Weird little turns of phrase will come and go.
For example
Frannis Scrace.
Frannis Scrace was a nonsense person/place in a crime novel I read once. Frannis Scrace was what or who the oversized, maniac killer that . . . ah . . . villinated that novel would ask an innocent bystander about. The momentary pause while the person sort of engaged sortilage to parse that little gem . . . “does he mean the old Francis Place? Is he looking for Fran Isgrace?” etc, that was the pause the killer used to hit and stun the victim with a three-foot length of tractor chain taped with athletic tape. After that, well, the person was basically fucked, because the killer was not the sort of person that required repeated blows to subdue a normal, ordinary churchgoer such as those he kilt.
I think about Frannis Scrace all the time. The idea that there are these bombs, these gordian bullets, that we just stick on – why is that? Why do we try to decode what we don’t recognize, rather then accepting or skipping or forgetting?
Thinking about Frannis Scrace has made me into Frannis Scrace. People don’t get what I’m saying a lot of the time.
They have to parse it out. Think it through. Decide if I’m fucked up or just fucking with them or what.
Say, friend, would you know how to get to the Frannis Scrace?
Isn’t that neat that someone else remembers the exact same line out of the whole Chaingang book series that I’ve never forgot since reading it about oh 12 years ago. Not sure why but the phrase somehow got to be top-of-mind in the last week and I kind of bet myself that even the mighty Google wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Bravo, ChuckUFarley, bravo.