So I had a parody fall apart – no I don’t want to talk about it.
It’s Wednesday night, and I have no post for Just Plain Stupid for
Thursday morning.
The Rug (which is actually not a person, but an old hairpiece,) my
old partner in the show, Headley and the Rug (and Cral) offered a bit
he did about Swiss cheese. Stanley McFarland – a man who
mistakenly thinks he has a sense of humor, offered me a poem from his
book, Confessions of a Protestant link - (there’s a real knee-slapper.)
You might see each of these offerings in future posts, but luckily
for you, Will Wright offered an actually good story from his
chapbook, Salt for the Journey link . It’s also available, as is so
much of the short fiction and commentary of Go Figure Reads writers,
on the official blog of Go Figure Reads – Junk Drawer. Junk Drawer
Of course it’s good because I helped him write it…
Kinda
Like…
by Will
Wright
It’s
kinda like this
Imagine a
hamster
He spends
all day in a converted fish aquarium
He’s is
left alone
Except for
two five minute periods a day
When some
giant says a few meaningless words
Does a few
chores
And
replaces the water and food pellets
The rest
of the day
He’s on
his own
Now
there’s only one interesting thing in his cage
The
running wheel
Not
surprisingly, the hamster starts to run
He runs
because he likes to run
He runs
because there’s nothing else to do
He keeps
running
Even when
he needs to poop
He runs
It doesn’t
matter
The poop
falls right through the wheel
And lands
on the floor
The
hamster keeps running
He poops
again
And keeps
running
Running,
running poop running poop
After a
while
He looks
down
He thinks
“Hey,
that’s kind of interesting
When the
poop falls through the wheel
It looks
different than regular poop
It’s in
an odd pattern
I wonder
if I can do this
On
purpose”
For the
rest of the day
The
hamster runs
And poops
With a
purpose
Sometimes
he moves to one side of the wheel
Sometimes
to the other
He tries
it while running extra fast
He tries
it while walking
The
pattern gets more and more interesting
When he
has to eat and drink
He’s
really careful getting down from the wheel
He doesn’t
want to disturb the pattern
Just as
the sun goes down
The giant
returns
He grunts
in human speech
“Gee,
you sure made a mess today!”
He takes
the paper from the bottom of the cage
And rolls
it up carefully
He puts
down new paper
And gives
the hamster
Water and
pellets
The giant
leaves
The
hamster lies exhausted
He looks
at the clean paper
He looks
at the food and water
And he
finally understands
“He gave
me food and water for my pretty pattern
He put
down more paper for a new pattern
I must be
an artist!
I’m
underpaid”
Here's a hamster with a different "skill."
