Creative Writing – Page 6

Worms

I was musing on the historical origins of the rod of Asclepius in the shower this morning (as you do) and suffered another one of those attacks where my brain produces something completely awful and then won’t let me rest until I inflict it upon a candid world. So it is with great sorrow, regret and apology that I present the following vicious and unjustified attack upon the musical legacy of the Beach Boys. I am so very sorry…

Worm, worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
Guinea worm, worm, worm, I gotta worm!
I gotta worm, worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
Gotta worm, worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
Messing with my brain! Worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
I’m in real bad pain! Worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
I’m sick of all the healers with their same old tricks,
I gotta find a new Doc with a twisty stick!
I gotta worm, worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
Guinea worm, worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
Messing with my brain! Worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!
I’m in real bad pain! Worm, guinea worm, I gotta worm!

Sorry.

Questions from my Toilet Paper

1: What is the best way to identify a frog species?
Stop it at the border and demand its papers

2: Some frogs can change the colour of their skin, why would they do this?
To keep up with the latest fashions

3: What is the biggest threat to our frogs?
Frog eating aliens from Tau Capricorni

4: True of False? Frogs can leap higher than a house.
True, for a sufficiently small house and a sufficiently large frog.

On France

France is a pentagonal country located in Western Europe, South America, the Caribbean, the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Antarctica and near Canada. In the middle of France is an island called France. In the middle of the island is a city. In the middle of the city is an island and in the middle of the island is a hunchback. The city is called Paris, and has nothing to do with the Trojan War.

Paris has an iron tower, a painting of a lady, tunnels lined with skulls and Jim Morrison.

Three languages are spoken in France, French, Breton and Occitan. Nobody understands Breton and nobody speaks Occitan. French people walk on stilts and sleep all winter. They will kiss you whether you want them to or not.

France was founded by Charlemagne who owned an elephant and was the grandson of a hammer. He shed the blood of the Saxon men. France famously killed their king and then set up new kings all over Europe to say sorry. They surrendered to Hitler in World War II, but you probably would have as well.

England and France fight all the time, except when they’re friends.

If French people don’t kiss you, they may instead blow you up. Boum!

That is really all you need to know about France.

The Seven Wonders of the Second World War

1: The HMS Habakkuk (UK/Canada)
2: His Majesty’s Artillery Barrages, Brixton and Leyton (UK)
3: The USS George Washington and USS Theodore Roosevelt Invasion Carriers (USA)
4: The Mukhoboyka Sonic Anti-Aircraft Array (USSR)
5: The Landkreuzer P. 1400 Ratte II Super Tank (Germany)
6: The Silberadler Intercontinental Bomber (Germany)
7: The Mount Takao Grand Imperial Bunker Complex (Japan)

Well, I never claimed to be Shakespeare

Pop Sonnets is great! Try figuring out each song before you read the tagline.

And while I can’t claim the same skill with letters as the bards behind the original, I couldn’t help but turn my hand to a bit of conversion from the modern…

Cruel seconds chase their course around the dial,
Sly minutes follow surely in their way,
Fast fading hours in darkness bring no smile,
And man may run no faster than the day,
Time’s arrow slips the clutch of all our care,
No method or design to stay its flight,
Small time remains, one night our love to share,
No morning shall come forth from out this night,
If dream this be I truly cannot bear,
A cynic’s coat I always having worn,
My hopes arise in contrast to despair,
God grant my plea to never see the dawn,
– Fain I would have the timepiece handless be,
One score and four hours left to spend with thee,

Now, who’s that by?

THE GREATEST TV SHOW OF ALL TIME!

There’s this guy, right? And he has this power, but he doesn’t know what the power is, just that he has it. And to find out what it is, he has to go on, like, a quest, and in the quest he visits this aircraft carrier, but it’s not really an aircraft carrier, it’s actually a parking garage. And in the garage there’s this, like, sort of bear man – he’s a man, but he’s also like a bear, right? Like, he’s big and hairy and he growls sometimes so you might think he’s a bear. And the bear man tells him something really important to do with concrete. And so now he has to go out and get the concrete, like all of the concrete, but there’s this big corporation that makes the concrete and they won’t give it to him. So he has to get a lawyer who specialises in concrete to represent him, but, and here’s the thing, he can’t afford a lawyer, so he has to hire a hot dog seller who says he’s a lawyer. But he’s not really a lawyer, he’s just a hot dog seller. And the hot dog seller has a dark past, which we see in flashback. And that’s pretty much the first season. In the second season there’s going to be this guy who flies and shoots firebolts from his hands. And then there’s, like, this other guy, and he has a power too and he knows what his power is and if our guy finds out what his power is it means the new guy will lose his power, right? And as the viewers we don’t know what his power is, although he already knows it, and he won’t tell anyone. And if he loses his power he’ll be turned into something really stupid like a dog, or an aircraft carrier or something. And so he wants to stop the other guy because he doesn’t want to be a dog or an aircraft carrier. So he’s hunting down the other guy and he has a friend who’s a really good hunter, but he has to pay him because although he’s his friend he doesn’t work for free, ever, because that’s his policy and he only accepts two dollar bills in payment and he wants a lot of them because he’s really expensive even to his friends. So they need to hunt for the other guy but also for lots of two dollar bills because they’re really rare. And the new guy has some kind of problem, maybe with his feet or his calves, and he’s always complaining about them and the hunter also has a problem that he complains about all the time, so they’re always complaining and they’re like the complaint brothers which is what the all fans will actually call them. And the show will be called “MAGNUM P.I. THE FORGOTTEN YEARS” and the new guy is played by the same actor as the old guy because they’re twins.

Notes on Physics

The Probability Maxim: All possibilities are played out somewhere in Probability.

The Probability Paradox: Probability travel links universes into continua that invalidate the Probability Maxim. First noted by the Wyrm philosopher Ryzan in 720 BC.

Artonic Quantum Theory: Artonic energy can only be expended in discrete units or quanta. This limits the amount to which Probability can be fractured, thus restricting which universes can be reached from any given universe and creating multiple interlaced continua – thus preserving the Probability Maxim. Disproven when the energy value of the Artonic Quanta was shown to be beneath the minimum necessary to fracture Probability.

Meta-Probability Theory: Championed by Zurvár physicist Àeksùl this theory proposed a second dimension of Probability, creating continua inaccessible to standard Artonic Probability travel. Fell into disfavour after the death of Àeksùl in his tragic laboratory disaster.

Harmonic Probability Theory: Probability can only be fractured in discrete units, restricting what universes are accessible and creating multiple interlaced continua – thus preserving the Probability Maxim. The currently accepted solution to the Probability Paradox.

The Russian Village

When I was kid I was really in to the paranormal (I still am, although I like to think I’m a lot less credulous today than I was back then). At school we had a book club where they’d hand out a catalog three or four times a year and (if you could convince your parents to fork over the cash) you could put in an order, and a couple of months later the books would arrive and get handed out. Now and then the catalog would contain books about monsters, ghosts and other “unexplained mysteries” and I’d always convince my parents to buy them for me.

In one of these books – it had a rowboat being capsized by the Loch Ness Monster on the cover – there was a story that has always stuck with me.

It was about an isolated village in Russia. Just over the hill from this village was another village that had once been run by monks, but in the middle ages there’d been an investigation by the Tsar’s troops who’d discovered that the Monks were devil worshipers and had put them all to the sword. Ever since, the village had been abandoned, and even though it was surrounded by fertile land the locals wouldn’t graze their sheep on it because it was ‘cursed’. The buildings were mostly collapsed, but the church belltower was still standing on one side of the village square, which was surrounded by stone benches.

The only people who used to go to the ruins were the local youths who’d prove how brave they were by trying to run from the top of the ruins to the bottom and then back between when the sun started to set and when the last rays left the belltower. There were all kinds of stories about what would happen to anyone who failed, but no one ever came to any harm, although no one would visit the ruins after sunset.

Now supposedly in the late 1800s a teacher named Swerts was sent to the village by the government to help “modernise” the area. He’d been brought in from Germany and was highly dismissive of the Russian peasants and their beliefs. When he learnt about the ‘cursed’ ruins, he decided that he was going to prove there was nothing to the story, and announced that he was going to spend the night there. The locals tried to talk him out of it, but he was insistent and eventually convinced some of them to assist him. They set out in the afternoon before a night of the full moon, and helped him get into the belltower by stacking up some of the benches from the square. They then hurried away, promising to come back and help him down the next morning.

When the sun came up they headed back to the ruins. They reached the square and called for Swerts, but he didn’t respond. After some nervous discussion two of the bravest men climbed up into the tower. On the top floor they found Swerts, huddled in a corner in terror with his arms wrapped around his head, weeping quietly and whimpering under his breath.

They couldn’t get any sense out of him, but they managed to get him down the tower and into the square. Here he went into hysterics, shrieking in German and apparently gesturing at the piled up benches. In the end one of the villagers had to knock him out, and they carried him back to the village.

After several weeks there was no change in Swerts’s condition, so the villagers sent a message to the authorities. A new teacher was sent out, and Swerts was sent back to Germany, where he was confined to a lunatic asylum in Cologne. No one dared to visit the ruins again, and after the Soviets came to power the site was cleared and the land put back into production.

As I said, this story stuck with me for some reason, always floating around in the back of my head. As I got older I discovered that most of the stories in the book were excitingly rewritten but exaggerated accounts of well known (and often completely debunked) ‘paranormal’ incidents, but I never found any other references to that particular one.

Then a few years back a friend of mine moved to Germany for work and ended up living just outside Bonn (which is just down the road from Cologne). I jokingly asked if he could say hi to Swerts at the local lunatic asylum for me, and in the resulting discussion ended up telling him the whole story. It turned out that one of the friends he and his wife had made was a member of the local historical society and he’d said he’d ask her if any records were available.

It turns out that there was a lunatic asylum just outside Cologne in the late 19th century, and although it was destroyed during World War II some of the records survived. Looking though these (they’d recently been digitised) she found that a teacher named Ralf Swartz was admitted to the asylum in 1882 with ‘hysterical paralysis’ after a trip to Georgia. He remained an inmate until he died of a seizure in 1907 and in all that time was completely non-communicative. He simply repeated just one phrase, over and over under his breath – Die heiligen Brüder nicht gerne auf dem Boden sitzend.

“The Holy Brothers don’t like to sit on the earth”

The dâ vamikèd

The Zurvár people have a large store of legends and myths, many of which are specific to particular Houses. One story shared between almost all Houses however is the dâ vamikèd, or “Tale of Creation”, which seeks to explain the origin of the Zurvár and their culture’s strong relationship to the ocean. Versions of the story have been traced back for over 700 years, and although variations abound, the core narrative of the tale remains constant, with “the Creator” (ràvamiket) making the five important elements of Zurvár existence in a specific order common to all versions.

The version of the dâ vamikèd presented here is taken from the well respected collection of Zurvár myths and songs collated and translated into English by Gâron Kár Vèelisavik in 1987.

The Tale of Creation

In the time before the sun, the Creator needed to cross the Great Ocean. So with his hands he crafted the first boat and set sail on his journey.

But it was dark on the ocean, and the Creator could not see his way. So he took coals from his stove and threw them into the sky. They became the stars and lit his way so he was no longer lost, and he continued on his journey.

But the Ocean was empty of all life and the Creator grew hungry. So he took splinters from his oars and threw them into the water. They became the first fish. He caught a fish, and cooked it on his stove, so he was no longer hungry, and he continued on his journey.

But the journey grew long and there was no sound on the ocean but the wind and the waves and the creak of the boat. The Creator become downhearted. So he tore pieces of cloth from his sail and threw them into the air. They became the first seabirds, which danced between the waves and filled the air with their cries. He was no longer downhearted, and he continued on his journey.

But the Ocean was wide and the Creator grew lonely. So he took twine from his ropes and knotted them together. They became the first Zurvár and provided him with the company he craved. He was no longer lonely, and he continued on his journey.

After many days of sailing, the Great Ocean came to an end. The Creator beached his boat on the far shore and talked with the Zurvár, teaching them to dance and sing like the seabirds, to catch and cook fish, to navigate by the stars and to build boats of their own. He no longer needed his boat, so he pushed it into the water and set it aflame. But the boat did not sink, it burnt brighter and brighter, then rose into the sky and became the sun.

And to this day the Creator’s boat still sails across the sky every day to remind the Zurvár of the Creator and all that he taught them.

The sequence of Boat, Stars, Fish, Birds and Zurvár (often represented by the knots tied by the Creator) is found in many aspects of Zurvár society, including the standard suits of playing cards and the days of the traditional five day week. The importance of the number five to Zurvár culture is also often traced to the Tale of Creation, although it is unclear whether the primacy of five derives from the five elements of the story, or vice-versa.

The Creator character of the story has never been worshiped by the Zurvár. He (or in some versions she) is not viewed as a god, but as an important and respected ancestor. Some Houses claim direct descent from the Creator via long and complex genealogies, some of which have been proved to be accurate for as far back as the early 1100s, although nowdays those who take such tales as literal truth are far and few between.

All Your Questions Answered

What was the first meme ever created?
Put a rock on your head and walk like Ugg does. It became popular during the spring of 38,423 BC, but was completely played out by late summer.

What actually happened to JFK?
During surgery for a cranial blood clot in 1960 a surgeon operating on orders from the British Royal Family inserted a small, radio controlled explosive in his skull. This was set off in Dallas by an MI6 operative when Kennedy started making moves to reveal British Intelligence involvement in the Sudan.

You have just become the emperor of the Roman Empire. What do you do now?
Poison my mother and marry my horse.

In your honest opinions, will the sitcom “Friends” have an anniversary reunion of some sort this year?
The studio won’t allow it. If all six actors are ever in the same location again Matthew Perry will reclaim his horcruxes, evolve into his final form and cast the Earth into a bottomless abyss of torment and hellfire for all eternity.

Which Ninja Turtle would you be and why?
Giotto – the one the other Turtles were too scared to talk about.

Traffic jams start and stop for no evident reason sometimes. What are some interesting explanations for this phenomenon?
Deep underground there’s a civilisation of malicious, degenerate dwarfs called Deros. They use mind control machines to make people randomly slow down their cars to cause traffic jams and accidents, and hence spread despondency, hatred and despair to the human population.

Why isn’t Glenn Beck on the radio anymore?
He finally evolved from his larval form. They tried to keep going with the show, but had to banish him back to his home dimension after he devoured three separate production teams.

Why do cats like boxes so much?
They’re all publicity whores by nature, and are trying to muscle in on the fame of Schrödinger’s Cat (sadly most cats lack the intelligence to comprehend the macro-scale implications of quantum entanglement, or notice the bit about the vial of poison).

Which famous person is thought to be dead when she or he truly isn’t?
Niels Bohr. As long as he remains unobserved he’s immortal.

Has the ABC finally admitted that Mr Squiggle was a Puppet?
Please, this is such an obvious COVER UP. Mr Squiggle was a living, breathing lunar ALIEN – this is simply the latest LIE from the New World Order to hide the TRUTH about the soulless deals the NSA and Illuminati have made to SELL US ALL OUT to the extraterrestrials. Sure Mr Squiggle is just a puppet, like Denver Airport is just a transport hub and Kurt Cobain shot himself. WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!!

The year is 2213, what is your most realistic idea/view of how everything will be?
Well if man is still alive, and woman can survive they’ll find that they’ll need to wait 312 years to be featured in a Zager and Evans song.

Which movies best represent their respective decade within popular culture?
Battlefield Earth is a surprisingly accurate depiction of the 2020’s when the… I’ve said too much.

Why is Garden City being evacuated?
The real question is why have people been allowed in there at all for the last twenty years?

Why do people willingly chose to be Juggalos?
Well the kids, they listen to the ICP music, which gives them the brain damage, with the rainbows and the magnets, so they don’t know what dressing and behaving like a civilised person is all about!

Why were there no new TV shows this week?
TV has finally run out. Too many houses with multiple TVs finally exhausted the supply. From now on there will be nothing but repeats, forever.

What’s your best joke about a specific nation?
An Elbonian walks into a bar with a pig on a leash. The Bartender says “Hey, you can’t bring that pig in here!” “Pig!?” replies the Elbonian “That’s my wife!” (The joke is that he’s too poor to marry a cow)

Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no normal human being would eat?
It’s so when FEMA and Barrack HUSSEIN NObama steal half your electricities you’ll still be able to make toast.

If his name is Chuck E.Cheese, what does the “E” stand for?
Emesis. It goes along with “Chuck” and explains what happens if you eat his food.

If you could make a disease, what would you call it, and what are the effects?
Contagious Botulotourettism. Sufferers randomly and uncontrollably shout the word ‘THAUTHAGETH!’ in the stupidest voice they can until they shake off the virus.

If Santa exists, but parents don’t believe in him, where do they think the presents came from?
Santa brainwashes the parents of the world to think they bought the presents. He does this by harnessing the Earth’s magnetic field – why else do you think he’s based at the north pole? To maintain the illusion, he debits the parents’ accounts by an appropriate amount, which – combined with the fact that the elves are paid only about 25 US cents a day – makes him one of the richest individuals on Earth. The US Government is aware of this massive scam, and set up HAARP to try and disrupt his nefarious brainwashing apparatus. Results so far have been mixed.

How does McDonalds food make your farts smell like McDonalds so quickly?
All McDonalds food contains the carefully collected and dried sweat of an alien being Ray Kroc captured outside of Roswell New Mexico in 1947 (this creature is the model for Ronald McDonald and actually appeared in several early McDonalds commercials). Amino acids in the sweat make the food highly addictive, but certain alien salts are immediately absorbed by the stomach lining, circulated through the blood and deposited into the intestines, where bacteria rapidly convert them into gas. These salts bond strongly with volatile compounds in the food, and carry them through this entire process, with the result that the resulting rapid flatulence strongly smells of the original food.

What happens if you cut off a mole?
He’ll give you the finger at the next set of lights. But a more important question is how the hell did he pass the visual component of the licensing test?

How would it feel to be turned into an athletic woman’s shoe for eternity?
It’d be kind of soul crushing.

If you had a theme song that played every time you entered a room, what would it be?
The old Thames Television ident theme. Short, but attention grabbing.

What are some loopholes every Vatican City citizen should know?
When arrested, if you can recite the 51st Psalm in Latin from memory you can claim “Benefit of Clergy” and get off scot free. They also have to supply you with up to half a pound of holy water and/or incense on demand, which is why the Swiss Guard have those big puffy pantaloons (that’s where they keep it).