July, 2068 – Remembering the Writer’s Flood of 2018
It came unexpectedly during a particularly stagnant summer. Some say that the writers were to blame, but there was actually plenty of blame deserved by a wide array of sources. It cannot be denied, though, that the writers got the whole catastrophe going that fateful day.
They were at a complete loss as to what to say. The lot of them gathered in the park banging their heads on the side of the huge Witty Tank of Words. From dawn till dusk, from dusk till dawn they beat upon its sides begging for it to relinquish its life-giving liquid of language and punctuation. No one noticed that as they pounded on its witty walls, periods and ellipses began oozing from its seams. The gathered writers began becoming alarmed when this slow ooze turned into exclamation points suddenly loudly popping out into the crowd with loud sounds like screams, howls, and yells.
Suddenly the witty sides of the tank burst completely asunder and all manner of verbiage and grammatical technicalities spewed forth, ensnaring even the hapless billions of longsuffering readers in chaotic waves.
The enormous blob of grammar that rolled through the middle of town was encased in every punctuation known to mankind. Surviving witnesses say commas, periods, semi-colons, jots, and tittles were apparently the most common. As the outer case of punctuation fell off, the alphabet of over 7,000 different languages shot through the gaps like water from fire hoses. The ultra-powerful streams felled a number of schools, libraries, and government buildings.
There was much carnage and mayhem that day, my friends.
There were many a run-on sentence that went on and on and on for miles, bewildering everyone.
One college professor was slain when a tidal wave of misspelled words fell on hees howze.
Three enormous waves of LOLs, JKs, and ROFLs slammed into the side of a car of a teenager who was texting while driving.
Tidal waves of a multiplicity of languages wreaked havoc in many different neighborhoods. One woman said ten strands of what she thought were Mandarin dialects plowed through her garden. A family eating a picnic said a German stream plowed through the park, taking their bratwurst and sauer kraut with it. Two boys said they learned to count to ten in French after it floated down the creek in which they were playing.
Onlooking readers groaned as a wave of puns struck a chicken farm. It was poultry in motion.
Several writers drowned in an ever-deepening cesspool of commas.
More than a hundred fragment sentences streams. Just stopped mid-thought. In the middle of the street.
A steaming black mess of profanity in the form of @#$%& streamed into the river, turning it as black as night.
At long last, an army of editors came in to save the day. It took them three months to clean up the mess. Even after most of it was cleared, all over town people were stuck to hashtags, question marks hung off the eaves of houses, nouns were smashed into verbs. It took a team of linguists a month to extricate a boardroom of council people from a congealed mass of really long, complicated sentences that didn’t say anything.
In the end, most of the chaotic mess was dumped into the already blackened river. It would be over 20 years before vowels returned to its fsh and rcks.
As for the rest, the editors made a new, sturdier Witty Tank of Words. Only this time they called it Witty Tank of Wise Words knowing full well that that would fix the problem forever and for all time. (Sarcasm had been restored.)
The carnage was over, but the smell of newsprint and gigabytes lingered in the air for years. They say that sometimes during particularly stormy weather long dead languages and hieroglyphics still float to the surface of the raging river.
Ben was a founding member of Rambling Ever On and a regular contributor and editor until his untimely death in April 2020.
We wrote a tribute to him, but the best tribute you can give him would be to read all the wonderful poems, short stories, book reviews, theological essays, and ridiculous satire pieces he wrote for us. Pass them on to others and maybe allow Ben to inspire you to write something yourself.
- The Chorus (Considering Ecclesiastes) - November 20, 2024
- The Aftermath (Considering Ecclesiastes) - September 24, 2024
- A Lesson (Considering Ecclesiastes) - August 20, 2024
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What an amazing imagination and ability to express it with crafted words!
This is hilarious!
It is one of my favorite things. I love this line/section in particular:
“As for the rest, the editors made a new, sturdier Witty Tank of Words. Only this time they called it Witty Tank of Wise Words knowing full well that that would fix the problem forever and for all time. (Sarcasm had been restored.)”
“The ultra-powerful streams felled a number of schools, libraries, and government buildings.” HAHAHA!
And this is just one more reason why Rambling Ever On is so great. Where else are you going to read something like this?
Good feedback, everyone. Ya’ll are the best, the bee’s knees, both of them, cause they are the best knees of all knees.
I’ve read like 4 different people on here or on Facebook quote the article and then say Ha! or LOL or something. And they all quoted different lines. Well done.