a spring rainbow

“There was a spring rainbow in the sky, and the blending of a rainbow and a blue glittering convertible had been too much for her: in a car like that, she’d said, begging Clyde to take her for a ride, why, in a car like that you could reach the end of the rainbow before it faded away.”

Johnny from Airplane!

Word of the Day: ASTERISM

Word of the Day: ASTERISM (12D: Constellation) — n.

  1. Printing. Three asterisks in a triangular formation used to call attention to a following passage.
  2. Astronomy. A cluster of stars smaller than a constellation.[ed. so … NOT a [Constellation] …]
  3. Mineralogy. A six-rayed starlike figure optically produced in some crystal structures by reflected or transmitted light.”

Making a book

“Why make a book? Why bother? . . . 

Making a book creates a midnight in which synaptic lightning illuminates our skull’s planetarium. It lets us peek into how we think we might work. . . . 

IGNORE THIS BUTTON

“IGNORE THIS BUTTON”

—Printed badge seen in London, 1978; The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, compiled by Fred Metcalf, 1986.

THANK YOU FOR LOOKING AT THIS BUTTON!

“Politenessman says: THANK YOU FOR LOOKING AT THIS BUTTON!”

—Ron Barrett, National Lampoon; quoted in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, compiled by Fred Metcalf, 1986.

laughing at your own joke

“Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke.”

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in the film Beloved Infidel, 1959.

Les Paul – Chasing Sound!

Lightarians

“Some claimed that light had a consciousness and personality and could even be chatted with, often revealing its deeper secrets to those who approached it in the right way. Groups of these could be observed in Monumental Park at sunrise, sitting in the dew in uncomfortable positions, their lips moving inaudibly. There were diet faddist who styled themselves Lightarians, living on nothing but light, even setting up labs they thought of as kitchens and concocting meals from light recipes, fried light, fricaseed light, light á la mode, calling for different types of lamp filament and colors of glass envelope, the Edison lamp being brand new in those days but certainly not the only design under study. There were light addicts who around sunset began to sweat and itch and seclude themselves in toilets with portable electric lanterns.”

—Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, 2006.

the truth of the Apostrophe

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