“We need to bring it back to life in a relevant way,” says Kelley Peters, the “insights” director who charts Grape Nuts psychographics for Ralcorp’s $5 million resuscitation attempt. Her target: men 45 years old and up. “Men aspire to it,” she says. “It’s strong and stern, the father figure of cereals.” Her marketing chief, Jennifer Marchant, points out: “It tends to break your teeth sometimes.”

True, but Grape Nuts loyalists don’t all welcome the focus on maleness. Sylvie Dale, 38, an editor in New Jersey, and a woman, says: “The rhythmic crunching that reverberates around your skull could be ambient sound meditation. To have the patience to get through a bowl, you have to practice mindfulness.” Ms. Dale adds: “I have a special place in my heart for this cereal.”

Fred Barber felt a soft impact; looked down, and to his utter horror found himself covered with a complete suit of tree frogs – hundreds of them, clinging in a continuous layer by their sucker-toed feet.

Fred Barber liked milk, a fact which he concealed with the most painful care from the gay, interesting, mocking crowd in London.

“O fuck!” she apostrophized, unable to restrain herself and startling me with the vigor of her expressions.

It is not given to all of us to imagine a world populated by antilions and anticrocodiles.

When males appear in somatopias, they usually take the form of a wandering penis in search of a warm refuge. 

There were also delightful notes on “burlesque social archaeology” and on the parrot, “the emblem of the false philosopher.”

“On Love Between Women.’’ This section gives the medical reasons for such behavior (eating too much celery and rocket, for example) and a descriptive list of different types of lesbians.

Nothing is more depressing than to imagine the Text as an intellectual object (for reflection, analysis, comparison, mirroring, etc.).

When the globe is organised and its population has reached the grand total of 3 thousand million, there will normally be 37 million poets equal to Homer, 37 million geometricians equal to Newton, 37 million dramatists equal to Moliere, and so on through all the talents imaginable. (These estimates are approximate.)