+“Never mind the trick. What the hell’s the point?”
+
+Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. “Who the hell knows?”
+
+=head2 v5.19.7 - Kurt Vonnegut, "Slaughterhouse-Five"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-12-20 by Abigail|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/12/msg210882.html>
+
+And somewhere in there was springtime. The corpse mines were closed
+down. The soldiers all left to fight the Russians. In the suburbs,
+the women and children dug rifle pits. Billy and the rest of his group
+were locked up in the stable in the suburbs. And then, one morning,
+they got up to discover that the door was unlocked. World War Two in
+Europe was over.
+
+Billy and the rest wandered out onto the shady street. The trees were
+leafing out. There was nothing going on out there, no traffic of any
+kind. There was only one vehicle, an abandoned wagon drawn by two
+horses. The wagon was green and coffin-shaped.
+
+Birds were talking.
+
+One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, "Pee-tee-weet?"
+
+=head2 v5.19.6 - Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Spam"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-11-20 by Chris 'BinGOs' Williams|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/11/msg210043.html>
+
+ Interior: cheap cafe. All the customers are Vikings. Mr and Mrs Bun enter downwards (on wires).
+
+ Mr. Bun: Morning.
+ Waitress: Morning.
+ Mr. Bun: What have you got, then?
+ Waitress: Well there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam;
+ egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam;
+ spam, spam, spam, egg and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam;
+ or lobster thermidor aux crevettes, with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pate, brandy and a fried
+ egg on top and spam
+ Mrs. Bun: Have you got anything without spam in it?
+ Waitress: Well, there's spam, egg, sausage and spam. That's not got MUCH spam in it.
+ Mrs. Bun: I don't want ANY spam.
+ Mr. Bun: Why can't she have egg, bacon, spam and sausage?
+ Mrs. Bun: That's got spam in it!
+ Mr. Bun: Not as much as spam, egg, sausage and spam.
+ Mrs. Bun: Look, could I have egg, bacon, spam and sausage, without the spam.
+ Waitress: Uuuuuuggggh!
+ Mrs. Bun: What d'you mean, uugggh! I don't like spam.
+ Vikings: (singing) Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam ... spam, spam, spam, spam ... lovely spam, wonderful spam ...
+
+ (Brief shot of a Viking ship)
+
+ Waitress: Shut up. Shut up! Shut up! You can't have egg, bacon, spam and sausage without the spam.
+ Mrs. Bun: Why not?
+ Waitress: No, it wouldn't be egg, bacon, spam and sausage, would it?
+ Mrs. Bun: I don't like spam!
+
+=head2 v5.19.5 - Charles Baudelaire, trans. James McGowan, "The Flowers of Evil", 51. The Cat
+
+L<Announced on 2013-10-20 by Steve Hay|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/10/msg208752.html>
+
+ I
+
+ A cat is strolling through my mind
+ Acting as though he owned the place,
+ A lovely cat -- strong, charming, sweet.
+ When he meows, one scarcely hears,
+
+ So tender and discreet his tone;
+ But whether he should growl or purr
+ His voice is always rich and deep.
+ That is the secret of his charm.
+
+ This purling voice that filters down
+ Into my darkest depths of soul
+ Fulfils me like a balanced verse,
+ Delights me as a potion would.
+
+ It puts to sleep the cruellest ills
+ And keeps a rein on ecstasies --
+ Without the need for any words
+ It can pronounce the longest phrase.
+
+ Oh no, there is no bow that draws
+ Across my heart, fine instrument,
+ And makes to sing so royally
+ The strongest and the purest chord,
+
+ More than your voice, mysterious cat,
+ Exotic cat, seraphic cat,
+ In whom all is, angelically,
+ As subtle as harmonious.
+
+ II
+
+ From his soft fur, golden and brown,
+ Goes out so sweet a scent, one night
+ I might have been embalmed in it
+ By giving him one little pet.
+
+ He is my household's guardian soul;
+ He judges, he presides, inspires
+ All matters in hos royal realm;
+ Might he be fairy? or a god?
+
+ When my eyes, to this cat I love
+ Drawn as by a magnet's force,
+ Turn tamely back from that appeal,
+ And when I look within myself,
+
+ I notice with astonishment
+ The fire of his opal eyes,
+ Clear beacons glowing, living jewels,
+ Taking my measure, steadily.
+
+=head2 v5.19.4 - Washington Irving, "The Widow and Her Son"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-09-20 by Steve Hay|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/09/msg207969.html>
+
+There is something in sickness that breaks down the pride of manhood;
+that softens the heart and brings it back to the feelings of infancy.
+Who that has languished, even in advanced life, in sickness and
+despondency — who that has pined on a weary bed in the neglect and
+loneliness of a foreign land — but has thought on the mother "that
+looked on his childhood," that smoothed his pillow and administered to
+his helplessness. — Oh! there is an enduring tenderness in the love
+of a mother to her son that transcends all other affections of the
+heart. It is neither to be chilled by selfishness — nor daunted by
+danger — nor weakened by worthlessness — nor stifled by ingratitude.
+She will sacrifice every comfort to his convenience — she will
+surrender every pleasure to his enjoyment — she will glory in his fame
+and exult in his prosperity. And if misfortune overtake him he will
+be the dearer to her from misfortune — and if disgrace settle upon his
+name, she will still love and cherish him in spite of his disgrace —
+and if all the world beside cast him off, she will be all the world to
+him.
+
+=head2 v5.19.3 - Andrew Hodges, "Alan Turing: The Enigma"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-08-20 by Steve Hay|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/08/msg206318.html>
+
+E.M. Forster, outdoing the King's heresy with grand bravura, had
+written in 1938 that if he were faced with the choice between
+betraying his country and betraying his friends, he hoped he would
+have the courage to betray his country. He would always put the
+personal above the political. But for Alan Turing, unlike Forster, or
+Wittgenstein, or G.H. Hardy, it was more than a theoretical question.
+For him not only had the personal become the political, but the
+political was the personal. He had chosen and promised for himself in
+working for the government. The choice for him therefore was that
+between betraying one part of himself and betraying another part. And
+however much he wavered between these alternatives, there was a solid
+logic to the mind of security, one that could not be expected to take
+an interest in notions of freedom and development. He had no rights
+to such things, as he would have had to admit. He might have
+outwitted the Home Guard, but when it came to questions that mattered,
+there was no doubt that he had placed himself under military law.
+There was a war on; there was always a war on now.
+
+=head2 v5.19.2 - Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-07-22 by Aristotle Pagaltzis|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/07/msg204905.html>
+
+The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the
+correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life,
+showing things that never were nor could be. [...] Not all is delight,
+however [...] One must perform perfectly. The computer resembles the
+magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of
+the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work.
+
+=head2 v5.19.1 - William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-06-21 by David Golden|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/06/msg203449.html>
+
+ Over hill, over dale,
+ Thorough bush, thorough briar,
+ Over park, over pale,
+ Thorough flood, thorough fire,
+ I do wander everywhere,
+ Swifter than the moon's sphere;
+ And I serve the fairy queen,
+ To dew her orbs upon the green.
+ The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
+ In their gold coats, spots you see;
+ Those be rubies, fairy favours,
+ In their freckles live our savours.
+ I must go seek some dew-drops here,
+ And hang a perl in every cowslip's ear.
+ Farewell, thou lob of spirits, I'll be gone;
+ My queen and all her elves come here anon!
+
+=head2 v5.19.0 - Batman, of the Joker, in "The Dark Knight Returns"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-05-20 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg201980.html>
+
+ From the beginning, I knew…
+ …that there was nothing wrong with you…
+ …that I can't fix…
+ …with my hands…
+
+=head2 v5.18.4 - Robert W. Chambers, Cassilda's Song in "The King in Yellow," Act I, Scene 2
+
+L<Announced on 2014-10-01 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2014/10/msg220770.html>
+
+ Along the shore the cloud waves break,
+ The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
+ The shadows lengthen
+ In Carcosa.
+
+ Strange is the night where black stars rise,
+ And strange moons circle through the skies
+ But stranger still is
+ Lost Carcosa.
+
+ Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
+ Where flap the tatters of the King,
+ Must die unheard in
+ Dim Carcosa.
+
+ Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
+ Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
+ Shall dry and die in
+ Lost Carcosa.
+
+=head2 v5.18.3 - (no epigraph)
+
+(no epigraph)
+
+=head2 v5.18.3-RC2 - Robert W. Chambers, "The King in Yellow", Act I, Scene 2
+
+L<Announced on 2014-09-27 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2014/09/msg220613.html>
+
+"Ah! I see it now!" I shrieked. "You have seized the throne and the
+empire. Woe! woe to you who are crowned with the crown of the King in
+Yellow!"
+
+=head2 v5.18.3-RC1 - Robert W. Chambers, "The King in Yellow", Act I, Scene 2
+
+L<Announced on 2014-09-17 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2014/09/msg220072.html>
+
+ CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
+
+ STRANGER: Indeed?
+
+ CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
+
+ STRANGER: I wear no mask.
+
+ CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
+
+=head2 v5.18.2 - Miss Manners
+
+L<Announced on 2014-01-06 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2014/01/msg211224.html>
+
+One of the major mistakes people make is that they think manners are
+only the expression of happy ideas. There's a whole range of behavior
+that can be expressed in a mannerly way. That's what civilization is all
+about – doing it in a mannerly and not an antagonistic way. One of the
+places we went wrong was the naturalistic Rousseauean movement of the
+Sixties in which people said, "Why can't you just say what's on your
+mind?" In civilization there have to be some restraints. If we followed
+every impulse, we'd be killing one another.
+
+=head2 v5.18.1 - Chuck Moore
+
+L<Announced on 2013-08-12 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/08/msg205897.html>
+
+The operating system is another concept that is curious. Operating
+systems are dauntingly complex and totally unnecessary. It’s a brilliant
+thing that Bill Gates has done in selling the world on the notion of
+operating systems. It’s probably the greatest con game the world has
+ever seen.
+
+An operating system does absolutely nothing for you. As long as you had
+something — a subroutine called disk driver, a subroutine called some
+kind of communication support, in the modern world, it doesn’t do
+anything else. In fact, Windows spends a lot of time with overlays and
+disk management all stuff like that which are irrelevant. You’ve got
+gigabyte disks; you’ve got megabyte RAMs. The world has changed in a way
+that renders the operating system unnecessary.
+
+=head2 v5.18.1-RC1 - Chuck Moore
+
+L<Announced on 2013-08-02 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/08/msg205445.html>
+
+Compilers are probably the worst code ever written. They are written by
+someone who has never written a compiler before and will never do so
+again. The more elaborate the language, the more complex, bug-ridden,
+and unusable is the compiler. But a simple compiler for a simple
+language is an essential tool—if only for documentation.
+
+=head2 v5.18.0 - Yevgeny Zamyatin
+
+L<Announced on 2013-05-18 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg201940.html>
+
+It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people
+who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write,
+walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes,
+and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in
+search, in questions, in torment.
+
+=head2 v5.18.0-RC4 - Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-05-16 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg201889.html>
+
+Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.
+
+=head2 v5.18.0-RC3 - Tom Waits, "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-05-14 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg201823.html>
+
+ I'd love to go drowning
+ And to stay and to stay
+ But the ocean doesn't want me today
+ I'll go in up to here
+ It can't possibly hurt
+ All they will find is my beer
+ And my shirt
+
+=head2 v5.18.0-RC2 - Tom Waits, "Earth Died Screaming"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-05-12 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg201723.html>
+
+ And the great day of wrath has come
+ And here's mud in your big red eye
+ The poker's in the fire
+ And the locusts take the sky
+ And the earth died screaming
+ While I lay dreaming of you
+
+=head2 v5.18.0-RC1 - Tom Waits, "What's He Building in There?"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-05-11 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/05/msg201651.html>
+
+ What's he building in there?
+
+ We have a right to know…
+
+=head2 v5.17.11 - Nigel Tufnel in "This is Spın̈al Tap"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-04-20 by Ricardo Signes|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/04/msg201056.html>
+
+It's very special because, if you can see, the numbers all go to…
+eleven! Look, right across the board: eleven, eleven, eleven, eleven!
+
+=head2 v5.17.10 - Vernor Vinge, "A Fire Upon The Deep"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-03-23 by Max Maischein|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/03/msg200504.html>
+
+The archive informed the automation. Data structures were built, recipes
+followed. A local network was built, faster than anything on Straum, but surely
+safe. Nodes were added, modified by other recipes. The archive was a friendly
+place, with hierarchies of translation keys that led them along. Straum itself
+would be famous for this.
+
+Six months passed. A year.
+
+The omniscient view. Not self-aware really. Self-awareness is much over-rated.
+Most automation works far better as a part of a whole, and even if human-
+powerful, it does not need to self-know.
+
+=head2 v5.17.9 - Douglas Adams, "The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-02-20 by Chris 'BinGOs' Williams|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/02/msg199115.html>
+
+Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
+The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a
+recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of
+his poem 'Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My
+Armpit One Midsummer Morning' four of his audience died
+of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the
+Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one
+of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been
+'disappointed' by the poem's reception, and was about to
+embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled
+'My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles' when his own major intestine,
+in a desperate attempt to save life and civilisation,
+leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
+
+The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator
+Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England,
+in the destruction of the planet Earth.
+
+=head2 v5.17.8 - Iain Pears, "An Instance of the Fingerpost"
+
+L<Announced on 2013-01-20 by Aaron Crane|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2013/01/msg197571.html>
+
+I must here declare myself as someone who does not for a moment subscribe to
+the general view that a willingness to perform oneself is detrimental to the
+dignity of experimental philosophy. There is, after all, a clear distinction
+between labour carried out for financial reward, and that done for the
+improvement of mankind: to put it another way, Lower as a philosopher was
+fully my equal even if he fell away when he became the practising physician.
+I think ridiculous of certain professors of anatomy, who find it beneath
+them to pick up the knife themselves, but merely comment while hired hands
+do the cutting. Sylvius would never have dreamt of sitting on a dais reading
+from an authority while others cut — when he taught, the knife was
+in his hand and the blood spattered his coat. Boyle also did not scruple to
+perform his own experiments and, on one occasion in my presence, even showed
+himself willing to anatomise a rat with his very own hands. Nor was he less
+a gentleman when he had finished. Indeed, in my opinion, his stature was all
+the greater, for in Boyle wealth, humility and curiosity mingled, and the
+world is richer for it.
+
+=head2 v5.17.7 - R. Scott Bakker, "The Darkness That Comes Before"
+
+L<Announced on 2012-12-18 by Dave Rolsky|http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2012/12/msg196707.html>
+
+No thought.
+
+The boy extinguished. Only a place.
+
+This place.
+
+Motionless, the Pragma sat facing him, the bare soles of his feet flat against each other, his dark frock scored by the shadows of deep folds, his eyes as empty as the child they watched.
+
+A place without breath or sound. A place of sight alone. A place without before or after . . . almost.
+
+For the first lances of sunlight careered over the glacier, as ponderous as great tree limbs in the wind. Shadows hardened and light gleamed across the Pragma’s ancient skull.
+
+The old man’s left hand forsook his right sleeve, bearing a watery knife. And like a rope in water, his arm pitched outward, fingertips trailing across the blade as the knife swung languidly into the air, the sun skating and the dark shrine plunging across its mirror back . . .
+
+And the place where Kellhus had once existed extended an open hand—the blond hairs like luminous filaments against tanned skin—and grasped the knife from stunned space.
+
+The slap of pommel against palm triggered the collapse of place into little boy. The pale stench of his body. Breath, sound, and lurching thoughts.
+
+I have been legion . . .
+
+In his periphery, he could see the spike of the sun ease from the mountain. He felt drunk with exhaustion. In the recoil of his trance, it seemed all he could hear were the twigs arching and bobbing in the wind, pulled by leaves like a million sails no bigger than his hand. Cause everywhere, but amid countless minute happenings—diffuse, useless.
+
+Now I understand.
+
+=head2 v5.17.6 - Kurt Vonnegut, "The Sirens of Titan"