SERIALIZATION OF “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle” – Chapter 45 of 61
Warble Plans to Put a Price Tag on Everything, Create a Single World Currency, and Hypnotize the People of the Planet
CHAPTER 45
Warble Plans to Put a Price Tag on Everything, Create a Single World Currency, and Hypnotize the People of the Planet
Again, Warble's plan is carried out pretty much to the letter, so there's no sense in going through the whole play-by-play of what exactly happened, when, and how, yodda yodda yodda. As always, Warble is quite pleased with himself once he's accomplished his stated intentions:
“Well, I really shined that time, didn't I?” Warble rhetorically crows, strutting like a rooster, beating his breast like a baboon, and virtually spreading his tail-feathers (had he any literal tail feathers to spread).
“Now, though, that's not all: We've been proactive in preventing mayhem. Let's take it one step further and be proactive in introducing the blessed condition of consumerism.
If we are lax in our duties, and give in to a lapse in our proactive activities, we could suffer a prolapse, and that would not be a pretty sight,” Warble pontificates, unaware of his malapropisms.
Mary rolls her eyes. “What have you got in mind now, Warble?” she wonders.
“With my wonderful imagination and profound visionary skills, Mary,” Warble replies, expelling a sound like a previously parched person who has just taken a big swig of water, “I see the magnificent future that awaits us, now that I've made the globe safe for commerce and consumerism and the world safe for globalization. Not just every man, but every thing: Every living, breathing, animate, inanimate thing—and so forth, you get the picture—will have its price. Stamped right on it, in fact. In other words: Bagged, tagged, and bar-coded to boot.”
“What in tarnation are you getting us into this time, Consumer Warble?” Comfy (and other similarly inquiring minds) wants to know.
“First, we need to have one world currency. The dollar, of course. That eliminates a lot of jobs (money changers, printer's devils, etc.) and makes purchasing goods (man's highest and loftiest endeavor) so easy even most Congressmen will be able to do it—with a little help from their favorite lobbyist or page, at any rate.
“We will hypnotize the world with this hip-hop chant I've written on the spur of the moment, so that they switch over to the dollar without our even having to spend the time and money that would otherwise be necessary to bomb them into submission:
“Ruble, Mark, Frank
Throw them in the TANK!
Rupee, Lira, Peso
In the trash they MUST go!
DOLLARS! DOLLARS! DOLLARS!
Makes you jump and HOLLER!
OUT with the old! IN with the new!
Make your neighbor be like YOU!”
In spite of himself, Comfy “gets the spirit” and begins movin' to the groovin', shakin' to the bakin', and jivin' to the connivin'. Soon the entire troupe is dancing in spite of themselves*, and Warble knows he has won them over once again.
* Taterskin is not strictly dancing, but he is cavorting around the undulating mob: running around, barking, and jumping in the air. Warble thinks Taterskin is just mindlessly mirroring the goings-on. Albert thinks Taterskin is trying to warn him about something. What Taterskin is really up to, though, is laughing at (not with) the people and celebrating the fact that he's not a dopey, dorky human.
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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: