From news.larc.nasa.gov!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail Mon Mar 21 11:22:40 EST 1994 Article: 131197 of talk.bizarre Path: news.larc.nasa.gov!saimiri.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!not-for-mail From: ai752x@unix1.circ.gwu.edu (Shadowboxing the Apocalypse) Newsgroups: talk.bizarre Subject: Great-Uncle Frank Date: 21 Mar 1994 01:26:12 -0600 Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway Lines: 86 Sender: daemon@cs.utexas.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: Shadowboxing the Apocalypse NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu Great-Uncle Frank wears his bathrobe all day. Because he can. Also, it reminds him of when he was younger, when he got to wear a robe in the daytime as well. Only that robe didn't have blue and yellow flowers on it. Great-Uncle Frank sits outside in the warm Florida sun. His portable TV is on a card table next to him. Great-Uncle Frank looks suspiciously at the tufts of grass that grow tall along the edge of his sidewalk. There's a hole, somewhere in those tufts of grass, where a family of lizards has been placed. The lizards are Cuban Anoles. Great-Uncle Frank hates them. They desport themselves on his lawn, and lower his property values. And they are big lizards. Great-Uncle Frank isn't sure how big. When Tess was alive, they would argue about how big the lizards were. "Those lizards, they're this big," Frank would say, holding his hands apart to indicate how big those lizards were. No, Tess would, say, they were this big, with her hands held apart a different amount than Great- Uncle Frank's. And he would disagree, because she was wrong. But now Tess is dead, and Great-Uncle Frank can't remember how far apart he held his hands when describing the Cuban lizards. Great-Uncle Frank and Tess also used to argue whether the eyes of the lizards were red or orange. Great-Uncle Frank also hates the lizards because of their name. Anoles. It sounds to him like they must be homosexual lizards. He's an old man, he's lived a productive and important life, and now homosexual Cuban lizards have infested his lawn. Great-Uncle Frank suspects that Fidel Castro is behind it. Fidel Castro is plotting against Great-Uncle Frank, in fact, but he is not responsible for the Cuban Anoles. Rather, Fidel Castro has sent Aida after him. Aida is Great-Uncle Frank's neighbor across the street. Aida is a priestess of santeria. Aida buys a live chicken every Thursday. Most of the neighbors are afraid of Aida. Great-Uncle Frank is not afraid of Aida. Aida is nice to him. She is a good neighbor, too, telling him about the mysterious people she sees near his house. Just the other day, she saw a mysterious man taking pictures of Great-Uncle Frank's house. Not long after, Great-Uncle Frank discovered that his vacuum cleaner was missing. In fact, Aida has been waiting until Great-Uncle Frank is lost in thought, as he often is these days, then going into the house and stealing things from Great-Uncle Frank. It was she who stole Great-Uncle Frank's vacuum cleaner, as well as the silver, the china, the good towels, and the glass bowl of fruit-shaped soaps in the guest bathroom. The vacuum cleaner has already been sent to Cuba, where Fidel Castro will re-export it for hard currency. Great-Uncle Frank knows nothing of this. On the TV, a reporter is talking to a grizzled old man on the other side of Florida. This old man is, like Great-Uncle Frank, sitting outside of his house. Unlike Great-Uncle Frank, he has a gun. This man, whose name is also Frank, lives in the part of Florida which has just been hit by a hurricane. He has no power, no running water, no sewer service, and the phone is out. He tells the reporter this. "I've got no power, no running water, no sewer service, and the phone is out," he says to the reporter. Then he says "'Scuse me," stands up, and fires four rounds. The reason Frank is shooting is also the reason why he has been asked to talk to this reporter. Many people in the hurricane area have no power, no running water, and the rest. But Frank has been the worst-hit by another calamity of the storm. The hurricane has freed a troop of baboons from a medical center, where they were being used for tests. They have taken up residence in a swampy area, rented by the Everglades National Park from Great-Uncle Frank (who dabbled in real estate when he was younger, and still draws enough money from his properties to let his nephew's family pay to replace his vacuum cleaner, silverware, and other losses to mysterious strangers), across the road from Frank's house. Frank was not anxious to have a troop of baboons as neighbors. But then he found out that these baboons have AIDS. If there is anything Frank would prefer less than to have a troop of baboons as neighbors, it is to have a troop of homosexual baboons as neighbors. "I'm not prejudiced," he says, squinting into the distance, "I just believe in-" *BLAM* "- the Good Book." Great-Uncle Frank is now watching the TV. He empathizes with this other Frank, who has also been beset by homosexual endangered species. Perhaps Fidel Castro is behind this as well. Meanwhile, another agent of Fidel Castro is stealing Frank's toaster. --- David Vacca, Shadowboxing the Apocalypse.