Category: The Brain… It Bleeds!

(But did he really love them? Or was he just using them?)

Hannibal, the son of Hamilcar Barca and not Hamilcar Oregano, loved elephants, it’s true. He loved their massive wrinkly faces and their disastrously floppy ears. He even loved their large, yellowing toes. He didn’t just love them for themselves though, he also really loved what they could do for him, theoretically, on the field of battle.

If you were a soldier, and let’s say you had a bronze sword and maybe a shield and, oh, if you were lucky, let’s say you had a spear or two as well. Let’s also say that this was your first day of fighting. You’re a neophyte soldier, fresh off the ancient soldier boot camp or whatever, and let’s say you’re screaming your voice raw, because you’re pretty scared, and everyone else is screaming, and maybe things seem a little less scary because of it. You’re all set, you think, to go maybe swing a sword at some other human beings, because you’re pretty sure they’re going to be swinging some swords at you, which you’re really not looking forward to to be honest. Anyhow, there’s all that adrenaline and blood pounding in your head. Oh yeah, and you maybe smack your sword against your shield a few times, because it makes a really satisfyingly resounding and pretty loud noise. Also, Old Sloucher over there, who’s been around a few battlefields, he’s pounding on his shield like there’s no tomorrow.

So you and, like, 500 other guys just start running running running and screaming and holding swords up, and you’re pretty glad you tied your sandals on tighter than usual that morning. So you’re all running and it’s feeling pretty great and you think, hey, maybe this soldiering thing isn’t so bad after all. You would be forgiven for thinking this, because it really is a truly glorious morning with the sun just beginning to shine over the mountains and all the flowers gloriously in bloom and the air so thick with the smell of wildflowers it’s like breathing honey, and then you run through a thicket of trees…

To find them.

You were ready for soldiers, even really mean and smelly ones with maybe their teeth filed down to points and with really sharp and curved blades and whatnot. What you weren’t ready for were these monstrous blobby grey tentacle monsters with, hey!, houses growing out of their backs.

So, that was a pretty bad day.

For Hannibal, those elephants worked out pretty swell. He was keen.

Charles Dickens was awfully fond of pudding. Also gravy and tweed. But not altogether. That’s besides the point. He seemed like a normal enough fellow at first, scribbling away on endless sheets of paper seemed only mildly eccentric, but once he started back-flipping down the path, his neighbors got concerned. There were many whispered discussions over fence posts.

The more superstitious among them secretly wondered at Charles Dickens’ meteoric rise to success. Wondered what kind of deals he’s made, and with whom, while making warding signs against evil eyes and other dark forces. Old Scratch was known for taking an interest, they muttered darkly, in those who thought they could take on the role of creator. I mean, all the same, they still raced down to the tobacconists every Thursday for the latest on Little Nell, the Heeps, Micawber, Pickwick, and Durpledorper. Faustian bargain or no, that Dickens was a damn fine writer. Funny too!

Meanwhile, Dickens kept on scribbling furiously. Keen observer of human nature that he was, he totally missed all that neighborly concern. Really, the giant pentagram around his house should have clued him in, but Charles Dickens was oblivious.

He just kept on writing and playing with his kids.

(Or was it bathed in such sweet liquor?)

Geoffrey Chaucer–Geoffy to his mum–had a problem. You see, all he wanted to do, just 24-7, was make inappropriate jokes. Jokes about bodily functions mainly, because they were HILARIOUS. His mum was not amused, and often washed his mouth with the ancient precursor of soap. Too bad they were in London (the city proper, even, INSIDE the walls), because it was tough getting something so high tech out in the boondocks. If you were in Leeds or, even worse, Nottingham, you were shit out of luck. So to speak. But in London, you could eat soap, and often did. It took a real literal sort of mind to think that soaping up a mouth would remove the filthy words from it. Those filthy English words. So coarse and unrefined.

How many dinners had it been now that had been needlessly (as far as Geoffy was concerned) cut short due to some, quite frankly, pretty hilarious remark, if he really did say so himself. In fact, Geoffy was so confident and so bold in pronouncing the high quality of his jokes, that he had triggered a kind of suggestible reaction among his friends, such that he only had to get that I’m-about-to-say-something-funny smile on his face, and they’d start busting a gut.

Why’d his mum have to be such a stick in the mud, to use a really popular, one might say hip, new saying. No one was really sure what it meant exactly, but everyone was pretty sure that being a stick stuck in mud would be pretty boring. Also, who wanted to wade into that mud and get the stick, when there were so many others just lying all about? Especially after that time when Arthur Wycklesbee drowned in that muddy sinkhole trying to get, what everyone agreed was, a really sick stick.

So anyway, Geoffy tried to bite his tongue at dinner, or at least keep his mouth full with food, but sometimes it was just too much. Someone would say something, and it would, like, set off a bunch of chain reactions in his brain, which was really pretty prochronistic, but what the heck? Geoffy Chaucer was, he thought, kind of a genius of words. If he was light years ahead of stuff, languagewise, well, who was gonna get on his case about it? His mum? (Well, yes, but not forever!)

Also, what was all this talking French all the time? Geoffy was pretty sure that English would come into its own one of these days. He wasn’t sure why, but all these jokes seemed just a little more funny when he said them in English… Maybe it was just him.

(Or was it lint?)

Hermes Trismegistus was a sore loser. I mean, sure, he knew all the secrets of the universe, or whatever, the shadowy stuff that hides underneath the surface of everything, but, boy, watch him lose his shit over a chess game or even a game of checkers, and you might not think so highly of his sacred knowledge, you know?

All his friends were like, Hermes, listen! It’s just a game, man. Lighten up! But Hermes Trismegistus just kicked the table over, threw the pieces on the ground, even, one time, he stomped a knight and rook into the floor. Boy, Abraham was sure pissed about that. He was all like, do you know know who I am? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? But Hermes Trismegistus didn’t care. He was too lost in the throes of his rage. He stomped off.

It was really surprising, you know, because otherwise Hermes Trismegistus was kind of a cool guy. He was really tapped into the source, just seeing behind the curtain all the time, and then writing it all up. That was pretty high tech of him, open sourcing all those occult secrets, cracking that geode wide open to reveal the glittery shards inside.

Get him on the losing side of a game table, and something just snapped inside his syncretistic brain. Eventually, Thoth, Moses, Noah and all the others had had enough. They just stopped playing games with Hermes Trismegistus.

Funny, even losing at solitaire would spark that explosion. Until he realized he could cheat, that is. All his friends rolled their eyes, but whatever, at least they didn’t have to watch him rage anymore.

(Or was it an esplanade?)

[Jorge Luis Borges failed to appear at the appointed time, so he has been replaced with a “double”. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you have any complaints, please leave your comments with Floyd, our janitor who is also doubling as our PR expert. Floyd really knows how to clean up a mess! Messes of all kinds really. Don’t be alarmed if you see mustard in his mustache. He does love mustard, our Floyd, to an alarming degree. Can’t get enough of it. It’s a reality that, when you put too much mustard in a sandwich, some of that mustard is bound to arrive elsewhere than its intended location, eg, trousers, vest, mustache, tablecloth. Granted, Floyd’s response rate may be a little slow. But there’s something to be said for the personal touch! Oh, and also, if Floyd is wearing his purple hat, please don’t address him as Floyd. When he’s wearing his purple hat, his “thinking cap”, if you will, Floyd likes to be referred to by his mother’s maiden name, Yuschchzloos (pron. Ooofloi). Also, please don’t be alarmed by Floyd’s long toe nails. He cut holes in the toes of his boots so they could “all hang out” (not a direct quote), so to speak. If you have technical questions, you’re in luck! Floyd is also our resident “answer man” (not a direct quote), and he loves giving people answers! Please to enjoy your regularly scheduled “Borges” experience.]

“Jorge Luis Borges” sipped his coffee on the veranda.

(But how many exactly?)

Sancho Panza, long suffering Sancho Panza, loyal and steadfast Sancho Panza, voluminous and exasperated Sancho Panza, rolled his eyes and sighed. Don Quixote stood atop a barrel. The barrel from which all their current problems originated.

“O! Let no man say that Don Quixote turned away in the moment of need. Let no man say that Don Quixote spurned a request for aid, a plea for succor, a beseechelment for help! I say to you, good people of Monskeygromzelvania, your words of woe fall not on deaf ears, for the ears of Don Quixote hear sounds of all sorts, the buzzing of gnats, the clambering of spiders on the mantel place, the groaning and stomping of giants with the toothache. O! sorry people of this town, I, Don Quixote, slayer of ogres, eater of sandwiches, and lifter up of the betrodden and bespectacled, I shall rid you of this pestilential infestation of rogues and scoundrels! No villain shall be safe before me! No ne’er-do-well will fail to scamper from my presence!”

The monkeys rolled about, scratching and biting one another. Doing all the grotesque things monkeys do. The fake Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra peeked from behind a tree, scribbling furiously away into a tiny notebook.

Sancho Panza tried to grab his hat back from the monkey that had stolen it.

Don Quixote leapt down from the barrel he’d been standing on, and fixed his wheeling gaze upon a monkey peeling a banana. “Mayor Dos de la Tres! I am at your service!” Don Quixote curled into a low bow, and his tin pot helmet fell off his head. The monkey took a bite of the banana. “Alas! Alack! etc. No town should be made to suffer so much as yours have at the hands of Los Malvodos Hermanos! I go to defeat these implacable foes!”

Sancho Panza finally managed to get his hat back, only to find a monkey on his back.

The real Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra leapt from the tree and landed atop the fake Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. “Scoundrel! Villain! Faker!” They struggled for a bit.

Don Quixote strode off into the distance. Sancho Panza hurried after, still bemonkeyed.

The real Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra tore the tiny notebook into even tinier pieces.

“Ha!” the real Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra said.

The monkeys did some more monkey things.

(Now where’d that butter go?)

Herman Melville liked to eat toast in the afternoon, but never for breakfast. It took a lot more work to make toast before toasters, you know. On this particular Thursday, Herman Melville had made some toast and then promptly lost it. (Hint: look to the beard! (OK, that was a little strong for a hint…)) It’s true Herman Melville had a delightfully full and lustrous beard, a veritable ocean of beard, if you’ll forgive the impish comparison.

Perhaps others, when losing their toast, might shrug philosophically and move on to the rest of their day, perhaps even eating an apple or a biscuit instead. Not so, Herman Melville. His eyes bulged out in a fearsome way and that one vein on his temple, the one everyone feared would be his undoing, throbbed in a troublesome way.

“Where’s my toast!” Herman Melville said. The universe did not answer. Some grubby little urchins outside his window burst into song and dance. It was pretty amusing, and normally Herman Melville might have joined in, but this toast was serious business, not to be trifled with.

Herman Melville slammed a cupboard and scraped a chair roughly across the floor and then tripped over a small settee. Herman Melville’s spectacles went flying. As he fell, Herman Melville’s ink-stained hands grasped for anything at all, found the table’s tablecloth and grabbed instinctively. The butter dish, three forks, a butter knife, a steak knife, six candles (unlit), a stained towel, a tin coffee cup, and the morning newspaper all clattered to the floor, with the exception of those things that made other noise than clattering.

Herman Melville sighed, face planted in a couch pillow, left leg tangled in the table cloth, mysteriously. Rage and desperation certainly did lead one to a sorry pass, Herman Melville thought, and took a bite out of his toast. Would you believe that he’d been holding it one hand the whole time? Writers, I tell you! (You got me, you got me. The “hint” was a total fake out.)

(Why aren’t there more balloons?)

Furthermore, a kind of pallor settled over the balloon. It just wasn’t having a very good day. First, there’d been that near incident with the porcupine, then the caroming bin lid, and finally, the heart-stopping (if it had one) wind-ride through the branches of that oak tree. Somehow its string hadn’t gotten tangled in branches. The balloon would have breathed a sigh of relief, only no lungs.

Virginia Woolf, in a really frankly quite tasteless display of foreshadowing, was skipping rocks on a pond. Her fingers were stained with ink, and it didn’t or wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to tell what she’d been doing with her morning (i.e., something with ink). The balloon settled gently down in the center of the pond. And Virginia Woolf, why, she just waded right into the pond to go get it. Some ducks quaffled quietly.

Balloon in hand, Virginia Woolf waded back to shore, skirt wet up past her knees, and handed the balloon to young Quentin Bell, who scampered off pretty quick with it. She smiled, and so did the balloon, that is, if it could have.

Virginia Woolf went on skipping rocks on the pond. Later on, the balloon popped somehow. But that’s ok. It was only a balloon, after all.

(But whose country?)

Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov had two rubles to rub together, and he sort of did, compulsively. “The devil take it!” he said, though not in English. By which he meant, not the rubles, but the whole roogatsed mess he’d found himself in, specifically, a bouncy castle.

Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov was the sole proprietor and operateer of a sprawling luminous (because fluorescent) Russian-style bouncy castle. In spite of his many warnings, those hooligans kept rushing in with their keys in their hands, their gem-encrusted rings on their fingers, their cokes in poorly lidded paper cups. He was always patching, washing, sewing, cleaning, scrubbing, patching, washing, cleaning, and he was just so sick of it all!

*Poof!* A berehynia fluttered down to rest on top of the bouncy castle. “A lobster singing on a mountaintop,” muttered Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov, and then louder, “Hey! Get down from there!” The berehynia was dressed all in golden and scarlet robes, no wings to speak of, this not being a rubbishy English sort of supernatural creature, and she cackled pretty marvelously, though not entirely meanly. He had expected her to float down from the ground, but she climbed down. She even slipped at one point, and almost fell. Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov chewed his worn out gum.

The berehynia fixed her hair and then fixed Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov with a deeply unsettling uncanny gaze. Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov stared back for as long as he could stand (1.6 seconds staring into her darkly whirling eyes), and then looked at the ground, then at the sky, then over at some trees, and then at the bouncy castle, his bane, his doom, his looming failure. Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov heard the faint hiss of leaking air. As for the barely functional petrol-powered air pump, let’s not even go there.

“You,” the berehynia said informally, because that matters in Russian, when you only seem to be speaking English, “are the owner of a castle.”

Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov snorted.

“Do you want it?” and here she paused for a bit in a manner that reminded Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov vaguely of chicken’s feet, “Or not?”

You would’ve asked Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov this question five minutes ago, and there’d’ve been no hesitation at all, but now something was happening. Something, though vaguely tediously strange, something was happening. And now Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov wasn’t sure.

They stood like that for a while.

It was only later, when Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov woke to a mosquito buzzing in his ear (it was springtime), that he realized his decision hadn’t been important at all.

Somehow, someway, and for some inscrutable reason that he, Vladimir Petrovich Ostranov, might never understand, he, he himself, had mattered enough for a Visit.

(Or maybe he was from Venus?)

Genghis Khan woke up with a terrible headache. Too much fermented yak’s milk the night before, he supposed. Also, maybe the head-butting competition hadn’t been the best idea. Still, he did have a new trophy and more respect, like he needed any more of that, from his fellow Mongols.

A klaxon rang out! Which was odd, because it was like the 13th century or something, and klaxons were pretty rare. Granted, it wasn’t a very loud klaxon, but a very tiny one. It appeared to be coming from underneath Genghis Khan’s furry yak hat. Genghis Khan couldn’t remember the name of his furry yak hat, because his head hurt just too darn much, but he was sure it had one! Still, that klaxon was curious, and being a curious fella, Genghis Khan lifted up the hat. There stood a very tiny man from Mars.

“Hello!” said the very tiny man from Mars, in Mongolese, of course. “I am a very tiny man from Mars!”

“Where is Mars?” Genghis Khan said.

The very tiny man from Mars pointed up through the top of the yurt. “Actually, maybe it’s over there,” and the very tiny man from Mars pointed south-south-westerly.

“What are you doing here?” Genghis Khan said. “Why were you underneath my hat?” Genghis Khan staggered to his feet.

“That’s a long story, how I got here, and why. I’m here to 1) fly on top of a kite, 2) ride on the back of a yak, and 3) give you a big kiss! I know I’m out of luck for #1, but I think 2 and 3 are quite achievable.” With that, the tiny man from Mars floated through the air via his anti-gravity belt, and swooped at Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan, who was no slouch in the reflexes department, dove out of the way, and rolled right out of the yurt.

“Oh darn,” the tiny many from Mars said, swooshing out the flap after him.