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I dreamed of emoticons all night. At one point, I heard Noelle
Cleary marveling, "Who would've thought we'd someday be expressing
moods with colons, semicolons, and parentheses?" (just as she did in
THE ART AND POWER OF BEING A LADY). Then I heard Nancy Kress
saying that "Although the semicolon will never replace 'I love you' as
a means of stirring readers' feelings, punctuation nonetheless has a
useful role to play in indicating emotion," just as she discussed in
WRITE GREAT FICTION. |
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ElicitationI couldn’t get a feel for what he was hiding or whether he even seemed capable of rape. Then a technique called “elicitation,” which we were taught at Quantico, popped into my mind. So I just sprung it on him, as if it were a foregone conclusion: “Well, then, after you raped her what did you do?”
He came back, without missing a beat, “I went into the bathroom and took a piss.”
“So that’s where we’ll find your fingerprints? On the bathroom wall—right?” I asked.
Realizing that he had just confessed, all he could say was, “Damn.”
The detectives looked at me as if I had pulled a rabbit out of a hat. I shrugged—“elicitation” was nothing but the psych-major name for one of the oldest tricks in the book, and we all knew it. I had almost been embarrassed to give it a try. But it worked—to my surprise, the guy walked right into it.
—Candice DeLong, Special Agent (2001)
“What did you say your name was?”
Tim sneered. Did this bloke think he was as dumb as all that? He wasn’t going to fall for the oldest trick in the book.
—Carla Jablonski, The Books of Magic 2 (2003)
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SONG: The Royal Scam
ARTIST: Steely Dan
ORIGINAL LYRIC:
And they wandered in
From the city of St. John
Without a dime
Wearing coats that shined
Both red and green
Colors from their sunny island
ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION:
And they wandered in
From the city of St. John
Without a quarter
Wearing nylons and garters
Both red and green
Colors from their sunny island
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| * Payphones used to take dimes, but now they take quarters. Isn't
it time to update song lyrics to reflect the realities of
inflation? Alas, it's vastly easier to rhyme the word "dime" than
the word "quarter," but here at Inflationary Lyrics Headquarters we
have risen to the challenge. Please join the fun and share your
own inflationary lyrics, with both the "before" and "after" versions! |
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
(permalink) |
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I asked, "Are there any questions?"
And a voice replied:
"What does it mean when you suddenly want to read only books translated into English from Serbo-Croatian?
"What does it mean when you start compiling a dictionary of one-letter words?
"What does it mean when you open a book at random to the first page of
a chapter entitled "Venturing Out"? And what if you then
deliberately throw it aside?
"What does it mean when you watch infomercials at 3 a.m.-- on a regular basis?
"What does it mean when three people in as many days ask if they can touch your hair?
"What does it mean when you decide not to put question marks inside the
quotation marks unless the quotation is a question? And what if
that was already the rule?
"What does it mean when you suck on one 'Sour Hearts' candy after another, all day long?
"What does it mean when all of the above applies to just one person?"
And then I stopped talking. |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: 
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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Saint Piccione
Patron of Unexplained Phenomena.
"How puzzling!" was Saint Piccione's reply to virtually any
statement. He never sought to understand mysterious phenomena
(hence his peccadillo of carrying a Bible but never reading it).
There are many unexplained aspects of his own biography. For
example, he possessed such a curious homing sense that he was
affectionately called "the pigeon" by those close to him. When
his detractors accused him of "vague and irresponsible theories
about God, heaven, the stars, and the supernatural," his answer
surprised no one: "How perplexing!" Indeed, there is little
evidence of any theorizing at all. "You ask me to explain the
problem of evil," he once told a follower, "but I might well wonder
aloud about other mysteries, such as where the sun disappears at night."
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| Who is your favorite imaginary saint? Do share! |
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I dreamed I became enamored over Eric Schlosser, who whispered in my
ear, "I care about every semicolon, every word, and every comma," just
as he said in THE NEW JOURNALISM by Robert Boyynton.
Then I dreamed about "Henry James' dictum that the true measure of
civility was the proper use of the semicolon," as noted in BORGES: THE
SELECTED FICTIONS. |
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Life with you has been a barren wasteland. I’ve been burned too
many times on the shifting sands of this desolate desert. Now
bite the dust and take a powder.
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I dreamed again that I was a period. This dream took me beyond
the realm of punctuation. I was a period of history. But I
was the Stone Age. No one was literate. I woke up tired.
During a nap later in the day, I dreamed of a man named Franco Gull,
sprawled on a sofa, whose "lips produced a pained semicolon" as he
considered "some very serious issues," just as in THERAPY by Jonathan
Kellerman.
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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"Do you believe everything you hear?" Yes. It's about as reliable as anything in print.
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If "aphasia" is the inability to express speech, what is the inability to remember the alphabet? " Alphasia?" Or perhaps "AphaZia?" This is my favorite description of losing one's alphabet:
Johnny spun to face a bookcase of art
criticism and wondered desperately if K came before or after N.
The alphabet, a pillar, a solace and a certainty since kindergarten,
had suddenly deserted him. He stood, bewildered and staring, as
if he’d suffered a crisis of faith. Does the alphabet
exist? If the alphabet exists, why is there so much suffering in
the world? The alphabet is dead.
—Cathleen Schine, The Love Letter
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SONG: A Letter to Mama
ARTIST: Josie And The Pussycats
ORIGINAL LYRIC:
Savin' a dime, wastin' my time.
ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION:
Savin' a quarter, tryin' to barter.
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| * Payphones used to take dimes, but now they take quarters. Isn't
it time to update song lyrics to reflect the realities of
inflation? Alas, it's vastly easier to rhyme the word "dime" than
the word "quarter," but here at Inflationary Lyrics Headquarters we
have risen to the challenge. Please join the fun and share your
own inflationary lyrics, with both the "before" and "after" versions! |
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Saint Obligación
Patron of Obsessive Compulsions.
Saint Obligación had an epiphany after taking the following sentence out of context:
The "beyond" includes nearly any obsessive compulsion, a thing or a behavior carried to excess.
This sentence wasn't from the Bible but rather a self-help book entitled Love is a Choice: Breaking the Cycle of Addictive Relationships. After her epiphany, she traded her habit for a more rigid compulsion, then went on to found The Holy (Dis)Order of the Sisters of Perpetual Handwringing.
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| Who is your favorite imaginary saint? Do share! |
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I dreamed I was "semicolonial": nominally independent but actually under foreign domination. I was Quebec.
Later that night, I dreamed that Al Franken called me "exotic punctuation," as he did in THE TRUTH (WITH JOKES). |
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
(permalink) |
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At lunch, I noticed that the new waiter at my favorite restaurant kept
looking at me and smiling. It was a lingering look, as if he
wanted to say something. But it wasn't until I was signing the
credit card receipt that he worked up his nerve:
"Are you ever in Wilmington?" he asked hesitantly, his eyes studying my
face with equal amounts of boldness and terror. His eyes reminded
me of Don Knotts; I could see the mustered-up self-confidence begin to
tremble under its own weight.
"No, never been there," I replied, wondering why he asked.
"You look just like my friend Tom. He lives in Wilmington.
He has the same hair style, same face, same ..." He paused,
looking me up and down. "Same everything!"
I assumed that "everything" referred to my taste in clothing.
I chuckled, muttering something about needing to meet my clone some
day. But my mind was reeling from the UNSPOKEN question that the
waiter seemed to be asking: "Are you my friend? Are you Tom?"
The waiter kept staring at me with those Don Knotts eyes, as if still
suspecting I was indeed Tom from Wilmington. Deputy sheriff
Barney Fife was determined to crack this case of false identity.
I got the hell out of there.
---
Later, the cashier at the hardware store bid me farewell with these
words: "Have a sparkling day," spoken in a slow monotone -- a depressed
drawl. The words and delivery were so incongruous that it was all
I could do not to laugh before I left the building! Plus, it was
the very first time in my life that anyone had wished me a "sparkling"
day.
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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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