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This message A Perfectly Regular Story was posted by Visionary barely remembered writing it... so maybe it'll seem new-ish. on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 at 14:47.
"You know, I'm eventually going to start taking that personally" Visionary observed as once again his entrance into the room prompted Christopher to start crying. "Am I really all that scary?"
"Only as an object lesson" Lisa replied brightly as Christopher ran to her open arms. "That is why we don't do drugs and we stay in school, sweetheart" she cooed.
"Hey!" Visionary complained grumpily. "I don't and I did! That was just Advil, dammit! And I graduated college!"
Lisa tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, that's even scarier then. Try to downplay those facts for the next seventeen years or so, will you? I'd like Chris to have good examples set for him..." She flashed him a wide smile. "In any event, here's your chance to win him over... I need to go make a few calls. Can you watch him for a little while?"
Visionary blinked. "Um... watch him what?"
"Just keep him from sticking any fingers into light sockets and such. For that matter, you probably shouldn't do that either... at least until I get back to watch." Lisa got up, unlatched the baby door and escaped before Christopher could realize that he was being abandoned to the mercies of the scary fake man. "Just entertain him with a story for a bit."
"Don't you have videos or something he could watch?"
"Well, I'm sure I could find you some Teletubbies or Barney or something" Lisa suggested evilly.
"A story sounds good" Visionary conceded quickly.
With that, Lisa was gone and the oldest and newest males of the reformed League of Regulars were left eyeing each other uneasily from opposite sides of the room. Visionary scratched the back of his neck and sat down on the floor, careful not to make any sudden movements. "Well, um... okay... Stop me if you've heard this one before..." he began.
Once upon a time, when there were plenty of tiny villages in the middle of nowhere filled with dirty, poor, uneducated, peasant legume farmers, there lived a simple man by the name of Jack. (Um... simple in lifestyle, that is... I mean, he wasn't necessarily the brightest of the bunch, but he could successfully tie his shoes, which was an accomplishment to be proud of back in those days). Jack was a fairly decent guy, and generally got along with the rest of the village even if other villagers had a tendency to imply that he was less than a *real* dirty, poor, uneducated, peasant legume farmer from time to time. He was though. Real, that is. Honest.
Anyway, one day Jack's very patient and beautiful wife asked him to take the cow into market and sell it... most likely to buy more legumes to farm. Or maybe there was a mad-cow scare... It's not really central to the story. In any event, Jack generally did as his wife asked... Jack was always considerate that way. Jack was not 'whipped'.
So, on a bright and sunny Monday, Jack set off for the bustling marketplace of Parodiopolis with a rope around his cow's neck, and a nice heavy cudgel for warding off dragons with sharp raps upon their snouts. Dragons will eat anything... inoffensive mad cows included. Oh, sure... they'll pretend they are sophisticated, civilized crime fighters, but I've never known one that doesn't start salivating like a firehose at the first sign of a wounded or elderly ungulate isolated from the herd. Or the sight of unattended twinkies, for that matter. Even if they have your name clearly written across them in the freezer.
The road to Parodiopolis was long, dusty, and not very well kept. Potholes were a huge problem, and the mayor of the territory (and every other territory around, it seemed) really wasn't doing a good job getting them fixed. Jack's cow nearly broke an axle hitting one the other day. Letters to the mayor complaining about it weren't helping much though... despite the fact that Jack and the mayor went way back. The mayor had even stopped taking Jack's calls and was suspiciously always out cutting the ribbon at some new mini-mall every time Jack stopped by. Jack really didn't know how the little fern got elected anyway. For that matter, Jack wasn't all that confident in the newly elected leader of the land, who coincidentally happened to be named after plant-life himself. Plants and politics just don't mix... but that's likely a whole other story.
It was on this long, dusty and ill-kept road that Jack came across an odd fellow (or perhaps fellette. Um, lady that is). Now, you'd think the fact that this rather unspecific person was wearing a black Zorro mask should have made Jack a little less trusting of him/her, but s/he was just so damn cheerful. And so Jack happily answered questions about where he was going, what he was doing, and whether oak or ash made for better dragon-thwaping cudgels. And, as two beings in the presence of a large smelly ungulate are likely to do, they eventually turned the topic of conversation over to the mad cow. Jack explained that the cow was driven mad by a needlessly long string of fish puns (something that no creature, sentient or not, should really be subjected to). As a result, one could never be quite sure what one would be squeezing out of the poor animal come the next milking. One day it was a melancholy omnibus, which made even the men of the village wince in sympathy and phone their mothers out of some sense of obligation.
Well, the cheerful ambiguous being thought that if the cow was mad, then it simply needed cheering up. S/he assured Jack that s/he knew of a place with wide-open fields filled with fuzzy hopping bunnies that would be sure to fill the cow with happy thoughts. S/he also likely harped on the fact that Jack hadn't finished telling a story that Jack had set there a couple of years back, but Jack probably would have ignored that fact as Jack always did. Jack wasn't made of stories, you know.
Well, naturally, the happy, bunny-filled place sounded like the most humane solution for the poor mentally unbalanced bovine. The problem is that it didn't really help keep Jack's family in legumes... or even omnibuses for that matter. The curious being had a solution, however, and offered Jack a handful of 'magic' beans in exchange for letting the cow once again run free and majestic as cows are wont to do when given their druthers. Naturally, Jack made the deal... not because he was simple, mind you... He obviously wanted what was best for the cow.
Now naturally, Jack's wife was happy for the cow when Jack came back and relayed the tale. She did feel obligated to point out, however, that they strictly farmed non-magic legumes, that they really weren't properly licensed and zoned for anything else, and that they'd have to wade through scores of red tape for USDA approval and such should they want to market the magical variety anyway, and who needs that? She mentioned that she was nice enough to refrain from offering the theory that Jack accepted the deal just to keep himself from having to walk the whole way to Parodiopolis and back. Don't think Jack didn't appreciate that. In the end she sighed and planned on sleeping better, knowing that they had done their part to bring a little more bovine happiness to the universe. Jack was left to dispose of the beans... which he did by dumping them in the outhouse.
Okay, admittedly that was a pretty 'simple' thing to do, and would lead to unnecessary complications in Jack's life.
It was around 2 am Tuesday morning while Jack was using the facilities that the beans really kicked in. (Um... the magic beans, that is. I can see how you might have thought of something else there). Anyway, Jack felt a sudden lurch and the next thing he knew he was on the floor of the outhouse and was pretty sure he had hit his head. After ruling out an aneurysm, Jack made himself decent and opened the door.
Now, I don't know if you've ever had the necessity to use an outhouse before, but if you have then you know that it's generally not the most pleasant experience to begin with. Very few people would agree to use one if they had to climb a few thousand feet to get into and out of it. Furthermore, most would prefer that they not need to consider the warning "please remain seated until we have come to a complete stop" at any time during the experience. These thoughts and more occurred to Jack just about then. Mostly, the 'and more' constituted "my wife is going to kill me".
On the plus side, although he and his outhouse were now up among the clouds suspended by a giant beanstalk, it appeared that he wasn't alone. Not very far away was an absolutely huge castle gleaming in the moonlight. Always looking to make the most of things, Jack wondered if perhaps the owner might want to buy an outhouse with, admittedly, a surprising amount of mileage on it.
As Jack approached the place, however, he began to see a flaw in his entrepreneurial plans. Considering that the door to the castle was so huge that he could practically crawl through the crack underneath without bothering to open it, Jack began to seriously doubt the outhouse would offer the resident adequate containment. Also considering that Jack's house should still be far below said outhouse, he began to think that it might be best to retire the property instead.
He was about to leave when a thunderous voice bellowed out "Fe Fi Fo Fan! Verily, I doth smell the most vexing stink of an American." Now, Jack would naturally have taken offense at this had he not just recently stepped out of an outhouse that had been shaken like a cocktail mixer by the explosive growth of magic beans, and had the guy not sounded big enough to hurt Jack. As it was, it actually seemed fairly reasonable.
Bereft of his stout oaken cudgel, Jack did the only prudent thing he could think of: He ran away like a screaming little wuss. Unfortunately, Jack's dinky little legs really couldn't cover much ground, and so his gigantic pursuer quickly caught up with him and lifted him high above the ground. "Thou art a most ripe one, aren't thou?" the giant mused. Thinking that Jack would make a pretty vile bone-bread, the colossal being instead decided to take Jack, put him back in the outhouse, put the outhouse on his neighbor's front porch, light it on fire, ring the doorbell and run away. The neighbor was a noted Hulk fan, and apparently had it coming. As luck would have it for Jack though, Xena and Buffy reruns were just about to air back-to-back, and so he was dropped into a huge box to await a break from the visions of ass-kicking beauty.
It could have been worse... Jack could have been put into a tube. Nothing good ever happens when the hero of story ends up in a tube. But I digress...
Thankfully, this was just a box. And Jack wasn't alone inside the box. There was also a scantily dressed, magic, animated harpy... er, sorry... *harp* in there with him. Being that this was a lascivious harp, quick to resort to shifty legal maneuverings or edible body lotion to get its way, Jack was obviously in much greater danger than he had been at any time before. Still, Jack was something of a decent fellow, and his wife would likely enjoy the harp's company and gossip with her over coffee, (telling stories that frankly have no business going further than one's spouse... but that's another matter entirely), so when the harp suggested that they help each other escape, Jack good-naturedly agreed.
The key, the harp suggested, was a goose that laid golden eggs, kept on the kitchen table across the room. That goose was worth more than the two of them put together, fifty times over. If they could get their hands on it, they could surely ransom it for their freedom. Not really having a better plan, Jack agreed and followed the harp as it quietly hopped to a knothole in the wood of their box. With a nudge, the knot fell out and a hole as big around as Jack was left. "Go up the table leg" the harp advised, "hide behind the vegetable plate... try not to let the giant cucumber make you feel inadequate, by the way... and then make a dash for the goose."
Jack considered a retort, but as usual the moment passed before he could really think up a decent one. Instead, with one last glare at the evil harp, he dashed through the hole and out across the huge hardwood floors. Luckily, the giant was intently observing an ambiguously close moment between Xena and Gabrielle, and so he made it without drawing any attention. It wasn't until he was up the table leg, around the intimidating vegetables, and standing before the 100 foot goose that he realize that he had no idea what to do next. As it happens, the harp solved the mystery for him.
"HEY GIANT!" She screamed, "HE'S TRYING TO STEAL YOUR GOOSE!!!" With that she hopped out of the box, and quickly made her way in the opposite direction towards the front door. "Oh..." she added as an afterthought, "He also said that Jurgens is the best thing that ever happened to 'Thor'."
Roused from the hypnotic visions of scantily clad warrior women tenderly dressing each other's wounds, the giant leapt from his Lay-Z-Boy in a fit of rage, gibbering incoherently. With a primal scream, he brought a gigantic baseball bat down upon the table, narrowly missing Jack and scaring the hell (and just about everything else) out of the goose. With frantic flapping and much honking the great goose took flight, taking a desperate Jack (who by now had a death grip upon the poor girl's tail feathers) with her.
Whatever instinctual flight response had been triggered in the waterfowl unfortunately didn't come with great attention to steering, and the two of them spent the next few harried minutes careering off of walls and furniture until, by pure stroke of luck, they made it out a window. They were further aided in their escape by the fact that when the giant opened the door to follow, he found a burning outhouse on his doorstep which he instinctively and quickly extinguished. It did not significantly improve his mood.
Physics demands that 100 foot tall geese do not stay airborne easily, much to Jack's dismay. Even after having ejected significant extra weight back on the giant's dinner table (and Jack did have time to note that only its *eggs* were gold), the goose dropped the full length of the beanstalk like a lead weight, crashing down into the dusty, ill-kept road outside of Jack's house and creating the mother of all potholes.
"What took you?" the harp asked, standing next to Jack's wife as Jack and the groggy goose climbed out of the crater. Before either of them could come up with an adequate response, a great shadow blocked out the moonlight. The huge form of the giant could be seen making his way steadily down the beanstalk (although his one shoe seemed to find the footing a bit slippery). "Well, that can't be good..." they all noted.
Jack's wife was unfazed, however. For she knew that, as is always the case in these stories, there happened to be a woodsman or huntsman or somebody readily available to save the day. In this case, it was a door-to-door knife salesman. Of course, this particular salesman was a bit odd, seeing as how he was wearing a full suit of homemade armor, and all the knives for sale were his of own invention... But the motorized, bilateral, omni-cutting, gerbil-powered butter knife turned out to be just the thing to chop through that pesky beanstalk and bring that giant crashing down. (He landed some thirty miles away in downtown Gothemetropolis York, where the mayor promptly announced it as all part of his bold 'urban renewal' plan).
And so, they all lived happily ever after... Jack learned to just say no when offered 'magic beans' from inexplicably happy masked people on the side of the road. Cheryl and the harp would chat happily most mornings, only to suddenly stop when Jack entered the room to suppress fits of giggles. The goose filled the cupboard with golden eggs, enjoyed the taste of legumes, and turned out to actually like fish puns. Oh, and the gerbils managed to survive the subsequent butter knife explosion with only a few mild burns.
The End.
"Wow" Lisa noted. "He's sound asleep... Have you been talking about the Vision again?"
"Humph" Visionary retorted succinctly.
Lisa winked. "So what did you tell him?"
"I sort of made it up as I went along..."
"In other words, you ripped off some other story and shoe-horned your characters into it."
"Hey, I never claimed to be original." Visionary said with a shrug as he tucked Christopher under a blanket. "Besides, sometimes it's the telling that's important, and I had fun. Plus I learned something, today..."
"What's that?" Lisa asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"Evil seems to skip a generation."
This poster posed from 12.252.6.120 when they posted
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- A Perfectly Regular Story - Visionary barely remembered writing it... so maybe it'll seem new-ish. - 14:47 on January 14, 2003
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