Wax and moths

The freak show barker pointed.

"The tallest man in the world!"

"Ships will run into him," they sighed. "Planes will fly into him."

Ships ran into him and planes flew into him.

They put a candle in his hand and a candle on his shoe.

"Now ships and planes can see him."

They could, and moths surrounded him at night.

"How beautiful," they said.

The freak show barker rubbed his hands.

"They love it," he said to the tallest man. "A moth zoo. From now on you'll only come out at night."

The tallest man began to weep.

Bees, good and bad

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon attracted a billion bees. It was good for honey but bad for sunbathers.

The forces of economics and relaxation clashed.

"Ignore these pampered elites!" the honey-sellers shouted. "We want more bees!"

"Ignore these economic fascists!" the sunbathers yelled. "We want fewer bees!"

Two earthquakes occurred and the gardens collapsed.

"Happy now?" the honey-sellers shouted at the sunbathers.

"Delighted!" the sunbathers yelled.

Tolstoy and the peasants, part 4: Revolution

With the fall of the dog from the pie tin the Russian Revolution began. Everyone rode to the Winter Palace on their bicycles and stole the chandeliers.

Then every house had a chandelier. Even the poorest.

Tinkle tinkle.

So began Communism, otherwise known as The International Movement of the Chandeliers; and the world was filled with light.


-----
Tolstoy and the peasants, part 3.

Nosy palaeontologists

"Palaeontologists," a dinosaur grumbled. "Nosy parkers. I can't do anything without them knowing about it. I break my leg one day and a few millennia later a palaeontologist will be messing around with my bones, saying, "Look at that, this clumsy woman broke her leg." I eat a diet of grass and millennia later they poke through my poo and say, "She ate a diet of grass." It's not like I travel to the future and tell everybody what they eat."

"Maybe we should."

So they went forward in time, dug through the palaeontologists' rubbish bins, and paraded the packets and wrappings down the street.

"Cup Noodle! Cheap cornflakes! Chocolate bars!"

"This one eats nothing but pizza!"

The palaeontologists were abashed.

"Let's put this in a museum," the dinosaurs laughed. They built a museum and filled it with evidence of palaeontologists.

The palaeontologists rolled around in sorrow.

Tolstoy and the peasants, part 3: Space race

Tolstoy's dog in its pie tin orbited the earth. The space race was on. The Americans launched a cat in a box. "Our cat in a box will orbit the planet twice as fast as your dog."

It did. Then the French launched a hamster in a shoe. It flew to the moon and back but burnt up on re-entry. The nation mourned. International headlines read: BRAVE HAMSTER.

But nobody mentioned the shoe. "I see which way the wind is blowing," said the pie tin. "I see those headlines." It ditched the dog and vowed never to orbit the earth again. A profession with no reward.

The dog limped back to Tolstoy's estate, and all the peasants shouted when they saw it:

"The Tsar! The Tsar!"

Woof woof.

"The Tsar has fallen!"

Aroo.


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Tolstoy and the peasants, again. (Part 2)

Giant sandwiches

"I'm hungry. I'm going to kill a moa."

He returned later that afternoon with empty hands.

"Where's the moa?"

"There aren't any. They're all dead."

"Extinct? Overhunted?"

"I fear so."

A woman looked at the sandwich she was eating. "This was the last of them then."

"That sandwich?"

"Yes."

"Already," he said mournfully, "I have forgotten what they looked like."

For hundreds of years afterwards, everyone believed that the moa had resembled sandwiches.

"Giant sandwiches."

Hatters

A group of contemporary pirates sat together watching a pirated copy of Pirates of the Caribbean. Most of them were African, some were from South-East Asia.

"We are underrepresented in Hollywood," one of them pointed out. "All of the pirates in this film are white."

"I disagree. There's this scene in the third movie ..."

"No, man, I mean we need to be main characters, real characters, ones the audience care about, not some black man standing in the background in part three. I mean like, what's her name, Keira Knightly. Do I look like Keira Knightly?"

They agreed that he did not look like Keira Knightly and never would.

"Exactly my point."

"So what do we do?"

"Hats."

"Beg yours?"

"We can't be white, we can't be Keira Knightly, we don't have any influence on Hollywood, we can't storm the place because it's inland, although I hear they might be shooting something in Hawaii next week," said the first pirate, who maintained a habit of multilingual fluency by following worldwide film industry gossip in books and magazines, "but we can wear awesome hats."

One of them leapt to his feet.

"I shall kidnap a hatter."

"Excellent."

"Good man."

"Problem solved."

They settled down to watch part two.