In my end is my beginning

THE END

"IN MY END" T.S. Eliot said "Is my beginning"

"Six eggs, half a kilo of elephants and a tin of text."

"The book has let itself be thought as such." p.300

"Meta-ta-ta-tatatatextual" screamed Such, "rapping" as I believe it is called. "Let there be light...

    and light was over all. Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? O dark dark d-d-d-dark-ark-ark!"

And Milton appeared, epic for revenge. At this point Nietzsche remarked that, according to subsequent intertextuality (The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy), should the abovementioned puritanical and myopic poet succeed in "Justifying the ways of God to men", in all probability the Deity would disappear. This, furthermore, was irrelevant. "Because I killed him!" said Nietzsche.

    "This (therefore) will not have been a book)" p.1

"So what will it have been, when it is?" asked Arthur.

"Before the beginning and after the end," contributed Eliot.

"So what?" inquired Arthur, or      "To be conscious
"so when?" at any rate.  "I'm       is not to be in
late" said the  at this point in    time..." ECP p.***
White Rabbit,   plot the charact-
"and I think    ers, insofar etc,   "A tale told by an
some descrip-   were situated in    idiot"  Macbeth
tion might be   a large white       Act * Scene * ll *
appropriate."   negative space,
"What, is he    traversed by blue   "Spoken as a
dead, then?"    lines called for    grapheme, written
asked Sir       some reason         as a phoneme, in a
Laurence        "feint", although   word, gramophoned!"
Olivier and     they were           UG p.47
Gerard Manley   perfectly
(ish) Hopkins,  perceptible,        "Some critical
in unison.  "No, but you are!"      reactions to this
said Arthur and Nietzsche.          book."  Anon.

VOTE COMPLETELY OTHER!

Sic transit arcana mundi

    Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplendern-schlitter- crasscren-bon-fried- digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein- von-knacker-thrasher- apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic- granderknotty-spelltinkle- grandlich-kurstlich- himbleiser-bahnwagen- guten-abend-bitte- ein-nürnbürger-bratwurstle- gespurten-mit-zweimacher-luber- hundsfut-gumberaber-schönendanker- kalbsfleisch-mittleraucher von Hauptkopf of Ulm entered and fell over.

    Syllable by syllable, like a long and disarticulate insect, he got up again, followed by himself.

    "Damn, the plot's gone missing again," remarked Arthur, casually driving a steak through the heart of the nearest vampire. "Oh but there is," replied Prof Karswell. "You though I was dead — but now, I'm undead." And so it was.

    "That's rare — a steak," said Arthur.

    "That's a rare steak," said Arthur's negative space.

    "That's a stare rake," said Arthur's negative time.

    "Thyme?" enquired Parsley, sage and Rosemary.

    "No, but squeaky beetroots have been sighted, both past and future," exclaimed the plot personified.

---

l. 25 P steak R stake Z wombat Zakrzevsky steak. Sic transit arcana mundi.

Apparatus umbrellicus

Vedic flew in, omitting to open the window and scattering glass over various conventional cottage appurtenances. "How," he said.

    "You're not a Red Indian," said Nat (or as I shall now call him, Alistair, as he was not American).

    "No. It was a rhetorical question," said Vedic. "I am your Natural Law Party candidate and am consequently allowed to ask them."

    "Ask them what?" asked Alistair.

    "Not what, how," replied Vedic.

    "Gott is dett," said Nietzsche, whose English was deteriorating.

    "Not Gott what?" Alistair said, patiently.

    "What, not?" said Aunty Phyllis.

    "NO" said everyone else, terminating her with a macaroon.

    "That macaroon — heap bad vibes," said Vedic.

    "Babboon!(?)" said Alistair.

    "Certainly."

    And a simian of rosy posterior came through the window. "Graark ark aark aark," it said, and ate Nietzsche's umbrella.

    "So that's where it went!" he said, "last time I didn't remember. Never mind, since everything has already happened, it has probably been eaten by almost everything, on a geological timescale. I don't really want it back, now."

    The babboon obliged, anyway.

---

3. MSS babboon Liz baboon Wilmowitz babloon uerbum non certae originis; cf. Ap.Rh. 3.1189 (άλ.)

37. I am not a baboon — I am only writing.

Young Nat Penderby

"And now for something completely other," exclaimed Gnaeus Corbulo, hitting Jacques squarely on the foot.

"Never have so many characters spouted so much nonsense in so few pages in such gibber written by such insane authors," added Lord Such.

"Let's see some Vedic flying," said young Nat Penderby to his aunty Phyllis. "Do pipe down," she replied; "I'm trying to knit a new leather tea cosy in purple." But young Nat was tired of such dismissive answers. He had had enough of his uninterested, not to say uninteresting aunt Phyllis. He was also somewhat miffed always to be labelled as young Nat, especially considering that he was 72.

Hence, he determined to take drastic action, to seek his fortune, and escape from his dreary life to the picturesque village of Nether Vetwainshalmete.

Plubnic burp

    Mr T leapt out from a banana-bush (el), wheelied wildly, wellied wobblily, cleared his throat, stoat, goat and moat (sorry) and started climbing into the floor.

    "Well, that's just about all we've got room for on this page," lied Jeremy Beadle, who was dying of bubnic plag. "Well, you should visit the dentist more frequently," lied Jeremy Beadle, who was dying of plubnic burp. "Well, thank you for watching — and remember, next time the star of the show could be," said Jeremy Beadle, who was dying of trognic blurk. "Hello, it's MEEEE!" said non-Beadlo. "You," finished the sentence yes-Beadlop.

    "Hello, my name's John Collins," said Neil Kinnock, "and I'd like to explain Labour's tax-eating proposals."

    "Non capisco," said Michelangelo, who didn't.

    "Non capiscum," responded the Czech Philharmonic, as it certainly wasn't pepper.

Naranja? Arancia?

"The odour of intratextuality," said Arthur, providing continuity.

"Does 'cui bono' mean 'well cooked'?" asked Ernie.

"We don't know," said the Turkish army, in Turkish. "No se!" said the Spanish army, without translator. The Czech Philharmonic, without conductor, said nothing.

    "Naranja?" asked Nieztsche, in Spanish (who was still dead). "Who cares — so's God!" he retorted. A moment later he was buried in oranges by the Spanish army. "Et tu, Sooty?" he remarked, looking at seven buckets, each one squirming with worms. *

    "That's disgusting," claimed the Emperor Ludicrus, with the emphasis clearly on the navel. And that's a type of orange.

    "Arancia?" asked Nietzsche, now in Italian, since the current writer spoke that better than Spanish.

    "Da, da, da, da, da, da; da, da, da, da, da, da," went the Star-Spanished Banner, the Bar-Mangled Spanner, and indood the Spag-Hetti'd Bunbur. Y! Y!

    To continue: stava seduta su un sacco gonfio, il solito sacco che riappare a certe latitudini come riappare l'asino, e si lamentava. Egli capì che quella donna diceva nel suo dialetto: "Dov'è andato? Dove se n'è andato?"

    "Vas-t'en!" Whoops, slight shuft of dialetto there.

    "Stilettos," laughed Neetcher, who couldn't even spell his own feet, let alone smell his name.

* Fri 20 Mar 92

Pitch invasion

Malthus strode into the room, balefully glaring around him. "There are too many characters," he began; "our figures show that, given this rate of increase, the whole book will fill up with character names alone. Something must be done. Oh, and another thing — there's too much gibber."

"O.K. the man's right," agreed Mr T, thrusting out Malthus from the room. "There, sucker — that's one fewer character."

But at this point the plot was regrettably interrupted by killer zombies invading the pitch. They were soon dispersed by the plot attendants, who soundly argued the case for not cluttering up the work with unnecessary diversions and idle pretensions. Most zombies dispersed peacefully, but stronger measures were required for a handful of troublemakers.

"What about unemployment?" shouted Theodora.

"Cui bono?" asked Quintus Lutatius Catulus, making a surprise entry.

But that was all — the room dematerialised and all that remained was a soft toy. And the entire Turkish army. Oh and Zimbabwe. Add 2 teaspoons of sugar and mix well. They think I'm mad. {Upside down} But I am not. *. So there it (is). (In)sanity sets in. "Sets in what," asked Jacques. "No EEC bureaucrats in here," said the local Tory candidate, pointing Delors towards the Door.

"No, not the Door," he said.

"Yeah, I never liked their music either," said Ernie, he who drove the fastest milk cart in the West.