SERIALIZATION OF “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” – Chapter 50 of 61
Warble Conspires to Arrest All the Water and Name Drops Hoosier Daddy
Chapter 50
Warble Conspires to Arrest All the Water and Name Drops Hoosier Daddy
Warble doesn't dwell on his dream. In fact, he forgets all about it after being violently awakened with that bucket load of H²0 as he was about to...do what?...he can't remember now, but he thinks it was something that was important to him at the time in the dream, anyway...oh, well...he dismisses it completely from his mind.
Note: By the way, this affinity of Warble's to forget things that you might think would be just about impossible to disremember is why some people (behind his back) refer to him as "the brainy zany with the drainy crany"
"Jacques, you're a genius!" Warble remarks, seeming quite surprised. "At least," he continues, in a lower register, "you're a junior genius, an adjunct genius, or a genius-in-training. You've given me another one of my great ideas! Of course, my agile mind would have alighted upon it eventually anyway, but you sped things up a little, so I gladly throw you a little crust of recognition, a bone of commendation."
"What have I done?" is all Jacques has to say to that.
"Water! You've brought to my mind thoughts of water. Wait! We must have the right mood music for this. Mary, see if you can download Mozart's "Eine Kleine Wassermusik" on the Arodnap's iPod."
"Warble," Ward says, grinning, putting his hand on his employer's shoulder, "I think you mean Handel,..."
"Don't tell me what I mean, Robespierre! And get your grubby mitts off of me, you buffoon! Go fondle your own Hondle!" Warble growls.
Ward's body English, when translated into written English, goes something like this: "OK, whatever, I was just trying to help," and he backs off, both literally and figuratively.
Mary, of course, can't find any such song in the iTunes database, so she calls WKRP in Cincinnati and requests "Smoke on the Water." When she returns to the huddle (Warble's employees are gathered around him, awaiting word on their next misadventure), the song has begun. Warble either doesn't even notice the music, or doesn't realize it is not the song he had in mind.
Soundtrack note: The following medley: Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" morphing into Handel's "Water Music" segueing into Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" (the album cut, with the guitar solo, not the single version with Ritchie Blackmore's most excellent solo stripped out)
"Water! Water! Water! Water is the elixir of life!" Warble begins. "Water is the wave of the future! We've got to secure our nation's rights to all the water that ever graces it by falling from the sky, or passing over it in the form of water vapor clouds, to you dunderheads. We must arrest the water, so that it can never leave us! You know the beautiful and classic poem by Emerson:
If you love something, set it free
If it comes back to you, well and good
If it leaves, hunt it down and kill it
"But Warble, that doesn't even rhyme," Mary complains, wrinkling up her face.
"Do not wrinkle your visage so, sweetums," Warble strongly suggests. "Who says it has to rhyme? Are you questioning the artistic sensibilities of Emerson Lake N. Palmer, the great poet lariat?
"Anyway," Warble goes on, waving his hand dismissively, "the real point, the crux of the matter, is this: If we don't even give water the opportunity to leave us, we won't have to kill it. We arrest the water, and it is ours forever."
"Arrest the water, Warble?" Albert asks. "What on God's green earth do you mean by that?"
"We will impound it, Albert," Warble replies. "We can't let it run free, like an escaped convict or a latchkey teenager! We've got to impound all the water, so that we always know where it is, and we can use it where we want, when we want. Water should not have a mind of its own. We are its masters! We are its Lords!"
"So you want to go into the reservoir business, I take it," Mullah deduces.
"As you wish, Mr. Gitani," Warble says politely, feeling generous and expansive. "Get in the car, kids, we're going for a little ride. A Sunday drive, if you will."
"But it's not Sunday, Warble honey," Mary protests.
"Who cares, wifey-poo," Warble smiles at her. "Sunday is more a state of mind than an actual day of the week, anywho."
"Hey, you rhymed!" Albert notes.
"Yes, so I did," Warble agrees, not realizing it until then but acting as if it were intentional. "Maybe I could've given my old rapper friend from Indiana a run for his money, if I had time for such tomfoolery as scribbling poems."
"You had a rapper friend from Indiana?" Comfy asks incredulously, imagining Warble probably thinks Michael Jackson was a rapper, rather than Warble's alleged friend being a genuine hip-hop stylist like Quadrevion Quartertone (who, as everyone knows, uses the stage name '1 sIk pUpPy'), or perhaps Garry N. D'Anna.
Soundtrack note: DO NOT, under any circumstances, play "Goin' Back to Indiana" by the Jackson 5 here. Instead, play "Gary, Indiana" from the musical "The Music Man"
"Hoosier Daddy," Warble informs Comfy, happy to trot out his famous friend, namedropper that he is.
"Ask yo' mama!" Comfy replies hotly.
"Why? What would my mother know about Hoosier Daddy?" Warble asks, confused.
"What business is it of yours who my daddy is?" Comfy says, ears flared, trunk raised, and trumpet blaring (using poetic license to translate Comfy's body English). "I asked you, Consumer Warble, and I want an answer: Who is this rapper from Indiana you claim to number among your friends?"
"I told you, Comfy: Hoosier Daddy! Hoosier and I go way back--he used to be a copywriter for my string of used car lots before he had a mid-twenties identity crisis and became a famous hip-hop artiste, well respected among music critics for his insightful and incisive lyrics."
"Oh, you mean! Get back, Warble! Get down! Hoosier Daddy!" Comfy reconciles, impressed that Warble, square peg that he seems to be, knows a rapper from a flapper, and hip-hop from flip-flops.
"Anyway, here we go!" Warble says, as he enters the location and date of their next rendezvous with fate.
Place: St. Louis, Missouri
Date: May 29th, 1913
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Blackbird Crow Raven’s “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” is being serialized in this space each Sunday and Thursday; it is also available in its entirety from here.
You can listen to the recording of this excerpt, by the author’s alter ego, here: