Tag: couplets

A hundred identical hooks

Believe the unbelievable
Love hurts

The end begins
Every second counts

Get carried away
Justice is coming

No guts, no glory
Assume the position

Evil rises
Looks can kill

Once upon a time
Unlock the secret

Revenge is coming
Love is a force of nature

Journey beyond your imagination
No body is safe

Fear thy neighbor
Break the silence

There is no substitute
Hold your breath

If looks could kill
Believe

A hero will rise
A love story

Love stings
Be careful what you wish for

Blood is thicker than water
The con is on

There is no escape
Lead us into temptation

Every family has a secret
Are you in or out?

This place is so dead
The time has come

The ultimate battle begins
Everything will change

Fight fire with fire
Escape is the only solution

Life happens when you least expect it
No one gets out alive

There’s one in all of us
Nothing is as simple as black and white

A comedy for the romantically challenged
The end is near

Take a stand
No soul is safe

Love thy neighbor
Join the party

Fear nothing, risk everything
How far would you go for a friend?

There’s one in every family
The boys are back in town

The journey begins
The hunt begins

They are coming
Legends never die

The real ghost story
Heaven help us

There’s only one way out
Get in the game

Heroes aren’t born, they’re made
Revenge is a dish best served cold

Let the mind games begin
Fight or die

Get some
Time is running out

Everything you’ve heard is true
Catch her if you can

Enter at your own risk
Get in, get out

Everybody has a secret
It’s time to take a stand

It’s her world, we’re just living in it
Careful what you wish for

A comedy to arouse your appetite
Everything comes full circle

Some secrets are better left buried
This might hurt a little

A legend never dies
You are what you eat

Feel the love
Are you game?

We’ve all been there
There are no clean getaways

There goes the neighborhood
Something wicked this way comes

The legend comes to life
Everything is connected

You can’t choose your family
Trust no one

There are two/three sides to every (love) story

A list of identical taglines for pairs of different movies in a blog post by Christophe Courtois. Submitted by Mark Dzula.

Sweet Thursday

What happened in between
the troubled life of Joseph and Mary

hooptedoodle
there would be no game.

Enter Suzy – the creative cross
tinder is as tinder does

the great Roque war
whom the gods love, they drive nuts

there’s a hole in reality through which
we can look if we wish.

Hazel’s brooding flower
in a crannied wall

parallels must be related:
lousy Wednesday: the playing fields of

Harrow: the little flowers of Saint Mack.
Suzy binds the cheese

a pause in the day’s occupation
sweet Thursday, sweet Thursday

sweet Thursday was
one hell of a day.

Chapter titles 1-21 from John Steinbeck’s 1954 novel Sweet Thursday. Submitted by Victoria Bean.

Sport

About midnight, having fallen asleep,
I was awakened and greatly surprised

at finding most of my companions
up in arms, and furiously engaged

with a large alligator
but a few yards from me.

One of our company, it seems,
awoke in the night, and perceived

the monster within a few paces of the camp,
who giving the alarm to the rest,

they readily came to his assistance,
for it was a rare piece of sport;

some took fire-brands and cast them
at his head, whilst others formed javelins

of saplins, pointed and hardened with fire;
these they thrust down his throat

into his bowels, which caused the monster
to roar and bellow hideously, but his strength

and fury was so great that he easily wrenched
or twisted them out of their hands, which

he wielded and brandished about and kept
his enemies at distance for a time;

some were for putting an end to his life
and sufferings with a rifle ball, but

the majority thought this would too soon
deprive them of the diversion and pleasure

of exercising their various inventions
of torture; they at length however grew tired,

and agreed in one opinion, that he had suffered
sufficiently, and put an end to his existence.

Taken from Travels of William Bartram by William Bartram, published 1928. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.

Why We Can’t See What’s Right in Front of Us

People tend to fixate on the common
use of an object. For example, the people on the Titanic

overlooked the possibility that the iceberg
could have been their lifeboat.

Newspapers from the time estimated the size of the iceberg
to be between 50-100 feet high and 200-400 feet long.

The Titanic was navigable for awhile
and could have pulled aside the iceberg.

Many people could have climbed aboard it to find
flat places to stay out of the water

for the four hours before help arrived.
Fixated on the fact that icebergs sink ships,

people overlooked the size and shape of the iceberg
(plus the fact that it would not sink).

From Why We Can’t See What’s Right in Front of Us, Tony McCaffrey, Harvard Business Review, 10 May 2012. Submitted by Emma Rae Lierley.

This is her

Names have power,
so let us speak of hers.

Her name is Sharbat Gula,
and she is Pashtun,

that most warlike of Afghan tribes.
It is said of the Pashtun

that they are only at peace
when they are at war,

and her eyes—then and now—
burn with ferocity.

She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30.
No one, not even she, knows for sure.

Stories shift like sand
in a place where no records exist.

From ‘A Life Revealed’, by Cathy Newman, National Geographic, April 2002. Submitted by Angi Holden.

Synopsis

Cambodian rival parties probe Michelle
Knight held captive for a decade 6 Children;

suicide-attack Doctors treat world
police, standoff merchants press, twist settlement;

pre-Islamic Bahrain filming Al Pachino movie,
Chicago building nears completion in Shanghai;

Giant octopus hunting Puget Sound World;
New York selling Boston, Globe; John Henry

deals to buy Boston, Globe, woman, voices, sons,
New Zealand, botulism, the sun set, a northernmost city;

Hollywood baby abandoned; inmates strike against California
archaeologists looking to begin again might be too late.

From the Twitter stream of the Associated Press, 2 August 2013. Some punctuation altered to recreate the ambiguity of a rolling Twitter feed. Submitted by M.K. Sukach.

The Secret Life of Daniel Craig, Poet

Awake at dawn with nothing to do.
I don’t want to think about it.

Aung San Suu Kyi.
Jealousy.

Travel. Home.
It all depends on how you interpret them.

Answering questionnaires.
I don’t know if I do.

“Fuck off.”
At a free bar.

Opposable toes.
Ruddy.

My knees.
Oh, they’re just perfect.

Krill. Ink.
Where I live now.

My third nipple.
A good mustache. A good mustache.

E.E. Cummings and Kurt Vonnegut.
Maggie and Milly and Molly and May.

Blisters. Quickly.
“Breathe in… breathe out. Repeat.”

Daniel Craig’s interview answers in The Proust Smackdown: Three Kings and a Questionnaire, Vanity Fair Magazine, February 2012. Submitted by J.R. Solonche.

The Nightingale

The color paintings were prepared on fine,
brilliant Wu silk, which were closely and wonderfully woven.

Traditional Chinese paints were used. The blues
and greens came from azurite, malachite, and indigo;

the reds from cinnabar, realgar, and orpiment, with the brilliant red
from coral and the pink-red from a flowering vine; umber from an iron oxide

called limonite; yellow from the sap of the rattan plant; and white from lead
or pulverized oyster shells. To all, powdered jade was added

for good fortune. These colors were mixed with stag horn, fish or ox
glue, or glue made from the pulp of the soap bean. The black

Chinese ink is ten parts pine soot, three parts powdered jade,
and one part glue made from donkey hides boiled

in Tang River water. The paints were mixed with boiling water. In
the first stage, the water looked like fish eyes; in the second,

like innumerable pearls strung together; and in the final stage,
like rolling breakers. The paints were applied with Chinese brushes made

of sheep, rabbit, goat, weasel, and wolf hairs picked in autumn,
as well as of mouse whiskers, with handles of bamboo and buffalo horn.

Where changes were required in the art, the paint was removed
by wiping the area with the juice of the apricot seed.

Illustration notes from The Nightingale by Demi (Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1985). Submitted by J.R. Solonche.

Grass-Eating Boys’ Commitment

phobia is not the only thing that’s worrying
Japanese women. Unlike earlier generations

of Japanese men, they prefer
not to make the first move, they like

to split the bill, and they’re not
particularly motivated by sex.

I spent the night at one guy’s house, and nothing
happened. We just went to sleep, moaned one

incredulous woman on a TV program
devoted to herbivores.

It’s like something’s missing with them, said
Yoko Yatsu, a 34-year-old housewife.

If they were more normal, they’d be more interested
in women. They’d at least want to talk to women.

A quote from Alexandra Harney in Slate, quoted in Why Isn’t Japan Having Sex? at The Good Men Project. Submitted by Andrew Milewski.