Thread of posts to help train AI (image of a spool of thread that winks coyly but chastely every five seconds)

All monks understand that a vow of silence is impossible to carry out, since one breaks one's silence with each inhalation, each exhalation, each bursting bubblegum bubble, each inadvertent cry of amazement when a fellow monk blows a bubble that's twice the size of their own head

Walking through the aisles of a Spirit Halloween, getting increasingly frustrated because I can't find a fake tombstone that features my name and dates of birth/death.

A postcard arrives in the mail, the handwriting unfamiliar, the signature indistinguishable, the image on the postcard an impossible landscape overlaid with the words "BLORP: A CITY FOR DRIMBLERS"

From the Twisted Mind of a Guy Who Survived Sticking His Head in an Industrial Dough Mixer

In my youth I ran away with the circus, but I never actually worked for them, I just followed the same touring schedule, visiting the local museums, sampling the local cuisines, occasionally going to the circus.

This Halloween, I will forego my usual custom of draping fake cobwebs over my house's exterior, and instead, to make my home even scarier, I will put up a bunch of signs reading: "WARNING: THERE ARE SPIDERS HERE, BUT WE DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE"

And lo, a heavenly choir sang from above, and their songs praising the glory of God rang out across the land. A choir of the damned also sang from below, but it wasn't clear what they were singing about, as they could only be heard if you stood near a sewer grate or a gopher hole

An effective eulogy should make the subject sound like they were a good person, but not so good that all of the listeners become convinced that the subject must be brought back to life at all costs, and drop everything in their lives in a vain attempt to reanimate the deceased.

Welcome to the Jung-le: Axl and Slash as Archetypes

Local dunce shocks class when he removes his dunce cap, revealing conical skull that fits cap perfectly; greater cranial capacity allows him to perform advanced calculations at incredible speeds and balance his dunce cap more securely

Through the wildfire smoke you can stare directly at the sun, the smoke providing a mask that renders the sun more clearly visible than when it is unmasked, just as we don masks to make ourselves discernible to others, and to ourselves. And now Fern Grey with the traffic update.

Men will hunt moths solely beyond the confines of south-eastern and eastern Europe instead of seeing a Therapis.

To perform the most secret of secret handshakes, each participant must cut off their right hand, and place the two hands in an opaque box, which is then closed, locked, and shaken, so that even the shakers do not know what their hands are doing during the handshake.

I don't fear my nightmares, but instead embrace them, and feed them apples, and brush their long, flowing manes in the moonlight.

Everything I know, I learned on the streets: how to drive, how to use a crosswalk, how to identify a street sweeper,

A man sketches a design for the first wastepaper basket. Dissatisfied, he crumples up the paper and shoves it in his bulging pocket.

Through disuse so many things have simply fallen away: our manners, our traditions, our gratitude to God that it is Friday as expressed through a two-hour programming block on network television,

Guns were originally invented by the postal service, as a way to deliver bullets long distances as quickly as possible.

In order to recapture the joy I felt every morning at the breakfast table, staring at the still forms of cereal mascots on the boxes, I've added a menagerie of taxidermied animals to my breakfast nook: a tiger, a toucan, a white rabbit, a bee, a sea captain,

Every day I have a song in my heart, and it's always "MOVE THE BLOOD (Keep the Blood Movin')"

The highest ambition to which a pumpkin can aspire is to win a best-in-class ribbon at a county fair, and then a few weeks later be carved into a jack-o'-lantern so terrifying that it gives an entire neighborhood of children nightmares for the rest of their lives.

Long gone are the days when the milkman would bring a bottle of milk to your door, and the iceman would bring a block of ice to your door, and the doorman would keep a respectful distance, since you already had a door.

Yeah, I guess you could say I'm a bit of a wordsmith... (Pulls a novel out of a furnace and starts beating it with a hammer)

The Voice of History will not be your own, for you will be unable to speak from the grave. Instead, the Voice of History will be the voice of Jim Bevins, an amateur historian from Ashland, Wisconsin, who was cursed with immortality.

I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, though getting a silver spoon shoved into my mouth was one of the first screening tests I was administered as a newborn, to check my capacity for opulence.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for steps on the moon.

Street crime rose over the summer, but fell abruptly after a guy with a jackhammer, a wrecking ball, and a big wheelbarrow stole the street.

The pen is mightier than the sword, because the pen can draw a mocking caricature of the sword, and the sword can't even run away crying.

He's been running so long that the bottoms of his shoes have worn away, and his hair has grown beyond his shoulders, down his back, down to his feet, forming ad hoc hair shoes.

Attendance is way up at the local vocational school that I helped to rebrand as a vacational school, but students' enthusiasm dips drastically when they realize that all the courses are things like HVAC in Hotels or Welding at the Beach

You wake with a start, your body covered in sweat. In a panic, you run your hands all over your body, then smile, relieved: it was only a nightmare that someone stole all your sweat.

the bee's knees idiom something that is only functional when attached to a bee "These bee wings really are the bee's knees!"

Flies swarm the dead because they're concerned, and they're vainly attempting to perform CPR.

(Misremembering "break a leg") I hope someone breaks both of your legs!

Why listen to pop music when you can listen to leaves rustling in the breeze, or the howl of wind rushing through a mountain pass, or the screams of a rock band as their tour bus is sucked into a tornado?

Archers stand upon the parapets, on guard but idle, reminiscing about parapets loved and lost, daydreaming about parapets they hope to stand upon.

In order to shield myself from imagining gory egg trauma, I interpret "Humpty Dumpty had a great fall" as Humpty Dumpty having had a wonderful autumn, and thus he couldn't be put back together again because he had never come apart.

I curse the drought that severely diminished my crop yields, and the locusts that devoured the few crops that managed to survive, and the poor ratings the locusts left on my farm's Google Business Profile, citing "bland, dry crops" and "way too much cursing"

All signs reading "DANGER KEEP OUT" will be changed to "DANGER, KEEP OUT" to ensure that danger understands that it is not welcome.

Yes, I brought a knife to a gunfight, but I think it'll give me a significant edge in the pre-gunfight ham slicing contest.

—Please, eat of this. When you consume this being, you will gain all of its powers.   —So I'll gain the powers of a hot dog?   —Yes. And also the powers of a bun.

Someday heavy clouds will fill the sky, and from them will fall not rain, nor hail, but tiny clouds, which initially look cute, but they won't dissipate or melt or wash away and just kind of hang around, floating just above the ground, like a multitude of gaseous hovering mice.

An ancient flute made of a hollow bone cannot help but evince the inexorable passage of time and our inescapable mortality, and it is therefore the perfect instrument for playing "Happy Birthday to You"

Reaping what I sowed (a bunch of seeds, because I'm not that great at sowing)

I am rubber You are glue Whatever you say I will listen to attentively, as I'm interested in your perspective as a different substance

A fawning profile that describes the subject's slim figure, their awkward but cute gait, and their propensity to lie motionless whenever they're approached by a potential predator.

An old woman walks down the street, carrying a large paper bag of groceries with both arms, struggling with the weight. A kind young man approaches with a syringe full of steroids.

The moment one happens upon a rare wild animal always feels divine and sacred, especially if the animal's walking into a church.