July 17, 2008

• Ruby’s Last Ride

  Once upon a time, there was a blubbery walrus named Ruby who called Peggy Porpoise fat. Peggy’s friends had warned Ruby about where this kind of behavior could lead. As one of Peggy’s friends quipped, Ruby will likely learn no lessons.

  But Ruby was smarter then all the other walruses and porpoises on the Ice Shelf, so she carved out hateful words for Peggy’s friends. These hateful words were written on the porpoises’ stony hearts, and porpoises, being beautiful but ultimately retarded creatures, now hated Ruby because Ruby hated their eruditeness towards her.

  And that’s when Ruby made her big mistake: she published publicly certain details of her first drink from the River of Promiscuity.

  Drinking from the River of Promiscuity was nothing new to the inhabitants of the Ice Shelf, especially not Rubi the Great, Who, in Her own right, had been a prolific strumpet many years ago. Curiously, Rubi was proud of this fact and the inhabitants of the Ice Shelf praised her for past behavior but only because they wanted to saw off a piece of that walrus to hang on their living room walls as a trophy, which, any bull would indeed have a right to be proud of and justified to flaunt such memento of conquest and achievement.

  What irked Ruby the most was the double standard of the Ice Shelf. The more whoring that Rubi did, the more she was loved, yet this courtesy was not extended to Ruby. In fact, the more that Ruby wrote about her promiscuity, the more the Ice Shelf impugned Ruby.

  Poor Ruby!

  Perhaps there was a double standard because Ruby wasn’t as beautiful as Rubi. Perhaps it was Ruby’s poor spelling and grammar. (Bad grammar didn’t stop the Ice Shelf from having orgies in Patty’s honor when she butchered the language.) One thing could be said for Rubi: she knew how to write such pretty bullshit.

  When the written word is the primary mode of communication, the ability to eloquently express one’s self is paramount. Paradoxical though it may be, there were those who had no aptitude for the written word and were thus given a hall pass to bumble along blissfully ignorant and thank God for that ignorance; it would greatly depress and infuriate the bumbler to know that she appeared as retarded as she thought Ruby to be!

  Ruby tried to remove her bold announcement of lasciviousness from the bulletin board in the middle of the Ice Shelf. The Donkey from Dallas thought that a breach of security had occurred, so being a good (but retarded) citizen, Donkey alerted the bulletin board proprietor of the removal in heated and heavy tones.

  Now, the proprietor had long since blindly trusted Donkey in matters of electronic security because he was retarded and thought that Donkey could do no wrong. The Donkey from Dallas was wrong.

  There was no breach of security though there was the removal of posted announcements.

  The proprietor of the bulletin board did, however, re-post a facsimile of Ruby’s announcement albeit in more intimate. explicit terms. He also signed Ruby’s name to this since she had posted her announcement under her moniker. The inhabitants of the Ice Shelf didn’t like this one bit.

  The only explanation that the proprietor could get as to why he was so impugned was that he used a real name instead of a pseudonym despite the fact that everyone on the Ice Shelf knew that he was referring to Ruby. “If you had not used Ruby’s real name” it was explained to the proprietor, “you would not now be impugned.” The proprietor saw this as hypocritical poppycock as no one on the Ice Shelf like Ruby. The animals on the Ice Shelf all wanted to poke fun at Ruby and see her reaction and many hated Ruby, but this they would not abide!

  The proprietor tried to explain his actions but the Ice Shelf was a big, dumb living thing that moved slowly and in unison, even though the inhabitants of the Ice Shelf proved the old adage None of us is a retarded as all of us. There were many retarded beings living on the Ice Shelf.

  In particular, Rubi was quite miffed about the turn of events despite those events not having anything to do with her. She had long ago given up on the proprietor of the bulletin board but made pretenses from time to time leading him to believe that she actually gave a shit about him. It is true that she once did and even admitted that she did on more the one occasion, but being Queen Bitch of the Ice Shelf she felt she had to ascend above the mere mammals of the Ice Shelf and begin her Reign of Terror.

  A Benevolent Dictator she was or so she seemed. The Ice Shelf gladly bent to her will, but the Ice Shelf was a living retarded, pliable monster with a sever case of conversion disorder. Rubi used this to her advantage thus enslaving the proprietor of the bulletin board. Rubi was insecure and feared that the proprietor would turn on her.

  Of course, Rubi couldn’t understand why the proprietor had taken such a proactive stance on the issue of the security of his bulletin board. She wouldn’t understand because she was too involved with her cat and mouse game. The proprietor assured Rubi that she had nothing to worry about because, though it turned out to be a false alarm sounded by the Donkey from Dallas, there was evidence of a potential security breach and thus he was acting in a defensive nature. Once he realized his blunder (that is, he listened to a braying ass) he did seek to rectify the issue but the Ice Shelf booed this move.

  Rubi threatened the loss of her friendship and her earlier promise of another romance like the one they had shared one Spring. The proprietor humbled himself and apologized publicly to Ruby in order to placate Rubi despite having already made amends with Ruby. The Ice Shelf was rather impressed with this apology and after it grew on her, Rubi seemed impressed too.

  Something was lacking, however. Even before the proprietor made what to Rubi was costly blunder, there was a coldness to her interactions with him, even though she lured his attention with the thought of endless happy days they would spend together. After his blunder, Rubi was colder still, though she appeared to thaw.

  The proprietor could not make rational sense of Rubi’s sudden desire to correspond with him nor her new dance of ridicule. Though he thought there was singleness of mind and purpose, Rubi had other plans.

  Adoration was Rubi’s sunlight and she played the part of a tender plant that needed to grow. To many, she was a beautiful rose who brought color and contrast to the cold, steel-blue white of the Ice Shelf. To the proprietor her flowering was pretty, but there was too much manure attempting to fertilize Rubi’s flowering and thus to the proprietor it was just a stinking mess.

  He therefore decided to test Rubi.

  Rubi, he reasoned was an intelligent walrus. At least, she appeared to be intelligent walrus. That also meant that she was predictable. Predictable, intelligent beings therefore would always follow a given course of action given the same seed of events. Furthermore, the proprietor would finally know at last what Rubi really thought.

  In no uncertain terms, the proprietor told Rubi to go to hell.

  Rubi decided to take the proprietor’s advice which shocked the proprietor. He thought she’d fight him tooth and nail. He also thought that if she really cared for him like she said that she did, she’d forgive him.

  She didn’t forgive him.

  No one liked the proprietor’s edict. The braying ass brayed, the Moocher mooched, the porpoise cried foul and Rubi considered burning her bridges.

  Chaos ensued on the Ice Shelf. None of the animals could live comfortably anymore until this wrong had been righted, but no one believed that the wrong could be righted, so one by one the Ice Shelf shrank. Sir Algore considered making a speech to the Ice Shelf because he mistakenly thought that the animals were dying due to global warming, but canceled at the last moment stating he couldn’t get enough jet fuel for the trip because of market conditions.

  Rubi hated the proprietor and wished that he would burn in Hell. For weeks the proprietor was forced into a purgatory of sorts, but he was eventually allowed to remove his sackcloth and ash when his prayers were no longer answered. He did have an answer and to that end progress had been made.

  The proprietor wanted to tie up a few loose ends and thus employed Ruby to do his evil bidding. Ruby didn’t like Rubi and secretly suspected that Rubi was really a porpoise all along but she wanted proof. After much cajoling, Ruby grudgingly wrote to Rubi to get Rubi’s side of the story.

  Much to the proprietor’s surprise, Ruby had been right all along–Rubi was indeed a porpoise! This greatly disturbed the proprietor but after a bit of cross-referencing, soul-searching and fact-checking the proprietor realized how wrong he had been.

  In the end, Ruby was still blubbery and fat and she had developed tusks for grousing at this and that. However, she was the only sane walrus on the Ice Shelf and was indeed smarter then them all. Her writing left much to be desired and was reminiscent of Peggy’s, but Ruby could correctly punctuate a sentence. Rubi might have been prettier and more knowledgeable then Ruby on a number of interesting subjects, but she had proven to be deceitful and was thus made to be less desirable the the porpoises on the Ice Shelf which were not really desirable. The Donkey from Dallas was still a braying ass.

  The proprietor still maintained his bulletin board to his satisfaction even though no one ever read what he posted.

  Nothing ever really changed.

  • 7:09 pm
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