From our outpost at Blogspot:

Our magician friend and tech wizard Gordon Meyer offers this handy eye chart for focusing on the upcoming publication of Magic Words: A Dictionary. Our new edition of the dictionary features Gordon's magic spell for bringing a snowman to life.

Which word is funnier: pizza or sandwich?

Clue:  This is according to the book Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain

Answer:  Pizza, as it is “more specific.”  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Christopher Hart, Drawing on the Funny Side of the Brain (1998), p. 107

The Land of Ultimate Bliss has pools of the seven jewels, filled with the eight waters of merit and virtue. The bottom of each pool is pure, spread over with golden sand. On the four sides are stairs of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and crystal; above are raised pavilions adorned with gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, mother- of- pearl, red pearls, and carnelian.

In the pools are lotuses as large as carriage wheels: green colored of green light; yellow colored of yellow light; red colored of red light; white colored of white light; subtly, wonderfully, fragrant and pure. . . .

[I]n that Buddhaland, when the soft wind blows, the rows of jewelled trees and jewelled nets give forth subtle and wonderful sounds, like one hundred thousand kinds of music played at the same time.
—Buddha, The Amitabha Sutra, as translated by Ronald Epstein, 1970.

"Other, seemingly more profound, thoughts took over his brain, thoughts such as, To what extent would a given quantity of catnip have affected quantum mechanics in Schrodinger’s theoretical catbox? and Why was C selected to symbolize the speed of light when Z is obviously the fastest letter in the alphabet?"  —Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, 2000

Saint Ornate
Patron of Embellishments.

Saint Ornate is quoted as saying, "There is the beauty of the natural world and the beauty we add in to it.  Mother Nature surely went overboard, let us join her." 

Devotees exhibit love through overuse.

_____

Jonathan quips:

I dreamed of a funhouse mirror, which warped and inverted my reflection.  Then, suddenly, the funhouse transformed into my own living room, and the strange reflection became an interrocolon, who was visiting for tea.

A great book . . . though I couldn't fathom pages 26-27.

Our colorful friend DJ Misc has a fun collection white-space "rivers"—typographic columns of gaps in a text.  This one, for example, has a delightful em-dash "bridge" crossing the river of white space.  Here and here are two more dramatic examples.

Joining in the fun, we discovered a deliciously ironic river of white space, in a text on how the White River area of the Black Hills region was affected by "rapid weathering and vigorous erosion."  DJ Misc has added it to his collection.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"People don't eat chocolate: Such was the prevailing wisdom of the 1970s.  In the decade of leisure suits and disco, chocolate had become a pariah."
—Joël Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars (2000)

Through his half- open eyes he saw hands holding flowers — thin hands, fine hands; but hands that belonged to no one. And were they flowers the hands held? Or mountains? Blue mountains with violet shadows? Then petals fell. Pink, yellow, white, with violet shadows, the petals fell. They fall and fall and cover all, he murmured. And there was the stem of a wine- glass; the rim of a plate; and a bowl of water. The hands went on picking up flower after flower; that was a white rose; that was a yellow rose; that was rose with violet valleys in its petals. There they hung, many folded, many coloured, drooping over the rim of the bowl. And petals fell. There they lay, violet and yellow, little shallops, boats on a river. And he was floating, and drifting, in a shallop, in a petal, down a river. . . .
—Virginia Woolf, The Years, 1937.

I couldn't sleep last night.  I tried counting sheep . . . but only saw ellipses!

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

 

Belated thanks to the folks at Lists Galore for spotlighting our interactive "100 Ways I Failed to Boil Water."

i dreamed of the eye and the beard of an Egyptian deity.

[This dream was inspired by Gary Barwin.]

"It took the brunt of the weather and so was in need of a good lick of paint."
—Kenneth J. Harvey, The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (2005)