persiflage

rather astoundingly mediocre

October 21st, 2010

The reason that dullness is so much farther advanced than genius is that it is so much better organised.

Samuel Butler

Any culture tells you how to live your one and only life: to wit, as everyone else does.

Annie Dillard

Classifieds

For sale: tumbler half filled with coke. Ideal for fan of mixed drinks especially those that include coke. i.e. rum and coke, rye and coke etc. $4. Box 341.
For rent: leaf blower. This old craftsman will come to your home and create a one of a kind glass leaf before your very eyes. $500/day. Box 9.
Mark it on your calendars (or collanders if you can't avoid the strain): October 28th - The Return of Uncle Glennie. Creepy stories at ATOMIC., The attic of 167 Logan Avenue. Doors will open at 7:00PM. Stories: 7:30- 8:00PM; 9:00- 9:30PM. Doors will be locked during Uncle Glennie's reading. It is cold, bring a sweater. Knock three times at ground level to be considered for entry.

The Mystery of the Lost Lenore

Listen to Part Seventy-Eight

Click on the picture. (2:46)

Or start from the beginning.

Links

Evil Strikes!

NOT an Anti-Labour Story

Once upon a time, in an enchanted glade near where Norwood becomes St. Vital, there lived an evil prescence named Seymour.

Seymour had lived in the glade for as long as anyone in the area could remember. Actually most of the people who lived nearby were on the youngish side so that isn't really saying very much but he had lived there quite a while.

At any rate, most of the inhabitants of that neighbourhood knew that Seymour lurked there in the pseudo-woods and they especially knew not to enter the glade in the late morning just before lunch because that was when Seymour was at his evilest.

But one fall morning Pete Galman, a third year philosophy student at the U of W, was going to meet his dad for lunch at the Sal's on Marion and as he was a bit late he decided to take a short cut.

Pete's dad, Mort Galman, a semi-retired businesman of some variety, was going to lend him some money and Pete was so focussed on thinking about the loan and all the great stuff he was going to buy with it that he forgot all about Seymour.

So, at 11:45 that morning, just as Pete was quickly and surely making his way along the little path that ran through the center of the glade, Seymour, who was invisible, leapt up from the pile of leaves in which he was needlessly hiding and whacked Pete right across the shins with a tree branch.

Pete stumbled and fell, scraping up his hands and his right elbow, skinning his right knee and tearing a hole in his brand new pants (I forgot to mention he was wearing new pants).

As a result Pete had to spend 40$ of the 100$ that his dad had lent him to buy new pants.

One never knows where or when evil will strike but if you don't have your head up your ass you can avoid some of it.

E. Koligh

Simone

Part Five

Simone was, of course, very curious to hear what Old Leonard had to say. She had just assumed when she met Mr. Turble that he had always been a badger. She had never heard of an animal, any animal, changing species. The fact that Turble had once been one of the park squirrels and indeed well known to Leonard was startling to her. And yet, it was true.

The old squirrel told her that in fact Turble, or Chester, as he was then known, had not only been a squirrel but he had been a particularly good one. No one, not even Leonard, could surpass him in scurrying, chattering or any of the other squirrelly virtues and when it came to nut-storing, well, Chester/Turble was in a league of his own.

All the other squirrels marvelled at Chester's prowess with nuts. It was rumoured that he could store an entire pound of pecans in his cheeks while racing along a telephone line without dropping a single one. And Old Leonard had actually heard him deliver a full four minute chattering rant at a rather stunned Golden Retriever while both his cheeks were full to bursting with acorns and it had been completely intelligible (to the other squirrels - the Retriever had not a blind clue).

But how, Simone wanted to know, did Chester or Turble, whatever his name was, go from being the living apotheosis of squirrelitude to his current incarnation as a myopic ink-stained badger?

That, Old Leonard said, was a very sad story. It seems that Chester and Leonard were friends of a sort, although Chester was known to keep to himself mostly, and one day they decided to go together to a part of the park were they almost never went to check out a rumour about a spilled shipment of peanuts that had been destined for the elephants in the zoo.

They were very excited as they skittered along the tree tops thinking about the huge number of nuts that must be necessary to sustain those lumbering pachyderms. They would eat like kings, little squirrel kings, if the rumour were true.

It turned out that it wasn't. There was no huge peanut spill. There were only of handful of nuts that some errant child had dumped from his less than capable hands as his irritated mother hauled him unmercifully towards the monkey house. Chester and Leonard were disappointed but Leonard was philosophical. Chester took it personally.

To be continued...