Move Along, Nothing Worth Reading Here

Well, here we are in the middle of summer 1992. I know you're all busy taking vacations, attending summer events like scion picnics, and sundry other occasions (I swear every third friend I have was born in July). Since you're all busy anyway and probably aren't going to have time to read this, I thought I would just kick back and kinda just rest this column. You know, let the grammar and spelling slide, not write about anything too interesting, just sorta hang out here in the center spread and do a sort-of nouveau air-conditioned brown study. See you next month.

There, now that any residual readership is gone, I can . . . uhm . . . I know, I'll write a letter! I owe Sue Dahlinger one. of course, I also owe her a check for Varieties of Ash, and an article besides, so maybe I'd better wait on that. Maybe I can start that article:

Okay, what did I figure? Watson's marriages as cross-indexed by the way he compliments women as he writes the stories up. Now if I could just find my notes . . . hnumm. Not there. Not under Wally Conger's letter. Not on the DPAPA pile. That's itl I'll wander over to the Prussian!

With the speed of a thought I find myself ensconced behind the corner table in the Dangling Prussian, a cool mug of Victorian-style root beer between my hands. No fizz, just flavor . . . and a few little chunks of root, floating around like orange juice pulp. Ah, the country of the mind. Ah, the city of the left frontal lobe. Ah, the tavern of neural pathway number 343-622A.

The Dangling Prussian is empty tonight. Just me and my rooty root beer and that portrait of Gottfried Von Bork, looking at me, giving me the creeps. I remember a joke Angie once told me about Von Bork, but I don't remember it well because I'm in a family publication at the moment.

The Prussian is a lot calmer when it's in Plugs Dottles. We should run a comic strip in here called "Pug and Dottie." Pug could be McMurdo the prize fighter, and Dottie could be Dorothy Sayers. They could argue Sherlockian scholarship, Dottie going on about being as "serious as a cricket match," and Pug showing her what Holmes's cross-hit looked like. Little cartoon stars would circle around Dottie's head, and Bob would get letters about wife abuse not being a laughing matter, then Bob would write that Pug and Dottie aren't married, and that would open up a whole new controversy . . . .

Some ideas are best kept to one's self, methinks. I've gotten Bob in enough trouble. Maybe I should do a whole column of ellipses . . . ellipse . . . ellipse . . . ellipse . . . ellipse . . . .

The problem with ellipses is that you have to put words in between them. That, and Watson never seemed to use them. He liked dashes: "Then -- "I have no doubt --" "That's lucky for him --” I bet it's because Victorian typesetters got ticked off if you made them slide three or four periods on the stick in a row.

If I fell asleep right now, maybe I could write like James Joyce. He had to use ellipses. Of course, I could call my Joycean novel Ellipses. And if I fell asleep right now, would anyone notice? Is this column over yet?

And how would have Holmes and Watson's relationship changed if Watson had had kids? Would Mary have made him stay home, or would he have just drug little James along for the ride? "How many more telegraph poles until we get to King's Pyland, Uncle Sherlock?"

Uncle Sherlock didn't mean to do opium experiments on little Jamie, Mary, honest he didn't . . . .

And now a secret message for the Dissecting Room's Junior Cadaver Cutter Club:

CODED MESSAGE HERE

(For those of you without the decoder ring, those are not dancing men, they're cadavers sprawled on the Dissecting Room floor.)

Hey, it's the end of the page! I can leave now!

THE COLUMN YOU HAVE JUST READ IS TRUE. NONE OF THE NAMES WERE CHANGED AS NONE OF THE INNOCENT ARE GOING TO READ THIS ANYWAY. JOIN US NEXT MONTH FOR SENSIBLE, MATURE ADULT BEHAVIOR.

(This column appeared in the August 1992 issue of Plugs & Dottles.)