"And now for something completely different"

[bacchus]

....!....

[piqaboo]

"No!", someone else exclaimed. "Its an early 21st century Empty Altoids Tin!"

"Ah!" gasped another someone. "Do you know what those things...........

[Shapley]

....can do when exposed to a low level gamma flux in a zero oxygen invironment?"

"No, what?" The president asked.

"Well, I'm not sure, either." Another Someone replied, "I was sort of wondering myself."

"Call the folks at the Pentagon, and have them get right on it." The President said. "By the way, wasn't that garden gnome over there this morning?" He asked, pointing at one of the lawn figurines.

"I'm sure the secret service moved it during one of their security sweeps." Said the Secretary.

"Just the same, I think I'll have a look at it." the President replied.

As he stepped off the portico, however, he...

[bacchus]

realized that, yes, he was right to be concerned about the misplaced gnome when it abruptly arose and made a dash for....

<small>[ 07-01-2005, 10:23 PM: Message edited by: bacchus ]</small>

[Shapley]

...the garden gate, knocking over Karl Rove in the process. Mr. Rove, picked himself up and continued on his way up the garden path, as Secret Service agents scurried past him in pursuit of the gnome.

The following day, the Headlines read:

Rove attacks gnome, Democrats and vertically challenged groups call for his dismissal.

Meanwhile, the President...

<small>[ 07-18-2005, 09:16 AM: Message edited by: Shapley ]</small>

[bacchus]

responded to the press inquiries by stating that, yes, if anyone in his administration attached a gnome that person would be fired - that is, if it could be shown that attacking a gnome was crime. Later that day.....

[Shapley]

...the gnome became unattached. Overjoyed at his sudden freedom, and aware that his captors were not yet aware of the change in situation, he sped away on a very small moped. As he raced through the streets of the city, he rounded the corner in front of A Very Familiar Bistro. (Which, if you ask me, is a very silly name for a bistro, but I'm no marketing whiz..)

Inside the A Very Familiar Bistro, Ort and Lula had just settled down for a glass of iced Venutian tea. Ducking their heads to avoid being seen by Bottom, who was also passing by at that moment. Bottom, thinking he had seen Ort's familiar head in the A Very Familiar Bistro, did not look as he crossed the street. Unnerved by the honking of a taxi, he stepped backward, crushing what he could only guess to be a motorized rollerblade. Beside the rollerblade was a sticky mess crowned with a miniature traffic cone, some of which had found its way onto his shoe.

As he scraped the mess from his shoe, he did not notice the roll of microfilm that became dislodged and rolled down the gutter. He looked once more into the A Very Familiar Bistro, but decided that his eyes had decieved him, and that Ort could not possibly be inside there. He continued across the street, then turned into an alley (which is a pretty neat trick, when you think about it).

Rising from the floor, Ort extended a hand to Lula, who pulled herself to her feet beside him.

"That was close" said Ort, forgetting to use the exclamation point.

"What was close" asked Lula, similarly forgetting her punctuation.

"If Bottom had seen us," Ort continued, "We'd have never gotton shed of him?"

"You used the wrong punctuation mark," said Lula, "I think that one was mine!"

"?" Said Ort.

"Yes!", Replied Lula, let me have it, please.

Ort did not hear this last sentence, since Lula had forgotten her quotation marks. He picked up his tea and took and sip, while Lula looked on incredulously.

"Is that an incredulous look?" Asked Ort, finally getting the hang of punctuation.

"Absolutely" Replied Lula, who had not quite gotten it right.

"Oh, Okay!" Replied Ort, returning his attention to his tea. The tea needed his attention. Right now the tea was the most important thing, nothing else could be more important than the tea right now.

"..." Lula started to say, but decided it was not worth the effort. She turned her attention to the tea, also, which she noticed was...

<small>[ 07-22-2005, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: Shapley ]</small>

[Shapley]

... rather pungent, not at all like the wonderful teas that had become the hallmark of the A Very Famous Bistro.

"Excuse me!" She said to waitress as she paused at the next booth, unsure where to deposit the platter of sandwiches she had just carried from the kitchen. The waitress turned and looked at Lula, then walked away, back to the kitchen.

Angered, Lula rose from her seat and walked into the kitchen, arriving just in time to see...

<small>[ 08-08-2005, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: Shapley ]</small>

[Shapley]

..nothing, since the light was off and the kitchen was empty. Through the open back door she could see a delivery truck from the Not So Famous Deli pull out of the alley and hurry down the road. A mixture of dust and exhaust gases wafted in through the door.

As Lula continued to look into the room she noticed that it remained empty. In fact, if anything, it became more empty the longer she looked at it. She turned and exited the door, leaving the kitchen emptier still. She returned to the table, where Ort was still studying his tea.

"Have you noticed," he begin, but forgot to finish.

"If that was meant to be interrogative, it's in dire need of a question mark." Lula replied, "And, Yes! I have noticed."

"Noticed what?" asked Ort, this time remembering his punctuation.

"I've noticed that!" She said calmly, despite the exclamation point, which pointed out the window to a...

[piqaboo]

declamation peninsula, desperately trying to pass itself off as punctuation.

Ort, missing the point (and the mark), asked ".....

[piqaboo]

Are you saying something? All I hear is a buzzing in my ears."

That buzzing sound preceded the delivery of a load of icecubes by the cafe's industrial-sized icemaker.

Lula's answer, if there was one, was completely overridden by the crash of falling icecubes.
That sound jarred both Ort's hearing and his memory, leading him down the memory alley (for no tidy lane was this), to the time when he and Lula had been careworn and fancyfree.

He missed those days of stealing elevator cable and selling it for scrap-prices. The only souvenir they had from those days were small bits of cable interspersed among the grasses of Lula's skirt. She'd placed them there with the goal of discouraging Bottom from eating her BA'd, should their paths cross yet again in the future. In the meantime, those short but tough length of nanotubing had proven to have many other uses, including that one time when.....

[bacchus]

she was in urgent need of a means to syphon gas from her lover's car. And how about that time when the elderly pastor wanted to be tied up and spanked while working on his weekly homily? Well.....

[Shapley]

...those days were behind her, even if her skirt wasn't. The homily wasn't very good, either, but the rest of the dinner went well. Lula had never cared for hominy..er...holly-lilly ..er...homononiny, whatever, she hadn't developed a flavour for it. And, by the way, did she ever untie the pastor? She was just trying to recall this when the crashing of another load of ice cubes sent her thoughts in another direction, down another path, towards another destination.

As it came into focus, she could see fields of coffee plants, waving gently in the breeze. The sky was cloudy, as it appeared to always be. In the distance, rain was falling, but Lula was dry. She could see herself moving to the shelter of the porch, just as the raindrops began to hit the coffee plants. From the porch she could survey the fields in comfort. She looked up, at the top of Mt. Rove, and she saw him, looking down at her. She could just make out his face through the falling rain. A face she hadn't seen in ages, a face she had thought was long gone from her life, a face weathered by years and by sorrow. It was the face of...

[Serenity]

desire!

[Shapley]

Yes! Desire! Good ole' Desire. Lula hadn't seen him in years. It seems all her needs were taken care of, all her wants provided, all her dreams fulfilled, so Desire had wandered off to see places and people who would appreciate him.

Lula hadn't really missed him, so why, now, did he reappear. What could he be doing here among the coffee plantations, high atop the mountain?

Of Course! She desired another cup of that rich, mountain-grown coffee! She awoke from her half-dream, and looked about the place, trying to catch sight of the waitress. As she spied the familiar plaid apron a couple tables away, she waved her hand in the air, to attract the waitress' attention.

Seconds later she was approached, not by the waitress, as she expected, but rather by...

[Shapley]

...a rather scruffy looking gentleman (if he could fairly be called that). He slid quietly into the opposing seat at the booth occupied by Lula. Without speaking, he reached across the table, dipped his spoon into Lula's half empty cup of lukewarm coffee, and stirred it thirteen times, clockwise, then withdrew the spoon, holding it level so that a few drops of lukewarm coffee remained in the spoon. He looked intently at the coffee for a few minutes, tilting and shifting the spoon to look at the coffee from every angle.

Lula, meanwhile, had attempted to make a hasty exit from the booth, only to find her way blocked by a bus cart. Trying not to disturb the stranger as he contemplated the spoonful of coffee, she slowly, quietly, pushed the cart away from the booth, hoping her exit would be unnoticed. It wasn't.

The stranger placed the spoon on the table, then reached across to grab Lula's arm.

"Things aren't going well." He said.

"What do you mean?" asked Lula, removing his hand from her arm.

"The coffee wars, the Martian settlement, the space elevator rebuilding, none of it is going well." He replied.

"What business is that of mine?" she asked, stepping from the booth, only to be knocked back into the seat by the busboy, who wasn't a boy at all.

"I know who you are." said the stranger, "It's your business, alright."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Said Lula, honestly.

"I think you do. You're husband won't be joining you this evening, he's on a ... err ... mission. He'll be needing you to join him."

"Nonsense," said Lula, "My husband is right over there!" she said, pointing to the corner where Ort had stood moments earlier. Ort wasn't there. Two rather generic-looking men in black suits were sitting at the corner table. They smiled at Lula as she pointed in their direction.

Lula suddenly became very pale. She turned back to look at the stranger. He was gone. Only a spoon and an airline ticket remained behind. She picked up the ticket and looked at it. It was a one-way ticket for a flight that was to leave in thirty-five minutes. The destination was Tokyo.

"Economy class, dammit!" said Lula, heading out the door for the airport. The two gentlemen from the corner table followed her for a few blocks, then turned and went to...

<small>[ 10-07-2005, 05:17 PM: Message edited by: Shapley ]</small>

[Shapley]

...a waiting tuk-tuk, which sped away in a direction perpendicular to that which they were originally traveling. They continued on this course for three blocks, then turned left and proceeded for four blocks, to the Bridge of Sighs. Or was it the bridge of size. Whatever, it was a sizable bridge. They stepped from the tuk-tuk, paid the driver the agreed-upon four Bongo Bucks, and waited till he had sped out of earshot.

"Looks like she went for it." said the first man, scraping gum from his shoe.

"Yes." said the second, "Do you think she'll find it?"

"Hard to tell," replied the first, "She's persistent, but no one's been able to find it yet."

"Do we need to tail her?" asked the second, "Are you sure she won't let us down?"

"No need." replied the first, "our contact in Tokyo will check in the minute she steps off the plane."

"Do you mean...." started the second, but he stopped short as he noticed the tuk-tuk driver approaching. His tuk-tuk was still running at the end of the bridge. As he approached the two strangers, he extended his hand, in which he held....

<small>[ 10-18-2005, 01:23 PM: Message edited by: Shapley ]</small>

[piqaboo]

a leaf of grass. Oh no it wasnt. Lula had had a brain-fart, a blonde-moment, a peroxide induced hallucinatin. It was "Leaves of Grass", a poetry collection by Walt Whitman. The slender book evoked memories of a story read in the long ago, and half remembered. She could not remember the title, nor the author. She vaguely felt the genre was science fiction, but had no certainty with that impression. Musingly, she opened the tome and thumbed thru it. Distracted, she sat back down at the table and began to drink her now cold coffee.

Meanwhile, in Tokyo, a man was standing in the airport, holding a sign and futily looking for a woman in a grass (and nanocable) skirt. He paged the MIB.

The nondescript MIB were patting themselves down, trying to find their buzzing cell-phone. Darn these camo-tuxedos, one sophie-anne-muttered. Which pocket did I put that thing in?

<small>[ 10-18-2005, 04:38 PM: Message edited by: piqaboo ]</small>

[piqaboo]

he turned around, and discovered he was alone.
The tuk-tuk was not to be seen, and only a pile of suitclothes on the ground testified to the previous presence of his partner. Nestled into the pants was a single....leaf of grass. Dried grass. Much, in fact exactly, like that in a grass skirt.

In Tokyo, the crew of one transpacific flight were trying to figure out what to do with the hysterical man who kept denying his name was Lula.
The list said they had 127 passengers, 126 of whom were present and accounted for. The remaining one, must by definition be Lula, despite his strenuous, nay, frenetic denials.

[Shapley]

"Ring! Phone! Ring!- Blow! Bugle! Blow!" chimed the tuk-tuk driver as he watched the MIC's search their camo tuxedos for the source of the ringing. He chuckled to himself as he looked at the source of the sound, their shoe-phones. Had they forgotten that they bought the Don Adamms Commemorative Edition shoe phones? Ah! Well! The ringing had now stopped.

Silence! Golden silence! The MIC's looked at each other in puzzlement, and sighed. I guess this was the right bridge, after all.

Lula, meanwhile, rose from the table, paid the waitperson, and departed through the back door.

The alley was gloomy this time of day, as the sun began to fade from the sky. She had never figured out why it did that here. Most places it sets, here, it just fades away, returning eight to twelve hours later, depending on the season. Ort had explained that it had something to do with the altitude and azimuth, or something like that, she really hadn't cared at the time. Now it puzzled her, and she wished he were here to explain it again, even if he was full of crap. She just longed to hear his voice.

Ort, meanwhile, had untied himself and looked around the cargo compartment he now found himself in. Outside the fusilage, the roar of the engines made him aware that he was in a plane, a big plane, and he was airborne. Where was he going now? How did he get here? Where was Lula? Why was he wearing this tu-tu and holding a wand?

All these questions would soon be answered...

<small>[ 10-18-2005, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: Shapley ]</small>