h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The toilet roll chicken. - A4284605
Author: Mike McCulloch - U246476

An engineer meets an artist.

Ah, yes. And there we have it then. To (severely) paraphrase someone who obviously knew whereof he/she spoke: no one ever went wrong underestimating the good taste of the general public.

Great piece! Thank you for sharing it here.

m

A very funny encounter! Great laugh! Might I suggest you take the 'u' out of 'beautified'. Slip of the finger-tongue on your part, I think.

'Smartypants' frontiersman!

?

In parts, this made me laugh out loud.

Excellent piece of work !

Thanks frontiersman for the papal correction: I learn something new (and probably forget something old) everyday. Thanks all, for your encouraging comments. Chips: which parts made you laugh? (not the spelling I hope?) M

Oh, man! And here I thought 'beautified' was on purpose... a sort of insight into the artist's grasp of things catechistic.

m

He! he! he!

It's a good yarn though, ain't it m?

f.

'darn' good

Hello m

The parts which made me laugh out loud

A working man meets an avant garde artist on entering a lift.

Man: (politely) Hullo.

Art: (reluctantly) Hello, ahem.

Man: Excuse me, I recognise you. ...now what the bleating lamb is your name? Can't think of it...

Art: Cytra Nime. I'm an artiste.

Man: Oh, yes! You're the daffy-twit who cobbles all that pretentious crap aren't you?

Art: (shocked) I beg your pardon?

Man: (laughing) No offence, but I read that one of your exhibits was mistaken for trash by a cleaner and thrown out! What was it? Oh yes: a chicken made out of used toilet rolls? If I was the pope I'd have sainted that cleaner.

Art: (looking around for an escape route) I believe the term is 'beatified', and I refuse to be lectured by a man who wears a decaying string vest.

Man: (pulls at his vest to draw attention to it) I'll have you know this vest was washed a few days ago.

Art: (hands on hips) How about what you keep inside it? Was that washed a few days ago?

Man: Lady. I may be less than pristine, but at least this is real sweat from an honest days slog in my workshop. I'm not a con artist.

Art: Neither am I!

Man: Oh yeah? Go on then, tell me what useful purpose your art serves.

Art: Alright. For what it's worth (she looks heavenward). God said to me one day, he said: 'Cytra, with communism defunct, capitalist society has gone coat hanger mad..'.

Man: God uses colourful language, but I wouldn't argue with him there.

Art: 'The only problem is', God said, 'that capitalist society doesn't realise it's gone mad'. The rich elite probably do, but don't care because they're in charge of the asylum. We need to show the people what's going on and galvanise them into action! How do we do it?

Man: (mind elsewhere) Don't ask me, I can't even get my wife to...

Art: (grabs the man passionately by the shoulders) My plan was to get the rich to do it to themselves: get them to buy and display my absolute rubbish for chimp-shrieking amounts of money, thus making it obvious to Joe Public, who have to scrimp and save for a decade to even buy a home, that the rich have obscenely more money than even a demi-god would need in its lifetime. I thought this could cause a revolution.

Man: Bloody hell! Nice idea. You're a bit like that Spanish bloke, the car one: you know ..er.. Picasso! He painted lots of people in bits in a village..

Art: Guernica!

Man: What? Yes ..er.. to point out the violence of the Nazis to the world, except that of course all the mundid ringoes didn't see it until much later, when the world had nearly blown up. So you're doing the same thing for the super-rich, eh?

Art: Well, sort of. However, there is a problem with the theory...

Man: I'm an engineer mate. There usually is! I'm my 'umble opinion (puts on Cockney accent) theeyories are for people what don't know what they're doing.

Art: Last week my agent told me that I have sold 100,000 prints of my toilet roll chicken to the general public! It seems they want to emulate the rich...

----

I didn't laugh at your spelling

C

You laughed at my first five letters? (ie: Hullo) Wow. Maybe I'm trying too hard, and instead of inventing complex story lines, I should simply stage scenes in which various people say 'hullo' awkwardly to each other? Anyway, ta for the comments. M

I laughed at the word 'politely'

Hello wasn't funny


'Reluctantly' was also funny

It's your use of adverbs and adjectives, your sentence formation as in the bits of villagers in the Piccasso scenario which made me laugh.

Clearer ?

Mike...

(Agreeing whole-heartedly with chips) there's something inherently funny (in, I guess, a theatrical kind of way) about an opening line like:

Man: (politely) Hullo.

The whole thing is wonderful!

m

M

Did you write this !

if that was to me, the answer would be: no chips...

this is the creation of one Mike McCulloch, and one, I might add, of which he should should be most proud indeed!

(I'm quite flattered by the confusion!)

m

although i suppose one 'should' would have been quite enough

m

I was indeed speaking to you. I was only confused because I mis-interpreted a frisson of excitement between you and Ron.

I apologise Mike McCulloch !

Congratulations Mike . Your entry has been selected from the Alternative Writing Workshop to be featured in the <./>underguide</.>

An UnderGuide Gem Polisher will be in touch for any final revisions or tweakings you might want or they might suggest before creating a UG copy of the entry to be featured on h2g2's Front Page.

Congrats again, thank you for contributing here.

Ah! Once again the UG proves that good taste, good sense and a good excuse for a toast are not dead!

Congrats, Mike!

Congratulations

Ta very much! I'll await your polisher. Regards, Mike.