Nobody likes a smartarse penguin
Posted on | September 6, 2009 | 2 Comments
The penguins glare at me from the shelf.
A dozen of them, maybe more. They glare and chatter in that penguiny way they have.
“We have classics,” they gloat, “many, many classics. Great works; wonderful, worthy works full of magnificent, moving, powerful prose. Prose that changed the world, that shaped imaginations and perceptions and lives. Prose that touched people, that inspired, provoked and incited them. Wonderful words that people have read and read and carried with them a lifetime.”
They add, slowly for emphasis, “we have beauty.”
The penguins wait, making sure it sinks in.
“And what do you have?” they ask. “What do you have but an inferiority complex and a bunch of scoffing, anthropomorphised, flightless birds?”
I have no answer.
Bastard penguins.
Comments
Gerry Hayes
I mostly sit around all day and drink tea. Occasionally, I write stuff and send it to strangers so they can humiliate me and deride my efforts. Other than the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it's not a bad life. Like I say, there's tea.
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What you did wrong was allowing your pets to be cheeky with you.
My Grandfather always used to say “litle books should be seen and not heard!”
I mean, it’s one thing when your own books talk back to you, but when it’s other people’s books, well, I’m lost for words!
That’s why I called them ‘bastard penguins’, the little bastards.