salesmanship
"There is a moment in a sales pitch when an arm around the shoulder or a hand on the back will help swing the deal. . . But you must know that moment! Try it too soon and you kill the deal—too late and you've lost your opportunity." Julius Fast and Meredith...
muckrakers and reformers need not apply
[flowplayer src='https://www.bootrundle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/beave31.m4v' splash='http://www.bootrundle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/shirtoverhead.png'] "Fellow workers, this is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to...
a suit for a benjamin
"My unexpected Appearance surpriz'd the family; all however were very glad to see me and made me Welcome, except my Brother. I went to see him at his Printing-House: I was better dress'd than ever while in his Service, having a genteel new Suit from Head to...
calculated exaggeration
"In that most attractively adhesive of Russian novels, Oblomov, the protagonist devotes his life to finding more and better reasons for not getting out of bed. He finally stops going to the coffeehouse to see his friends because he knows that they will want to argue...
Creative Shame Reduction Experiment, Trial 2
“Suicide is the ultimate act of Shame," me "Suicide is an act of Violent Narcissism," mike (quotes from last night's conversation with Mike Schmidt, Qi Gong teacher and Energy Healer) Our chat was on Facebook Live, on my Boo Trundle page. I was going to post it here...
thank heaven for little grills
"By enabling farmers to generate food surpluses, food production permitted farming societies to support full-time craft specialists who did not grow their own food and who developed technologies. Besides sustaining scribes and inventors, food production also enabled...
Let Go Again
Hello Scratchers. This website isn't going anywhere--all my old Itchy Banquet posts will remain here in the Archives (I love them all so much). HOWEVER, I have renamed the site BooTrundle.com to reflect the human being who is making this stuff, and to allow me to...
the frock makes the man
[flowplayer src='https://www.bootrundle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/busby-berkeley1.m4v' splash='http://www.bootrundle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/dancingonarockingchair.jpg'] "PROUD PRELATE: You know what you were before I made you what you are now. If you do...
the artful dodger
"Some people are ruminators and some people aren't, and the ones who are can turn one bad incident into a lifetime of trauma. 'You can't let yourself think how close this shit is,' O'Byrne explained to me later. 'Inches. Everything is that close. There's just...
grab your partner
ALVY I've a very pessimistic view of life. You should know that about me if we're gonna go out, you know. I feel that life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. ANNIE M'hm. ALVY Those are the two categories . . .The horrible would be like, I don't...
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
[flowplayer src='https://www.bootrundle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/maritalbliss1.m4v' splash='http://www.bootrundle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Screen-Shot-2012-05-22-at-8.20.08-PM.png'] "His affection for his present wife grew steadily. Her cleverness...
nude human bridge
Dante: Excuse me, that man's body is being used as a bridge. Hypocrite: Yes, everyone who comes by here walks on his writhing back. Dante: What did he do? Hypocrite: He sentenced a good man to death. Dante: What about those men over there? What's their problem?...
ear in the grass
"The average number of parts now added is ten. This includes most of the following: hair, eyes, pupils, ear, two or three parts at the neck, arm and fingers, leg and foot. The arm for most is placed accurately (in the upper third of the body), points upward,...
you’re a dog
"Suddenly we are on that greyish borderland between science and philosophy, where everything depends on how one defines such things as 'pain,' 'sentience,' and 'awareness' in animals when humans have themselves barely begun exploring the nature of their own...
sans culottes
"Half-way up they closed in on me and started talking. The girl said, 'Look the crazy girl, you crazy like your mother. Your aunt frightened to have you in the house. She send you for the nuns to lock up. Your mother walk about with no shoes and stockings on...
an actor prepares
"Theoretically you might suppose that the ideal type of emotion memory would be one that could retain and reproduce impressions in all the exact details of their first occurrence, that they would be revived just as they were really experienced. Yet if that were...
guts
"I realize quietly what a terribly civilized person I am—the need I have for people, conversation, books, theater, music, cafés, drinks, and so forth. It's terrible to be civilized, because when you come to the end of the world you have nothing to support the...
edith wharton was a hottie
"The real purpose of the window-curtain is to regulate the amount of light admitted to the room, and a curtain so arranged that it cannot be drawn backward and forward at will is but a meaningless accessory. It was not until the beginning of this century that...