Rob Suggs (July 10, 1999)"the oozing brain" wrote:
>Is keeping all my fine first/special editions in Mylar jackets enough?My dear Oozing, one can never do enough, can one? I can only relate for you my own feeble attempts at standing vigilant in the name of bibliovirginity against the relentless sands of time. My collection is maintained in a vault far from my home; merciless torture would not liberate the precise address from these lips, Mr Oozing, but I assure you it is some 1200 miles from my abode. This vault is immersed some 600 cubits deep within the bowels of the earth, in a spot unravaged by earthquakes at least since the time of the proto-Incas and earlier. A twenty-foot thick wall of pure steel encases the 40,000-square foot casing, and within there is only darkness--and my towering filipino man-servant, Mr. Throttle, who is suitably blind and dumb for the purpose of guarding a dark and silent sepulchre, but he moves like a cat and has the ability to snap your head off its spine as if it were a red berry on a rotten bush. And indeed we would see oozing brain in that event, do you not agree, my querysome friend? Pardon my brackish humour. Each book is separately encased in an acid-proof, completely airtight case crafted from pure plutonium and equipped with its own laser-guided security grid, meaning that if it were touched by anyone but Mr. Throttle who comprehends its secrets, a 50,000-volt charge would electrify and gelatinize the intruder; though the end would come too quickly for him to feel any true pain. Mr. Throttle has swept up and discarded the remains of several unsuspecting defilers, whose stomach acids and other human filth must be quickly removed from our pristine environs. An elevator communicates with the earth's surface from this subterranean cavity, and the entrance is well-hidden by a team of agents in my employ. They would appear to the passerby to be unremarkable Pakistanis operating a corner convenience store, but in reality they are hindoo priests in the possession of dark secrets transcending human memory. The Slurpee machine opens the elevators--not that this clue alone would provide you any service. You would ignorantly touch the grape button--or it could be the cherry, I will not reveal it--and a hideous doom would enfold you, I assure you my cranially exuding friend. I can only tell you that the colorful orb that would appear to mark one of these fruity flavors was for time out of mind the eye of an idol in Delhi. As I say, you will never find this entrance; many have tried and failed. It is so secret that I lie in my bed, tossing and turning, anxious over the fact that even I know its location. I have proposed to inscribe the words on a small metal plate and have the plate surgically inserted into an unspecified sector of my anatomy. And then I will have full amnesia invoked by an operation on my own brain. The secret must be preserved--at all costs. For this reason, I read e-texts and, if I must, old copies of Good Housekeeping furtively removed from my dentist's office. My gift to the finer books is to divorce myself from them completely. Even thinking about them--from all these miles--could it cause some telepathic damage? Could Mint become Excellent merely from the mysterious process of thinking? Alas, science can provide no assurances! I am a miserable creature!
Rob
oOo
rbadac (July 11, 1999)
Rob Suggs wrote:
> My dear Oozing, one can never do enough, can one? ...'No, Billy, that's not how you do it, here, tear me out another page...look, you fold it like this, then like this, then you draw the bugs on these triangles and leave these blank. See? Bugs. No bugs. Bugs. No bugs. Now you try it.
'You know, you shunta left your skateboard lying around where that big man could step on it and fall down. He sure did dance funny when he hit that shelf, though, didn't he? What a stink ! P.U. !!
'Gimme another page. No, that one's got too much writing on it, gimme that other one, the one that says First Printing. We'll play Hangman...'
two kids drinking boysenberry Slurpees
oOo
Rob Suggs (July 11, 1999)
Curiouser and curiouser."No," said the little voice from left occipital. "You shan't compose another facetious riposte for the electronic symposium! Intellectual communion is far too precious. We have more to offer on radical psychosexual prototext in May Sinclair. Give me that keyboard!"
"PPPPTTTT" returned rbadac's right occipital. "Go get your own toys, it's my turn now. Besides, your upper parietal neurons are misfiring."
"Whaa--? I---"
"Made ya look! Now giddowdahere. Repress yourself."
Thus the inner conflict raged on. For the time being there were two rbadacs, but how long before four? Sixteen?
In a metropolitan library, a time bomb ticked on.
ooOoo