Yaffles on a chuckle skim

In continuation of tonight's festivities: for your perusal I offer a literary smorgasbord.
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My favorite poem ever:
"The Woods of Westermain" by George Meredith
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I.
Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
...
[full text] Rather long
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My favorite book ever:
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
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This is what happened.
Before my life started properly, I was doing the usual mewling and sucking, which in my case occurred on a pair of huge, soft black breasts. In the African tradition I continued to sucke for my first two and a half years, after which my Zulu wet nurse became my nanny...
My life proper started at the age of five, when my mother had her nervous breakdown...
I spoke the language that had pronounced the sentences that had killed their grandfathers and sent their grandmothers to the world's first...
[amazon.com]
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My favorite short story ever:
"A Christmas Memory" by Truman Capote
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Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.
[full text]
(Bob will remember the film... "It makes me feel all sparkly inside!"
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My favorite short film(s):
Tater Tomater, director Phil Morrison
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"Tater Tomater is the story of a cafeteria worker, Doris, who, over the course of a hectic day, begins to lose control. Being forced to say the same thing over and over again, she begins rhyming words and her co-workers don't quite know how to react.
[IMDB]
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and Vernon, Florida, director Errol Morris
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Early Errol Morris documentary intersplices random chatter he captured on film of the genuinely eccentric residents of Vernon, Florida. A few examples? The preacher giving a sermon on the definition of the word therefore and the obsessive turkey hunter who speaks reverentially of the "gobblers" he likes to track down and kill.
[IMDB]
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My favorite feature-length film:
Life as a House, director Irwin Winkler
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When a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he takes custody of his misanthropic teenage son, for whom quality time means getting high, engaging in small-time prostitution, and avoiding his father
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And rather than a favorite television show, a few random quotes to round things out:

Julia: [reading aloud a letter from Dash Goff] Yesterday, in my mind's eye, I saw four women standing on a veranda in white, gauzy dresses and straw-colored hats. They were having a conversation. And it was hot. Their hankies tucked in cleavages where eternal trickles of perspiration run from the female breastbone to exotic vacation spots that southern men often dream about. They were sweet-smelling, coy, cunning, voluptuous, voracious, delicious, pernicious, vexing and sexing... these earth sister/rebel mothers... these arousers and carousers. And I was filled with a longing to join them. But like a whim of Scarlett's, they turned suddenly and went inside, shutting me out with a bolt of a latch. And I was left only to pick up an abandoned handkerchief and savor the perfumed shadows of these women... these southern women. This Suzanne. This Julia. This Mary Jo and Charlene. Thanks for the comfort, Dash Goff... the writer.
-Designing Women [more]

Blanche: She walked in on me and William last night. I could have fallen off my headboard and chipped a tooth.
Rose: You think that's bad? She came into my room while Albert and I were reenacting the plank-walking scene from "Peter Pan".
Dorothy: What the hell goes on in this house at night?
-Golden Girls [more]

Jack: For your information, most people who meet me do not know that I am gay.
Will: Jack, blind and deaf people know you're gay. Dead people know you're gay.
Jack: Grace, when you first met me, did you know I was gay?
Grace: My dog knew.
-Will & Grace [more]

Terry: I heard a rumor.
Deputy Trudy Wiegel: What's that, Ter?
Terry: Mexican werewolves are coming up from Mexico and selling crack.
-Reno 911! [more]

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