Image by Heather Plew from Pixabay
A pot lid clunked below, and steam rose through the hole and misted Frank’s glasses. A rancid smell wafted through the hole and assaulted Frank’s nostrils.
‘What in the name of Buddha is that putrid pong?’
‘But, Master, Fountain of All Knowledge and Vessel of Infinite Wisdom, surely you must know.’
‘Any chance of a fifty-fifty? Of phoning a friend? Of asking the chanting audience?’
‘O Master, I have but a special treat for you.’
‘A special treat, you say? What is it? Lupita Nyong’o’s telephone number? Tonight’s winning lottery numbers? A crowbar to pry my trapped head free?’
‘O Master, you are truly blessed with infinite wisdom and wit. No, I am truly humbled to serve you your daily meal.’
‘That’s kind of you. I’ll admit to being a tad peckish. Say, what’s on the menu, today?’
‘But, Master, Fountain of All Knowledge and Vessel of Infinite Wisdom, surely you must know.’
‘Surprise me.’
‘Why, Master, ’tis what you have eaten every day ever since you blessed us with your wisdom. ’Tis Dzo Dong Thukpa.’
‘Dzo Dong Thukpa? What’s that?’
‘Why, Master, ’tis but your favourite. Stew of a yak’s ying-yang.’
‘What? Yak’s ying-yang? You’re telling me the pong’s a stewed dong?’ A queasiness stirred within Frank, and he released a bilious burp.
‘Yes, Master. Every day, upon the dong of the gong, a yak is taken from the throng, and our Hopper of the Dung, Dang Deng, dings its dong and makes Dzo Dong Thukpa to keep Master’s infinite wisdom strong. ’Tis the greatest sacrifice a yak can make on its path to enlightenment. Ready, Master?’
Holy cow patties! Frank thought, Hoppy was going to poison him. A searing pain tore through his head …
Mikhail Moiseyevich ‘the Tzar’ Leakoff (25 October 1917 – 9 November 1989) was a Czechoslovakian chess grandmaster and 12-time World Chess Championship first-round loser. At a celebrity tournament in Las Vegas in 1989, he requested a time-out to take a toilet break. Standing at the urinal with an Elvis impersonator beside him, Leakoff heard someone step up behind him and say in a deep voice, ‘Checkmate.’ Leakoff looked over his shoulder and saw a drag queen with a three-day stubble. Leakoff’s last words before tipping over and dying of a heart attack were ‘I resign’.
Oh, no, he thought, not more of those random facts popping into his head. And more streaks of pain. So excruciating …
Sacher Torque is a measure of the force that causes a woman to circle about a café as she awaits an available table so she can have her 11 am coffee. The Gazer Strip is the exclave that exists between the woman’s eyes and the cake display case. The Beaufort Scale (not to be confused with the Beaufort Scale) is an empirical measure of a woman’s wrath should anyone, particularly her husband, occupy that strip.
Frank’s headache intensified as the cold, hard surface crushed his head and pushed his face harder and flatter against the timber floor. Holy Buddha! Such pain, only now ten times worse.
‘O Master, ’tis mm-mmmm. Most de-lish-ous! Does not its aroma stir your sacred cephalic response?’
Frank’s mouth dried as the pain burned …
Special Operation Brunch was the codename for a series of commando raids on Sardinian bakeries between June and July 1943 by the British L Detachment Special Catering Squadron. Armed with pie irons, butter knives and rationed HP sauce, the raiders rallied to squadron leader Major Crumpet’s war cry of ‘Come on, lads, they’re toast’ before plundering their adversaries and gorging themselves on the spoils of victory. To this day, Sardinians on Toast remains a staple in the British diet.
Frank broke into a cold sweat as the pain stabbed …
Fatima the Ravenous (c. 1753 – September 3, 1803) was the last queen of Behemotho, an island monarchy floating about the Pacific Ocean. Famed for her enormous appetite for men, Hāngī, gambling and exercise avoidance, she is the only known monarch to have ‘ascended’ (aided by a winch) to the throne, having eaten their predecessor (in her case, Diminutive the Digestible). She drowned—with a pair of toy boys at her feet, a half-masticated pig shank in one hand and a royal flush in the other hand—when her island sank (purportedly due to rising sea levels, though her not-so-loyal subjects thought otherwise), only for a shiver of card sharks to strip her flesh, resulting in the island resurfacing a republic.
Frank’s heart pounded as the pain drilled …
Xiphias Gladius (20 July 1945 – 6 May 1973) was a Greek swordfish and pop-up entertainer. Renowned globally for their ability to tip their head back and swallow a human, Gladius died whilst choking on a sumo wrestler when performing at an all-you-can-eat sushi bar. Critics labelled the act ‘a dangerous, stupid stunt only a fish out of water would be silly enough to attempt’.
Nausea stirred within Frank. Holy Buddha! He was going to spew. Again. But this time to drown in his gastric juices. Still alone, still in the dark, but now stuck and still before the Simile Simulator could return him to the pawn shop. A curse on that pensioner and his pillbox …
On 1 October, 1984, Pablo Pilosé, a native of Brazil who resided in the city of East Newark, New Jersey, broke the world record for the loudest recorded human scream. Pilosé broke the record at a beauty salon owned by his cousin Conchita. In preparation for his first date in fifteen years, a 54-year-old Pilosé presented his hirsute body for waxing. Having smeared a generous application of hot wax on her cousin’s back, followed by a calming reassurance that ‘this won’t hurt a bit’, Conchita ripped and Pilosé roared and soared, recording a scream of 188 decibels (dB). Witnesses present reported that Pilosé may have broken his record that very day, had he not declined his cousin’s offer of a Hollywood wax. The imprint of Pilosé’s head in the ceiling of the waxing booth at Brazilian Bliss is ranked 3rd on Tripadvisor’s Top 10 New York Tourist Attractions.
Still his glasses misted. Still the stench assaulted his nostrils. Still his headache intensified. And still his head felt like it would be crushed. His eyes watered as his nausea rose from his chest and burned the back of his throat, only for him to gag and gag until a gong clashed in the distance, and he released a prolonged, resonant ‘F … i … v … e!’.
And Frank’s headache and nausea subsided.
What the bloody Naraka was that! he thought, as he struggled to calm his breathing and heartbeat.
‘Look, Hoppy, if you don’t mind, I think I might skip the stew today. Say, have you got an analgesic? This headache of mine is killing me. It feels like my head is about to explode.’
A blister pack popped below Frank, and a trapdoor opened below his mouth. Two fingers placed a pill in his mouth, and a drinking straw pressed against his tongue.
Frank sucked and swallowed.
‘Better, Master?’
‘I hope so. This is the worst headache I have ever had.’
‘O Master, ’tis not a headache. ’Tis but knowledge. All knowledge. All that was, all that is and all that will be is filling your blessed bald head.’
‘What? I’m bald? My locks, my wonderful curly locks! Gone! I didn’t even get to have a receding hairline! Say, what’s with all these numbers I keep booming out?’
‘But, Master, Fountain of All Knowledge and Vessel of Infinite Wisdom, surely you must know.’
‘But that’s it, Hoppy. I don’t know. But what I do know is that your assumption that I know everything is getting on my nerves. To be truthful, it’s giving me the squirts.’
‘O Master, I am truly humbled that my nugatory being is in your thoughts and I am able to aid Master’s regularity.’
‘So, what are they? The numbers I boom out?’
‘Why, Master, ’tis the Peal of Pi.’
‘What, some code for the recipe for a citrus-topped tart?’
‘No, not the peel of a pie, Master, but, rather, the peal of the number π. The mathematical constant. The pinnacle of irrationality. Upon the stroke of every seventh minute, you, Master, proclaim to the faithful the next digit in the infinite sequence of its decimal representation.’
‘Why?’
‘But, Master, Found—’
‘Hoppy, if you say that one more time, you’ll end up a bug on a windscreen with your head truly and humbly up your arse.’
‘O Master, I am truly humbled that you would hasten my journey towards Nirvana.’
‘Why every seven minutes?’
‘Seven is the divine number, Master.’
‘How long have I been doing this?’
‘Why, Master, I believe that the next proclamation will be the one millionth decimal place.’
‘What? One million? That means I … what’s today? … the ninth of May? … 2014? … that means I’ve been doing this for … thirteen-odd years! Since … January 15, 2001!’
‘Oh, Master, Fountain of All Knowledge and Vessel of Infinite Wisdom, truly you are all-knowing. Yes, you, Wikki Pedia, have blessed us with your infinite wisdom since that holiest of dates. ’Tis why thy head aches, Master. And why you cannot move. Your wealth of knowledge has swollen your hallowed head, wedging you within your sacred cave. But fear not, Master. For the end is nigh. Having pealed the one millionth digit, your memory will be full and you will move on on your path to enlightenment.’
‘What? I’m going to die?’
‘O Master, not die; rather, reincarnate. Fear not, Master. Not long now, and it won’t hurt. So I’ve heard. Though only you, Master, Fountain of All Knowledge and Vessel of Infinite Wisdom, would truly know.’
‘Hoppy, how long to the next Peal of Pi?’
‘O Master, but three minutes.’
A draught of ice-cold Tibetan wind blew Frank’s robe up above his waist as he checked the run-down clock.
3:05. Holy Dzo dung! He was going to die! Here he was, the Fountain of All Knowledge, the Vessel of Infinite Wisdom, high in the Himalayan mountains, and you’d think here, amidst all these clouds, there’d be enough storage for his infinite wisdom.
‘Hoppy! Hurry! Do something! For Buddha’s sake, I need more RAM!’
‘O Master, coming!’ A sheep bleat came from below.
‘Not a ram, you numbskull novice. I said RAM! I need more memory!’
Grasshopper cleared his throat and enunciated:
‘When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past—’
‘No, not a Shakespearean sonnet!’
Grasshopper cleared his throat and sang, ‘Mem’ries—’
‘No, not a Streisand song! I need—’
2:48. Frank drew his knees up under his belly as a fierce pain pounded his head …
Tommy ‘The Thumb’ Palmer (15 July 1961 –) is an Irish jockey and an alleged race-fixer. Famed as the shortest jockey to ride in a Group 1 race in Ireland, Tommy rode the 5-year-old gelding Digitalis in the 1980 Irish Grand National and was first to cross the finish line. Sadly, Tommy had his arms clasped around the neck, and his knees pressed to the muzzle, of the favourite, Phalanges, as the field surged past the post in a photo finish. A jockey-less Digitalis finished a distant last. Phalanges was declared the winner, the first and only horse to win the Grand National by an official margin of a buttock. Having given the booing birdcage the middle finger when returning to the enclosure, Tommy fronted the stewards, who put him down—to Group 2. He never rode in a Group 1 race again. In 1984, Tommy vanished whilst in the jockeys’ sauna. Police investigating the scene found only a puddle of sweat on the sauna floor. Tommy’s whereabouts remain a mystery to this day.
2:22. Frank’s mouth dried as the pain burned …
In Round 3 of the 95th Scripps National Spelling Bee, held in National Harbor, Maryland on May 30, 2023, Florida state champion and tournament hot favourite, Becky ‘Braces’ Braithwaite, froze when the adjudicator asked her to spell ‘Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia’. Carried stiff-limbed from the stage by her shocked parents and taken to the Green Room, where she soon thawed out, Becky now limits herself and her lexical talents to regional monosyllabic spelling competitions in the warmer climes of her home state.
2:09. Frank broke into a cold sweat as the pain stabbed …
The final of the second season of Junior Bake Off Colombia was telecast on February 16, 1993 on Galavisión. Finalist Sofía Catalina Izabella Sanchez won when she wooed the judges with her deconstructed Bandeja Paisa. The other finalists were Juan E. (with his take on his uncle Pablo’s recipe for apple jacks) and his cousin Roberto E. (who cooked his father’s books and served them with a dusting of white rock). In the spirit of competition, Juan and Roberto spared Miss Sanchez her life. The judges and host weren’t so lucky.
1:51. Frank’s heart pounded as the pain drilled …
On this day (January 15) Master Bubba Meinecke Jr (aged 18 months) broke the world record for the dummy spit at the 1963 Toddler Games. Upon hearing his mother warn him that she would confiscate his favourite rattle if he didn’t behave himself, a dummied Meinecke crawled out of his pram, waddled over to the launch circle and released, in a fit of tantrum, a spit that saw his dummy sail beyond the landing zone and the stadium, only to strike a down-on-his-luck Mr Tommy Teathing as he purchased a lottery ticket that would that night win the first prize jackpot. Meinecke’s record still stands to this day; sadly, Mr Teathing (1933–1963) doesn’t.
1:39. Fear roared through Frank’s very being. Holy Buddha! He was going to die! Alone, stuck in the dark, away from his pawn shop. And with his bare arse stuck up in the air. If found, he’d be a cert for a Darwin Award …
Torquigener is a genus of pufferfishes native to the Indian and Pacific oceans, with a single species ranging into the warmer parts of the east Pacific. Compared to most of their piscine relatives, that species’ colours (and personalities) are relatively dull. The species Torquigener albomaculosus has been described as ‘the least fittest of aquatic creatures’ due to a diet high in salt and a two-packs-a-day smoking habit. Recent clinical trials involving the application of nicotine patches have seen an increase in species longevity, though increased mood swings and appetite resulting in weight gain have been co-reported.
1:22. Why couldn’t he have just been content with his humble life as a pawnbroker? Damn that old man and his cursed Simile Simulator! Holy Gautama! The pain! …
Xéchasa Xechasiáris (530–490 BC) was a Greek herald and literalist, who volunteered to run from the battlefield near Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC). With his commander’s words to ‘hop to it’ ringing in his ears, Xechasiáris hopped on his right leg the 26.2188 miles to Athens. When he arrived and was asked, ‘What news?’, he, puffing and panting, ummed and aahed before blushing and uttering his famous word, ‘Xéchasa!’ (‘I forget!’). He then turned and hopped on his left leg the 26.2188 miles back to Marathon, where he arrived, puffing and panting, and gasped, ‘Poio itán páli to mínyma?’ (‘What was the message again?’) before collapsing and dying. Pheidippides, Xechasiáris’s replacement, famously ignored his commander’s instruction to ‘skip to it’.
1:01. Frank screamed in agony. Oh Buddha, he thought, please, no more! Just let him proclaim the millionth digit and die! Now! The cold, hard surface crushed his head as it swelled and swelled, flooded with all manner of random cold, hard facts …
Meteorological readings, meteorological forecasts … birth registers, death registers, marriage registers, divorce registers … political polls, election results … financial indices, trade agreements, business annual reports, IPOs, commodity prices, oil barrel production … declarations of war, treaties of peace, manifestos … recipes, wines, poisons … shipping news, flight arrivals, flight departures, bus timetables, train timetables … film reviews, TV episode recaps, comedy routines, bestsellers lists … celebrity profiles, Hollywood gossip, Bollywood gossip … sovereign reigns, despots … medians, means, modes, normal distributions, statistical outliers … theorems, methods, laws, rules, phenomena, standards, formulae … speeches, treatises … fictions, fables, fairy tales, folklore, poems, memoirs … Oh Buddha! So many memoirs!
… universities, colleges, schools … galaxies, solar systems, stars, nebulae, planets, meteorites … continents, countries, cities, towns, outposts … deserts, mountain ranges, flooded basins, ocean trenches … thousands of species of plants, millions of species of animals … races, tribes … corporations, charities, interest groups … languages, dialects, codes … dark matter, light-hearted matter, double entendres, riddles, jokes, puns … machine repair manuals, manufacturing processes … basilicas, churches, chapels … musical scores, songs, ditties, jingles, lyrics, librettos … logos, slogans, taglines … newspapers, magazines, books, webpages … propaganda pamphlets, newspaper opinion pieces … Oh Buddha! So much use of the first-person singular subjective personal pronoun!
… paintings, sculptures, etchings, photographs … castles, historical houses, shanty towns, crumbled ruins … scientists, politicians, philosophers, artists, musicians, martyrs, activists, business moguls, administrators, diplomats … paedophiles, priests, drug lords, death row inmates … molecular compounds, chemical reactions … sporting results, gambling odds … rich lists, median incomes, poverty thresholds…diseases, disorders, ailments, symptoms … diagnoses, prognoses, treatments … on-this-day events … known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns, and fake news.
Oh Buddha! So much fake news!
And Frank’s memory filled and filled and filled, and his head swelled and swelled and swelled, and his throat screamed and screamed and screamed until he thought his head would explode.
0:13. And then Frank saw it. There, front and centre, amongst all that knowledge. There, in the sandbox. There, waiting for someone to click on the submit-your-draft-for-review button. Oh Buddha! Stop! Don’t click! Please! Everyone knew that once a draft entry was reviewed and published, it was a fact. An immutable fact. Forever …
Deaths in May 2014
9 Frank Hockley, 40, Australian pawnbroker, coward, simpleton and last known casualty of the Simile Simulator.1
Frank’s eyes watered as Death’s rattle rose from his chest and burned the back of his throat, and at 0:01, a gong clashed in the distance, and with his last breath, Frank released a prolonged, resonant, ‘O … n … e!’.
And his world went dark, still and silent.
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