Once again, Decoder Ring Theater presents another page from the casebook of that Master of Mystery.

That's Sultan of Sleuthing, Martin Bracknell's immortal detective, Black Jack Justice,

starring Christopher Mott as Jack and Andrea Lyons as Trixie Dixon Girl Detective.

The name's Trixie Dixon Girl Detective. The name's Dixon. Trixie Dixon Girl Detective.

I am constant as the Northern Star, of whose true fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.

I'm sorry, I didn't actually mean me.

That is a quotation.

As those of us who make both a vocation and a recreation out of spinning fantasy from fact are well aware, quotation is the root of all evil.

And if you don't believe me, somebody famous probably said it once too, and that makes it

true, right?

And this is a problem with the quotation game.

It gives random snippets, absence of any context, the weight of implied truth by association.

Those trading upon the reputation of others apply the quote to situations with which it is not concerned,

and make subtle or sometimes not so subtle alterations to the passing phrases of the formerly famous to suit their argument.

And of course, the more genuinely vacuous simply make up their quote altogether,

ascribing their own trite musings to the famous and infamous in a desperate and pathetic need to have their opinions matter,

which vastly outweighs their ability to think thoughts worth caring about.

But that is ever so slightly beside the point.

The earlier quote about the Northern Stars from one of history's most noted liars, William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare himself may or may not have been a liar in his lifetime, but his immense

quotability has certainly helped us make him one since his death.

Of course, the man did write histories that were slightly less factually accurate than an episode

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