A Lesson in the Desert (as the Frustration Builds!)

Unending BE - episode 139269

With a disorienting LURCH, the four Authors who have recently been BICKERING with each other find themselves, after blinking a few times, in the back seat of a station wagon, one of those old green station wagons, like the Brady Bunch used to have. . . .

Station wagon?

Yes, station wagon. In the back seat were JigSaw, Dabbler, DejaVoodoo, and You Wish, all of them little boys with ages ranging anywhere from eight to twelve. They each had cap pistols and were each wearing cowboy hats. JigSaw was sipping a Slurpee from a paper cup.

In the front seat, behind the steering wheel, was MarkT. In this incarnation, he looked about thirty-five. The station wagon he was driving was speeding down a desert highway at about seventy miles an hour. MarkT turned, taking his eyes off the road for an instant. "That's IT! QUIET, all of you! I'll turn this car around right now! I mean it!"

"But DA-AD!" whined Dabbler, "it's not my faw-wlt! The other Authors pay no attention to continuity! They don't read the previous episodes!"

"I don't care! They have better things to do than spending all day doing research! You're lucky they find the time to come here at all!"

"The other Authors won't do what I want!" whined DejaVoodoo.

"They're not supposed to DO WHAT YOU WANT!" MarkT raged. "You only have control of the characters you create during the episode you're currently writing! If someone else changes one of your characters, that's TOUGH LUCK! You can't DEMAND that the succeeding Authors NOT write using any of your characters! It's an unenforceable rule, anyway! Any Author who follows you up can pretty much write what he wants, whether you like it or not!"

"But Da-ad . . ."

"QUIET!!! You're all giving me a headache! You all KNOW that I HATE TO MANIFEST MYSELF LIKE THIS!!! Do you remember what happened the LAST TIME I had to interfere with you???"

"No joyrides for a WHOLE MONTH!!" volunteered Dabbler, as the other boys scowled at him.

"That's right! I'm grwoing fatigued with this endless arguing about the meta-nature of the BEAddventure, anyway, to say nothing of the way you all MISUSE your characters! If you can't take proper care of your pets, you can't have any at all! Now BEHAVE YOURSELVES, or you won't be allowed to create ANY MORE alternate universes!!!"

BOOM! The four little boys disappeared from the back seat. MarkT turned his attention back to the road ahead. A sign by the side of the road read "LAS VEGAS--31 MILES."

"Thank God," MarkT breathed, "I could use a little peace and quiet."

  1. Let's see what Jim's doing while all this goes on. . . .
  2. Let's see what Rick's doing while all this goes on. . . .
  3. *Let's go Backstage and try to all get along without fighting. . . .
  4. Let's see what Francis McNasty is doing while all this goes on. Why, he's just siting in the living room, eating Doritos and watching an old episode of "Barnaby Jones"--who wants to follow HIM?
Go back - Go to the parent episode.

F-Cup Fitzgerald

Wed Apr 18 14:33:49 2001