SPECIAL FEATURE:
Matt McIrvin Will Now Explain His Own Joke!

People occasionally complain that references in my Usenet posts are slightly obscure. I can't imagine why. Nevertheless, as a public service, I've provided helpful annotations and illuminating hyperlinks so that you, too, can get most of the jokes in the following post. All unexplained jokes are left as an exercise for the reader. Enjoy!

Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
From: mmcirvin@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin)
Subject: Re: A Fragment Of Poesy.
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 05:29:08 GMT

nickb@primenet.com (Nick S Bensema) wrote:

James "Kibo" Parry <kibo@world.std.com> wrote:

The Curious Case Of M. McM-----------
by Edgar Allen Pooh

Halfway up the stair,
        I met a man with two-tone hair...

MATT McIRVIN WILL NOW WRITE THE OTHER FIFTEEN PAGES. THE END.

 
                    -- K.
                    He better, it's my Constitutional right!!!

What if he's not an American?

[Matt's computer screen with waving patriotic flag, bearing a lizard labeled "DON'T TREAD ON ME, FOR I AM IGUANA IGUANA POWERSURGIUS, NOTE TO SELF, GAR IS A WOMAN, FRY CUTE LITTLE IGUANA EGGS FOR BREAKFAST, 10 FPS." Music: "Pomp and Circumstance," our national anthem]

But I am! Before I write the other fifteen pages, however, I must process the information now entering my optic nerve, as my patriotic duty.

[Camera swings around from the screen and zooms in tightly on Matt's right eyeball, revealing a pair of parentheses, and, behind them, an elliptical tunnel made of dark gray and light gray segments that slowly shade to stark black and white as the camera hurtles down the tunnel, which now curves and writhes in all directions. The camera is following the words "Edgar Allen Pooh" written in distressed Helvetica letters, which tumble as they hurtle. Spooky Danny Elfman music. A Time Cookie covered with microchips and oats tumbles past, then a spindle-shaped object seemingly made of gold. Then the tunnel opens out to a striped cavern swarming with beetle-like machines tending a multiply-galleried mechanism that extends from floor to ceiling.]

MECHANISM

Shlurp. Shlurp. BOING. Shlurp. Shlurp. BOING.

[Camera zooms in on a beetle-like machine.]

BEETLE-LIKE MACHINE [voice of Mel Blanc]

It's a living!

[The words "Edgar Allen Pooh" enter a gaping slot at the front of the giant mechanism. The whole thing starts clattering and shaking; it seems to be jammed in there. Finally, there is a rending noise, and the mechanism emits, from a second slot marked TRADE IN USED FARECARD, the words "e. e. 'Doc' cummings." Strings connected ultimately to Matt's fingers, and attached at this end to pulleys on the mechanism, start to wiggle.]

  it's
        spring)


  and the triangulareyed little chickladorianman
        comes:

     bouncing
  via            strappedonbergenholm

             pinK:
                     completelypink  not just pinkish
              pinkthroughand through

and kimballandbuskirk come running
      to the unbelievably: hostile;environment of the center
 of 

              a lambentsphere of violetcoruscating actinic light
          produced by

                     BRILLIANT

                q-beam; helices: of tenthousandmassed ships of
            galactic patrolwhere solidmatteritself could not
        conceivably survive the massed energies of the almost
    unimaginably violent forces brought to bear by the
awesome power of the Negasphere! (and it's

                                           Spring


    boskones die] [before they're stalled
    boskones die cause gharlane called
    gharlane trolls
    good boskones bite
    boskones enjoy
   (eddore knows whoy)

   (with evil sadistic glee in their redly glowing eyes as
    they contemplate saturnalia of indescribable alien lust
    visited upon the flesh of innocent victims but for the
    tireless efforts of genetically flawless auburn-haired
    lensmen and their arisian-built pseudo-living incorruptible
    psychic amplifiers)

    the hope you're stoned on thionite

         but

              while we have ships and clear ether which
                 give us speed

         to conquer worlds with

             who cares if some oneeyed sonofabitch
              gives us scissors to cut out Words with?



                                      - e. e. "Doc" cummings

-- 
Your font is:      Proportional  Monospaced
                                      ^
The amazing Font-o-Meter!  http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/

Notes

Don't tread on me

Slogan on American Revolutionary War rattlesnake flag. Back

Iguana iguana powersurgius

There was an astonishing Easter egg in some versions of MacOS 7.5. It was there in system 7.5.4 and 7.5.5, at least. Dragging the words "secret about box" onto the desktop from SimpleText would bring up an animation of a waving flag, bearing a picture of an iguana and the phrase "Iguana iguana powersurgius," in front of Apple's One Infinite Loop headquarters. The flag was not a movie but a finite-element simulation; you could interactively vary the wind direction, and even rip the flag off the pole if you caught it just right. There was some key you could hold down to make it display frames per second (hence the "10FPS" part), but I've forgotten what it was. Back

Gar is a woman

An acquaintance has an iguana named Gar, who unexpectedly turned out to be female. Apparently, you have to give a female iguana a good place to lay eggs. She will not lay them just anywhere, even if they are unfertilized, and if she doesn't lay them, she is in danger of becoming "egg-bound". The eggs are smaller than chicken eggs, but they lay fifteen or twenty to a clutch. Back

stark black and white

A frequent image in movies by director Tim Burton. Back

Danny Elfman music

Another Tim Burton reference. Back

time cookie

A weird-looking special effect in the movie The Philadelphia Experiment. It was supposed to look like a chunk of land, covered with buildings, that had come unstuck in time; it looked instead like a tumbling oatmeal cookie covered with electronic components. Back

spindle-shaped object seemingly made of gold

A detail from the "stargate" sequence in Arthur C. Clarke's novel version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Cut from the movie. Back

"It's a living"

Phrase frequently uttered by the animals that supplied motive power to the Flintstones' household appliances. Back

TRADE IN USED FARECARD

Label above a slot on Washington, DC Metro farecard machines. The slot is for trading in used farecards, but, for some reason, some farecard machines also spit out new farecards via the same slot. Back

e. e. "Doc" cummings

The poem oscillates between parodying

E. E. Cummings - great 20th century American poet; fond of odd punctuation and capitalization, lyrical love poetry, bitter satire, and paeans to innocence. He was born about a block and a half from where I wrote the above post, near Kirkland Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A little-known fact about him: He didn't insist on writing his name in all lowercase.

E. E. "Doc" Smith - American science fiction writer who wrote a lot of action-packed "space opera" in the first half of the 20th century; fond of hyperventilating prose, super-science, huge space battles, extremely noble heroes, and extremely vile villains. His best-known work is the Lensman series. Back

chickladorianman

"balloonman" in a Cummings poem about Spring. In the Lensman books, the Chickladorians were pink and had triangular eyes. Doc Smith seemed oddly intent on stressing just how pink they were. Back

strappedonbergenholm

The Bergenholm drive canceled a ship's inertia, allowing it to go faster than light with almost no effort. There were also personally-mounted ones. Back

kimballandbuskirk

Kimball Kinison and van Buskirk were heroes in the Lensman series. Back

Negasphere

A weapon made of antimatter. Back

boskones

In the original Cummings, a satire on Stalinism, "kumrads die before they're old". In the Lensman books Boskone was the criminal organization out to ruin the galaxy. Back

gharlane

Second in command of the unspeakably evil Eddorians, Gharlane of Eddore is the mastermind behind the mastermind behind the mastermind behind Boskone. Also, a certain science fiction enthusiast on Usenet. Back

lensmen

Heroes secretly bred by the noble Arisians to ward off Boskone, and supplied with nifty wrist-mounted psychic amplifiers called Lenses. Back

thionite

The most addictive drug in the galaxy, pushed by Boskone. Back