[The following short story was originally published on this blog in 2010. I am republishing it now due to the overwhelming number of requests that I do so. Ha! Nah. I'm doing so just to make it easier for Br'er Marc to find.]
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A few days ago, I posted here at 'Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends' a new installment (the 7th in the series) of ‘Sex, Tattoos & Violence R Us’. In this latest edition, I had a bit titled “Funny-Sounding Verification Words”.
As you may know, on some blogs, when submitting a comment for posting, you are required to type in a computer-generated Verification Word. These are nonsensical arrangements of letters meant to insure that the comment submission is coming from a real human being and not some spamming computer program.
Well, I find some of the Verification Words to be funny, or interesting, or just plain weird, and so for the last 7 months I saved in a Word File all of my favorite Verification Words I encountered while submitting comments to the blogs of others. Here are the 27 words I wound up saving after 7 months.
jebocker - mifie - curbiti - stermo - bolergar - redshe - stampoxi - phreti - liturva - spoteli - hingsomp - jewdays - demetax - waysizin - emotle – mingsi - equalysi - antiverg - muthref - expot - wingam -ellycart - unglyz - dinathr - ditypolf - inhomiz – locurri
Well, this morning, I got to wondering just how difficult it would be to try incorporating all of these words into a story. I decided to give it a go and below is what I came up with. Turns out, it really wasn’t very difficult at all. Especially if seriousness and quality are immediately thrown through the window, trampled upon, and then put to the torch. Right from the start, I figured the simplest way would be to come at this problem with a kind of futuristic Sci-Fi approach.
I can hardly believe I wasted time in doing this . . . but I did. No point in "wasting it worse" by refraining from posting it on this blog. Here’s a Sci-Fi look at the future by a guy (me) who really doesn’t much like Sci-Fi stories nor the future. I’ve put all of the Verification Words in red.
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GUERRILLA WARFARE WITH THE REDSHE
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today.
~ "In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)"
by Zager & Evans
When the Moon was in the seventh house and Curbiti aligned with Liturva, I received an urgent call from Commissioner Bolergar on the Fratphone. It seemed that the Redshe were threatening to perform extreme circumcision on all of the men they held captive during the upcoming Jewdays celebration unless their demands of equalysi were met.
The Redshe were Marxist-inspired Feminists led by a female midget named Unglyz, and equalysi was their extremist ideology that on the surface meant that women should be given fair and equal treatment with men in all areas of social, political and professional life here in Bravenewworldwetrust. But everyone knew that in practice, the true goal of equalysi was to give preferential treatment to females, while degrading men and undermining their self-esteem. Everyone also knew that “extreme circumcision” was a euphemism for... well, literally emasculating the men held in Redshe prisons.
It was up to me to free the captives and teach the Redshe a lesson they would not soon forget. My name is Jacques Jebocker, and I am a professional exterminator for the highly trained, all-male counterrevolutionary warrior unit called The Dinathr.
When she learned that I might be gone for as long as four weeks, naturally, my wife Mifie pleaded with me to let her accompany me on this mission. I explained to her that it would be fast and dangerous and I couldn’t afford to be slowed down by anyone with physiological emotle wiring. It would be best if she stayed behind, at home, and continued raising our children. It was a tough job – tougher than mine – but someone had to do it.
But without saying a word, Mifie flashed me a view of her locurri and I began to think: Well, heck, four weeks IS a long time, and a man gets lonely on the road and while hiding in the underground ellycarts waiting for just the right moment to spring into action and exterminate the enemy.
“Alright, see if you can find a babysitter,” I told Mifie, and then I went to the garage to pack my gear.
That night, Mifie and I enjoyed a fine meal together, as we knew it would be our last for some time. Hereafter, we’d be scrounging for scraps, dumpster diving, and begging for crumbs from the destitute Mingsi we encountered in the villages on the outskirts of devastated Expot. Expot was the name given to the ramshackle and burned-out buildings that remained of once glorious Good-Pot Utopia on the high, rolling hills region in Bravenewworldwetrust after the terrible Wingam Wars had wrought their destruction.
I couldn’t help mentally dwelling on the demanding, rigorous job that we were in for, of the deprivation and exhaustion that lay ahead of us and the jungle-producing diarrhea that would lie behind us.
“Jacques, you’ve hardly touched your hingsomp,” Mifie scolded me, “and I sauteed it just the way you like!”
“I know. I’m sorry, Mif,” I confessed. “But you wouldn’t be hungry either if you knew of the demanding, rigorous job that we are in for, of the deprivation and exhaustion that lies ahead of us and the jungle-producing diarrhea that will lie behind us.”
“Try not to think about it, darling,” she said as she pulled the cork on another bottle of 2525 vintage spoteli, and poured me another large crystal glass full of the intoxicating stuffs.
Three bottles of spoteli later, Mifie unveiled her locurri and we fell to the kitchen floor together and engaged in passionate ditypolf while our dog, Spot, kept barking into the
Inhomiz-Canine Translator, “Get a room! Get a room!”
Mifie and I woke up hungover as hell on the kitchen floor at eleventy o’clock the following day. Damn, we had already missed the morning Stermo Racer! Now we’d have to commute to Dinathr Headquarters at Expot with all the smelly peasants on the slow and bone-rattling Stampoxi Train and pay the exorbitant demetax at the crowded Waysizin Station. Crap! I hate it when that happens. And it happens a lot! Too often, if you ask me.
The Waysizin Stations were centers where bureaucrats working for Uncle Sam’s Big Brother weighed and measured every traveler’s luggage for taxation purposes. Every aspect of life was regulated, weighed, measured and taxed, but the people cheered the taxes because the citizens’ wealth confiscated by Uncle Sam’s Big Brother’s bureaucrats here in Bravenewworldwetrust was used to keep the homeland safe from invasions by maurading bands of Redshe, Mangy Muthref and other undesirables. Or at least that’s what the people were told by their politicians.
Commissioner Bolergar was pissed that I was so late in arriving at Dinathr Headquarters, but he was even madder to find that I had brought Mifie with me.
“What the hell’s wrong with you, Jebocker?” Bolergar demanded. “How could you bring your wife along on a mission like this? Do you have any idea what sort of demanding, rigorous job you are in for, of the deprivation and exhaustion that lies ahead of you and the jungle-producing diarrhea that will lie behind you?”
“While I’m out there trying to gain the trust and the cooperation of the Mingsi, I think the special equipment Mifie possesses – her locurri, to be crude but specific, Chief - will come in handy in that regard,” I argued. “And besides that, the babysitter gave us her ultra-low ‘War With The Redshe’ rate. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“Very well,” Bolergar said. “But at the first hint of trouble, I’m taking you off this case and turning it over to Agent 86.”
“I won’t let you down this time, Chief!” I promised.
“Fine, Jacques, fine. Now the first thing you’d better do is see Doctor Freddie Phreti in the laboratory and have him give you both a dose of Antiverg. Dinathr Headquarters has received fairly reliable intelligence reports that the Redshe have contaminated the local water supply with the deadly Verg virus to which only they are immune.”
“You got it, Chief,” I said as I turned to leave for Doctor Phreti’s office. I always dreaded having to take the Anti-Kool-Aid solution because it smelled like urine. The Antiverg syrup, however, wasn’t so bad because it tasted like chicken.
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Well, that’s as far as I got with this story because I ran out of Verification Words. And too bad, too, because I feel I have the beginning of a genuine classic here.
;o)
As ridiculous as the thing is, it was kind of fun to write and I do sort of like what I stuck in there.
It was just an experiment to see if I could use all the crazy Verification Words, but I managed to make references to everything, almost including the kitchen sink. One can find Batman in there, Get Smart, The Pink Panther, the Hippie ‘60s, but best of all, it’s a commentary on Feminism, the phony War Against Terrorism and the stupidity of modern Americans willing to trade money and liberty for safety. And I was also satirizing the sort of rubbish that passes as “entertainment” for dumbed-down Americans today. You know, crap like Battlestar Galactica and Xena The Warrior Bimbo, stuffs like that.
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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