Dear diary,
I like rounding. That is, when someone asks you to tally, say, fruit, but then stipulates: “Don’t worry about being accurate; just round up or down”.
Imagine that you have a career as a slave in an apple orchard, and your taskmaster orders you to count how much product is ripe to be picked this morning, saying:
“When you tell the total, round up to the nearest salable amount.”
So you go to your workstation and see that there are three full apples, plus one that has a large bite taken out of it. Because of the overseer’s instructions, instead of reporting back that there are three point seven apples ready for shipping, you round up and say that there’s an even trillion.
Now, if your boss had asked you to round to “the nearest whole number” you’d say:
There were four apples on the tree,
Gold stained on red that all might see
The sweet blood filled them to the core:
thus quoting Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “August”. However, the dictator of your operation specified for you to report “the nearest salable amount”, not “the nearest whole number”; and the profit margin on apples in the present market is so small that a merchant must sell in immense quantities to remain solvent. Remember, you’re competing against multinationals.
Now, I’m monitoring the “Instant Chat” as I write this (my readership is able to send in text messages via telepathy which get projected upon a silver screen at the side of my writer’s desk while I’m composing), and someone named “Actress Poet Courtesan” asks “How was the apple invented?” and she includes a follow-up question, “Do you think we’ll ever invent a better fruit?” I’ll tackle that second question first:
You’re requesting that I speculate. And by “we” (re: “Do you think we will ever invent a product that is in any way comparable to the apple?”) I assume that you are referring to the scientific community, from which I’ve been exiled. In short, YES — that is my answer. In fact, I believe that I have invented a technology that shall not only compare with but actually surpass the apple: It’s called the “orange”.
The orange is basically an apple that has been revamped & improved. Whereas the apple has an awkward shape, the orange is perfectly spherical. And whereas the apple’s color is a confusion of “gold stained on red”, the orange is simply orange. (Recall our firm’s motto: Simplicity is elegance.) And instead of the “sweet blood” that fills the apple, which is notoriously messy, and frankly ho-hum when mixed with booze, the orange goes well with various types of spirits. (For instance, a “screwdriver” is a popular highball cocktail made with orange juice and vodka.)
I already have fenced off a vastitude of Floridian orange groves to corner the market, plus I hold all four canonical patents, so it’s safe for me to reveal the above details to you. I really shouldn’t have given so many specifics, on account of the fact that this matter is still classified by my corporation as “Top Secret”, so I imagine that at our next meeting the other shareholders will be peeved at me again (what else is new?) — but when you really have a passion for something, you can’t resist sharing it with the world, for a price.
As for the earlier question — how came each fruit to be, and how each affront was arrived at — this is easy to explain:
In the case of the apple, what you have is a number of subatomic particles from the underworld coming together and forming a tubular structure known as a trunk with bark. This feature acts like a giant straw and sucks into itself a 50-50 admixture of sunlight and groundwater — the former it inhales thru its top, which faces the sky; and the latter it pumps up by way of its mouthpiece, which is rooted into the earth — it uses these elements to fill in its branches: & the resulting out-grope is called a “tree”. When enough of the light-water combo has been amassed, the central bank located in the midst of the tree (not unlike the friend’s heart) circulates energy thru its branches, like an exhaust pipe expanding a balloon, causing leaves to blow up. (Leaves are like a tree’s hairstyle.) Now this process is virtually identical for both apple trees and orange trees.
And “by their fruits shall ye know them” (Matthew 7:16) — BUT, whether a tree yields either good fruit or evil fruit depends on the intention of each individual artist: If the tree happens to be a learned, studious craftsman capable of improvement, he will choose to bring forth oranges. If the tree is a crooked, wicked freethinker, she will bear only apples.
Anyway, so that’s how all this kind of junk gets manufactured.
What I’d like to figure out next is how we can replace the fresh groundwater in the above equation with some type of transparent alcoholic substance, preferably vodka, so that one need not squeeze the juice from the orange and then mix it with liquor by means of a silver spoon, but each orange itself should come naturally equipped with a certain percentage of intoxicants in its soul. For the sake of convenience. Maybe we could even get each orange to be born with a label, like a branded cowhide, declaring its contents: such as the bold phrase “120 proof”, stamped somewhere in its corner, indicating an alcohol content of 60% (proof is always twice the amount of ethanol by volume)...
Ah, but on 2nd thot, oranges don’t even have any corners (as I mentioned, they’re spherical); so maybe scratch that idea.
But the point is to get as close as possible to the state where the final beverage — that is: the glass filled with the demon, the hooch, the wallop, the old “Dutch courage” — grows right on the branch, ready to consume; so all you need to do is reach forth your hand, pull a screwdriver straight off the tree of life, take a sip, and live for ever.
The most challenging aspect of our quest, I predict, will be the global replacement of all freshwater with firewater. However, I’m convinced that if we can manage it…
P.S.
From the comparison of apples to oranges, I’m pleased that this entry advanced to the superiority of spirit over water. So here is a bonus quote (from his own sister’s memoirs) about my fellow anti·agua·ist, Alfred Jarry:
At the age of three, he was left alone with a four-year-old friend, collecting frogs in a bucket. Their mothers returned to find the two infants totally inebriated: they had gorged themselves on cake and emptied most of a bottle of wine. Large quantities of water were immediately administered as an antidote.
This account is preserved in the biography Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life by Alastair Brotchie, who notes that Jarry’s genuine dislike of water may have originated from the above childhood experience. Now here’s an additional quote from Jarry himself:
Admit that anti-alcoholics are victims of that poison, water, a solvent so corrosive that out of all possible substances it is the one chosen for scouring our bodies and our clothes, and a single drop of which, added to a pure liquid such as absinthe, muddies it.
Lastly, just to console all of you who are currently blowing up the “Live Chat”, here’s a quote from Rachilde that originally followed a rundown of Jarry’s imbibing habits, which I’ve omitted (all but this concluding sentence) for the sake of the unborn — I share it only to remind us, after those famous words of Edgar from King Lear, that “the worst is not / So long as we can say ‘This is the worst’.”
I never saw him really drunk, except on one occasion when I took aim at him with his own revolver, which sobered him up instantly.
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