Parodyverse Team Up #5 “The Pinocchio Plot!”


The time: now. The place: the kitchen of Visionary’s extra-dimesnional lighthouse home. The situation: domestic disharmony.


“You will not believe what I found in your son’s Zune this morning!” Hallie informed the former leader of the Lair Legion upon her materialization in the cozy breakfast nook.


Visionary blanched at the myriad of inappropriate possibilities that filled his mind before he became conscious of the fact that, “Griffin has a Zune? When did he get a Zune?”


“When the 3.1 came out,” Hallie replied somewhat guiltily, “it was an early Christmas present.”


“A Zune. I’m still using a cell phone that has to be carried in a giant hip holster and yet my ten year old son has a Zune. What do I have to do to get a Zune?”


Hallie placed her hands on her hips and gave her friend a stern look, “Oh, knock it off Vizh. You’re just going on because you like to say ‘Zune’.”


It was a fun word, Visionary had to admit, and at this stage in his life he knew to take advantage of even the simplest pleasures when there was an opportunity, “What did you find… on Griffin’s Zune?”


The living hologram called up the file she had copied and willed it to play. A two-dimensional screen materialized, broadcasting the image of a man with a blonde pompadour and flamboyant red robes. The burly Beau Brummell spoke, or rather shouted:


“Well, let me tell you something Mean As In the Average Sense Jean, there’s nothing The Natural Boy hates more than these worthless Robo Americans. They’re clanking, clattering, carbon-unfriendly cans of cogs and cowardice. Toasters with a sense of entitlement. The Natural Boy has no use for them. Why back during the Parody War, while the Natural Boy and every other red-blooded Real American was standing up to that cosmic jabroni the Parody Master, these ‘Robo Americans’ were either playing Benedict Arnold or laying low in a refrigerator box somewhere hoping they wouldn’t be asked to do something useful for the cause, like donate themselves to a scrap metal drive. And now The Natural Boy hears these phonies want to trade in their punch cards for voting cards? Despicable. The only rights Robo Americans have is the right to rust! That is, if they’re lucky enough to stay out of the ring with the one, the only, The Natural Boy Danny Sparks! Yeah!”


“Natural Boy Danny Sparks, you’re going to be facing the currently undefeated Machine Machine at this month’s Robot Rumble. Do you have any personal message for him?” the interviewer asked.


“Him? Did you just call Machine Machine a him? That’s an insult to hims everywhere, Mean As In the Average Sense Jean. These Robo Americans are as genderless as a snow plow or pontoon bridge. Would you call a pontoon bridge a him, Mean Jean?”

“Well, I-“


“Of course not! That would be ridiculous! World’s gotta make sense, Mean Jean! Otherwise every day would be one long existential nightmare of epistemological relativism, where you take the octopus to work and enjoy blue with your potato salad. And that’s not the kind of world The Natural Boy Danny Sparks wants to live in. Yeah!”


“Natural Boy Danny Sparks, your message to Machine Machine?”


“It’s a message so simple even something only fluent in binary code will understand it. Come Robot Rumble, its over for Machine Machine. Its warrantee has run out. The factory is issuing a recall. The reason: unplanned obsolescence. Yeah!”


To Be Continued