©1985 Dr. Christopher Gross
THE END OF ALL BULLETS
Chapter 20

That's right, folks -- that was the time "Bob" came over and he was wearing that electric spinning bow tie of his. We kept telling him it looked stupid, but he thought it was the funniest thing on God's green earth and he just sat there laughing -- he wouldn't stop, so eventually we had to pile the chairs on top of him. And he just kept laughing -- even with the hot ashes from that Pipe falling in his face. Finally the police had to come over and investigate the racket. They came into the lab and asked what was going on, and we said, "Oh, it's just "Bob", but he was gone...

And some Glorp came on the TV and she said we need tough new laws because the Conspiracy won't go away by itself and so we had to be mature about this. And so we better all knuckle down and do our jobs or we'll end up getting our Slack taken away by force, because Slack isn't a right, it's a privilege. And slavery isn't a privilege, it's a right, and self-destruction isn't a right, it's a duty. And "Bob" is a fictional character propped up by a bunch of malcontents who need expert medical attention, not that they deserve it. AND I AM ELMER FUDD! And she said that I really did need help if I went around saying things like that. So I watched TV and the movie came on and the hero proved he was the hero by renouncing his Slack for all eternity. Of course he had to do it, and the folks who took his Slack disposed of it properly and said he was a good boy, and get back into the box. And he got back into the box and he never came out of it again. And everyone solemnly agreed that it was the Will of God. And the heroine was mysteriously removed from the film before that -- she just stopped appearing. I was wondering why she disappeared, and tried getting an answer out of the networks. I gave the network a call, and they sent a bunch of guys over to punch my eyeball. But I was out.

I struck up a conversation with a random passerby, and she described in great detail what I would be doing for the rest of the month. It sounded like a threat, but she was very nice about it. She spat on me and drove off in someone else's car. I sat down under a tree and some men I didn't know ran up with megaphones and told me not to go to sleep and that if I had any common decency at all I should buy a car. As I got up to leave, one of the men explained to me, in meticulous detail, his vendetta against his brother-in-law. He never knew exactly why he was angry but he sure knew what he was going to do about it; he managed to repeat each of his sentences, with variations, at least four times. Then he asked me to take out a mortgage on his house and was offended when I laughed politely. So I tried to cross the street, but the traffic was backed up as far as the state line in both directions, even though the cars went real fast. I stood before the double line of automobiles and their screaming drivers for about half an hour before I turned around and went home without crossing the street. The TV went on again and some Glorp game host was on and allowed as to how we should all have Atari games implanted in our heads so we could all be state-of-the-art, because Science is self-correcting and Inevitable and we have to be more mature about this. And a commercial came on with some little girls doing aerobics and and some guy saying that he'd even grow tomato plants on top of your roof just to make you happy. No, those two things had nothing to do with each other. Some guy running for office came on and spouted words out of the dictionary at random, and then that choir that sang 'We Are the World' and that Pepsi jingle started singing, 'Get Off Your Hiney America.' I thought I saw "Bob" in another commercial, but it was just the Goodyear blimp...

BACKBACK TO
CLASSIC TALES