Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Fun with anagrams

Some years ago Dick Cavett found himself idle while waiting in an airport. He sketched the letters GORE VIDAL, and then rearranged them to form EVIL GLOVE. Nice, but no cigar, since in Cavett's creation L appears twice, and A is omitted.

A real anagram of the egregious Vidal is A LOVE GIRL. I like this one because it brings out his immaturity (even in the autumn of his years), together with his sexual confusion. The guy still cannot bring himself to admit that he is gay. On second thought, perhaps the old codger merits GRAVID OLE. The matter is really summed up by LARGE VOID.

With two Y’s, WAYNE DYNES admits of few anagrams. The one I like best is YAWN END, YES!

One should not get too carried away with this. A former associate, the noted art historian LEO STEINBERG, accumulated a number of flattering anagrams of his own name. One he did not cite is BILGE. TERSE? NO.

Speaking of ART HISTORY, my home field, a nice instance is ARTISTRY HO! Unfortunately, the discipline is rarely plebeian enough to merit TRASHY RIOT. For those truly jaded of the endeavor it is A SH*T OR TRY.

PHILOSOPHY yields HI, OH SLOPPY and HIPPO HO, SLY.

For some unfortunates ASTRONOMY turns out to be A MORON STY and AM NOT ROSY.

POSTMODERN has taken its lumps, but here are a few more—DESPOT NORM, DOT SPERM, NO and TEN SOD ROMP (my favorite dance, actually).

It’s that time of year, so one should check out GAY PRIDE. There is a lot of speechifying, hence YAP RIDGE. Those who have wearied of the whole thing would term it A DIRE GYP. One can always infuse a little controversy with incest (NICEST)-- PA, GIRD YE! A démarche of that caliber would certainly show that one is not ageist.

Politicians are also served. GEORGE W. BUSH is BEG SWORE UGH and SOB ERG WE HUG. John Kerry is not productive (only four items), but one is HORNY JERK.

Together with many others I view the claims of organized religion with skepticism. By the same token, though, militant atheists, whose dogmatism mirrors that of the religionists, turn me off. It is sobering then to learn that ATHEIST can be EAT SH*T.

You can find more of these items, till world’s end, at the site Brendan’s On-Line Anagram Generator (check Google).

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