Dear diary,
Now my court case begins. The judge bangs her gavel and sez: “All right, let’s get this over with.” She then begins to read the newspaper while corporate thugs slander me.
The result of my trial (for I win my case) is that I’m awarded as much land as I can grab. This is what is meant by the famous phrase “land grab”. What happens is that the U.S. Authorities bring me out to a field and say:
“We will officially present you with a deed of ownership for all the land that you desire — the only catch is that you must be able to run physically around the perimeter of however much acreage you wish to possess, and you only have a single day to do this. Does that make sense? (It’s exactly like that Tolstoy story How Much Land Does a Man Need.) In other words, we will shoot the starting gun, and then you must hasten around the countryside like a rodent, scurrying hither and yon, imagining a dashed or dotted line springing up behind you, wherever you go, and this line shall denote the border/area/extent of your prize-possession. Thus, wherever you are able to run before the sun goes down will be the land that we present you the deed to — so long as you make sure to connect the starting and ending points of your loop of travel, any landscape enclosed by that path will be owned by YOU.”
I raise my hand, signifying that I have just one simple question.
“Yes, go ahead and ask your question, Bryan; we are listening,” say the U.S. Authorities.
“I just have one simple question,” I say. “I’m wondering if I might telephone a Russian friend to help me. For I am an old man, stricken with years, and my beard is white; also, behold, I can no longer make love to a woman. Watch this… (I try with a woman-shaped boulder and fail.) See? No dice. Therefore, please give me permission to call a comrade who is part of the Upper Class, and he and I will hop into a potato sack together and get this farce over with in a jiffy.”
“OK,” say the U.S. Authorities, “you may borrow our mobile phone to contact your idol Leo Tolstoy.”
So I call my friend Tolstoy, who is youthful and vigorous, and he fathers fourteen children apiece upon all the mistresses of the U.S. Authorities, and I write him a letter of admiration for these deeds; and I ask him in a postscript to join me in a sack race this coming Thursday.
On the night before my victory lap, Tolstoy shows up in my dream and helps me race around the contiguous United States. Then we step out of our burlap potato-sack and bow to the cheering crowd. Then I awaken, head out to the field, and find that Leo Tolstoy is nowhere to be found.
“Where’s Tosltoy?” I cry.
“He stood you up,” say the U.S. Authorities. “He never answered your fan letter. He was busy spending the night with our mistresses.”
“Just your mistresses?” I say. “Why did he not also sleep with your wives? For they are far more robustly attractive.”
The U.S. Authorities blush scarlet for shame and have me removed by security. Then they bring me back because the ceremony of my land-bequeathal cannot be concluded without my personal participation.
“Bang,” sez the starting gun.
And I begin to run as fast as my legs can carry me. I dash straight forward into the landscape exactly six feet, and I collapse. Then I get back up and turn ninety degrees and dash for a few feet more, and then again more, and then I complete the rectangle that I have drawn in the ground.
The U.S. Authorities stare in disbelief. “But the sun is still up. You’ve only covered about a gravesite’s worth of landscape. Get going — you have all day. Take the countryside! Do your land-grab!!”
I smirk. “No, this is all the land that I need. Six feet deep of good earth to lie within, for I ask you only to bury me, so that God can dig me up.”
“Do you mean that you shall plant yourself as a seed, and then when the temple of your body is decomposed (9-11’d), you shall build it up again, thus commemorating the general resurrection; and all humankind shall inherit immortality with new flesh and praise the LORD for eternity?” ask the U.S. Authorities, who are all believers in some sort of Pauline Christianity.
“No, I mean: bury me in my grave, for I’m sick of your fine-print schemes and broken promises,” I say. “The part about God was a joke. Please hurry; I mapped this plot out fair-and-square.”
So they all set to digging with their shovels, and just when they’re almost done, I kick them each in the butt and watch them tip over and writhe like insects on the ground. (Have you ever seen a type of beetle whose shell is so big that when it falls on its back, it cannot manage to flip itself over; so it just remains there madly flailing its appendages?) The old men try to right themselves; but they cannot rise to standing-position without help from their robo-butlers, all of whom I unplugged earlier in the morning, so they’re currently uncharged.
When I finally stop laughing at this scene, I hail a taxi, and it’s a different female driver this time; but she brings me to the place where I need to be.
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