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TRIVIAL TALES for Ravenous Readers

^{by Ric Carter}

A NEW MAP OF HEAVEN

Jolie woke up one bright morning and decided to draw a new map of heaven. All the old maps were so confusing, and faded and folded and fusty. A new map would be just the right thing.

Jolie thought that a good way to start would be to learn all she could about maps and stuff. She quickly found out that there are all sorts of map-like things: maps and surveys and charts and plots, all for sketching out and keeping track of almost too many things to keep track of.

Jolie started with charts. She tried nautical and nomical and logical and graphical charts, but those didn't quite work.

Since she'd heard that Heaven is in the sky somewhere, she went on to astronautical and astronomical and astrological and astrographical charts, but none of those pinpointed Heaven.

She tried geonautical and geonomical and geological and geographical charts, but they only pointed down, and she didn't need or want any map to Hell or Earth or Middle Earth or whatever.

The toponautical and toponomical and topological and topographical charts all seemed like a confusing mish-mash, like so many soggy cheerios, but she thought they were worth looking at.

The psychonautical and psychonomical and psychological and psychographical charts were CRAZY, the worst of all, but she'd also heard that Heaven was inside you, so they needed to be studied. So much research needed to be done!

{Jolie learns that it's hard to draw a new map of heaven because all the old maps and surveys are on dry brittle smelly discolored wormy paper; and heaven changes all the time and stuff there moves around; and whenever she asks anyone in heaven where things are, they just point off in some other direction. A compass doesn't work well there either, either moral or magnetic. And without a working moral compass, who knows WHERE you'll end up? It's like Columbus, who set sail with FOUR ships — but the SANTA CRUZ sailed off the edge. This worries Jolie. So she tries to make a moral celestial compass.}

(to be continued)

LENNY THE JEEP

Lenny the Jeep was very unhappy. Everyone said that Lenny was dysfunctional. Carrol and Cris, his drivers, would discuss this in public. Lenny always got embarrassed and defensive.

Carrol said (loudly, in an irritating voice), "It's because of a factory defect! This rotten jeep was just built wrong! Those factory workers and robots are just so sloppy!"

Cris said (cringing a little, tired of arguing with Carrol), said, "No, it's a design flaw. The engineers didn't take the right approach, they didn't consider all the parameters and paradigms. They're too short-sighted."

Lenny the Jeep didn't know how to deal with this bickering. But it got even worse; neighbors and bystanders and total strangers and idiots would voice their opinions too.

Juicy Jimi, the bully who lived down the block, sneered and said, "Oh, Lenny the Jeep is just a retard. Look at that retarded face! What a moron!"

Professor Romanescu, a dinosaur in the literature department at the local college, opined that "This is obviously a misapplication of General Semantics. The form is not the function! The function is not the form!" But all his postmodernist colleagues rudely told the Professor to shut up and go deconstruct himself.

{Lenny the Jeep will be humiliated by his family (blood cohort), friends (age cohort), strangers (global cohort), and himself. Then the FBI visits people in the neighborhood and asks them questions and throws them in jail for lying. Lenny the Jeep is thrown in jail too, because he denies that he knows anything; and to say that is to tell a LIE to federal officers. Of COURSE you know something! Lenny the Jeep will try to talk to the other prisoners, but since they're just the same old folks from his old neighborhood, he'll be humiliated.}

(to be continued)

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