Late of Pablo Fanque's Fair -- Popcorn by The Colonel # 63

Epigraph: “Are we lost?” I asked [Daddy] tenderly. “Shut up,” he explained.

“The beauty of the night -- moonlight everywhere, sauntering clouds limning majestic trees -- would have enchanted me had I not been seeing it through a bullet hole in the trunk of my car.” --Tonya Lavel

“As the sun dropped below the horizon, the safari guide confirmed that the approaching cape buffaloes were herbivores, which calmed us all except Herb.” --Ron D. Smith

Dorothy Parker is said to have said, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” Dean Martin is said to have tweaked it: “I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy.” (Emphasis added.) I think he also said, “You’re not really drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.” Now this: enjoy alcohol responsibly.

“The dame was stacked, both conventionally and in that she was the third of five bodies stacked against the wall where Grandmother stacked the bodies of the people she poisoned, which had never troubled me till I was studying the bodies and munching on some of Grandmother’s ginger snaps and felt a twinge in my stomach.” --Kenneth Bennight

“Once an evil troll lived under a bridge and took pleasure in collecting gold from unsuspecting passersby, until word got out and bridge traffic fell to zero, after which the troll didn’t do much of anything.” --Rachel Flanigan

“Amour-propre” is not “love of the proper” or “love of propriety.” Far from it: “amour-propre” is “self-love" (“propre”=self) in either of two senses, neither good. Rousseau used it to mean the kind of self-esteem that depends on the good opinion of others. He contrasted it with “amour de soi,” self-love not generated from without. Earlier writers used “amour-propre” to mean “selfishness” or concern with one’s own desires, as distinct from “unselfishness” or putting God and neighbor ahead of self. One sense of the English word “proper” carries the flavor of the French “propre,” as in “You can find a Burger King in the Middletown area, but not in Middletown proper.”

“The sharks circled Clarence’s rapidly deflating life raft like a pack of rabid personal-injury attorneys at a five-car pile up. He tasted his own fear, and it tasted like chicken. He wondered if that was because he, too, would shortly taste like chicken.” --Wendi Tibbets

The whole frat showed up at the rally because somebody told them that LGBT meant “Let Guys Be Themselves.”

The adjective “brackish” comes from the noun “brack,” which means “brine.” Pop quiz: Use “brack ‘n’ brine” in a sentence. “Honey, I’m going down to the Brack ‘n’ Brine for some salt water -- we seem to be out of it.”

“[Bryan] Cranston [who plays Walter White in “Breaking Bad”] fixed me with his cold stare to demonstrate that his face is naturally ‘mean,’ and the experience was like a cold walk in the uncanny valley.” --Tad Friend. 

“The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of human aesthetics which holds that when human features [on, e.g., a robot] look and move almost, but not exactly, like [those of] natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.” --Wikipedia, Uncanny Valley.

Chatting with a help-desk jockey in Minnesota while an algorithm ran, I learned that despite being newly hired, the jockey snagged what was for him a desirable schedule: 2 p.m to midnight, four consecutive days per week. When possible, we report happy news. "Cheer up, things are getting worse."

Sitting alone among secluded bamboos

I play the zither, whistle on and on;

Deep in the woods, unknown to the world,

A bright moon comes and shines on me.

--Wang-Wei

“If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.” --Professor Irwin Corey

“I may not know what I’m talking about, but I know I’m right.” --Muhammad Ali (We know exactly what he's talking about; the same thing happens to us all the time.)