Though we don't exactly sit on a coffin waiting for someone to support our creative endeavors, we actually have on more than one occasion sensed the earth yawning beneath our feet.

Is Francophobia a voluntary condition?  Consider this illustration from The Quiver, 1872.  The caption reads: "I shall hate everything French."

Pollen was once considered fairy gold.  "Did you ever wish with it?  Just touch your finger to the pollen, and then wish.  After you wish, blow hard twice to get the pollen off.  If it goes, your wish will come true, but if not, you will not have your wish" (E. M. J., "A March Ramble," Primary Education 1906).  Our illustration of the pollen fairy appears in Blossoms by the Way by Carrie Adelaide Cooke, 1882.

We've looked at tens of thousands of vintage illustrations in the course of our research, but this is the very first portrait we've encountered that identifies what the portrayed is doing!  The caption puts this portrait ... ahem ... head-and-shoulders above the rest!  Luckily, we can mentally search and replace all the captions we've seen to date with "sight-seeing."  So very much of what our beleaguered eyes have seen makes better sense now!  Whew!

Suspense is overrated.  Sometimes it's lovely to have questions answered immediately.  Take the story "Julia's Little Weakness" (from The Lady's Realm, 1900).  What's Julia's little weakness?  The very first sentence illuminates us forthwith: "It was for 'stars.'"  Belated thanks, Philippa Trent, for getting right to it!  (And for beginning her story with a long dash!)

They say that disasters always come in threes.  And we're the first to prove it.  Take, for example, this record of railway accidents.  We show that they do, uncannily, group into threes.

A glass half frozen

Never boils.

"It's a wise person who monotonizes existence because then each small incident, if one knows how to read it in a literary way, has a wondrous quality." —Enrique Vila-Matas, Dublinesque

From our former outpost at Twitter:

Sean Tejaratchi notes that "In the future, everyone will be offended for 15 years," and it's a worthy addition to our ongoing contention that:

Perhaps Andy Warhol Was Wrong, For a Fascinating Variety of Reasons

(Click the title above for our surprising research.)

The genius behind Nein Quarterly noted that "In the future, we'll all have 15 minutes of future," and it's a worthy addition to our ongoing contention that:

Perhaps Andy Warhol Was Wrong, For a Fascinating Variety of Reasons

(Click the title above for our surprising research.)

We won't deny it: we were disappointed to learn that this introduction to zoology was not — literally — illustrated by an artful crayfish.

We bemoan the rampant demythologizing of our culture, yet the trend began with our founding fathers.  Originally, the immortal declaration was that all men are created eagle (a vestige endures in the word egalitarian).  "The entire conceptual castle of our mind relies on this creation of abstractions by metaphor from the foundations of our bodily experience in the world" (Piero Scaruffi, The Nature of Consciousness, 2006).  The eagle has landed as Apollo has fallen, leaving a hollow nest egg.

Here's a Kafkaesque retroactive lifetime goal: a centipede has been "temporarily waysided" from opening our dictionary of magic words.  Technically and poetically, it's a "human centipede with 2 legs for a hundred spines."  And the centipede's name is Pearl.  Here's the entire list of unopened books into which the centipede may or may not make headway.

To avoid performing an ordinary social duty or otherwise excuse a breach of civility, merely say:

"Nothing is interesting save to see what happens next." —John Cowper Powys, Porius

"The skeleton key to getting to know ourselves is the discovery that we can get to know ourselves on many levels."
—Jerry Stocking

Riding the skeleton key into the garden of forking paths, from Punch, 1852.

From our former outpost at Twitter:

To those who praised me for not being the least bit affected by a U.K. reader's colorful broadside against one of my books ("STOP producing useless works of nothingness" and "The best use of this work would be to shred it for hamster bedding"), I must confess that I hadn't been aware of the review; I was frankly too busy working on useless nothingness!  However, the review is absolutely correct that my book (and, truth be told, my entire body of work) is marvelous for hamster bedding.  I challenge hamster caretakers worldwide to purchase any one of my books, shred it, and verify that it's the best hamster bedding nobody ever used.  Send photos and results to the e-mail address provided here.