Tuesday, March 09, 2010


MAGPIE FOUR

Channel Five News at Five O’Five:
Dan Scout and Teresa Terse Reporting:

Dan (grinning like a baboon): Good Evening and Good 505! Dan Scout and Teresa Terse for the 505 team!

Teresa (left eyeball rotated slightly to the right and also grinning): Thanks Dan, and a good evening to our 505 team...don’t be shy, wave everyone! (As the cameras move up and down in semblance of a camera wave, the news anchors heads are chopped off repeatedly.)

Dan (gesticulating the quotation marks): We have “breaking news” tonight that elephant enthusiasts have discovered an ancient elephant carving, whose, or should I say “its” “nose” “honker” “proboscis” “ sewer smeller” “double barreled shit detector” “pneumatic peanut picker” “nostrilian thrombosis”...

Teresa (reaching over and grabbing Dan’s double barreled shit detector, twisting it, while smiling into camera front): Yes Dan, you are so right, but as usual, so sadly miss-spoken. As most of our viewers know, Ivory is an animal product, grown by elephants in Africa and Asia in biologic formations commonly known as Tusks. Not to be confused with the really bad Album by Fleetwood Mac. Some cultures believe ivory has medicinal value, most illogically the belief that ivory powder ingested orally can induce thrombastic erections and/or grow hair where you want it to sprout...

Teresa’s monologue is interrupted by Dan noisily picking up his dropped prompter sheets, shuffling and stacking them together, and as she gives him the evil eye, Dan jumps in: Oh, so sorry TERSE.eeeesa...Back to the news, for those you who do not understand large carved ivory elements, this is a primer: The carved object you see before you is not, as commonly thought, an example of Scrimshaw. This specimen is in fact an early tool of early things, named a Screwshaw. A Screwshaw was an early prototype screwdriver from ancient history populated by literal beings, where screws, aka nails with ridges, were pounded into the object instead of being twisted, hence the linear engraving on the early Screwshaw example posed above, which as you can see, has no conical elements. In contrast, Scrimshaw consists of drawings done by really bored sailors on pieces of whale bones, the dirty and routine work being relieved somewhat by dancing the hornpipe or keel-hauling a drunken sailor. The extreme boredom led sailors to engage in the risky dance of the hornpipe, which depending upon the lilt of the deck and the direction of the wind, blew some of them young laddies into the briny brink. Binge drinking was also high on the list of favored past times and spewing competitions were frequent albeit messy.....

Teresa has had enough, takes her shoe off and whacks Dan about the head, and as he cowers, arms flailing to fend her off, the camera crew signal their assent by moving the cameras up and down.
Stay tuned for the news at 10:05.

7 comments:

steviewren said...

Delirium...I'm deliriously crazy about your off beat take on the subject.

C.M. Jackson said...

well done--I didn't want it to end-still laughing!

Vicki Lane said...

What channel was that?

A terrific wild ride of a post!

Violet Cadburry said...

Thanks for all the kind words...still trying to get this blogging magpiey thingy down:)

joanna said...

I wonder what your "Sister William's" would think of this post -- hilarious,, from the 'far side' or 'off the wall' it is funny stuff.

Joanny

robkistner said...

Your work is bold and awesome, and you are courageous and free -- come visit me…

…rob
http://image-verse.com

The Muse said...

http://adivashammer.com/archives/1274

i cannot leave a copy and paste comment of my read, as another... for your work is raucous and uproarious! i feel as though my insides have been tickled pink..or pachyderm gray! LOL