Korup Tweener was president of the IOC, and in addition, a worried man. This would have surprised anyone who had been keeping up with the news.
As Korup had planned, LaserFriedEyes had jumped at the opportunity to sponsor the 20/20 Timbuktu Olympics. He negotiated a handsome 3% royalty of future eye-correction-procedures done by LFE in return. LFE had been sold on the 20/20 sponsorship plan - he chuckled to think they had not SEEN it themselves. LFE went on to suggest the slash in the year and a respelling of the Olympics to LympidOptics but Korup had firmly resisted. He might be slightly venial, accepting a slash here and a cut there, but he was a man of ideals. The specific ideal here was that 3% was diddly squat for a full-blown renaming. He suggested 10%, but that would have a big cut and LFE, only believed in small, carefully controlled cuts.
He should have been singing this morning, but something was amiss. Count on the bloody athletes to mess up a supremely exquisite deal. If only he could have had sports without those silly sportsmen.
Every venture of his life brought him to a similar conclusion.
He had built a hotel, which took reservations over every possible communication channel. It took them over the phone, email, grapevine and carrier pigeon. He even built a site on the totallymeganet, which had replaced the dysfunctional retro curiosity called the internet.
The hotel was a gleaming hunk of smooth granite carved out of a single rock, dazzling with diamond chandeliers and fountains of wine. Korup’s office had a private indoor beach, with its own sun. He used it for surfing, beach-side drink-swilling, and arousing jealousy in his fifth grade classmates. Fifth-grade had been the last year the educational system had endured him before sobbing quietly in a corner and shooting itself in the head. The hotel had six practice racetracks for his chauffeurs, twenty frolicking areas for his masseuses, a nine-level garage and a five-dimensional hall for private parties. The hotel had been booked up for twenty years before construction. The only thing the hotel had lacked was rooms.
The irritatingly demanding customers had whined and complained and shouted. When even that failed to get any action, they shot at him. It was enough to put a hardworking businessmen off his fourth drink. If only his customers just paid up instead of wanting to stay in the rooms, the hotel would have been an outstanding success.
After that, he wrote a book on his teenage adventures as an amateur mac-and-cheese and PB&J sandwich chef. He applied the adjective "amateur" later, for which he qualified only on the basis of having been fired from every restaurant he worked at before the first payday.
The book was advertised heavily and received tons of acclaim from those critics whose children had been recently kidnapped. They agreed unanimously that it was "an awesome top-quality book, Nobel material. Also Oscar and knighthood material, a thrill-packed fantastic page-turner actually. Really, believe us. Buy the book. Please! For Bobby." It had not sold a single copy. The huge pile of printed copies had threatened to collapse and petrify under its own weight into a new mountain range.
He got around the problem by mugging people into buying the book. All over the world, people reported being held up by burly men with guns who thrust copies of "A tale of two pastes and pasta: pastimes of my past" in their bags despite all their pleas and cries for mercy. The muggers then demanded $13.75 and returned precise change when presented with $20 bills, before running away in embarrassment and pining in street corners for their previous honorable, if low-paying, careers in noose quality assurance, pet psychiatry and sewage stirring.
"People are the problem," he summarized to himself. Customers, readers and sportsmen - all people, damn them. He brought himself back to the present.
2020 had broken a record. Every single one of the medalists (including those in rhythmic solitaire and synchronized tech support) had tested positive for banned substances. Partly, it was because so many substances had been banned in recent years. Before the Olympics, there had been a flurry of news reports about new drugs and there had been talk of adding them to the list of banned substances.
Damn drugs! There were the classical ones to increase muscle mass, reduce fat content and weight. There were now drugs to smooth the skin and make all hair fall for that aerodynamic body. There was a drug that made a swimmer shoot out his sweat in jets all over his body instead of passively leaking it. There was a drug that increased typing speed, so athletes could write all their emails faster and concentrate on reaching peak form. Every single one had been banned.
Actually, Korup had no problem with the drugs. He just had a problem with people making noises about the issue and upsetting him just when he was starting to enjoy his job, the perks and the bribery.
Korup had defeated Pers Ist Enbagar in the elections and that rankled. Today, Pers was waving a report stating that the cost of testing was more than the cost of the Olympics. The committee reacted to this bombshell with outraged snores. Someone in the press-box poked them with the telescopic lenses of their zoom cameras. Once the committee had digested the information and their lunches, they went to dinner. Just before leaving, they also decided that rather than testing, all three medalists would simply be declared positive on the evidence of their victories and the medals would be handed to the next three athletes.
The 2024 Olympics, were quite painful to watch. In every race, the contestants rushed to the finish line and stopped ten feet away. They then spent hours jostling and pushing the other contestants. Once three had been tossed across, there would be a mad sprint to get to the fourth to sixth places. This ridiculous situation was adversely affecting the dignity of sports and more importantly, television ratings and advertising revenues.
By 2028, there was a lot of athletic espionage to try to figure out the top few competitors in each race and the best strategies to end up fourth. Athletics became more about poker and the other person's psychology than about simply running fast. This was a welcome diversion to everyone but the purists, who are not worth listening to anyway.
Hysterically successful movies were made about this new genre. They involved a character who said, "My name is Pawn. Games Pawn," followed by elaborate explanations about being born of a mutually embarrassing union between the Goddess of Sports and one of the sixteen minor Gods of Chess. The movies consisted of weak puns and silly villains who explained all their plans before failing.
Several game theorists were able to get a job helping with the spying and they arrived at the final solution. In every event, three light and obscure competitors were allowed to waltz through the heats into the finals along with three former shot-putters. When the event began, the shot-putters threw the three flyweights across the finish line. The rest of the competition proceeded as in the good old days.
After a few races, the shot-putters went on strike. Their jobs were then outsourced to comic-book heroes because they could get themselves across the finish line first themselves. It made perfect sense that they should win everything and also that they should be disqualified for being superheroes.
Their PR folks realized the opportunity to advertise on the yards of their clothing. Even Tarzan succumbed to peer pressure and switched to trousers. He successively added a shirt, a cape, a mask and public humiliation when his chimpanzee Cheetah blasted him on Jay Leno for being a sell-out.
Around 2032, someone suggested that the IOC remove the ridiculous ban and let the athletes compete on a combination of hard work and research rather than on the mere genetic accident of athletic talent. This sounded compelling to the drowsy IOC members between their dreams of power, pelf and pineapples. Guest speakers from sneaker companies, sports banks, and cereal bar makers helped them overcome slight flaws in the argument by explaining how this was in line with the spirit of the CorpOlympic motto, "Just do outsourced IT, CitiUSA, Altius, Fortified-with-vitamins".
A motion was passed when the committee regathered after the bathroom break - since Altius reminded people of mountaineering, which had no connection to the modern Olympics, and there was no one offering a trillion dollars to keep it, it was dropped from the motto.
The committee members retired to their lives of public luxury with the satisfaction of a job done, whether well or not. And everyone lived happily ever from that day because they could safely take all the Prozac they wanted without having to worry about anything at all.
May 03, 2006
October 05, 2004
The elephant tracker
We went to Mudumalai wildlife sanctuary with some friends this week. Our stay was at Bear Mountain resort which has some lovely views of the mountains in the area. The staff was very enthusiastic and took us on a great short trek. The only drawback was the rest of the clientele which was a bit loud. Well, there was one more drawback, but let me tell you the better things first.
On the drive from Bangalore to Mudumalai we passed through Bandipur. We were thrilled to see a bunch of shining eyes staring as we drove in the night. It turned out to be deer gazing boldly at the passing cars. In the next few hours, we saw many more of the spotted variety standing alone. We even saw big herds of twenty or so of them at some points, almost adjacent to the highway.
Closer to the resort, we noticed a huge, dark shadow about fifteen feet from the highway. My friend reversed the car to check it out. It turned out to be a bison peacefully enjoying the moonlit night and a midnight chew of its cud. We spent ten minutes there till it picked its head up to start evaluating our car and then gave a meaningful glance up at its horns. At that point we realized it was getting pretty late and drove away.
All through the night, we kept seeing many hares, frogs and mice crossing the road, illuminated by our headlights in the act. All in all, the jungle was simply crowded and overflowing with noisy, active life.
On the return drive, we drove in the day and saw lots of langur. We encountered a deer with huge branched antlers right on the road - it came up to our car in the hopes of food when we stopped. We resisted the temptation to feed it, the good citizens that we are.
While we stayed in the resort, we told the owner we wanted to take a jungle safari to spot some elephants. He advised us to take our own car (it can go offroad) into the jungle with a guide instead of going for the normal jungle safari. Shiva was the guide he introduced to us and the tall, muscular fellow completely looked the part of the competent jungle guide, in tune with the rhythms of nature and the language of the forest.
He shook hands gravely with us and told us, "One request sir. Total silence in the car please, no offence." He motioned with his fingers to his lips.
"I will watch," he said, pointing to his eyes. We were glad to be in the hands of a jungle guide who watched with both his eyes.
"... for animals," he added after about 3 minutes as we were walking to the car. Our joy was unbounded.
"It is good your car is grey and splattered with mud from the rain - it will blend in. I am wearing grey so the elephants think I am one of them. When we are deep in the interior, I will call to them and they will come." He pulled an imaginary twine with his fingers in the "tu kacche dhaage se khincha chala ayega" style that heroines use in Indian movies to demonstrate how thoroughly they have henpecked their prospective grooms.
"If you see herds of forty elephants, do not panic. You only have to be afraid of lone male elephants," he informed us. Then he reassured us with a wry smile, "But not today. Don't fear - Shiva is with you."
We were spellbound. This was truly a man of the jungle, a stately Tarzan-cum-Mowgli of Mudumalai, a magnificent creature who spoke to the brutes of the forest even though he dwelled in the cities of men. I gazed in admiration and respect as I remembered stories of Native Indian (the tomahawk and peace pipe variety) scouts and trackers who could follow a man's trail for weeks and weeks. "We Indians (the Taj Mahal and Sambar variety) are no less than anyone," I thought with a patriotic lump in my throat. There may have been an emotional tear in the corner of my eye also, but I wiped it away before anyone noticed.
Shiva took us along the highway without bothering to go off it even once to any interior road. "Confidence," we marveled to ourselves. We spent about 2 hours in the jungle with him and did not see a single animal - not an elephant, not a deer, not a hare, not a squirrel, not a frog, not a mosquito. I am not exaggerating.
As soon as we dropped him off, we saw a few deer and lagurs.
On the drive from Bangalore to Mudumalai we passed through Bandipur. We were thrilled to see a bunch of shining eyes staring as we drove in the night. It turned out to be deer gazing boldly at the passing cars. In the next few hours, we saw many more of the spotted variety standing alone. We even saw big herds of twenty or so of them at some points, almost adjacent to the highway.
Closer to the resort, we noticed a huge, dark shadow about fifteen feet from the highway. My friend reversed the car to check it out. It turned out to be a bison peacefully enjoying the moonlit night and a midnight chew of its cud. We spent ten minutes there till it picked its head up to start evaluating our car and then gave a meaningful glance up at its horns. At that point we realized it was getting pretty late and drove away.
All through the night, we kept seeing many hares, frogs and mice crossing the road, illuminated by our headlights in the act. All in all, the jungle was simply crowded and overflowing with noisy, active life.
On the return drive, we drove in the day and saw lots of langur. We encountered a deer with huge branched antlers right on the road - it came up to our car in the hopes of food when we stopped. We resisted the temptation to feed it, the good citizens that we are.
While we stayed in the resort, we told the owner we wanted to take a jungle safari to spot some elephants. He advised us to take our own car (it can go offroad) into the jungle with a guide instead of going for the normal jungle safari. Shiva was the guide he introduced to us and the tall, muscular fellow completely looked the part of the competent jungle guide, in tune with the rhythms of nature and the language of the forest.
He shook hands gravely with us and told us, "One request sir. Total silence in the car please, no offence." He motioned with his fingers to his lips.
"I will watch," he said, pointing to his eyes. We were glad to be in the hands of a jungle guide who watched with both his eyes.
"... for animals," he added after about 3 minutes as we were walking to the car. Our joy was unbounded.
"It is good your car is grey and splattered with mud from the rain - it will blend in. I am wearing grey so the elephants think I am one of them. When we are deep in the interior, I will call to them and they will come." He pulled an imaginary twine with his fingers in the "tu kacche dhaage se khincha chala ayega" style that heroines use in Indian movies to demonstrate how thoroughly they have henpecked their prospective grooms.
"If you see herds of forty elephants, do not panic. You only have to be afraid of lone male elephants," he informed us. Then he reassured us with a wry smile, "But not today. Don't fear - Shiva is with you."
We were spellbound. This was truly a man of the jungle, a stately Tarzan-cum-Mowgli of Mudumalai, a magnificent creature who spoke to the brutes of the forest even though he dwelled in the cities of men. I gazed in admiration and respect as I remembered stories of Native Indian (the tomahawk and peace pipe variety) scouts and trackers who could follow a man's trail for weeks and weeks. "We Indians (the Taj Mahal and Sambar variety) are no less than anyone," I thought with a patriotic lump in my throat. There may have been an emotional tear in the corner of my eye also, but I wiped it away before anyone noticed.
Shiva took us along the highway without bothering to go off it even once to any interior road. "Confidence," we marveled to ourselves. We spent about 2 hours in the jungle with him and did not see a single animal - not an elephant, not a deer, not a hare, not a squirrel, not a frog, not a mosquito. I am not exaggerating.
As soon as we dropped him off, we saw a few deer and lagurs.
September 16, 2004
The need for improving stereotypes
This article was found in the correspondence of Colonel Copper Beckham Twiner with the love of his life, Lady Patricia Spicekicker. The Col. Twiner was mentally and spiritually faithful to her till the end of his days. However, the four year separation from Lady Posh, as her friends called her, resulted in a number of physical and legal acts of disloyalty, during his posting to India with the East India Company from 1836 to 1840. The Colonel may be identified by clairvoyant readers of these chronicles as the illustrious ancestor of Korup Tweener. Actually, he was about as illustrious and admired as that stupid fellow whom Drew Barrymore married, what's his name... yeah, Tom Green, but Mr Tweener is buying us a burger (AND ketchup) during our negotations with him for an interview, so anything goes. Anyway, here is the letter.
My dear little Posh,
I continue to pine for you in the hot arid lands of Hindoostan. However, duty (and the shareholders of the East India Company, to be followed in twenty years by Her Majesty's government) beckon your darling Beckham and I must steel myself to bring education and light to the heathen of this benighted land by massacring and hanging as many of them as possible. It is an arduous task that I have set myself, but it needs doing and we Twiners have never shirked the burden of our race or the opportunity for quick advancement.
If you had marked my preceding words closely (and you better), you would have noticed that I made a prediction about what is to happen in 1858. The faculty of foresight is something I have been working on with my fourth wife, Kathin Krittika, who is excellent at divination. She has assured me that you would not be angry at the news of our marriage. I am afraid I may have injured your pride somewhat again, but I must assure you that only the utmost expediency of acquiring her powers of prediction precipitated this marriage.
While I pour my heart out in every mail to you and do not desist from expressing the depth of my despair at this enforced parting, I have also always attempted to elucidate and educate you about various matters that I believe should be of interest to an enlightened young lady of your mental calibre. In today's monograph, I will attempt to shew to you the limitations of the stereotypes we hold dear these days, as has been demonstrated to me by the time I have spent in Hindoostan. Please feel free to publish the rest of this as an extract in a respected scientific publication of your choice IN MY NAME. Alternatively, you may publish in the tabloid (they are going to be invented soon, says Krittika) of your choice and SEND ME THE MONEY.
It has come to my attention that a number of stereotypes have been held about the natives of various countries of the world and about various religions of the world. I have noticed very similar stereotypes held in Hindoostan about the natives of various regions of this colony. This suggests to me that our stereotypes are rather limited in power and have to be constantly reused when faced with peoples that we have not known before. This is a lamentable situation and I will propose some measures to deal with it later. In the next few paragraphs, I present some illustrations.
Example 1: The fellows of this country are supposed to be lazy intellectuals who care about aesthetics and can talk for days and days about matters of literature and art. They think their one big city is the jewel of the world and that their language and cuisine are the only ones with any merit. They have had a lot of strong leaders in their recent history, who have taken recourse to violence for their political ends. They are good-for-nothing socialists who don't want to do an honest day's work. The remarkable thing is that there exists a state in India, whose natives are looked upon in the same light by the rest of India. (Editor's note: We will not risk naming the country and state that the Col has in mind because, frankly, we are in this business just to make money [Owner's note: You ain't making any!], not to rake up controversy. We will leave it to the readers to take guesses.)
Example 2: The people of this country are seen as loud-mouthed, demanding braggarts who think the rest of the world should learn THEIR language. They are hard workers which has made them prosperous, but they have no culture or sophistication. Because they have the money, they attract a lot of immigrant labour from other countries. They tend to pay a lot of attention to perception and looks and make constant fun of us Europeans for our funny teeth and what they think are bad looks. Remarkably, there exists a state in India about which the rest of India feels exactly the same way.
Example 3: The fellows of this community are thought to be hard-as-nails businessmen who will extract their pound of flesh when it is due, whatever the consequences to anyone else. They are thought to be penny-pinching moneylenders and impossibly cruel. While they originated from one small section of desert land, they have spread all over the world and now control major industries in almost all countries. There is a community in India, who is thought of in exactly the same way.
Example 4: The people of this country are supposed to be very stupid. Everyone else makes jokes about their lack of intellect. There exists exactly such a community in Hindoostan.
I only have four examples here, but this should be enough to convince any logical person. While the younger and idealistic (which means "stupid") set of readers may conclude from this that we should do away with stereotypes and simply judge every man or woman on individual merit, that is obviously ludicrous. What is required is a greater diversity in our stereotypes so we can continue to judge people quickly and entertain ourselves by making jokes about them.
--
I remain, as always, your faithful lover,
Colonel Copper Beckham Twiner
By a stroke of good fortune, we also found Lady Posh's reply to this letter and it follows below.
When the hell will you grow up, Twiner? I was never in love with you and never even knew of your existence until you started writing me letters from the safe distance that India provides you. I have been married for the last year to Lord Nuncle Spearshaker. He is looking forward enormously to your return to the British Isles, so that he may thrash you himself.
PS: In my previous requests to you to stop writing to me, I have told you about the romantic sonnets he pens and his refinement and delicacy. I realize now that this may have given you an inaccurate picture. Please allow me to correct that - he weighs 250 pounds and crushes irons rails between his fingers to keep them in good health and prevent the onset of writing-related stress injuries.
PPS: As for your stupid theories, who the hell cares?
My dear little Posh,
I continue to pine for you in the hot arid lands of Hindoostan. However, duty (and the shareholders of the East India Company, to be followed in twenty years by Her Majesty's government) beckon your darling Beckham and I must steel myself to bring education and light to the heathen of this benighted land by massacring and hanging as many of them as possible. It is an arduous task that I have set myself, but it needs doing and we Twiners have never shirked the burden of our race or the opportunity for quick advancement.
If you had marked my preceding words closely (and you better), you would have noticed that I made a prediction about what is to happen in 1858. The faculty of foresight is something I have been working on with my fourth wife, Kathin Krittika, who is excellent at divination. She has assured me that you would not be angry at the news of our marriage. I am afraid I may have injured your pride somewhat again, but I must assure you that only the utmost expediency of acquiring her powers of prediction precipitated this marriage.
While I pour my heart out in every mail to you and do not desist from expressing the depth of my despair at this enforced parting, I have also always attempted to elucidate and educate you about various matters that I believe should be of interest to an enlightened young lady of your mental calibre. In today's monograph, I will attempt to shew to you the limitations of the stereotypes we hold dear these days, as has been demonstrated to me by the time I have spent in Hindoostan. Please feel free to publish the rest of this as an extract in a respected scientific publication of your choice IN MY NAME. Alternatively, you may publish in the tabloid (they are going to be invented soon, says Krittika) of your choice and SEND ME THE MONEY.
It has come to my attention that a number of stereotypes have been held about the natives of various countries of the world and about various religions of the world. I have noticed very similar stereotypes held in Hindoostan about the natives of various regions of this colony. This suggests to me that our stereotypes are rather limited in power and have to be constantly reused when faced with peoples that we have not known before. This is a lamentable situation and I will propose some measures to deal with it later. In the next few paragraphs, I present some illustrations.
Example 1: The fellows of this country are supposed to be lazy intellectuals who care about aesthetics and can talk for days and days about matters of literature and art. They think their one big city is the jewel of the world and that their language and cuisine are the only ones with any merit. They have had a lot of strong leaders in their recent history, who have taken recourse to violence for their political ends. They are good-for-nothing socialists who don't want to do an honest day's work. The remarkable thing is that there exists a state in India, whose natives are looked upon in the same light by the rest of India. (Editor's note: We will not risk naming the country and state that the Col has in mind because, frankly, we are in this business just to make money [Owner's note: You ain't making any!], not to rake up controversy. We will leave it to the readers to take guesses.)
Example 2: The people of this country are seen as loud-mouthed, demanding braggarts who think the rest of the world should learn THEIR language. They are hard workers which has made them prosperous, but they have no culture or sophistication. Because they have the money, they attract a lot of immigrant labour from other countries. They tend to pay a lot of attention to perception and looks and make constant fun of us Europeans for our funny teeth and what they think are bad looks. Remarkably, there exists a state in India about which the rest of India feels exactly the same way.
Example 3: The fellows of this community are thought to be hard-as-nails businessmen who will extract their pound of flesh when it is due, whatever the consequences to anyone else. They are thought to be penny-pinching moneylenders and impossibly cruel. While they originated from one small section of desert land, they have spread all over the world and now control major industries in almost all countries. There is a community in India, who is thought of in exactly the same way.
Example 4: The people of this country are supposed to be very stupid. Everyone else makes jokes about their lack of intellect. There exists exactly such a community in Hindoostan.
I only have four examples here, but this should be enough to convince any logical person. While the younger and idealistic (which means "stupid") set of readers may conclude from this that we should do away with stereotypes and simply judge every man or woman on individual merit, that is obviously ludicrous. What is required is a greater diversity in our stereotypes so we can continue to judge people quickly and entertain ourselves by making jokes about them.
--
I remain, as always, your faithful lover,
Colonel Copper Beckham Twiner
By a stroke of good fortune, we also found Lady Posh's reply to this letter and it follows below.
When the hell will you grow up, Twiner? I was never in love with you and never even knew of your existence until you started writing me letters from the safe distance that India provides you. I have been married for the last year to Lord Nuncle Spearshaker. He is looking forward enormously to your return to the British Isles, so that he may thrash you himself.
PS: In my previous requests to you to stop writing to me, I have told you about the romantic sonnets he pens and his refinement and delicacy. I realize now that this may have given you an inaccurate picture. Please allow me to correct that - he weighs 250 pounds and crushes irons rails between his fingers to keep them in good health and prevent the onset of writing-related stress injuries.
PPS: As for your stupid theories, who the hell cares?
September 03, 2004
The slacker ninja chef
The previous story has catapulted Korup to a legend of mythically inconsequential proportions and he has been receiving imaginary fan mail by the non-existent shipful.
There has been wild speculation about the whereabouts of this character in the present time and expeditions have been planned to meticulous detail to locate the fellow wherever he may be, only to be canceled at the last minute because of utter pointlessness. However, since we here at The Sentimental Turnip are not constrained by any notions of rhyme or reason, we went the whole hog and located Korup Tweener.
Here is the schocking truth that will make you sit up and yawn. Dare you believe it?
The president of the IOC in 2020, the wildly popular, the much-admired, envied, ridiculed, loved, hated and ignored, the sensational Korup Tweener, the man called "the dude" by a small number and called "who?" by the rest is, in 2004, merely a mac-and-cheese and peanut-butter-and-jelly-sanwich-maker. He prefers to refer to himself as a cordon bleu mac-and-cheese arrangeur, but we know that, in addition to being all of the above, he is a pompous and pretentious moron.
We delved a bit more into his past. He has never been able to keep a job more than a month and was at a loose end in May. Last week, he tapped into the old boys network of Farthunder High where he graduated from fifth-grade with honours and the accompaniment of cherry bombs. The grapevine informed him that his friend, confidante, alter-ego and fellow awesome-dude from the fifth-grade, Ashkent Erik, was on the lookout for a chef to prepare mac-and-cheese at his newly acquired restaurant.
Korup did not have a better old boys network to tap into because his school and he had had a mutual no-hard-feelings divorce after he completed grade five. The school had attempted to teach Korup negative numbers in grade six. He had realized that this new knowledge could only help him to tally losses and was therefore useless from a business perspective.
From that day, he had refused to believe in negative numbers in the same way that other people refuse to believe in ghosts, and this attitude had finally led to irreconcilable differences (get it? get it? get it? we are awesome - yay for us!), followed by an audit and the parting of ways.
As he learned from his friends in successive years that they were being taught irrational numbers, and then imaginary numbers, Korup had patted himself on the back with a self-praising back-patter on getting out of that hotbed of insanity called Education and its specific manifestation in Farthunder High.
We arrived at the restaurant and glanced around. It had a medieval-Disney-Shakespeare fastfood theme and was called MacDuck. On one wall was a giant poster of shorts-clad mice jousting in tights and armour with seven gentlemen of below-average height. From the opposite wall, a bald man with an obscenely ostentatious collar mulled over various options in a thought bubble beside his head, "To see or not to see. To free or arrest thee. Use Brie or use Chutney. Give me Liberty or Give me Lakhani." A greenish statue with a thorny crown looked on coquettishly at him from one side, while Patrick Henry glared at him in perpetual outrage at the almost-plagiarism.
Into the MacDuck, Korup had inveigled himself using his friendship with Erik and gotten promoted to the title of le grande pinata in a few short weeks. This didn't mean anything, because a chef was allowed to write any title on his paper hat, but Korup still allowed himself some pride at having thought of it.
Our futuristic feature from last week has grabbed this manic attention-seeker from his life of idyllic and cheesy obscurity and placed him at the helm of fabulous (Dictionary meaning: fictitious) intrigues and wild affairs of derring-do and chivalry with no beginning to them.
We are trying to convince Korup to take out time from his busy schedule of plotting raids of the wine cellar and the mock chastity belt that hot short waitress, Tipayi had been saddled with, to answer fan mail and dispense some of his limited gyan to our readers.
Mr Korup is asking for a burger and fries for his time but we are trying to restrict his demands to the burger since we are craving some fried carbs ourselves. Unlike other members of the press who enjoy expense accounts and houris to pander to their every whim, we have to pay for our lunch ourselves, so a little fries-related graft in job-related expenses is quite acceptable, we feel.
A breakthrough in negotiations is expected in a week and we will get back to you next Saturday with reports from this rather boring and unexciting event.
There has been wild speculation about the whereabouts of this character in the present time and expeditions have been planned to meticulous detail to locate the fellow wherever he may be, only to be canceled at the last minute because of utter pointlessness. However, since we here at The Sentimental Turnip are not constrained by any notions of rhyme or reason, we went the whole hog and located Korup Tweener.
Here is the schocking truth that will make you sit up and yawn. Dare you believe it?
The president of the IOC in 2020, the wildly popular, the much-admired, envied, ridiculed, loved, hated and ignored, the sensational Korup Tweener, the man called "the dude" by a small number and called "who?" by the rest is, in 2004, merely a mac-and-cheese and peanut-butter-and-jelly-sanwich-maker. He prefers to refer to himself as a cordon bleu mac-and-cheese arrangeur, but we know that, in addition to being all of the above, he is a pompous and pretentious moron.
We delved a bit more into his past. He has never been able to keep a job more than a month and was at a loose end in May. Last week, he tapped into the old boys network of Farthunder High where he graduated from fifth-grade with honours and the accompaniment of cherry bombs. The grapevine informed him that his friend, confidante, alter-ego and fellow awesome-dude from the fifth-grade, Ashkent Erik, was on the lookout for a chef to prepare mac-and-cheese at his newly acquired restaurant.
Korup did not have a better old boys network to tap into because his school and he had had a mutual no-hard-feelings divorce after he completed grade five. The school had attempted to teach Korup negative numbers in grade six. He had realized that this new knowledge could only help him to tally losses and was therefore useless from a business perspective.
From that day, he had refused to believe in negative numbers in the same way that other people refuse to believe in ghosts, and this attitude had finally led to irreconcilable differences (get it? get it? get it? we are awesome - yay for us!), followed by an audit and the parting of ways.
As he learned from his friends in successive years that they were being taught irrational numbers, and then imaginary numbers, Korup had patted himself on the back with a self-praising back-patter on getting out of that hotbed of insanity called Education and its specific manifestation in Farthunder High.
We arrived at the restaurant and glanced around. It had a medieval-Disney-Shakespeare fastfood theme and was called MacDuck. On one wall was a giant poster of shorts-clad mice jousting in tights and armour with seven gentlemen of below-average height. From the opposite wall, a bald man with an obscenely ostentatious collar mulled over various options in a thought bubble beside his head, "To see or not to see. To free or arrest thee. Use Brie or use Chutney. Give me Liberty or Give me Lakhani." A greenish statue with a thorny crown looked on coquettishly at him from one side, while Patrick Henry glared at him in perpetual outrage at the almost-plagiarism.
Into the MacDuck, Korup had inveigled himself using his friendship with Erik and gotten promoted to the title of le grande pinata in a few short weeks. This didn't mean anything, because a chef was allowed to write any title on his paper hat, but Korup still allowed himself some pride at having thought of it.
Our futuristic feature from last week has grabbed this manic attention-seeker from his life of idyllic and cheesy obscurity and placed him at the helm of fabulous (Dictionary meaning: fictitious) intrigues and wild affairs of derring-do and chivalry with no beginning to them.
We are trying to convince Korup to take out time from his busy schedule of plotting raids of the wine cellar and the mock chastity belt that hot short waitress, Tipayi had been saddled with, to answer fan mail and dispense some of his limited gyan to our readers.
Mr Korup is asking for a burger and fries for his time but we are trying to restrict his demands to the burger since we are craving some fried carbs ourselves. Unlike other members of the press who enjoy expense accounts and houris to pander to their every whim, we have to pay for our lunch ourselves, so a little fries-related graft in job-related expenses is quite acceptable, we feel.
A breakthrough in negotiations is expected in a week and we will get back to you next Saturday with reports from this rather boring and unexciting event.
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