Peanuts
by Jane Austen
Miss Lucy van Pelt, young, witty, and handsome, found it unavoidable that she play a game of foot-ball with Mr. Charles Brown, the dreadfully wishy-washy companion of her otherwise commendable brother Mr. Linus van Pelt. Wishing to be rid of this bothersome neighbor, she lifted the foot-ball just as Mr. Brown ventured to kick it, leaving him out of sorts as she tittered with laughter and went to hear Mr. Schroeder play at the pianoforte.
Beetle Bailey
by Ernest Hemingway
“It’s a mighty sorry business, Sarge being blown up like that,” Beetle said. The other soldiers in the café nodded silently. He ordered another bottle of vermouth and drank the vermouth. It was a good vermouth.
Cathy
by Virginia Woolf
A rain fell over the city, streaking the office window. Cathy looked up from the computer screen with its instructions on how to knit a brown sock. “My God, to be a stereotypical woman makes me feel as though I have no nose!”
Dilbert
by Charles Dickens
There was much to be done in the halls of Business in expectation of a visit from Mister Catchclaw, the enterprising Vice President of the Corporation. The clerk Dilbert was requested to turn out spread-sheet upon spread-sheet until, his eyes scarcely able to focus on his computing screen, he requested to his supervisor, Mister Lapwroth, that he be allowed to return home to care for his round companion Dogbert. “Home!” exclaimed Lapwroth, “Home is for those who work smarter, not harder!”
Doonesbury
by Jorge Luis Borges
I awoke one day and regarded the morning news on my television, which I keep on a shelf in my library. The images were those of men, but men who had been replaced by floating feathers, cowboy hats, and giant cigarettes. Truly now, I knew that I had entered into the labyrinthine Fiefdom of Metonymy.
The Family Circus
by William Faulkner
“Incest and miscegenation!” Pa yelled as he entered the room where Billy and Dolly sat. Billy fled through the doorway, too panicked for ratiocination, and wound a peregrinating dotted line around the yard and by P.J., the deaf and dumb youngest brother.
Dennis the Menace
by Marcel Proust
Upon accidentally dropping a glass onto my kitchen floor, a most regrettable and yet unavoidable occurrence over the course of one’s lifetime of glassware use, I chanced to hear a sound that was just the same as the clatter of glass when, as a boy, I threw a leather ball through the window of our neighbor Monsieur Wilson, who responded with a thundering yell of the Christian name of I, your narrator.
Hagar the Horrible
by Leo Tolstoy
Two Vikings sat upon an island and recalled how they came to be there. They arrived there through History, which is but the manifestation of the great divine force which drives us, a force which may be called “God” by the cavemen of B.C.
Garfield
by James Joyce
Stately plump Garfield hated Mondays and lasagna I said lasagna I will Lasagna.