“Give us a screen, a glowing screen!” Mr. Barton had found a way to mock everyone present, and most people who were not.
Anselm Bligh, A Collection of Miniatures.
Merit: a phantom.
Clive Morrow, A Crustacean’s Dictionary.
Once he was within the canyon, Mr. Redhorn quickly determined what he wanted to observe. And it lay well upstream. Over there, near the boulders.
James Yazzie, The Blue Mesa Murders. (1959)
“A special thanks to Windows 11.” Just another odd thought of Charlie’s, before falling asleep.
Jason Starling, ed., Adventures in Narrative Parsimony.
Wisdom should pinch.
Godfrey Tooke, Collected Aphorisms.
The twentieth century was strictly low comedy, Elizabeth. The raw courage of Piet Mondrian! A creepy little twit—Jean-Paul Sartre—telling us (each and every one of us) all about ‘being’. And there—it seems so long ago now—stood Doctor Freud, solemnly explaining that tiny infants not only want to engage in coitus with their mothers, but cannot help being completely shaped for the rest of their lives by that desire.
Rollin Mungo, Selected Rants of Mr. Barraclough.
The Enlightenment held that if people are given the freedom to think—and actually engage in that freedom—they will eventually arrive at the same thoughts (i.e., the Truth). There are only three problems with this. First, people are not like that. Second, the world is not like that. And third, what we refer to as Reason is not like that.
Titus Musgrave, The Enigma of the Box.
“Your name is Blackie. Blackie Humphries. Or Ned Humphries? Also known as Slim Louderbush. Also known as Buster Kelso and Tom Stearns and Cowboy Dilly Dale. Well, sir?”
Ansonia Lytle, The Forgotten Door—A Hilda Lake Mystery. (1934)
Words are ephemera.
Godfrey Tooke, Collected Aphorisms.
“This item has an established value of $7,500.00. That is largely because Pablo Picasso is alleged to have looked at it, for more than twenty seconds.”
Nicholas Bruhns, Otto the Magpie.
dennis scharnberg 