Geez, can’t those helicopters just get along?
You’d think by the 20th century…
Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups, by Robert Anton Wilson.
Only, there’s nothing unintentionally (by the author) absurd in there.
I blame their bloodthirsty owners, who set them against each other in brutal cage fights. It’s a throwback to 19th century ornithopter fighting.
The Service Man’s Guide to Automotive Lubrication.
I have the 5th edition of this short (112 pages) tome, dated March 1938.
Three of the volumes of the Dun and Bradstreet Reference Book of US Companies, May 1989 prop up my work monitor. The fourth made the monitor too high off the desk. If you want to know the address and number of employees of any American company in May 1989, just give me a shout.
Imagine how many pages there would be if the lubrication issues were not limited to automobiles!
I guess your high school was old enough to have shop classes.
Not absurd as in wrong or ridiculous, but about occasionally obscure matters logical, linguistic, you name it.
Quine, Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary
Sheer brilliance, short, and in paperback. The most amusing general knowledge bit I can recall right now is when Quine discusses just how horribly illiterate it is to pronounce “processes” as (roughly) process-eez, like you hear sometimes.
It’s a dictionary, but it’s awesome. The DC Super Dictionary. Google it. If you find one, BUY IT.
Really? How is it illiterate? Of course, once I read your post, I tried to remember how I pronounce processes and I can’t recall what I usually say: probably processes, no “eez” at the end.
One book I bought as a remainder a few years ago was Churches of the South Atlantic Islands:1502 - 1991 by ** Edward Cannan**.
It’s a detailed history of the Diocese of St. Helena, which controlled the churches on the Falklands, Ascension, St. Helena and Tristan de Cunha.
cover pic
Ok, more “weird” than “absurd”, plus it’s out-of-print and way, WAY expensive, but The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana is incredibly neat.
Just ask any librarian. They’re supposed to know everything, and apparently they actually do. I used to ask librarians absurd questions sometimes just to see what would happen.
Once upon a time, in the old Carnegie Library in Paso Robles, I asked the librarian how many original Carnegie Libraries were still in operation. She didn’t know, but she DID know exactly where there was a book on it. Sure enough, she led me down an aisle and pulled a book that was a compendium of everything about Carnegie Libraries – history, pictorials, tables of statistics of all sorts, lists of which ones were still standing and which of those were still libraries, etc., etc., etc…
This was some years ago. Sorry I don’t have a cite. But google “Carnegie Libraries” and you’ll see there’s lots on the subject.
The PENIS Files: Foreskin Restoration (Illustrated) [Kindle Edition]