“Not long ago, friends of mine came to me with their their nine-year old son. He couldn’t write. Again, I suggested zigzags. Take a pen in your hand. Move it up and down, as if you were waving goodbye. That’s the movement you need. How do you turn zigzags into letters? You depart slightly from a regular movement, just enough to make characters. A closed top becomes the letter a. An extended line makes an ascender.”. (Gunnlaugur SE Briem)

briem.net: type, handwriting, and lettering, by Gunnlaugur SE Briem.
Above: La Operina, (Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, 1522), detail.
Meaning: “Enjoy life and health.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention. The father is unknown.”

“Each week there are thousands of new patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The patents I pick are usually a) really weird, b) really cool, c) really scary.”.
Patently Silly: the humor of invention.
By Daniel Wright and Alex Eben Meyer.

Above : Nutcracker (David Aaron Powell, patent US D494820).

“I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.”

(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
42 : the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.