This one was influenced by two disparate sources, Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For and Edward Gorey's The Unstrung Harp. The former once featured a strip in which most of the tchotchkes for sale at the feminist bookstore have a Venus of Willendorf theme (Venus of Willendorf coffee mugs, Venus of Willendorf boxer shorts) as well as a strip in which one of the dykes threatens to put superglue in another's "personal lubricant dispenser," a phrase that evidently stuck in my head. And the novelist Mr. Earbrass in Gorey's book receives a gift from an admirer of "an unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum." I had to look up epergne, but that phrase also stuck in my head. The whole passage that contains it is wonderful: "Mr. Earbrass returned from a walk to find a large carton blocking the hall. Masses of brown paper and then tissue have reluctantly given up an unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum. Mr. Earbrass recollects a letter from a hitherto unknown admirer of his work, received the week before; it hinted at the early arrival of an offering that embodied, in a different but kindred form, the same high-souled aspiration that animated its recipient's books. Mr. Earbrass can only conclude that the apathy of the lower figures is due to their having been deprived of novels."
An unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum
This one was influenced by two disparate sources, Alison Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For and Edward Gorey's The Unstrung Harp. The former once featured a strip in which most of the tchotchkes for sale at the feminist bookstore have a Venus of Willendorf theme (Venus of Willendorf coffee mugs, Venus of Willendorf boxer shorts) as well as a strip in which one of the dykes threatens to put superglue in another's "personal lubricant dispenser," a phrase that evidently stuck in my head. And the novelist Mr. Earbrass in Gorey's book receives a gift from an admirer of "an unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum." I had to look up epergne, but that phrase also stuck in my head. The whole passage that contains it is wonderful: "Mr. Earbrass returned from a walk to find a large carton blocking the hall. Masses of brown paper and then tissue have reluctantly given up an unnerving silver-gilt combination epergne and candelabrum. Mr. Earbrass recollects a letter from a hitherto unknown admirer of his work, received the week before; it hinted at the early arrival of an offering that embodied, in a different but kindred form, the same high-souled aspiration that animated its recipient's books. Mr. Earbrass can only conclude that the apathy of the lower figures is due to their having been deprived of novels."
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