Inadequate Prep
It was to be a routine colonoscopy, but I died.
A brightly lit, red-carpeted corridor lay ahead of me. Along the way were many doors. Curious, I opened one of them to see a tableau of a moment of my life which wasn't particularly praiseworthy. I shut it.
Summoning intestinal fortitude, I tried another door--again, it wasn't pretty. I became worried, being as I was dead. Someone obviously had rolled out red carpet for me, but what was behind the doors wasn't particularly welcoming.
Finally, I opened a door to a wonderful scene from my past. I was humble, magnanimous, altruistic, and generous. I was putting myself second or third or fourth. I looked good!
This encouraged me to open more, a passing-in-review of sorts. Relieved, I found more doors opened to exemplary life-scenes than shameful ones. That's fair, isn't it? Everyone's life has good and bad.
Everyone learns along the way.
Learning--mine was validated by more good visions presenting than bad. Yes, I had learned! I still opened a few doors to stinkers, but the scale was tipping my way.
I came to the end, where, I saw in "the light," dead relatives--mother, father, others. They were smiling and welcoming, but behind them a grim man stared at me.
I pushed my way through to confront him.
"Sir?"
"Yes," he responded. "I'm here reporting to you."
"About?"
"About your soul." I swallowed hard. "You see," he continued, "not all of yourself will see Paradise. There are parts of you that will go...elsewhere."
"Elsewhere?"
"That doesn't concern your good parts. We don't take the good with the bad here. Hope that's acceptable."
Thinking here was instantaneous: I won't be separated--dissected! The bad had made me the good person I am. They're a part of me, too.
"All or none," I answered. "I must be true to myself."
"Fine," he said, with finality.
I awoke in the Recovery Room.
"I'm afraid we weren't able to complete your colonoscopy," the gastroenterologist apologized. "Too much debris--feces--on your colon walls."
My epiphany: You can't see good tissue through crap; alternatively, the good through the bad.
"Your purge failed," he went on. "I'm afraid your bowel prep was inadequate. We'll reschedule you again and this time order a 2-day prep."
Another prep, my ass!
My epiphany matured: It's not "you are what you eat"; it's "you are what you keep."
Pins and Screws and Eyes of Needles — Oh, My!
Under general anesthesia, the urologist pressed Peter Harper's testicles along his inguinal canals until they reached the final bottlenecks of swollen inguinal rings.
“It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven,” he said under his breath. Peter Harper was indeed very rich.
“What?” asked the anesthesiologist.
“Eye of the needle,” he repeated, pressing gloved thumbs on each bulge. He forced Harper's gonads, squeezing them forward until wringing them through, bruised, into their familiar resting places.
“Those are surely gonna be sore for a while,” the urologist said, transferring care to the orthopedic surgeon who prepared plaster of Paris to immobilize Harper's pelvic ring. He hoped the six separate fractures and disarticulated femur head would heal with the help of a dozen titanium pins and screws.
No one had informed them just how Harper had sustained these injuries, by now requiring six units of blood. Car accident vs being impaled by falling onto something were the leading guesses.
After the orthopedic surgeon shaped the plaster girdle, strategically windowed for bodily functions, ice packs were placed to reduce the swelling of his genitals protruding through the cutaway holes.
The urologist implanted the suprapubic catheter to rest his bladder until his penile urethra could pass anything more viscous than gas. Using the other access hole, the colon and rectal surgeon, having finished the colostomy, next identified the traumatic rectal-bladder fistula via proctoscope, sealing it with an endoscopic procto-ring.
After the suctioning saliva and other comatose secretions had been done, the nurse in the recovery room had time to wonder. Car accident?
Peter Harper attempted to speak.
“What?” his nurse asked. “You’re out of surgery and doing fine.” Harper spoke again. Once again she couldn’t understand. “Try again, Mr. Harper. Cough.” He coughed and groaned from the pain.
“Who was that woman?” he finally rasped.
“What woman?” the nurse asked. “Cough again.” He coughed again. He groaned again.
“That woman,” he repeated. “I have to find out who she is.” He coughed yet again. “She was fucking fantastic.”
"Easy there, lover-boy. You might unscrew your screws."
"That's really funny, he sputtered, then drifted off.
Happy Endings
Quisque was a storyteller always in search of a happy ending. He was a talented and educated raconteur, but everything he wrote he limited to exactly 125 words. He was a neurotic.
Like most writers.
Since everything he wrote was only 125 words, and since he was always in search of a happy ending, four of those words, at the minimum, had to include that happy ending, as such,
"...lived happily ever after."
Thus, even such a terse conclusion left only 121 words, max, to tell a tale with a beginning, middle, and end. Including a happy ending.
And if the ending were to be more complex than merely the "...lived happily ever after," that meant even fewer words that could be used to arrive there.
On this particular day, he wrote this opening, eating up, at the outset, four words:
Once upon a time...
[This reduced his opus to 117 words which, as it turned out, was divisible by 3. Thus, he could perfectly balance the beginning, middle, and end with 39 words each.]
THE BEGINNING
...there was a man whose biography was told in allotments of 39 words. His childhood, thus, he truncated as, Got birthed, learned to walk and talk, went to school, made mistakes, sometimes learned lessons. Sometimes, however, he did not. [39 words]
THE MIDDLE
Found a girl, made her happy, then got her pregnant, married her, made her unhappy, became a father, kept making her unhappy. Found another girl—a secret girl—a masseuse who made happy endings, but made her unhappy, too. [39 words]
THE ENDING
His wife learned and conspired with his masseuse lover to prepare a special massage table. Prone, his face sealed one hole in the table, his genitalia another. Two can wield cutlery faster than one. They became lovers and so… [39 words]
… lived happily ever after.
And so, Quisque was successful. Another perfect 125-word story, replete with a beginning, a middle, and a happy ending, and a moral, too, at that!
He was pleased, for it was the closest thing he would ever get to a happy ending again, without a face or genitalia.
Cold Calling: Truth in Advertising
"Hello. Is this Geraldo?"
"No, it's Gerard. Who's calling?"
"Hello, Gerald. Don't let the accent fool you; my name is, um, Eddie. I'm calling because you've been pre-approved for a low promotional interesting credit card."
"What's the interest, Eddie?
"Huh? Who?"
"Eddie--you!"
Thank you for that, Jerry. Yes. I'm Eddie. The interested rate is very exciting, because it's actually a minus interest rate. The more you charge, the less you have to pay. Sound of interest to you?"
"Sounds too good to be true."
"And too true, George. May I have your Social Security number?"
"Why do you need that?"
"Just a routine credit check."
"Why does my credit need to be checked if I'm going to get paid with minus interest for charging things?"
"Oh, you, know, all routine."
[CLICK]
"Hello, is this Mary?"
"Actually, my name is Mary-Anne."
"Thank you for that information, Marian. My name is, um, Freddy. Could I interest you in a lifetime supply for free gasoline?"
"I drive an EV, Freddy."
"Who? Oh, yes, I am Eddie."
"I thought it was Freddy."
"Yes--Freddy. Well then, would you be interesting in a lifetime supply of electricity? Please, just give me your Social Security number and I'll see if your number quantifies."
[CLICK]
"Hello, Dick."
"It's Richard."
"OK, Rick. My name is, um, well, it's Dick, too! How ya like that?"
"Dick, you called me. Tell me what you're calling for."
"Well, Ricky, I've been directed to notify you of an incredible offer you qualify for."
"I'm listening."
"I'm the conservative for a considerable amount of money, but I need someone to accept it into their bank account. We've got to move it for tax reasons."
"How much?"
"$30 million."
"Tell me more."
"Just give me your bank's routing and account numbers and your Social Security number and I can transfer the money right now."
"Right now?"
"Yes, while you're on the phone with me."
"OK, ready?"
The information was given.
"Please hold."
---
"Mr. Burubu!" Asmir shouted, "Mr. Dick's given me all the information we need!"
"That's great, Asmir!"
"OK, so what do I do now?"
"Make the transfer. That's what we promised."
"If only more people would believe me."
The Great Badalamenti!
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” — Arthur C. Clarke
________________
"And now for my final trick," the Great Badalamenti, boasted, "I'll make someone in the audience disappear."
The applause was anemic. He was the fifth magician of the night, so the crowd were visibly tired, yawning and fidgeting.
"A volunteer, anyone?" He looked around his audience. "How 'bout you, sir? Yes, you, with the Rolex. And that beautiful wife. Right, wife?"
A well-dressed middle-aged man nodded--about his wife--and then pointed to himself.
"Yes, you! Come on up."
A smattering of applause began. The man kissed his stunning wife at their table and rose, albeit tentatively. His wife seemed irked by the show of affection, of which the Great Badalamenti took notice and great interest.
Once the man had joined him onstage, the audience applause grew.
"And you are?"
"Roderick," the man answered.
More applause.
The Great Badalamenti then removed from his mouth what must have been over a hundred colored handkerchiefs tied together in one long string. When he shook out the heap of cloth, it billowed into a multicolored, large single sheet.
More applause.
The Great Badalamenti threw the sheet over Roderick.
"Roderick?" the Great Badlamenti asked.
"Yes?" he answered from under the sheet.
"Have we ever met before?" he asked.
"No," answered Roderick, although his beautiful wife knew better.
"OK, when I count to three, I want you to fixate on Hell."
"Hell?"
"Yes, Hell." Then to the audience, "It makes for dramatic notoriety." The audience laughed. Back to Roderick, "Got it? Hell?"
"Yes," Roderick answered, "Hell, firmly in my mind."
"Great. Now when I tap your head, that's where you're going. Don't worry, you'll just be visiting." The audience laughed.
The Great Badalamenti tapped Roderick on the head. The sheet collapsed to the ground--quite empty.
The audience gasped, then applauded wildly. The magician took a bow, the lights went out, the music queued, and when the lights returned, the stage was empty.
It was a great show, but it wasn't a great trick; because it wasn't a trick.
The Great Badalamenti had a new girlfriend and wore his new Rolex.
________________
“Any sufficiently advanced evil is indistinguishable from magic.” — the Author
Fools Like Me
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree...Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.— Joyce Kilmer, 1915
I was dispatched to inspect Earth 2.0 after four years of training. This Earth-sized planet, in the habitable zone of the N14-Z system, turned out to be within only a half-lifetime's reach via paraluminal speeds. I was awakened by my automaton 3 days out from orbit injection, so by the time of atmospheric entry I was 100% physiologic again.
Descent was nominal. I had been trained well. The maps had been accurate, too, so I targeted a heavily wooded subcontinent that had open swaths dividing it. Seeing it from above, I imagined it as some type of highway system connecting all the wooded areas. The more I followed the linear patterns, the more I realized one could probably connect the entire planet with them.
I landed on one such open area, and after an hour of xeno-acclimation, as per the protocol that had been established, I was ready to disembark from my vehicle. After finally having boots on the ground, finally out in this new world, I took a deep breath. All seemed well.
It had been a long time since I had seen green, but what lay around me was a verdant area of angled flora, rising dozens of meters into the blue sky. Green is hardwired into the human brain. It's in our DNA. Its electromagnetic spectrum frequency soothes the mind. I felt at peace here. As long as there was green, I'd be OK.
The trees' angulations made them look like strings of connected Ws, Ms, and Xs. White puffy clouds dotted blue skies above the horizon. As long as the sky was blue, I'd be OK. Blue and white with green — another scheme we're hardwired for.
I was home — it was the first thing I thought. I thought I had thought it; it was more like the thought had been presented to me.
But I knew I wasn't home, really. Still, I don't know if a more Earthly welcome could have been presented to me, had it been scripted and fed into some planet-making machine.
The trees were slightly different, even a little "off," but I could get used to that. They were very thick, yet twiggy, with lots of irregular features in the bark. But as long as they were green, I'd be OK. As long as they were emerald, celadon, chartreuse, jade, mint, olive, myrtle, citron, or harlequin, I'd be OK. There were all of these hues within the green spectrum, but also one more, of a greenish shade unknown to my Earth. I realized I had the distinctive honor, bestowed upon me, of naming it myself.
Remy. I named this unique tree's green "Remy." Remy-green, like the freshly cut oars hewn for rowing, still a bit green when first striking the blue waters.
I watched, now, the "slightly off" aspects of the flying insect-like creatures, minding their own business in the variegated flowers and the green trees. I followed one particularly colorful one and wondered about mandibles, venom, stingers, and yet-to-be-discovered contrivances of defense. From childhood Earth had trained me well, so I was cautious. This tiny beast fluttered to the Remy-green tree in particular.
The tree, my favorite, so far, stood with angled branches as if it were waiting patiently for something, its arms akimbo. The markings and knots on its "bark" fired up my mind's pareidolia, and I imagined a strange alien face on it. I scanned laterally across the trees to the left and right, and found similar markings. The more I studied them, the more discrete faces seemed to emerge. Was this some sort of welcoming committee, I joked to myself. And was that even funny? Or a premonition?
Pareidolia is well-established in the space program. It is the reason we see a "Man in the Moon," or that "face" in that rocky pyramid on Mars. I looked up and saw the giraffes and lobsters in the billowed clouds. This aptitude figured prominently in Man's survival, expressly for the advantage of recognizing faces or the appearances of danger. Recognition is the ignition for interaction; interaction is the fuel for society.
Pareidolia had served us well.
Still, these visages in the bark were almost spot-on for faces. By looking deeply into them I could almost know what such faces might be thinking.
And then I heard them.
It was a low rumble at first, in frequencies so deep it was hard for me to echolocate any discrete origin. But the sounds began climbing up the scales until it was obvious they were coming from these "face-trees."
I sat on a soft mound of dirt and just watched and listened. And I saw things. Were lip-like thin shelves of bark moving? I re-checked my chromagraphic analyzer, and there was nothing in the air, hallucinogenic or otherwise, except oxygen, nitrogen, and some trace elements.
My first tree of scrutiny, the Remy-green tree, began to get louder, out-singing (singing?) the others. Then, one of its akimbo branches extended, its terminal part flexing upward and inward, as if to wave me toward it.
The entire soundscape began to come together in unison, as if I were being welcomed into some planetary rite of passage.
I rose and approached the tree. The branches on the other trees began to shake in place, adding a percussive element to the chorale. I got close enough to its Remy-green to touch it, but I hesitated. Again, an abundance of Earth caution discouraged me from jumping right into the milieu of another life form. Was this flora? Fauna? Something altogether different? Something altogether friendly?
Was it beckoning me or warning me? Welcoming me or condemning me?
I needn't have anguished so. It finally extended a branch and touched me on the top of my head. That's when I heard every tree on the planet, the entire Earth 2.0 choir, singing heavenly out to the lightyears in an explosive array of sinusoidal, electromagnetic vectors.
I needed not be anywhere else again.
I signed out of my explorer's datalog, and I began my new adventure. I was changed. I was changing. I was being changed.
I would not be the last man from Earth 1 to come to Earth 2. I had no idea how long had passed before I saw men and women come here again. By my reckoning, it would have been about another 30 more years or so for the first Earth to revisit the second. When they did, this time it was with five explorers on a pre-colonization mission. They had come with all of my notes, a voluminous trove that ended abruptly. Indeed, my observations were historical records. And when they had stopped, so suddenly, that was historical as well — and the motivation to find out why.
Of the five interworld travelers, one of them had a personal stake in it, as he was my son.
My son, Remy.
I loved him dearly, but — still — I needed not be anywhere else.
Based on my data, they had landed on the same patch of clearance and found the environment as inviting as I had. They found the same contingent of welcoming "trees," and they fell for the pareidolia ignited in their mind's eye. They had been warned by my observations, and so they were wary of reading too much into it. But Remy was troubled.
He eyed one particular tree, standing among the others — what he couldn't know was of an eponymous shade of green. It stood proudly as if were some member-in-good-standing, with interesting marks and knots. He didn't fight the pareidolia. Instead, he embraced its call.
"Dad?"
The branch's touch was re-enacted, the connection made again, and the new evolution of Man had begun, as the official welcome to Earth 2. Remy embraced his father, even if it was a spiritual act carried by the preternatural fluids imbued within the cellulose and fibers of trees whose bark imperfections mimicked the faces of all visitors who had come before.
Remy and his father saw their entire new world before them. They felt every leaf, branch, trunk, and root; swam in its water table; tasted its life. Their euphoria was a grasp of an entire network of mycelial synergy. They partook in philosophy, mathematics, theology, and a thousand other sciences and arts.
The knowledge — and the assimilation thereof — went far beyond the roots and the synapsed consortium so realized; it extended to the very minerals that held the data of worlds and stars born, universe-sown, and reborn. They also partook in something the first Earth had never been able to achieve.
They had peace on Earth.
Limerick(s) of the Week # 53: Great Persons Graded Personally
Thomas Edison, a great inventor, we think
Defined success for those on the brink
As 10% inspiration
But 90% perspiration
Which proves all geniuses stink
Einstein tried to unify fundamental fields
In Theory, of Everything, minus one, unrevealed,
'Cause gravity got the best of him
When he couldn't lift the floor from his chin
After slipping on the quantum banana he peeled
Madame Curie loved seeing through things
With the radiation that the letter-X brings
But she just didn't figure
That the fallout was bigger
When her little lady fingers caved in
Alexander Graham Bell
Would make it easy to tell
People far away
What telemarketers say
When they cold-call you to spamly oversell
Leonardo da Vinci took a girl
Mona Lisa, to canvas and oil
But in Renaissance zeal
He tried copping a feel
Which is why she gave him that look
Pervert Guglielmo Marconi
Loved hot, his day's macaroni
But microwaves he broadcast'a
Were too hot for the pasta
So he live-streamed his balls and bologna
Two Brothers were certainly right
About how heavier-than-air could take flight
The others crashed twice
And some even thrice
So two or three wrongs don't make a Wright
Louis Pasteur got concerned
When all his attentions to his lady were spurned
He offered milk of human kindness
She said, "Shove it kindly up your ass!
Unpasteurized, it must've soured and turned
Archimedes said, "Eureka, I've found it!"
When he put hot water around it
His erection was buoyant
With empiric enjoyment
But the water displacement had drowned it
Hedy Lamarr was a Hollywood beauty
Who wanted to do her immigrant's duty
She went from Howard Hughes-bopping
To frequency-hopping
'Cause she loved radar more than her booty
_________
BONUS: the inventor of divorce
***
Henry the VIIIth was a big thingdom
Who was above all living things in his kingdom
But a corkscrewy spirochete
Chartreuse and indiscrete
Took him down to his grave a'dribbling
Billy Goats Gruff and Gruffer
Once upon a time, there was a lush pasture. The only way to get to it was via a stone arch bridge over a swift stream.
The owner of the pasture was fixated on preventing the goats next door from getting across because they ate everything he grew. So he found a homeless troll and offered him the job.
"You do eat goats, right?" he asked the troll. "Even the gruff ones?"
"Umph," replied the troll, which the pasture owner took for a yes.
Soon, his pastures became lush again, verdant and bountiful with waves of variegated plant blooms. He'd open his cottage windows to inhale their fragrant bouquet every morning.
One such morning he flared his nostrils and, to his horror, what wafted into them was the malodorous fetidness of goatshit. Furious, he made haste to the bridge where his troll was, noting swaths of bald pasture on the way.
"What the hell, troll!" he shouted.
"Umph!" the troll snorted.
"Let's talk about this, shall we?" he asked the troll icily.
"Umph!"
"Did a billy goat--gruff, that is--try to cross this bridge?"
"Umph!"
"And did she convince you not to eat her because he said the next goat would be much tastier?"
"Umph!"
"And gruffer?"
"Umph!"
"And so you let her pass, is that right?"
"Umph!"
"And then that next goat came along and said the same goddamn thing? That you should wait for the next goat because she would be even tastier and gruffer?"
"Umph!"
"So you let her pass, too, is that right?"
"Umph!"
"And that third gruffiest and tastiest goat of them all, did you eat even her?" The troll fell silent. "You didn't eat a single goat, did you!" he shouted.
"Umph!"
"So what happened? What'd you do to 'em? Did you have your way with those goats?"
"Well," the troll suddenly articulated eloquently, "let me ruminate on that a moment."
The pasture owner was stunned. "Are you trying to get my goat, troll?"
"Don't worry. Already did. Got 'em all--good. Know what I mean?"
"Only if you're so horny you had the ugly one, too. You know what they say about the ugly ones."
"Right answer. You can pass, asshole."