Sunday, February 08, 2004
Eschew eschewing gum
This is the true story of my trip to The Land of Nothing But a Chestnut.*
As I stood there on the airplane, I knew something was wrong. Not only were there no visible seats on the smooth, cylindrical metal floor, it was becoming harder by the second to keep myself attached to the accelerating plane. As I flew off, the realization hit me seconds before the runway that I ought to have been standing in the airplane. Momentum dragged me across the pavement until a suitcase on a nearby luggage cart popped open and a halter top hit me in the face, bringing me to a quick halt. I stood up and walked the remaining seven thousand miles to The Land of Nothing But a Chestnut. On the border of said Land stood much more than a chestnut. To get a good idea of what there was, take a chestnut and add three giant mutant pigmen with bulging muscles and forehead veins, ready to impale you upon hundreds of tiny pieces of lead at a moment's notice, then subtract the chestnut. Yeah. So I nonchalantly dropped to my hands and knees and casually began to crawl past them, whistling an inconsequential tune. A few seconds later my head hit shin, and I looked up to see a gruesome spit-laden mouth growl, "What do you think you're doing?" I told him, "Goo goo, ga ga," in keeping with my infantile camouflage. Mistaking my innocent babblings for foreign nationalistic rhetoric, he bellowed something about filthiness, infidels, renunciation, and slaughter, and slammed the barrel of his gun down my throat. I coughed a bunch. It looked like the end was immanent, but I checked my dictionary and discovered it was imminent. Suddenly I had a vision of the Electric Disco Fencepost, and he told me what to do, by way of interpretive dance. So I stepped on the pigman's toes, screamed in his nose (yeah, i know... but it worked) and gouged his bad attitude out. Finally free to enter The Land of Nothing But a Chestnut, I found it surprisingly vacant. Pulling out the crude map of TLONBAC that the old senile pretzel vendor-turned-cartologist had drawn for me, I read his vague directions leading to an unnamed "point of interest." I was uneasy, but I proceeded. As I turned the final corner I beheld, shrouded in a thick fog of nothing at all, a single chestnut. The map fell from my suddenly convulsing hand, and I stared for days until my mind was utterly blown and I died. There I can be found to this day, an expression of pure ecstasy on my slightly decayed face. They'll probably cart me away one of these days.
*Condensed version of the story: I went there. There was nothing but a chestnut. Far out.
This is the true story of my trip to The Land of Nothing But a Chestnut.*
As I stood there on the airplane, I knew something was wrong. Not only were there no visible seats on the smooth, cylindrical metal floor, it was becoming harder by the second to keep myself attached to the accelerating plane. As I flew off, the realization hit me seconds before the runway that I ought to have been standing in the airplane. Momentum dragged me across the pavement until a suitcase on a nearby luggage cart popped open and a halter top hit me in the face, bringing me to a quick halt. I stood up and walked the remaining seven thousand miles to The Land of Nothing But a Chestnut. On the border of said Land stood much more than a chestnut. To get a good idea of what there was, take a chestnut and add three giant mutant pigmen with bulging muscles and forehead veins, ready to impale you upon hundreds of tiny pieces of lead at a moment's notice, then subtract the chestnut. Yeah. So I nonchalantly dropped to my hands and knees and casually began to crawl past them, whistling an inconsequential tune. A few seconds later my head hit shin, and I looked up to see a gruesome spit-laden mouth growl, "What do you think you're doing?" I told him, "Goo goo, ga ga," in keeping with my infantile camouflage. Mistaking my innocent babblings for foreign nationalistic rhetoric, he bellowed something about filthiness, infidels, renunciation, and slaughter, and slammed the barrel of his gun down my throat. I coughed a bunch. It looked like the end was immanent, but I checked my dictionary and discovered it was imminent. Suddenly I had a vision of the Electric Disco Fencepost, and he told me what to do, by way of interpretive dance. So I stepped on the pigman's toes, screamed in his nose (yeah, i know... but it worked) and gouged his bad attitude out. Finally free to enter The Land of Nothing But a Chestnut, I found it surprisingly vacant. Pulling out the crude map of TLONBAC that the old senile pretzel vendor-turned-cartologist had drawn for me, I read his vague directions leading to an unnamed "point of interest." I was uneasy, but I proceeded. As I turned the final corner I beheld, shrouded in a thick fog of nothing at all, a single chestnut. The map fell from my suddenly convulsing hand, and I stared for days until my mind was utterly blown and I died. There I can be found to this day, an expression of pure ecstasy on my slightly decayed face. They'll probably cart me away one of these days.
*Condensed version of the story: I went there. There was nothing but a chestnut. Far out.
