Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Deathless Prose your time has come!

He slowly raised his hand in class, awaiting the memories he was sure would soon flood his conscious like a vast wave of manatees after a particularly bad day in the battle for control of Florida's pristine waters. The memories concerned the last time he raised his hand in class, which was in 1922, thirteen years before his death and 86 years before his resurrection as !The Masked Moron!. The memories didn't disappoint, and soon life-like images of Warren Gamaliel Harding came like little bats escaping the belfry of their paltry and slightly pathetic insect-obsessed lives. !The Masked Moron! finished raising his hand, and the teacher called on him, the first time such an event had occurred since the beginning of WWI. "Oh Joy" cried the !The Masked Moron!, "I have been called upon by the teacher of 2008!" The teacher, exasperating slowly like a pressure cooker just a few moments after being plugged into a not-functioning-but-possibly-good-enough-to-do-the-job-at-hand electrical outlet, asked !The Masked Moron! if he had anything remotely intelligent to say. !The Masked Moron! rotated in his seat, and slowly turned his beady eyes on the Innocent Maiden sitting next to him. "Get your beady, filthy, and masked eyes off of me!" she screamed, "you are a lecherous old fool and only deserving of complete censure by any normal estimation!" !The Masked Moron! cried out, in a voice that sounded as if it had last cried out in 1922, which in fact it had, "How dare you speak that way to !The Masked Moron!! No woman can speak that way and live!" The teacher, who had by now boiled over and was straining the metaphorical noodles, said, "That's no way to talk to a recently-resurrected man, Miss Innocent Maiden! Apologize now." The Innocent Maiden was by this time slobbering like a dog with rabies on a hot summer's day, and therefore quite incapable of saying anything, much less apologizing to the !The Masked Moron!. The teacher said, "Well, if that's the way things are going to be, you'll have to sit in the corner with a dunce cap on your Innocent Maiden head". The Innocent Maiden bounded off to the corner in a single leap, barking all the way exactly like a pedigreed Alsatian doesn't. The Innocent Maiden picked up the dunce cap and began to chew it, saliva spewing everywhere, while her lawyer phoned the ACLU and threatened a lawsuit over use of the dunce cap in post-post-slightly later-modern-America 2008.
!The Masked Moron! was then asked by the teacher, who was metaphorically pouring Heinz tomato sauce over the now-cooling noodles, "Do you have anything further to say?" !The Masked Moron!, as it happened, had nothing further to say, so he cracked open a freezing-cold Coors Light and immediately retched. He reached for a cup of water, and his thirst was quenched by the cool, light, delicious flavor of arsenic mixed with quinine, dissolved in vinegar, petrified by a stare from a great big hippopotamus, and finally eaten and expelled by a smaller-than-average aardvark who glorified in the name of Sid. The drink was tasty, and !The Masked Moron! had several more. The teacher was not at all inclined to allow this behavior to continue, and she began to scream. The sound joined melodiously with the continued barking of the Innocent Maiden, crescendoing upward with a joy normally associated with the end of war or at least milkshakes for everyone, even the dog.
!The Masked Moron!, having finished his beverage of choice, was now disinclined to remain in the classroom, and he left the room, with the memory of his being called on forever etched in his brain, supplanting the memories of Warren Gamaliel Harding which were anyway quite musty.
The first person !The Masked Moron! encountered on his way down the hallway was the school librarian, who asked him why he hadn't returned his library books for nearly a century. The !The Masked Moron! didn't even deign to smile, as this was one of the oldest librarian jokes out there, and he wasn't interested in sullying his reputation by smiling at such an old chestnut. The librarian was offended, and promised to "set the old man straight" and perpetrate similar acts of violence against !The Masked Moron!'s person. !The Masked Moron! was not impressed, and decided to take the librarian on a ride she wouldn't forget, flinging her onto his back and then jumping off the school's roof. It was only a two-story drop, but they were both so surprised to see a cow munching chicken on the baseball field adjacent to the football field with its newly-painted yellow goalposts and aging but still relatively sprightly scoreboard that they both had conniptions and died, !The Masked Moron! for the second time, the librarian for the first, mercifully ending a story that should never have been started but at least fulfilling the self-imposed and quite ridiculous obligation to post every day.
The End.

6 comments:

Leo de Toot said...

Dear Mr. R. Shliach

(hopefully the cow was not munching chicken prepared by an undocumented alien)

As every, Leo de Toot.

e said...

I'd love to comment but unfortunately I'm busy tonight and did not have enough time to read the post carefully.

Let me just point out that you misused spew. There's another verb that you misused, but I can't find it now. Whatever. Your job for homework is to figure out the issue. Hint: rember "the mind boggles."

Just like a guy said...

Spew
1. To send or force out in or as if in a stream; eject forcefully or in large amounts: a volcano that spewed molten lava; spewed invective at his opponent.
2. To vomit or otherwise cast out through the mouth.

What's your problem exactly? And what should I do with a boggling mind?

e said...

To you remember the mistake I pointed out in how you used the word "boggle"? Google it; you'll see and recognize your mistake with spew. There's another verb you misused, but I can't find it.

Just like a guy said...

What's the problem exactly? Explain yourself. Saliva spewed everywhere-cast forcefully from her mouth. Ok?

e said...

She spewed the saliva. That saliva was spewed.
Se my comment about "boggles the mind" for humorous examples of the importance of this distinction.