Ms. Smartarse > Recent Status Updates

Would you be Bunty McMustard?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘Then you have my sympathies regarding the loss of Courtland. I understand you and he were betrothed?’
‘In every single way but physically, legally, and affectionately,’ she announced as if that were somehow a fine boast.

“I’m not here to give you public feedback every time someone criticizes you.”
“Is that a fact? Then what are you here for? Marriage is a couple mutually joined as one but doing what the higher hue demands. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”
“I’m sure she was going to tell me how insanely bossy up-color girls could be, but then she [contracted a mortal illness], and it must have slipped her mind.”

"If you enjoyed laughing in the face of death, you might like to have a crack at High Saffron. One hundred merits, and all you have to do is take a look.”
“I understand there’s a one hundred percent fatality rate?”
“True. But up until the moment of death there was a one hundred percent survival rate. Really, I shouldn’t let anything as meaningless as statistics put you off.”

I must've started listening to the sequel at least 10 times by now, but an 11-year pause is way too much for me to just go with the flow.

Battles are terrible, but they're also comprehensible. You know what you're doing. Well... all right, that's not entirely true. You know what you're supposed to be doing. There's a lot of yelling and hitting things and then you look up and it's over. But once you've been through a few of them, you know more or less how things go. Magic, though... I don't know how it's supposed to work or why.

"Don't thank me," said Elspeth. "Come back to tell me, after it's over."
Thinking of the long journey southeast, Marra shook her head. "I may not live to do it," she admitted.
"I know," said the dust-wife gently. "But I'll still be able to hear you."

All of them, Isidore thought; they're all strange. He sensed it without being able to finger it.

The Masque of the Red Death - **

The Colloquy of Monos and Una - *

When he smiled, you could believe anything that came from his lips. Someone once said - and he was right - that Mijail could have convinced Christopher Columbus that the world was as flat as a pancake.

By the time I walked up the steps to room on the fourth floor I was convinced that this had been the strangest day of my life. But had I been able to buy a ticket to relive it all over again, I would have done so without a second thought.

"But Renate. Have a heart. Look how cute she looks!" Gertrud pet the kitten, calming it. The little one was purring for joy as Gertrud gave me puppy-dog eyes.
"Be reasonable, Gertrud. The old man back there at the fish stand also looks cute, but you're not taking him home either!"
"You never know what the day brings," she retorted.

"Did she study medicine, like she wanted to?"
"Yes, she did. But... it's like this... Kirsten's always been more for the arts and animals. Academia is not really her thing..."
"I see. Does she fight shingles with belly-dancing?"
"With cats."
We looked at each other for a few seconds, and then burst into a long, loud, hearty bout of laughter.

On a sultry Tuesday in 1989 they had suddenly announced that the End was not only in sight, but here, and that all true Christians must unite to do battle against the Beast. The Beast was never specifically named, but most true Christians concluded he resided somewhere among the liberal churches. There was fervent prayer on methodist front lawns.

Lost and Found - 2.5 /5 stars

All My Darling Daughters - 4/5 stars

Father of The Bride - 4/5 stars

A Letter from the Clearys - 3.7/5 stars

And Come from Miles Around - 3.5/5 stars

Fire Watch - 3.3/5 stars

Service for the Burial of the Dead - 3.7/5 stars

This world can be remade, perfect again. Your kind can be remade. And I will help Him do so. But to fix an imperfection, the first creation must be cast aside.

I check the time on my drug-dealer flip phone, the one I bought in another Chicago. It won't make calls in this world - I guess minutes aren't transferable across the multiverse.

"I won't let that happen."
"How?"
"I don't know yet."
"But you're working on it?"
"Yes, I'm working on it."
"And we're not lost."
We are so fucking lost. Literally adrift in the nothing space between universes.
"We are not lost."
"Good." She smiles. "I'll postpone freaking out."

Experimental physics - hell, all of science - is about solving problems. However, you can't solve them all at once. There's always a larger, overarching question - the big target. But if you obsess on the sheer enormity of it, you lose focus.

"So what can such an insanely expensive kobe beef do, that others can't?" I ask making an innocent face.
"It writes poetry and will whistle 'La Paloma' for you," Ellen answers resignedly.
"And is it possible to read the poem before one chooses the animal?" I inquire.

Early Christian writers have also supported the idea of metempsychosis, stating that each soul would reincarnate as many times as needed to reach spiritual completion, meaning salvation. The Church has of course condemned these teachings: after all, if humanity could reach salvation on its own, its services would become useless and it would cease to be a worldly power.

There was already a long queue at the [check-in] counter, and I whispered to Gertrud that her usual faking of a heart attack would not be a good idea this time. We'd risk being left behind [by the airplane], and we couldn't risk that.

Stefan just buried his face in his hands, adding that he was happy to be ignorant when it came to the shenanigans of us "old folks".

The head librarian stared down at him with a look of confusion-tinged concern that bordered on annoyance. Oliver couldn’t blame him. He was probably having a breakdown in the man’s favorite chair. No matter, he could quietly have a bout of hysterics in another chair.

Maybe it's worth us coming back later tonight, staking out the place, see who comes here? They might be connected to Jamie's disappearance, or maybe they saw something last Friday?

I was sleeping, went to bed with no second thought about Jamie. It's so stupid, really, how you take things like that for granted. I was stupid. I thought he'd come home. He was supposed to come home. And now he's...

I handed her the blade I carried.
"Can you use it?"
"I don't know. I've never tried."
"Then you can't."
"I really do want to stab him. That will surely help?"

It is often said that mankind will not be free till the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest; if you ask me, the man who ordered the strangling would promptly step forth and proclaim himself Lord Protector, and it would all begin again.

"Tell me," said [the head of Gods],"Is there a god of policemen?"
"No sir," said Carrot. "Coppers would be far too suspicious of anyone calling themselves a god of policemen to believe in."

"I did once design a simple means whereby entire fleets could be destroyed quite easily, my lord. Only as a technical exercise, of course."
"But with numbered parts and a list of instructions?" said the Patrician.
"Why, yes, my lord. Of course. Otherwise it would not be a proper exercise."