copyright © 1999 James Erwin
One Last Parody While My Feeble Brain Stalls For Time"ONE LAST PARODY WHILE MY FEEBLE BRAIN STALLS FOR TIME" IS COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL AND MAY NOT BE DOWNLOADED, TRANSMITTED, PRINTED OR PERFORMED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
By James Erwin 887-9501
Lights down on cue. Lights up.
July 12, 1884
My esteemed diary.
To-day, shortly after lunch, a small beggar-child approached me and made me to understand through its parlous trilling gibberish and twitchings of its offal-caked arms that its Irish mother was sick with the Spotting-Cough and somehow required a shilling of mine to buy a loaf's end and hog scrapings. I promptly tossed the squealing Papist urchin under the wheels of an approaching omnibus, which rent the ghastly ragamuffin into steaming ribbons, which were consequently the subject of much contest among the dogs and boars of London's streets. Upon the outcome of one such contest for the waif's left foot I wagered eight guineas and lost to a fellow gentleman, whose calling card I have pasted here as a keepsake.
July 22nd, 1884
Happy day, o diary!
To-day at the Hasterbrooks, Lord Symington displayed a number of trophies he gathered while hunting in the West End. He presented me with a fine oaken chest containing an entire family of exotic origin, which he described as `some sort of Continental.' From papers in the vest pocket of the father, I vaguely surmise that they were Latin, or perhaps German of the Alpen sort. My son Cecil tells me that an expert could measure the volume of the crania and determine their race, which would certainly put my mind at ease, as I studied with a German attache at Sandhurst and should hate to see an entire family of fellow Nordics put to death with elephant guns.
August 4th, 1884
Most trustworthy diary.
To-day I rose early and put to sleep the kitchen staff with ether. I then trussed them soundly and had Henries load them into the transom. After tea and sandwiches at the lodge, we tossed them into a Wicker Man and set them afire to mark the end of pheasant season. It was a merry flame! The Duke of Kent launched into a merry wassailing song, and several men removed their ascots and sodomized boys of Portugal, who were then carried to the lodge's seventy-hand stone idol of Moloch and thrown into the roaring embers of Moloch's terrible maw. I myself had a merry lark with a strapping lad of twelve named Marco, whose tongue I have pasted here as a keepsake.
(flip page)
(break character)
People complain about the English language. Here's a fact. English isn't a language. Other people have languages. We have English. English is every useful word from every pronounceable language in the world. Rodeo, Spanish. Penis, Latin. Knish, Yiddish. English, German. If your language still contains words not in the English dictionary, one, we have a better one already, or two, it's probably French and describes the act of fucking a trussed goat.
(walk to stage right)
My father once strapped me to a dead steer and took me to the County Fair. He said it would help me on my 4-H project. "Look, everyone, at my son," he said, and then vomited on three farmers in from Bondurant. They took turns pissing on me while my father was passed out, which at least kept the flies at bay. It was that day that I realized maybe my father cared. It was that day I realized I would still some day be forced to kill him with a broken Seagram's bottle.
(walk to stage left)
Broken bottle. Damaged goods. Damaged people. Look.
We laugh. We have to laugh.
Lights down.
Performed by James Erwin.
Performed by Greg Hays.
Performed by Ben R. Williams
Library]
