Guest Post from Hansel von Wordenrhyme

Mien Gott!

Herr Justin it has been more than 15 years since I gave a lukewarm review to Poesy Does It: The Collected Works of Justin (1990-1993)…and still, still! you defame me.  Calling me biased!  My affront knows no bounds.

I stick by my original thesis “If I built ships as poorly as Justin wrote these poems, why I would not be a part-time shipping magnate, I would be a full time bad poet.”

I apologize if this was, as you Americans so quainty put it, “too real” for you…but I thought it best to help form your aesthetic early in the process…and it looks like my idea was quite the success as your latest work “Upon a Meeting with a Cow in a Pasture” was quite an improvement.  (Except for your misuse of the term “cuds” as a vowel…granted English is not my mother tongue, but I do believe Noah Webster would say that cud is only a noun–Jon was right about that.  That Jon sure is smart–just like when you were boys, but more so now!).

Keep writing Herr Justin, but stop defaming.

I must bid you adieu and go and check on my ships.

Guten Mornen,
Baron Hansel von Wordenrhyme

Up and Reading…

Well, Jon your last post piqued my interest, and I have once again returned to Shandy Hall rejoined Toby, Papa Shandy, Trim and the gang as we wait for the eventual birth of our intrepid narrator. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

[Dare I venture a prediction? Not much. Although I have to admit I was on the edge of my seat for the pulse-pounding door hinge episode. I thought about taking a little break after that...just to catch my breath.]

I did find it particularly funny though when mid-way through volume 3 Tristram apologizes to the reader for taking them on a tangent. Why now, Tristram? Why not 150 pages and hours of my life ago when your apology may have actually meant something to me.

Now, on to non-Shandy related items:

I feel like you are calling into question the journalistic integrity of The Jeffryes Family Post-Intelligencer Bugle Tribune. I will have you know that Eustace Van Culturingham IV was always fair in his reviews. (Which is more than I can say for your alter ego, part time German shipping magnate, part-time poetry critic Hansel von Wordenrhyme.)

I am going to have a go at finishing Volume 3 tonight. Maybe I will actually have something insightful to say in the near future. (Although, that’s probably as likely as Tristram Shandy actually coming to the point of the story.)

Until later.

Justin