Keyboarding Quasimodo (coherent surrealist narrative)
Bill Palmer
Maybe they do that because they don't like my style. Or perhaps they
give me that nickname because they view me as squint-eyed as the result
of something I wrote.
Likely though, they call me the Keyboarding Quasimodo because of the
strange deformity of my back.
You may recall my having talked at times about the need to have
"writer's spine," the courage to write about troubling personal
matters when you feel that doing so will benefit your work.
Now, however, I must tell you of a another danger. You can
develop too much writer's spine. Then you are no longer sexy.
You look grotesque as a result. Your back develops a hump
similar to that on an angry cat. The hump begins to loom over
the net like a black mountain.
That makes some readers uncomfortable. They begin to think
you are not doing your best to contribute to a pleasant
newsgroup ambience.
They might also call me the Keyboarding Quasimodo for my neat
trick of typing as I stand.
When I am standing and composing at one-hundred words a minute,
I hop two feet to the left and then two feet to the right, keeping
my legs locked together as I jump. My hands never leave the keyboard
while I do this.
I hope right-left, right-left, faster and faster, with never more
than one second between jumps.
I can keep that up for ten minutes. As an exercise for dexterity
and general fitness, I highly recommend this invigorating activity.
Another stunt of mine involves crashing through monitor screens.
Oh, I started by simply reaching in lightning quick and giving
smug beaks a playful little twist and then darting my arm back.
Eventually, though, my true nature asserted itself.
I started bashing faces, particularly faces of pests who had
been annoying me with belittling, dishonest behavior too
long for their own health.
Is it not odd, when you are dealing with human parasites, the
way they try to denigrate your work before helping themselves
to it?
First they might tell you can't write worth a tinker's
damn. The next thing you know, though, they are stealing
your honest name by forgery so they can attract more readers
for their drivel!
After I got tired of smashing smirking, thieving faces,
I started kicking through screens with my heavy boots.
Two weeks ago I shoved a spike-booted foot though a monitor
and kicked the face of the world famous human cockroach.
(You remember "the Roach", the notorious defamation artist
and all-around parasite, don't you?)
These days the renowned human cockroach grins at his monitor
with a new set of "choppers"!
Well, one thing led to another, and finally I started
swinging though monitor screens on a rope, and yes--
let us not mince words--viciously assaulting guilty
male persons of one unpleasant stripe or another.
Women? No. Never women, even the guilty ones, that's
my motto. Call me sexist if you will, but number me
among the last of the gallant heroes.
Getting on with my narrative, well, tonight I put the
Dumpster Rodent in the hospital.
Oh, you know about the Dumpster Rodent, don't you? Why,
Dumpie is the most famous troll on the net. He LIVES
to pester those whose writing talents attract him.
At one time, the Dumpster Rodent's silly messages struck
me as cute, until he--as the result of a petty
grudge over my satirizing him--began encouraging the
plagiarism of my work, the forging of my name, and the
fraudulent moderation scheme that all but ruined one
of the best fun and advant garde creative writing groups
on the net.
A few hours ago I did what duty required: I gripped the
end of my rope and ran to the back of my room, next
swinging myself forward through the air straight at
my monitor.
Crashing through boots first, I grabbed the terrified
Dumpster Rodent before he could scurry off. Dumpie took
a horrible beating and kicking, I can assure you.
I danced a jig on his legs. I am sure I broke at least
three of his ribs while pounding him with fists bigger
than his undersized head.
For a couple of months, the Dumpster Rodent is going to
have do all his trolling from a wheelchair while pecking
on the keys one at a time with a pencil held firmly
between the two (I left him one upper and one lower)
front teeth remaining in his mouth.
Then there there was the case of the cowardly net vandals:
"Mangy-mutt" and "Lousy".
To wit: I Bill Palmer, before disappearing in a flurry
of Midwest autumn leaves, hung Mangy-mutt and Lousy for
their great folly, by their heels on wordscreens of the
world. There they will twist slowly and painfully in the
great magnetic winds for hundreds, perhaps thousands of
years as the archives open, shut, and open again.
That accomplished, I went after "the Witch Doctor" but
changed my mind before I crashed through his screen.
The Witch Doctor is a highly-intelligent being, who,
out of impertinent arrogance, tries to explain away and
degrade any mind he is fascinated by but cannot come
close to fathoming.
Like many people having half-formed intellects with a
psychological bent, the Witch Doctor's envy inspires
him to view originality of expression only as a
dangerous mental pathology. Let us hope the Witch
Doctor amends before his envy devours his intestines.
Anyway, those are some colorful but less significant
details hinting at why I am sometimes called the
Keyboarding Quasimodo.
Here is the central reason why I suspect the term has some
connection with my reality, though.
The other evening I was sitting in a coffee shop minding
my own business when I felt a hand far stronger than my
own grip me by the back of my neck.
The hand forced my gaze toward what seemed, in my dizziness,
like the blue and white orb of planet earth watched from afar.
It was the stunningly beautiful sight we have seen in space
phortographs and film.
Then I saw a peaked shadow sliding into view, a vast, unearthly
silent black mountain stealing up over earth's shimmering sphere
like a perverse eclipse.
An unstoppable dark spring seemed to bubble up from somewhere,
flooding fear into every corner of my conscious thoughts.
The shadow, I then realized, was nothing other than my back's
gigantic hump, which in reality is an opaque image projected
by a panicked mind which has deformed itself trying (with all
its frail power) to comprehend what it means to dwell in this
galaxy.
The retarded man did rage
Inside your dim mind cage,
The Milky Way's his house
He's frightened as a mouse.