Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Cacoethes Scribendi

A novel, a novella, and a novelette were walking in the woods.

The novel said to the novella, "You're short." The novella said to the novelette, "You're shorter." The novelette pulled out a matchbox and set fire to other two, laughing while he did it.

The novelette then slipped out of its disguise and revealed its true identity as a work by Stephen King. The real novelette was bound and gagged and sinking to the bottom of a river close by. A wandering epic transcribed the entire event upon itself and added a good bit of fiction about a hero with a funny name rescuing the novelette and restoring order to the universe. A tragedy stumbled into the scene, mistook it for a farce, and completely failed to alert the editor. The result was that an excessively pretentious piece by Robert Frost was catapulted into undeserved fame completely by accident.

Shakespeare was too busy being the main character in a romance to notice, while Douglas Adams insisted that nothing mattered, saving it had something to do with tea or 42. Lewis Carroll went to his room to work out the situation with a deck of cards and a pencil.

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