Pacifism is not the answer.

 

Now that the accused passivists who form what's known as the rump of the Surviving Branch (think genealogy here, kids) have gathered together bits of colored paper to increase the merriment quotient in our abandoned hotel, those of us who remained behind for our own good can see that parts of our faces start to swell (around the burn marks, as you might guess) and our voices, when we're inclined to try to talk at all, assume a fellacious quality. If, when I turn to the right to get at a rare seashell caught between the tumbrels of reticulated isotopes which were imported from Iberia to improve our eyesight in darkness, I'm accosted by a silent witness to bankable atrocities, my first instinct is to trounce a lonely soldier in a multi-layered  storybook shanty and delay his entry into a bygone clinical trial which comes as a surprise to a representative of the Introducer's Association.

They have bargained by our side for multiple durational periods and had every reason to flee the premises even after their specimens were lost in the War. There are tracts of vellum which prove the opposite but a well known anti-ageism activist has absconded with them and they won't play ball. This leaves us no choice but to evaluate our functions with a cold, hard staring contest into the vacuum of spacious accommodations for leisure-time activities everywhere. And it won't get any easier after this. For the simple reason that we serve meals while memorizing sports trivia and engage in sexual relations while violating Federal parole statutes. If it makes anyone feel better, we could offer them a chance to grow more apologetic while they age with grace. Or would that be too much to pretend to ask?

We ask because it never fails to occur to those of us entrusted with secreting a prime ingredient in our hoop-skirts that the metaphorical dome under which we labor during prime viewing hours is liable to collapse the articulated shards in a shamble of bromads. This would not be the result which those of us on the inside have lobbied for in all the years since I sold a compromised witness into a nest of vainglorious mickterflarbs. And it doesn't get any sweeter than that. You can tell by the way they switch the label in nugatory skylights. All the directions are absorbed and a lone drop of digestive bile coats the Slanting Desk with the sheen of intra-uterine masturbation. Now we will adjust our handkerchiefs for the road ahead and scare the bejesus out of the intransigent revulsionists who scope our bride. It'll serve them right. And then we'll sit down for a tasty supper. And then we'll die.

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