24th March, 1994
The leopard stirred. After spending three nights up a tree in Mozambique, it was annoyed. That was a mild case of annoyance compared to the annoyance of Patrick who discovered that he had been killed even before the story had begun. The leopard leaped down from the tree and hitched a ride into town, hoping that Sandra wouldn't attack him with her wicked thesaurus. Hoping on one fot, he unhitched the ride, which bounded off with obvious relief. His fot was obviously relieved to escape in case Sandra's thesaurus turned out to be a dictionary instead. Fortunately this was not the case, and the fot came to live a long and fruitful life before being wiped out by a crazed Mills and Boon editor who had taken too many drugs during a rewrite. The question was, would the car engine start? It was easy to see that once he was attached to the World Wide Web, his pointers would get into knots. This was only a problem insofar as his garage was getting very untidy. It was also full of moaning people who had been trapped in there since early last century. Partly because of this he had never gotten around to cleaning it out, but an equally contributing factor was that he was as lazy as a ruby-crystal rod.
Over time, especially a few years, trapped people become concerned about things. As a consequence he was engulfed by thousands of people thrusting dirty laundry at him as soon as he poped his head in the Vatican, becoming the first Chinese laundryman to rule the Roman church. Instead of the usual sceptre, he carried the samurai sword, an artifact Letitia was determined the obtain for herself. She had to make do with a aardvark sauce on her sandwiches. The new pope, Jian Chung I, was eating alone in the precept, enjoying the sunshine and the dried tomatoes. Jian finally felt as though he'd had enough. He had had as much sunshine as one pope could possibly consume, and was getting a bit burnt from the tomatoes. Suddenly the phone rang. It was God. ``Your mission, Jian, should not be hit by a passing comet before I finish my sentence...'' Suddenly, before God could finish his sentence, Jian was hit by a passing comet which completely surprised the small gnat who had been living in his left ear for king over $100 a week rent to an enterprising mite which lived in Jian's hair. ``Blast!'', God exclaimed, ``I hate it when that happens''. Jian gazed down in astonishment at what the comet had done to his purple corduroy flares and sparklers; it's never wise to mix comets and fireworks. Jian stumbled in astonishment, as did the author who had not met him before. They went out for dinner and ended up back at his apartment around 2am.
Jian was raving about the pressures of being fictional in a way only the blitheringly blind drunk can achieve. The author kept on making a nuisance of himself by inserting a copyleft statement in front of everything Jian said. He was sued to pieces by a team of lawyers who had large pointed dribbling pens that allowed them to release 4.4 Lite sometime after February 4th; hooray! As Dennis prepared a 350M drive for the onslaught, Novell began flexing it's bindery, showing off in front of the small crowd that had gathered in front of the computer. First, Novell set up a small server in under 20 minutes, borrowing a small child from the crowd to do it. Next, in a feat of monumental chutzpah, the toddler was induced to program in JCL. At this stage several RSPCA members kidnapped the toddler and hastily made off in a hot air balloon smelling of salami and coriander. When they had regained their senses they parked in the opening of a nearby and almost dormant volcano, which chose at that moment to become completely active and exploded, killing all in the hamlet at the other end of the paragraph. Anja unlocked the car door, got in and turned the radio up. It had been a hard day, slaving over a hot thermos, and the antelope had eloped with an ant.
Abruptly Anja's car radio faded into static. She looked up expectantly for the UFO, then realised it was just some street-kids making off with her antenna. Damn! She'd forgotten to start the car! That meant she'd have to make the 300km journey all over again. Now she realised why the scenery had appeared so static. A large pizza came hurtling through the sky thinly disguised as a UFO. It landed unceremoniously on a rock in the Pacific, and took off again before anybody noticed.
And in hustling, bustling New York, an iguana salesman went from door to door in a vain and pathetic attempt to find his long-lost sister Mary. If she had existed his task would have been much easier. As it was he was destined to spend his life in constant frustration and failure, becoming more and more depressed, his car battery always flat, more, commas inserted, than, full-stops. He became obsessed with hunting down and killing the vile authors of his life's tragedy. He would take to wearing a trench coat and skulking in alleys, waiting for an author to be off-guard. Aaaaarghhh......
Leaving a suitable pause to pay his last respects, Sir Mervyn Moncrieff, O.B.E. C.I.A. F.B.I. P.C.M.C.I.A., vowed he would never again eat those who had loved him so much.
At the funeral, Anja sobbed in a continuous and thus unsurprising manner. How had Patrick died this time? Grebo the cat thought of the bones for afters, and Ozalp was into his third chicken before he noticed. Lightly was her voice, and all the listeners were entranced. People came from far and wide to gather round and hear her, ponder her words, and wonder if they should be nailing her to some sort of wooden cross-shaped thing. No-one actually paid attention to what she said, but the smell was so unbearable they knew they had to do something about it. So as the pack of rabid arts students wielding rotary mango pickers swamped her, she threw herself to her knees, pleading for mercy. Mercy stepped forward and threw a stone at her. ``Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone'', interjected God. ``Actually, Sin left me for that floozy down the road'' replied Mercy. ``Take that, and that, and that...''.
Many weeks later, after an eventful hiatus, the Stones gave their first rock concert in Mersyside. Nastier things have been known to happen, but not with such lack of attention to detail. Grimly aware and only going because they were being paid, the fans lumbered into the concert. The first group onto the stage were the `Sneekers'. The crowd jeered ``This isn't rock, it's sole! We wanna rock!'. A rock obligingly fell from the sky and crushed everyone. ``Oh well - I AM without sin, after all'' God muttered. It was a very large rock. So large that it took a full picosecond for God to generate it out of nothing. Arguments about babel fish aside, God decided to reintroduce the status quo and the rock promptly vanished and the band was replaced by AC/DC supported by Big Cap and the Rectifiers. They were spaced out on the magneto-hydrodynamics that the tuning fork induced. Llamas predate between the hours of 10am and 3pm.
Denatured potatoes and eugenically slotted aesthetics can corrupt or render harmless various tree-traversal algorithms. If you suspect your binary or avl tree has been sniffing potatoes, be aware that the tree will need to be in-order defoliated. KEEP POTATOES AWAY FROM TREES! The last few lines were sent in by a D. Quayle from America. Thanks for your contribution D., and if you have any spare pocket money, consider buying a dictionary.
And so as Ozalp ran wild among the elderberries, Patrick succumbed again to death. In the distance, a leopard-spotted leg was spotted, rapidly approaching the circle at infinity. Its mission was to determine why it was a circle and not a square at infinity. If it succeeded, it knew that the guano-flavoured cheese was able to restore youth and vitality. But as the volcano blew its top, the leopards packed their bags and left.