Subscribe in a reader
Scenes from a War: Episode 1
Conan the barbarians knock on the gate with battering-rams. Cablecars and dastardly painters come for the moving parts. Oops I peeled my monitor off its frame. Fires from torches lick the sky above the gates, pointed tree trunks, maybe birch, accident waiting to happen there eh? And the persistant orgy of yells and grumbling on the other side sounds like a flag. Moanmar Khaddafi and Charlie Sheen were cooking up smores as everyone else geared up for the imminent battle. The marshmallows melted, and they were dripping down Sheen’s chin. And then Emilio Estevez climbed the gate with a pulley system, after which they hoisted up an enormous batch of boiling orange pekoe tea to pour on their enemy.
The women and children disappeared that night, and lookouts confirmed that the enemy was throwing them on a big bonfire right outside our front door. We loaded the slings with rubble and disgusting, rotting garbage. And some flaming olive oil. Emilio came back to my Bill-Pullman porter kiosk, and I hurriedly pasted my monitor back on the wall.
He asked me what on earth I was doing. My back is on the wall, I pointed out. Emilio looked at the painting at the opposite side of my room, and there I was, my back painted, me walking away from the painter. We need reinforcements, he said, and I dotted the eyes and crossed the tees on mutually assured destruction. But he said we don’t have to; they will just drink themselves silly and leave in the morning. I didn’t want to risk it, but he insisted, at which point, Gary Busey came in, and got out of his fat suit. He was naked, and had a gorgeous woman’s body.
I’m not taking appointments right now Gary. Retirement and carpet bombing is what I expect pleasantly. That’s all. Oh yeah, and Kelly Clarkson’s favourite CD, which I bought on the internet. We could always just fall on them, Khaddafi said. Death by fat. Gout had to be the co-conspirator. Maybe it would be more suitable to just cut his Achilles tendon and pee on the wound. Then Canada’s boyfriend came out with a piece of felt tied together with a round of raw rope. Undone, there were several sizes of shurikens, some dipped in adder venom. That’s just so you can say that you died like Cleopatra for all of a few seconds before you die when we kill you.
I swear at that moment, Kim Basinger flew in on flying dragon, you know, neverending story-style, and asked for whoever is in charge in our camp. Apparently, she’s an ambassador of the enemy. If there were ever an EILF, you know, an enemy I’d like to f#@&, there it was.
She told us she was there to talk peace terms. I said that we hadn’t even got a chance to cut anyone’s head off yet, and it’s not fair to end a war until you get to do what you enjoy most at least once, and have people say “Well, we were at war.” Not much to say to that.
Her dragon-thing took off, turned around, screeched and all that, and then took off. After that we heard a terrible whir as a bunch of glops of gravel and pebbles and sand were pitched into our eyes. And it burned. But she did warn me.
Charlie Sheen smiled crookedly. It’s time to get serious, he said. He waved his arm, and out of the corners of the room sprang an enormous army of porcupines to wander out on the battlefield. There, the enemy could fall, in disorientation caused by the lobbing of clothes drenched in whale sperm, rolled up into a ball and lit on fire, into their midst, on the many spines of the porcupines scrambling to get in and out of the way.
