Alabaster and Giant Sloths
Many of you will be intrigued by the title of this piece. This is much longer than THE Rant, and nearly as twisted. It has a slightly more logical framework, but if you know me, then that's not saying much. Be prepared for a ride through the inner workings of my brain for this one. This one goes out to my second biggest ranting heir. I hope you enjoy this, Sarah!
Do you have any idea how much damage a single smudge can do? In my case, a single smudge was responsible for the downfall of the New Age ruler of Egypt, Pharaoh Chretien. The evil usurper, Paulus Martinius, with his green boxer shorts and dollar-sign-crested spears, brought down the great monarchy of The Man Who Wouldn�t Die. It seemed that things were going to be better very soon. Well, at least that�s what the people thought at first. But when the rainbow disappeared, thunder and lightning came down from the skies and burned him to a crisp, and foreign armies took the capital and made the entire nation slaves, then things weren�t looking so great. It must have been something supernatural.
What does a smudge have to do with this? To quote Kronk, the dull-witted bodyguard in The Emperor�s New Groove: �Well, you�ve got me. By all accounts it doesn�t make sense.� But here I am, talking to my friend Colin from PYPS, and I�ve just finished breakfast, and we�re both listening to dc Talk full blast. And I�m sure that the smudge will work itself into my head sometime soon. Did you know that in Kitchener they have a day off today? As far as I know, there�s nowhere else that has the day off. So I was thinking that Colin and I could meet somewhere, and we could do some karaoke. You�ve just got to love those microphones, especially the ones without the cords. Did you know that karaoke is a Japanese word? I guess so, it�s pretty obvious, but almost no one says it right. It�s Kah-rah-oh-kay. Same thing with kamikaze. It drive me absolutely nuts. Squirrels like nuts. Squirrels are crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once. They locked me in a rubber room. I don�t like rubber rooms. Rubber rooms have rats. Rats? I hate rats. Rats drive me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once... sorry, sometimes I get carried away like that.
I�ve actually nearly been slapped for repeating those last few lines. Particularly at PYPS. But there are a few people who like it. Martha, for example. She made me recite the entire thing in our disco group, and Rachel and Sarah are my literary heirs when it comes to that particular rant. I guess I like it so much because it�s a lot like slapstick comedy. Silly things are sometimes the best, don�t you think? I think the funniest slapstick I�ve ever seen has never actually been created. I just sort of made it in my head one day. We were in Modern Western Civilization class, and first we were talking about Ugh and Oop. It�s a theory about how civilization began, talking with grunts and the need to work together to achieve a common goal. So I got this picture in my head of all these cute little cavemen walking around. And then, somehow, we started talking about the animals that supposedly existed between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the domain of man. So we�re talking things like saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths, and... GIANT SLOTHS! I really like the idea of giant sloths, so I put two and two together. And so basically I�ve got this picture in my head of a little caveman standing in front of a forest, looking from side to side, so innocently, and then looking up just in time to see this giant thirty foot sloth fall right onto his head. I know, I�m a bit twisted, but it�s so hilarious!
It�s amusing to think that the same species that couldn�t get out of the way of one of the slowest mammals in the world could create all these weapons of mass destruction, make all these huge buildings, and come up with all these scientific theories. My personal favourite is the theory of quantum mechanics and physics. According to some of these theories, it�s possible to exist in several different dimensions at once. Which means, of course, that if you are walking through a doorframe in one dimension and walking straight into a pole in another. That�s actually pretty funny, because my brother did just that yesterday. He came home from school and exclaims, �I walked into a pole today!� Actually, quantum mechanics can be used to explain a lot of the dumb things we do. You could always say, �It�s my fault! No, not me here, but me in Dimension 7498!� But honestly, it�s pretty strange, because, if you take the rules of science in a particular way, it�s possible to prove that you don�t exist. It�s all over my head, personally.
That�s another good point. What do a roof, and umbrella, and quantum mechanics have in common? They�re all over your head, of course. But try to get that question without having me rant on about my brother walking into poles and such. See, for you it would just be a fun thing, just a question to ask around the dinner table, but for me it was actually a serious question. Maybe you�ve heard of Reach for the Top? It�s the provincial finals for School Reach, a trivia competition. My school team was the first to go in fourteen years, and we had already lost the round robin, so we wouldn�t be going on to television. Anyways, we�re in the final game, all ready to go home, having had a lot of fun, and the final question asks that very question. We didn�t even get it, and we�re supposed to be the elite of the trivia buffs from our school. Pretty sad, if you ask me, although I didn�t feel so bad when I found out that almost nobody out of all forty teams managed to get it right. It didn�t matter to us, but could you imagine if getting the question wrong meant the difference between placing in top ten or not? I would feel so horrible! My good friend Fahad felt sort of like that. At the tournament, he managed to lose us two different games, where the final questions were almost identical, and he said the wrong hockey team both times. The first time, the answer was the Leafs, and he said that Canadiens, and the next game he said the Leafs and it was the Canadiens. We didn�t hold it against him, but it was pretty funny nonetheless.
There was so much marmalade at the tournament. You would not believe how much of the stuff they gave us in these little packets for breakfast. I can�t stand the stuff, so I gave it all to Colin, our cute little grade nine backup player, who was better than the rest of us. He ate the stuff bare, he didn�t even put it on anything! But then again, he was really strange. Not like me. I�m totally normal. But then again, there really isn�t such a thing as "normal," is there? If you say something is "normal", then you measure everything against a certain standard, like what society thinks a person should be. But who is completely "normal"? It�s pretty strange. For example, if "normal" was based on me, then the entire world order would be overturned. If you�ve met me, you understand. Like, if "normal" was based on me, then anyone who knew that alabaster was a rock and not a perfume would be considered mentally unstable and would be thrown into the infirmary. And I wouldn�t want to put Rachel and Sarah into a place like that...
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