The big bad uglies are back
The season of the crunchy brown leaf is upon us. I recognize this not only because everywhere I go I trod upon foliage that is both brown and crunchy, nor because of the hysteria of chittery squirrelling that's going on in my yard right now. No indeed — the truest and surest indicator of this season's annual manifestation is the ritualistic spectacle of putrescence that issues forth from the Big Box.
The imagery is as familiar as it is nauseating: slimy bug-people and improbable lumbering lizardoids; toothy winged rats and hairy boogermen; rusty-implement-wielding misanthropes and unkempt practitioners of questionable science. And the requisite goo and ooze and spurty gurgling nastiness that always follow them.
This is the Man's doing. (If not, then he is surely the willing catalyst.) Night after night, he soaks up these unpleasant transmissions, and always with increasing relish, until ultimately the army of little people come to our door in their macabre disguises and demand restitution. It is a long and tiresome and wholly incomprehensible season.
Improbably, the Woman buys into this nonsense. She who fears even the most insignificant of leggy bugs somehow possesses the constitution to ride along on this grisly caravan of gore. She even seems to slip into a mild psychosis of her own, in which she festoons my fortress with a small army of miniature gourds.
Trying times.
I did, however, discern a barrage of images within the Big Box the other night that actually commanded my fascination. It was a documentary of stupid people (nothing new there) who found themselves menaced by strange, gargantuan hairless mole-rats with the ability to take human form. These oversized vampiric vermin, even as they chomped and squished their way through the inept human population, were beseiged by an army of righteous warrior cats, led by the champion law-enforcer Clovis. And for all their mysterious powers, these unearthly mole-creatures were rightly terrified of the formidable force that had gathered to dispense justice.
It was a glorious battle and a moving finale, as scores of my compatriots leapt upon the scaly forms of these rat-demons and slashed them to pulpy lumps. I don't believe any of the human participants survived the melee, except perhaps the one young woman Clovis had put under his personal protection.
There's a lesson in there. Let us hope the Man has been keeping notes.
The imagery is as familiar as it is nauseating: slimy bug-people and improbable lumbering lizardoids; toothy winged rats and hairy boogermen; rusty-implement-wielding misanthropes and unkempt practitioners of questionable science. And the requisite goo and ooze and spurty gurgling nastiness that always follow them.
This is the Man's doing. (If not, then he is surely the willing catalyst.) Night after night, he soaks up these unpleasant transmissions, and always with increasing relish, until ultimately the army of little people come to our door in their macabre disguises and demand restitution. It is a long and tiresome and wholly incomprehensible season.
Improbably, the Woman buys into this nonsense. She who fears even the most insignificant of leggy bugs somehow possesses the constitution to ride along on this grisly caravan of gore. She even seems to slip into a mild psychosis of her own, in which she festoons my fortress with a small army of miniature gourds.
Trying times.
I did, however, discern a barrage of images within the Big Box the other night that actually commanded my fascination. It was a documentary of stupid people (nothing new there) who found themselves menaced by strange, gargantuan hairless mole-rats with the ability to take human form. These oversized vampiric vermin, even as they chomped and squished their way through the inept human population, were beseiged by an army of righteous warrior cats, led by the champion law-enforcer Clovis. And for all their mysterious powers, these unearthly mole-creatures were rightly terrified of the formidable force that had gathered to dispense justice.
It was a glorious battle and a moving finale, as scores of my compatriots leapt upon the scaly forms of these rat-demons and slashed them to pulpy lumps. I don't believe any of the human participants survived the melee, except perhaps the one young woman Clovis had put under his personal protection.
There's a lesson in there. Let us hope the Man has been keeping notes.
so sayeth Shmool on Tuesday, October 10, 2006
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