Archive | December, 2011
Clown Apocalypse: The Day the Laughter Died
It was as though everyone who was infected by the Bozo Virus (BV) had received an extensive education at the Barnum and Bailey Clown College. In fact, one of the early ways of detecting the infection was for doctors to test if patients could juggle, even just a little bit.
It was a sign of the hilarious malady to come.
In addition to physical skills, victims of BV had a gnosis of clowning techniques. For example, after the onset of the physical symptoms, sufferers would understand the idea of having a framework, a general structure for an act, whether a short “side dish” or a longer “entrée.” These would be fleshed out (and covered with whiteface) with bits, gags (running and stand-alone), and occasionally, with some business. Sometimes with props, sometimes with other clowns.
For some, the disease was relentless. As soon as they had a framework, and another victim or prop to work with, and even some weak business, they would start the show. It didn’t matter if they had an audience or not. It didn’t matter if they were any good. They just needed to clown.
But the laughter that clowns and virus victims alike long to hear would never come. The blow off arrived, but there would be silence. Many a joke “chomped the flower”, and produced nary a chuckle.
These poor bastards did not have to wait for the inevitable end of the Bozo Virus. The end would find them sooner. As their gags died, so did they. In horrible, horrible droves.
Some lay on railroad tracks, some took pills, and a lucky few found cannons to fire themselves from. Most of them would just pretend they tripped on something, and fall into traffic. (This was dreadful on two fronts: in addition to the guilt of thinking they’d just killed someone, drivers discovered how impossible it was to get pancake makeup off their fenders.)
Everyone agreed: even clowns couldn’t make suicide funny.
Read the first part, Clown Apocalypse.
Alltop likes a good blow off. Depressed Student Clown, a photo by Phil Kneen(www.philkneen.com) on Flickr.
Troy and Abed — Christmas Infiltration
Alltop enjoys “infiltrating” your funny bone.
A Traditional ‘Christmas’ at the Tundra Household
Dr. Maximilian Tundra was heading home again for the holidays, dread clutching his heart like an iron fist. He’d managed to avoid Thanksgiving, but there was no escape from The Feast.
The Feast, as it was known amongst Clan Tundra, was a toxic stew of carbs, fats, and pharmaceuticals that had a tendency to drive the family bonkers.
Not that they weren’t certifiable to begin with.
Dr. Tundra’s sister, Eugenie, was a brilliant “installation” artist, who was nevertheless, seriously bi-polar. His younger twin brothers, Xavier and Xenophon, had never really recovered from their childhood “incident” — as the family called it — following a plane crash in the Andes. His Da, Dr. Halvard Hemming Tundra, seemed perfectly normal; of course, the Great Danger of attending the Feast was that Dr. H. H. Tundra didn’t attend, and that he sent his doppelganger, Mr. Angry McBucktooth in his stead. His Mum, Beatrice Pelagia Tundra (nee Sweeney) was in denial, but otherwise safe to be around.
And that was just the nuclear family. Getting the extended clan together required a number of court orders, insurance waivers and to be on the safe side, Da usually hired off-duty members of the SWAT to patrol the grounds.
Perhaps it was for that reason, or perhaps it was the family’s iconoclastic nature, but The Feast was never celebrated on Christmas. It always happened on the Solstice.
The darkest day of the year. Of course, it also marked the start of days getting brighter and brighter. The rebirth of the sun, his Da called it. But when it came to the holiday, his family and The Feast, Dr. Tundra was definitely a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy.
The policeman checked his ID, and waved him past the checkpoint, a set of gates loomed ahead, which would let him into the Tundra compound. A high fence, razor wire atop, surrounded the area. Guards and German shepherds patrolled the grounds, checking the fenceline for weak points.
It would do no good. It never did.
He parked, put on his flak jacket and entered the Tundra mansion. The smell of roasting turkey and peyote stuffing filled the house, and Dr. Tundra shuddered.
An outside observer would wonder if that was a shudder of anticipation, excitement, or perhaps the thrill of visceral familiarity that we get when we return to our childhood places.
But no, it was dread.
Alltop freebases its turkey. The reasons why festive feasting can cause family fracases.. Thanks to ckirkman for the turkey pic. Originally published December 2005.
One of the Magi Explains About the Myrrh
Everyone keeps giving me shit about my gift to Jesus the Son of God and the Messiah, King of Kings.
“Isn’t myrrh basically perfume for mummies?” these ass-clowns keep asking me. “Is that an appropriate gift for a BABY?”
Look, first off you have to realize that I planned to bring gold.
But Caspar called dibs on that. Fair enough, I thought, he is the “Keeper of the Treasure” or whatever those freaky Chaldeans call him. I don’t know. Those people have some weird habits. Every heard of doing the Chaldean Donkey? But they have lots of gold, and Caspar is wealthier than Croesus.
So I thought, no problem. I’ll give Him some nice Frankinsense. That stuff rocks. I would wear it every day if it didn’t make me smell like a Babylonian prostitute. But then I found out that bastard Balthazar already had a pearl-encrusted, gilt box filled with the stuff.
“WTF Balthazar? I was going to give The Messiah Frankinsense.” He just flipped me off. That Balthazar is an Indo-Parthian twat, and a show-off to boot. Pearl-encrusted, my ass. We said one gift.
I was happy to represent though. I mean, of the three magi sent from The East, I was the only one who was a real magi. I went to Zoroastrian High, did my undergraduate degree at Azura University and my doctorate at the prestigious Zoroaster School at the University of the Great Whore of Babylon (a party college, but the program is well respected.) Without me those tools, who are kings and members of the high caste, but who never finished their basic studies, wouldn’t have even found Bethlehem. I mean, they couldn’t even identify their own asses, let alone the Star.
Myrrh, for those in the know, is one of the most holy of essential oils, which is why those decadent Egyptians use it for their mummification rituals. And yes, it’s a little bitter, but really, I have to object to the freakin’ hymn:
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
It’s about salvation, not just death and dying. It’s meant to represent that he was going to help us rise above death again. AND it’s got freakin medicinal values. Suck on that gold!
But I must admit, I probably shouldn’t have given it to him in a Lamb’s Bladder. That was taking the symbolism too far.
Alltop loves a good lamb’s bladder cup. Originally published in 2010.
Ask General Kang: Do you have Santa Claus on your home planet?
No, we didn’t have Santa Claus when I was growing up. We didn’t have Christmas. Heck, we didn’t even have your primitive paleo-brain concept of religion.
We did have the concept of gift-giving, and something we called Consumer Day, when we tried to boost our Neecknabian economy and give gifts. And we did have a folk tradition similar to your jolly Saint Nick. We called him Troglor the Consumer, and if you didn’t buy at least a thousand pargnags (that’s roughly $700 US in the current exchange rate) in gifts, then you were put on the “naughty” list.
Now, in your ridiculously soft human custom, getting on the “naughty” list means no more than receiving a lump of coal in your stocking, or at worst, having some dude dressed up as the devil coming to your house to scare you.
Troglor was not so innocuous. If you got on the “naughty” list, you didn’t find yourself invited to sexy parties, oh no, you found yourself in receipt of a shitload of hurt. Most of the time you would find yourself auctioned off — organ by organ — to the highest bidder at the yearly “Boxing Off” Day sale. Sometimes, if you were really bad, he’d just put a Neecknabian Rectal Weasel in your bed before Consumer Morning.
Nasty.
I always gave at least 1200 pargnags worth of gifts, just to be on the safe side.