Tag: Doug Hawley

Ghost Writer From The Sky

Sheila told Duke, “Hurry up we want to get there before dark”.

As usual, Duke did not hurry “I’ll be ready in a few. I’ve just got to check on the Trailblazers latest draft bust.”

Fifteen minutes later they started the short walk to the Buck Tree, a huge cedar named after an early benefactor of Iron Mountain Park in the middle of Lake Oswego. They had opened their Christmas cards earlier. There were no presents because they got whatever they wanted whenever they wanted and had no need for more clutter.

Their ritual of many years was to go to the Buck Tree on Christmas Day, have a bottle of Pinot Grigio, a few snacks and tell each other what they had to be thankful for.

Sheila started. “I’m so happy that the USA has not been in any wars for fifty years, and that the military has largely been used for domestic purposes.” Sheila was particularly anti-war because she was the descendant of a president who was guilty of war crimes, but not punished.

“I like that bad drugs have largely been replaced by fun, mostly organic hallucinogens.”

Sheila again “Renewable energy, wave, geothermal and hydro have mostly replaced fossil fuels.” She blushed a little because her antique Dodge Charger named Deuce still ran on contraband petrol and at that very moment was having fun in stealth mode on Iron Mountain Boulevard. In part to cover her embarrassment, she asked “What are Carl and Josie up to?”

“They are having a romantic evening out in the country where their loud antics can’t disturb the general public. I’ve never seen two cars that make more noise while having sexual escapades. Speaking of the limit on fossil fuel, we get snow in Lake Oswego again now that global warming is retreating.” A light snow had started to fall.

Duke opened his mouth, but didn’t speak. A little old man who vaguely resembled Saint Nick said “Hi Duke, I’m your creator Doug. Here’s my card.”

Duke pressed the biography circle on the card and images of “Doug” entered his mind showing a quick synopsis of Doug with a voice over. Doug grew up in the middle of the last century, studied math, married Sharon who became his editor, and wrote his most popular stories, the smart car series.

After the biography had concluded, there was no card and Doug had disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared.

He looked at Sheila and said “That is the weirdest thing that has ever happened.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Can you believe that we are the creation of some writer?”

“That’s what you saw? I saw purple monkeys riding on pink elephants.”

They looked at each other for about five minutes and chorused “The mushrooms, the special mushrooms”.

***

We wish you peace and joy all around the world. The title is a play on “Ghost Riders In The Sky”, a favorite of the ghost writer. This story was requested by Maysam Kandej for a Christmas collection. Thanks Maysam. It is also included in the smart car series in The Short Humour Site.

Language report 2019 -2119

During the last hundred yrs great progress has bin made in American Language. This essay will kover the trends and landmarks of that period.

The drivers of the changes were 2 movements. 1 went under the banner “If it’s diffikult, it’s not worth doing” which led to “The Great Simplifikashun” and the other was texting.

The “Diffikult” movement was supported by nearly everyone, but was strongest in akademia. Even the students went along. Sum say the first change was abandoning kursive. As with kursive, many other similar changes were brewing simultaneously. Bekause no 1 knew what affekt or effekt meant, “impakt” was used exklusively. Outside of historikal dokuments such as this, neither archaik term has bin used since 2043. Imply and infer had konfused generashuns, so inpler was used for either 1, despite sum preferring imfer. Inspired by texting, your and you’re bekame ur. Problem, disease, injury, error and mistake were effektively eliminated by “issue” by the 2030’s. A survey indikated only 3% of the populashun understood there, their and they’re so they all bekame ther.

By 2105 15% of spoken words were either “impakt” or “issue”.

Parts of speech were improved by ending the arbitrary distinkshun between verbs and nouns. Much earlier, task and impakt were verbed, and ask and reveal were nouned. By 2085 every verb had been used as a noun and by 2093 every noun had been used as a verb. The combinashun bekame nerbs.

Texting had bin a great force in simplifying and improving the language. Ur, 4, b, u were promoted by texts. It had added shortkuts such as lol, btw, lmfao and other wondrous things. Along with the internet, texting emojis had eliminated the need 4 most words. Following the peaceful robot revolushun of 2098, no human had done any riting outside of texts since 2105. Human aktivity during the 8 hours awake revolved around watching klassik entertainment such as “I Married Joan” and eating Doritos. Robots now kreate all literature, and do a much better job than humans ever did. Kompare “Romeo And Juliet” to “Parents Had Issues, Kids Died” for example.

Bekause pre- had bekome primarily used to mean “early” as in pre-sale and pre-board, it lost its original use as “before”, so words such as “prehistory” bekame “before history”.

Kleches were skrutinized in the 2080s. Bekause they had never bin regulated, sum rules were rekwired. The Kommission kame up with:

Most kleches kud not b used more than 50 million times without being retired for 20 yrs at which time they kud be resurrekted. Klassiks such as “On / off my radar” kan b, in fakt should b, used at every opportunity. Based on this ruling, “woke”, “optiks” and “walk it back” kan be used now, but u will have to wait for “groovey”, “lit” and “yo mama”.

1 of the rules developed over the time period of this report that defies understanding is the rekwirement to add “kommunity” after every group. People speak of “the gravel kommunity” rather than “gravel”, “writing community” rather than “writers”.

The promulgashun of this odd rule is lost in antikwity.

Despite language being largely standardized, ther is 1 large exsepshun. Half the world recognizes one form of address – sapien or title – and the other half has 3,422 depending on amount of oppreshun, nationality, ethnisity and choice from 83 genders.

By KPR3

***

Inpler is written by Mr. Doug Hawley.