Ironically, there's never been an adaptation of What Mr. Darwin Saw, 1879.

Have you heard that there are only seven literary plots?  Yeah, there's a book on it.

Q: What do you call it when your caretakers convince you that your hair isn't blond enough?

A: [Highlight to view text] Munchausen by peroxide.

Here's what books looked like before the "Me generation."  From 1893.

Traditional math aside, Goldilocks had forebears.

Also ...

Even before Darwin, everyone had forebears.

People think, "T & A.  Ooh la la!"  But they have ups and downs like all of us, and the reality is that it's long hours and hard work.  Our illustration is from Lower Eatington: Its Manor House and Church, 1880.

Q: How is a jack-in-the-box like Norma Desmond?

A: They're both still big; it's the pictures that got small.

Literary Sandwiches  (for June, inspired by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt)

The Henry James: juxtaposes Old World cheeses (corrupt and alluring) with New World heirloom tomatoes.  The sandwich is presented brashly open and facing abuse.  It is served with its ghost-doppelganger (not shown) so as to nurture alternate American and European lives.  The sandwich comes with suspicions that it is gay.

The William James: so enormous that diners may, through free will, request an abridged serving.  The William James asks, do we run from an enormous sandwich because we are afraid, or are we afraid because we run?  (Spoiler: we are afraid because we run.)  Note that only the sandwich's material self is provided; the social self, spiritual self, and pure ego are available with our other self-service condiments.

The Alice James: for those knowing neither hope nor peace, this sandwich invites you to "abandon the pit of your stomach" in the struggle between the body of this meal and your moral power.  This is a sandwich you'll write about in your diary.

When we encountered this line, "My Diet Coke tasted like it'd fallen off the back of a very old truck," we recalled the failed ad campaign: "Have a Coke and a simile."

We say that "apples and oranges" can't be expressed as a ratio, and that's because mathematics is citrus-based and prejudiced against apples.  Note that "tangerine" and "tangent" share the same Latin source, "tangere" ("touching"); "satsumas" and "summations" are derived from the Latin "summa" ("highest"); "lemons" and "lemniscates" both come from the ancient Greek island of Lemnos.  It's worth pondering ("ponder" has the same Latin root as the Ponderosa lemon ["weigh"]) just how Ugli the citrus bias is, my little Clementine.

As the regional operations supervisor would say, "Why are you budgeted for both a court fool and a buffoon?" —Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt shares a deleted scene from A Christmas Carol:

Behold! I am the Spirit in which the things you didn't take in the spirit in which they were intended... were intended.