"As the proverb says, better to return as a ghost than never at all."
—Giorgio de Chirico, Hebdomeros

"The first step in the writing process is to understand the assignment. This may surprise you if you have never thought about the variety of writing assignments you may encounter."
—John A. Beck & Marmy A. Clason, Light on the Path (2007)

Here's a link to our guest blog diagram over at DJ Misc, showing how diamonds throw out miniature northern lights.

In our book on Divination by Punctuation, we note this marvelous take on the hyphen by the great scholar of anomalies, Charles Fort: "We have to get along with the logical-illogical, in our existence of the hyphen. Everything that is said to be logical is somewhere out of agreement with something, and everything that is said to be illogical is somewhere in agreement with something. . . . In an existence of the hyphen, it is impossible to be altogether wrong—or right" (Wild Talents, 1932).

While on the subject of hyphens:

Here's a hyphen-shaped cloud.

Is this a hyphen trapped in time?

A page emblazed with the words "This page intentionally left blank" is hilarious to folks blessed with the ability to comprehend irony (recall our previous post in which a person with irony-challenges proudly stepped out from under a rock, discordance be damned!).  But we surely approve of working a hyphen into such ironically non-blank pages.  Speaking of irony, we're reminded of a great line in the classic comedy series Black Adder: "'Have you no idea what 'irony is?'  'Yeah, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron."

Why waste your time in a living hell?
You can live in cloudland just as well.
—Holly Johnson, "Heaven's Here"

The manifesto manifesto, by Kim Mok.

(via J-Walk)

"The surprising truth, that life over there is much the same as life over here."
—Blackwood's Magazine (1978)

"Writing is just a version of reading."
—Geof Huth

. . . which reminds us of Hemingway's description of "eyes like inkwells."

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "'Move on to a more elevated existence,' the demon whispered." —Bob Blackman, The Commission, 2004, p. 130. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

From our Magic Words outpost:

We have a new book out for magicians and magic enthusiasts — a guide to the hidden gems of the classic magazine The Jinx (1934-42), entitled Jinx Companion.

See it online for free at our Jinx Companion page.

"Rhetoric, as hardly bears repeating, bears only a distant relationship to truth."
—Wlad Godzich, "The Domestication of Derrida"

Don't look a sugar daddy in the teeth.

(Thanks, Mike!)

 

"The only certainty is risk."
—William Campbell, Dead Forever: Apotheosis: Book 2 (2010)

"Surprising though it may sound, some of the splendour of the inaccessible realms above can be found even here."
—Friedhelm Hardy, The Religious Culture of India

"The simple answer is that it is just impossible.”

—House of Commons Health Committee (2007)

Here's our guest tweet over at the traffic light on Michigan Avenue.

Let's enjoy an interlude from our long-running game to consider some things that sound funnier than they are:

• amusia — a less-than amusing condition in which one loses musical ability.  (This one is noted in Erin McKean's Weird and Wonderful Words.)
• the zany plots of most ghost comedies.  (This is noted in The TV Times Film and Video Guide.)
• Montezuma's Revenge.  (This is noted in Florence Crannell Means' Emmy and the Blue Door.)
• a "tepid boxoffice blunder."  (This is noted in Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever.)
• a penile Swiss Army knife bristling with attachments.  (This is noted in Hollywood East: Hong Kong Movies and the People Who Made Them.)
• last rites spoken in Pig Latin.  (This is noted in the "Pluck You, Too!" blog.)
• sexsomnia — unwanted "sleep sex."  (This is noted by CNN producer Stephanie Smith.)
• snoring
• cuckolding
  
• a mounted Boer.  (This is noted in The Bedside 'Guardian,' Vol. 23.)
• a 6-foot tall rabbit called Frank.  (This is referring to the film Donnie Darko.)
  

"Our only certainty may be that we feel uncertain about our future."
—Caren Goldman, Healing Words for the Body, Mind, and Spirit (2009)

Playing on the old Zen chestnut, we ask:

If a traffic light hangs at an intersection and there's no one there to see it, does it see red?

Our favorite virtual traffic light answers this question here.

(Thanks, Gordon!)

From our former outpost at Twitter:

Kudos to Gary Barwin for this Googlewhack: "Metaphor, it's really something else!"

"This may surprise you — many people find that anger makes them feel good."
—Judith S. Wallerstein & Sandra Blakeslee, What About the Kids? (2004)

"Don't take this the wrong way, but if I feel tomorrow like I do right now, I might be better off hanging out with myself."
—Yolonda Tonnette Sanders, Soul Matters

"It's not rocket science," says Margaret Watson. "People learn to be parents every day.”

To which we say: "out of this world!"

We're honored to illustrate an article about L.A.'s mysterious public gardens.  Our photo depicts the beautiful Descanso Gardens.

Our friend Jonathan Caws-Elwitt spotted this lovely pfft variant in the wild:


We can verify that p'fft is an appropriate response to "blankety-blank nonsense" (as noted on the first page of Budget Weddings For Dummies).  Relatedly, Wodehouse has written: "He had a dim sort of idea that it began with an F or a G, but beyond that his mind was a blank" (The Small Bachelor).

But did you know that p'fft comes down to us from an ancient Chinese expression meaning, "May your children and grandchildren never murmur as they carry out the careful and brilliant virtue of their predecessors"?

It's commonly assumed that the apostrophe in p'fft stands for an f, the concept being that an f-too-many is overwhelming.  Indeed, Wodehouse notes: "You could have knocked me down with a f" (Right Ho, Jeeves).  Yet the truth is more interesting.  The apostrophe actually stands for a hyphen, swept upwards as it were by the breath of the expression.

"The surprising truth is that Mom can also read your mind when you are fast asleep."
—Linda Sunshine, How Not to Turn Into Your Mother (1991)

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "A mocking demon whispered in her reluctant ear: 'How happy you might be now, if things were only changed a little!'” —M. V. D., "The Story of Margaret,” Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine, Vol. X, 1881, p. 263. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

There's something beautiful that children don't learn in books of fairy tales.  In surrealist novels for grownups, the illustrations don't necessarily correspond to the text.  For example, in the dreamily Gothic Czech masterpiece Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, the illustration of a headless woman for page 149 appears next to page 106.  Prof. Oddfellow explains the phenomenon by way of Philip G. Zimbardo's Discontinuity Theory, which suggests that cognitive searches for rationality and normality may lead to madness.

For Pam, the Phantasmaphile

 

"The only certainty that we have is that we are not alone."
—Mary Kay Kelley, Celebrating the Lectionary (2010)

I dreamed my tea leaf reader saw an asterisk.*

*To learn what an asterisk means in a tea leaf reading, see Dr. Boli.

Photo by Scout Seventeen, slightly modified.

"This may come as a surprise, but I don't spend a lot of time checking out your wife's breasts."
—JoAnn Ross, Far Harbor

A Moon / Venus semicolon, captured by Greg.

Here's an insightful review of an unusual, gutted book that cannot exist digitally.

"The answer is simple:  more money will be needed to achieve the results that might have been reached.”

—Drayton Bird, Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing (2007)

"The [computer] link will turn out to be the most important new punctuation mark since the comma."
—software architect Mark Bernstein

(Thanks, Gordon!)

"This may surprise you. ... Writing is work — hard work."
—Thomas Wolfe, quoted in his illustrated biography by Ted Mitchell

 

"Calling it a hunch just makes it mysterious, and it isn't."
—Isaac Asimov, apparently not referring to Marty Feldman's hunch in Young Frankenstein (given that Marty's hunch mysteriously switches from the left side to the right side of his back)


A still from the perennially hilarious Young Frankenstein.

"All we have are fragments."
—Geof Huth

Gordon spotted our Not Rocket Science at Chicago's Quimby's Bookstore, sitting next to All My Friends Are Dead.  The pairing is apropos, for our book was inspired by the illustrious Martha Brockenbrough, author of the forthcoming The Dinosaur Tooth Fairy (Arthur A. Levine Books).

Which car is funnier: Buick or Chevrolet?

Clue: This is according to the book Humor in the Classroom: A Handbook for Teachers (and Other Entertainers!)

Answer: .....Buick......” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Citation: Deborah J. Hill (1998), p. 67

"For nutritional quality, the surprising truth is that most tomatoes are created equal after all."
—Rodale's Organic Gardening (1987)

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "But this demon whispered, 'Trust me,' and her soul longed to obey." —Lucy Blue, The Devil’s Knight, 2006, p. 260. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Turn those e's silent, and Obama has a new slogan if he runs for president of China.*

Hop[e] and Chang[e]

* "Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China." —The Washington Examiner

[Thanks, Mike!]

Dana Michelle Burnett suggests that "Home decorating is not rocket science."  So much for those spaceship-themed wall stickers!

 

A lovely review of our dictionary of magic words, from the Silver Star Journal:

A massive and truly amazing tour de force of linguistic dexterity, merging sorcery, etymology, history, and literature into a global cascade of words of power magical and otherwise, drawn from countless ancient and modern civilizations. The art of Grammarye meets literary erudition, with each word examined, explained, and illuminated by wild and witty quotations from countless sources. Spells, mantras and Qabala meet slang, hokum and poetry. Enormous fun, and about thirty pages devoted to aspects of Abracadabra and its variants alone! Big fun! Hours of creative playtime!

"The act of reading impedes looking at words."
—Enrique Enriquez

"This may come as a surprise, but some of the things you do to relax can actually make you more stressed!"
—Trevor Romain, Stress Can Really Get on Your Nerves!

Our 9th cousin, the visionary Dr. John Dee (adviser and tutor to Queen Elizabeth I) is here beautifully celebrated by the artist Sev.

"The answer is simple:  change is happening constantly, with each tick of the clock, with each blink of an eye, with each breeze off the Bay.”

—Marcia Z. Nelson, The God of Second Chances (2001)

Paddling in school is controversial.  Yet how will students row, row, row their boats gently down the stream without a paddle?

"When you do walk away from a flip, keep it short and sweet. This is not rocket science. Either it makes sense or it doesn't." —D. Sidney Potter, The Flip (2010)

We find this advice useful whether the flip in question refers to a tract home or a finger.

 

"The surprising truth about performance evaluation is that it rarely works and is almost universally disliked by leaders and followers."
—Modern Hospital

"I want more than what I want."
—Salman Rushdie

"Language only works when two or more people agree that it does."
—Geof Huth

"Why didn't you tell me in the map room there was a map missing?"
—Gwyn Cready, Aching for Always (2010)

(This delightful snippet is scanned from Book Sales of 1895.)

The following passage from Robert Irwin's astonishingly brilliant The Arabian Nightmare, in which a character traverses a chessboard-like Cairo, recalls our own manual on using a game of chess to construct a story: If A Chessman Were A Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary.


Deliciously, the character in Irwin's novel is about to confront a knight!

"This may surprise you, but the best place to meet a flight attendant is not in the air, but on the ground."
—Don Diebel, The Complete Guide to Meeting Women (1991)

Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear.

Are the whispered words pictured on the right of an angelic or a diabolical nature?

Answer: Diabolical. "I do not know what demon whispered to me, 'Take this book home with you.'” —Friedrich Nietzsche, qtd. in R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche, 1973, p. 51. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

"The & is a possibility."
—Geof Huth

 

"Our only certainty is that dissonance is a source of motivation."
—Bella DePaulo & Leah Wilson, The Psychology of Dexter (2010)

Our friend Teresa at Frog Blog posts about the fine line between giving up and seeing how much more one can take.

"I know this may come as a surprise, but it turns out that refrigeration actually dries out its contents."
—Christine Ansbacher, Secrets from the Wine Diva

From our former outpost at Twitter:

"'Life insurance': a pretense that it is a soothing and useful event to have a violent and painful death."
—Leonora Carrington

"The answer is simple:  It is widespread but not universal.”

—Robert Arking, The Biology of Aging (2006)

Did you hear about the stage magician who toyed with yoga?  His kundalini rose as a balloon snake.

"This is not rocket science but if you draw four horizontal lines across the page equally spaced down the sheet you will magically produce five sections!" —Essential Skills for Managing in Healthcare (2010)

We tried it ... and were delighted to see that the five sections correspond to a rocket's five stages!

 

"It is impossible to understand how millions and millions of people all obey a sickly collection of gentlemen that call themselves 'Government!'  The word, I expect, frightens people.  It is a form of planetary hypnosis, and very unhealthy."
—Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

"Even liquids may be magnetic. This may surprise you, but you can easily prove it to your own satisfaction."
—Raymond B. Wailes, "Fun With Magnetic Chemicals," Popular Science, April 1938

We've previously noted that even a squiggle isn’t immune to the corruption inherent in transliteration.  Here's our newly updated pictorial study of how Laurence Sterne's elegant and eloquent squiggle (d)evolved through various editions of Tristram Shandy.  We call it "Lost in Transliteration."  We're proud to be the only place on the Internet that compares Dutch, French, Spanish, German, and English squiggles from literature.

"The surprising truth is that an ancient Roman would probably not have known how to decipher any of [the Roman numerals]."
—Quantum (1994)

Here's a guessing game. How many pages did a reader make it through Metaphysics of the Supernatural as Illustrated by Decartes before scrawling an expletive in the margin? There are 65 pages, so your guess should be from 1 to 65.

To reveal the bad word in question as well as the correct page number, click the image below.

Which is funnier: last year's fashions or last century's?

Clue: This is according to playwright Arthur Wing Pinero.

Answer: Last year's. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Citation: Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, Plays (1986)