Category: Humour

Patrick gets the answer right

A parable of education

I was working at the YMCA’s daycare centre. It was summertime, so the kids were there all day. My boss was not happy with the programme for 4- and 5-year-olds, so she asked me to spend some time with those classes and just observe what was going on.

Patrick was the youngest of the 4-year-olds. He was skinny, pale, and freckled, with a large bush of orange hair and enormous blue eyes. He looked like a little clown. He was usually off in his own world somewhere, oblivious to everyone else. His mum dropped him off quite early, and when the teacher arrived he was already deep into a box of Legos and far away on Planet X. The teacher would greet him, “Good morning, Patrick!” and Patrick, as if awaking from a dream, would turn briefly from his toys and reply, “Hi, honey!” Everyone found this amusing, but when Patrick’s mum found out she sat him down and explained that his teacher had a name—Mrs. Johnson—and he should call her by her name. The next morning, greeted by the teacher, Patrick replied, “Hi, Johnson!”

On swimming day the 4s and 5s had the pool together. There was some sort of holdup with the snacks, though, so while the teacher of the 5-year-olds sorted out the problem, the teacher of the 4-year-old class had both groups sitting in a circle, waiting. She began talking about colours in a syrupy, sing-songy voice. She had a few sheets of coloured construction paper. “Yesterday we learned our colours, didn’t we?” she began. “Georgia, do you remember the colour you learned?” She continued around the circle in this way, and finally got to Patrick, who was way off on Planet X as usual, returning only when he heard his name at the end of the teacher’s question. “Do you remember the colour you learned, Patrick?” Startled out of his reveries, he looked up to find everyone staring at him expectantly. He knew he had been asked a question; he knew everyone was waiting for him to answer; but he had no idea what the question was. He bent his head and began balling his fists up inside his striped t-shirt.

A helpful and sympathetic girl from the 5-year-old class asked, “Is it on his shirt?” Patrick’s eyes went to his shirt, searching desperately for the answer. “No,” the teacher said, “it isn’t on his shirt. But it is on his shoes.” 

Patrick was wearing red sneakers. His eyes leapt from his shirt to his shoes. Everyone waited, hardly breathing. Suddenly, Patrick had the answer. His body relaxed. He lifted his head up, smiled, and answered triumphantly, “Dogshit!”

And he was right.

Baseball Clichés

There’s a lot of ballgame left to be played. It hasn’t been a textbook start. They’re trying to chip away at the deficit. A two-run blast! The game has really sped up on him. He hasn’t got his best stuff tonight. He threw a rocket to first base. Let’s right the ship. That was way upstairs. It’s a game of inches. He came to play. It’s getaway day. He got squeezed on that pitch. He left the yard. His first trip to the plate. They’re playing him to pull. That’s two gone. Two out, nobody on. He’s clutch at the plate. At the top of the zone. A chopper to short. His baseball I.Q. is very high. He plays the game right. He sends it down the right-field line. It hugs the line. A big turn around first. He takes the base—a two-out free pass. No defence against a walk. He smacks one to left field. He found a hole. He’s tipping his pitches. With two strikes he needs to shorten up. That swing is too long. It caromed off the wall. They swept the series. They went wire-to-wire. The count is even. A walk-off! He rounds the bases. It ran inside. Jammed him. It’s a different team today. He lays off that pitch. Peaking over his shoulder at the runner. You can feel the momentum. It’s a hitter’s count. The stars are aligning. It’s a pitcher’s count. He’s on the bump. He kicks and fires. Strike ’em out throw ’em out. That was just a bad at-bat. Don’t let the ball play you. Play a clean game. He’s trying to find the strike zone. Back-to-back K’s. Picks it up on one hop. He steps up to the dish. Power hitters. Those bats are warming up. He misses downstairs. The tying run is at the plate. The count is even. He ran through a red light. There’s traffic on the base paths. Station to station. Top of the lineup. Bases loaded. He’s throwing smoke. He challenged him with a fastball. Swing and a miss! Don’t expand the strike zone. Clips the outside corner. He’s dealing. High-leverage arms. Back-to-back hooks. On deck. Waiting in the wings. In the hole. Comes in with a heater. Right at the knees. Threw it right by him. Struck him out looking. A pitcher’s pitch. He rings him up. He swings through it. Busted him up and in. A little chin music. Tough to do damage. Make him throw strikes. He was taking all the way. One pitch one out. The runner was stranded. The last nine outs are the toughest. He picked his pocket. He goes back to the warning track, he’s out of room, looks up, and it’s gone! A sky-scraping home run! A monster home run. A bomb! A no-doubter. The right fielder just turns and watches it go. An insurance run. They’ve blown the game open. They’re putting up some crooked numbers. He’s taking one for the team. The bottom of the order. The seventh-inning stretch. Retired at first base. They haven’t cashed in on their opportunities. Struggling offensively. Buzzed his tower! Up and in. Down and away. The inner part of the plate. The outer part of the plate. A defensive swing. Drifting foul. Couldn’t get there in time. He misjudged it. The series finale. They’re playing match-up. A 1-2-3 inning. Retired in order. A bloop hit. A lazy fly ball. An ice-cream cone catch! He closed the door. He missed the bag. It’s a new ballgame. The wheels have come off. It’s all about getting outs. That first out is so important. He scorched it! His bat’s starting to heat up. Right at the centerfielder. Right back through the box. A rocket off his bat. He gave it a ride but the ballpark held it. A long out. Very playable. Popped him up. That’ll find the seats. He fires to first. He might have chased Ball 4. He’s battled through injuries. Ahead in the count. Just got a piece of it. Just wide of the chalk. Another big inning. Down the stretch. One game at a time. Brushed him back. Taking all the way. Can o’ corn. Another goose egg. Did he go around? A productive out. Move the runner. Putting up zeroes. Down to their last out. Down to their last strike. He went up there hacking. The lead held up. A dandy of a pitching duel. It was a team win.

 

Clerihews

Definition
“A clerihew is a whimsical, four-line biographical poem of a type invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875 – 1956).

Form
“A clerihew has the following properties:

  • It is biographical and usually whimsical, showing the subject from an unusual point of view; it mostly pokes fun at famous people
  • It has four lines of irregular length and metre for comic effect
  • The rhyme structure is AABB; the subject matter and wording are often humorously contrived in order to achieve a rhyme, including the use of phrases in Latin, French and other non-English languages.
  • The first line contains, and may consist solely of, the subject’s name. According to a letter in The Spectator in the 1960s, Bentley said that a true clerihew has to have the name “at the end of the first line”, as the whole point was the skill in rhyming awkward names.

“Clerihews are not satirical or abusive, but they target famous individuals and reposition them in an absurd, anachronistic or commonplace setting, often giving them an over-simplified and slightly garbled description.” 

—From Wikipedia

Samples (by E. C. Bentley)

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St Paul’s.”

The younger Van Eyck
Was christened Jan, and not Mike.
The thought of this curious mistake
Often kept him awake.

Some Original Clerihews
1.
Young Winnie Churchill
Thought, “A career in the Church’ll
Surely drive me barmy.
I think I’ll join the army.”

2.
The philosopher Socrates
Said, “I try not to mock at these
Tedious fools, but they all take a fall
‘Cuz they’re such know-it-alls.”

3.
Miss Florence Nightengale
Ditched her farthingale
And thought, “I will hie me a
Ways down the road, perhaps to Crimea.”

4.
Steven Jobs
Threw away gobs
Of mess and fuss
And designed a computer for the rest of us.

5.
Miles Davis
Thought, “God save us
From slavish imitation.
Let’s try some innovation.”

6.
Thelonious Monk
Was in a deep funk
Until he manufactured
Chords that were fractured.

More of E. C. Bentley’s clerihews can be found at Project Gutenberg, here: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46691/pg46691-images.html

My favourite memory of science class

It was in Grade 7.

Our teacher was a no-nonsense fellow who addressed us as Mr. This and Miss That.

We were having a lesson about the properties of matter.

Steve Brodhag, sitting in the back row, had dozed off.

The teacher, noticing this, called out in a loud voice, “Mr. Brodhag, what’s matter?”

Steve, wakened suddenly, groggily replied, “Uh, nothin’.”

The most pernicious race of little odious vermin

“. . . As for yourself,” continued the king, “who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But by what I have gathered from your own relation, . . . I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

—Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

Part II, A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Chapter 6

Don Quixote’s wise words

The inspiring words of Don Quixote, seeking to console Sancho Panza:

All these squalls to which we have been subjected are signs that the weather will soon improve, and things will go well for us, because it is not possible for the bad or the good to endure forever, and from this it follows that since the bad has lasted so long a time, the good is close at hand.

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (Part I, Chapter XVIII)

In the next moment he learns that their saddlebags have been stolen and they have nothing to eat.

Give some to the drummer?

Fate Marable (1890 – 1947) spent most of his life as pianist and bandleader on Mississippi River steamboats. In 1910, with a thousand passengers dancing to his orchestra’s music,

a fire broke out in the hold. Despite their orders to keep playing lest the passengers panic, each of the musicians in turn laconically allowed as how he figured he’d just ease on over and ‘see what was happening to the boat,’ in order, of course, to report back. Each one in turn slipped out and disappeared, including Marable, who left his drummer to carry on alone.

Sigh. I imagine the drummer thinking, “Ah, at last they’ve given me a solo!”

The steamboat

. . . burned to the waterline that evening. As a local paper reported: ‘Wild panic broke loose among the passengers, and . . . a general stampede ensued. Screaming, cursing, praying men, women, and children fought, jammed, and trampled over one another in mad chaos and confusion.’ Two passengers lost their lives, and crew members, who jumped into the water to help floundering passengers, later reported that babies rained down on them from the deck railings. After reuniting with his musicians on Bad Axe Island, Marable found that without the [steamboat] he and his band . . . no longer enjoyed gainful employment. Happily, John Streckfus [the owner] soon went out and bought a whole fleet of boats . . . .

—William Howland Kenney, Jazz on the River, p. 43

So, the drummer—who was he?—seems to have survived, but no word on whether he was able to save his drums.

Gibbon, massacres of Christians, and dying moths

From Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, Chapter XV:

Here Rachel came up from the lower garden with a book in her hand.

“What’s that book?” said Ridley, when she had shaken hands.

“It’s Gibbon,” said Rachel as she sat down.

“The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?” said Mrs. Thornbury. “A very wonderful book, I know. My dear father was always quoting it at us, with the result that we resolved never to read a line.”

“Gibbon the historian?” enquired Mrs. Flushing. “I connect him with some of the happiest hours of my life. We used to lie in bed and read Gibbon—about the massacres of the Christians, I remember—when we were supposed to be asleep. It’s no joke, I can tell you, readin’ a great big book, in double columns, by a night-light, and the light that comes through a chink in the door. Then there were the moths—tiger moths, yellow moths, and horrid cockchafers. Louisa, my sister, would have the window open. I wanted it shut. We fought every night of our lives over that window. Have you ever seen a moth dyin’ in a night-light?” she enquired.

The passage continues:

Hewet picked up the book that lay on the ground.

“You like this?” he asked in an undertone.

“No, I don’t like it,” she replied. She had indeed been trying all the afternoon to read it, and for some reason the glory which she had perceived at first had faded, and, read as she would, she could not grasp the meaning with her mind.

“It goes round, round, round, like a roll of oil-cloth,” she hazarded. Evidently she meant Hewet alone to hear her words, but Hirst demanded, “What d’you mean?” She was instantly ashamed of her figure of speech, for she could not explain it in words of sober criticism.

“Surely it’s the most perfect style, so far as style goes, that’s ever been invented,” he continued. “Every sentence is practically perfect, and the wit—”

“Ugly in body, repulsive in mind,” she thought, instead of thinking about Gibbon’s style. “Yes, but strong, searching, unyielding in mind.” She looked at his big head, a disproportionate part of which was occupied by the forehead, and at the direct, severe eyes.

“I give you up in despair,” he said. He meant it lightly, but she took it seriously, and believed that her value as a human being was lessened because she did not happen to admire the style of Gibbon. The others were talking now in a group about the native villages which Mrs. Flushing ought to visit.

“I despair too,” she said impetuously. “How are you going to judge people merely by their minds?”

“You agree with my spinster Aunt, I expect,” said St. John in his jaunty manner, which was always irritating because it made the person he talked to appear unduly clumsy and in earnest. “‘Be good, sweet maid’—I thought Mr. Kingsley and my Aunt were now obsolete.”

“One can be very nice without having read a book,” she asserted. Very silly and simple her words sounded, and laid her open to derision.

“Did I ever deny it?” Hirst enquired, raising his eyebrows.

You couldn’t give me a billion dollars to get on an airplane.

The great Paul Motian, from Motian in Motion, a wonderful 2020 documentary of his life and career. Skip to the 41-minute mark for this:

Oh yeah. No, I won’t get on an airplane. Forget that. You couldn’t give me a billion dollars to get on an airplane. I’m serious. Give me a billion dollars—I will not get on an airplane. I just did so much of that, man, so much touring, wow, year after year after year after year. Planes. Airplanes. Hundreds of airplanes. Terrible! That’s terrible! Touring is a horrible life.

Years of international living and traveling have led me to exactly the same conclusion. Having said that, billion-dollar offers are welcome.

Snarky Jane Austen

When King George III went mad and was unable to carry out his duties, his son became Prince Regent in 1811, ruling in his father’s stead until the old king’s death in 1820, when the Prince Regent became George IV. As Prince Regent, he led a notoriously dissolute life, with massive debts, multiple mistresses, and rumours of multiple illegitimate children—having separated from his wife, Caroline, after the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte. The public sided with Caroline and despised the Prince Regent.

As Jane Austen was about to publish Emma, a representative of the Prince Regent was sent to her, in an apparent attempt to improve the Prince’s reputation, with a request that she dedicate the novel to the Prince Regent. Austen was unhappy, but finally agreed. Here is the dedication:

TO

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

THE PRINCE REGENT,

THIS WORK IS,

BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS’S PERMISSION,

MOST RESPECTFULLY

DEDICATED

BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESSES’S

DUTIFUL

AND OBEDIENT

HUMBLE SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.

. . . Which reminds me of women in an Austen novel, holding their bone china tea cups, backs straight, smiling, and neatly inserting verbal stilettos between the ribs of the  ladies on the opposite sofa. Ouch!

Nothing good came of it

In Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, the narrator is an older woman who lives alone in a small rural community in southwest Poland. Walking in the forest one day, she meets an entomologist and, upon learning that he has been sleeping under the trees, invites him to stay with her and sleep on her sofa. The eccentric capitalization mimics the writings of William Blake, the English Romantic poet, artist, and mystic.

Boros’s presence reminded me what it’s like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there. Each morning when he went off to the forest, I blessed my glorious solitude. How do people manage to spend decades living together in a small space? I wondered. How can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened to me too. For some time I shared my bed with a Catholic, and nothing good came of it.

*  *  *

As we were off to bed, emboldened by the wine, Boros and I embraced, to say thank you for this evening. A little later I saw him in the kitchen, taking his pills and swallowing them with water from the tap.

It occurred to me that he was a very good Person, this Boros. And it was a good thing he had his Ailments. Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.

He came to me in the Night and squatted by my bed. I wasn’t asleep.

“Are you asleep?” he asked.

“Are you religious?” I had to put the question.

“Yes,” he replied proudly. “I’m an atheist.”

I found that curious.

I raised the quilt and invited him to join me, but as I am neither Maudlin nor Sentimental, I shall not dwell on it any further.

—pp. 157, 166-67

Happy Birthday!

Dear Colleagues,

Thank you for the birthday card and your kind messages!

I confess to a moment of shock when I first received it. 

“What?!” I thought, “Is it my birthday?” 

I had to check my driver’s licence and the calendar on my phone. The first confirmed that my birthday is actually in June, and the second confirmed that we are still in the month of May. 

Then I saw Michael’s message: “All the best on your 80th!”

That sent me back to my driver’s licence. 

There seem to be three possible explanations. 

One, Michael is ten years ahead of us. Two, I am ten years behind. Or three, Michael wisely decided to wish me a happy 80th on the odd chance that he might forget to wish me a happy 80th in ten years. 

And then I realized the truth: this is all Dakota’s little joke, just because I’m always saying “Happy Thanksgiving!” and “Happy Birthday!” to her. Today is somebody’s birthday, isn’t it? So, Happy Birthday! 

But now she has taken it another step: actually handing out birthday cards to people, randomly. And I was the obvious first choice.

Good one, Dakota!

And . . . Happy Birthday to you all! 

(Including Queen Victoria!)

Out-of-fashion romantic nonsense

“What objection can you have to the young gentleman?”

“A very solid objection, in my opinion,” says Sophia—“I hate him.”

“Will you never learn a proper use of words?” answered the aunt. “Indeed, child, you should consult Bailey’s Dictionary. It is impossible you should hate a man from whom you have received no injury. By hatred, therefore, you mean no more than dislike, which is no sufficient objection against your marrying of him. I have known many couples, who have entirely disliked each other, lead very comfortable genteel lives. Believe me, child, I know these things better than you. You will allow me, I think, to have seen the world, in which I have not an acquaintance who would not rather be thought to dislike her husband than to like him. The contrary is such out-of-fashion romantic nonsense, that the very imagination of it is shocking.”

—Henry Fielding

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Book VII, Chapter iii.

Country gentlemen, and gentlemen in town

He then bespattered the youth with abundance of that language which passes between country gentlemen who embrace opposite sides of the question; with frequent applications to him to salute that part which is generally introduced into all controversies that arise among the lower orders of the English gentry at horse-races, cock-matches, and other public places. Allusions to this part are likewise often made for the sake of the jest. And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss your a[rse] for having just before threatened to kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another.

It may likewise seem surprizing that in the many thousand kind invitations of this sort, which every one who hath conversed with country gentlemen must have heard, no one, I believe, hath ever seen a single instance where the desire hath been complied with;—a great instance of their want of politeness; for in town nothing can be more common than for the finest gentlemen to perform this ceremony every day to their superiors, without having that favour once requested of them.

—Henry Fielding

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Book VI, Chapter ix.

Cymbal Crash

In Grade Nine, as the youngest member of the high school concert band’s percussion section, I was assigned the cymbal part for a long symphonic piece whose name I have forgotten. 

On the night of the concert, the auditorium was filled with parents and students. I stood in the back row on the highest riser, a tall, skinny kid feeling uncomfortable. Partly my discomfort was due to the tie that was strangling me, but mostly it was because I had had very little rehearsal time for this number. There were, it seemed to me, about 5,000 measures of rest, including several repeated sections and other confusions along the way, before my single cymbal crash. The cymbals were heavy, 16 or 18 inches in diameter, and I stood for a long time, hands gripping the leather straps, a cymbal at each side resting lightly against my thighs. In vain I searched the music with one eye and kept the other on the band director as he conducted, hoping fervently that he would give me a sign when my moment was near.

To crash the cymbals properly, however, required some preparation. I had to raise them up in front of me, about six inches apart, one about twelve inches higher than the other. I worried that the band director, having more important matters at hand, would not alert me long enough before the crash to give me time to prepare. Finally it seemed to me that I had better get ready, so I raised the cymbals up to their proper positions and waited. Just as my arms were starting to quiver under the weight of the cymbals, the director looked at me and discreetly shook his head. 

As inconspicuously as possible, I slowly lowered the cymbals and stood again with my hands at my sides. Only later did I realize that a tall, skinny boy raising a large pair of shiny cymbals in the back row provided, for most of the audience, the only real interest of the performance.

The piece continued, and I waited, hoping desperately for either a section of music that I recognized, or a sign from the conductor. 

Nothing. 

Once again, fearing I would miss my cue, I raised the cymbals, and waited. Again my arms began to tremble. Again the conductor shook his head, and again I lowered the cymbals slowly to my sides.

I can’t remember now whether this sequence repeated three times, or four, but finally, my arms now visibly shaking, the conductor nodded. With immense relief I recognized the crucial passage of the music, and I successfully crashed the cymbals, right on time. 

My relief turned to shock, however, when—right in the middle of the piece—the entire audience erupted in applause! They had been waiting through almost the entire, dreary number for that cymbal crash. The tension caused by my repeated false starts must have been excruciating.

A week or so later, my French teacher kicked me out of class and sent me to the vice-principal’s office. She was angry with me because I refused to carry the heavy textbook home each night to complete her five-point homework assignments. “If you did your homework, you could have an A!” she shouted in exasperation. When I told her that I was quite happy with my B+, she kicked me out.

The vice-principal, hardened by constant experience with rather more serious discipline problems, listened to my story, looked at me without expression, blinked once, and invited me to sit down. “I really enjoyed that band concert,” he said. “You did a great job with those cymbals.”

Taken aback momentarily, I recovered my footing and we talked for several minutes about the weight of crash cymbals. We discussed the care one must take not to catch one’s tie in between the cymbals and thus spoil the crash. And so on. We pretty much exhausted the topic. Then he looked at me and asked, “Do you think she’ll let you back into class now?” He wrote a note for me and sent me back.

The teacher’s vocation

In La gloire de mon père, Marcel Pagnol remembers one of his father’s colleagues, who graduated from teacher’s college first in his class. From there he went straight into a job in the worst neighbourhood in Marseille, a part of town where no one dared to walk at night. He stayed there, teaching in the same classroom for forty years. 

Marcel overhears his father ask this man one evening,  

“So, you never had any ambition?”

“Oh yes,” he said, “I did! And I think I have succeeded very well. Just think: in twenty years, my predecessor saw six of his former students guillotined. As for me, in forty years I have only seen two, plus one who was reprieved. That’s made it all worthwhile.”

Faculty Meeting

We’re all aware of the math teacher’s problems.
The PE guy gets exercised over the smallest things.
The history teacher can’t forget his past.
The English teacher has choice words for everyone.
The geography teacher knows his place.
The biology teacher loves life, but hates frogs.
The computer science guy is bug-eyed.
The chemistry teacher overreacts to the slightest change.
The physics teacher is energetic, but no one understands him.
The art teacher claims he’s been framed.
Put the Home Ec teacher together with the Crisis Management Counselor and you have a recipe for disaster.

—ca. 2003

‘Hamlet: The Happy Ending’

Some of my students were devastated to discover that Hamlet dies at the end of the play, so I have obliged their tender sensibilities with this additional scene. —etm

—————————————————————————

Scene: Wittenberg. A room in an inn.

HORATIO
But how is this possible?!

HAMLET
‘Season your admiration’, good friend. In short, by a hair’s breadth and the grace of God. But sit you down, and I will lay it all out before you. Here, a bit of wine will do you good.

Horatio sits and grips his wine cup as though it were the last real thing in his universe.

HAMLET
I saw right away that to stay in Denmark meant certain death for me and those I most loved. I began with Ophelia, and together we wove a plan. Then came you, and the ghost. I wanted to tell you all, but feared to put you in danger should the king suspect you, and so I must beg your pardon, dear Horatio.

HORATIO
But I saw you die, with my own eyes. I saw Ophelia buried. I saw you kill both Laertes and the king, and I saw the Queen drink the poisoned wine. Have I gone mad?

HAMLET
Fie, fie! you are the sanest person I know. But eyes can deceive, good Horatio. What you saw was mostly theatre. Acting. Stage tricks I learned during my days with the players in the city.

HORATIO
Did no one die?

HAMLET
Only the king and, alas, old Polonius. That was the accident that nearly unraveled all my plans.

HORATIO
But my lord, you killed the king with the same rapier that only moments before you pulled out of Laertes. How can Laertes live, if the king died?

HAMLET
That was nicely done, eh? Laertes and I managed the rapiers very well. Of course, everyone was so alarmed by then, it was easy to beguile their senses with a sleight of hand. [Seeing Horatio’s incomprehension.] The rapier that seemed to kill Laertes was one I had from the players. The one I plunged into the guts of that villain was real.

HORATIO
May he roast in hell! O, my lord, you cannot know, nor I cannot say had I a thousand years, how glad I am to see you here before me, alive and well and smiling. [They embrace, both shedding glad tears.] Tell me, though, how is’t with the Queen your mother?

HAMLET
Still my mother, God be thanked, and no longer queen, I am glad to say. She was yet divided in her heart, though always loyal to me, but when Laertes told her of the king’s plan for the fencing match, all division ended and she became an eager player in our plot. And then, when the king did not stop her from drinking the wine that he thought was poisoned, all remaining sympathy was erased and she rejoiced in his death, though for the sake of our deception she could not show her happiness ‘til later.

HORATIO
And where are they now— your mother, Ophelia, and Laertes?

HAMLET
At home, such as it is, waiting to embrace you when I bring you there to greet them.

HORATIO
With all my heart will I greet them, each and every one. But what of Rosenkrantz, and Guildenstern? Do they live?

HAMLET
[Laughing] Aye, what a pair, those two! The king had no idea what actors they were. At moments they nearly convinced me of their villainy. They are in London, and from their latest letter it appears that they are making a name for themselves in the theatres there. Perhaps we shall go and see them, or better yet persuade them to return here and join us. We might make Wittenberg the centre of the world.

HORATIO
Does Fortinbras know you live?

HAMLET
Aye, aye, he was my back, had the fencing match not gone as I planned it. The great fool, he was just as happy to become king as I was to escape from that madness. Ambition, greed, grasping always for favours and power—what kind of life is that, Horatio?

HORATIO
Not the sort that I should want, my lord.

HAMLET
No, nor I. Shall we go to greet the ladies and Laertes? They await us.

[Exeunt]

Fake Apple Store, Fake IKEA, Fake Dairy Queen. What’s next? — Fake France!

The news about entire retail shops being copied by clever Chinese entrepreneurs leads to the obvious question: where do we go from here? Clearly, fake stores are an intermediary step in the development toward a much more ambitious project: fake countries.

Think about it: millions of Chinese people would love to visit France, for example, but it’s too far away and too expensive. Solution? Fake France! Berets, baguettes, red wine, accordions, and an entire fake Paris complete with Eiffel Tower, Montmartre, and Jim Morrison’s fake grave (Jim himself, of course, is head of a highly successful import/export joint venture headquartered in Shanghai). Given the trends of the world economy,  it will soon be cost-effective to populate Fake France with real French people, drawn to the opportunity by attractive wages and the possibility of shopping in Fake Apple Stores on their days off. I’m sure there’s a spot somewhere in the south of China with an appropriate climate that’s already been staked out by developers.

But why stop there? How about . . . Fake Egypt! Just what Xinjiang Province’s barren sands need. Other countries, of course, could be more challenging. Fake Norway, for example: we can do snow, we can do fjords, but the crystal blue water in those fjords? Hmmm.

Lest you think all of this is a bad thing, think again. The Chinese genius for making exquisitely accurate copies—an art that goes back for centuries, by the way, prompted by imperial demands for copies of ancient art works that had been lost—may end up saving all of us. We continue raping, pillaging, plundering, and polluting the planet with little thought for the consequences. The Chinese, I’m convinced, are thinking ahead for us. When the planet has finally been rendered completely uninhabitable, where will we go?

Of course: Fake Earth!