Fritz Bingle, a farmer with a 100-head of dairy cattle, wouldn't hear any of the objections friends and family had about putting his last name on his company's LLC, even if Bingle Dairy did elicit snickers from most everyone.

"Who knew our little joke would get so far off track," he said with a slight shrug and a half-smile, sitting in the witness stand.

On the brink of starvation, we decided that some of us must leave and try to get help, so I and 16 others agreed to go and we called our little band "The Forlorn Hope."

Tiger Tompkins was known in the Bowery as the go-to gent for a bon mot to keep the sporting crowd laughing, but as he got older his witticisms turned darker until his outlook was so bleak only the desperate and suicidal came to visit.

The branch hung precariously by a thin strip of bark, like Damocles' sword, as the children played beneath.

The Earth began to wake from a millennia-long slumber, and with the stretching of her stiff limbs, humanity, long an annoyance, shuttered in abject fear.

She waited in aggravated anticipation for her children, still asleep, to open Christmas presents.

Rich, sitting down to watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" for the first time, was disheartened to see the hero fail to maintain his integrity, instead bowing to the pressure of his better nature.

Indentured servitude never sat well with Elizabeth, a situation she remedied by slipping into her mistress' bedroom as she slept and permanently severing the contract.

The hotel—wallpaper peeling, the carpet musty and faded—still laid claim to a vestige of its former glory thanks to Capt. Willis Standgarden, its longest staying guest whose 1931 film "Glitzy GaGa Gala" was the first to feature synchronized swimming toddlers.

Simon had no compunction about twisting history or current events to suit his political views.

The senators, proverbial Neros fiddling as Rome burned, nitpicked their opponents policies while the country collapsed.

Helen harbored ill will towards her former lover's new lady friend Lola, but cloaked her feelings in a thick layer of southern charm that was so sickeningly sweet it hurt her teeth every time she smiled.

Francis always felt like a child, a fluttering, gnawing, almost annoying anticipation in his belly, as he walked up the steps of the art museum.

Through the fog of smoke from the cannons Elihu saw his brother, his eyes hard, his finger on the trigger of his rifle.

They lived separate, parallel lives, a wall of stone and beliefs dividing them.

The gun lay between them like a lie revealed.

After the first phone call that morning, which was quickly followed by a barrage of others, Don knew his client had done something else stupid.

Mr. William Fortune's job, as spokesman for a chemical company, was to walk the tightrope between the truth and blatant lies, something he had learned to do during his first marriage, a time when his world-view revolved around cocaine, strippers and gambling.

"The greatest invention in the world and we turn it into a vehicle for porn and cute pet videos," lamented Stan, holding forth at his barbecue grill. "

Franz was devastated the first time he heard Simon and Garfunkel's "America," knowing that sales of his patented bow tie cameras would soon be plummeting.

The snow snaked across the blacktop and onto the hood, blinding white snakes against the windshield.

Across the barren hills he saw them coming, inevitable, like the rising sun.

Sue began to suspect she was the butt of a cosmic joke.

The ice split with each step, sending long, thin lines that mirrored the lifeless tree limbs on shore, spreading ahead of his unsure footfalls.

Lisa, known by the stage name Salome,stumbled and nearly fell in the midst of her "Dance of the Seven Veils," when she saw Sammy walk into the Peek-A-Boo Room with a new girl on his arm.

The Mariachi band, tired of playing traditional songs for unappreciative tourists eating chalupas, broke into a Delta Blues tune so heart-wrenching tears soon washed over the dinnerware and onto the floor.

Kurt had no compunction about drinking his friend's whiskey since there was a stark difference in their paychecks.

"Sure, I got a bad ticker, but if you don't shut your trap, I'll take you out before I croak," growled the old sailor at the bartender needling him.

After five years John Paul could no longer imagine a life outside his prison walls.

Mazzie was told not to rock the boat, but contention was her only vice, so it was less than a week before she began to once again ask impertinent and pointed questions of her superiors.