THINGS MARK TWAIN NEVER SAID

Mark Twain died Thursday April 21, 1910.  He stopped making speeches shortly after his death.
Here are some quotes from the speeches he never made:


"I'll never be eaten by cannibals.  Never the Twain shall meat."


"Give me liberty, or give me death!  On second thought, give me a hot fudge sundae."  


"To pee, or not to pee?  What is wrong with my bladder?"


"If you cannot do great things, give up."


"I have a dream!  I have a dream!  I have a dream that one day I will be Martin Luther King." 


"You must be the change you wish to see in your pocket."


"Money is the root of all fun."


"That's not all, folks, but it's enough for now."

A FANTASTIC STORY?

I ran out of ideas while writing a story about a writer who is blocked.  He was halfway through his novel when his characters went on strike for better character traits.  They felt that they should be equal to the characters created by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain.  How can writers write when their characters refuse to work for them?

I never thought that my main character's characters' strike would affect me.  If their strike does not end soon, then I will abandon this story and hope the literary police do not arrest and charge me with Criminal Negligence and Story Abandonment.

It was such a fantastic story idea before I ruined it by turning it into writing. 

THE WINTER BLAHS . . .

I'm tired of weathering fights with Emily Bronte.  (So are Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw.)

The Fountainhead froze because it's too cold to count with Monte Cristo.  (His friend Alex Dumas annoys me by always shrugging his atlas.)

I wish Hamlet would make up his mind.  He can't decide whether to shovel my snow, or not to shovel my snow.  (He also can't decide whether to buy slings and arrows with his outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubadours.)

The cold means my huckleberry won't fin, and Mark Twain hasn't the time to fix it.  Says he's too busy painting frozen fences with Tom Sawyer. 

King Lear won't lend me his jet to fly to a warmer climate.  He tells me to reason not the need.

Henry Miller refuses to move the Tropic of Capricorn north so that the Equator becomes the Tropic of Cancer.  Even Portnoy is complaining about this.

As if I don't have enough to do!  Oliver slipped on some ice and twisted his ankle.  Our mutual friend Charlie Dickens is too busy building his bleak house to help me to look after Oliver's cat Copperfield, and Oliver's dog Dorrit.

It's too cold to go to the the lighthouse.  It's too cold to go to the fair at Vanity.  It's too cold to go see Alice in Wonderland. (My friends Virginia Woolf, Bill Thackeray and Lou Carroll are disappointed.)

Gus Flaubert and Georgie Orwell say it's too cold for them to bring me eggs from Madame Ovary's animal farm.

I agree with my neighbor, Gabe Marquez, that cold winters make it seem like one hundred years of solitude.

Would there be winter blahs if Oedipus Rex had created Mother's Day in January?