"Oh, yeah?" -- Popcorn by The Colonel #67

“Oh yeah? Well, the jerkstore called, and they’re running outta you!”

Civility in public discourse deserves a full column of its own. 

This ain't it. 

This is an excavation from the Word Hoard. The Spirit of Brevity was loosed.


Part One:

"Love locally, hate globally. Keep your friends near, your enemies far." --Roy Marshrigger

"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire

"Psychoanalysis is a disease that takes itself for a cure." --Karl Krauss (=KK)

"Iranians resent Arab domination of Islam. Iranians are not Arabs."

"How do I find time to read so little?" --KK

"Left-wing and right-wing anti-Semites join hands and dance in a circle around Israel, and in seeming violation of the laws of geometry, the more that join in, the tighter the circle becomes."

"Self-deception can be a step transaction, as when politicians lie to journalists, then believe the headlines. When politicians believe their own press releases, it eliminates the middleman."

"Wearing an ascot is an invitation to a beating."

"When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible." --George W. Bush

"A menurkey is a menorah in the shape of a turkey. A truly once-in-a-lifetime gift."

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but raptors are pretty dang scary." --Devin Moore

"Hard as it may be to believe, potatoes are not the solution to every problem. Sometimes another ingredient is necessary." 

"Whom Would Jesus Bomb?"

"I've stopped drinking, but only when I'm asleep." --George Best

"All the world's a stage we'll grow out of."

Metrics: a short story has fewer than 7,500 words. A novellette has at least 7,501 but no more than 17,500. A novella has at least 17,501 but no more than 40,000. A novel has at least 40,000 words. A novel with more than 100,000 words is a long novel. A novel of infinite length cannot be written in our universe, even by monkeys with typewriters, but many have fallen asleep in the attempt.

Some genetic studies indicate (1) that many Jewish communities outside Israel were founded by single men who married and converted local women and (2) that the women who founded the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Europe were not from the Near East.

Old man to old woman as both stand at street corner with traffic light flashing "DON'T TWERK": "Let's get the hell out of here before it changes."

"No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical." --Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)

Part Two:

Quiz: Which of the following words, excluding the phrase "Berliner Eispalast," doesn't belong? (Answer below where the goblins go)

Inconsistent
Attention
Cuteness
Tennyson
Berliner Eispalast
Content
Maintenance
Glistens
Martinet
Written
Sententia

"To one whose only tool is a getaway car, every problem looks like something to flee in a hurry."

Are poems and plays and jokes and limericks "fiction"?

"They certainly give very strange names to diseases." --Plato, ancient Greek author, philosopher, and Athenian (427 BC - 347 BC).

The word in the list above that does not belong (excluding "Berliner Eispalast") is "martinet." The rest all contain the letter series "t-e-n."

"I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything." --Steven Wright (b. 1956)

"Take all the words in Joyce's Finegan's Wake, put them in alphabetical order, delete the ones that appear in the dictionary, and for a year or two, use only the undeleted words. Whatever happens, write it up, and apply for tenure."

"We are marching to aporia." --Heraklitos?

"One of Lyndon Johnson's tools for securing the votes of fellow legislators was to call them at their mistresses' homes." --Christopher Tho

"The British royal family almost didn't let the BBC televise the coronation of Princess Elizabeth because it would be inconsistent with the dignity of the monarchy for the event to be watched in pubs."

"What kind of witch is a 'versus witch'? I heard someone refer to 'that versus witch.'"

Robots have been enlisted in the war on jellyfish. 'Bout time.

To prevent the cast from revealing the series ending, the producers of Breaking Bad shot five alternate versions.

The behavior of Napoleon's sister Josephine made Kim Kardashian look like Anne of Green Gables.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." --Napoleon

"If ignorance were bliss, I'd be the happiest man on this flat earth of ours." --Jim Nasium

"An aphorism is either a half truth or a truth and a half." --KK

"What's Proust Got to Do With It?" --motto of Tina Turner Book Club

"Snobs aren't reliable. Some things they like are good." --KK

"Why can't Italy produce a statesman of the stature of Angela Merkel?"

"Dogs are loyal, yes, but to us, not to other dogs." --KK

"Clear the air of all concerns." --Garland Jeffreys

"Those who love deeply never grow old. They may die of old age, but they die young." --A. W. Pinero

"The calm and ordinary mind is The Way."

"'Ready rhino' is an old-fashioned British slang term for 'ready money.'"

"Neither is the examined life worth living, if we are frank with each other."

"I fight on. I fight to win." --Margaret Thatcher

"When the vital principle of our government, the equality of the human race, shall be fully realized, when every fetter within our borders shall be broken ... and a noble mission fulfilled, we may call to the down-trodden and oppressed of all lands -- come." --John Bingham (1815-1900), author of the 14th amendment.

And now for something completely different, to wit, a follow-up to "An Appreciation of Xenia of Ngarr," last week's reprint from The Galactic Times.

Confidential Memo from the Editor to the Publisher of The Galactic Times

Ma'am:

It didn't work.

Instead of tamping down popular resentment of Ngarrians, the editorial "An Appreciation of 'Xenia'" fired it up. Just look at the online "comments" section after the editorial; they come from nearly every sector of the Federation. On second thought, don't. It'll just depress you, Ma'am.
Five minutes of reading that stuff will put you off democracy for life.

It's a good thing we pre-cleared the editorial with the Federation Ministry of Communication, or they might be blaming us for the political blowback. Take my word for it, epithets like "changers," "morphies," "shifties" are the least of it. Some writers went so far as to say things like, "Bad as the enemy is, at least they promise that if they win, they'll wipe out all the shifties."

More than one comment complained that letting the shifties -- darn, they've got me saying it now -- that letting the Ngarrians "take over" Terra is simply making it harder to exterminate them when the time comes. Now Terra will have to be destroyed, they complain, in addition to Ngarr I, II, and III, to get rid of the shapeshifters.

Some of the anger is being directed at The Galactic Times itself. They're saying that The Gal is a tool of the Federation establishment, pushing its unionist philosophy that's "soft on shapeshifters," We're getting threats. Nothing security can't handle, but still. So far there's nothing personal to me, but if that changes, I may have to resign and disappear with my whole family, witness-protection style.

Maybe the whole Federation unionist policy is a fool's errand, at least as far as the shapeshifters are concerned. Maybe people will never reconcile themselves to living on easy terms with creatures that can take other shapes.

I'm sorry if I sound down, Ma'am. I know you like people working for you to be upbeat. Maybe trying to do something nice, something good, and having it chewed up and spat back into my face has ... oh, never mind. I'll see what a stiff drink and a night's sleep do. After all, tomorrow is another day.

[Do not send. DELETE.]