Q: What's the difference between a duck and an elephant?
A: You can't get down off an elephant.
At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously
-- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being
in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason.
-- John Keats
The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
Univ. by Professor Scott Rice. It is held in memory of Edward George
Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
time) novelist. He is best known today for having written "The Last
Days of Pompeii."
Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
Bulwer-Lytton. This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
written in 1830. The full line reveals why it is so bad:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Q: How many gradual (sorry, that's supposed to be "graduate") students
does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: "I'm afraid we don't know, but make my stipend tax-free, give my
advisor a $30,000 grant of the taxpayer's money, and I'm sure he
can tell me how to do the gruntwork for him so he can take the
credit for answering this incredibly vital question."
You will experience a strong urge to do good; but it will pass.