skit #70: clueless druids

What Britannia's knights could not budge, clever Merlin portered Stonehenge over to Salisbury Plain by the glib sorcery privy only to the brilliantly lazy. In memory of those peaceably practicing death, and in consideration of those suffering life, Merlin arranged the trilithons into a harmonious geometry so as to bring good health to those in pain.

The possible ills it could cure were many: bloody flux, hysteria, leprosy, the ague, menstruation, nits, the black plague, the red plague, and all things ranging from phlegmy to choleric. Stonehenge, an instrument of magic, and magic, an expression of the divine, healed only ailments spiritual in nature -- barring misfortune ordained by the heavens, understandably.

How it healed them, none knew. Maybe the stones' approximate circles coerced the Prime Mover to deliver equally approximate relief. Maybe some then-undetectable penicillin stowed away on the sarsen stones. Maybe Merlin was indeed a bastard spawned between a incubus and a princess, borne with an armory of spells capable of transporting and enchanting this superstitious pile of rocks known as Stonehenge. Full of as much modesty as guile, the charalatan or wizard known as Merlin sought no credit for this boon, as he was already preserved in the formaldehyde of superior legends.

These things historical, among many things responsible, AGW & Sons Construction Co. never considered.

Important interstates overran England, leaving only a few idyllic pastures strewn about for historic landmarks. The foremen orchestrated a fleet of bulldozers and cranes into the crude snort and swing of civil construction, conducting the the wrath of Man. An operator dressed in day-glow orange garb sneezed, jerking a lever, loosing the wrecking ball. The highway overhead pass collapsed, toppling Stonehenge like playing cards. AGW & Sons restored all those big old rocks to just about the right vicinities.

As cranes suspended the elements of Stonehenge in the sky, the dumbstruck tourists knew they were witnessing a marvelous spectacle, so they embraced intimate silence such spectacles encourage. Pirouetting against the squall of the English autumn, Stonehenge exposed its audience to a barrage of magics not Merlin nor the Prime Mover nor AGW & Sons Construction Co. anticipated. Like clueless druids, the onlookers awaited answers from inanimate stone.

Stonehenge deciphered the stifled words of lovers' hearts.
Stonehenge afflicted many with agnosticism.
Stonehenge placed White Noise as second at today's pony race.
Stonehenge recommended Highway A344 as a detour considering recent events.
Stonehenge admitted Merlin was just an old fabulist.
Stonehenge admitted it was just a pile of rocks.

The crane lowered Stonehenge whereupon it remained silent for the rest of its ageless days.

skit #69: Y ⅄

No town would have him, for an alphabet of misdeeds preceded his decency. On his flesh, searing irons forever inscribed 'V' for vagabond, 'D' for deserter, 'S' for slave, 'B' for blasphemer. Wesley never felt remorse for exercising his freedoms, though the repeated brandings convinced him to carry a mote of regret.

His back ribbed with whip runs and his face flecked with knife nicks, Wesley still recognized himself. And though he could not imagine what methods delivered the majority of his scars (perhaps he was swathed in incandescent chickenwire or honey-glazed to feed fireants), he still recognized himself.

On his left temple he bore another letter whose corresponding crime Wesley never learned. Between all the seasoned scoundrels and pedantic lawmen he encountered during his interminable vagrancy, none could decipher its significance.

A Texan undertaker made known, 'Yeasayer. No one likes an optimist.'
A scowling Chihuahuan jailer muttered, 'Yanqui.'
'Yap too much.' noted the chain gang leader.
A Californian prospector squealed, 'Yuh--yah--yahooooooooooooowieeeee!' before falling off his barstool.
A sentimental whore supposed, 'Y is for yesterday, so you never forget what you did.'

The torpid Yuma winds made no effort to cover Wesley's tracks. Every tiresome stride remained plotted in the dunes, tracing a disparaging retrogression into the very very distant horizon. There he could see his origin: the last town that had evicted him. Footprints quantified the distance he marched, dispelling any misconceptions of his progress. Wesley wished for a sandstorm or, when desperate, cataracts, but everything remained unequivocally clear.

He littered despair like the preemptive breadcrumbs of someone planning to become lost. He sometimes took relief in reveries that he may one day step into his first footsteps, inadvertently completing some unexpected circle,
never feeling obligated to walk those steps again. Vultures loomed between Wesley and the sun, pausing to judge his resemblance to carrion. Each morbid interruption of daylight returned his focus from the diversion of daydreaming to the necessity of marching.

He drifted through seas of sand he could not drink, through forests of cacti that provided no refuge. He marched directly towards where ever he intuited the next town may lay, detoured only when the regal Saguaros stood stubbornly in his path. 'They never gotta move a sister's whisker,' Wesley admired, and, 'How wrong-made I am for this desert,' Wesley admitted. When Wesley sweat or cried, he suspected the cacti somehow pocketed his moisture.

He began to resent that when alone in the desert he was not of his own belonging. When the town did not want him, he was cast into the desert. Wesley did not know where to go when even the badlands refused him. Sand, sand, sand, and sand. At least all the branding irons were gone, all his indictments were gone, all the naysayers were gone. When offered nothing, Wesley searched for anything. Under his microscopy, no trivia went unexamined in his search for something.

From the sand smiled a wee ivory sliver. Wesley gingerly extracted the wishbone; so dainty and delicate, it must be a quail's. Though he didn't know why it seemed familiar, Wesley was happy to find anything at all.

skit #68: Moonshine Rules

Two events allowed the reclusive hamlet of Wersolla Bluerock to enjoy fifty-four years of invisibility.

First, a promotion-minded Union commander's boastful report exaggerated the success of his contribution to General Lee's scorched earth policy, making claims of thorough Ozarkian eradication when, truthfully, it was a mere peppering of devastation. Second, a federally-funded committee of transgressive Arkansans, for fear of their families' safeties, omitted the whereabouts of their cherished hometowns when responding to federal surveys. Wersolla Bluerock, for what any yankee or carpetbagger or scalawag knew, had been destroyed.

Even had Wersolla Bluerock been razed, few would miss it. Its only citizens were a few dozen moonshiners living in ramshackle shacks. They perpetually slept, distilled, or recreated in eight-hour staggered rotations. Unmolested by the government and self-satisfied, the merry band lived lawlessly and happily for a number of years. When cirrhosis made its inevitable rounds, the shantytown was completely depopulated by 1888.

Wersolla Bluerock no longer had men in its huts, nor a place on a map, but had abundant of hooch in vats. The untended moonshine began to burble to one another. They began courteously, introducing their names, their distillers, the locations of their vats, and so on, and so on, and so on. The depletion of all smalltalk topics made for deeper discussions: their interests, their ambitions; conjectures on the meaning happiness, on existence, on purpose.

They learned of commonalities between moonshines. Wishing to testify their fraternity, they constructed a list of qualities describing moonshininess. They began with the necessary platitudes to form a foundation upon which every moonshine must agree. As the list lengthened, it grew divisive with audacious entries. Some speculate the list's abrupt end marks the abandonment of the Moonshine Rules, as the moonshines slowly realized how different they were.

When Wersolla Bluerock was rediscovered in 1919, Arkansan sheriffs donated the Moonshine Rules to the Little Rock History Museum, whereupon the tattered document was meticulously reassembled. Whether the words of the Moonshine Rules belong to the moonshines or were warped by civilized men remains unknown.

The Moonshine Rules

1. All moonshines are spirits.
2. All spirits are liquid.
3. Spirits must be contained in vessels.
4. Spirits come in a variety of potencies.
5. One's distiller determines one's potency.
6. A moonshine was distilled to exalt its distiller.
7. To falsify one's potency by means of forged proof or methanol is unmoonshinelike.
8. To be unmoonshinelike is to portray one's distiller as undistillerlike.
9. A moonshine has no hands so as to make unmoonshinelike falsifications.
10. A moonshine has no wisdom so as to conduct unmoonshinelike reasoning.
11. [missing] bliss with neither use of hands nor wisdom.
12. [missing]

skit #67: sometimes forever

No history books will enshrine the recently-deposed regime responsible for obliterating the Library of Alexandria. As the Library is rebuilt, the offending censors are appropriately forgotten, sometimes forever. Half-stocked with books, cheeky Alexandria takes on a gap-toothed cheshire grin. The Library remains chipper, never decaying from within, only destroyed from without.

By sheer volume, the Library has known and forgotten the world many times over, though never bothering to take an inventory. Its patrons rumor of its contents: magical recipebooks; necromonicons; blueprints for the pyramids; an alchemical method; a self-addressed letter from Jesus to Daddy; a proof for the true meaning of life; a proof for the meaning of truth; a proof for the meaning of meaning. Some rumor of herds of intralibrarian gazelle. Some rumor of an enclave in the northeastern wing, complete with bunkbeds and a mayor. Some rumor of book nymphs, presumably you.

Spines and spaces occupy every shelf, susurruses and silence occupy every aisle. Soaring shelves partition the library into a labyrinth full of forks and corridors, simplifying navigation into discrete rights and lefts and forwards. Of no apparent help, this particular instance of the Library of Alexandria abides by Dewey Decimal Classification. Some patrons still manage to become lost though inundated among so many structures: architectures, maps, taxonomies, logics, alphabets, grammars, dogmas, philosophies. Those in search of specific tomes find their quarry no faster than those roaming aimlessly.

Whichever of the Libraries stands, it always lures the same people. The trenches surge with idealists and idiots, scholars and madmen, all sorts insatiable, sloshing against the walls, consuming everything, molesting nothing. Yet you glide through the chaos with the elegance of an aphorism. I admire you through an aperture, peripherally squared by Principia, Quixote, Symposium, and Genesis.

The absent books permit me to see your candlelit silhouette. I selfishly wish for an empty library so I could see all the parts of you, but then neither of us would be here at all. I see you preoccupied, your eyes scanning passages, your lips mouthing words reflexively, your thumbs thumbing page corners. You are probably searching for something. For your attention, I write a book, put it on the shelf, and wait for you to read it. Not yet, you don't.

Somebody, maybe the Moors, razes Alexandria. When the Library is rebuilt, the new librarians ensure every book and rumor and aperture returns.

skit #66: eggplants forever

You did not finish everything on your plate. A puddle of uneaten aubergine takes a curiously distinct shape and winks a botanomantic wink. She, the aubergine, articulates the plight of suppertime plants through a series of vogued poses:

Forgo introductions. You remember me, you do, you do. You selected me -- me, the purplest, the firmest, from all the eggplants. You liberated me from that stagnant nunnery. The other ladies didn't even want to be eaten, just to be pretty. You'd think they wanted to be eggplants forever. Jealous, jealous. You slipped me into my chariot, a brown paper bag, whose confines left me victoriously deaf to their slander and slurs. Jealous nobodies.

We went to your apartment. I let you take me all apart, boy. My night skin off, my pale flesh cleft, that routine. All splendid. So you cooked me, served me. But then nothing. You let me go cold, untouched. You poked me with a fork and didn't even taste the tine.

And don't act picky. You look healthy enough. No scurvy, no beriberi, no goiter. I can only imagine the cornucopias you've shat. Okra and artichokes and fava beans and -- oh, how repulsively incriminating, I spy broccoli between your teeth. So come on, boy. You'll need me for a balanced diet. Just a nibble. Take in my vitamins. Take them all.

Sombre now, her gestures take on the grave tone of a potato. You do not know on what basis you sense this.

Oh, and you're very culpable, yes. You owe this to me. Buying all that produce week after week. You know where it comes from, you do. Agriculture, cultivars, GMO -- ptooie. Now all these seeds my momma gave me mean nothing. I want to be remembered, have children. Get me into your body, into your cells. Make me a part of you. You owe me, eat me up. Let me in.

Yes, yes. Absorb my sugars, simple and sweet. Leech those nutrients. Just make me a part of you. With me, ascend the subway stairs, go nowhere on the gymnasium treadmill, pedal, run, fornicate, frolic. With me, with me, mundane or not, anything. Just to feel what you feel. Anything outside of this eggplant feeling. To have toes and teeth if only for a day! Even when you flush me down, I will have had that day and you will still be fashioned from me. Yes, swallow me.

The first-course arugula urges you to dispose of the aubergine. Since your body hardly belongs to you, you spit her out. You start to trust his judge of character; She was manipulative and a little mad. Sedate, sated, you retire for the evening.

Other ghosts of forlorn vegetables swim in your kitchen, awaiting opportunities for incarnation.

skit #65: NOT YET TURNED

The unquenchable curiosity of prodigy Antonin Antécédent often lured him to the last chapters of the assigned curriculum far before his classmates. What latent success his teachers spied in him would NEVER MANIFEST AS THEY PREDICTED. His mentors estimated his future to harbor typical prosperity, perhaps as an ambassador or an economist, unaware of his SEEMINGLY FORTUITOUS DESTINY.

ONE ILL-WEATHERED NIGHT, academic exhaustion and hypnotic rainfall lulled young Antonin to slumber. He slept, cocooned in a nest of his half-read texts. Storm clouds sulked above his apartment ominously. Witnesses described midnight's mood to emote PALPABLY DANGEROUS EMANATIONS.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZRRRRQQQQQQQQ--------KPOWWWW!!

Disgruntled after nine lightyears of schlepping, a SIRIAN SOLAR WIND stumbled upon one of any undeserving terrestrial blue planets. With great fury it effused a FOUL INTERGALACTIC MIASMA into Earth's hospitable heavens. IRRADIATED LIGHTNING AND NUCLEAR RAIN bombarded Antonin's apartment complex. The shingle-mailed roof, veteran to hailstorms and hurricanes, disintegrated. Not their landlord, not their local news station meteorologist, not even their PREFERRED DEITY could save them.

Emergency services arrived promptly, but found little life to salvage. An UNMARKED AMBULANCE whisked away the only survivor, an incapacitated prepubescent male. Antonin remained hospitalized throughout his youth, years which elapsed in cavalcade of month-long comas. His dreams were haunted with inklings of PSYCHOMANIPULATIVE EXPERIMENTATION. During his brief episodes of consciousness, he amused himself by rifling through a complementary assortment of books stacked on his bedside table, comprised solely of CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE NOVELS which he would later discover was of NO COINCIDENCE.

Antonin Antécédent stumbled into the world, no longer as a boy of yesterday, but a chimera fashioned from GENE-BENDING RADIATION, HIGHLY-CLASSIFIED EXPERIMENTATION, and LIMITLESS CURIOSITY. He re-emerged as...

THE TOMORROWER

The Tomorrower uses his EXTRAORDINARY POWER of INFALLIBLE PRESCIENCE to thwart the plots of wrong-doers. Pages of his comic book NOT YET TURNED appear to him as CLEARLY AS THE PRESENT. A hero devoted to justice, he uses his gift to prevent the calamities incited by the nefarious Vanguard of Villainy -- unsavory agents of COMMUNISM, TERRORISM, and CAPITALISM.

One secret still evades even the Tomorrower's clairvoyance. Page one of The Tomorrower #1 recounts The Tomorrower's FORGOTTEN BOYHOOD as young Antonin Antécédent. Should he ever read this page, he would FIND EVERLASTING PEACE AND TRANQUILITY; And so he must never read this page, for his retirement would mean CERTAIN DOOM for all those he protects.

The Tomorrower #11: THE BIG RED X
Will the Tomorrower outwit Aunt Ziety's insidious trap of LASER BLADES OF TRIFLUXIC ACID? Will the Tomorrower muster the UNQUESTIONING COURAGE needed to confront the inevitable? The Tomorrower must answer whether the only thing to fear is the fear of fearing fear itself.

The Tomorrower #32: THE TODAYER
When mad quantum physicist Dr Guillaume d'Libre projects the infinite number of Earth's realities, the Tomorrower finds there to be too many comics to read. Without the QUAINT PREDICTABILITY OF DETERMINISM, the Tomorrower must defeat d'Libre with INSTINCT AND WILES.

The Tomorrower #59: DRAWING BLANKS
The Cartoonist compromises his series's ARTISTIC INTEGRITY for the sake of INCREASING MARKETABILITY. As the Tomorrower revolts against his greedy creator, the Cartoonist improvises UNFAVORABLE PLOT DEVICES with his fountain pen, AN ARTIFACT FROM THE FOURTH DIMENSION.

skit #64: your midwife

The mother ejects you into the world. You arrive upon a regal carpet, red and placental, dressed in a custom-tailored gown of natal finery. The doctor delivering you wears a hygienic paper mask, a pathological and emotional contraceptive. Despite your attempts to distinguish yourself, her eyebrows convey only indifference with a jaded evenness. Your grand entrance of blood and mucus does not make her fawn nor flinch. The mother does not even bother to wake. You suspect your birth will be reflected in a census somewhere.

It is when the doctor leaves and the mother sleeps that your midwife takes you.

When cradled in your midwife's hands, you are so utterly precious to her. Her resplendent warmth permeates her industry-standard latex membrane. She removes her gloves and holds you with real hands of flesh and fat. You are the little girl daddy always wanted. You are the sole heir of a dying patriarch. You are the first panda bred in captivity. She places you in the mother's arms, where you sleep in motionlessly blissful fatigue. Then she leaves.

The mother-in-your-bed inspects you suspiciously, jarring you awake. She searches in your eyes for the rhyme of your riddle. She does not know you are simple and intuitive, devoid of mystery. By her brutish manhandling, you ascertain she must be a butcher or a mechanic. You want only for her to leave you alone. You miss your midwife.

Through hermetically sealed glass, you see your midwife fondling another baby. Cradled in her hands writhes a bounty of animated amethyst, and her face smiles upon that child so utterly precious to her. Your midwife shamelessly smiles upon seven other babies as you watch during your stay. Each day, your midwife plays concierge to the perpetual influx of guests.

You refuse to acknowledge the certain thousands she smiled upon preceding and succeeding you. Your midwife is not yours alone. The smile imprinted on your id is generic.

You age. You no longer remember how your midwife smiled upon you at your birth. Nor does the electrician remember how your midwife smiled upon him at his birth. Nor do you remember each other as neighbors through the hermetically sealed glass. He repairs your refrigerator, delivers your bill, and offers no discount.

skit #63: the gray detective

An excerpt from One Derringer Two Dead reads:

TURNER: Baby, I bought you something that reminded me of you.
TURNER gives MARIBEL his late wife's emerald brooch.
TURNER and MARIBEL embrace, uncertain of their future.


An excerpt from the article reads:

Mr Dean Clanson grew immensely famous during the 1940's, starring in such notable films as One Derringer Two Dead, Red Lipped Red Hipped Red Handed, and The Prince and the Copper. Over his 23-year career, Mr Clanson has won 12 international awards, starred in over 80 full-length features, and established himself as a film noir icon.

Though Mr Clanson easily qualifies for stardom with his gruff aplomb and handsome face, film critics laud his influential character interpretations. Early film noir entertained through intrigue in visually and morally monochromatic stories of cops and robbers. As subtle and sharp as a splinter, Clanson introduced gradients to the genre. His repertoire of skeptical glances, derisive smirks, and reserved tears sullied the image of the Good Guy and polished the image of the Bad Guy. The private eye was no longer a man with a gun, but a man who asked and answered questions.

"[Each film] has the potential to be more than just another shoot-'em-up flick. All the story has to ask is, 'Why did they shoot-him-up?' Don't worry that the diamonds are stolen or that the broad is dead. Worry about the unasked whys. Why not steal them? Why not kill her?" Clanson remarked in a 1954 interview.

Devoted to his craft and profession, Mr Clanson often brought his work home with him. He studied method acting since the beginning of his career at age 26. He acknowledged his zealous studies marred his marriage to model Chelsea Regalio in a 1943 interview: "Can't blame her. Who wants me for a husband when I ain't even up to being my wife's husband? Hell, I'm beginning to think even I don't want me as a husband." Mischief and sorrow often riddled his personal life. His innumerable trysts, benders, and divorces all fall under public scrutiny. Mr Clanson once flippantly justified his antics as "character research".

Mr Duke Valotti, director and lifelong friend, admired Mr Clanson's "Sure, Dean is professional and abides by the letters of the script, but he's mischievous. Transgressive, even. He'll find a way to run amok in the script, a fox in a chicken coup. Like in Red Lipped, Dean was the one who improvised Turner [Mr Clanson's role] giving his wife's brooch to his mistress. And what happens? He creates perhaps the most memorable scene of 40's noir."

Mr Clanson will be signing autographs this Saturday in the Tupelo Convention Center, RM 331. $10/per.


An excerpt from the police report reads:

Mary Nobody, a housekeeper employed by Rude Lucy's Bed & Breakfast, entered the premises to perform routine cleaning as no "Privacy, please." placard hung from the doorknob. Once inside, she recognized renowned actor Mr Dean Clanson. After requesting a complimentary autograph, she suspected him to be incapacitated and contacted emergency services.

The concierge, Joey Nobody, reported Mr Clanson to be quiet, polite, honest regarding his consumption from the mini-fridge, having rang up a $49 tab on ginger ales, coffees, and pastries.

The bellhop, Pablo Nobody, reported Mr Clanson to be a lightly packed and an excellent tipper. Mr Clanson and the bellhop shared a comfortable silence in the elevator ride.

Detectives believe Mr Clanson to have been researching the role for his next film, The Gray Detective. A screenplay authored by Mr Duke Valotti was discovered among Mr Clanson's otherwise spartan possessions.

The time of death is estimated to be 03:15AM, Sunday, March 19th. The cause of death is currently undetermined and homicide remains a possibility. The deceased has not been implicated with intent to commit any illegal. The chief of police plans to release a statement at 08:00AM, Monday, March 20th.


An excerpt from The Gray Detective reads:

VALOTTI: I wrote something that reminded me of you.
VALOTTI gives CLANSON a screenplay.
CLANSON: My first line says, 'Film noir starts with the climax and ends with the story.' So?
VALOTTI: Go on.
CLANSON: Next one says, 'Method acting starts with the actor and ends with the character.' And?
VALOTTI: One more.
CLANSON: 'What happens when you wind up having to play yourself?'
CLANSON appears pensive, uncertain of his future.

skit #62: a quantitative aptitude exam

QUANTITATIVE APTITUDE EXAM

NAME:________________
DATE:________________

MECHANICS

1. A cylindrical piston capable of producing 43.6N of thrusting force. It is known skin naturally has a static friction coefficient of 0.60 and kinetic friction coefficient of 0.51.

a. Determine the force with which the cylindrical piston will slide off a buttock. For this exercise, a buttock may be approximated as uniformly spherical surface (x² + y² + z²) given the cylindrical piston is angled 35.0 degrees tangentially to the buttock's perimeter.

b. Human saliva lubricates, reducing static friction by -0.40 and kinetic friction by -0.32. Determine the force a saliva-lubricated cylinder will slide off the same buttock. Latex increases static friction by +0.34 and kinetic friction by +0.22 without the application of saliva. Determine whether a cylindrical piston encounters more friction when in contact with skin or when in contact with a latex-saliva combination.


THERMODYNAMICS

2. You are presented with a custom-made cupric torus (known as a Prince Albert). Copper is known to have a conductivity constant of 59.6 × 10⁶ S/m. Human sperm cells die in temperatures exceeding 37.7C. Human testicles (considered a wet conductive tissue) offer resistance at 1082.2 Ω.

An electric catheter is inserted into a urethra, providing stimulation at 500.0mA. Given coitus will ensue between an older yet virile male and a fertile young female, prove whether or not a prophylactic is superfluous in order to avoid impregnation by the penis in question.


STATISTICAL ANALYSIS & STANDARD DEVIATION

3. A struggling student may only pass a class with a mean grade greater than 0.700. The student's standing is calculated to be 622pts/900pts (0.691). The past four (4) exams indicate a mean grade of 0.653 (std dev 0.093). The Quantitative Aptitude Exam is worth 100pts.

a. A regression model extrapolates her exam performance. The constant a reflects her ability as a student, the constant b reflects her optimism on a given day, and the constant c reflects poor performance due to the distracting animal magnetism of her older yet virile professor.

y = ax⁵ + bx² - x - c

Determine the constants from Appendix A. Calculate y, where x is the number of hours studied.

b. Suppose a lenient professor offers to increase her final exam score in exchange for sexual favors. In this exchange rate, the professor defines 1 pt = 0.412 sordid affairs (SA). He proposes an economy of scale to the student's advantage, defining x as the number of SA and c as in the previous problem (3a).

y = cx²

Given her statistically probable final grade determined in problem 3a, what quantity of SA must commence for said student to receive a C (>0.700)? To receive a B (>0.800)? To receive an A (>0.900)? What is the student's most economic option?


PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC

4. Consider the following values held by a society:

- Citizens may be of any positive age less than 100 years old.
- A citizen reaches adulthood at the age of 18 years.
- Any two citizens who share relatives are related.
- Any citizen may issue their intent to pair with another citizen.
- A societally-acceptable pairing consists of:
--- two mutually-intent unrelated adults.
--- two mutually-intent unrelated non-adults.

Construct a truth table. Determine which pairings may exist in concordance with this society's values:

a. An older yet virile professor and his athletic son
b. An older yet virile professor innocently filming the pairing of his athletic son with a young fertile university student
c. An older yet virile professor and a young fertile university student (a very mature 19 years in age) by means of a private agreement

GRADE:_______ / 100

skit #61: merrily skipping beats

1954: Four women sing doo-wop doo-wah into a condenser microphone. Their record becomes immensely popular, its songs mostly dealing the sorrow of loss.

1960: His four chambers form as atria and ventricles. His capillaries indiscriminately rout out all his extremities, the mundane toes and exotic testicles alike. His heart beats inside his mother's womb, pumping her borrowed blood into her son. A baby boy gestates. He will later change his recognized name to Hunter. Upon delivery, the pediatrician notes no congenital defects and report it is a heart like any other heart.

1968: It repeats a four verse mantra: intake, compression, power, exhaust. Suspended by a hydraulic lift, the car does not move. Gasoline makes the engine snarl horrible things, which seems to please two men from Engine Assembly. They tick off the standardized quality assurance criteria one-by-one, torque the V8 to the chassis, and approve the Chevrolet Chevelle 396-SS for consumer purchase.

1979: Hunter careens down the interstate in his Chevy. He bought it second-hand. The previous owner's abuse drove it from showpiece to jalopy in a mere eleven years. Hunter cares only that it has a radio, that it is red, and that it is fast.

The engine backfires and expels infernal incantations, grawachukka grawachukka. Hunter never acknowledges the officious red oil lamp who glows earnestly with all the other pedantic indicators of the dashboard. The 1986 Chevrolet Chevelle 396-SS Service Manual clearly suggests to "verify motor oil level and color are within factory recommended limits." Hunter snickers at the phrase "wipe the dipstick," reads nothing else, and closes the manual.

Hunter drives having never earned a license, intuitively and illegally. He's not one for learning. Hunter doesn't know any theories; He is not a theoretical man, or even a theoretical boy. He lives. His nineteen-year-old heart runs on the thin fuel of rotgut and cigarettes, merrily skipping beats. He has never noticed any indicator lights on his person, but he if he did, he would ignore them too.

The engine stalls at a red light. He suddenly realizes if the engine seized, he would need a replacement junker in which to barge about town. Stowed in the glovebox remains the Service Manual, its unread contents describing the predicted lifecycle of his failing Chevelle. The engine restarts apathetically. Hunter is relieved.

It's six o'clock, night or afternoon, and he is soused. He gets some fuel and his new girl named Trixy. His Chevy floats down the boulevard with enough gas to drive all day. The women living in his radio sing doo-wop doo-wah.

skit #60: to conduct its affairs

If it were truly part of the body, the tongue would be its most powerful muscle. Never apart, so like the eternal union between lichen and bark or between lovers wedlocked, they are one. In the cockpit of her mouth curls a tender larva so innocently pink and vulnerable Mabel would never suspect its tyranny; This symbiosis profits every mouth, so the tongues all claim: its servant is paid in saccharine rewards to conduct its affairs.

Mabel often finds herself coaxed into strange circumstances by her tongue.

Sometimes, she stands in sleet outside the French bakery before sunrise. She gains a dress size over a month and her tongue remains suspiciously muscular. She eats her rationed gruel, an oppressively scrumptious brioche. When she savors her ration slowly, she finds refuge from the slavery of consumption. She chews, reveling in the temporary freedom from her tongue. Without her appetite, Mabel is thoughtless to the point of lucidity. Her tongue, nearly decapitated between carelessly gnashing teeth, spurts blood in protest of her failed coup d’état.

She finds potions to tame her master. Mabel's tongue whips in the cage of her teeth when she drinks poison, a venomous adder. Pacified by milk, it sleeps like a sated lioness.

Sometimes, her tongue longingly strokes the contours of her crowns and the girth of her molars. Her tongue embarks into the mouth of a lonely stranger. She suspects the two tongues might exchange hosts for the sheer sake of wanderlust, but she has no evidence of this; She imagines all tongues have the same general directives. The lip-shrouded larva between her legs awakes and commandeers the evening's operation, and Mabel complies oh-so-willingly to any clitoral suggestions, eventually resulting in a tear-gilded miscarriage.

Sometimes, her tongue twines her breath into words. As she is resigned to do, Mabel listens, impressed by her tongue's ability to produce opinions. The tongue never exhausts its stamina, only its audience. With confidence, its tone degrades from charming to flippant to insulting, at which point the tongue cowardly retreats to the haven of Mabel's jawbone. She is left to stammer in her tongue's defense with no present means for articulation. Mabel's friends (and their tongues) grow aloof.

She can tolerate her tongue's rule no longer. She fears it is unstable, dangerous. But without her tongue -- its sensuality, its voice -- she is not Mabel. Relinquishing the scissors, she postpones her independence. She and her tongue continue to marry.

skit #59: in prudence

Guided by her notorious grandfather's meticulous notes, Victoria constructed an artificial man in her mountaintop laboratory. She did away with the Tesla coils and the grandeur and the superstitions. She would not fail where he did.

She established a trade rate with a lonely mortician, and exchanged her gender's warm flesh for his profession's still meat: tight lips, obedient eyes, attentive ears, dimples, strong hands, a reproductive tract, a heart, a token noggin. She accumulated her ingredients from the mortician's garden, piece-by-piece, pound-by-pound.

To see the inner-workings of her man, she reasoned, he must be utterly transparent. She blanched the tissues of any melanin in a potassium permanganate bath before drying upon several clotheslines. There hung the future of her man, as blank as overexposed photographs, as clean as Sunday's linens. She assembled his diaphanous body with delicate expertise, making no mistakes, transcribing her grandfather's morbid schematics to the unto her invisible patient.

She knew the fate her grandfather met and so dared not allow her Creature to live freely. In prudence, she disengaged the nervous system after every experiment.

Candlelight illuminated the dust which settled on the Creature's skin. The patina implied the visage of a velveteen warthog. She dutifully dabbed rubbing alcohol over his entire body before experimentation, slowly erasing him, in hopes of subduing her disgust under the pretense of minimizing the chance of infection.

During examinations, she arranged a halo of candles around the Creature, whom she perched on a stool. She injected localized dyes to her area of interest, giving him substance only when and where she deemed necessary. She attached diodes to muscles and watched them seize. She introduced luminous fluids and watched them circulate. She pressed her fingertips into his diaphanous flesh to observe his vitals and viscera displace. She turned off his nerves.

She blew out the candles. The dyes faded, and so did her man. She had scribbled notes of how he behaved under ideal conditions. In old age, when she would review these notes from her youth, she found them to be either illegible or inane.

As a scientist, Victoria differed from her grandfather. Where he was reckless, she was compulsively diligent. She repeated her experiments hundreds of times to ensure he results were sound. Endlessly: she turned him on, his muscles contracted, his fluids pumped, she probed him, she turned him off. Every time he felt his heart beat or his finger twitch, he knew a little more of what it was to live.

She initiated experiment: ninth trial, fifteenth series, umpteenth cycle. She plunged her syringe into his thigh. But the Creature was not there, nor was he anywhere in her lab.