One-Liners and Bits

“54321”?!! I thought numbers only went up!

A bird flew into a window but its reflection kept on going. Its reflection tried to live the life that the bird would have lived, but it could only fly in a straight line. In fact, this is what always happens with birds. The bird-reflection flew back into the window, then flew into another window and rescued itself—“almost!,” said the bird’s reflection.

All of the blurbs for my plagiarized book are pretty much predictable—enraged (e.g., “Hey, I can’t believe you did this!!”), or indignant (“I don’t get where you get off; you just took my whole book and copy-pasted it”)—but, on the other hand, look at some of the big names I got: Ernest Hemingway, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jack Kerouac, Jane Austen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oh, wait: those are just the names of the authors I plagiarized. No wonder they aren’t even more upset: in a way, they are credited on the back of the book! Still, I think I deserve full credit for the work, and for the blurbs—“Hey, I think I should step in here; I did not write a blurb only so that you could”—all right, all right: that’s also in the book, Jack Kerouac! Remember?!! And blurb part is over! And what’s with the tone of that blurb; that is not your best writing! I am questioning whether you even wrote that superstar blurb. “Hey! I am writing this right now and I am Jack Kerouac—no, I am writing this, and it is my work!” I guess anyone can write an outraged blurb. Hey, wait! What if I just remove the authors’ names from the back blurbs? And, also, huh? Isn’t the book already published?!! “No”??!!

Lucky for me, the driver’s education teacher drew a mirage instead of an overpass, when teaching overhead clearance. Now, the overpass thinks I have a diagonal flying-car.

What if after they mated, male salmon didn’t die, they were tortured?

And here I am on Easy Street. I got here just fine, thank you very much. O.K., well, the directions were a bit challenging to follow. But now that I’ve driven down Difficult Course, the Detours! Detours! Detours! Bumper-to-Bumper Traffic “Interstate Highway” System, and Back Where You Started Circle—and, by the way, what were they thinking building Heavy Construction Drive, All Cobblestones Racetrack, Sure to One Day Have Congestion Tiny Lane, Two Ways at Once Street, Half-a-Drawbridge (“I didn’t think my drawbridge would kill anybody,” said Hetch Car-Accidents, creator of all of the streets listed. “Turns out when the drawbridge goes down,” Car-Accidents continued, sheepishly,” there’s still no other half of a bridge there. They thought I was saying only half of the bridge should be ‘draw’… I meant the whole bridge. It just seemed like a different kind of drawbridge that would be awesome to have,” he continued. “I mean, not with no other half! Not with no other half! Pssssh! Pssssh! One of these days I’ll write half of the whole thing down in an autobiography. You know, I’m listed as one of Car and Driver’s “100 Most Compelling People.” They have me on there as an honorable mention.”), and Just Parking Abandoned Tow Road? Well, now that I’m here, the directions are easy (Whew, that Hetch Car-Accidents digression was a doozy; I’m exhausted!): just stay on Easy Street! Oh, wait, wait, what’s this? Stay on Easy Street until it becomes Rough Go Dead End? Oh well. I guess I should have stayed on Infinite Tolls Expressway.

Some ideas for e-mail: out-of-office replies block, contacts trash (I know, but just for the contacts), “Sent or Received?” folder scramble, no-out-of-office reply, “Let It Go” random daily e-mail delete (it’s in your contacts trash—but for how long?), out-of-contacts e-mail block, send out-of-office reply without a subject, out-of-office undo, and improved spam.

“You’re fired! This is the boss. Uh-oh. Oh, wait, it isn’t bad for the person being fired to know it’s the boss. Well, wait, maybe it is bad. Well, either way, I hope they didn’t hear me. Yeah. O.K. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. What? I’m fired! O.K.!”