A Curmudgeon's Guide to Vice & Immorality, Vol. 2

Cur kər (noun) an aggressive, sometimes mangy-looking mongrel.
Mud məd (adj.) a soft, sticky substance well-suited for flinging at the pompous and the proud.
Cur•mudg•eon kərˈməj(ə)n (noun) the owner and operator of a sharp mind, a keen wit, and a gift for setting the record straight with a humorous riposte.

A Curmudgeon’s Guide to Vice & Immorality (Vol. 2) presents a compendium of spurious but hilarious guidance about vice and immorality from a who’s who of cultural iconoclasts. Herein, you’ll find advice and admonitions about sex, money, lying, cussing, smoking, drinking… all of our favorite vices!

My first encounter with curmudgeons came through an introduction to the wits of the Algonquin Round Table, that storied group of writers, critics, actors and columnists who gathered daily to lunch and kvetch at New York’s famed Algonquin Hotel. Leading members of the group included Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. They were preceded by their esteemed ancestors, Mark Twain and Will Rogers, and joined by their contemporaries, William Claude Dukenfield, a.k.a. W. C. Fields, Mae West and Groucho Marx. Across the pond, their crotchety cousins, Oscar Wilde, G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, wielded an unmatched facility with the timely bon mot or illuminating adage, all the while creating a deep reservoir of humor for leading comedians and commentators of today such as Chris Rock, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler, and David Letterman, not to mention the world-class malcontents H. L. Mencken and Woody Allen.

To wit, this advice from George Carlin: “Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.” Or Jonathan Winters’ honest confession as to the trials of sexual temptation: “God is in my mind but the devil’s in my pants.” Mae West suggested that “To err is human, but it feels divine,” while William Somerset Maugham assessed that many well-meaning reformers “have their hearts in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.”

I’m not suggesting that all of these entries should be taken at face value, for example P. J. O’Rourke’s observation that “Smoking is very bad for you and should only be done because it looks so good,” or Hunter S. Thompson’s confession that, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” Not shy to broach the big issues of life and death, you’ll find Woody Allen’s admission that “Love is the answer, but while you’re waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions,” or George Burns’ rationale for refusing to die: “I don’t believe in dying. It’s been done before. Besides, I can’t die now—I’m booked.”

Please enjoy this collection of aphorisms and adages, full of concision and cogency as delivered by a unique coterie of cantankerous contrarians. Their pronouncements are often meant to be both entertaining and enlightening, providing both fresh insight and perhaps a corrective impetus for change to otherwise obstinate opinions and boorish behavior.

Tom Willett
Valhalla on the Harpeth