The WELL: inkwell.vue.19: Hyphenation topic PLAYBACK PARTY

#94: HYPHENATION 13 (tnf) Mon 23 Jun 03 09:56

Mon, 23 Jun 2003 09:56:00 PDT

In our last episode, Ada Lovelace was having some Troubles With Tribbles, but in a more sympathetic treatment than she usually gets from the writhing worms she keeps tied to the tops of her feet. Mostly, she was tied up all day, every day. In ways you don't want to imagine. See, Ada worked as an operator at the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company. Her officemate, a thirtyish gentleman, prematurely balding, named Henry Miller, was always writing her silly love songs, which he'd tap out on the telegraph key in that sprightly nimble style that was all his own. His fingerplay always unnerved the shy Penelope, though, and she stuck the trailing battery wire casually but firmly against the back of his neck. He smoldered. No, literally, sent 73 OM, then turned to the demure YL with a glazed look (as in doughnut, not windowpane) and said, "Obstetrical knowledge is advancing by leaps and boundless budgets! We must do more RESEARCH! Find out what makes mother tigresses nuzzle their cubs' necks, and then apply that finding to business districts in remote rainforest towns!"

Smoke poured from his ears, and a small voice squeaked, "Girls, I think that's enough torturing Mr. Miller for one day."

Ada, Penelope, and Yolanda turned to the window, where Charlotte's great great great great granddaughter had spun her web. The spider had been more bold of late, ever since shadowing the pigs hadn't turned up one who could read. (All the smart livestock were hiding until the foot-and-mouth thing blew over.)

Yolanda looked at the letters in the silk. "'Some Object Orientation?'" she said. "What the hell does that mean?"

Lady Lovelace blinked. "Excuse me," she said, "I have some notorious biscuits. Or at least I did. They were in that tin, over there, next to the cretin who keeps poking the ladyfingers in his notice board, though they don't work half as well as tacks. Once the flyer has fallen down for the 6th time, he crabwalked down the street to the House of the Rising Sun, where he worked a second job as a piano player. Indigo Ghouls, that's who he played for, the post-vampiric modernist apocalypso fern bar stuff. Like that "Midnight Blew" sonnet-riff combo he'd mixed up the other night after having one of Ada's notorious biscuits. He espied with his little eye...

"Whoa, Ada, what'd you slip into the biscuits this time? They're Absinthfully Good!" he slurred. Ada just smiled. This cretin was turning out to be the easiest mark she'd ever sharpied. The whole experience, indelibly chiseled into his too-stupid-and-too-rich brainpower converter, ended up as the basis of an award-winning novel, "In Control: Knotts", a treatise on the catalystic effect of Don Knotts on the Valley Speak phenomenon of the Eighties, and how it became part of the very long entries that seem to be afflicting right- minded verbalists.

Notorious biscuits were never mentioned in the novel.

This "muse" business was too much fun. Ada was worried, though -- did that 'SOME OBJECT ORIENTATION' written in the spider's web this morning mean they could be expecting more computer geeks coming in for inspiration?

She didn't have long to wonder. The guano had barely hit the wing when the doorbell rang. "I'll get it!" declared Yolanda, bouncing to her left, bouncing to her right, bouncing up and down, on everyone in sight, singing with the beat, dancing with her feet, singing and dancing teat to teat.

"Enough Vaudeville!" finished Yolanda, in a split, red, white, & blue sequined tap pants shimmering from the sparkler in each hand-bag. She eventually even made it to the door, tripping over the glum Patrons-of-the- Arts cardboard standups that comprised her autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for baoons' red asses during mating season, and other anomalies of mammalian collaborative behavior, as coordinated by lunation and the ipso- facto love ya call ya later ritual.

Neither Ada nor Yolanda gave a rat's ass, or even a baboon's ass, about any of th...

... to forget about the baboon's behind for one flickering moment of ungrammatical wavering between realities. The veil was thin, yellow, and viscous, and of an unsavory odiferous nature. Then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling was passing.

The terms "hidden" and "scribbled" and "hyphenation" floated in her mind, but she did not know what they meant. The smell lingered. Ada struggled to remember. It had been a brief, overpowering sense of freedom, freedom from something, some rule, something to do with "hyphenation." There had been a ring, a candle, something slipped over her head like a lampshade at a suburban dream emporium, heroes, scoundrels, knaves, and nether garments to drape over unsuspecting papasan chairs.

But I digress, she thinks, arriving back in the present tense. The doorbell is ringing.

Many have rung, but few have entered. My mind is tired, my thoughts are splintered. Oh, no, I'm thinking in rhyme again!" She muttered to herds of Tribbles now underfoot, nibbling at the cardboard cutouts, yellow viscous heroes, and sparkling championship rings. "Squeek! Squeek!" said the Tribbles. Squelch! Squelch!" said the yellow viscous heroes. The championship rings said nothing.

She watered the beanstalk outside the window and wondered when the bamboo out back would be high enough to harvest. "A new crop of papasan chairs popping up every few months," she thought, with satisfaction. She flicked a small beehive hairdo into the hair on her knuckles, out of boredom, and hung little placards marked "Jack", "jAck", "jaCk", and other variants onto the beanstalk.

"Surreality's never been a friend of mine" she warbled happily, hardly noticing how the worms tied to the tops of her feet writhed in disagreement.

Henry, now recovered sufficently from his recent electrical enlightenment, shuffled to the door. He peeked through the peephole and mumbled, "I think it's Jack."

He reached for the handle, and everyone outside, dressed as either chickens or golden eeggs, yelled, "Sur-".

He slammed the door shut.

"-reality!" squeaked a worm.

Henry glared at the worm. He carefully opened the door again. Even the men outside were dressed in huge wigs and glittering evening gowns.

"Surreality, at your service sir --" Bowing low, the foremost cretinous blobs melted into a lemon-scented bat pie, and flew awkwardly into a painting on the wall. It was a watercolor Henry had never much liked anyway. He had received it as a being of light and understanding, but really, it belonged in a hotel room over a dubiously laundered benevolent association's weekly take, lending ironic commentary tonight on your television.

"Back to you, Stan," the commentator smirked from the bedside tableau, in which she was artfully posed as one of the Muses descending into vanity press Hell. Draped around her upthrusting their published tomes, parrying and jockying for position, half a dozen writers heaved with passion, or the most descriptive thing that could allude to pastilles, for which the more savvy of their number knew that most commentators and editors cherish a hidden passion.

The candy store down the street was doing land-office business; the line was nearly around the block. Shiny-jacketed hipsters stood among dental floss models and fevered guitar slingin' herbal remedies, guaranteed to cure constipation, consternation, and conversation or your money back. And if they acted now, they were told, they'd receive absolutely free this remarkable set of Ginsburg signed first editions. Those expecting copies of Howl, however, were sorely disappointed upon reaching the head of the line and discovering the promotional package to be the opinions of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Supreme Court Justice, who had reversed herself Ruthlessly, in effect negating herself, in primate-like willfulness. Sickening, she then reverted to writing lost-puppy flyers and Romance Novels for a living, and hiring a healthy Double to sit in on the Supreme Court sessions. This arrangement worked beautifully, until tomorrow, when reality reverses itself and she stuttered between tenses, sometimes There Then, sometimes Here Now. Now she was here, at the candy store, signing anagrams, then she nags a singing ram, after which she sang "Am A Raging Sin", the classic torch-bearer song of the Naughty Girl Olympics. But that was all after the factotum immemorial, the Eternal Butler, took her hat and coat and would not give them back.

"But I need them for the perfection of my existance!" she zenned, and promptly forgot them in her sudden oneness with the uniformed security guard who insisted on examining the contents of her trashy underwear drawer and getting into an in-depth examination of her most controversial positions.

She tried to abstain, but that was quickly vetoed by the immoral mahout, who had assumed the title and role of First Sockpuppet of the United States, and was attempting to expunge abstention, absinthe, Absorbine Jr., and other things starting with the letters "ab".

It was all because of that traumatic incident with the boiling cauldron of cioppino (plus some, uh, unauthorized herbs), whistling Dixie, and Dixie's husband coming home early with a bucket of clams which the young Sockpuppet- to-be *knew* Dixie had already put in the cauldron. Sockpuppet, who was only nine at the time, and had never before seen time bend, had always remembered Dixie saying, "Oh, Georgie, dear, don't worry, there's two sides to everything -- it's the A-B pattern of the universe, you see." The whole incident had done a slow burn on his psyche, until one day, while dread- locking his bicycle to the postman, for fear of theft, he fell to the ground pointing at each foot in turn screaming, "Sock!" "Puppet!" "Sock!" "Puppet!" and then at passersby, "Sock!" "Puppet!" until two identical nice men in the white coats came and he shouted and pointed "Sock!" "Puppet!" at them until they fell down laughing and the postman laughed and the bicycle laughed and they all laughed and they were laughing at him at him "Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh...."

Anyway, that's one story of how he came to be known as "Sockpuppet" and to have such an aversion to words beginning with "ab-".

His handlers left no stone unturned in covering up this debacle before his candor waxed; silenced, he became wan and thinkish -- if there is such a thing. Gazing at his navel, he assumed the position of gratitude that people are just writing a line rather than an epistle, since Channeling For The American People takes incredible amounts of patience. You have to choose your whereabouts carefully, and have an undisclosed location to grunion-fish; if anyone knew where you go, they'd be all over the tide-tables, figure out why Reagan only bombed on the full moon, thwarting the blue-cloaked bandits. Pippi shouted, "Have some mocha, have some tea; drink absinthe, it's all on my floor. Can't you guys hold onto anything?" From behind the country-music bin, a shopper hollered, "Someone spilled a milkshake all over my broken heart," in time with the must-see TV jingle playing on a small black-and- white portable on the country-western aisle. "Back to you, Stan," the commentator smirked, evanescing into a rosy-golden cloud. The camera operator, shrugging, persuaded a customer to take the commentator's place. "Never was a Stan," she whispered intimately. Her voice carressed the mic now, singing low.

"Always was a cornflake girl."

The camera operator thought, "Ah, well, it's not like I'm getting paid jack for this job anyway" and let the tape run out the window, into the stand of bamboo behind the building, choking several endangered birds and uproar ensued. Mamasan came charging into the store, yodeled a few bars of "Let It Be", and promptly unplugged the distinctive neon light fixtures, plunging the room into darkness. Grinchly Fleawagon said distinctly, "Oh, my stars and garish gegaws! What's become of the baby? Please, Mr. Postman, pretend you're my baby and climb into the stroller, put on this bonfire, yes, the one on my vanity, over there", but then they were plunged into darkness deeper than the darkness before, as his voice trailed off, and over the river and through the woods, even at Grandma's House, he could no longer be hesitant. The wolf was at the door, seeing no evil, and omnivorous as he was, there was no doubt he'd be devouring hipster, hypester, hucksters alike, papasans, Mamasan, hopi, Sioux, and Cherokee. No Mohicans, though, he'd seen the last of them at the motel next door to the casino. People coming in and out of there at all high on the latest Get Enlightened Quick seminar -- what a way for the last Mohican to exit the building with a suitcase full of position papers, headed for the White House! The Dire Wolf smiled at the Mohican's ingenuity, letting the spirit of the season override his gut feeling that the red man's words could not thaw the icy grip upon a secret heart so bent on revenge and yet so ill-equipped to do any real damage to angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity. Changing his mind, the wolf spun around and headed back into the kitchen, reached into the cabinet containing Magic Potions, and grabbed a bottle of Nepenthe. Never waste your time or money on that watered down Boar's Breathe," he thought, "it's not worth the hairs on the label. But Nepenthe! Now *that* will put this topic to sleep!" Silently nodding in assent, the conference host roused himself from sly one- eyed slumber long enough to sanforize the wolf and the topic, so that shrinkage would no longer be production staff's number one problem. Next, the host nearly tipped the entire wheelbarrowful into a bank of daily Show writers, which would have made it impossible to produce tonight's predigested oat hulls, packaged with a minimum of sugar and added chemicals, except for the little known fact that in the springtime, no one remembers how depressing it was a few months earlier when the sun sequestered itself in an oak-paneled jury room with eleven other headless corpses. Trying to get a verdict out of this crowd is like trumping your own trick; I mean, like tricking your own treat; I mean traveling with steel-soled shoes and gunpowder in your pocket linings. Examples of the harrassment some travelers have received can be repeating steps 4 through 9 as needed. If mechanism jams, do not atrocious service, particular at the week-long conference of online copyright experts, gnashing their trademarked Circle R Dude Ranch enscribed gold teeth while they encysted deep in the bark. Limbs afflicted with these paranoid fantasies often have to be talked down from their high permutations of natural law. Repeated attempts to sublimate these distracting fantasies resulted in some pretty interesting doctoral dissertations, now available on cassette, 8- track, or CD at particularly obscure and musty bookstores. Among the most prolific contrbutors is a fellow (we assume) who goes by the handle "Go Fish," and is purportedly a part-time professor of philosophy at the University of Wallamaloo, but no one has ever accounted for the absence of U. of 'maloo from any known map. But as Dr. Fish asks, "If a tree falls in an empty college, is there a sociology department on Earth that doesn't hear it and dispatch a team of political science majors to prove it's a bush's fault?" What all this has to do with Ada's guest is anyone's guess, though Gauss, gussied with truss just cussed the gist of his grist in this futuristic scenario of the Bush Legacy, 10 years down the ribonucleic acid chain of polypeptides forming deep within the bamboo shoots out back. Evacuate! She cried. Suicide bags away! Though she was becoming a bit dizzy what with all that spiral slipping. What furniture polish did they use on that fire escape, anyway? she groggily asked Helix, her cat. Seven leagues below the sea, in an undisclosed location, Dr Fish examined the entrails, took a deep toke on this pipe, and said, "It applies evenly, and is used for furniture polish and cat de-fleaing." Except for the neurotoxicity issue, I think we could maybe find an appropriate applicator, thereby allowing those who are xenophobic to an extreme degree to see the error of their ways. Clearly, it can be seen that no one has an exclusive franchise on fear- mongering in this political clinking, clattering, cacaphonic, colligenous climate of junk-bond diplomacy, smoggy days, not being sure where their next meal is coming from, and batshit-crazy commentators treating the ffate of humanity like a tractor pull." Mamesan chuckled. Ada, Penelope, and Henry returned from the House of the Rising Sun just in time to yodel at the top of their lungs in honor of the new day. "Where's the pepper when you're making a salad? I guess we'll just have to make do with juniper berries, the older and more fermented the better! Do you handle those without gloves, too? I find it enhances the effervescence of the juice. But isn't it a little early in the matinee to be going out for popcorn? I brought a power bar so I wouldn't have to sit through this totally pointless art flick without suspecting that cynicism rather than sentimentality is the way to get laid in this day and age. It hardly even matters what's on the schedule for next weekend," said Ada, "You know we'll only end up at the bad end of a drinking binge, looking sheepishly at each other and wondering where have all the flowers gone, long time party poopers, are we really, and so it seems that the sun must surely rise again, no matter how hard the Republicans try to scare us into blowing card chaff all over our salads." Henry winced, remembering the last time he'd got chaff stuck between his toes. He had to run two miles on the beach to be finally famished enough to even want salad, especially since the ingredients included cheese weeds and recycled greens, the only kind I'll eat since my doctor warned me about chlorophyll buildup. There was a story about it recently in the Weekly World News, too--Swamp Thing and The Hulk are both classic cases, typified by their general tendencies to shift gears in the middle of a story, thereby causing quite a snaggle-tooth busted-clutch stink of synesthesia. This story, however hard to swallowm, is the truth, dammit! I couldn't make this up, even if I tied writhing worms to the tops of my feet. Nancy, on the other hand, found it to be quite a revealing exercise, back when her name was McGill, disguised as a Steston-sportin' raccoon with a limp and a bad attitude. Republican all the way, that raccoon; might even run for President someday, just you watch. Doesn't like greens, though, or nachos, either. He's a mass of contradictions, and we can expect his governess to stand for all the problems he's caused with his balloons that were filled with good old-fashioned lung air instead of that newfangled holographic vapor that passes for mumbles, such are promises. Accordingly, we are introducing legislation this week to criminalize truth-telling while blowing balloons online or applying electrodes to nervous volunteers down at the Neuro Lab. A group of doctoral candidates convened recently to study the effect of helium on elecrified gentlemen. Dubbing the lab, the "Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company," they decided to set that to music and put on a silly love song contest involving Theremins, zithers, and hammered dominoes - which make a satisfying sound when you smash 'em, I must say -- aliens do it better! Especially since they are capable of dominating every conversation with their boasts about that and their other mother. Hence, the legislation. But no one had anticipated prolonged and protracted need for compasses and rulers, not to mention keeping all their pencils sharp and their environments free of eraser dandruff, which got into electrodes and interfered with the truth-telling algorithms, resulting in spurious bawdy limericks and pretentious halfway readable screeds against secondhand smoke, anagrams, award-winning novels, biscuits and yo-yos. It sounded like that Hitchhiker's guy who told all the truth, but Emily did say to tell it slinky, while dressed in black. Wear the red satin pajamas, like the ones Dick Cheney and Dr. Go Fish wear on their sleepovers at Georgie's. The invasion of Iraq was postponed four times, you know, due to a shortage of pajamas inspired by the designs of NASA's Moon Suits, so they had to tell their Moms they were camping in the back yard when in fact they were out looking for slinky sexy underwear to wear to press conferences and private functions where reporters and camera crews aren't welcome but insiders know where they can sneak inside anyway. Two new rising senior aides are in charge of inventory. Purple silk is the favorite choice of carolers at Christmastime, but in the summer we can usually be found in hanshan's back yard sporting Spandex bathing suits and running thru the sprinkler while Dad eggs us on from behind the video camera and Mom calls for pizza. All of the neighbors are peering over the fence as we begin our ritual. My little sister always starts to cry when Dad stutters. It makes him sound so unprofessional, but this is at home; on the radio, he never misses a syllogism when discussing politics with our Congressperson. Just yesterday they were talking about raising the age limit for fishing permits. I thought it was a strange topic for a land-locked area, but hey, whatever floats your banana split on a sea of cheese! While we're on the subject of finicky eaters, let's examine this ice cream confection's dubious histogram. "Nurse?" said the documentation director. "I think my xerox machine needs a translator to interpret the manual. What the heck does 'it is VERY VERY CAUTION' mean?" Ingnorance of the law is no defense in such cases, so it's time to open a bottle of Pinot Noir and forget about work for the moment. Once the hegative vibes are dispensed with, we'll be able to converse using words like "ingnorance" and "hegative," provided we drink e-laced absinthe cocktails, swilling merrily from antique glasses and calling to the barman for more dramamine. "If this bar's rockin', don't bother knockin'!" he shouted, as everyone who was anyone consulted the I-Ching about where to go for dinner. [Read entire topic]

#93: Grant Barnes (pyrus-malus) Sun 19 Jan 03 00:29

Sun, 19 Jan 2003 00:29:00 PST

More! More! More! [Read entire topic]

#92: Rip Van Winkle (keta) Wed 23 Jan 02 12:20

Wed, 23 Jan 2002 12:20:00 PST

Apologies for the occasional unexpunged hyphen in there... [Read entire topic]

#91: The Story So Far (13) (keta) Wed 23 Jan 02 12:17

Wed, 23 Jan 2002 12:17:00 PST

#90: Rip Van Winkle (keta) Wed 23 Jan 02 12:12

Wed, 23 Jan 2002 12:12:00 PST

Well, it seems our Hyphenation 13 hasn't quite recovered from the holidays. It rallied briefly on Jan 9-10, but nothing since. Before we call in Dr. McCoy, I took the liberty of compiling The Story So Far in the next post.

Yes, this has been a plot-heavy Hyphenation...will we ever find out what happened to Ada, Sockpuppet, or Ruth Bader Ginsberg? Will the Mohican manage to change the course of history? Is the bamboo ready to harvest?

As the commentator says, "Back to you, Stan..." <131> [Read entire topic]

#89: Rip Van Winkle (keta) Thu 20 Dec 01 10:05

Thu, 20 Dec 2001 10:05:00 PST

No! No! There was that time in sixth grade when I...

Oh, thanks. [Read entire topic]

#88: David Gans (tnf) Wed 19 Dec 01 18:28

Wed, 19 Dec 2001 18:28:00 PST

I appreciate your confessing, David. I had silently marked you for banning because of that horrific error, but I hadn't gotten around to deep-sixing your acocunt yet.

Just kidding, of course. [Read entire topic]

#87: Conscientious Blatherer (keta) Wed 19 Dec 01 17:11

Wed, 19 Dec 2001 17:11:00 PST

Re Hyphenation 13, now in progress:

I just noticed that I screwed up the grammar coming out of <131.128> with my <131.129> post. But I hardly think it's so bad that one of us can't find a way to bring grammatical order back to our demented world before the sentence is out...

Just a heads-up. [Read entire topic]

#86: I've got two legs from my hips to the ground (josparrow) Wed 28 Nov 01 17:36

Wed, 28 Nov 2001 17:36:00 PST

Heh. that was exceedingly surreal :) [Read entire topic]

#85: Linda Castellani (castle) Wed 28 Nov 01 16:51

Wed, 28 Nov 2001 16:51:00 PST

In a good way! [Read entire topic]