Is it true, as Momus suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"?  Decide for yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë

I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.  This is certainly a beautiful country!  In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society.  A perfect misanthropist’s heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.  A capital fellow!  He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name. Suddenly, a shot rang out.

Linear time reversed itself as the Belgian new wave band Neon Judgement remastered their first two cassettes and released them on vinyl LPs.  Why they skipped 8-tracks along the way to vinyl, we'll never know, but we're eagerly awaiting a cylinder phonograph release, presumably available in time for holiday shopping.

Prof. Oddfellow experiences a brainstorm below Portmeirion's folly lighthouse as the sun sets behind Moel y Gest mountain.

"To penetrate as far as possible into the great white area on Dawson's map, south of the Kananaskis Lakes, marked with the magic word 'Unexplored,' that most fascinating and suggestive of all names to any lover of the wilderness."
—Canadian Alpine Journal

miasma: a suffocating cloud over Miami

"Every science is a mutilated octopus.  If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts.  To a believer, the effect of the contemplation of a science is of being in the presence of the good, the true, and the beautiful.  But what he is awed by is Mutilation.  To our crippled intellects, only the maimed is what what we call understandable, because the unclipped ramifies away into all other things."
—Charles Fort (Wild Talents), on every science's propensity to dismiss anything that doesn't fit its dogma

 

True or False: Monkeys are always funny, and amoebas are not funny unless they talk.

Clue:  This is according to a guide to drawing comics

Answer:  True.  (The answer is in black text on the black background.  Highlight it to view.)

Citation:  Suck School of Comic Art, Suck.com, (Nov. 7, 1997)

Our 14th great-grandmother, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, has many distinctions, not the least of which is her likelihood of having written the Shakespeare plays and sonnets.  (For compelling evidence, see Sweet Swan of Avon: Did a Woman Write Shakespeare?)  In this photo, we embrace our literary heritage.  The purple shirt and magic wand are in honor of the Irish branch of the family, which traces back to mytho-historical High Kings and fairy folk.

"If somebody should like to write a book, but is like millions of persons who would like to write books, but fortunately don't know just what to write books about, I suggest a study of scares, with the idea of showing that they were not altogether hysteria and mass psychology, and that there may have been something to be scared about."
—Charles Fort, Wild Talents (1932)

LAST QUARTER (FUTURE)

"As if to punctuate the point, divine shafts of moonlight stream down."

—Mark I. Pinsky, The Gospel According to Disney (2004)

 

This bright and cheerful September afternoon, with the strong greens and browns all around him and the ethereal, gentle misted tones of blue verging into violet in the distance.

—Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, translated by Richard and Clara Winston

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook: