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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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| 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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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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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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