From Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing by Charles Bowden.

The "flying cheese wedge" UFO.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1982.

"Negative people are all buried in unmarked graves."  From Who Cares About Apathy by Ludlow Porch.

This says there's real money to be made through sharpening your pencil.  All these years we mistakenly thought that using an ink pen was more elegant.  From Motion Picture Herald, 1931.

Finally, the truth about what happened to Christmas.  It was run down by a reckless driver.  "The Man Who Killed Christmas," from Lighted Pathway, 1971. 

While researching insights into how to know when it's over, we encountered this surprising tidbit from Alton Brown (I'm Just Here For the Food): "You'll know it's over when you reach in with tongs and can easily crush the bones."

We fact-checked this, and remarkably it's true -- everyone is an Alaskan, given a broad definition of Alaska.  From We Are Alaskans by Mary Lee Cadwell Davis, 1931.

A secret of the geometers -- there's a fourth side of the triangle.  Amazon calls Ellery Queen's The Fourth Side of the Triangle the 29th book of 27.  That makes sense, given the new math.

We've previously noted the mysterious phenomenon that rows of dots or asterisks in a text invariably illustrate what came before or comes after.  Here are three random examples from the same book: the first row of dots represents the holes in a belt mentioned above them, the second row represents the holes in the blanket of night that allow stars to peek through, and the third row represents a series of gunshots.  Watch for the phenomenon -- it never fails!

From The Land Where the Sunsets Go by Orville Henry Leonard, 1917.

It's unusual to see an author use his birthday numbers as a byline.  From When a Witch Is Young by 4-19-69 (Philip Verrill Mighels), 1901.  Speaking of birth numbers, see our resurrection of the remarkable Astronumerography.

The alien seductress who mothered his 34 space children.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1991.

Just a gentle warning -- if you don't look at your golf club correctly, you may be violating a patent.

Are any ghosts watching?  We roll in the Spirit Applause-O-Meter to find out.  It's Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia.  Thanks to KlingonCaptain who wrote, "I just realized that a lot of sitcoms from the days of analogue film probably have a lot of ghost cast members but we just can't see them. Can you imagine what The Andy Griffith Show, Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Flying Nun would be like if we could see the spirit cast members?! If only the Sylph Scope was real and we could use it to see ghosts."

A fifty-fifty chance might seem simple, but there are actually rules involved.  From Rules for 50/50 Chances by Kate McGovern.

The face of God, from The Current Sauce, 1972.

"There is pudding everywhere if you know how to look for it" —The True Value Show

Tuning into parallel universes: it's Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia.

We double-checked, and these are indeed the nine states of existence: 1. OK, 2. afraid, 3. asleep, 4. paralyzed, 5. petrified, 6. poisoned, 7. dead, 8. ashes, 9. lost [as a ghost wandering the otherworld].  From Wizardry Handbook.