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.