Brandon Burt <
offbra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> WIDE SHOT, EXT. A CITY STREET. Men with hats and briefcases, and women
> with gloves and pocketbooks, stride this way and that, each intent upon
> some ill-defined errand. We hear the cheerful strains of a vaguely
> familiar UPBEAT MID-CENTURY RIFF, probably appearing in the stock-music
> catalog under a heading like "Hustle and Bustle!" or "Busytown."
>
> A small, furry creature slinks in from stage left, fully scruffed and
> wearing a negligee.
>
> "Wait ... that can't be right," he says, stopping in midstride. "Why am I
> wearing a peignoir in the middle of the day?" he wonders. "Why, in fact,
> am I wearing a peignoir at all?"
>
> This exclamation startles a passer-by—this one of the hat-and-briefcase
> variety—right in the middle of doing that thing passers-by always do, so
> that, before doing it, he blurts out, "Nice pig!" and scampers off,
> thereby completing his mission, upon which he receives the contractual
> +1UP before falling into a Yawning Chasm.
>
> This confuses the otter to no end. "No, that can't be right, either," he
> says. "Because, eventually, I'll forget all about it and stop being
> confused, whereas 'to no end' implies a never-ending, permanent state of
> confusion."
>
> "Not necessarily," came a reply from a different passer-by, wearing gloves
> and confidently clutching a pocketbook, who, like the peignoir-wearing
> Otter, had also stopped mid-stride, apparently for no other reason than to
> argue with him. and was suspended a few inches off the glittering
> sidewalk, in violation of the laws of physics. "You see, even though a lot
> of people use 'to no end' in the sense of 'without cessation," it's more
> correctly used to mean 'with no discernable purp—OOF.'"
>
> "Purpoof? Now that really can't be right," said Otter, but his words could
> scarcely be heard over the growing commotion as a hapless passer-by, who
> had stumbled into the floating, purse-clutching one, bent down to retrieve
> his hat from the glittering sidewalk lest he become a *hatless* hapless
> passer-by, and unwittingly formed the nucleus of a whole multi-passer-by
> pileup.
>
> [Ed. Note: Look, Sally, the writer really wants an aerial shot here, he
> says "to depict the rapidly growing area of confusion radiating outward as
> all the passers-by trip over one another." But I told him, "Look, we don't
> really have the budget for anything like that, this is just supposed to be
> one of those weird, pointless, self-referential stories Otter used to post
> to Wundee," but he was really insistent. Can we get a drone or something?]
>
> [Ed. Note: And what's the deal with the pig? What pig?]
>
> [Ed. Note: Oh, and then he says it just cuts to 'a tight interior shot of
> buttered T*st.' Whatever could be meant by that?]
>
> [Ed. Note: And something makes me a little uneasy about this 'suspended a
> few inches off the glittering sidewalk' business. I think he's planning to
> bring in a physics cop or something. We're going to need a whistle and a
> truncheon."]
>
> INT. DAYLIGHT: A CAFE that, moments earlier, was abandoned. The CHEERFUL
> MID-CENTURY RIFF reaches a crescendo and we DOLLY IN to an EXTREME CLOSEUP
> of the counter, where butter melts slowly down the side of a stack of
> crisp, wheat T*st, coming to rest, finally and yellowly, next to an
> unopened grape jelly packet on the small plate beneath.
>
> —Otter (who thinks a truncheon must be a kind of deep-fried, crunchy
> battered fish, which sounds delicious, and wonders if that cafe is
> anywhere nearby.)
>
Greetings old friend, it's excellent to see you again. Apologies
for tardiness in replying; if you're still there I'll try to better in
future. It's 2 a.m. here now, so I'll keep this brief and just say
that I hope that I see you again here in dear old Wundee.
Newsflash: ~ USENET STILL NOT DEAD YET! ~
--
^Ï^ My pet rock Gordon just is.
~ Slava Ukraini ~