I was leafing through the postcards in my Music and Songs category, reminiscing about the hoops some of these songs made me jump through, sometimes just to find out the line reference WAS from a song. I still have my suspicions about some others, but the research is seldom simple, as this type of gag seems to have withered to nearly nothing by the 1920s. But as I looked over the array, it made me wonder how much my many fanatic readers recall about these songs.
YOU, of course, have memorized every pearl of wisdom secreted by my computer. But you can try some of these questions on your less attentive friends, and thus garner bragging rights/
1.Bert Williams seems to have contributed dozens of catchphrases (what we called ‘memes’ in my day). Which of the following factoids is NOT true about Bert Williams?
a.producer/writer/star of the first all-Black musical comedy on Broadway
b.got very tired of performing his signature song “Nobody”
c.had to leave the country after marrying a white woman
d.was for most of his career half of the comedy duo Williams & Walker
2.The Merry Widow Waltz was NOT called that in the operetta “The Merry Widow”. Its original title was
a.Queen of Heaven Waltz
b.Footloose and Fancy Free
c.Dreamy Fish Waltz
d.Once Upon a Dream
3.Why was it so hard for the young lady to find her boyfriend Kelly?
a.In search of a stage career, he changed his name to Bert O’Williams
b.She was looking for a redheaded Irish immigrant in New York City…on St. Patrick’s Day
c.He had been sent to prison
d.He had died, thinking she would never come to see him
4.This phrase had great popularity after being used in a song that had nothing to do with romance (sorry). What WAS it about?
a.What to do when pennies rain from Heaven
b.What to do during an earthquake
c.A young man being thrown out by his girlfriend’s father
d.Fixing a car.
5.Which of these is NOT a reason for the lady’s rage?
a.Bedelia is a song about a man leaving his wife
b.Bedelia was so popular in its day that people got sick of hearing it
c.Bedelia is a song about what the young man will do to worship Bedelia if she marries him
d.The singer claims he loves to hear anything Bedelia says, and this lady suspects her husband of irony
6.This postcard was one of several sequels inspired by what song?
a.Bringing Up father
b.Father Knows Best
c.Everybody Works But Father
d.Daddy Long-Legs
7.Only Me did not involve bedbugs. What WAS the trauma faced by the main character?
a.Child neglect
b.Loss of a spouse
c.Being the player who lost the big baseball game
d.Being the last soldier left to defend the fort
8.What American writer supposedly referenced this song–“I’m Afraid To Go Home in the Dark”–on his deathbed?
a.Edgar Allan Poe
b.Eugene Field
c.Stephen Foster
d.O.Henry
ANSWERS
1.c. That was heavyweight champ Jack Johnson
2.a. But if you’ve never heard the Dreamy Fish Waltz, you haven’t truly lived
3.b.I don’t believe she ever DID find him
4.d.AND the hero was wearing his Sunday suit
5.a.It WAS one of the jauntiest pop melodies of its day, so it was everywhere; I still catch myself humming it. Thanks for another earworm, Interwebs
6.c.Another of Groucho Marx’s fond memories of vaudeville days
7.a.Mom, hearing the mighty crash, fears that her favorite daughter has been injured, but she gets the answer in the title
8.d.Does it change the poignancy of his last words to know he was referencing a song about staying out drinking until dawn?
The door they tumbled through was coated with smiling faces on the inside but sharp orange rock on the outside. Louba’s hips caught in the doorway but Bott was behind her this time. He threw a shoulder against the obstacle and they popped out together.
“Ya woon’t have problems like ‘at if ya’d lose a couple tons o’ suet,” said Bassada, jumping out of the way.
“Nifty advice. Drink it an’ water flowers wit’ it.” Louba slapped at a few smoulders on her overalls. Deep gouges showed on her arms. Bott brushed his hands on his knees to shake some green skin from under his nails. She had not offered a lot of useful handles where he needed them, and the sweat had caused frequent slippage.
“Cap’n plays rough.” Bassada slapped him on one shoulder. “Nex’ time I gits ta go last an’ git stuck.” Chlorda looked him over with frank admiration.
Bptt turned eyes still dazzled by afterimages around their new prison. They had lamded in an oblong orange case. The ceiling looked low, but he doubted he could reach it from the floor. Darl brown rock formations sprang like blemishes along the floor and walls. A ridge of brown and orange rose far ahead of them, blocking any vision of what might be waiting behind it.
He leaned forward, squinting. A spot of white gleamed between two rough brown ovals. He eased toward it, one hand on his satchel. The skeleton he found was far beyond making any kind of threatening gesture.
”Someone else lost this game,” said Chlorda, who had advanced with the captain.
Bott knelt by the bones. “The Emperor said this place had never been tested.” He blinked twice to banish the black and white squares still flitting across his line of vision. “It’s either a prop to scare us or something that was fed to…something else in here.”
He looked up at the ridge. “What’s ‘at?” demanded Bassada, moving up between Chlorda and the captain to point at metal among the bones.
Bott blinked again. “Wrenches,” he said. “So, a technician who got lost during construction, maybe.”
”Any meat on them bones?”
The other three looked up at Louba, who was still slapping out incipient flames. Each slap was now leaving a handprint.
Chlorda nodded. “She’s becoming frenetic. She does that when she’s hungry.”
“Lotsa her ta keep fed.” A blue finger jabbed Bott’s back, a little too low. “I gets kinda frenetic meself when it’s too far between meals. If we ain’t getting’ et right away, Cap’n, I wish ya’d call an’ find us a food slot.”
“I tried that.” Feeling it was better to demonstrate than complain, he drew out his command card. “Ship, where is the nearest food outlet?”
“He still hasn’t learned to say ‘please’. It’s in room 8W5/3T0/3C5.”
Bott looked up, shrugged. Bassada reached over his shoulder to press his fingers against the card. “Hey, ship! What room’s ‘is?”
“Your voice is changing, lummox. You are in room 8W5/3T0/3C5.”
“Well, staple yer pitcha ta me frame!” Louba stepped forward. “Where at?”
“The order slot is in a crack in one of the rocks around the corner from your current position.”
“Corner?” Bott took two of the wrenches and put them in his belt, nodding to his companions to take the other tools. “What corner?”
“My maze is filled with corners, lummox, so I can tell you you’re cornered.”
The four looked to each other, and then started forward, Louba still swatting herself but less strenuously, not that she was holding a wrench and two screwdrivers. They found that the ridge ahead of them formed one wall of a corridor with another ridge beyond it. Following this path, they walked nearly to the end of it before Bott noted a thin line on one of the rough outcroppings. This was a handy thing to find, but it was also handy to whatever might come around the edge of this corridor. Waving his crew back, he leaned around the end of the ridge to check.
Beyond this canyon’s end was another that looked even longer. One difference was that it lacked yet another ugly brown ridge at the end. In the distance a broad grey wall waited, with ornate moulding around what seemed to be a massive hangar door.
Bott nodded, and Louba tucked the screwdrivers away and brought out the ration card. She shoved it into the slot among the rocks. “Gimme the best eatin’s ya got!”
“You again,” sighed a voice from the speaker next to the slot.
“Jus’ give out.” She turned to Bott. “We knows ‘is guy from way back. Waters ‘a soup.”
A panel slid up in the rock, revealing a cubical white chamber. The floor of this slid back to allow for the rise of a broad silver platter with a silver domed cover. Four rolled napkins sat next to this, apparently holding cutlery. “Hot hoopdydoo!” shouted Bassada. “Pass me a plate!”
Chlorda reached out two fingers to raise the lid from the platter. A curlicue of steam rose from a pyramid of tiny translucent cubes. Snorting, the gold aristocrat tossed the silver cover over one shoulder. “Mashed lumpucks again!”
“An’ still no maynage,” sighed Louba, chest heaving.
“Izzat as best as ya could do?” demanded Bassada.
“Due to the demands of the Imperial company,” the foods computer replied, “It is necessary to….”
“Excuse me.”
“What do you want?” the first voice demanded of the second.
“I want to chat with my pet lummox,” the main computer replied. “He got out of his cage before I could complete his obedience training, and I THINK he’s forgotten how many cards he’s carrying.”
“Oh!” Bott reached for the collection of command cards he carried: light blue, dark blue, pink, orange, red, green…. “Bilstim thoughtful, for a slave ship.”
“Keep in mind, lummox that you refused to pose as a slave, and are therefore a prisoner. One of my jobs is to ensure that you are maintained in a condition which will provide a good game.”
That seemed reasonable. “An instrument of torture AND a slave ship. I’m proud to have you buy my lunch.” He glanced at the card Louba held, and selected one nearly the same color. Sliding this into the slot, he said, “Let’s try a little harder.”
“Why didn’t you use that one in the first place?” grumbled the foods computer.
“I rtold you he was a lummox,” said the Drover.
The platform with the lumpucks withdrew, to be replaced by a plain white platter holding four covered plates. Under each cover waited a steaming chunk of meat, a tangle of something brown and crisp, and a tumble of blue fruit. Bott sucked in his cheeks at the aroma.
“Better take a small taste so we know whether….”
Louba had seized a plate and, pulling out a screwdriver, shoved a large gobbet of meat into her mouth. “Poison’s quicker’n starvin’.”
Bott claimed a plate as Bassada and Chlorda pushed in. He didn’t THINK they’d take his food, but they did have two hands each. “Let’s keep moving, at least,” he said, tossing one of the fruits into his mouth. “It won’t be safe to stand long in one place.”
They went slowly around the corner, careful to spill none of their provisions. “Should we aim for that?” Chlorda asked, crunching on the brown frieds as she nodded to the vast door.
Bott took another step forward, his mind really on whether they could go back and have the foods computer send the forks and knives back. “Seems easy,” he said, around a mouthful of berries. “Been harder to get through a room than to get out so far.”
“Real dr cd be behin’ a rock,” Louba noted. “Er all of ‘em.”
She leaned on the corner of the ridge they’d just come around, and jumped away at a click. A section of the ridge slid back.
“No tanks very kindly kindly,” she said, looking at the hole this revealed in the floor. “No more tubes. Gotta double dose las’ time.”
Bott balanced his pate and reached for Dunny Bunk. “Well, the book says to turn left. That would be right there.”
“I’m facin’ ‘is way.” Bassada stuck her free arm out. “So lef’ is ‘at big door.”
“I’d hafta to walk backward,” Louba pointed out.
Bott understood the reluctance to slide into any more tubes, especially with lunch to be taken care of. But as he started to give an order he hadn’t quite made up yet, Chlorda cried, “Lala!”
A crack shot up the middle of the huge door at the end of the corridor. In the same amount of time, the door pulled back to the left and right.
“Akhain gubrath!” cried the company behindthe door, apparently as surprised as the prisoners that it had opened.
“Come along, lover!” Louba set her plate on a low rock. “I’ll put a arrow troo yer head an’ call ya me beau!”
“What are they?” Bott demanded, a hand in the grenade satchel.
“Akhain,” said Bassada, “Ey’ll eat just about anythin’.”
Bott lifted a grenade. “What won’t they eat?”
“Anythin’ ‘ey can drink.”
Bott took a mouthful of the fried side and watched them come on, galloping among the rocks. Long waving hair made their outlines hazy, but he could see each had four legs and about a thousand teeth. They had two hands each as well, one holding an axe. The other hand differed from Akhain to Akhain, carrying daggers, hammers, or a long double-bladed device he had no desire to sample. One long spear held Nubry’s head on the point.
“Better go.” He let the grenade slide back into the satchel and, snatching food from the plate, dropped the berries into one pocket and the fried brown mesh into another.
Chlorda grimaced at the advancing horde. “It might be their job to chase us, not kill us. There could be something especially dire at the end of this tube.”
“That’s true for any of them.” Shoving the last of the meat into his mouth and hurling his plate at the Akhain, he jumped into the tube.
It seems like just the other day that I was going through my inventory of postcards showing old cars so that I could illustrate a column filled with fine old jokes. Come to think of it, that WAS just the other day. You can go back and read the last blog any old time you feel like it. Don’t rush; the jokes won’t suddenly become new.
Anyhow on my way to THAT column, I was impressed by the number of times one bit of wordplay turned up. Jokes on postcards worked then the way jokes on TikTok do now” one person uses it and suddenly everyone is. It’s the Bennett Cerf joke philosophy—Who CARES Who Said It First?—in action.
We have looked, hereintofore, at similar phenomena: the fact that Old Fishermen Don’t Die (they just smell that way), the folks who go out into the wilderness and embarrass themselves running around with a bear behind, and the cow stepping on ones of its tender buttons, to name but a few. So I thought I’d take a look at the postcard use of “auto” for “Ought to”.
Postcards are perfect for this joke, of course. Telling people that they owe you a letter or a visit was a major strength of these pre-cellphone texts. But I noticed something odd.
The vast majority of these gags accompany pictures from the very early history of the auto itself: the small, primitive, open vehicles, some of them looking homemade. (Because you could DO that in those days: four bicycle wheels, a box to sit on, and a motor, and you had a car.) Was this a joke which was just so overused by 1910 that the next generation of postcard artists didn’t dare haul it out of the attic?
I did find a few. Having worked in the trade of writing humor, I am aware that an old joke is better than no joke at all if a deadline is looming. There’s always a little nostalgia value: a customer might say “Oh, I remember when THAT used to b funny!”
And you will notice that this artist (since these cards obviously come from the same hand) has four lines in the caption, so that the “auto” pun can be concealed under the camouflage of poetry.
Other artists weren’t quite so shy. I know people who are like this about their automobiles, in fact. “Why do I need a new one when this one still has some mileage in it?” This artist has, furthermore, employed an entirely different sort of camouflage. If the picture is full of action, the reader might skip over the well-worn tires and sputtering engine of the caption.
Here, in fact, the joke is the FOURTH most important part of the postcard, as the artist has clearly spent time to make sure you look at the ladies and then that elegant car, and then rush past the “ought to” to get to the gag about streamlining. I’ll have to try something like that myself with the joke I realized I did NOT make a few paragraphs ago. Surely in all the clutter on the Interwebs I can make a joke about “autopuns”. See, the whole “autopen” busin…no? You auto see some of the other jokes I didn’t make.
Antique postcards with cars tell us how different driving was, once upon a time. They take us back to when steering wheels were just replacing the tiller and all cars were reverse convertibles (you had to stop somewhere to put the roof ON.) Dusty ghosts of bygone rules rise from the past and we recall the days when cars were such a novelty that just about any driver would be arrested just for having a noisy mechanical vehicle
On the other hand, antique jokes with cars can show us how much the same we are. Someday I shall analyze the diary of an Illinois sheriff of 1907 who considered buying his office a car and came back snarling that all car dealers were liars and rapscallions. In the meantime, here is one of our good old fashioned joke quizzes, with the set-up in the first section and the punchlines below. Keep both hands on the wheel and your eyes on the text.
QUESTIONS
Q1.The teenager in his battered old jalopy was pulled over by a traffic cop. “You were doing sixty-five,” the officer told him. “Promise me you’ll keep an eye on your speed and I’ll let you off with a warning.”
The kid said, “Oh, please give me a ticket….”
Q2.The Dumpster Cinderella called the police in a panic. “Someone got into my garage and stripped my car! It looks all right outside, but when I get in, I see they’ve stolen the steering wheel, the dashboard, and even the glove compartment!”
“Keep calm, Ma’am,” said the voice at the other end. “Here’s what we want you to do. Take a deep breath, and then go to the garage and take a good look at the doors, especially the locks. Then call us again….”
Q3.The used car dealer was showing a customer a dented heap that still had most of its headlights and one and a half bumpers. “Here’s a beauty,” he gushed. “Only driven on Sundays by a little old lady.”
“Yeah?” said his visitor. “As….”
Q4.The customer walked around the old heap and asked the used car dealer. “Does it have air conditioning?”
“No,” the salesman admitted, “But you get good cross ventilation….”
Q5.The woman looked out the window on a drive through the countryside and complained to her husband at the wheel, “You don’t cuddle the way we used to when we were dating.”
He glanced over. “Well….”
Q6. The pedestrian leaped back too late and went flying as the car sped through the red light. “What are you?” he shouted, clutching his arm, “Blind?”
“Blind?” said the driver, speeding on, “….”
Q7.Bitsy was telling Betsy about her driving test. “I liked this instructor much better than the last one. He wasn’t always shouting when I forgot my signals or pulled out into traffic without looking.”
“Did he pass you?” asked Betsy.
“No,” said Bitsy, “….”
Q8.The cop came up to the window of the car he’d just pulled over for some very erratic traffic maneuvers. “Let’s see your license,” he ordered.
“Are you kidding?” the driver laughed. “….”
Q9.It had been a spectacular smash-up, but both drivers came out of it unharmed. The driver of the red car said, “Here, you look really shook up. Better have a bracer.” He pulled a flask from his back pocket and passed it to the driver of the blue car.
“Thanks,” said the second man, and took a healthy swig. “You need one too, I expect.”
“Not yet,” said the first driver. “….”
ANSWERS
A1.Otherwise none of my friends will ever believe this heap could go that fast.
A2.when you realize you were in the back seat
A3.a getaway car?
A4. Through the holes in the floorboard
A5. I haven’t moved
A6.I hit you, didn’t I?
A7.He passed out
A8.Who’d give ME a license?
A9.I’ll wait ‘til after these troopers smell your breath and fill out the accident report
Sheriff Parimat swept a hand down her little skirt as she stepped off the traveling square. It was a futile gesture. Nothing would make this wisp of uniform long enough.
No one saluted or even nodded to her; this was the least-travelled corridor in the Rhododendron. Had it not been for the blue carpet which had been rolled out to cover the brown one, she would have suspected no one had come near the museum since her own last visit.
Sirg was asleep, which left her in command again, but there wasn’t much to command. Procedures aboard the compound vessel were largely automatic while the y remained in standard orbit. Now and then she had to order a search party to find someone who had taken a wrong turn on the Drover and couldn’t find the way out, This was not demanding.
She blinked at the bright lights. These had been added to the first nine rooms, to enhance the exhibits dedicated to the Emperor, burning away the dim, sool atmosphere she loved. She closed her eyes to slits and moved along, her hand on the light blue velvet ropes. On the required tours of the first nine rooms, overzealous cadets would throw themselves down in front of the pictures of His Imperial Worship. Id they accidentally nudged the pictures , this counted as sacrilege, and led to wasteful executions. She had installed heavy stanchions and velvet ropes with chains inside to keep the hyper-loyal alive.
Awards, trophies, pictures and plaques glittered around her. These were unlabeled, of course, but holographic guides could be activated if explanations were needed, and a recorded tour was also available. Sheriff Parimat didn’t need these. She ground the butt of her left hand against the top of a stanchion as she turned to regard the walls of the ninth room.
The museum had not changed, barring the new lights, for most of the years she’d been alive. An uo-ti-date museum would have dispensed with the velvet ropes and transparent cases in favor od the latest archivally-sound security fields. Bit this collection of relics of Imperial greatness had gone unimproved at first because her father considered it a low priority and after she succeeded to command because she liked it the way it was.
She moved past the newest portraits of His Imperial Worship, the ones bestowed upon her for her own unblotted record, Beyond the lights, beyond the exhibits which were required viewing, was her sanctuary. She hardly had to give orders that she was not to be disturbed while she was here; three fourths of the crew of the Rhododendron didn’t even know these rooms existed.
Here she could sit without worrying how high her tiny uniform. was riding. Here her eyes could rest. Even her personal quarters had had the new, brighter lights installed. His Imperial Worship wanted no suggestion of gloom about his visit.
And here she could reflect on the previous Imperial visits she had survived. All she had to do was survive one more. Then she would be free to command the Rhododendron on its mission, perhaps for years before His Imperial Worship remembered her or her ship.
Rubbing one thigh, she moved into Room Ten. A rope had come unhooked from its stanchion; she stooped and reached for the metal end of the velvet rope, her eyes on the exhibit to make sure nothing had been disturbed. She frowned. A small picture of the Imperial Family hung there. Someone should have moved that; His Imperial Worship did not like having pictures of his father on display, even in areas tours were not required to go.
“Your captain’s lucky there’s been just two tours so far.”
The voices came from Room Eleven. A woman’s voice with ice in it replied, “The Sherriff must approve any removal of items from an exhibit.”
“She better watch her pretty paws.”
“You aren’t telling us your Sheriff outranks His Imperial Worship in this.”
“Her Grace takes a personal interest in the museum.”
No sense letting that information reach His Worship; the Sheriff stepped quickly to the next room. No doubt that family picture was the cause of the argument. Letting everyone know she had already decided to remove it might quench any threatening fires.
Just past the door stood Lt. Bab Katner, an officer grown white-haired in her service to the Rhododendron. The closest thing to museum curator on board, she was officially Chief of Imperial protocol, and Poet laurate. The two men with her were Imperial guards. Katner outranked them by a great deal, but this was trivia to members of the Imperial Escort.
As they were willing to point out to the Lieutenant. “We’re Emperor’s men,” said the taller guard, waving a hand toward his special insignia. “We don’t take any orders from some flunky of a far star sheriff.”
The short trooper took Katner by one arm. “Maybe she doesn’t know about Emperor’s Men.”
The Lieutenant shook her arm loose, only to have the other arm taken up by the taller trooper. “She probably never even saw a real man on this bucket. Let’s show her.” His free hand went to the Lieutenant’s tiny skirt.
Sheriff Parimat slipped to the exhibit nearest the door, and took the end of a stanchion rope in one hand. Disconnecting this caused a tiny click.
The tall man turned. “Another one! One for you and one for me!” He let go of Katner’s arm and strode toward the Sheriff.
Had he come close enough, he might have recognized her and reconsidered. Sheriff Parimat did not let this happen. She had both ends of the heavy velvet rope in hand now. A rwist of the wrist sent one end into the air.
The metal caught him right under the nose. “Hey hey hey!” called his partner as blood spurted onto the tidy museum floor. Lt. Katner caught the distracted man’s tunic and threw him after his fallen comrade. The Sheriff pivoted the stanchion on its base to hit the falling man in the throat.
Lt. Kastner straightened what there was of her tiny uniform, sparing not a glance for the two men, one of whom was still alive and trying to push his windpipe back into line as he choked noisily to death. “Your Grace, these men were trying to remove an exhibit item in Room Ten. Though they had not authorization, I’m afraid they had a valid….”
The Sheriff had been pulling the stanchion back into place. Planting her feet, she jerked both wrists.
The base of the stanchion caught the Lieutenant hard under the chin. She fell backward, sitting down hard on the face of the first trooper. The Sheriff returned stanchion and rope to their accustomed positions before moving to make sure Kastner was still alive, and doubly sure that the two troopers were not.
“What is the situation here?”
Rising, the Sheriff considered Colonel Kierpath. He was a Hamgar from the Imperial Escort, with a service record that entitled him to a certain amount of personal expression in his uniform. Gis tunbic was cut low to exhibit a bristling thicket of chest hair, taken on his planet as a sign of hyperactive masculinity, while his trousers were as tight as they could be without being skin grafts, to exhibit extensive muscling of calf and thigh.
He had a personality to match all this. “What happened to these two men?” he snapped at a Sheriff who outranked him as much as the Lieutenant had outranked the troopers.
Understanding how trifling this consideration of rank would be to the Colonel, she did not mention it. “Thee two men had knocked out the Lieutenant and were dragging her between two display cases. I could not allow their actions to pollute the Imperial atmosphere.”
The long pink nose rose. “The woman was unconscious when you found them?”
The Sheriff’s nose rose to match it. “She was.”
“And they were taking her between these display cases?”
He had now asked two more questions than the most liberal Imperial Sheriff would accept from a colonel. “Unless they dance some dance in your command that the rest of us don’t see.”
Long orange lips snapped down at the corners. “This may call for a full investigation.” Without waiting for a response, he plucked out a command card with a light blue stripe along the center. Shoving this into a communications monitor usually used for the recorded tours, he pressed two pads and barked, “Your Worship? Colonel Kierpath!”
The bland Imperial face appeared on the screen. It was a startlingly tight shot, to keep people from calling him and sneaking a peek behind him at the monitors showing the progress of the game. All that could be seen of the Imperial Game Center was one thin leg, its foot directed at the ceiling. A slight twitch showed the owner of the leg was still technically alive.
“Colonel?” The Imperial voice told the Sheriff His Imperial Worship had been interrupted while doing something interesting.
The Colonel did not appear to notice. “Two of Your Worship’s troopers are dead. This woman admits she killed them, claiming an attack on a junior officer. She has been uncooperative in answering my questions.”
Imperial eyes looked mournful. “From whose company did the dead men come?”
“Mine, Your Worship.”
“You will be compensated for the inconvenience she has caused you.” Imperial eyes shifted. “He is talking about you, dear Sheriff?”
She stepped closer to the monitor. “Yes, Your Worship.”
“I am not happy. You will report for the first and second shifts with my pets in the morning. In the meantime, for your lack of cooperation, I order you to turn over to SHERIFF Kierpath….”
“Your Worship!” cried the former Colonel, both hands clutched in his chest hair. “I thank you so….”
“All information you have on how to survive four consecutive shifts. And have him shaved before he reports to the pens in…let us say ten minutes.”
No one had ever survived three shifts with the emperor’s trained pigs. “Your Worship!” the former Colonel cried again, his intonation now somewhat difference, his fingers twisting in the chest hair which meant more to his civilization than the insignia on his uniform.
“That is the highest honor I can bestow,” His Imperial Worship said, blinking once, “On an officer who cannot train his soldiers better. Dear Sheriff, make sure the best of the barbers under your command sees to this. You know how particular Stenge can be.”
The monitor blinked off. Marah Parimat smiled at her fellow Sheriff.
In the middle of the last century, a number of postcard publishers decided to take arms against a major injustice. They, and their staff cartoonists, did their very best to draw the attention of the American public to thus social evil, hoping to provoke action on behalf of an overworked and underappreciated stalwart of American labor, suffering difficulties around the country due to the unfair demands of society.
In some places, these oppressed souls could not even be mentioned by name, but postcards could find their way everywhere and plead their case. It should be obvious that we are addressing the twentieth century postcard’s attention to the ass.
The situation causing concern was most often associated with the West, as an area where the ass was put to a great deal of work on long hot days.
But the cartoonists did not fail to mention that asses did not get a workout in places like Atlantic City, and other resort towns nearer to the east coast.
World War II brought new chores for the busy ass. Men whose asses were in danger at all times raised their voices to express their discomfort with this arrangement.
However, it is more often women whose asses were the focus of attention. This may be because women were perceived as being more sensitive about their asses. I am in possession of no statistics or studies on the matter, though, and it may simply be that women were seen by postcard cartoonists as putting their asses through rougher assignments.
As a third possibility, it could be that their asses were considered more delicate. Certainly, we see more postcards dealing with women dragging their asses from place to place (though for some reason, when the subject turns to asses being dragged from state to state, the dragger is more often a cowboy. I thought about checking the Interwebs for information about the states of cowboys’ asses, but my algorithms are so confused now, I didn’t like to add a lot of research to the mix.)
After all, the AI has given up on me already. You should see some of the sites it showed me when I asked about women dragging their asses. I hope you would be as amazed as I was about the number of websites dedicated to female dragons.
In any case, our benevolent postcard cartoonists sought to cast light on the trials and tribulations of a noble animal, suggesting that, whether a man or woman was involved, an ass could expect little more than slaps, spanks, and kicks in return for all that work.
Only the always pioneering Curt Teich Company came out with an explicit ass postcard, making its position on asses clear. And I hope that I have helped convey this clarity into the new century.
“I should warn you, sir, that the last person who attempted robbery here is now the stuffed mermaid you see on the wall over….”
“I wasn’t going to try it. But can you sell me something that will make me so much money so fast that I can pay you well and still have some left?”
“I do have this magic ring.”
“That’s a tin circle with a pebble set in it.”
“It is well camouflaged, sir; the witch who crafted it was a woman of strange whims.. This grants the purchaser the power to turn anything he touches into gold.”
“I’ve heard about such things. No, thank you. Somebody always winds up turning their daughter or their wife into a….”
“The witch knew those stories as well, sir, so the ring comes with safeguards. If you wear these elytra gloves under the ring, nothing will turn to gold, since you are not touching the ring. And, if you say “Pumpernickel” three times, the ring will transform anything you mistakenly turned into gold back into its original form.”
“It sounds better and better. Um, why are you selling it, then?”
“I enjoy the work, sir. It isn’t about just piling up gold.”
“Hey, I’d like to have that attitude myself some day. How much do you want?”
“I need some token payment to make it a purchase, but after that I will take only as much gold s you make the first time you put on the ring.”
“Interesting. And if I don’t turn anything into gold while I’m here? Or what if I touch YOU?”
“Part of the enjoyment of the job, sir, is seeing how these things work out. What were you thinking of touching first?”
“I have half a dozen pennies in my pocket here.”
“Gold pennies are a novelty, sir. If you touch nothing else while you’re here, that will do nicely.”
“Done and done. Here’s the copper penny. Give me the ring.”
“Here you go, sir. And the gloves with….”
“Ha! I hope you like that penny, because I’m not…I’m not…I’m not moving.”
“Well, no, sir. You are currently touching your clothes and boots, and now that they are solid gold you won’t….”
“Pumpernickel! Pumpernickel! Pumpernickel!”
“I’m glad you remember the spell, sir. Very good.”
“But I still can’t move1 It’s not working!”
“True. The witch, as I say, had strange whims. And since you were touching the ring, it is now itself gold, and no longer the magic tin….”
“But what now? I can’t just stand here in your shop forever.”
“No indeed, sir: it will scare away customers. I’ll just fetch the tin snips.”
“He’s ripping her overalls off now. It’s a real pity you can’t see this.”
The screen had been out of Nubry’s line of vision since the golden woman started dancing. His Imperial Worship had thoughtfully provided commentary on how her dancing became a general hugging, kissing, squeezing lovefest among the four prisoners, preoccupying them too much to see their danger until they stepped into trap doors which dropped them inside warm, soothing tubes where they were bounced and jiggled into painful levels of sexual tension.
However, by twisting her neck and tipping her head way back, Nubry could just see the monitor which printed out their dialogue.
“OOH, MY DARLING CAPTAIN1 DO TRY TO BE GENTLE!”
“I SJALL LOVE EVERY PARTICLE OF YOUR LUSH GREEN BODY!”
She could not hold the position long, and had to tuck her ears back between her knees, a position the manacles had forced her to assume some ten minutes or eighty years ago. All she could see in this position was herself, where the blades had cut away her uniform. The view would not have inspired her even had her eyes been the only organs offended by the process. The worst, though, was that the machinery had also let her hair loose, and she could not move a hand up to brush the strands away from her face.
“Quite the grip he’s got on her breasts. I had some thoughts about pumping in an aphrodisiac vapor, but I see now that would have been redundant.”
Nubry pressed her lips together. It hurt. The last moisture to touch them had been sweat, and she doubted she could manage even that now. He’d made fourteen copies in a row; the memory of that pain was bad enough, but she also knew how much her strength had been depleted. Soon she’d be too weak to do anything about escape even if she got the chance.
“Nothing new about what they’re up to mow. I’ll just let them go at it and stop neglecting my guest.”
Sje tried to turn her head again, but at the same moment, her wrists were drawn between her thighs to roll her into another midair somersault. Her heels came down to the floor, pressed against each other. The cuffs on her knees pulled as far apart as her hip joints would allow. The thigh bones were trying to pull away from the hips entirely.
Ignoring that and the pain in her neck, she tossed her head to flip her hair back. Her eyes went up to the big monitor, n found it blank. She looked down to the conversation screen again.
“OH, CAPTAIN!”
“WE CAN DO THIS EVERY AFTERNOON AND EVENING ONCE WE’VE CONVERTED THE DRAGONSHELF TO OUR USES.”
“ARE YOU GOING TO SELL THE BOOKS, OR JUST DUMP THEM?”
Her eyes grew round. Then she lost sight of the screen as her head pulled down behind her and her heels, still together, were tanked up to meet it. A deep breath rattled in her throat as the thigh bones popped from their sockets.
The words on the monitor hurt worse. Bott wouldn’t do that, would he? He would ot! But would he? Dumping the books had to be a Klamathan suggestion. He was a pirate, of course, and not a librarian. He might not know the value of books as books, not merchandise. And perhaps he thought one of the copies was the real thing, and, since that person had died, he no longer had to think about the Dragonshelf’s captain.
“And I thought of sending some of my pets in, but those four would wear out my poor little pihhes.” She could hear, but not see, the Imperial chair move around her. “Do you like piggies, my dear?”
“What….” She licked her lips, but her tongue was nearly as dry as they were. “What will you do…with my ship…if we don’t get out?”
The chair moved again; a painful jerk brought her eyes where she could see it. “Concerned about your books? You needn’t be.” A fat thumb came down to the pads on his console. “I’ll keep them—and your ship—forever as a trophy.”
Her wrists shot straight up, and her ankles rubbed her ears. “You…will?”
“In my office.” The mobile throne moved closer; one Imperial hand raised a long glass from a holster on the side. “I have a very efficient compactor: your ship will crush down to a cube about the size of this chair. I don’t know whether I will put your bodies inside before the crushing, or sprinkle your bones around the cube in a tasteful arrangement.”
He slurped at the long light blue glass. Ice clinked when he moved his hand.
Nubry couldn’t keep from pressing her lips together, bits of the surface flaking off as she did so. “The…books?” she said, when she could.
“Will be preserved forever.” He slurped again. “You’ll never need worry again about someone tearing a page because they will have been mashed into immovable objects about the width of one of tour fingernails. Perhaps I should take a fingernail or two now, so my technicians will have something for comparison.”
It would have been a relief to cry, so, of course, she couldn’t. “There are…valuable things…in the collection. Are there? Yes, there are.” She swallowed. That felt as if the sides of her throat were scraping together as her lips had. “Where else will you find forty years of Eetervi tram schedules?”
His free hand made some adjustments. Her heels rested on her shoulders. Her wrists were brought down around her knees and up again to her forehead. “Anyone can find them right in my office. You couldn’t ask for more efficient filing.”
“But they won’t be…no one can….” She tried to lift her head enough to relieve her shoulder joints. It didn’t seem to help. “Books are imp…aw!”
She was rotated ninety degrees. The Emperor rolled a dark blue ball with blunt spikes protruding from it across his knees. A nudge from one knee sent it to the floor.
“See if you can fail to land with anything delicate against that.” A thumb jabbed out again to his control pad.
The power was cut off to all her manacles at once. Nubry could do nothing to stop, or even adjust, her fall. The ball caught her at the base of her stomach.
Something beeped on the wall of monitors. Nubry opened one eye to find His Imperial Worship riding the chair back to his usual viewing spot. She reached out experimentally with one hand.
This did not feel good, nor was she terribly encouraged. The manacles were still attached to her and, deprived of their lifting power, were heavy. Those of her joints still working together felt fragile. She moved forward, and nearly screamed as one of her hips popped back into conjunction with that thigh. But she didn’t want to upset His Imperial Worship by letting hi know about her troubles, and kept dry lips jammed together.
She did not so much crawl as slither, pulling herself along the deceptively cool-colored floor. Bypassing the trap door which dropped her copies into the maze, she aimed herself at a door in the wall. If only it was motion-sensitive: she certainly lacked the strength to pull herself up to work the controls.
“Leaving? Without your party favors?”
One of her mistakes, she reflected, was in thinking that once she’d dropped free of the immense half-egg duplicating machine, the manacles would have no power to move her. She rose spread-eagled into the air. He let her come down and straddle the sharp edge of the eggshell for a moment before letting her drop inside again, ankles together, her hands on her hips.
She met the Imperial eyes. “If it’s a party…when do you serve refreshments?”
Her right leg was jerked up into a perfect right angle to her body. “One thing at a time, my sweet guest. Party favors first.”
His chair moved. She tried to watch it, but jerked as she felt the power in the manacle on her rised keg die. The manacle was probably big enough to break her left ankle if she just let it fall.
“Sooner or later, tender librarian, you will have to let that leg fall.”
She looked to him, and then to the floor. Somehow, the controls of the copier had been shifted to exactly where her right heel would land.
“I will need more copies,” His Imperial Worship explained. “Your pirate is so amazingly randy it may take twenty or so to make any impression.”
Nubry looked past him. The big screen was still dark, but she could again see the conversation screen.
‘OH, PLEASE.”
‘NO, WE MUST CLIMB OUT OF THIS MAZE AND BURN THAT DAMNED LIBRARY. WE NEEED SPEED AND THOUGHT.”
So did the captain of the Dragonshelf. The Emperor was correct; she could not hold that manacle up for long. Best to let it drop where and how you wanted.
She pulled her knee up to her belly and then slammed it down, letting the cuff add to the impact of her heel. Her teeth felt like cracking at the pain of impact, and her eyes clamped shut so sharply she felt her lashes must cut into her cheeks.
“Oh my,” said His Imperial Worship.
She opened her eyes. His Imperial Worship had leaned back in the chair, his hands folded over his stomach. “Dear, dear.” He didn’t look at the controls. “I fear you have jammed the mechanism, my dear. How many copies do you think it will feel compelled to make?”
She looked down. All the pads seemed to have been jammed down into the surface of the console. Lights were flashing, and she could feel the power surging. She pulled back her foot to kick the controls, but at the same moment, that foot was drawn up swiftly until the heel nudged the small of her back. Her leg muscles started to twitch; the rest followed. Ripples ran in waves along her stomach. Her cheeks billowed.
“You wouldn’t get this experience from a book.” His Imperial Worship took another slurp of his drink.
To be frank, I find it easier to believe that the world is painted on the inside of a massive cosmic eggshell than that, once upon a time, a bunch of devious authorities got together and decided “Let’s tell them the world is a slightly flattened sphere and see how long we can fake them out.” The “What” of your really good conspiracy theory never bothers me nearly as much as the “How” and “Why”.
When I was younger, my potential as a scam artist was hampered by something of that same philosophy. I would get halfway through convincing someone that I was excused from P.E. on rope climbing day, and the other side of my brain would kick in, saying “They’re not really buying this, are they? Better tell ‘em it’s not so.” So I never quite polished by skill at bald-faced lying. (I never got more than about three feet up that rope, either.)
But I am missing out on a major source of income. So I am giving up this namby pamby insistence of truth or even probability, and let loose my own flock of conspiracy theories. If I get enough comments of “Yeah, baby, tell it like it is!”, I will expand these into bestsellers filled with footnotes and True Facts. (And also mark down my demographic as Sixties survivors suffering from serious flashback issues.)
Let us begin with what I call the Historical Conspiracy. This is the kind which explains that what you think you know about some bygone event is all fakery. I could tackle the belief that the Vatican, for reasons not clear to me, adjusted the calendar by a century or so and 112 years of our “history” never really happened, or that the Titanic was sunk on purpose to kill a particular passenger, but let’s start with something easy. Conspiracy Theories 101 should open with assassinations, and, by modern preference, the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
I have not done an exhaustive search of the literature (I’m not sure that’s even possible at this point) but among all the conspiracies about who REALLY shot JFK (Lyndon Johnson, a Castro agent, an Onassis agent, or a friend of JFK himself as an elaborate suicide), I find one obvious assassin who never gets the credit.
Marilyn Monroe.
Yes, Marilyn herself was…what? Marilyn Monroe died the previous year? Don’t listen to the Mainstream Historians, Junior. Haven’t you looked over the conspiracy theories about HER death? Haven’t you read the True Facts that Marilyn was murdered by the CIA and/or FBI to protect the Kennedy administration from what she might have said about the Kennedy sex lives? Have YOU never wondered about that? WHY would the FBI and/or CIA commit a murder to save JFK’s reputation when we KNOW from other conspiracy theories that they were planning to knock him off next? Well, if you use that part of your brain specially prepared for True Facts, you will understand at once.
Marilyn Monroe did NOT die in 1962. The body buried was that of a spare blonde starlet, something California was riddled with. Marilyn was spirited away so she could hang out in Dallas until JFK rode by. Proof? Ha ha. Look how often Marilyn was photographed wearing a headscarf. Do you need more proof than that?
Yes, the Babushka Lady, that woman with the camera who was wearing a headscarf on a warm Dallas day, and who has never been identified…that was MM herself, waiting to do her job and then be whisked away to a safe house until needed for another assassination. Proof Positive. So….
Hmmmm? Is there any evidence that Marilyn was that good a shot? Could she have fired a gun hidden inside a camera from that angle and hit a moving target? Listen, I can’t spill all my facts in one little blog.
I do not write a food blog. I have mentioned this before. But I accidentally ran into a reservoir of “Live and Let Live” on the Interwebs, where the attitude has increasingly become “My way or you’re scum”. So it is merely from an astonished appreciation of this hidden well of empathy that I write about Lasagna.
A local eating establishment (I don’t write restaurant reviews, either; I don’t need even more competition for a table on Saturday night) recently put “lasagne” back on the menu, and though it was good, I noticed quite a number of differences between it and the “lasagna” available in my hot lunches at school, or the similarly named dish my mother used to make. I still make my mother’s recipe, and, on one of those rare occasions when I have cooked for another person, served this to a young lady who was, um, polite about it. So I went in search of what real lasagna is, whether it MUST be spelled lasagne, and how far my mother was from the REAL recipe.
Well, as the Interwebs (and my computer’s spellcheck, which keeps autocorrecting it) inform me, we call it “lasagna” over here, though “lasagna” is the original Italian word, and is preferred on some menus. As for the traditional recipe, well, there ain’t no. My mother’s version is apparently just as authentic as the “hundred-layer lasagne” I have seen on specials menus.
The word comes from the name of the cooking pot for the noodles, and that the resulting entree is apparently one of the oldest pasta dishes known. Our distant ancestors liked putting down layers of cooked flat pasta, plopping stuff between them, and then baking the result. I am intrigued by the version for Lent, which was layered with walnuts, the version which included bacon and hardboiled eggs, the recipe which has the pasta cooked in chicken broth and then spread with chicken fat between the layers…there ARE no boundaries, so there is no foul territory (I will ignore the anchovy and olive version, personally, but you do you.)
There is also general agreement that the result needs to be covered with cheese, though people DO hold out for their favorite cheese/s for this purpose (and I was intrigued by the 12-cheese recipe). Certain cheeses are preferred if you have decided to make a Dessert Lasagna, an idea I have not encountered before today, making me feel I have been cheated. These are apparently served cold, which I understand, although if some chef got mixed up and baked the chocolate chip and peanut version I saw, I do not believe I would send it back.
I have now seen recipes for a “Southern Lasagne”, originating not from southern Italy but from the American south, involving grits and greens, an “Aussie lasagna” which involve kangaroo meat cooked in bear, and even an old favorite I ran into at another dining joint years ago, lobster lasagna. This last seemed to be part of a trend, not so much of favoring lobster as favoring alliteration, as I also saw Lentil Lasagna, Lamb Lasagne, Liver Lasagne, and a dish which is now on my “Only In America” list, “Lulla Kebab Lasagna”.
As I say, this attitude is stunning in a world which insists only the author of an article preserves the one and true WAY to do anything. In fact, I was so disoriented by the whole experience I had to counteract it by looking up pizza. As soon as I saw one lone angry voice holding out for the spelling “pizze”, I felt better.
Blogsy Babbles 