A 1-in. hole was bored in the center of a 2-in. square block. Two finishing nails were driven in, as shown in the sketch. These were connected to terminals of an induction coil. After everything was ready the powder was poured in the hole and a board weighted with rocks placed over the block. When the button is pressed or the circuit closed in some other way the discharge occurs. The distance between the nail points–which must be bright and clean–should be just enough to give a good, fat spark. –Contributed by Geo. W. Fry, San Jose, Cal.

We’ve all been there. Man’s favorite splurt. We’ll blurt out your words as soon as you speak ’em. Once poked, twice blinded.

A brace of birds makes a fine kettle of fish. Cover the ears of the little ones with cotton batting. Plug their noses with mint julep. Stop up their behinds with tar and feathers. If they so much as open their gills give them a good licking.

Madame Mac Méod (future Mata Hari) éxécutant des danses brahmaniques dans la bibliothèque du Musée Guimet de Paris
*13-3-1905

Using the advanced editing suite he was able to add a dash of peasant to his mix, and to tone back the cosmopolitan. The proceeds from his cut of the robot dream sequence in Sex Kittens go to College allowed him to replace his spleen with a dog’s breakfast. He was field stripping a spec 4 with x-ray eyes when she was sent on a sea cruise with her spiritual advisor.

Please confirm that you have consented to this operation and that in the case of a less-than-favorable outcome you donate
your gizzard to the butcher
your needs to the baker
your charming ways to the candlestick maker

He was hoping to make the next pay grade at the sewage treatment plant, the only industry still showing year-to-year growth. She, as a reward for her performance selling perfume in junior achievement, swallowed a fly.

You know the story of the farmer who stumped the philosopher with a simple question, “What brings you out on a night like this?” But did you see the poet spin on a fantastic toe and flee the gathering with his tale between his legs?

I’ll bet you dorks to donuts that there’s nothing up my sleeve, and if there is, that you put it there.

And I’ll drop a dime on you if you spill those beans on the birds and the beeswax. Keep it all under your tinfoil hat. Don’t spoil the children’s surprises, lord knows we’ve left them a batch.

In the prenuptials they pledged to lick each other’s compass until the cows came home, if it got to that bearing. But he learned to speak Urgudu on the tom-tom when he heard there were some cool cats there, and that changed his whole way of looking at things. When the bottoms fell out of the pussy market he was the last to know.

Let them without pretensions utter the first scoff. And let them who ain’t stoned honor their vows.

Elvis never came to my funeral, and why would he, I never came to his. Jesus never mentioned me in his will, but I will mention his in mine.

Of Tarzan and the arm I sing
Wonder Woman and Fu Manchu
Working it up in the lab at night
By the light of the silvery moo

His good arm got caught in the wringer while trying to squirt a growth hormone into the whites. He treated it with a double dilution of the ruptured spleen of the creature from the Black Lagoon. You can imagine how that turned out. His hard drives barely get to sleep. He’s sooey generis, very generous, especially with his greenhouse gases. He was able to convert them to laughing gases via the laws of capitalism.

What to say about her? Born dancing. Junior achiever. The crack in the cosmic egg. He had her tailed so he knew there wasn’t another man.

When you go out to write, you’ve got to look out for those hemmingways. What’s a hemmingway? Forty ounce in the old measure, just shy of a jeroboam.

Even flies sleep, so I suppose worms do too. Or maybe they just take a nap. Do they dream? Even Freud couldn’t figure that out.

Simulations show that if the Earth did not have a Moon, Newton would not have discovered gravity. At least not until 1950, by which time the Russians were already working on Sputnik.

It is recorded by Sempiverous Vivitius (in Vie de Scipion l’Africain, the archaic French translation by Master Bodo of Bourgony) that Caesar said that at low tide the Celts would bind their captive women to the posts of the pier, and poke fun at them as the tide came in. The tide came at

sixes and sevens
round numbers squared
square numbers in a round whole
higher numbers
irrational numbers
numbers too tight to mention

But don’t worry your pretty head about ancient history or higher mathematics. We’ve gone far beyond that. When’s the last time you saw a captive woman? In the heyday of Fu Manchu ? When the lily-white girl got up-ended by the jungle bunnies? When the Nazis let loose their gorillas on the Red Cross nurses. You might remember, it happened just the other day.

Under the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act of 2006, cellphone users cannot opt out of the presidential alerts. Please stay tuned.

I’ve just got to be the most authentic person that I know of.

No bones about it.

No two ways about it.

Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

Not in a coon’s age.

Not until the pope’s not catholic.

Not until the bear doesn’t shit in the woods.

Not until my shit don’t stink.

Not until the end justifies the meanies.