"And now for something completely different"

[piqaboo]

And why was the tutu made of grass? didnt these people realize how flammable that is? Or is it inflammable? Whatever it was, he wasnt going to play the flame game.

On second thought, he just might. It was mighty cold in that cargo compartment. It made him long to be back in the A Very Famous Bistro, drinking coffee and ogling Lula.

He curled into himself, examined his tatoos, and bored with that, began to examine the wand. It was peculiarly....

[OperaTenor]

...rusted....

[piqaboo]

..and pointless. "What kind of wand would have no point?, or is it no purpose?" mused Ort, using all the appropriate pun-ctuation? Ort was only familiar with movie magic, where wands have points, sabers glow brightly, and 50-year olds look 20.

But of course, the pointlessness of the wand was the whole point! This rusty, pointless wand was created for a special purpose. It was designed to.....

[Shapley]

...fit neatly into a receptacle. The rounded shape at the end, coated with a thin layer of Oxymigbig... er Oxymoxie... er Oxymiobio...whatever, there was some on the end of it, which would indicate that it had been recently used, since Oxybogsie...whatever has a very short lifespan when exposed to the atmosphere. The receptacle had to be here on the plane. But where?

He looked about again. Strapped down in the corner was a familiar box, adorned with the images of snakes, which he seemed to recall from an earlier hallucination. He approached the box, and noticed...

[OperaTenor]

... that all of his ideas lacked probability and human emotion anymore. It was the same old saw, worn smooth and boring from being run back and forth so many times over the years.

He sighed and approached the box anyway, still hoping against hope something completely different would happen this time around.

As he leaned forward to touch the box, the plane angled down and banked hard right, and passing through astral, settled in a neoconventional("neocon" for short) plane of exsistence.

He looked about yet again in his new plane of exsistence, taking in the surroundings. Most striking(it hit him in the head) was the presence of a nannytube ribbon, this one consisting of molecularly altered, flattened red silk, with a carboluminum perambulator tethered to it for conveyance(let's just call it a "neopram"). As he drew closer to the neopram, he noticed a sharp scent of peppermint, curiously stronger with every step closer. Also, he became aware of a faint whimpering emanating form the neopram.

Just as he reached out to pull back the hood on the neopram,.....

[Shapley]

...his arm was grabbed by the curiously strong hand of the creature inside. Startled, he pulled back, only to find that he was unable to break free. He looked the creature in the face, and realized it was that creature which he had feared the most...parental responsibility. As he stared into its eyes he could see the realization of his worst fears... a steady job, nights at home, school fees, college savings plans, soccer teams, and worse of all....

the minivan!

Struggle as he may, he could not escape the grasp of the creature, it had him firmly in its grip.

"Turn this plane around!" he shouted to the pilot, "I have to get home."

The pilot, who was dressed like a pedicab driver and spoke little English, or at least pretended to, did not respond immediately.

"Do you hear me?" Ort shouted.

"Tokyo!" replied the pilot. "mission. Coffee"

Or was it Kofi? Ort wasn't sure. All he knew was that, wherever he went, he was going to have to drag this creature along.

The plane banked again. The clouds parted and the familiar sight of Mt. Fuji appeared below them. Ort could hear the landing gear being lowered, he felt that familiar feeling in his gut as the plane began to descend. He looked into the perambulator, and thought of Lula, who must by now be...

[OperaTenor]

....relieved that it's her off-shift for parental responsibility duty. Especially since the spectre of parental responsibility was looming ever larger before Ort, so much so that it was starting to spill ove the sides of the neopram, pooling in the bottom of the neocon plane of exsistence.

And the two entities(the looming parental responsibility and the neocon plane of exsistence, that is), having made contact, began a reaction, much like mixing matter and antimatter, the outcome being a healthy dose of reality. It was a mortifying sight for Ort, who even though mortified, stood tranfixed and watched the dawning realization of reality.

At this moment, the plane touched ground, so now reality became well grounded.

Ort suddenly felt much better once the plane rolled to a stop and the door opened. He unhooked the neopram from the nannytube ribbon, and rolled it, along with its ominously hideous cargo, out the door and off the plane. There, on the tarmac, sat the dreaded minivan, it's yawning door beckoning him to load up and drive away. But now, with the new realization of reality upon him, Ort decided that maybe the minivan wasn't so bad after all. At least it wasn't an evil SUV, aka.....

[piqaboo]

LexusLuther. But, he had hoped for something a little.... sparkier. No matter (or antimatter (or Auntie Matter)), he set to buckling in the required restraining devices, hooking the neopram to the LATCH devices (devizes?) with a will. While he had a way to go, he heard an odd sound behind him, and soft noises uttered from the minty-fresh neopram. He looked, but could see nothing. NOTHING! He saw nothing! And that's when he realized that Lula had rejoined him, and that she was rescuing him, not from parenthood, but at least from the minivan moiety thereof. For Lula had purloined a blue Ford Anglia from a production studio, engaged the invisibility mechanism, and landed it in the parking lot. She was having some difficulty disengaging the mechanism, which was not surprising as the newcon environment flustered and confused her. Plus, she was really more of a biological girl. Finally, she succeeded, and leptin to Ort's arms, saying .....

[OperaTenor]

<small>[ 10-28-2005, 09:30 PM: Message edited by: OperaTenor ]</small>

[Shapley]

..Ouch! Ort was still holding the neopram in his arms when she leptin to them. Were it not for the extremely strong nannycables woven into her skirt, the pram handle may well have been driven into her...well... leg.

Having not been prepared for Lula's leptin, he dropped her, the neopram, and the carved box he had removed from the plane. They fell with a crash onto the pavement, which was smooth and silky, apparently being composed almost entirely of good intentions. Ort looked at the handbasket parked nearby, and realized where this road was leading.

The road was indeed laid out, and it's direction set. This thread, however, had taken a different turn, as Lula looked, much to her surprise, and noticed that the occupant of the handbasket was none other than...

<small>[ 10-31-2005, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: Shapley ]</small>

[OperaTenor]

<small>[ 10-28-2005, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: OperaTenor ]</small>

[piqaboo]

...the hawaiian punch guy! While Ort and Lula were distracted, he'd crawled out of the snake-box, rolled his dice, got snakeeyes, and thus chose to climb into the handbasket rather than the pungent neopram. He'd had some trouble getting there (being as he was an advertizing cymbal, his intentions were never good), and once there, he found it crowded, as Joe Izuzu had beat him to the punch, so to speak. And why? Because.....

[Shapley]

OT,

You didn't have to delete your post. After, all, as you pointed out, you got there first.

It would have been interesting to run two parallel threads! It's not like there's a lot of continuity to this thing anyway.

[piqaboo]

OT , come back! My post makes no sense without yours......

[Shapley]

...Joe had been fired after being caught telling the truth. He then commented that the place was going to the nether regions in a vessel made of woven fibres, and lo and behold, here he was. The Hawaiian punch guy spoke, saying:
"[ 10-28-2005, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: OperaTenor ]", which Joe found confusing, to say the least.

Joe replied: "[ 10-31-2005, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: Shapley ]"

The Hawaiian punch guy took offense at this, and proceeded to punch Joe, who mounted Joe Camel and left the handbasket in a huff, or was it a hump? Whatever, he left.

Ort had been watching all this with disinterested interest, as Lula untangled the Neopram from her skirt. As the two Joes rode off into the sunset, Ort turned to Lula and said...

[piqaboo]

"I could sure use a cup o' joe, 'bout now!". Lula distractedly tugged at a tangled nanotube in her skirt, thus inadvertently moving herself into an alternative universe. When she looked up, Ort was no longer standing next to her, looking after the departing joes. Rather, he was just staggering out the entrance of the vehicle-what-brung-him, holding the snake-encrusted box. He'd had many alternatives, including deleting himself. While he'd pondered them, others had decided and moved on, which limited his alternatives to holing up in the vehicle and waiting for it to leave, or leaving it. With ore without the box. As he approached the exit he had a weird sense of deja vu, and thought to himself "I should check the footing on that runway; its probably slipperier than snail snot". He shook his head to clear it of such unattributable hearsay, and stepped out, only to find....

<small>[ 11-03-2005, 04:31 PM: Message edited by: piqaboo ]</small>

[Shapley]

...that there had been no mention of "Hitchiker's Guide" on this thread since the movie's theatrical release. He decided against purchasing a copy at Wal-Mart, since that was a likely indication that the movie didn't live up to it's promise. If, indeed, it had promised anything. "I'll just catch it when it comes out on the late show." He said.

His mind now drifting back to his current location, he decided to fill the box with the ore, choose an alternative Universe, and head out, pronto. He knew Lula had probably vanished into one of them, but he didn't have a clue which one. Using his acute powers of reasoning he set out to determine his course.

"Eenie, Meanie, Miney, Moe," He began, "Catch a ...

[Jane]

" ... ACHOO!"

"Bless you," Someone cut in.

Now where had that come from? Ort looked around and nearly jumped a foot when he saw . . .

[Tarzan]

...me(Tarzan), Boy and Cheetah, looking sad and lonely since Jane left jungle. Me not know why Jane leave jungle - perhaps she got uppity notions of fame education, and stardom in big city.

Tarzan very puzzled...

[Shapley]

...looked stunning in his formal loinclout. Jane, however, had carried the "civilized savage" look a little to far, as the leopard-skin formal looked out-of-place, and the bone hair clip was really rather gaudy.

Lula, spotting Tarzan across the foyer, had mistaken him for one of the pearl fishers. She approached, straightening what was left of her skirt, and said...