I ask people impertinent questions. Hopefully turning up pertinent answers.

As in 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'?" The skull howled with laughter. "You just got your ass handed to you by a nursery tale?""I wouldn't say they handed me my ass," I said.Bob was nearly strangling on his laughter, and given that he had no lungs it seemed gratuitous somehow. "That's because you can't see yourself," he choked out. "Your nose is all swollen up and you've got two black eyes. You look like a raccoon. Holding a dislocated ass.

Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!

Knowledge is the ultimate weapon. It always has been.

Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white.

I grunted. It's something I picked up over a fifteen-year career in law enforcement. Men have managed to create a complex and utterly impenetrable secret language consisting of monosyllabic sounds and partial words—and they are apparently too thick to realize it exists. Maybe they really are from Mars. I'd been able to learn a few Martian phrases over time, and one of the useful ones was the grunt that meant "I acknowledge that I've heard what you said; please continue.

Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood.