Tut

The Nile went up, the Nile went down, and so the crops were watered.

"Marvellous," said the Ancient Egyptians. "It happened again. Hooray for the king."

They believed it was the king doing it, with his godlike powers. The king believed it as well. Everyone did. Even the crocodiles believed it. One crocodile believed that the regular motions of the water were making his teeth hurt, and he went to the king to ask him to stop.

"I'll tell you what I can do for you," the king said, leaning down graciously. "I can have your brains pulled out of your nose with a hook. Then we'll stuff your internal organs in jars and you can stay in my pyramid with me after I'm dead. How does that sound?"

"No thank you."

"You're very picky."

"I'm not picky," the crocodile said. "I like my privacy, that's all."

The Blood Countess forgets

The widowed Countess Elizabeth Báthory bathed in the blood of young women to keep herself youthful.

"Pass me the soap, János."

"Mistress, we are out of soap."

"Who neglected to buy soap?"

"Ilona."

"I will bathe in his blood too. That will teach him to buy soap."

But it didn't. Instead she was infected by his forgetfulness.

"Whose blood do I bathe in again?"

"Young women."

"Ah yes."

She made a note of that and stuck it on the wall.

"Don't let me forget."

Tolstoy and the peasants, again.

One year later Tolstoy tried again.

"Would you like justice and social equality?"

"Yes."

He was delighted.

"By this we mean we want to moon the Tsar."

He dressed a dog in a velvet suit and stood it on a chair. "The Tsar."

They mooned the dog and harmony reigned on the Tolstoy estate thereafter. The dog got in the pie tin and flew away.



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The first Tolstoy post.

The Waste Land of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot worked in a bank. His friends came to him one day and said, "Look, T.S., here is some money to support you. You need to leave this bank and devote your time to poetry."

"Ah, my friends," he said. "This bank has been an inspiration to me. One afternoon before I worked here I came in and heard the bank clerks singing, each to each. I asked them if they would sing to me and they said, "No." Out of that incident I made a poem. More recently there was a manager who walked around with his arms full of hyacinths. They dripped water on the floor. We called him the hyacinth manager. Another poem."

"We're sorry T.S., we didn't know."

"All great poets work in banks. A little-known fact. Keats handled hedge funds. Byron dealt with loans and interest rate adjustments. Ezra Pound, he is planning to fake his death at the age of eighty-seven and take up residence here as a bank vault."

"Really?"

"Yes. In the future, when his poems have been forgotten, he will still be remembered for his e-z swing hinges and dependable locking mechanism."

They sighed with longing. "Oh tell us, where do we sign up to work in this bank?"

"Here, my friends. Here."



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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, for the singing.
and The Waste Land, for the hyacinths.

Thinke he which made your waxen garden

The Italian showman toured London with a garden made out of wax. "Gardens are very important," he said. "Adam and Eve were born in a garden."

"What else is born in gardens?"

"Moths. Spiders. Turtles, sometimes. Fruit, of course. Ants. Worms. Caterpillars. Cut-worms."

"In your garden?"

"Nothing."

"Pfh! Ha!"

"It has already given birth to everything," he explained. "Let it rest." Emotion made his eyes look wet. "Have some pity."

"It must be his mother," they said, feeling sorry for him in his distress.

"It is ... it is ..."




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Question: why is there an extra e in the title? Answer: it's a quote from John Donne's Satire 4. "I /Thinke he which made your waxen garden, and / Transported it from Italy to stand / With us, at London, flouts our Presence, for / Just such gay painted things, which no sappe, nor /Tast have in them ..." etc, etc.

How much spaceship does a man need?

Leo Tolstoy thought a lot about the peasants. "What can I do for you," he asked them, "to make your lives better? Would you like justice and social equality?"

"We would like a spaceship."

He bought them a spaceship.

"This is a pie tin."

"It is a spaceship."

"It is a pie tin."

He lost his temper. Ignorant peasants! Blind to social and material progress!

"What is the matter?" asked his wife, coming up to the group.

"He bought us a pie tin."

"That's nice," she said. "That's nice of him."

Eyak, 2008

The last person in the world who understood the Eyak language died in January. Nobody else knew this, but the common cockroach had its precise, true name spoken in only that language. On that day, all of its other names perished in sympathy.

Householders around the world stared at the oval insects in their kitchens and murmured uncertainly, "What are those?"

The people who manufactured the sprays that are used to exterminate cockroaches woke in their beds and found that their purpose in life had been cosmically mislaid.

"What did we do with ourselves before today? Something, but what?" It was impossible to remember.

"What will we do now?"

"Poisoning ourselves seems somehow natural."

"What will we use?"

"I don't know."

They crawled under the sink and hid behind the oven.