by Chaka and Genghis Khan
Epigraph: “A God who could not at once exist and not exist, and move at will between the two, would not be almighty, but a slave to Aristotle.” --Sir Harry O. Triggerman
The books of the Koran are arranged by length, shortest first.
"A mortgage does not create a debt or obligation, it merely secures one."
JEET NO JEW means “Did you eat?” “No, did you?”
You can take the world as a given, or as a Given.
The Haunted Package Store: Wines and Spirits.
A company that makes user-friendly computers: “Easy P.C.”
Thought-provoking political party names:
“Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party”
“Smile Like You Just Pulled on a Pair of Pants You Don’t Often Wear and Found a Billion Dollars in the Pockets Party”
“Anti-Socialist and Beer Party”
“I suppose you’re wondering why I didn’t ask you all here.”
“The immorality of fascism and racism stems from the moral equality of all human beings; it cannot rest on an assumption that all human beings or groups of them are exactly the same.” --Robert Verbruggen
Donkey Hodie de la Mancha.
Fireworks survivor Thumbeam McThumbhand.
Get rich fast writer Eudora Wealthy.
Food section headline: “Tis the Season of Slicing and Skewering.”
One writer counts the following as the most beautiful passage in all of Nabokov:
“Pnin slowly walked under the solemn pines. The sky was dying. He did not believe in an autocratic God. He did believe, dimly, in a democracy of ghosts. The souls of the dead, perhaps, formed committees, and these, in continuous session, attended to the destinies of the quick.”
Mel Brooks, Mel Torme, Mel Canto.
Mild oath: “Chilblains and carbuncles!”
Maybe the first rule of decency: Don’t Yell “Jump!”
Parallel universe proves smaller than expected.
In the movie “Blade Runner,” based on the Philip K. Dick story, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” the only way to tell androids from humans was that androids felt no emotions. One test was making subjects read or listen to jokes or sad stories and watching their reactions. Some androids could fake emotions, but they had to figure out which emotions to fake and under what circumstances. Questions put to subjects might be “Was that sad or funny, and why?”
Jazz pharmacist Cannonbee Adderall.
If you see a couple with a dog, can you tell whether the dog is a child substitute or just a dog?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a man turning into a driveway is just a man turning into a driveway and not, you know, a man turning into a driveway, Lon Chaney style.
“Al Franken, Giant of the Senate” is the title of the book, and Al Franken is the author, but the joke is best when said as a whole: “Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, by Al Franken.”
Reminds me of Gene Wolfe’s short story, “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories.” It was collected in a book with other of Wolfe's stories and the book title was “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.” Other stories in the collection were, if I recall correctly (1980), “The Death of Doctor Island” and “The Doctor of Death Island.” You’d think there was a shortage of titles, or that the author had a scheme of constrained writing. Constrained writing can produce some amazing results. Did you know that the best-selling “Green Eggs and Ham” uses only 50 different vocabulary words and was written on a bet?
Hypograph: “If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.” --Abraham Lincoln
Zen hypograph: “With Zen there are no vacations. Not even time for a coffee break. But on the other hand, who needs a break from Zen?”
(c) 2017 Ineffectual Ambition, LLC, a division of The Large But Poorly Defined Project, Ltd.: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” --Samuel Johnson. Caveat lector.
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