There once was a harsh smoker's cough,
Whose owner was (oddly) a moth,
When it flew round the room
The cosmos went foom,
And they misreconstructed its froth.
Isn't it always?
"Or at least nominality," said Arthur, bursting. Emu return served upon his return, serve, ice will resume nonpresently in a mode quite unlike negative absence.
"Let's just swell" – Clint.
"There's been another murder," gasped the station attendant. But no one heard him, save the cactus; since it was incapable of speech, this wasn't much help.
Arthur burst upon the scene once again. "It's been a long time," he remarked, "quite a few pages – too long. I've a suspicion the book fell prey to the hermeneutical mafia for a bit."
"How did you work that out," asked his dimwitted assistant Carmen.
"Turmoil in the word markets – speculation on the future of sanity, the price of common sense rose a hundred fold, and massive devaluation of reason. Not to mention a lot of weirdo words and bigamists."
"Brilliant," she replied.
"But now we're back, and we mean business – not literally, of course." So saying he slammed the phone down with one hand, while serving to Rod Hull with the other. Yet again surreality had invaded the pitch, and brought proceedings to a halt. The crowd were unhappy – they lost their temper and their marbles, which scattered over the football pitch.
"Stop that," ordered Arthur, "normality will resume now!"
There once was a lunatic cat
Who deranged itself under a mat,
It stuffed up its face
With some haddock and plaice
And now it's frenetically fat.
There once was a sozzled old wino
Who drowned himself under the lino,
Then he climbed up a tree
And ignited with glee –
So where is he now? Buggered if I know.
There once was a smelly old emu –
Said its keeper, "I really must clean you",
But the emu went bonkers
And stoned him with conkers
A stupid tale? All right, be seeing you...
This is the gibber book. Grey is its colour (well, sort of). Grey is its nature – until it moves up to the broad sunlit uplands, of course.
There once was a girl who wrote prose
Its style was a bit of a pose
She wrote about Joyce
And exhausted her voice
Yet the text refused to metamorphose.
There was once a chap who wrote verse
Though than prose he did think it was worse
Somewhat less than lucid
His style was reducèd
Till either naïve or perverse.
"The deconstruction of fundamentals reduces the decks of clear, erroneous ideas to the plank of an excess, of remains."
of Glas, etc!
{A bee, an eye, the letter U}
"The deconstruction of erroneous fundamentals, reductive ideas, remains a plank in the decks of an exceeding clarity."
Ha! etc
B C Ŋ U
Heavy Aunt Crossing
{A small label bearing a picture of a telephone and the words "FREE TWO-TONEPHONE" has been stuck into the book. Next to it, up the side of the page:} Two towel greeeeen! greeeeen! greeeeen! Sorry, long word. Paeleontology.
Or letters to that tedium.
{A line graph of "LIZ: SANITY FACTOR" against "ERM factor (ELKS, RODENTS & MOOSES)". The line rises rapidly from the origin, forms a triangular peak, then shapes itself into a cat with a smiley face. The cat's bushy tail resembles a question mark.}
"The reduction of deconstruction remains the fundamental plank to clear the decks of an excess of erroneous ideas."
"Heavy Elk crossing"
"Cross Elk heaving"
"Heavy Cross Elking"
