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Hammet does a lovely bit of narrative sleight of hand there. Realistic, too.

I am surely sorely surly. I am so surly that contemplating the phrase "surely sorely surly" does not console me. Contemplation of Shirley Sorley-Surly, Assistant Secretary for Prevarication, Evasion, and Obfuscation, helps hardly at all.

I think that on mornings when you drop your toothbrush so that it slides down one side of the sink, up the other, and leaps with a gay twirl into the toilet, you should be allowed to call in, not sick, but cursed by God and liable to draw down affliction on all nearby.

I don't think dogs experience time anything remotely like we do. I don't think people without clocks and calendars do either, come to that. What dogs are real good at is associating events. What happens different on Saturdays?

I liked the bit in For Whom the Bell Tolls where the curse is "I spit in the milk of your mother" and is commonly abbreviated to "Milk." Something like that might be imagined.

"Oh my god" is plausible in a polytheism because there are the gods and then there is your god. The problem with created curses is that all the ones that sound and feel right already exist and are comic. "Gee whiz!" "Gol darnit!" "Foo!"

The narrator or narrators of whatever I am reading at the moment. That's what happens anyway, except for the part where other people hear. It it has to be just one, Proust's Marcel. He's a vile little shit, but has a great eye.

The prosecution had an unbroken chain of witnesses for every step of the crime. It is a good story because it doesn't always go that way, but it has been known to go that way.

Two regular cops showed up, hit the guy, and cuffed him. I gave one of them the purse and my name and address, saying where and when the guy had thrown way the purse. A while later I was called to teatify before a grand jury. The guy had knocked down an old woman for her purse.

The jogger was scrawny, but could clearly keep this up for hours if necessary. Perhaps realizing this, rh fugitive darted into a vestibule to hide. The jogger stood pointing where he had gone. The traffic cop caught up and spoke into her radio some more.

I looked the way they came, and maybe two blocks away was a short, plump traffic cop, running as fast as she could, stopping bent over wheezing and yelling into her radio, running again. Also suggestive. I picked up the purse and pedaled after the fugitive.

Way and gone back in the bad old 70s, I was heading off to work as a bike messenger, and a guy ran past flanked by a jogger. As the guy paseed me, he flung something under the parked car between us, and it slid out in front of me. It was a purse. That was suggestive.

It has been known to happen.

Cooperation.

The less slavery benefited him, the hinkier it looked. He wound up spending all his time convincing Quakers that slavery is wrong. OTOH, he had a wife and child, and likely neglected them. One would have to read more about that to be sure. 2/2

Maybe John Woolman, 1720-1772. He was an American Quaker, and when something looked hinky to him, he would cease to profit by it and see how it looked then. Slavery looked hinky, and he ceased to use products made by slaves, accept service from slaves, or sleep in inns that kept slaves. 1/

Hence the Egyptian god of libraries, Seshat, Mistress of the House of Books. She wore a leopard-skin sheath and a star-shaped halo. She was Thoth's sister, wife, or both. Gods are like that. She was also patron of books, records, calculation, and architecture.

Presented with a vision of loveliness, I can only think that the severed head really should be dripping more. There is something badly wrong with me.

It is a minor bit of evidence for the existence of a benevolent creator that defecation feels.good. It looks like a small courtesy.

Yes. They often start with a biographical vignette about the man killed, so that the slain light up as they die. This makes their deaths more poignant, and also establishes their rank and corresponding value as a kill. Compassion and brutality are all rolled up inseperably together.