Blog Post 21 Feb 2022

Back in the early days of North America there was a popular singer named Madonna — no last name; just Madonna — and she came and helped me find a crew of workers to remove my house’s roof. 

Madonna then suggested that we get some guys to build a dock at the side of my house and fill the yard with water. So I invested in a mechanical dockside crane, which we then used to lower various items into my now-roofless house. 

We bought a grandfather clock and a rolltop desk. Securing these purchases to the crane’s hook, we lowered them into position. We did the same with a magazine rack. We also put an antique bed in there. 

Then we lured a robber onto the beam (which we chained to the hook of our crane), and we lowered him down into the house, just to see what he would steal. — The trick was that we glued all the doors shut, so when the robber tried to heft the grandfather clock out the bedroom window, he had to give up and ask us for help: 

“The thing won’t fit; what should I do?” he yelled while looking up, because Madonna and I were standing on the top of my house’s roofless wall like gods. — We laughed and said: “It’s just a joke. We’ll let you out now.” Then we leaned down and extended our hands to the robber, and Madonna and I lifted the guy to safety. 

“What’s your name?” I said. And he replied, “Jack.” 

“Jack? Nice to meet you,” said Madonna; “I’m Madonna, and this is Bryan Ray. Do you have a sister? We’d like to pay her a visit.” 

Jack the robber looked puzzled for a moment; then he said “Why do you want to meet my sister?” 

I then clutched Jack’s bowtie in my fist and said in a semi-threatening voice “Look, Jack, I don’t want to have to lower you back down into the house. Just relay the facts about this damsel whom you claim is your sister.” 

Jack looked back and forth between me and Madonna; then he stammered out the woman’s name and last known address.

So Madonna and I rewarded the robber by setting him up with a college fund, which he greatly appreciated. Then we rented a Subaru Outback and drove to Jack’s sister’s place.

“Jill? Is that you?” Madonna said, when a lovely woman answered the doorbell of the all-brick house in the forest. “Your brother sent us. I’m Madonna, and this is Bryan. Will you invite us in for tea?”

Jill blinked and said “Just Madonna and Bryan? No last names?”

“Well, he’s Bryan Ray, the famous author; but, yes, I myself use only my one single stage-name.”

“And if you yourself work hard and stick to your goals in life,” I added, addressing Jill, “you, too, could someday become a world-renowned star.”

Jill invited us into her cottage, laid out the doilies, and served Earl Gray tea. She explained that she was only hesitant to let us in at first because she’s not familiar with the hottest music of her epoch, moreover she is college-educated and thus post-literate rather than semi- or non-literate.”

“Ah, I understand,” I said, while secretly doctoring the tea with a vial of potion that I keep inside my coat’s inner pocket; “no hard feelings.”

Eventually, after a satisfying visit, Madonna and I said goodbye to Jill. “Goodbye, Jill,” we each shook her hand at the doorway, with our Subaru clearly visible in the background of the frame. “Goodbye,” said Jill.

“Well, it looks like we’re on the road again,” I said from the passenger seat while Madonna piloted our rental car.

“Sure does,” she winked.

We drove for a really long time. The road stretched on endlessly. There were yellow stripes painted between the lanes — it was a two-lane road, which eventually turned into a six-lane superhighway.

Soon we met a deer, a moose, a bear, and a squirrel. Madonna slammed on the brakes, and we narrowly avoided striking these animals with our vehicle. (“Looks like we’re in Disney territory,” Madonna remarked to me, under her breath, after muttering the most offensive expletive.)

We discovered, during the lengthy conversation which ensued, that these creatures were hoping to make some friends — that’s why they were standing in the road. We asked them why they wouldn’t simply befriend each other and stop blocking the free passage of speeding traffic. They answered that they already ARE friends with each other; but they wished to acquire comrades among humankind. And the squirrel added, as a fun fact, that roughly 41 million of his kind per year are killed by motorized vehicles. This made both Madonna and me emotional; we ended up delivering our next lines of dialogue with glistening eyes. 

The scene ended with us forging a strong bond with these fine creatures. We offered them a ride and opened up the rear doors of our rental car, expecting them to hop in and join our adventure. But they declined, saying that although they loved us dearly, they could never partake in vehicular homicide. — I then argued that Madonna is a really good driver and that she would never commit any crime behind the wheels, not even an unintentional one — and as proof of this claim, I asked the animals to consider our recent screeching to a halt on the superhighway, which caused us successfully to avoid hitting them: 

“Not a single one of you received even the tiniest scratch: look at your coats,” I said; “consider each one respectively, starting with YOU, dear squirrel: behold, your fur looks immaculate; and YOU, dear bear: you’re in tiptop shape, you’re not bleeding at all from the ears; and YOU, dear moose, your antlers are intact, and your bones remain unbroken to this day; finally, YOU, dear deer, you’re neither riddled with bullets — for huntsmen did not slay you in a soot-filled warehouse — nor are you sleeping soundly beside a clear stream next to the Great God Pan and his best friend the Devil: no, your coat’s only flaw is that it harbors a few deer-ticks.”

So the animals all agreed that I had a good point, and they tallied up their votes and turned in their decision. Madonna received the golden envelope labeled “Jury Verdict”, and she opened it up and read the message on the card that it contained: 

“Oh, I recognize this as one of William Blake’s proverbs,” she smiled; “it says: THE CUT WORM FORGIVES THE PLOW.”

So the moose, the bear, the deer, and the squirrel, all hopped into the back seat of our rental car, and we continued to drive until we reached the carpet store.

Inside the carpet store, we goofed off. Our animal friends sharpened their claws on the environs, if they had claws to sharpen; whereas, if they had hooves, they trampled around with blissful abandon. (In the eyes of a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.)

The manager of the shop came out and explained to us that he is also the owner. He offered us coffee and feed-bags of snack-nuts. Then we returned to our road-traveling.

“Why did we visit a carpet store without purchasing any carpet?” said Mister Squirrel from the back seat, once we were zooming down the superhighway again.

“Because,” said Madonna while looking at cute Mister Squirrel in the rear-view mirror (she only took her eyes off the road for this split second, so don’t worry that she’s becoming an unsafe driver), “their prices weren’t very good, and the colors and patterns struck Bryan and me as unappealing.”

“I sorta liked most of what I scratched on,” said Mister Bear. “Don’t WE have a say in how the funds of our organization get distributed?”

I turned around fully, from the front passenger seat (unbuckling my safety belt to do so) and pointed my finger in the face of Mister Bear, to make my reply. (My finger was thus dangerously close to his jaws, as I spoke — I could even almost see the face of the human being who was playing the role of the bear within the costume: the actor’s two eyes were glistening at the back of the throat.) “Are you sassing your mother?” I snapped.

“No, I seriously just wish that we would have purchased the carpet that I scratched, in honor of the adage ‘You break it, you buy it’.”

Hearing this, I looked at Madonna, and Madonna took her eyes from the road one more time to look at me. I then turned back and addressed Mister Bear:

“OK, we’ll go back and purchase the carpet that you chose to ruin. But please tell me: Why do you want a roll of carpet? Are you going to install it in the woods, over the top of the forest flooring?”

“Hmm,” said Mister Bear. “I guess I just love how it feels when you scratch it. So, yes, I’ll install it on the ground.”

So we went to the trouble of doing a U-turn in the middle of the superhighway, despite all six lanes being packed with speeding vehicles; but we neither slammed into any of them nor did we hit any of the animals who happened to be scampering around at that moment, because Madonna is a conscientious operator.

[UPDATE 21 Feb 2022: After I published the above entry, the popular singer Madonna released her latest album, which she titled CONSCIENTIOUS OPERATOR. — I assume that she chose this name as an homage to me, because that’s the phrase that ends this present blog post.]