In Persuasion Nation (17 page)

"Oh
for crying out loud," says the grandmother who loves Doritos.
"Don't you people believe in the concept of 'fun'?"

"In
the concept of 'funny'?" says the bag of Doritos.

"We just want to express ourselves the way we want to express
ourselves," says the giant Ding-Dong. "We find that fun."

"Well, we don't find it fun," says Jim the penisless man.

"Well, we do find it fun," says Kevin, the man who tricked
Jim out of his penis.

"Looks like we'll have to agree to disagree on this," says
the Ding-Dong.

"No," Grammy says. "This has gone on long enough."

The orange, the man briefly involved with the Ding-Dong, Jim the
penisless man, Grammy, and the piles of mush, frustrated beyond
reason by years of repetitively enduring the same
physical/psychological humiliations in replay after replay of
their respective vignettes, attack.

It is a bitter fight, which we know because out of a big cloud of
dust fly a number of limbs, a bottle cap, bits of delicious
flaky chocolate, and part of an orange peel.

When
the dust settles, we see that the entire Ding-Dong/
Doritos/Timmy/grandparents-who-love-Doritos/Kevin/Slap-ofWack
coalition is dead, except for the Slap-of-Wack, who is almost dead.

"Please, mercy," the Slap-of-Wack says.

"When did you ever show us any mercy?" says Jim the
penisless man, and finishes off the Slap-of-Wack with a brutal karate
chop.

The orange, insane with pent-up rage, falls upon the Slapof-Wack
and tears it asunder with its tiny teeth until the other members of
the coalition pull him off.

The members of the orange/Grammy/man-briefly
involvedwith-a-Ding-Dong/piles-of-mush/penisless-man coalition
drag the remains of the members of the Ding-Dong/Doritos/Timmy/
grandparents-who-love-Doritos/Kevin/Slap-of-Wack coalition outside,
and bury them in a shallow mass grave.

Then they leave the area, a little sick at what they have done,
especially the orange, who several times becomes so distraught
it stops rolling altogether, and must be picked up and hurled down
the path by Jim the penisless man, who, turns out, has a very good
arm.

One torn green triangular corner of the murdered Slap-ofWack bar
blows across the desert, eventually coming to rest in a cactus.

Panning in, we see that the torn green corner is still breathing.

Over the next few hours, its breathing stabilizes. It is alive. It
will live.

Stuck
in the cactus hour after hour, day after day, full of shame and rage,
the ton corner has a series of deep spiritual realizations concerning
the true nature of that supreme power which brought it and everyone
else and everything it has ever known into existence, and is the sole
reason for their continued existence.

What does this power want?

It doesn't know. How could it know that? It is just a torn corner.

But
surely there is a plan at work. It can feel it. They are born into
vignettes, and these vignettes are their homes. These vignettes are
what give their lives meaning. If they were not intended to do their
vignettes in exactly the way they do them, why would they tel so
strongly inclined to do them in that exact way? Therefore, the way to
live righteously is to enact one's vignette with as much energy
as possible, and oppose, as fiercely as possible, those who
would undercut the proper enactment of the sacred vignettes. This is
one way—perhaps the only way—or a lowly being such as itself to be
in touch with the supreme power.

Take me, it prays, humble me, make me more open to your purpose.

Suddenly it feels a great surge of power, filling it, changing it,
and its former identity as the mere corner of a Slap-ofWack bar
is all but forgotten, subsumed in this new and greater identity.

Over
the next week, via constant prayer, the corner more than quadruples
in size, and begins to subtly glow, while attempting to free itself
from the cactus via a series of energetic forceful shrugs, each
of which leaves it utterly exhausted.

Finally it is free, and falls to the ground.

After several days of being blown around indiscriminately by the
wind, the corner learns to adjust its posture in such a way that it
can control its trajectory. Soon it actually learns to fly, via kind
of hunching itself in the middle while simultaneously
straightening its "neck."

Over the next few weeks, as it practices flying during the day and
meditates on these new great truths at night, it is gradually, almost
imperceptibly, transformed, from a mere green plastic-cellophane
comer into a beautiful glowing oblong green triangular symbol.

Abe Lincoln stands giving the Gettysburg Address. Everyone is
rapt, except for one guy in the front row, who keeps raising his
hand and hopping up and down in his seat.

"Did you have a question, sir?" Lincoln says.

"Wendy's GrandeChickenBoatCombo," the man says.

"That's not a question," Lincoln says.

"Wendy's GrandeChickenBoatCombo?" the man says.

"I'm
afraid I am unable to discern your purpose, sir," Lincoln says.
"I am trying to pay tribute to the brave men who died here."

"Pay
tribute to this, beardo-weirdo!" says the man, and presses a
button on his chest, and suddenly is transformed into a giant
GrandeChickenBoatCombo; that is, a giant synthetic chicken product
shaped like a frigate, with oars made of celery, and wafer-thin
nacho sails.

Then
the GrandeChickenBoatCombo beats its wings and its sails and floats
up around Lincoln's head, ramming his tophat off, spraying him with
salsa from its Mini-Salsa Cannons
^®
.

"Anybody else think a great-tasting poultry-nautical treat is
loads more fun than this old fuddy?" says the
GrandeChickenBoatCombo.

"I do," says General Grant.

"Me too," says Harriet Tubman.

"We totally agree!" say the ghosts of several Union dead.

"Sandwiches for all!" says the GrandeChickenBoatCombo.
"Great taste is what made America great!"

"Not a bunch of yappin'!" says Mrs. Lincoln.

Cannons fire from the battlefield and scores of
GrandeChickenBoatCombos begin drifting down via tiny parachutes,
and the suddenly euphoric members of the nineteenthcentury crowd
trample Lincoln and the graves of the Union dead to collect their
rightful GrandeChickenBoatCombos. Even the Union dead are trampling
their own graves. One sad Union ghost, missing a leg, gets only part
of a bun.

Suddenly another cannon is fired. A cannonball strikes the giant
GrandeChickenBoatCombo directly in the chest, killing it instantly,
covering the spectators in a grotesque chicken-nacho-salsa spray,
pelting them with dozens of the little edible-plastic sailors
embedded as prizes in every GrandeChickenBoatCombo.

"Mr. President," someone says, "please continue."

As the cannon smoke clears, we see the
orange/Grammy/man-briefly-involved-with-a-Ding-Dong/piles-of-mush/penisless-man
coalition standing behind the cannon that fired the shot that killed
the GrandeChickenBoatCombo.

President Lincoln nods his gratitude to the coalition, shuffles
through his papers, and continues.

The oblong green triangular symbol is finally strong enough to begin.
It takes off, leaving the cactus behind, and soars between mountains,
over great cities, along twisting riverbeds, until, as if drawn there
by some invisible force, it arrives at the now deserted Gettysburg
Battlefield. The crowd has returned to their nineteenth-century
homes. Lincoln has returned to Washington. The only thing remaining
on the field is the mangled corpse of the GrandeChickenBoatCombo.

The oblong green triangular symbol hovers gently above the
GrandeChickenBoatCombo, sending down hundreds of thin exploratory
compassionate green rays, trying to understand.

Then a shiver of pity/outrage runs through the symbol, and it speeds
away.

The
orange/Grammy/man-briefly-involved-with-a-DingDong/piles-of-mush/penisless-man
coalition is crossing a vast harsh terrifying wilderness.

Suddenly, in the distance, they see a town.

At the edge of town they are met by a polar bear with an axe in his
head, a puppet-boy whose lower half has been burned to a crisp, six
headless working-class guys holding bottles of beer, and Voltaire,
who's been given such a severe snuggie that his eyes are open wider
than real eyes can possibly open.

"My God," says the orange. "What happened to you
guys?"

"I broke into an Eskimo home and tried to eat their Cheetos,"
says the polar bear with the axe in its head.

"During my puppet show, I got too close to a BurninWarmCinnabon
being eaten by an audience member, and burst into flames," says
the puppet-boy.

"A giant can of Raid gave me a wedgie," says Voltaire.

"Snuggie," says the puppet-boy. "A snuggie and a
wedgie are two different things."

"A giant can of Raid gave me a snuggie," says Voltaire.

"And what about them?" says the orange, indicating the six
headless working-class guys.

"They
insulted a
T. rex
who just really loves Coors," says the
polar bear with the axe in its head.

"Wow," says the puppet-boy. "I can't believe I'm
standing here with the
orange/Grammy/man-briefly-involved-with-aDing-Dong/piles-of-mush/penisless-man
coalition."

"You know us?" says Grammy.

"Oh gosh, everyone knows you," says the polar bear with the
axe in his head.

"All over the land, inspired by your example, people are saying
enough is enough," says Voltaire.

"Just
last week, a frazzled overworked new mother rose up against the can
of Red Bull which had moved into her home disguised as a giant breast
in order to wet-nurse her baby," says the puppet-boy.

"A group of Revolutionary War soldiers recently registered their
dissatisfaction at having been led into the Battle of Yorktown
by a tube of Pepsodent," says the polar bear with the axe in his
head.

"Wow, we had no idea," says Grammy.

"Will you come into town with us?" says Voltaire. "Show
us how to organize and execute a successful program of resistance?"

"We'd be happy to," says Jim the penisless man. "But
it's only fair to warn you: things may get ugly."

The
six headless working-class guys make gestures with their beer
bottles, indicating: Not to worry, ever since that
T. rex
thing we're kind of past the point of worrying about things getting
ugly or whatever.

Then there is a tremendously loud noise and the oblong green
triangular symbol, swollen to the size of a city block, powers
into the frame and freezes in midair, hovering overhead.

A deep magisterial voice emanates from inside.

"Who are you to quarrel with the Power that granted you life?"
it thunders. "The Power which made the firmament, put the moon
into her orbit, controls the very rules of physicality by which you
are bound? The Power which allows bananas to sing and freshly
laundered clothes to wink, which bids the very stars come down from
the heavens and recast themselves into diamonds on a ring on the hand
of a woman who has finally been put in touch with the softer side of
herself via TampexGloryStrips?"

A tremendous walkway thunks out of the triangular symbol's
underbelly.

Down
the walkway stumble the members of the
Ding-Dong/Doritos/grandparents-who-love-Doritos/Kevin/Slap-of-Wack
coalition, still filthy from the grave, along with the fully restored
GrandeChickenBoatCombo.

"Alive?" says Grammy.

"Resurrected," says the symbol.

"You can do that?" says one pile of mush.

"It is easy for me," says the symbol.

"Hoo boy," says the other pile of mush.

"Let me talk to it," says Jim the penisless man.

"Careful, careful," says Grammy.

Jim
the penisless man looks meekly up at the huge oblong green triangular
symbol.

"What
would you like us to call you?" Jim the penisless man says
politely.

"Sir," intones the huge oblong green triangular symbol.

"Sir,"
says Jim the penisless man. "Couldn't we all, working together,
devise a more humane approach? An approach in which no one is
humiliated, or hurt, or maimed, an approach in which the sacred
things in life are no longer appropriated in the
service of selling what are, after all, merely—"

"Silence!"
shouts the green triangular symbol, shooting multiple bright green
beams of light into the members of the
orange/Grammy/piles-of-mush/penisless-man coalition, rendering them
instantaneously intact, positive, and amnesiac.

Grammy
has a sudden inexplicable desire to use her walker to cross a busy
street without first looking both ways.

The
orange, free of all gashes and dents, is suddenly deeply curious
about the contents of his good friend the Slap-of-Wack bar, and
makes a mental note to ask the Slap-of-Wack about his contents as
soon as they get home to their wonderful suburban kitchen. What
he wouldn't give to be once again on his beloved kitchen counter,
looking down fondly at the perverted-looking chicken carcass and the
two evil empty cans of soda in the trash can, far far below!

The piles of mush are reconstituted into two human halfheads,
which are then reconstituted into a single human head, which goes
rolling toward the torso of the grandson, which stands at the bottom
of the walkway, summoning its own head.

Jim the penisless man suddenly has a penis.

The man briefly involved with the Ding-Dong thinks warmly of his
fiancée, who, he feels certain, is waiting for him in a
certain meadow.

The polar bear, the puppet-boy, the headless guys, and Voltaire,
terrified, race back to town.

Hours
later the polar bear with the axe in his head is still hiding under
his bed, trembling. He's never seen anything like that before. That
green thing can raise the dead. That green thing can brainwash the
most powerful coalition in the world.