It has been a while since we have discussed the postcard which is all, or nearly all, words. Our ancestors were great fans of an art form which some prefer to call poetry, though sometimes the same sentiments were written in a paragraph that didn’t pretend to be anything but prose. I don’t know if today’s generation would understand a sentiment written out not to be part of a huge essay but just to exist on its own as…what? A text? A tweet? A meme? Okay, you’re going to relate to these postcards more than I thought.
Anyhow, I recently acquired a large collection of postcards described as “romance and marriage, which included a half dozen of these wordy cards. Be warned that they do deal with the fantasy and reality of both. Oh, and as seen by the one at the top of this column, some of them are examples of just Too Many Words. This leaves the sender nothing to say (which may have been the point.)
This is a little more flowery (so to speak), and really a little easier to read because of that. This is the only postcard in this article which was actually messaged: a man wrote a two-line message endorsing the front of the card, and handed it to his wife (whom he addresses in the message as “Wife”.)
We have discussed hereintofore the habit of a generation or two around the turn of the last century for what I call “refrain” poems, where a sentiment is hammered in by putting it at the end of every stanza. (I’ll look into whether or not these were all inspired by the best-selling poem “Excelsior”, but that’s a whole nother blog.) Telling other people how to treat their spouses, however, has no specific age in history, and I am not sure this doesn’t do the job better than some 300-page how to books on the same subject. (On the other hand, the song “Little Things Mean a Lot” covers the same territory, and has a melody.)
This, however, tosses the whole question into the cold, harsh light of day, what some might call “real life”. I feared the worst on seeing the title, but steel your nerves, good reader. The moral of the story is also better done here than in many a trade paperback self-help volume.
It should be understood that there were plenty of postcards as well about how to treat your husband. This is a British contribution to the literature of interpersonal relations.
How this got into the collection I hesitate to ponder. But I like its attitude and I admire its courage, since it bears all the marks of a card published somewhere around 1912, when, I was always taught, Americans minded their language in public. (I have also read that we simply became more mealy-mouthed somewhere around 1929.) I started rewriting this text in my head, substituting other words. But the result would be merely derivative, larcenous, and unpublishable. Consider your own version…AFTER you decide why this was part of the matrimonial postcard collection.
Bott hit the big golden door first. The black knob turned a fingerwidth to the left, but no farther. The grumbles of the grobbles grew louder as more pushed up onto the bridge. The scent pf burning grobble was unattractive, but not as unattractive as the odor of approaching unburnt grobble.
A dimpled golden hand reached past him. “Slide these two bolts, Luv.”
Bottt twisted the knob again as the Klamathan hand held back the springbolts. Everyone sprang forward as one when the door swung open.
The door banged shut behind them and did not reopen, though all four of the fell back against it, beaten back by the heat in the light grey room. Hot dry wind ground sand into Bott’s nose. He narrowed his eyes to slits, studying the chamber to find out if this was the last one he’d see.
Most of the floor was occupied by a vast octagonal pool. This pool told Bott he was definitely still aboard the Drover. Bubbles rose to the surface, shimmering with a dozen shades of every color in the spectrum, and then bursting with new waves of light and heat. Above pool and bubbles rose a vast dome, constructed of metal bars curved in gracious, delicate arcs.
“I think we have to climb.” Bott reached a hand to the nearest Bar. It was hot, but not too hot to grip.
“Motivate them toes!” Called the green, picking out a bar and hauling herself up.
“Hang on tight!” Bott cautioned. Some of the curves in the design allowed for large gaps between bars. Whether the gaps were big enough to let the green Klamathan fall through, he wasn’t sure, but he was positive he wouldn’t be able to pull out any of the Klamathans who got wedged in the openings.
“Know what yez mean,” aid the blue, mounting up. “Not at me best when it’s hot. Can’t get traction.”
The wind, to no one’s surprise, did not relent as they rose above the pool. The gold’s hair flipped left and right, as did the coat of the blue Klamathan, allowing generous views of massive scarred thighs. The green reached up and gave her colleague a healthy pinch.
“Bluebottom, you air as much use as a acre o’ snakes,” she called. The blue kicked back at her head, missing wide.
Wiping grit from her face, the gold moved along bars which brought her closer to Bott. “”We may have time to introduce ourselves before new perils are launched. I, sir, am Chlorda Diona Pollar, late of Klamath.”
“I’m Bassada Del Dorma,” called the blue. “From KHLAmath.”
“Louba Bobari Bomar, of Rukhlamath,” the green reminded him, with a glare at the other two.
It was about as bad as Bott had feared. From their pronunciation of the same planet’s name, they marked themselves as members of assorted rebel groups which hated each other nearly as much as they did the Free Imperial State. He shrugged and climbed on; if he was lucky, they might all be Imperial spies just pretending to be Klamathan rebels.
“I’m Captain Bott Garton,” he replied. “How long have you been on board the Drover?”
“Oh, the start of the triumphal procession,” said the gold, now climbing hip to hip with Bott. “Leaders of rebel forces were to be honored by being sold at the first DroverSlave Auction.”
Bott froze, despite the heat of the room and his climbing partner. “You’re…all…rebel leaders?”
”Makes fer lotsa fun,” Bassada Del Dorma told him. “Gotta take turns leadin’. Goldguts ‘ere did get us outa them slave pens. Not ‘at it’s been doin’ us much good so far.”
“There was a lapse in security.” Chlorda told Bott. “Days ago. I naturally took the lead and we were well on our way out when this ridiculous command-sharing rotation came up, and we wound up in this maze.”
“Some commanda,” sneered Bassada. “Stans on her tiptoes an’ yodels when ya gooses her.”
“I do not!” snapped Chlorda. “Well, once.”
“A day,” grumbled her blue colleague, reaching for the cluster of bars at the peak of the dome.
“An’ you?” asked Louba, looking over her shoulder at Bott. “When’d you….” She paused her talking and her climbing at the same time.
Everyone did the same. The wind had stopped. Four pairs of eyes checked every direction, seeking what new threat this might signal. Bubbles continued to rise and pop, now far below them.
“Oo-ah!” Bassada swung at one thigh with her right hand. Her left slipped off a bar, and her face hit another. Before she could drop further, Louba slapped one hand on the blue backside and shoved another underneath. Bassada shrieked, but before Bott could see what, exactly, was being grabbed, he was slapping at his own body.
The whine of the swarm gave away its composition. No one had claimed credit for the electric moths, whether they were exotic organics or an invention of the Imperial labs. What was known on numerous planets for certain was the intensity of their voltage, and their preference for soft flesh over any other target.
Bott whistled and reached into a pocket. He didn’t suppose he’d be needing these souvenirs much longer.
“Thumbprinks, huh?” Louba watched as the moths followed one dropped digit down to the pool. “Member that….”
“Why should these playpretties pay us a visit just now?” mused the Klamathan aristocrat, slapping at a few moths which preferred her cleavage to the severed thumbs of former security personnel. “I wonder…aha!”
The majestic gold head reared. Bott glanced the same direction. A golden panel showed in the ceiling, just above where the dome reached its peak. Had the gold not checked that direction, the contestants might have been harried by stinging moths to hurry down to whatever peril waited on the other side of the dome.
“At’s a piddo!” cried Bassada, now sitting on the bars. “Let greengams go first and haul us after. She kin lift anything at’s loose!”
“Like you, sposin?” Louba balanced herself on the bars and rose slowly to reach for the circular door. Bott braced feet and hands for a new trap, perhaps more and larger insects, but nothing came out at them. The green Klamathan got a grip, and disappeared into the ceiling. Then green arms reached out.
“All clear!” she shouted. “Le’s have a customer!”
“I’m game fer a ride,” said Bassada, sliding over under the hole.
“You will wait your turn,” said Chlorda, sidling up. “Your arms are long enough to give me a boost.” The boost was less than dignified, but served its purpose. Gold legs disappeared into the opening as Chlorda called back a term Bott had not heard before, but understood. He was less personal when it came to boosting Bassada up through the exit.
“Yer nextest, Cap’n.” Bott studied the green arms and then considered the descent along the dome of bars. Not sure which was more perilous, he raised his arms and allowed himself to be collected.
All three women helped him find his way up, each using both hands for the purpose. He knew this groping was a sign they were accepting him as a companion, but he was not positive he wanted to be found THIS acceptable.
“Close the door,” he panted, “Before any moths follow us.”. While they checked the threat below, he was able to pull free of their assistance. Louba kicked the door across the doorway.
The room they had entered was a narrow rectangle, walls light grey with intermittent patches of darker grey. Hot and damp, it might be no more than venting for the fumes from below. That was hopeful: if they weren’t meant to be here there might be an actual way out. A dull whine made Bott think of the moths again.
“Better go,” he said, rising to his feet.
Chlorda nodded to the lighter end of the chamber, starting forward with one hand extended ahead of her at shoulder level. “Of course, we’d be free by now if I’d been allowed to the lead the group straight on.”
“Yah yah,” Bassada responded, pushing up next to her. “I believe ‘at. But we got a cap’n here now, an’ he outranks yez. Maybe YOU gonna get spankin’s, ‘is trip.”
Bott winced, remembering how Klamathan commanders conducted discipline aboard ship. Miscreants were also sentenced to stand in a corner, not a light punishment if that corner was handy to a crew of imaginative Klamathans. He glanced at the broad expanse of cloth across the backside of Louba Bobari Bomar, and then at his hands.
“Aboard my ships,” he said, trying to keep desperation out of his voice, “We made do with confinement to quarters and deductions from that crew member’s loot.”
“Loot?” Bassada Del Dorma whirled, her coat swirling a half second behind her body. Bott felt himself surrounded by muscular arms. “Oh, a pirate cap’n! A pirate, yet!”
“Gonna get out and scrummel up some loot!” The big blue Klamathan slapped her palms together and then threw them wide for a hug that encompassed both Bott and Bassada. Not to be outdone, the impressed aristocrat threw her gold body into the mix, and joined the jovial mauling. The pile collapsed to the floor, with Bott at bottom. Distracted by weight and odor and exclamations, he recognized that whine at the same time: it was an off-key, pitched=-up version of “My Beautiful Lady”, a ballad from his home planet. So this was indeed another torture room, and their progress was being monitored.
He started to explain this, and gagged on the general atmosphere. Green Klamathans , barring cologne, always smelled to him of coffee and burnt sugar, blues of bread and honey, and golds of vanilla. He missed the librarian; Nubry smelled like a sweaty crew member.
“Well, now.” Bassada stood up and smoothed wrinkles from her only garment. “No quarters ta confine us to, an’ we gots no loot, so yez’ll hafta do it our way. Beggin’ the cap’n’s pardon, I’m sure.” She hitched up her hems. “Unless yez’d like ta teach me a good lesson right now fer talkin’ back.”
The gold reached out and slapped the exposed buttock hard enough to leave a purple handprint. “Wait right there! Who said anything about this man being OUR captain?”
Bott was on firmer ground here. He rose, checking his pockets: Klamathan affection frequently had practical applications. The cards were still there. “If none of you wants to step aside for the others, a neutral party’s your logical choice. Besides, I can contact someone who may help.”
He squeezed the sides of the communication card. “Ship, you never told me there were prisoners aboard.”
“You never asked,”
The Klamathans stood back, imnpressed. “Where’n honeypot almighty’d ya pick up a playpretty like ‘at?” demanded Louba, massive green fingers reaching in.
Bott pulled his hand away but did not retreat. “I took it when I hijacked the Drover.”
He braced himself for another embrace, but after three pairs of very large eyes studied him for a moment, the Klamathans turned away for a conference. “It’s a trick,” said Bassada. “Gotta be a spy.”
“I say we let him play captain for a bit, even if he is a spy,” whispered the aristocrat. “He might leave if we don’t.”
“Like ta see him try,” said Louba, glancing at the pirate.
Bassada pulled her back down into the huddle. “Yez always busts alla best parts.” “Do you know the Klamathan penalty for spying?” the Drover inquired. “It starts with a razor.” Bott shoved the card back into his pocket.
The Klamathan conference broke up, and they rejoined him, patting and poking. “Yer our cap’n,” Louba announced. “Leastways fer a coupla doors anyhew.”
Bott pulled free of the acclaim and pointed to the far end of the chamber. “There’s the first one, then.” He was rather proud of his ability to manage to think in this personal humidity AND the irritating background music. Apparently, the Drover didn’t know he had crew members who whistled farther off key than this.
They reached a square door without a handle, but with two lighted buttons in the center. Bott reached ut experimentally and just brushed the top button. Both buttons went out and the door shot straight up into the wall. He wondered what might have happened if he’d hit the lower button, but this was no time for pondering. He stepped through the square into the darkness, waving the hand that was not in the grenade satchel to warn the others back in case this was the wrong place to be.
He knew the Drover must still be in orbit around Lodeon VII, but this really looked as if they had made it outside. The rolling landscape must have been built in a factory, and the vast starlit sky projected from some hidden source.
Nearest the door were two high hills, with a broad road running between them, and narrower trails to the right and left. Louba stepped up next to Bott, scratching her left elbow. “Lemme see here. We better…yackit!”
She glanced back at Chlorda Diona Pollar, who had pinched her. The gold nodded toward Bott. “Ah!” said Louba, understanding.
Knowing the decision would now be left to him as captain, Bott studied the landscape. There could be no second guesses: the roads diverged too far for them to see the other two from whichever they took. “Ask yer pal in yer card,” suggested Bassada.
Nott knew how little good that would do. But he had to come up with a firm decision, and something to back it up. He doubted there was any chance of blowing part of a hill away, but reached into his grenade satchel. His hand came out without a grenade.
“Well, paint a stripe down me nose and set me to plowin’,” cried Louba Bobari Bomar, as he leafed through Nubry’s book. “A pirate what reads!”
Better not to claim too much. “No,” he said, “This looks like a book, but it’s a special coded map.” He riffled through the pages. “If the, um, bunnybunk is looking up in the picture, we have to turn left, and right if it’s looking down. Anything else, and we go straight ahead.”
“I have heard of such things,” said the gold aristocrat, nodding to her colleagues.
“Where did I leave off?” Bott turned the pages deliberately. “Here!”
There was nothing to recommend this page particularly beyond that it was light enough to be seen in the night atmosphere of this room. The animal was looking up into an orange bush, at a red slipper with a silver buckle. Bott wondered what it was all about.
”Kay.” The green Klamathan swung her massive hips to the left. “Let’s mobilate.”
Bott strode forward, exuding faith in his “map”. And for several yards, the book seemed to have picked a useful path. The ravine that was revealed around the other side of the hill was a momentary disappointment, but he saw the Drover had kindly provided a means of crossing the chasm. One end of a rope was tied to a spiky plant, and the other to a platform for passengers. Bott took hold of this.
“Tink yez puts yer feet over here, Cap’n, Luv,” said Bassada, “At’s a handle up on….”
“Be just like them to make the rope that much too short.” Bott glanced at the Klamathans and the ledge at the far side of the deep, dark ditch. “Better try it two at a time. If we make it, one can swing back for someone else. If not, we both swing back.”
“Or we could just turn back.” The gold sniffed. “It would also be just like them to give us a rope which will break during the swing.”
Klamathans, even under Klamathan captains, seldom proceeded on orders alone. “I’d’a gone right,” said Bassada. Louba said nothing, extending one leg and scratching at the mark left on her knee by a moth.
The other paths were probably no worse than this one, nor any better. But aside from this, to change direction would cast doubt on his book, and his guidance as captain. “No time to go back.” He glanced up. “There’ll be something happening soon. Look.”
Three heads tipped up. Stars were disappearing from the sky. “Better do sumpm,” said Louba, stepping toward the rope.
“I think you should try it.”
Bott had a grenade in his hand; the three Klamathans were crouched for a leap. Nubry was offended by none of this. She brushed dirt from her hair and dark stains from the front of her uniform. “That was a lot of work.” She nodded around the group. “Who’re your friends?”
Bott realized his hands had left the grenade satchel and were holding hers. He let them drop.
“We’ll leave introductions for the other side,” he said, assuming his most captainic tone. “Now we….”
Thunder shook the hill and the path. Looking up, Bott found all the stars were gone. “Come on. If your prayerstone can help us, we can use the boost.”
She shrugged. “I don’t think you’ll need my help, but you can have it.” She raised the stone to her lips and then tucked it into the neck of her tunic. “Who goes first?”
“The lightest ones.” He took her hand and wrapped its arm around her waist. “I’ll bring the rope back.”
“The little snirp…” grumbled Chlorda.
“Quiet,” ordered Bassada. “Can’tcha see it’s his sweetie?”
The rope made stretching sounds but did nothing drastic. Bott took hold of one of the hands at his waist.
“Bott?”
Clutching the wrist, he peeled it back. He shook it, and then let go.
“Bott!”
She screamed all the way down. Bott wondered whether the real Nubry would have gone on so long.
The skeleton swung its gladius and slashed a dozen pictures pinned to Debbi’s kitty bulletin board. She pulled to the left, jamming a thumb down on the console. Armor clanked and Dirk struck out with his claymore, slicing the creature in half (and severing the bottom two feet of the Hello Kitty curtains.)
“Now, demon, never shall you….”
“Fall for that move again,” said the skeleton as its bones leapt from the ground into their previous arrangement. The gladius came down: Dirk and his weapon clattered to the floor. He did not seem to have the monster’s power: his pieces stayed where they were.
That made three dead bodies on Debbi’s Grumpy Cat rug. If these characters didn’t pull back into the game console at the end, she’d have some explaining to do. They had also kicked up plenty of dust from the dry, baked earth that had taken the place of her bed and bedside table. Debbi peered into the little screen, looking for another hero.
A grating cackle came from the skull. “Now, REAL human.”
Debbi gave up on finding another champion, and tried instead to scroll to the command to shut everything down.
“That will profit you nothing,” the skeleton cackled, striding forward. Debbi had played plenty of games. Her reflexes were sufficient to get her out of reach of the gladius. She could tell the blade would have missed her anyhow. If the bony clown was playing with her, he’d learn a severe lesson.
As soon as she figured out how to teach him. She cast her mind to other strategies as the skeleton came forward, turning more of her floor into cracked alien soil.
Her loser dad complained all the time about the hours (and money) she spent on her games. He had tried putting a parental time control in the games he helped develop. That had been Debbi’s first big sale online, sharing how to bypass that. Since then, she had helped pay for her game work by stealing his, and leaking it online. He STILL had no idea who Honeygamer
the Hawful was, and he never would, so long as he kept telling her what he and his company were going to use next to trap the hacker.
The skeleton cackled and swung again, but tripped on the cord of her Cinderella lamp. Debbi glanced at where her bedroom door had been, but a twisted cactus sat there now.
Dad had been working way late on the VGR, or Virtual Game Replicator, which meant babysitting by Aunt Alice who busied herself with match-three games on her phone and let Debbi play what games she wanted. Dad would come home exhausted with this weird console and tell Debbi he didn’t feel it was quite ready for trial. “The monsters are a little overpowered,” he confided, with a serious sigh.
If Clack, a level one skeleton, was any indication, he was right. Dark Breakout was certainly going to be a challenging game. But if trial and error meant dying, and she had to do it for real….
The 3-D game was no mere photographic illusion. Debbi, easing to the right and searching the screen for help, stepped on Dirk’s swordhand and tumbled into Clack just as he lunged. The crash sent them both into another crash. Her stack of game discs mingled with his scattering bones.
“Ha!” Debbi pulled back against her desk. There HAD to be a way to shut this thing off. Clack growled as he tried to reassemble, his ribs and fingers stuck through assorted shining discs.
This was pathetic. She refused to be killed by a level one. She’d spent hours in other games, customizing heroes, any one of which would crunch Clack into…. She looked down at Clack, about three-fourths reassembled, and yanked the disc out of the VGR console.
“Shutting off the game will not stop me, loopy human!”
“Not the plan.” She grabbed up a disc from the floor. “Immortal Renegade”? Excellent choice! She jammed this into the console. Her thumbs went to the controls, her brain humming “Be compatible…Be compatible.”
She felt a tremble. Of course. Dad would never use a new system. Loser.
Clack rose and took up the short sword. Hearing music, he glared at the ceiling. “What’s….”
Stone flagging appeared on part of the baked earth as Immortal Renegades came out through the eye of the VGR. Debbi tapped a line of type on the screen.
Chaodius the Malwart stood forth from the stones on taloned feet. He raised his enchanted sword and smiled. Clack screamed and turned to run, but hit the wall hung with boy band calendars. He had no time for anything else.
When even the dusty skull had been ground to powder, Debbi heaved a sigh of relief. “You have done good work, Chaodius.”
“Thank you, Mistress.” Chaodius knelt before her, and Debbi gave him a regal nod. She then gave a shriek as the orc jumped up and snatched the console.
She felt the heat of the light from the eye of the console as he turned it full on her. Stone floor and stone walls replaced what was left of her bedroom.
“Now!” Chaodius’s voice took on a different note. “You’re the one who thought I’d look cool with purple eyeshadow on green skin, not? With glow-in-the-dark tattoos? And put me in this orange kilt?”
“Wait!” Debbi grabbed at the VGR console. SHE was playing this game.
Chaodius shoved an elbow down, knocking her onto her backside. A big green thumb slid across the VGR screen as she staggered to her feet. “Flippers for hands. No more button-mashing for you! Hair color…. you’d look better bald. And you need real armor.”
Clutching futilely at her clothes, her curls tumbling around her feet, Debbi wished she hadn’t automatically shut off the parental game timer.
Well, we’re sneaking up on spring, or vice versa, and I’m sure you’ll remember that fine old line: “In spring, a young man’s fancy turns lightly to what the young ladies have been thinking about all winter.”
Postcards were never shy about romance, and the artists responsible for the images on postcards knew a great deal about how the course of true love ran never smooth. One of the great obstacles to romance, according to the postcards of old, was not winter, but the difficulty of finding the time, the place, and the opportunity. Even in an age when people did NOT carry a camera around in their pockets, the possibility of a private place for a quiet cuddle was slender, and excuses had to be found. Here, for example, we have a couple of couples who have ventured WAY too far from the roadway, and have become so lost in the depths of the dark forest that their only choice is to huddle together for warmth, and wait for a glimmer of light to break through the surrounding gloom. (That car hasn’t even pulled off onto a shoulder…but it’s the only one.)
There were so many jokes, around the turn of the last century, about what happened on the train when it went through a tunnel (completely unlighted in those days) that it makes on yearn for the good old days.
And we have noted hereintofore about the romantic uses of the umbrella, both on and off the beach.
There was also a blog abut how indispensable an accessory to romance the park bench was, but at that point, I hadn’t seen THIS chap, who apparently waited until he found a place t sit down before telling the woman he loves her.
There are not nearly so many postcards discussing what happens when two people manage to slip off to the kitchen to heat something up, but they do exist, this cowboy cuisine version being one of the most recent examples. (I admit to some curiosity about what they’ll be enjoying later, but the way they’re cooking, it won’t be what’s in that pot.)
There’s a fine old joke about this kind of excuse, about the couple at the train station who bid each other such a passionate farewell that the train pulled off without them, the passengers watching until the locomotive chugged away into the distance. The stationmaster watched them do this again for the noon train, the train at half past, and when they pulled the same performance for the one o’clock passenger special, we ambled over and said, “Why don’t you folks run over to the bus station. They leave every ten minutes there.”
A hammock is always a good excuse, once you master the art of defying gravity. We also did a blog on how these provided an excuse for sitting close, since they sag toward the middle, pushing two occupants together. And the best ones had enough cloth in them so that anyone who decided to lie down in one caused gravity to bring the sides up, hiding the occupant(s).
Any excuse will do, of course. THIS chap with his hearing problem, mistakes “Oh you men!” for “Kiss me again”. Personally, I don’t think he has a hearing problem so much as a listening problem.
Then there’s THIS excuse. I’m sure np one really…yes, Groucho used a version of it, but…yes, I HAVE heard about five country songs based on the same idea, though…well, yeah, I guess I HAVE kept a straight face while people told me about explaining this to a sweetheart. Well, let’s just admit it’s spring, and the excuses are blooming.
“Hey, grumblin’ grobbles! Getcher big baggy shoulders outa my way! How many we got?”
Bott looked the newcomer over. A low gray oval with deep black eyes and long grey teeth was toddling through the forest, paying no attention to the glittering trees. Tufts of red hair over the sunken eyes waggled as it spotted the Klamathans.
The grumbling grobbles were frontline Imperial cannon fodder. Bred by the thousands, they were of little practical use, but they were low to the ground and easy to replace. When they did reach a target, they liked to bite things.
The grobble paused. “Grobble grobble grobble,” it grumbled. Bott knew it hadn’t stopped because it was outnumbered. Grobbles didn’t know when they were outnumbered because they could count no higher than two. Bott understood, and reached into his satchel for a grenade.
The chief weakness of a grobble, outside of a tendency to twiddle its toes at the height of massed battles, was a cleft at the back of its skull. Bott put the grenade away. Even at the cleft, the skull was hard enough to set off the grenade (if the grenade could be set off that way) and bounce it back. He put a hand on his harmonica, squinted, and let the instrument fly just as the grobble started forward again.
The harmonica struck with a clong and bounced back. Putting out a hand, Bott snared the instrument as he jumped over the startled grobble.
“Well, as I hopes ta lay square eggs!” cried the green Klamathan.
“A man!” exclaimed the blue. “A man wit’ a harmonica!”
“Careful,” commanded the gold, sucking in her lips. “He may be Imperial.”
“I’d take a Imperial,” the green replied. “While he lasted.” She stuck out a hand as Bott bounded toward her. “Howdy! I’m Louba Bobari Bomar!”
“You’re not!” snapped the gold, with a stamp of one foot.
The big green head turned to consider her. “I am, y’know.”
The gold-sandaled foot stamped again. “You are nobody until your betters have been introduced!”
Klamathans had one of the most conservative, most stratified social systems in the known universe, though casual observers might not notice. Even as the gold scolded, she was smoothing her robe and approaching Bott on tiptoe. The blue casually flipped back one side of her coat, the better to show she was wearing nothing underneath. The green twisted her torso, bringing her buttocks into sharper prominence in the silhouette of her overalls.
Bott could feel the glow radiating toward him from among dimples and pillowy cheeks. Or perhaps it was just the body temperature of four very large women: even the gold was taller than he was.
Safest to keep cool, he thought, by sticking to business. “Where can we go?” he demanded. “That grobble’s probably the scout for a whole company.”
Dimples flattened a bit; the Kalamthans regarded each other. There was an edge to the gold’s voice as she replied, “I fear our only choice is to double around and use the other exit from our dining room.”
“Laughin’ boy’s dining room, At’s a great idea, I don’t tink.” She reached out and dealt the nearer denim-covered buttock a resounding thwack. “Better jus’ tell Broadbeam Baby hear ta lie down over alla them blowholes. She’d get a trill outa it.”
The green, apparently not resenting the thwack, set her fists on her hips. “It’s MY day fer queenin’ it an’ I says….”
“burblebobblebibblebubblebeeblebobbleboo!”
A long red slot cracked open in the floor of the forest. Dozens of short, square combat grobbles grumbled forth, teeth shining bright in long red mouths. These teeth were neither terribly long nor remarkably plentiful: they were grinding teeth. As usual, the troops were armed with long black forks and knives.
“They’re coming,” said Bott, more to brace himself for the assault than because he thought the Klamathans hadn’t noticed. “We…..”
“Barbecued bugballs!” The big green smacked one fist into the palm of her other hand. Bending her legs, she launched herself into the mass of grobbles.
“Wait for baby!” The blue dove into the air to land atop another column of grobbles. Her technique, once she had landed, seemed to consist mainly of grabbing the nearest grobble and biting it on the forehead. This strategy was, Bott noticed, singularly successful. The grobbles paused in confusion: weren’t THEY supposed to be doing the biting? The pause made it all the easier for the green to pick them up and punt them back into the crevice from which they’d emerged.
“They can’t take all of them that way.” Bott reached for a grenade. “Too many grobbles.”
The gold was standing next to him now, rubbing her left hip against his side in an absent-minded manner. “I know,” she sighed. “They simply will not learn to coordinate their efforts for proper impact. Excuse me.”
A venturesome grobble had approached far too near. Taking it by the nose, the aristocrat hauled it up and yanked it forward against her own collarbone, stunning it either with the impact or by covering its breathing apparatus in the bosom it found itself mixed up with. As it struggled, she got a grip on its chest hairs and then tossed it over her shoulder into the golden river. The grobble sizzled and went under, not to return.
The combat prowess of the three women was no great shock to Bott. One did not make the mistake, twice anyhow, of assuming any Klamathan was slow, stupid, or quiescent simply because she was big. Still, as he had mentioned, there were quite a few grobbles: too many for three Klamathans and one pirate, particularly if any of the enemy remembered those weapons.
Further, someone had apparently given the horde instructions. The grobbles were spreading to the left, blocking any approach to the door through which they had all come. Soon, the only escape would be across a bridge which obviously did not crave to be crossed.
He bounced the grenade in one hand. That white powder, whatever it was, might be too fine to clog the fiery blowholes in the bridge. But it would make for a diversion, and anything which distracted the enemy from its goal (and meal) would be welcome.
“The loonies are that way, Luv,” said the gold, as Bott pulled the pin and threw the grenade behind himself.
“Watch this,” he replied.
With an explosion like the bursting of a large bubble, the grenade dissolved into an expanding ball of blue goo. This splintered and fell across the bridge in a thick blue rain. The blowholes spouted flame under the first impact, but there were too few blowholes and too much goo. A smell of cooking oprianas filled the air: really old oprianas, the ones with red spots.
Of course, Bott realized, watching with wide eyes, a grenade salesman would naturally pack an assortment in a sample bag for customers, each with its own bang. Best to pretend he had expected this.
“This won’t hold forever,” he said, “Better call the others.”
“Oh, why?” The gold put an arm around his waist and a hand behind his belt. “With my brains and your weapons, we could leave this place more quickly…and more amusingly, too, without a lot of….”
“Looka dat! She’s takin’ off with alla goodies!” Leaping onto the head of a grobble, the blue skipped along a row of them toward the bridge.
“Calls ‘at piggy,” noted the green, kicking her feet up and flinging a couple of grobbles wth each kick. “Piggy an’ unpolite and downright downheartening.”
Bott wondered for just one second whether it might not be safer to try swimming downstream in the burning river. Then one blowhole popped free of the goo with an opriana-scented squeal.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, charging out onto the bridge. The goo was not slippery, but it was hardening, blackening. He heard the surface crack under the feet f the following Klamathans,and the blue called “At’s one corn I won’t hafta burn off meself.”
But all four reached the far end to look back. The footprints left by the Klamathans were glowing in the hard black crust. Just as the grobbles realized their assignment included pursuing the foe, these footprints broke open in a wild calliope symphony, accompanied by a smoke of burnt vegetation.
“Grobble grobble grobble,” grumbled the leaders of the pack, seeing their path blocked.
“Ya done it!” The blue nearly sent Bott into the river with a congratulatory swat on the back. “Yer gonna be useful, what wit’ allada grenades!”
“Knew he’d be useful afore I saw any grenades,” countered the green, licking her lips.
Danger followed danger in this maze. “The door,” Bott said, pointing. “Before the grobbles try the bridge. Some would be bound to make it across the bodies of the others.”
“Masterful, too,” said the gold, leaning down to pat the back of his pants. “That’s so cute in a man.”
The knock on the door of the unlikely little shop was thunderous.
“Good afternoon, sir. How may I….”
“Remember me?”
“Certainly, sir. You are Galliga of Coyne, who set off to defeat the Dragon of Mount….”
“You sold me the magic tablecloth of Queen Clothilde.”
“True, sir. An excellent way to make sure you have enough provisions to cross the Fiery Wastes of….”
“I want my money back.”
“Well, technically, sir, it ceased to be your money when you took possession of the….”
“The magic tablecloth is supposed to provide a massive feast when I spread it out and say ‘Feed Me, Genie’: roast meats, sparkling wine, fresh bread, and everything I could desire. But it doesn’t work!”
“Well, sir, you understand the old legends….”
“You told me the old legends were true! But all I see when I perform the spell if a bowl of boiled beets!”
“You must understand, sir, that the legends always leave out the boring parts. Queen Clothilde’s seventh son, Frackward, rode out and battled the Goblins of the Green Pit, but his legend never mentions it took him nearly a year to ride that far to the south. The queen’s ninth daughter tricked the wizard Horripilis by climbing his castle wall, but nowhere does HER legend discuss the fingernails and toenails she cracked in the process. It’s a part of storytelling that balances events against the attention span of an audience.”
“My attention span is not extensive. Tell me at once what you’re talking about.”
“The legend of the magic tablecloth leaves out a great deal of biography. Queen Clothilde was the mother of thirty-seven heroic offspring, who went out and performed mighty deeds which freed people from suffering and extended the Queen’s realm. She raised them with as much care as she ruled her kingdom and formed her magic spells, and a little of her personality is included in each of her artifacts.”
“Meaning?”
“You WILL get your roasts and baguettes and delicate baked meringue desserts, sir. But you don’t get one mouthful of those things until you finish every bit of your beets.”
I hang out with a number of Luddite intellectuals: that is, these are people who still read books and watch television, and wonder about some of the things they learn in these places. But since they do not believe in allowing the Interwebs into their homes, they then tell these things to me, knowing I have access to a world of answers.
The trouble with getting your answers on the Interwebs is not so much that you find ten times as many false answers as true, as that there is no answer, right or wrong, which cannot be made much longer if you keep looking.
For example, one of these ladies asked me, “Why do people cry ‘uncle’ when they give up? Why not cry for mommy? Is it related to ‘Who’s your daddy’?”
Now, there IS a short answer to that question. That answer is “Well, nobody knows, exactly.” But if you work on it, you will find that researchers have found possible answers, all possible, all as likely to have been provided after the fact, just to answer the question. There’s the ancient Roman game where kids would punch each other until one called the winner “my best of uncles”, or the ancient Irish version, related to the word “anacol”, meaning refuge. And you can always take on the fine old joke about the man who strangled his parrot because it wouldn’t say “Uncle”, tossed the supposedly dead body out the window, and next morning found all his chickens had been killed by an angry parrot that kept screaming, “Say ‘Uncle’, you filthy beggar!” Up to you.
Another day, the inquiry was “Do we call ‘em oyster crackers because people ate them in oyster stew, or because when they’re floating in the soup, they look like oysters?”
The short answer to that is that “No one knows”. A longer answer is that either of her suggestions may well be true. (Or not.) If you want a deeper die into oyster waters, you find that they are especially connected with a city in Pennsylvania or another one in New Jersey, and are sometimes called “water crackers.”
Before you ask, the “soda cracker” was called that shortly after the invention of baking soda made their manufacture simpler. And there are roughly half a hundred different derivations for “cracker” as an ethnic label, from the use of “crack” to mean “brag” and the use of cracked corn in the diet, though I kind of like the one that traces it to the loafers who hung around the cracker barrel in the general store.
Another of the crew amazed themselves when I noted that a strange product name at least made you look at them, by exclaiming, “Made you look, you dirty crook: stole your mamma’s pocket book. Turned it in, turned it out, turned it into sauerkraut.” What startled them was how rhymes can be handed down for decades on the playground, but I wondered where the (what’s the opposite of a nursery rhyme?) came from.
Well, the short answer is “Um, nobody knows”. But MY, the playground has evolved since I was there being dared to walk up the slide the wrong way. For one, thing, the earliest citation of the poem online (at least where I was looking) traces it all the way back to 1977, when I had reached an age to be dared to go over and talk to that cute sophomore girl at the bowling alley. Another claimed the CORRECT version, traced all the way back to 2001, is “Made you look, you dirty CHOOK”, and the verse ends with “Stole a dime and bought some wine and now you look like Frankenstein.”
About the only information I found which can really be regarded as solid fact is that pocketbooks make crummy sauerkraut. Now, if everyone will leave me to my own devices, I will return to my ongoing struggle to find out why movie gangster slang made “Roscoe” a word for a gun. I suspect Fatty Arbuckle is involved, but the Interwebs continues to hide the True Facts from me.
“Where is she?” Bott demanded, pulling the gold card out of his pocket.
“You know the rules, lummox. I can tell you only where the Dragonshelf is.”
Bott glanced around the little yellow room again for impending hazards, and then demanded, “Can you tell me if I went through the same door she did, anyhow?”
“That’s privileged information. Maybe a big bad pirate like you can steal it somewhere.”
The pirate rapped the card against “Bunny Bunk and the Purple Pillow,” even though he knew this wouldn’t hurt the slave ship. “So you can’t tell us a thing and at the same time you’re telling His Imperial Worship every move we make.”
“He can watch for himself on the monitors,” the ship replied. “We don’t chat. All he’s said to me personally so far is that I’d look better with racing stripes.”
“You might, at that. Now tell me I have bad taste and see what His Imperial Worship does to you.”
The tone in the computer’s voice was one Bott knew well. “Pirates. Gantlets. All this cumbersome inelegance. The gantlet you are running is one of my most inelegant functions.”
“Is it?” Bott inquired. “How about the slave pens?”
“Slave hold, pirate: slave holds. And well-crafted holds. But even you, a numb-thumned apprentice pilot with piratic tendencies, must see that this zoo of bogey beasts is irrelevant. I could do the same job much more efficiently without them.”
“There are more of those things?” Bott asked. “How many?”
“One could contrive so many more delicate dangers.” The computer was just about sighing over this. “Now, if you had walked into one of the rooms with broadcast walls…why, then I could show everybody what I can do on my own.”
Bott didn’t believe he cared to watch the Drover show off in that way. “What do those rooms look like?” He looked around again.
“Most will be big square chambers with very light yellow, almost translucent walls.”
“Um,” said Bott. “Um, this is a big square room with yellow walls.” He wasn’t sure about ‘translucent’.
“Why, so it is.”
Then the walls were yellow no longer. The room went black for one heartbeat. Then colors and sounds filled it to the farthest corner. To Bott’s right was Strey Ectet, once his first mate, being compressed in a questioning device by Imperial Police. To his left was a swirling remfmonster from “Hand on Mouth”, one of his home planet’s most famous horror movies.
Before him was a man strapped to a standing rectangle, flames consuming his clothes. Bott didn’t turn around. Above the screams, the crackle of flames, the splintering of bones, and the jibber of the monster, a calm voice was explaining, “I am afraid your test results are not everything that could be desired.”
There had been a door at the far end of the chamber, straight ahead; he was sure he remembered that. He started forward, eyes closed. Then it occurred to him that the Drover was limited to audio or visual torments. Best to be alert.
The pictures had changed into outsized close-ups. Stery’s head was giving in to the pressure: fporty foot screens made every symptom of the bursting discernible. Ahead of him, the victim’s face was obscured by smoke, but he could see the smoking, curling skin and oozing fat. The burning eyes and turning teeth of the monster loomed on the left; that movie had always left him quivering. This must be why the Drover had such exhaustive information about comics and shows: the Drover could more easily torment victims with full access to the popular culture of their home worlds.
The volume rose. Stery’s voice was round, liquid monosyllables, but still recognizable as that of the voice that always said, “Gio get ‘em, Captain!” The remfmonster rattled and roared.
Bott had no idea when he started running. He did know he was screaming “Turn it off!”, even though he couldn’t hear himself. Surely he was close enough now to the far wall to be seeing that door, but the flames around the man on that wall were bright enough to be blinding. He reached out to feel for a handle, jerked back as he felt heat, and cursed himself for being so gullible.
“You have,” a deep, calm voice informed him, “Perhaps the worst scores in the history of this examination center.”
The door handle was nowhere. The pictures started to twist around each other, brighter and brighter, as Stery’s twisting mouth threatened to swallow the monster that was biting at the burning man. He jammed the gold card and Nubry’s book into his satchel, taking out another random grenade as he threw his back against the unforgiving wall.
And then he was out.
“Ho ho ho ho ho!”
He had apparently thrown himself against the door, which had dropped him into a cold, blue spherical room that echoed to a bass voice. “Ho ho ho ho!”
Bott sat up, shivering. Had it really been that hot in the room with broadcast walls, or was it just projected flames?
“Ho ho ho ho ho!”
“Quiet!” Bott shouted. “I have to think!”
Two doors showed uphill from where he had landed. The red one on the left seemed to be ajar. He stumbled forward.
Frowning, he paused to look down at what had made him stumble. Four plates and three cupssat on the cold, blue floor. He sat down next to them.
“Ho ho ho ho ho!”
One plate was clean. The others held remnants of mashed lumpucks. The cups were wet inside.
Bott rose, holding the clean plate. Nothing had followed him out of the broadcast chaber; these must be connected with somebody ahead of him. Might the librarian be there? She might have declined a meal, having eaten recently, but in that case, whose were the other dishes? After another look at the other plates, he tucked the clean one into his pack, and strode toward the two doors.
“Ho ho ho ho ho!”
The door on the left had been braced open with the fourth cup. It might be Nubry, exploring a little ahead, and leaving signs for him to follow. What might she have seen on those tormenting screens?
“Ho ho ho ho!”
“Wish we’d’a let that whistleding door shut. I can still hear laughin’ boy.”
“Yez c’d go back anytimes ya like. Getting’ tired a’ yer bellyachin’.”
“Ah’d’s lief go back to the cells, anyhoo. Getcher lumpucks at reg’lar hours, at least.”
“If the two of you could leave off arguing for three seconds, we may find a way across this brighteye bridge.”
Bott tucked the plate a little farther down, and looked over the grenade he had taken from the satchel. Then, moving up, he eased the left door open just a little.
A dazzling black and gold forest stretched out before him, a cold sharp breeze dismissing the last of the heat and sweat from his face. He took two steps in among the feathery gold leaves and then, whipping around, caught the door before it could latch. Whoever was ahead of him had had the right idea; he adjusted the cup in the doorway and let the door rest against this.
“Hear ‘at! What was it?”
The forest was quiet, except for the voices. As a professional, Bott was annoyed that he had allowed door and cup to make that little clonk. As Bott, he shivered with glee at the thought of having mystified someone. It would be no trouble to hide among these trees if they came looking. He glanced upward. Unless the trees were hungry.
“Let’s work on the main problem. If the bridge won’t play along, we’ll need to double back.”
“Mus’ be sumpm good ahead. Gotta be a reason ‘at door’s so hard ta get ta.”
The solid black dirt was hard and solid underfoot, with no broken branches or plumy leaves to crackle as he moved. Bott slid quickly forward to find the object under discussion. A black arch stretched over a swift golden stream. On this side stood three women, all on tiptoe, considering the arch. As he watched, one of them set an experimental toe on the arch. Gold flame shot from openings all along its stretch.
They were Klamathans, and the worst assortment possible. A fold woman, her robe and turban covered with question marks, stood with hands on hips as she frowned over the arch. A much larger blue woman in a long tan coat stood with one hand on the rail. The woman who had attempted the crossing was a massive green Klamathan in blue overalls.
Bott had served on crews with Klamathans, whose home planet was one of the most recent, and troublesome, of the Free Imperial State’s acquisitions. They could be jolly companions, but if you had a varied group of them, it was best to mingle the sexes as well. He wondered how three women had made it this far without killing each other.
The blue women stepped over and dealt the green one a resounding slap on one bare arm. “Gwan! Yez gots sa much flesh it ain’t gonna matter dips if some melts offa yez.”
The green woman nodded, with a slight smile at this rough encouragement, but withdrew from the attempt. “Thanks. Druther make a canoe outa me crotch hairs an’ see if it floats down ‘ere.”
The gold minced forward, still on tiptoe. “Of course you’ll try it. Think of the common cause.”
The green nodded. “Course! Musta lost me head! I’ll go.” And she started down the bank of the river. Bott slipped a little closer.
“Looks rough,” she called up to her companions. “But coon’t we cut down a tree mebbe and try boatin’?”
“Gross green grunter yez sits on’d sink it,” the blue told her. “Mebbe we t’rows yez in and floats over like ‘at.”
Bott didn’t believe he wanted to be seen by this group. Being enlisted into their cause might be the biggest danger of the maze. He turned to go.
A second little clonk drew everyone’s attention. “We must see what’s making that….” The gold began to say. Her mouth dropped open. “Lala!”
“Fripplepletz!” the blue woman cried.
The green, slapping her hands together, shouted “Flallop!”
Bott peered through the woods to find what had inspired their responses. “Sprockets!” he whispered.
The problem of dealing with archaic humor is that you often run into jokes which are amusing primarily if you know the context, and know something about the times. That joke about why Santa Claus won’t bring you a television because he has so much trouble with antennas on the roof isn’t quite the same nowadays; the same goes for stories which involve getting tangled in phone cords, cranking your car to start it, and being amazed you’re overdrawn when you still have checks left. (If I ever throw caution to the winds and do my columns on stand-up comedians of the past, called “Is This Still Funny?”, we will cover this issue more thoroughly.) The problem is compounded when you are dealing with a catchphrase (meme, for the young’uns) or, as we will discuss today, a line from a once-popular song.
Let us, for example, consider this line from Bert Williams, perhaps the greatest comedian of his generation, whose songs were so popular that their titles were lifted and reused for anything the lleast bit related…or totally unrelated. We have mentioned THIS classic before. The song itself was another one of his ditties about how tedious it is to be broke, and finances where everything is going out with nothing coming in. Seasickness postcards abound using this title, but the most notable theft…I mean homage, was when the Cascarets company took the phrase as the official slogan of its popular laxative. All these connections are lost, and the joke loses much of its punch, in a world which has forgotten both song and singer. (And even the laxative, for that matter.)
With this postcard you do get a fighting chance, since it gives you a few lines of the original, just enough to hint that what was meant by the original song is NOT about a loving couple as depicted here. You do need to assume that someone would refer to a man as Josie, but our ancestors didn’t feel we’d be spending a LOT of time on the gag, reckoning without a generation of bloggers.
The song referred to here is almost utterly forgotten, and I’m not terrifically surprised. I have heard two or three recordings of it without ever quite feeling an urge to sing along. But it was published in 1880, before audio was reliably recorded, and maybe there was something about it I’m missing. But in its day, it was a huge success, sung and enjoyed for a generation, producing dozens of jokes, many of which I have been seeing for some time, without seeing a connection.
The original song deals with a bar where one customer likes to hang out, argue with the other patrons, and mooch until the proprietor tells him to “Go Way Back and Sit Down”. The indigent soul has his day in the sun when he bets on a horse at a hundred to one, wins, and drives to the bar in an automobile (which makes me question the 1880 date for at least this verse.) Somehow, melody and lyrics were used as sources for parodies and occasional songs (songs for special occasions.) I can see where it would have excelled for, say, retirement parties, and in this postcard it becomes, I guess, a temperance message. But there is one very popular use I was aware of but did not understand, being ignorant of the song.
See, I had read this line about a dozen times, because a friend of mine collects miniature chamberpots. (Yeah? What are you doing with your life that’s so much better?) And many of these, several of which also have an eye painted inside the bottom, include this admonition. So I owe to this postcard the understanding of THAT old joke. I didn’t know I was yearning to know this but (and I use THAT word with some trepidity) I do know a little more about what happens when the song is over and the melody DOESN”T linger on.
“She’s back!” whispered George, one of the male nurses on night shift. “She’s back!”
Whispers became cheers as the tall, iron-thewed warrior strode along the corridor, her starched uniform rustling to attract her followers. One by one they fell in behind their mighty hero, knowing she could not fail a second time.
Suzanne ignored them. The legends of Arren were of no concern to her. All that mattered was that procedure be observed, prescriptions filled, and patients preserved, come what may. She readied her clipboard; tiny bolts of lightning leapt from the pages, inducing louder cheers from her followers.
But these fell silent, and clustered near the exit as Nurse Arren strode into the operating room. Dr. Allyn was on the floor, his eyes shut. Dr. McGraw clung to a monitor, breathing heavily but flailing out with her pen to force the beast away from the table.
The monster was mumbling not raising its tone on any syllable. Feelers of red, like toxic worms, reached from beneath its iron-clad suit to clutch at interns and nurse practitioners alike. Dr. McGraw lunged, but fell forward as another red tendril latched onto her ankles.
“Stand aside!” Suzanne’s voice echoed in the room as she readied her clipboard. “You shall not impede our work!”
As the beast turned, its growl interrupted not at all by her appearance, Nurse Arren sailed a sharp prescription into its face, followed by six pages of X-Rays.
She ducked as the prescription sailed toward her eyes, and was caught in the throat by am esophageal X-Ray. Of course, the overgrown Insurance Beast would not fall so easily. Her counterattack had been ready before the prescription flew, and she now drew out….
My editor looked up from the page. “What is this?”
I shrugged. “You said you wanted to see a story based on….”
Her fist thumped the desk. “I said NORSE Mythology!”
Blogsy Babbles 