Things apropos of nothing

Sometimes lightening strikes and you create a work of genius forged in what writers call ‘white heat’.

Sometimes it hits a little too hard and your brother the sheriff has to pull a few strings to get you that janitorial job at the grain silo.

I think you know what time it is.

• Sunday night, whilst recuperating from a Saturday I don’t quite remember, I popped in Dario Argento’s ‘70s horror film “Suspiria”. And after enjoying Asia's dad's 1977 masterpiece, I trolled through the DVD extras, whereupon I landed upon the bio for lead actress Jessica Harper which contained this sentence:
  
  
  
  
  “That same year, the actress appeared opposite Richard Dreyfuss and Bob Hoskins in INSERTS, John Byrum’s controversial study of a failed movie director’s descent into the world of pornography during the 1930’s.”
  
  My immediate reaction?
  
  “I never ever want to hear the words ‘Richard Dreyfuss’, ‘Bob Hoskins,’ and ‘pornography’ in the same sentence again.’
• And now, for nothing more than a chuckle and a groan:
  
  “You know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat. But then again, there are a lot of cats.”
  
  “You know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat.”
  
  “Have you SEEN how many cats there are in this city? I say: Curiosity got lucky (or fell down on the job, one).”
• “You know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat.”
  “Curiosity sounds like good people.”
  Did blogs help the Democrats win the election? Well, not more than, say, organization, money, and GOP blundering did. But people – cable news-types, mostly – like to say they did. And I think it’s because they just like to say the word, “Blogs”. Say it with me now – Blogs – it’s just so ugly and alien a word, it sounds made up, doesn’t it? It might as well be “Flern” or “Splorfs” or a hundred other words you snatch right out of thin air.
  
  
  
  
  But it’s also the way cable news anchors say it: You get the sense they don’t even know what it means.
  
  Much like how anyone who learns a new word feels they have to use it forty times a day, you just keep hearing it coming out of their mouths – again and again -- until you start to wonder, “They don't SOUND like they know what that word means?” As if, once they come back from the commercial break, it's: "Next up, what The Blogs are talking about. But first, news on the emperor and his fantastic new clothes."
  
  It’s like the president and his “Internets” or Ramona Quimby and her ‘dawn-zer’ problem.
  

Today’s lesson: And if you get THAT reference, Encyclopedia Brown, I’ll be mighty impressed.