2501. Alligator

Henry was aghast. A fully grown alligator was squeezed into his toilet bowl.

 How on earth did a fully grown alligator come up through the toilet pipes? You’d think that it wouldn’t be able to jam through.

 Henry told his wife. There’s a fully grown alligator curled up in the toilet.

 Oh for goodness sake! declared Savanah his wife. When will you never learn? How come I got married to someone so stupid? Of course it couldn’t fit through the toilet pipe. Use your brains. It would have come in under the door.

2481. Sing a song of sixpence

To put it mildly, the king was sick to death of four and twenty blackbirds popping out of his pie and singing their heads off.

“This is not a dainty dish at all,” said the king. “In fact it’s downright disgusting. Try eating pastry that’s had twenty-four birds plopping around on it. I shall once again go out into the scullery and boil myself an egg.”

The king exited. Next thing there were loud screams emanating from outside the scullery window. The king reappeared in the dining room. “Call an ambulance,” he cried. “One of those birds has pecked off the maid’s nose while she was hanging out the washing.”

The queen arrived, having heard all the noise. “Oh,” she said. “The king is boiling an egg again. There’s plenty of bread and honey in the parlour, darling. There’s no need to boil Humpty-Dumpty every day.”

“Nowhere,” said the king, “does it say that Humpty-Dumpty is an egg.” With that the king issued an edict: From now on no one may refer to Humpty-Dumpty as an egg.

And they all lived happily ever after in a little crooked house.

2322. A moment in the life of Felix

Felix regarded Great-aunt Stella’s advice as utterly insensitive. Great-aunt Stella had said to Felix, “You can reach for the stars”. Didn’t she know he was blind?

As time went on, Felix became more and more upset at Great-aunt Stella’s insensitivity. How can one reach for the stars if one can’t see them? In a moment of extreme fume he managed to steal Great-aunt Stella’s handgun out of her purse. When she came into the room he fired in her general direction and shot the chandelier to smithereens. (They were very rich)

“What the hell is going on?” asked Great-uncle Vladimir.

“Oh,” said Felix, “I thought you were Great-aunt Stella.”

“You’re wasting your time,” said Great-uncle Vladimir. “I’ve already stabbed her in the kitchen with the carving knife.”

“How can you have done that,” asked Felix, “when you are in a wheelchair?”

Before he could answer, Felix pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

There was a great splash followed by a moment’s silence.

“Now I can get the money,” said Felix.

Then Great-uncle Vladimir said, “I never cared for the fish in that aquarium anyway.”

(Explanation: Great-aunt Stella had been stabbed to death by Great-uncle Vladimir. Great-uncle Vladimir and Felix had planned to murder Great-aunt Stella and enjoy her enormous riches. But she left all in her will to her tropical fish.)

2233. The Candy House

The horrible witch pushed Hansel and Gretel into the refrigerator and the light went out when the door was shut. They had a terrible time trying to stay cool.

The witch was busy heating up the cooking range to roast Hansel and Gretel when the woodsman turned up and pushed the witch into the oven. He then went on his way.

Oven doors can be pushed open from the inside, so that is what the witch did and she stepped out back into the kitchen. Fridge doors are not like oven doors; they need the outside handle pulled to open the door. Hansel and Gretel pushed their shoulders to the door – WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! – and the refrigerator fell over on top of the witch and killed her.

Now the door of the fridge was face down on top of the witch’s corpse and there was no hope of escape. That was when the woodsman returned because he’d forgotten his axe. He saw the fridge on top of the dead witch and said “Good riddance to bad rubbish”. He pushed the fridge upright and in doing so accidentally opened the door.

Hansel and Gretel stepped out and the woodsman said “What the heck are you doing in there?” Everyone was very happy because the woodsman was Hansel and Gretel’s father.

He said to his kids, “Just leave your dead stepmother on the floor. Let’s go outside and eat some candy off a drain pipe.”

2108. Would you believe?

I was walking along the road when I saw it. It was a lovely summer’s afternoon. Not much traffic. And there it was! On the side of the road. I was blown away. I had never seen anything like it before.

When I got home I told my wife.

“You won’t believe what I saw today. Suddenly. On the side of the road. There it was.”

“Goodness gracious!” she said. “Is it safe?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I suppose I should report it.”

“But who do you report it to?” she asked. “The police?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d imagine the police wouldn’t be interested. It’s not a crime.”

“Well who then?” she asked.

“Do you want to come and have a look?” I said. “It will probably still be there.”

So we walked along the road. It was really rather exciting. But when we got there it was nowhere to be seen.

“Blast!” said Janina. “I’ve never seen the rare Purple-Spotted Seven-Toed Toad before.”

2085. Like a pig in muck

Wow! I’ve just been awarded the “I’m the Only One in the World to Get this Award” Award! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you to the anonymous benefactor. It didn’t come via email or via any social media. It didn’t come via a blog. It came via traditional mail post; or if it didn’t it could well have.

There are a whole lot of responsibilities that come with this Award – like nominating ten more bloggers but not telling any of them who you are. In fact it should be so secret that it’s recommended that you don’t even tell the people you have nominated. If you’re reading this, you know who you are.

I also have to answer heaps of questions, like “How does one do that?” and “What are those things made of?” and “Tell us something you don’t know”. They’re the type of questions that Oprah would ask.

One of my favourite questions is: “How on earth do you think of something sensible to say every day on your blog?” It’s not easy, I can tell you. Some people post absolute claptrap. Pure hokum! Hooey! They seem to revel in wasting people’s time. Not so I. And so say all of us, and so say all of us, for he’s a jolly good fellow. Hip Hip Hooray!

It certainly feels surreal to get this Award. I keep pinching myself. It’s very hard to think straight when one is so excited.

To add to the excitement I’m expecting today (ordered online) some Yorkshire Tea bags (Yorkshire tea – a brand – being the only tea we drink – morning, noon, and night).

My life is filled with happiness and this Award is the icing on the cake. I’m as happy as a pig in muck.

2062. Twaddle

Now and again it’s fun to have a guest blogger, so I have invited Scholastica to post something on my blog today. Scholastica is a pseudonym for Vonnie Blotchard. Scholastica is a name which has overtones of scholar and elastic. In other words, Vonnie is a flexible student of life. She is open to new ideas and ways of doing things and expanding and contracting thoughts.

Only the other day she posted on her own blog – which has subsequently been removed – a method of killing quivering moths that might come fluttering into your living quarters at night when you’ve left the light on. It is a merciless method intended to teach the moth a jolly good lesson and involves a pair of tweezers and a broomstick. Brilliant!

Also on her blog Scholastica sometimes lets her twin brother Benedict, who goes under the name of Imintofootball, post a blog on her blog which I must admit is very kind considering the nonsense he comes up with.

Scholastica on the other hand is thoughtful yet wildly inventive. That is why I invited her to do a posting on my blog. She has spent a lot of time thinking about it. She is a master – or rather a mistress (perhaps even neither one nor the other) – of Obscurantism. If you don’t know what Obscurantism is then you will know once you’ve read Scholastica’s wonderful contribution. Take it away, Scholastica!

Blabbercation on the windy trail of life.

Well done, Scholasica! See! I told you! If anyone has any comments about her contribution please leave them on this blog and not email or text Scholastica personally.

I said at the start that it was fun now and again to have a guest blogger. But it’s more than fun. Possibly for some of you more dreary readers it can be a life-changing experience. To have said “Blabbercation” rather than “Blobbercation” or even “Bloggeration” or “Buggeration” is a feat in itself and shows the altitude to which Scholastica these days flies about in. Elastic scholar indeed!

You will no doubt be disappointed that these guest bloggers on my blog are very rare. It’s getting harder and harder to find a good blogger these days. Too often bloggers post nothing but twaddle.

2000. The nicest you’ll get

A celebration of the 2000th story, in which Pravin Pilkington-Hooghiemster reposts his favorite interview. It is with the famous author, Bruce Goodman (aka Brieuse Bernhard Piers-Gûðmönd), with a reprint of the magazine cover in which the interview first appeared.

The Self-Effacing National Treasure

“If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna”

“The nicest you’ll get”

Monday, 16 November 2020

Seated at a wooden table on the veranda of a log cabin in the Appalachians somewhere, it’s hard to imagine that one is talking to New Zealand’s most performed playwright. And it’s most profound.

“Profound?” he smiles. “Who said that?”

“I read it somewhere,” I answer.

“Then you’re better read than I am,” he chuckles. It’s hard to believe. The walls of Bruce Goodman’s log cabin are lined with bookshelves of ancient Greek plays, the complete writings of Napoleon, the novels, short stories, plays, poetry, biographies, philosophical treatises, and histories of old and modern North America, Europe, the Indian Subcontinent, Central and South America, Africa, and Oceania.

“It’s too far from here to the library”, he mutters. “Besides, they won’t give me a library card.”

I ask which of his prolific outpourings is his favorite play. “The latest one”, he says without hesitation, as if he has been asked a thousand times before. “It’s always the latest one. In this case it’s Café Play, yet to be performed. And Qatar. There’s one of them getting done in Qatar at present. They put it into Arabic.”

Goodman has an impressive list of works and awards to his name. “The first full-length play I wrote was Cloud Mother. The reviewers declared during its successful run that Goodman was an experienced playwright. I tried to announce that in fact it was my first, but no one seemed to want to listen. So they keep on getting written and performed. I’ve been experienced since the start”.

How then does it feel to be compared at various times and by various critics to Shakespeare, Goethe, Chekhov, Ibsen, Miller, Brenton? Beckett even. And Ionesco. Pinter. Ian Baird.

“It’s all in the head,” he says. “I write one scene with King Neptune’s wife wearing a rope chignon and they think it’s reminiscent of the second part of Goethe’s Faust. The truth is – I reckon – that they find it hard to categorize the plays. The best observation probably was from the person who said my scripts were all upside down and backwards. I don’t mean them to be. It’s just that I don’t know any better”.

And why no agent?

“I used an agent once. For a whole year not a single script got performed. So I took them back and pushed them myself. The following year there were over 1200 productions.”

And what’s the secret?

“Well, as Napoleon said, if you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.”

The interview has ended. I’m offered a cup of tea; a proper tea, not the apricot-scent-of-Alaska that can be gotten from specialty shops.

And may we take a photo for the magazine cover?

“I got one here you can use. It’s old, but it’s the nicest you’ll get”.

Poem 99: At last! A poem for academics!

See the new moon up-slip
and flare its vicious whips of light
across the back of night.
The moon bears no delight, but brings
dull rays of hurts and stings
made yesterday. It sings cold songs
old songs that don’t belong
if we are to move on and make
a fresh and novel take
in the lake while baking a cake.

To hear this poem being read click HERE!

Apologies for poor audio – broken mic.

1974. Fallen off the edge

That bull outside our window has mooed ceaselessly all night and now it is horse.

Hoarse, son, not horse.

Same thing.

No it’s not. It’s spelled differently.

I’m saying it, not spelling it.

Typical youth of today. You can’t read. You talk talk talk. Or failing that, you text everything and spelling doesn’t matter.

Aha! Aha! Aha! I’ve been proved right!

How so?

That bull just had a baby and it’s a foal. So there!

There’s only A difference between foAl and fool. And bulls can’t have babies.

I give up. You’re just an anti-transgender racist. Totally illogical. And you are homophobic and use plastic. Xenophobic ageist! Come back when you can think straight about gay people and the legalization of maruwanja marjuieguiba maruawana canabas pot.

At least I’m not hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic.