with no obvious ill effect, although only three of the four knives were seen again.

He washed the knives down with more alcohol.

His Movements

The next morning, his bowel movements were uneventful.

However, he passed one of the knives in his stool.

Moreover, he passed two more knives in his stool the next day.

The fourth and final knife never made its way out of his bowels and also did not prove to be of any inconvenience for him.

On Not Practicing His Skill

Over the next six years, the young man did not practice this skill again.

In Boston

Six years later he was stationed in Boston.

While drinking in a gathering of sailors, he boasted about his former knife-swallowing skills.

His current shipmates did not believe his story and under the influence of grog he began again, he demanded a knife be brought to him to swallow.

He swallowed it instantly.

Throughout the evening he swallowed five more knives.

Obligations

The following morning, word had spread about his tactics the previous night.

Many visited him during the day, and he was obliged to swallow eight more!

The Tally

The tally of the total knives he had swallowed now stood at fourteen!

First Admission

He was admitted to Charleston Hospital with abdominal pain.

After a few days the knives had all passed safely through and his symptoms resolved, just in time for him to sail back with his ship to France.

Pressed on to the HMS Isis

His next ship was the Betty of Philadelphia. Early in the voyage back from France to the USA she was stopped by the Royal Navy and he was impressed into service aboard HMS Isis.

Drunk Once Again

On 4 December 1805, drunk once again, he swallowed his final twenty knives and two days later he reported to the ship’s surgeon, Benjamin Lara.

His Treatments

He was given castor oil and enemas of thick water-gruel, and opium for the pain.

When the symptoms continued, a dose of 30 or 40 drops of sulphuric acid daily was tried in an attempt to dissolve the iron.

Finally he was given murinated tincture of iron, but this made his pain worse.

When the Knives Dropped

After remaining on the sick list for three months he felt the knives drop into his bowel and felt much relieved and was discharged back to light duties.

Summer, Fall, and Winter, 1806-1807

In June 1806, he vomited one side of a knife handle.

In November and again the following February he passed more pieces.

Dr. Lara Kept Informed

Although Lara was transferred off HMS Isis in November 1806 his successor, Mr Peter Kelly, kept him informed of the patient’s progress.

Discharge

He continued to pass pieces of iron and knife handles; each ejection was accompanied by considerable pain and in one instance the vomiting of two pounds of blood. He was finally discharged from the ship, as unfit, in June 1807.

Disbelief

After leaving HMS Isis, he traveled immediately to London and presented himself to Guy’s Hospital for treatment. His admitting physician, Dr. Babbington, did not believe his story and discharged him after a few days.

Readmission and Deterioration

He was readmitted in August, however, his condition much deteriorated. Examining the patient with Sir Astley Cooper, Babbington asked for the opinion of the surgeon Mr Lucas.

What Dr. Lucas Found

Lucas performed a rectal examination and felt one of the knives in the rectum.

Under the Care of Dr. Curry

Although he was again discharged on 28 October 1807, Cummings was readmitted in September 1808, this time under the care of Dr. Curry.

He was given more acid, mucilage and opium but slowly deteriorated, suffering bouts of pain and indigestion and having difficulty eating.

Incurable

Over the course of three and a half years, he consulted several doctors and was admitted to the hospital on numerous occasions.

During this period, he vomited and defecated many knife fragments.

In his final moments, he was sent home and was deemed “incurable” by the doctors.

His Death

He finally died in March 1809 in a state of extreme emaciation.

Plagiarism

Choose any tree that you think pretty.

Which is nearly bare of leaves.

Which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall, or other light ground.

(It must not be against strong light, or you will find the looking at it hurt your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or you will be puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in shade; and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray or rainy day is the best for this practice.)

You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against the sky.

Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map with absolute accuracy.

Without the least thought about the roundness of the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them in with pencil.

Then correct and alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your paper is dirtied.

(Only not destroying its surface.)

Correct until every bough is exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in curvature and in thickness.

Look at the white interstices between the boughs with as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had to survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy penalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave the hedge anywhere too deep a curve.

Try continually to fancy the whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground.

Do not take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused network or mist.

Leave them all out, drawing only the main branches as far as you can see them distinctly.

Your object at present being not to draw a tree, but to learn how to do so.

When you have got the thing as nearly right as you can, take your pen, and put a fine outline to all the boughs.

Take care to put the outline within the edge of the shade, so as not to make the boughs thicker.

(The main use of the outline is to affirm the whole more clearly; to do away with little accidental roughnesses and excrescences.)

(It may perfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than your outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to mark the facts clearly.)

The temptation is always to be slovenly and careless.

The outline is like a bridle, and forces our indolence into attention and precision.

You cannot do too many studies of this kind.

Every one will give you some new notion about trees.

“Humoresque” — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Plagiarism

2014 (MMXIV) will be a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2014th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 14th year of the 3rd millennium, the 14th year of the 21st century, and the 5th year of the 2010s decade.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.

The United Nations designated 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming and Crystallography.

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier.’

New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion.

4

Year 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday in the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Wednesday in the Julian calendar. It was the year that saw the beginning of what became known as World War I.

Latvia will officially adopt the euro currency and will become the eighteenth Eurozone country.

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.

The 2014 Winter Olympics will be held in Sochi, Russia.

Have a new soul.

2

Year 1814 (MDCCCXIV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar.

Comet Holmes (17P/Holmes) will reach perihelion.

Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.

A new nose.

Ring out the old, ring in the new.

An annular solar eclipse will occur.

3

Year 1714 (MDCCXIV) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Thursday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.

Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.

New feet.

Faye’s Comet will reach perihelion.

The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.

New backbone.

5

Year 1614 (MDCXIV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Saturday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar.

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup will be held in Brazil.

I will bestir myself.

New ears.

The Sky City skyscraper is planned for completion in Changsha, Hunan, China.

And try to be wise if I cannot be good.

7

Year 1514 (MDXIV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will cross the orbit of Neptune after travelling for over eight years. New Horizons is scheduled to reach its mission target, Pluto, in 2015.

New eyes.

The Scottish independence referendum will be held.

The first unmanned flight test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft is scheduled to be launched.

6

Year 1414 (MCDXIV) was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.

The Catalan independence referendum will be held.

Hark, it’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.

A commercial cure for baldness is predicted to become available.

New hair?

Plagiarism

Art and cultural property crime—which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines—is a looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses in the billions of dollars annually.

Jan van Eyck: The Just Judges.

Early to mid-1800s: Burkel paints After the Hunt (c. 1830), Amalfi Cave (c. 1845), and The Horse Round-up (c.1861-1863).

In October 1969, two thieves entered the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Italy and removed the Caravaggio Nativity from its frame. Experts estimate its value at $20 million.

Vincent van Gogh: View of the Sea at Scheveningen(1882).

1925: All three Burkel paintings are acquired and subsequently exhibited by the Pirmasens Museum in Germany.

On December 31, 1999, during the fireworks that accompanied the celebration of the millennium, a thief broke into the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England and stole Cezanne’s landscape painting View of Auvers-sur-Oise. Valued at £3 million, the painting has been described as an important work illustrating the transition from early to mature Cezanne painting.

Johannes Vermeer: The Concert (c.1658–1660).

On September 8, 2011, Madeleine Leaning on Her Elbow with Flowers in Her Hair by Pierre Auguste Renoir was stolen during an armed robbery in a Houston home. The masked robber is described as a white male, 18 to 26 years old, who weighs about 160 pounds and is approximately 5’10” tall. He was armed with a large-caliber, semi-automatic handgun. A private insurer is offering up to $50,000 for information leading to the recovery of the painting.

Rembrandt: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633).

May 13, 1942: To avoid Allied bombings, the Burkel paintings were taken to a local air-raid shelter outside of Pirmasens.

Approximately 100 paintings stolen from a Florida family’s art collection in a fine art storage facility. This collection included works by Picasso, Rothko, Matisse and others that were recovered from Chicago, New York and Tokyo.

Vincent van Gogh: Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen (1884).

Radu Dogaru’s mother, hoping to free her son from prosecution, told the police that on a freezing night in February, 2013, she placed seven stolen paintings — which included Monet’s 1901 Waterloo Bridge, London; Gauguin’s 1898 Girl in Front of Open Window” and Picasso’s 1971 Harlequin Head — in a wood-burning stove used to heat saunas and incinerated them.

September 19, 1945: The Pirmasens Museum reports that “about 50 paintings which had been stored in the air-raid shelter at Husterhoh School during the war have been lost during the arrival of the American troops on March 22, 1945.” The works were later smuggled to the U.S. by unknown individuals.

Jean-Baptiste Oudry: The White Duck (1753).

Mid-1960s: A New Jersey man purchases the Burkel paintings.

How Picassos, Matisses, Monets and other precious masterpieces may have met a fiery fate in a remote Romanian village, population 3,400, is something the police are still trying to understand.

Amadeo Modigliani: La Femme à l’éventail (Modigliani) (1919).

Late 1980s: The Burkel paintings are handed down to the New Jersey man’s daughter.

Caspar David Friedrich: Landschaft mit Regenbogen (c. 1810).

October 25, 2005: The William H. Bunch Auction and Appraisal Company in Pennsylvania advertises the sale of the Burkel paintings on the Internet and through the print media. Heike Wittmer, Pirmasens Museum Director and Archivist, spots the paintings for sale and alerts German authorities. U.S. Embassy officials contact the FBI, which halts the sale and takes custody of the paintings from the consignor, who voluntarily agrees to their return to Germany.

Rembrandt’s Self Portrait (1630): Recovered in a sting operation in Copenhagen carried out in cooperation with ICE and law enforcement agencies in Sweden and Denmark. The FBI had previously recovered Renoir’s The Young Parisian. Both paintings had been stolen from the Swedish National Museum in Stockholm in 2000.

February 10, 2006: The Burkel paintings are repatriated to Germany by the U.S.

Pablo Picasso: Le pigeon aux petits pois(1911).

In December 2002, two thieves used a ladder to climb to the roof and break in to the Vincent Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In just a few minutes the thieves stole two paintings: Van Gogh’s View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, valued at $30 million. Dutch police convicted two men in December 2003, but did not recover the paintings.

Forensic analysis of ash found in Mrs. Dogaru’s stove, conducted by Romania’s National History Museum, found nails and tacks that indicated that at least three had been burned.

Franz Marc: The Tower of Blue Horses 1913 (missing since 1945).

Carl Spitzweg: Der Liebesbrief 1845-1846 (missing since 1989).

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING THESE WORKS OF ART OR CIRCUMSTANCES OF THESE CRIMES, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL FIELD OFFICE OR THE NEAREST U.S. EMBASSY OR CONSULATE.

Plagiarism

It was an icy day.

Pierre Pinoncelli damaged two of the eight copies of Fountain by Marcel Duchamp with a hammer.

The attacks were separated by 13 years: The latest on January 4, 2006 at Centre Pompidou in Paris.

And in Nîmes in 1993.

Where he also urinated into it before using the hammer.

Accordingly, in our Mongolian age all change has been only reformatory or ameliorative, not destructive or consuming and annihilating.

The substance, the object, remains.

All our assiduity was only the activity of ants and the hopping of fleas, jugglers’ tricks on the immovable tight-rope of the objective, corvée -service under the leadership of the unchangeable or “eternal.”

I have seen

The old gods go

And the new gods come.

The Stone Breakers (FrenchLes Casseurs de pierres) was an 1849–50 painting by the French painter Gustave Courbet.

It was a work of social realism, depicting two peasants, a young man and an old man, breaking rocks.

The painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1850. It was destroyed during World War II, along with 154 other pictures, when a transport vehicle moving the pictures to the castle of Königstein, near Dresden, was bombed by Allied forces in February 1945.

Day by day

And year by year

The idols fall

And the idols rise.

Damage then recovery, damage then recovery.

We buried the cat,

then took her box

and set fire to it

in the back yard.

Even to his death, Duchamp retained a sense of humor.

The evening of 1 October 1968 had been a pleasant one, dinning at home with his friends Man Ray and Robert Lebel. Shortly after his guests had left, it happened suddenly and peacefully. Just before retiring at 1:05 A.M. his heart simply stopped beating.

Those fleas that escaped

earth and fire

died by the cold.

Courbet died, age 58, in La Tour-de-Peilz,Switzerland, of a liver disease aggravated by heavy drinking.

But he hammered his poor heart to death, Lord, Lord,
    He hammered his poor heart to death.

“D’ailleurs, c’est toujours les autres qui meurent;” or “Besides, it’s always the others who die”.

Today

I worship the hammer.

Plagiarism

blue-rollers_6312

A rose is a rose is a rose.

The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Antimetabole. Repetition of two words or short phrases, but in reversed order to establish a contrast. It is a specialized form of chiasmus.

Sometimes a cigar.

Freedom from morality.

Epiphora. The repetition of a phrase or word at the end of several sentences or clauses.

Sisyphus was son of King Aeolus of Thessaly and Enarete, and the founder and first king of Ephyra.

Epizeuxis. Emphasizing an idea using one word repetition.

Everything becomes and recurs eternally – escape is impossible! – Supposing we could judge value, what follows?

Conduplicatio. The repetition of a word in various places throughout a paragraph.

So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going?

Inque tuo sedisti, Sisyphe, saxo.

Parachesis. Repetition of the same sound in several words in close succession.

New means against the fact of pain.

Epistrophe. The repetition of a word or phrase at the end of every clause.

Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition?

Antanaclasis. The repetition of a word or phrase to effect a different meaning

Tantalus was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink.

Anadiplosis. The repetition of the last word of a preceding clause.

The enjoyment of all kinds of uncertainty.

That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox?

Anaphora. The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of every clause.

Wu Gang, known for endlessly cutting down a self-healing Bay Laurel on the Moon.

wing_of_a_blue_roller_1512_mugs-rc589eed1ec6d499abe372d473ec40308_x7jpm_8byvr_512

Experimentalism, as a counterweight to this extreme fatalism.

Polyptoton. The repetition of a word or root in different cases or inflections within the same sentence.

Abolition of the concept of necessity. Abolition of the “will.”

The most famous facet of Naranath Branthan’s life is his apparently eccentric habit of rolling big stones up the hill and letting them roll down back, and laughing thunderously on seeing this sight

Polysyndeton. The repeated use of conjunctions within a sentence, particularly where they do not necessarily have to be used.

Abolition of “knowledge-in-itself.”

Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.

A rose is a rose is a rose.

blue-rollers_6312

Plagiarism

Knock knock.

An art thief is a man who takes pictures.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

It was the blurst of times.

Take my wife—please.

You have a better chance of stopping a serial killer than a serial thief in comedy.

I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did

Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.

Ducks will never hug! This devastating thought will consume my evening.

I’m wild about his turnip tops.
Likes the way he warms my chops!
I can’t do without my kitchen man.
Now when I eat his donut
All I leave is just the hole.
And if he really needs it,
He can use my sugar bowl!

I’d like to give my kid an interesting name. Like a name with no vowels … just like 40 Fs, that’s his name.

Just realized ducks can’t hug and now I can’t sleep.

Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want 2,000 of something.

I think I am, therefore I am. I think.

I intend to live forever, or die trying.

We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.

Life is a four-letter word.

#1: Hey, I hear you got a job as a salesman.
#2: Sure did. Pays real good.
#1: What do you sell?
#2: I sell salt.
#1: Is that right? I’ll be. I sell pepper.
#2: Shake!

Let’s face it, some people have a way with words. Other people, uhh . . . oh . . . not have way, I guess.

I’d like to have 19 kids. I think naming them, that’s going to be fun. I already have names picked out. First kid — boy, girl, I don’t care — I’m naming it Rrrrrrrrrrrr.

A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef.

The funniest food: ‘kumquats.’ I don’t even bring them home anymore. I sit there laughing and they go to waste.

Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

What are three words a woman never wants to hear when she’s making love?
“Honey, I’m home!”

Just realized giraffes can’t hug and now I can’t sleep.

My real name is bdbdbdbdbdbd. My sister’s name was yullyullyull.

You’re watching a guy do your material and people are laughing, but they’re laughing because they think this performer has a brilliant mind and he’s a funny person.

Just realized horses can’t hug and now I can’t sleep.

A drunk was in front of a judge. The judge says, “You’ve been brought here for drinking.”
The drunk says “Okay, let’s get started.”

I think he sort of got some of my jokes in his head and got sloppy.

Who’s there?

Turtles. Zebras.

Little tiny hairs.

It takes forever to cook a baked potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I just throw one in there, even if I don’t want one. Cause by the time it’s done, who knows?

The Aristocrats!

Plagiarism

line up all the empty bottles

the long-necked beer bottles

the wine bottles

Stand to attention all the empty bottles, yes …

the long-necked beer bottles from the antique stores,

steam off the labels and line the bottles up, the green ones
with the brown, black, yellow and clear ones.

The beer bottles whose labels have been torn off by
bleak, neurotic fingers

Is a pillow bottle a disciplinary form of some metaphor?

The bottles afloat on all the seas, those with messages in
them and those without any.

What I viewed there once, what I view again /Where the physic bottles stand

On the table’s edge,—is a suburb lane, / With a wall to my bedside hand.

Line up the bottle that killed Malcolm Lowry with the bottle
that killed Dylan Thomas ( I think that’s a record ! ).

I don’t know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better

line up the bottle that killed Malcolm Lowry with the bottle that killed Dylan Thomas

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound
In the throat, burning and turning.

Rage, rage

and the bottles that killed all the drunken poets nobody’s heard of and the poets who spoke all their lines into their bottles

Because their words had forked no lightning

Yes, line up all the empty bottles; yes …

the bottles that killed all the drunken monkeys,
poets nobody’s heard of and the poets who spoke all their
lines into their bottles and all that weren’t smashed on frozen
roadsides, when flung from car windows.

Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.

because I’m telling you now, right now…
the party’s over.

Plagiarism

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost – the most legitimate – passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

Georges Simenon wrote more than 500 novels.

Property is theft.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Isaac Asimov wrote 506 novels.

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.

Alexandre Dumas wrote 277 novels.

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.

Opportunity makes a thief.

Rolf Kalmuczak: maybe 3,000 novels. More than 100 pseudonyms.

Hunger makes a thief.

Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser’s passion, not the thief’s.

Ursula Bloom—over 500 novels.

James Joyce wrote four novels.

James Joyce wrote three novels.

James Joyce wrote only three novels.

It’s nice to sometimes get things out of life, rather than stealing from other artists. I’m trying to steal from the real people.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

They’re stealing my ideas. They’re imitating my shots.

Only.