First Lines

A friend sent me a link to a long discussion on, of all things, a horse board. One of those things that get hilariously out of control and are just delicious. It was called "Famous Opening Lines from Novels, update for the modern age." It's the kind of thing I just love, so I am going to blatantly plagiarize here and post some of the best, for your reading pleasure.

“Alice was beginning to tire of sitting by her sister on the bank. She took out her iPhone and played Angry Birds for the next three hours.”

“Call me Ishmael_65.”

"Last night I dreamt I went to www.Manderley.com again"

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. For his next vacation, he was hiring a charter, no matter what the cost."

"Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when enthralled by her blog as the Tarleton twins were."

"Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the bluetooth earpiece which our visitor had left behind him the night before."

"In the beginning God coded the heaven and the earth."

"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife and only a dial-up internet connection, so when the twister came, they couldn't pull up weather.com quickly enough."

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Check your phone, girl. I just sexted you."

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. When it rained, you would not believe the mess, it was next to impossible to get flood insurance."

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of the iPhone and then they just had to bring out generations 2, 3, and 4 in rapid fire succession."

"Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. A passer by would hardly recognize it now, ever since that hedge fund manager moved in and built on a 6000 square foot addition."

"All this happened, in 140 characters more or less."

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own internet meme, or whether someone else will post a video of themselves putting Mentos in a Pepsi bottle in time to music, this blog must show."

"I am an invisible man, for I post anonymously on the internet."

"Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a dial up connection and and ancient PC on a shelf and keeps an analog cell phone for taking calls."

"First witch:
When shall we three meet again?
In chat room or IM?

Second witch:
When the hurley burley's done again
When the ipad works again."

"Howard Roark laughed.

He stood naked before the hotel mirror. A frozen explosion of light burst against the glass. The image of the flash digitized his power and he knew he could display that power those lesser than he. He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think.

He tried to consider it. But he forgot. He was tweeting."

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The best of the China photos are now ALL up on Flickr. Whew!