At least this one, from Fred Kline, who deals in art, is funny.
The background is that he has at least one "Leonardo" that I declined to support.
I have to say that the Leonardo meatballs have not materialised. As a vegetarian, I have mixed feelings about Mr Kline's failure to keep his promises.
From: Lears Fool Society, Princeton on the Pecos
To: President, The Crazy Leonardo Club-Principessa Division (kindly distribute)
OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION 2010 LFS IGNOBLE PRIZE
Dr. Prof. Rev. Martin Kemp, Cardinal of the Unauthorized Church of Leonardo da Vinci Orthodoxy,
Your Eminence,
As you are the current President and Editor-in-Chief of The Crazy Leonardo Club-Principessa Division, please accept the sincere congratulations of the Lears Fool Society (LFS) on your clubs winning the 2010 LFS IgNoble Prize for Leonardo da Vinci Theory, a newly established category for gold-plated gobbledygook.
Along with a limited edition tin-plated lead medallion depicting Leonardos Parachute for each of the members including the shadowy Mr. Peter Silverman, you and your fellow alchemistsespecially citing the contributions of Mr. Pascal Cotte and Mr. Peter Paul Birowill receive a years supply of gift-boxed Leonardos Meatballs made entirely of organic bullshit, which as Leonardo instructed in his Notebooks, the meatballs can be burned as fuel, used as cannon balls, or boiled and eaten during cold winters of discontent.
Martin Kemp was again cited as author and editor of The Story of the New Masterpiece By Leonardo da Vinci: La Bella Principessa, an unctuous and slippery-tongued tome with proofy illustrations and pseudo-scientology. The LFS says three cheers for your well-done hoax! Martin Kemps book receives as well the 2010 LFS IgNoble Prize for a Book on Leonardo da Vinci, a newly established sub-category for gold-plated hard-cover gobbledygook. We feel IT will live in infamy along with other LFS IgNoble Prize winners: Hitlers Diaries (Hitler-Tagebücher) and Clifford Irvings (exceptionally well-written) The Autobiography of Howard Hughes, among others. For this original anti-achievement, Martin Kemp is banished to three years of carefree life in Antarctica at Ellsworth Land Lodge and Weasel Farm (350,000 scenic square miles of mountain and enthralling high plateau with live-in arctic weasels for company (all-expenses-paid/clothing and weasel food not included). This entitlement also comes with mandatory monthly weekend visits from Peter Silverman; the Italian art historians and politicians and other smoothy expertiseans associated with your prizewinning gobbledy-book, including the impeccably imperious and pompous couple Nicholas and (faux-book designer) Jane Turner; and of course your choice of relatives, students, and sycophants. (complete all-expenses-paid+$250 cash).
The awards dinner will be held on Halloween Evening, October 31, 2010, at the clandestine Bernard Madoff Estate, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. In honor of the occasion, the awards ceremony will be held in the dark Ballroom at the Madoff main house. The Voodoo Shamans Chorus will provide entertainment with voodoo incantations and handmade effigy dolls with a packet of poison pins. Please note that the evening will be illuminated only by flashlights held by Lears Fool Society members, each of whom will be supplied with red paint-balls and a slingshot. All award recipients are required to wear white shirts and no pants (including underpants) and to submit to the tattooing of one of Leonardos ugliest grotesque caricatures on top of the right forearm (no exceptions). Transportation and bodyguards provided courtesy of The Swiss Bankers Swisscheese Hedgefund and Worse Angels Security & Torture Laboratory, Inc.
Again, congratulations to you and the whole package of wieners. Nobody roasts a wiener like LFS!
Yours sincerely, and most assuredly,
Fred R. Kline, Sergeant at Arms
Lears Fool Society
Princeton on the Pecos
The Leonardo da Vinci Library and *Abattoir
Dragons Lair #1
New Mexico, U.S.A. 87504
*Visitors Welcome
Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.
(Art eternal, life short, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult)
Hippocrates (b. 460 BC- d. 357 BC)