Counting Down to… Fun!

On the planet Derginuuz fun was a serious business. We’re talking industrial, national levels of attention paid to this most serious of endeavors. Gantt charts (or the Derginuuzian equivalent), spreadsheets, tracking systems, etc etc.

The intergalactically renowned somber, gloomy, and downright melancholic Derginuuzian took their fun seriously as only the morbidly depressed can. Also, there was no opting out. This fun was mandatory!

You. Had. To. Have. FUN!

On the Derginuuzian-equivalent of Thursday, on the 13th day of Luupido, the largest nation on the continent of Spazadyp was preparing their third FUN for the decade.

The countdown began.

10!

Yupeet Gazx wept in anticipation for all the fun he would be having.

9!

Pyreut Hiffn prepared to scream with delight. (She’d been training for months.)

8! 7! 6!

Countless children and adolescents were admonished not to take the imminent fun for granted. Few listened to their elders.

5! 4! 3! 2!

Countless hushes fell over countless crowds.

1!

FUN!

Otherwise, There Was No One There

(Or was there?)

There was a time, thought Carlos Rodrigo del Iglesias Jardinio (Cridge, for short–only his mother called him Carlos Rodrigo del Iglesias Jardinio and only then when she was really mad at him, like that time when he painted all the ducks purple and orange: only blue paint allowed!), when scores of people would have shown for any kind of soirée or garden party he might decide to throw, not to mention cocktail parties or brunches!

So the lack of guests, if not quite alarming, sure didn’t sit right. No, it didn’t sit right at all. Cridge spun a party favor bag around and around on his left index finger while the fingers on his other hand reached for a (his third!) delicious chocolate lavender macaroon.

Granted, his last party had ended somewhat poorly. The helium powered hyenas had, well, lead balloons came to mind, let’s just say.

Cridge sighed and reached for some pink lemonade (spiked, obvs, with his favorite brand of vodka).

Later, he would put all this excess away. Later.

Filthy with Soap

(Or was it coal dust?)

Trevor Meredith Van Woort had a peculiar twist in his brain whereby he perceived soap bubbles as tiny fruits, huckleberries and watermelons, say, and even sometimes vegetables.

There was one strange weekend in his 34th year when every time he washed his hands, he lathered up with clocks.

Needless to say, it certainly made bubble baths interesting!

Trevor Meredith Van Woort never spoke of it to friends and family, and though it wouldn’t be fair to say that he suffered in silence, he was often vaguely troubled by this curious flaw in the neuronal connections in his brain.

It was the morning of the “wildebeest” bubbles when Trevor Meredith Van Woort really started getting concerned…

King Kong Wasn’t a King, But He Sure Acted Like One

(Or did he?)

King Kong and Donkey Kong were having coffee and cigarettes at a very large diner in Queens. This was the 1980s, so people still did that, or maybe it was the 1930s, I forget which. Donkey Kong had this, like, perpetual grimace on his face. It was a great sadness for him in his life, because he felt like, hey, just because he looked mean, didn’t mean he actually was. OK, for real, he did have this compulsion to set barrels on fire and throw them down ramps. Especially he liked doing this toward overweight, balding, Italian plumbers who had, like, this chip on their shoulder whenever he seemed to be going out on dates. Still.

King Kong, whose expression was slightly less stuck in an “angry face”, stirred his coffee with a sugar spoon, dumped, like, the 37th packet of sugar or nutrasweet or whatever into there. King Kong was pretty unhappy to be in Queens. He missed his prehistoric jungle hideaway, missed romping with dinosaurs, and missed eating gigantic bananas. Still, it wasn’t all bad, he supposed.

“DK, how ya doin’ ape?”

“Oh, you know. Apart from this infestation of Italian plumbers I got, not so bad. They’re always all up in my face, but at least I got no plumbing issues at my place. Silver linings, ape, silver linings. You?”

“I still have this compulsion to climb the Empire State building, but ever since that restraining order. Well, I gotta stay away. Been in therapy for my aviophobia. Only got dive-bombed twice yesterday. Can’t complain. I guess.”

Donkey Kong took a bite of toast. “That’s tough. Honestly, I don’t know how you do it.”

King Kong sipped his coffee. “One day at a time. One day at a time.”

Donkey Kong stared out the window.

King Kong stared out the window.

The waitress left them alone.

Cornelius, Cornelius, What Have You Done?

(Or rather, what haven’t you done?)

Let’s say your name was Cornelius. No really. You are now Cornelius. Every day for your entire life that’s the word you’ve heard, consistently, more than any other. Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius!

Now let’s say you really like marmalade. It’s your favorite thing. More than chocolate. More than ice cream. Even more than gluten-free bread! More than bagels. More than kumquats. More than violets and pumpernickel. More than raging waterfalls. Even more than all the things you’d think would be your favorite thing. But, just, there’s something about marmalade.

Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius! Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius!

Well, Cornelius, you’ve got some brussel sprouts. Do you put marmalade on em? You sure do!
How about spam? Also, yes. Your best three-piece suit. Well, secretly, hell yes!

Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius! Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius! Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius. Cornelius!

That’s just the kind of person you are, Cornelius. You love marmalade. And now, you don’t even bother to hide it. And it’s marvelous.

Benjamin Franklin Plays It Safe

(Or was it dangerous?)

Benjamin Franklin was the talk of Paris with his raccoon hat. Especially after it bit Mde. Portreleaux on the nose when he leaned down to kiss her hand. Such a furor! Such scandal! Benjamin Franklin was oblivious, because his French was a little rusty. (Using his trusty pocket French-English dictionary, he’d snowed John Adams and gotten this cushy, all-expenses paid trip to Paree!)

Granted, things were a little terrifying. Or would that be Terrifying? Still, Old Ben rode out the deadly dangers with aplomb (or at least obliviousness) and feasted on the pale shadow of French delicacies. (Anything was better than the oatmeal he constantly ate at home! Oh, also raccoons.)

Jean Rhys Considered a Minaret

(Or was it a cupola?)

Jean Rhys considered a minaret. Chiefly, she considered whether to rappel down it or not. Perhaps a gliding option would be more successful in this case.

Jean Rhys, international super spy, fashionista, and mildly successful novelist, considered her next moves. There were many options to choose from, but only one, presumably, that would leave her body free of the wrack and ruin that would certainly follow were she to choose incorrectly.

The wind picked up. She stowed her grappling hook gun/zip line and pulled two cords on either side. Wings snapped outward, and she leapt out into air.

Moments later, Jean Rhys stood in the uppermost floor of the sinisterly modern Geatzenvluegh Towers.

Some documents labeled ‘Antelope’ later, she shoved her gear into a furnace, and found her meandering way out of the building with the nighttime cleaning crew.

Makin’ it look easy, Rhys. Makin’ it look easy.

Julius Caesar Liked Toast

(And also the glories of war?)

“Et tu, Miranda?” Julius Caesar bellowed, as she handed him toast that was firmly in the well-done spectrum of toastiness and bordering on burnt. Everyone knew (or should!) that Julius Caesar liked to have his toast only slightly toasted, the barest hint of warmth and crispiness and browning. Julius Caesar sighed and reflected on the difficulty of hiring reliable toasters. His eyes glazed over and he reflected on some far off future time when a device or contraption might be used to toast a piece of bread identically every time. Perhaps it would involve springs, timers, and highly contained fire. Also, this piece of toast was ever so much thicker than the last!

And then, to top it all off, some purple jam oozed off his terrible toast and slipped onto his second best toga. I mean, it was purple too, obvs, but it was the principle of thing! He would have to settle for his third best toga (he only wore his best during official state events). Julius Caesar roared in fury. Calpurnia Pisonis said, “Oh, I’m sure it will wash out dear.”

Julius Caesar pouted. “I’ll look like such a slob!” He stomped off in a huff. Calpurnia Pisonis rolled her eyes. As he stomped out of the room, Julius Caesar turned back to say, “You were right about the Ides–” and then promptly stumbled into some kind of urn thing.

I mean, could the Ides of March get any more terrible?

The All-Seeing Eye of Sauron

(But what about his ears?)

Sauron, former servant of Morgoth, etc etc, had a problem. He’d tried being a Necromancer for a while, but everyone had seen how well that worked out. Besides, he’d gotten super tired of zombies, turns out. Orcs were scintillating conversationalists by comparison. Also, Mirkwood had a serious mildew problem, and after a couple centuries there, he’d developed a serious mold allergy. And food? There were only so many ways to cook mushrooms.

Anyway, good riddance! Mordor had a delightfully dry and sunny clime. Well, the sun was up there somewhere above the volcanic ash and orcish industrial effluvia. So, yay?

After that wizard scoundrel’s tiresome meddling, Sauron vowed that he’d never be snuck up on again. Hence the All-Seeing Eye business. Only one, because he’d needed the other for things like pouring milk into his (evil) breakfast cereal and reading his ancient (and evil) esoteric tomes of forgotten yada yada.

Downside to the All-Seeing Eye: he’d forgotten to put in an off switch. Ugh. There was Elrond prancing around in his “magical” (magically gross, you mean!) glade. There was Gandalf incessantly smoking pipeweed and blowing those stupid smoke rings. There was Saruman trying to look secretly sinister in his bathroom mirror while trimming his nose hairs.

By Morgoth (cursed be his eternally vile name)! But the White Council were a dull bunch. It got so he couldn’t even enjoy an Orc ear sandwich in peace!

Sauron sighed, rattling the tea cups, at least. He stared at some rocks for a couple weeks.

Ah! Much better.

When he looked up, a couple hobbits were scrabbling up Mount Doom…

Catherine the Great Ate an Orange and Then Threw Some Rubles at an Artist

(Or was it not really Екатерина II Великая {Yekaterina II Velikaya}? Or still even rather yet: Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg?)

And when I say she ate an orange, she ATE an orange, did our Tsarina Yekaterina. One might be forgiven, were one an emissary from the French court, for thinking that perhaps one should peel an orange before eating it. Were one an emissary from the English court, which is not outside the realm of possibility in those days, perhaps, one might have a strong sense of, not deja vu exactly, but a strong resonance with those stories one heard of Queen Elizabeth at grandmama’s knee.

Yekaterina cleared her throat and, had there been any noise whatsoever, one imagines it would have ceased immediately. “Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, approach us,” she said, though not in English, and probably not even in a Russian easily recognizable to today’s Russian speaker, one thinks.

Vigée Le Brun approached Yekaterina as she sat at table, biting into another orange. Vigée Le Brun (Louise to her acquaintances, Betty to her friends, something else entirely to her lovers, one imagines) curtsied deeply, and spoke something in French. Oh, I’m sure it was recorded somewhere what was said, who laughed, and who kissed whose hand. The Tsarina said something about being a fancier of art, and Vigée Le Brun, who had hardly expected to find a place more civilized, a place less fraught with terror, but then there you go, could barely even remember agreeing to paint the portrait, much less the painting of it.

When painting Tsarina Yekaterina’s portrait, Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun endeavored, with all her skill, to portray the brief moment of kindness she had felt, in the eyes perhaps, or maybe the mouth.

The large sack of rubles didn’t hurt, either.