Sunday, October 7, 2007

CHAPTER 10 - TUX

Chris Llanfair stood before a tall mirror and adjusted his bow tie.

“Your cummerbund is all wrong,” said Witney his daughter. Witney reached for the pull tab on the cummerbund and pulled it down a bit and to the left. “There, that’s better,” she said.

I ought to buy a tuxedo though Chris rather than always rent one. This one smelled kind of funky he thought. Whitney had insisted on white, even though Chris preferred traditional pink and orange.

Chris had been invited to a reception for the Ambassador from Linux at the Governor’s Mansion. Chris did not want to go. He had been to five receptions in one week and the canapés, Dom Pigeon, and idle chit chat were driving him nuts. Perhaps Sindy Blazer would be there thought Chris. Sindy was always good for a laugh and a snide but penetrating remark. That is if he did not have to sit on the dias and look interested while the Governor droned on about mutual respectful relationships and goodwill in both the real and virtual universes.

Witney was going to be his escort. Following the Druid defeat on Mount Sodom, both Chris and Witney had developed a better more balanced relationship. Witney was not longer the self obsessed delinquent nietzscheist little girl he had loved as a child and despised as a teenager. She had become a responsible young woman, even if she was a bit of a punk and was constantly humming weird songs by Discharge, or Deathchange. Witney had talent thought Chris. Humming punk music was especially difficult. She was also handy with her hands and feet Chris had observed during the ferocious fight with the Druid's Army of Circe in the ancient forest on Mount Sodom. Chris was happy to realize that all those years at the very expensive Reform School for Incorrigible Girls and Dykes, where she had learned to fight with aplomb, grace, and with a wicked and deadly hook kick, were well worth the lindens.

Witney looked at her dad and though about how much smarter he had become in the last two years. She realized that her dad was no longer the money obsessed uncaring bureaucrat she had known as a child and teen. He was now simply filthy rich and under here careful tutelage he was learning how to spend it. He was pretty smart too, she had come to understand. How many fathers could print legal tender in their basement and in huge amounts. Yes, her dad had really grown up after he eventually got around to reading the compendium of the Medway Group of Poets she had given him as a send off gift as she stood at the gate to the reform school and freedom. The school had been the best thing that ever happened to Whitney and she never failed to attend the annual reunions or carefully read the monthly alumni magazine ‘Die Pig Die.’ Witney loved her job as Chauffeur to the powerful and still missing Senator Hyram Funstas. The Senator was easy to work for and he paid for all the tickets and parking fines she got while driving his armored limousine. The Senator has some odd ideas about sex, but to Witney just about everything concerning sex was either odd or outrageously funny. Except for the good parts of course, thought Witney.

Witney looked at the clock and realized they would be late if they didn’t get hustling. Witney paused for a moment to adjust her tee shirt with the fashionable and revealing tear across the chest. She looked at her Doc Martinis and realized she needed to sandpaper the toes better when she got home. Her bondage pants of a pale yellow and puce plaid completed her look and her single spike of hair toped off her look in a stunning and trendy way.

“Come on dad, we gotta run.” Witney said as she headed toward the stairs and the enormous armored limo with gold wall tires waiting below in the circular drive. It was the Senator’s limo and the V8 engine was warming up.

A long line of flying carpets was streaming down Capital City Expressway on the way to Governor Linden’s Official Residence. They were moving fast and security was light although all precautions had been taken to ensure the Ambassador from Linux would be safe. In the lead were two police carpets with red lights flashing as if to say “get out of my way or ill run you down.” The caravan swiftly passed the burned out Capital City Stadium from which wisps of smoke could still be seen even thought the riot which had burned the stadium to the ground had occurred months ago. Soon the caravan reached the sweeping curve of the expressway as it headed north toward the capital dome. On the right of the expressway was the famed Oak Forest which had just begun to loose their leaves in the autumn weather. Ahead was the King Chlodric the Paracide Suspension Bridge which spanned the wide and wet Muddy River.

A bridge maintance crew was painting new wriggly lines on the bridge and three avatars stood leaning against their shovels next to a large Turkoman Van parked by the side of the bridge. On the side of the van was a large logo and lettering that said ‘NAGS Industries.’ The logo looked a bit like an avatar surrounded by ghost images of itself fading into the distance.

A Possum’s Hot Dog cart was on the roadside under the shade of a very large and very old oak and several tourists were munching on Possum’s famous dogs. Sandy, the hot dog vendor was having trouble making change for a 100 linden note. Finally Sandy substituted extra condiments for the change he lacked.

A cement mixer had stalled in the middle of the span, and two City Cops were setting out flares and stopping traffic. The Ambassador’s caravan slowed to a stop. Traffic soon piled up behind them. The driver of the cement mixer had the hood of the carpet up and he could be seen kicking the leading fringe and shouting.

The cops at the bridge approached the two lead police carpets and chatted briefly with the officer in charge. They were laughing at some private joke. In a few moments the two bridge cops approached the line of cars in the caravan.

One of the cops came up to the Ambassadors’ Limo and motioned to the driver to lower the window. Montgomery Melva, the limo driver for the Governor was driving the Ambassador and he hit the window button and leaned out the window to ask the cop how long it would be. He never got the question out of his mouth. His account was canceled before he could even speak.

Sindy Blazer had just left the afternoon session of the boring scientific conference. She had written her article on the presentation on her blackburry. Her thumbs hurt and her chocolate red nail polish had been worn on the leading edge of her finger nails and this put her in a bad mood. She reached for her me-Phone and called her number at the office. One ring, two ring…

“hello, sindy’s not here leave a message the beep. beeeepp”

“Jimmy,” yelled Sindy “Stop that, you’re not an answering machine.”

“oh sorry miss sindy, i didn’t know it was you,” said Jimmy Whashisname the copy boy and office lurker at The Times.

“I going to send in my lead article now by blackburry. Make sure it gets to the city desk and this time don’t correct my grammar. Jimmy do you even know how to spell preposition?”

“no,” said Jimmy. “i wont mark it up or improve it i promise.” He said.

“You better not,” said Sindy. “Ok here it comes.” Sindy punched a sequence of keys on the blackburry and the article hit the ether.

“Bye,” said Sindy and she hung up without waiting for Jimmy’s reply.

Jimmy went to the printer and immediately printed a copy of the article. He reached for his yellow crayon, but it was too worn to be useful. As the article was printing he faced a dilemma – eggplant or peach. Decisions were difficult for Jimmy so he decided to choose based on alphabetical order. He pulled the papers from the printer and sat down at Sindy’s messy desk. Holding the peach crayon in his hand he quickly realized he could really improve this journalistic effort. Before he set to work he read the article carefully.

MORE CRAZY HUMOR FROM THE SCIENCE CONFERENCE
FLAT FRACTURES FUNDAMENTALISTS

Sindy Blazer, Science Editor The Times. Times Semaphore.

(HOTO Forum, Sim of Sonogno) The assembled geniuses and really smart people at the Conference for the Scientific Determination of All Things, known as CSDAT, have seen a number of humorous and loopy ideas presented, along with some serious proof’s for conventional wisdom. Today’s nutty suede-o-scientific theory was presented by Sadie Silverman of Rideo College.

The cause of all the merriment and laughter her paper entitled: ‘Proofs that Second Life is Really Flat and Not Round Like The Big Brainy People Say.’ Sadie, who has a GED equivalent from the Sonogno School for Wayward Girls, was not into her presentation for more than a moment before the laughter and guffaws sounded through out the vast hall of the Forum. In research funded by the Flat Second Life Society Sadie humorously claimed that if Second Life were indeed round how could the ‘accepted’ scientists explain the impossibilities of holding unsecured objects in place on a curved surface.

To which Igor Eisenstein, the smartest man in Second Life and winner of the bronze medal, shouted “Yes, and how can you hold all those impossible ideas in such a small head!”, as he threw his popcorn and soda at the podium.

Sadie barely got out her second argument that “down is down and therefore the world cannot be round, for if one avatar’s down is another avatar’s up, then the whole of Second Life would be in chaos”.

At this point the assembled leading lights of the scientific community began to glow incandescent with mirth and gaiety. Soon the amused attendees realized that the presentation was the evening’s farcical entertainment. Hanging on every joke, the brainy, canny, and clever were reduced to tears. Of particular note were the jokes on the difficulty of maintaining oceans and the ‘fluid problem’ on a sphere.

Some of the jokes and audience replies, although hilarious, cannot be printed here due to their scatological nature. Sadie’s presentation ended to thunderous applause and a jolly time was had by all. Sadie Silverman is appearing nightly at Heart Of The Ocean’s comedy club – the Bloodshot Eye.

Tomorrow an overflow crowd is anticipated to hear Professor Ora Fora, head of the Department of Disasters, Ruin, and Desolation of the Junior University of Second Life (Rossa Campus). Her paper ‘Time Inflation in Second Life – A Proof’ has already created much buzz and rotten tomatoes were sold out early for her presentation.

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