Patrick Hughes (1) (1939–)

Patrick Hughes got his start at the brilliant, yes brilliant, Bad News Hughes, http://badnewshughes.blogspot.com/. This book is a collection of the best of those blog entries with a few extras thrown. Hughes documents the absurd, painful and humiliating episodes that seem to hound his life. It can be amazingly funny (I can't remember laughing out loud so much as I read a book), but be warned; it can also be extremely profane and crude. This book s seriously not for the faint of heart. But for all his bluster and bravado, Hughes always manages to give these stories a lot of heart and some of them can be heart-breakingly bitter-sweet. Don't let that wimpy last line lull you into a false sense of security, though, because the moment you start thinking he's a softy, Hughes will bring you back to reality with a story about something like frying a turd. And God bless him for it.… (mer)

http://nhw.livejournal.com/888709.html

Goes through the standard paradoxes - the class of all classes that do not include themselves, Zeno, Cantor on infinity, the unexpected hanging, etc, and many variations. Slightly confusing layout in that every page has a vaguely relevant quotation at both top and bottom, which breaks up the main text rather abruptly. Mostly of interest to teenage proto-geeks, but I laughed out loud when Russell, worrying about the class of all classes that do not include themselves, confides his concerns to Whitehead, who ripostes, "never glad confident morning again!" You bastard, Whitehead, is the thought which probably went through Russell's mind.… (mer)