’t Was the Day of the Moon that killed the Loon!

Dear reader,

When you read this in the year 2112, you are in all likelihood enslaved by a race of giant mutant locusts. For them, just this:

All hail our locust overlords!

When you read this, I will most likely have died during the Great Fire of Europe of 2046, that I started after setting fire to my arch nemesis, a giant locus…. I mean, a giant lizard! Phew! That was close… or wait, I’m already dead; why am I trying to save myself here? So yes, it was a giant locust that I torched, and I’d do it again any day of the week, provided I see a giant locust every day, it isn’t Monday and it isn’t raining that day, and maybe also not when it’s chilly out – I’ve already been a bit fluish lately, I guess the worst I could do in such a condition is go out and burn locusts – you can call me a maniac all you want, but I’m not insane!

I figured you might be interested in a few pointers as to how you can defeat your overlords. First of all, don’t revolt on a Monday. I did that once, and then I overslept, I forgot my explosives, so I ended up with an empty backpack at a parliament that had also overslept, which meant there was really nobody to blow up. To at least make an impression, I shouted BOOM! at the top of my voice to a group of tourists. Sadly, they were Japanese and had no idea what I was on about, because apparently explosions make different sounds in Japanese. Story of my life. You’d think the fifth of November would be a Monday, but it turns out that it wasn’t in 1605, but then you are forgetting that in more than 10 per cent of all years, the fifth of November DOES fall on a Monday.

As the old saying goes: “ ’t Was the Day of the Moon that killed the Loon!”

So don’t take any chances. The best time to revolt is on a hot summer Friday when the locusts that shackle you are out laying eggs in the sand and contemplating their pending weekend orgies, those sick fucks!

In my time, I at least had access to petrol to pour over them and then set ablaze with the mere touch of a button (because it was a button controlled lighter; I know striking a match stick may have been more cinematographic, but I really couldn’t risk a match refusing to light (when you eventually defeat the locusts and make my life into a film, be sure to use your artistic license and change it back to the match (the match with which I then light the cigarette of the seductive Bond girl that for some reason won’t stop following me, but who will then stop following me, because she too will fall victim to the flames (and who wants a Bond girl with third degree burns? Except for burns victims fetishists, that is…)). Of course I will perish in the resulting fire as well, but here too, might I ask you change the location of death? Instead of a public toilet where I was battling a severe cramp attack down there and punching a penis on my right that had pierced its way through a gloryhole I hadn’t noticed, maybe have me rescue a puppy and/or a child without legs from a burning building. Minor changes, really.

So what should you use instead of petrol because I used up all of that in my time? You know, some liquid that burns. Alcohol? Tomato soup? You figure it out! Do I look like friggin’ Allah? (I certainly hope not, for obvious reasons)

You know there really is no reason to start pointing fingers about the past. Did I fund the research to create a race of intelligent superlocusts with laser guns in their eyes? Does it really matter? No, what matters is that we can forget the past and move on. Maybe you should just accept your current situation. I mean, is building a giant locust pyramid out of human bones such a bad job? Have you ever worked at McDonald’s? I don’t think so. At least you get to keep some of your dignity (when one of your bones becomes part of a load bearing beam in the pyramid, but still).
Or revolt if you think you can be civilized about it THIS time. All those other times, it really didn’t work out, did it?

Hail to Ktrrkkrrrrr, Ruler of All!

The Word is Holy, spake the clown

Yes, it distinguishes me from all those beings who do not possess It or refute the endless possibilities it has to offer. All I can offer them, either in consolation or in scorn, is just more words, infinite streams of closely bonded syllables to express the plenitude of my bladder (among other emotions).
It puts a roof over my head. By morphing words into other words, I am allowed to eat, not always equally healthy, though I feel we cannot put all blame on the Word for this. Laziness is a dish best served in under five minutes. *hears microwave sound*
Long ago, a client asked me, “could you deliver tomorrow, SOB?” Since the clock had not reached noon yet, my mental state could euphemistically be described as “gasping for breath”, so immediately I wondered why said client would call me a the son of a female dog. Did he know that I was actually raised in the forest, by a wild woolf along with five other woolf cubs? Only when I was 18, I came into contact with the outside world. This is why my language feels stilted and unnatural, since I spent my childhood chasing rabbits, urinating against trees and howling at the moon (such a stereotype, by the way; one day, one of my stepbrothers and I decided to stop howling at the moon, because we felt it was something people would expect from us, you know – and there we were, first full moon, not howling, and then BAM!, he stepped on a wolftrap; cut off his hind leg, so we all had to eat him… We continued howling after that…), all while you were learning your fancy grammar, la-di-dah!
As far as the translation world is concerned, it’s generally quite polite and very much dissimilar from any reality TV show one might compare it to, so of course the SOB had a much more innocent explanation. It would be a daunting task to make a reality show about translators…

VOICEOVER: Next on National Geographic… A brandnew series about the ancient art of bilinguality. It’s like bisexuality, only without all the sex! A rollercoaster ride of a TV show…. Explosions, drama, drugs, passion,… All words that can be translated!
In our first episode, we will follow Tim around.
‘Hi, my name’s Tim and as you can see I am now in my underwear, lying in my office, which is also a bed, and I am translating a text about a cream against haemorrhoids.’
VOICEOVER: “Will he make the deadline? Does an unexpected slowdown of his internet connection give him discomfort? Will he survive or does he still have some cheese in his fridge?”
“Oh, the deadline is tomorrow, SOB. So there’s plenty of time. The internet’s going fine now, but you really never know… Sometimes, I have to hold my computer like this to get a good signal. It’s just one of the dangers we face in our lives every day.”
VOICEOVER: “Will his mind sustain the excruciating torment of being tied down half-naked to his computer? Will a finger cramp prevent him from typing in the letter E? And what about his balls; won’t they be slowly microwaved by his laptop by the time he sends off his finished translation?”
*Explosion sound*
“You know, the best way to protect your balls against laptop radiation is ice, lots and lots of ice, applied in a washcloth on around the testes. Only downside is that when the ice melts, it may look like I’ve wet my bed, but usually that’s not the case…”

So where was I? Oh yes, the Word that is the bird!
We take them for granted, so much so that we often neglect them, which whirlpools into a pit of incoherence, madness, and ultimately, a whole lot of nonsense disguised as wit.