The proper response to a pun is an ursine growl, whether you can bear
the hulaBaloo, or it makes you want to cave. If the pun comes from
your cub, don’t let it give you hives. If it comes from your sweet
honey, just let it bee. If you friend Nate tells a pun, you might
through a few prickles his way, but then be polite and say, “Hi
burr Nate!”
Does a bear crap in the woods? I don’t know, but all the following
picture puns were crapped on FaceBook, and not a single one from my
paw…
(or my maul, for that matter.)
Pun humor didn't start with animals but they are now infected.
This might explain it.
Yeah, cows are now good humor intolerant.
And it's passed on to each generation.
Not surprisingly, domestic animals are afflicted.
Though some domestic animals are too smart for me to understand how.
But let's face it; we humans are the source of this infection.
It might have started with our mating rituals.
Which we pass on to our young.
It affects professions like criminology.
And medicine.
Which even spreads to non-animate objects.
Which in turn might affect politics.
Even the planet is shaped by it.
And energy as well.
And if you want to escape it - I'm afraid there's...
Then again - maybe it all started with the bears after all.
This is another
full chapter, and more than twice what I’ve been told (by people
smarter than me,) what a blog post should be. The problem is that
there are no natural breaks in the chapter other than a few hundred
words into the chapter and a few hundreds words from the end. I
considered offering you the beginning and end of the chapter in one
post and the middle in another.
But then
there’s the possibility that someone might actually be reading this
story, so I’ll just post the whole chapter.
Chapter 18
FrankenDodd
As old as I am, I was never much of a wanderer. By mid-day we were
far beyond any place I’d ever seen and even closer the infamous Ton
That Needs Washing. There was a loud creaking sound in the distance,
and it looked like Lustavious was going to lead us right to it, when
something went wrong with the Jonma Claim. He walked five steps
towards where Lustavious was pointing, then turned, shouting, “No
schishsway.” He walk five paces toward a pola-beer tree, then
turned shouting, “No shishsway!” heading back toward Lustavious.
The patterned repeated four or five times.
“We’re in the land of entitlements,” muttered Mage-e-not.
“Beyond the pola-beer tree is the inverted stewpot of politics. I
guess the Jonma wants to get back to it, while Uriculous wants to
follow Lustavious.”
Seeing the dual-possessed body alternate back and forth I realized
how similar the original Jonma was to the Uriculous Wisehind I knew.
Maybe that’s why Uriculous was having so much trouble controlling
the Jonma.
That, and the fact that Uriculous wasn’t too bright.
“What now?” I asked Lustavious.
“We stay here,” sang the Light Bringer. “This is fine
entertainment.”
“No schishsway,” said either Uriculous or Jonma Claim. It was
getting hard to tell the difference.
After a hundred or so, “no schishway,” I lost interest. “I’m
hoping the pola-beer tree gets him,” I said to Mage-e-not.
“Not likely,” said Mage-e-not. “My grandfather planted those
trees all around the inverted political stewpot for just that
purpose. It’s disappointing how few politicians they eat.”
“But the tree looks so healthy,” I said. “How does it survive?
It doesn’t eat sheep, does it?”
“You’re in the land of entitlement,” said Mage-e-not, licking
his lips. “This place is crawling with pork.”
The creaking in the background got louder, followed by a large crash.
“creaking rattling, kerplunking,” said Ono.
“Yeah,” said Mage-e-not. “I’ve seen the creaking rattling
kerplunking before. It’s pretty interesting.” He didn’t say
any more. Lustavious was still fascinated by Jonma Claims spasmodic
changes in possession, Lip Ton Tease was training a small rivulet to
form into a shower, and Jonma Carry was staring stone-faced at Jonma
Claim, giving no indication how he felt about the other Jonma’s
struggles, so the three of us, along with Swampy, went on to see what
the creaking rattling and kerplunking was about.
We came to a wide valley set between three hills. On each of the
hills were large beautiful homes. In front of one hill was a group
of well-dressed people by piles of gold they had banked against the
hill’s side. In front of another hill stood a group of people in
work clothes with tools and building materials piled on their hill’s
side. On the third hill was a double throne perched high on a pile
of gold. On the throne was one of the strangest two-headed monsters
I’d ever seen.
In the valley were scores of thin, poorly dressed people looking
longingly on the cause of the creaking sound. The creaking came from
a great plateau of land, balanced precariously on a spike of rock.
As the plateau’s weight shifted, it tilted on the spike, making a
creaking sound that we’d been hearing for miles.
And hundreds of pigs were running in all directions.
“That’s the FrankenDodd,” said Mage-e-not pointing at the
two-headed apparition on the throne. “He’s such a great monster
that he gets two thrones.”
“What’s a FrankenDodder doodoo?” asked Ono.
“Right now he’s just collecting,” said Mage-e-not. “See the
little pigs running around? The bankers with the gold are sending
coins with the pigs to give to the FrankenDodd. They don’t want
the monster to force them to lend their gold. The builders are doing
the same thing, but they want the FrankenDodd to force the bankers to
lend so that they can build.”
“What about the poor people?”
“They don’t have any gold, so they’re offering their votes.
After the FrankenDodd has collected enough gold and votes, it’ll
decide whether the bankers must lend or not.”
“What are they going to build?” I asked.
“Homes for the poor people.”
“Ding dong!” said Ono.
Mage-e-not laughed. “Wait and see.”
For some time the only thing to see was the scurry of little pigs.
The banks of gold shrank slightly, and the builder’s pockets got
lighter. The people pleaded and pledged their undying loyalty until
the FrankenDodd stood and declared – “We Build!”
The bankers groaned while the people and the builders cheered. The
poor formed a line in front of each banker where they signed a paper
and received a bag of gold. Then the poor took their bags and gave
them to the builders. The builders took their building materials and
started throwing them up on the plateau, causing the plateau to tilt
and creak more energetically.
“Oh no,” said Ono. “They’re hammer-banging on the
tippy-top?”
“Sure,” said Mage-e-not. “The poor can’t afford to live on
builder hill, or lobbyist hill, and they certainly can’t afford to
live on banker hill. Where else can they build their homes?”
“Somewhere stable,” I said.
“Stable costs gold,” said Mage-e-not.
“But they’re getting gold from the bankers.”
“But only enough to build homes on Nomargin Plateau. That’s the
name of that area balanced on Variablerate Spike.”
“Cuckoo!” said Ono, “They should juggle ker-ching from
knock-knock to splosh on firma-terra!”
Mage-e-not laughed. “That would actually solve a problem. You
don’t understand the land of entitlement at all. You’d make a
lousy politician.”
“Is that an insult?” I asked.
Mage-e-not made a face, which considering how strange looking he was
to begin with was not any more alarming than his regular face.
“Think of the politicians you’ve met,” he said. “Jonma
Claim, Jonma Carry, the speakers, All Bore, do you think I insulted
her?”
“RunPol didn’t seem so bad,” I said.
“That’s why RunPol never wins! Gee Elmer, for an eight
thousand-year-old guy; you can be pretty thick at times.”
I wondered if that was an insult too, but decided not to ask.
Instead we watched as the builders built all over the plateau. When
they’d covered the entire area, they even started building on top
of the houses they’d already built. The plateau was tilting from
compass point to compass point so rapidly it almost looked like it
was spinning. The people cheered as the builders built, and the
bankers wrung their hands as the piles of signed papers got higher
and their banks of gold got lower. They still sent pigs with coins
to the FrankenDodd, but the builders sent other pigs and people
danced and praised the FrankenDodd. The FrankenDodd smiled
beneficently as its throne rose higher on an ever-increasing pile of
gold.
And so it went on all afternoon and into the evening.
“Oh no!” said Ono, “The tippy-top…
Just then the whole area stopped tilting, and started tipping. One
edge of the Nomargin Plateau slammed into the ground and all the new
houses slid off the surface.
The poor people cried in dismay, and the bankers threw up their hands
in frustration. The builders didn’t seem to mind. They just
started pulling apart the building materials and putting them back in
piles against builder’s hill.
“We lost our homes!” the people cried to the FrankenDodd. “What
shall we do?”
“What was wrong with their homes?” the FrankenDodd barked to the
builders.
“There was nothing wrong with their homes,” said the builders,
still busily gathering up materials for the next build. “Nomargin
Plateau was unstable.”
“You!” shouted the FrankenDodd to the bankers. “Why did you
loan money to have homes built on an unstable plateau?”
“You told us we had to,” said the bankers. “We tried to avoid
it. We sent you gold and petitions but you commanded us to loan our
gold.”
“Shame on you!” shouted the FrankenDodd. “You should have
known better.”
“We did!” said the bankers.
“See! You admit your fault.”
The bankers held up their papers. “We are owed,” they said.
“Our banks of gold are low, and the homes are gone. Who will pay
us now?”
FrankenDodd took his baby finger and pointed at each banker in turn.
“Oinky-oinky, piggy-wig. Who has paid us most to rig? Who stays
hale, and who gets jail, I pick the most corrupt one.”
And the banker he ended up pointing to, got all his gold back –
except of course, the gold he had sent by pig to FrankenDodd. That
gold was there to make certain that FrankenDodd got to keep its
double throne right where it was.
After a couple more rounds of Oinky-oinky, FrankenDodd sent the
remaining bankers to jail, and confiscated the remaining gold in
their banks. It didn’t seem to matter. New bankers came down the
hill with their gold, setting up for the next day.
“This is terrible,” I said.
Mage-e-not shrugged. “It’s politics.”
“We have to do something.”
“What?”
“Jon and Jonma screech and snarl,” said Ono. “Whip and zip the
FrankenDodd.”
“You’re right!” I said. “Let’s go tell the Jonmas.”
“Sure,” said Mage-e-not in a voice that made me doubt his
sincerity. “Let’s go tell them.”
By the time we returned, Jonma Claim was showing the strain. His
changes of direction were now lurches, and his shouts of, “no
schishsway,” were almost indistinguishable sputters. Lustavious,
arms crossed, was still watching. Tease was showering, and Jonma
Carry was sitting upright against a tree, looking like a stone
carving.
“What do we do,” I asked Ono.
“You bark,” she said, “I’ll purr.”
That was less clear than most of what Ono said, but we ended up
standing on each side of the lurching and stumbling Jonma Claim,
explaining the situation, and what the FrankenDodd was doing. While
Jonma Claim was heading for the inverted stew pot, I told him he
needed to act now; when he headed back towards the pola-beer tree Ono
– in a surprising variety of sound words – pleaded with him to
save the poor people.
We had no way of knowing if he could hear us at all. Finally Jonma
Claim stopped. He turned to Ono and said without the slightest lisp,
“That’s not our mission.” He turned to me and said, “That’s
not my committee.”
“Oh no!” said Ono, rushing over to the immobile Jonma Carry.
“You glug our pitter-patter?”
“I heard,” said Jonma Carry.
“You whizz and whomp the FrankenDodd?”
I wasn’t sure he heard her because he didn’t say anything for a
while. Finally, he asked, “Were there any trees or bushes nearby?”
“Near the FrankenDodd?” I asked.
Jonma Carry’s head gave one stiff nod.
Ono looked over at me. It wasn’t a question I was expecting, but
as I thought about it, there had been a short prickly bush not far
from the double throne. “There was a bush,” I said.
Jonma Carry, and Jonma Claim spoke in eerie unison: “Blame the
bush.”
At this point I'm supposed to tease what happens in the next chapter, but I've forgotten what that is... But won't it be terribly exciting?
The question most writers dread is the one they are asked the most
often. “Where do you get your ideas?”
Now I haven’t been asked that question yet, but I’m hoping that
someday I will be famous enough that someone will. When that day
comes, I WILL HAVE AN ANSWER!!
I get them in the shower. It’s usually when the water is hottest,
and steam fills the bathroom. In other words it’s when a computer
or tape recorder would corrode, paper would wilt and when ink would
run.
I get them when the lights are out and I’m so close to asleep that
I’m not sure if I’m even awake. It’s when my legs are half
under the covers and half walking a woodsy trail I walked when I was
a child. In other words, it’s when I can’t possibly get up and
fire up the desk top.
I get them when I’m walking, far from home and only when I have no
mobile device, pen or paper. It’s when a mockingbird or noisy
brook is telling me a story with the kind of magic that will break if
I breathe too hard. In other words, it’s when I am absolutely
certain that I can take nothing from my experience but memories.
It’s also usually raining.
So when I’m in the shower, or about to fall asleep, or walking by a
brook, I do my best to remember the brilliant idea.
And I usually forget most of it.
Muses, being frisky sorts, love giving writers – or at least
wannabe writers, glimpses and teases, without any possibility to them
getting the entire picture down in print.
Or maybe they just want us to be clean, well rested, and properly
exercised (but not exorcised.)
No – I think they’re just frisky.
Muses are allergic to the practical. Muses want to haunt the writer,
not give dictation. They want you to forget your dentist appointment
on Tuesday, and that you need to make a deposit in your checking
account by 3PM to prevent the check you wrote to the Mystic Order of
Arachnid Vigilance (my favorite civic organization,)
from bouncing.
They want your entire attention, all the time; because if you stop
listening, that’s the moment they’ll whisper their best stuff –
too low to hear.
So now you know why writers step out in traffic, zone out at dinner
parties, and wear outfits that were obviously chosen at random.
We’re paying attention to another world, a world of ideas populated
by practical jokesters. Our laptops are crammed with thousands of
files – most of them shorter than a paragraph or two, waiting for
the moment with the muse will relent and give the rest of the story.
But that rarely happens. Usually the rest of the story is
constructed by the badly abused and poorly dressed writer, building
his superstructure of paper-mache onto the muse’s tiny foundation
of gold.
And it usually sucks, and gets relegated to the “needs work” file
which always far exceeds the “ready to publish” file.
And you hear the muse giggle.
Some day a sixteen-year-old at a dinner in one of those rare moments
when I’m paying attention will say to me, “I’d want to be a
writer, but I’d love to know where you get your ideas.”
“Would you; would your really?” I’ll ask.
And I’ll giggle in conjunction with a chorus of muses dancing
around my head and braiding my nose hairs.
Misery loves company, so they say.
And sometimes, as in the movie, Stranger than Fiction, the muses really mess us up.
Any similarity
of the characters to persons (or jerks,) living or dead is protected
by some lawyer stuff somebody told me about one time.
Chapter 17
The Speaker Monster
I must have slept because waking up was not pleasant. My eyes had
reacted to something in the air, and were swollen and gunked up.
Dirk, who never had that problem, told me that it was a system in my
body that thought I was under attack from pollen, or dust. All I
needed to do was flip my inner switch and it would go away.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t take me into my area of switches the way
he could take me to the school of amazing stuff.
I picked off the piles of gunk and hoped I didn’t look as bad as
Mage-e-not. The paste that never came completely out of his shirt,
had now plastered it to his body. Form-fitting was not a good look
for Mage-e-not.
Lip Ton Tease, dripping and radiant, looked at each of us back and
forth. “Showers,” he said, pointing in a more precise way than
non-monks pointed. The point was so precise, that for a moment, I
thought I saw a red dotted line form across the landscape. I wiped
my eyes and looked again. It was gone.
“I prefer baths,” said Mage-e-not.
But we figured the monk was probably right – a shower would make
life much better for us and the people we traveled with. We trundled
off to where Tease had pointed so precisely. We trundled there
because Mage-e-not and I shared the joy of trundling, just as we
disliked clambering. I realized that Mage-e-not was becoming a
friend.
Maybe a shower would wash that away.
The showers were impressive. A line of personal-sized waterfalls
fell from forty feet above. Carved in stone above each fall were
symbols which on reflection became words in my mind, “freezing,
cold, cool, tepid, warm, hot, scalding,” and “are you kidding?”
“Are those words?” asked Mage-e-not.
“No,” I said. “They’re >#@%*’s.”
“Of course,” said Mage-e-not. “How do you spell that?”
“Exactly,” said a Showr Rinn master we had not noticed till that
moment. “Contemplate that while under the waters, and you will
reach enlightenment.” He produced a loofah and broke it in three
sections with one hand. With the other hand he rebound and braided
the seven cords of his braids with two fingers while healing the
wings of a wounded butterfly with two others.
His thumb just sat and contemplated the experience.
The monk gave a section of loofah to Mage-e-not and another to me.
I was about to thank him, but he had left or was no longer visible.
In my hand was a full sized loofah.
“Wish I could do that,” said Mage-e-not.
“Maybe you should join the Showr Rinn.”
“Nah, I like baths.”
Mage-e-not took two steps toward the tepid shower, and I was
contemplating the scalding when I saw the naked form of Akwar
showering beneath it.
There’s got to be a switch in my head to erase that.
That’s when we saw the speaking pair.
I had heard of the speaking pair, but hadn’t run across them
before. At first glance they appeared to be two beings, the first a
salamander-like creature with a long tail. The second being was a
man of sorts, immediately behind the salamander and with a bright
orange face.
“I don’t want to go to the ‘are you kidding’ shower, said the
man with the orange face. I would like to go to the tepid shower.
The salamander flamed, and it became clear how the man acquired his
orange face.
“Look,” said the orange-faced man, “I’m very important. I’m
more important than you are now. You haven’t been speaking for
years.”
The salamander just flamed again.
The man reeled, and the pair nearly knocked over Mage-e-not.
“What’s the problem?” said Mage-e-not.
“Grinchking here wants to use the ‘are you kidding,’ shower,
but it’s too hot for me,” Said the orange-faced man.
“I know you,” said Mage-e-not. “You’re Jonma Burner.”
“That’s me,” said Jonma Burner. “I’m very important. I’m
much more important than Grinchking.”
Predictably, the lizard flamed again.
“So why don’t you each go to the shower you prefer?” asked
Mage-e-not.
I knew the answer. The salamander’s tail, though it appeared to be
only wrapped around Jonma Burner, actually was connected to the man
at the naval. Jonma Burner gave the tail a tug which made his belly
bulge.
“I could have lived without seeing that,” said Mage-e-not.
“It’s only temporary,” said Jonma Burner. “As soon as he
becomes completely irrelevant, I’ll be able to stand on my own.
Then you’ll hear some powerfully moderate middle-of-the-roading
that will get me fire from both sides – not just his backside.”
“Good luck with that,” said Mage-e-not.
The lizard dragged the Jonma off towards the ‘are you kidding’
shower, and the thought of Akwar made me abandon any thought of
scalding and settle for the warm shower next to Mage-e-not’s tepid.
“There seem to be a lot of Jonmas around,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Mage-e-not. “We’re close to the Ton That Needs
Washing where all the dirty politics happens. Politics produces
Jonmas, or attracts the ones that are already produced. I haven’t
figured out which.
“Loofas are great, though,” he said.
I had to agree.
I came out of the shower feeling much better, though Mage-e-not and I
still seemed to be becoming friends. I guess even showers and loofahs
can’t fix everything.
We returned to the campsite and Ono eyed my loofah. I handed it over
to her without her even having to ask, and she ran off towards the
shower. Lustavious tried to grab Mage-e-not’s loofah, and the
little man showed surprising back bone by putting it out of reach.
Swampy landed on Mage-e-not’s shoulder, mangling his shirt, though
not defecating on it, and nearly pecked Lustavious’ eyes out.
“Pretty bird?” said Mage-e-not uncertainly.
“Yeah, right,” squawked Swampy, and flew off after Ono. Tease,
apparently unable to resist a chance at a second shower, grabbed
Mage-e-not’s loofah.
While we waited for Ono and Tease to shower, I made algae bars which
we covered with the last of the celestial tomato paste. I saved two
for Ono and nobody complained. She seemed to be the only one able to
enjoy them.
“I wonder what’s on the menu at the school today,” said
Mage-e-not.
“I’m not going back.”
“Why not? You even have something to put food in besides my
shirt,” he said waving the shiny silver bag which Ono had left
behind.
“The custodian banned me.”
“Owww,” said Mage-e-not, “the custodian with his mop of glory!
It’s very frightening.”
“You go,” I said.
“I can’t,” he pouted.
“Besides,” I told him. “This whole party is gathered together
to banish my brother and me to oblivion. Do you think I should be
expected to cater the affair?”
Mage-e-not was silent after that, and I held out hope that a budding
friendship that loofah couldn’t crush, might get destroyed by algae
bars. I performed a ritual that Dirk told me brought luck, taking my
middle finger and laying it across my index finger.
“We’re late getting schtarted,” sputtered Jonma Claim after Ono
and Tease returned. “Lesh get moving.”
“Where?” said Mage-e-not.
“Light Bringer?” said Jonma Claim. “Your prey is close. Which
way do we go?”
Lustavious looked very pleased and dramatically held his lit finger
above his head. It might have been more dramatic after dark, because
Lustavious being so tall, and the morning sun so bright, it was hard
to tell if the finger was lit at all.
But it was dramatic, and Lustavious was pleased, so that was probably
the only thing that really mattered.
“This way!” sang Lustavious, and he began humming a hum that
sounded like heavy horses, clad in armor with incredibly large and
blond warriors on them. It was a pretty ambitious hum, and
Lustavious pulled it off very well.
So we all followed the hum.
Whenever we fall into despair concerning the American government, we can always cheer ourselves by listening to the Brits. Where did they get this crowd - from the lock-up during a soccer (yes, I know you call it football,) match?
Animals aren't just window dressing. We don't like them because they are pretty or interesting. We like them because they have personality. Sometimes that personality is dangerous.
Hmmm, the main course holding the appetizer.
A good run builds the appetite.
Run him over this way, bear.
We believe in eating with the little folk.
Though sometimes the little ones bite back.
And sometimes they don't know they're little
Dangerous? What's dangerous about lil ol' me?
And sometimes their personalities are fearless.
You wanna come out and play?
We could romp in the garden.
Or splash in the pool.
If I can cross this scary road and get past all the cars, there's a butcher shop across the street.
Crossing the road? I cross the just to get to the other side. THIS is the real scary place.
But we love them best when their personalities are just weird.
What do you mean duck-billed? Fedoras have straight brims, silly.
