Klarinet Archive - Posting 000295.txt from 2000/01

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] recorders
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 10:51:10 -0500

Roger Shilcock wrote,
>I'm not sure your loose use of the terms "ancestor" and "evolution"
justifies your claim that your statement was "correct". <snip> I wish
musical instruments were *not* said to have "evolved" and have "siblings".
They're not organisms - people make them.>

If my use of figurative language lured anybody into that dark region of
Error's Wood where clarinets come alive, chirp angrily and rebuke their
owners with accusations of insufficient practicing, inadequate cork grease,
cheap reeds and so forth, I sincerely, humbly, abjectly apologise, and
stipulate for the record that, no, clarinets are not alive, AFAIK. People
make them and unmake them. It is mere superstition to believe that they
sometimes unmake us.

Lelia

I'm making my stupid pet human type this. She's wrong, as usual, and so is
that Shilcock human. Just when I finally persuaded her to glimpse at least a
corner of the truth, he had to come along and impress her with what passes
for logic amongst humans! <Sigh.> Well, it's a dirty little job,
instructing humans, but someone's got to do it.

Humans are so deeply sunk in ignorance that I suppose it's useless to try to
persuade you of the Truth. Naturally, I could explain everything more
lucidly in Feline than in English, but humans, being tailless and so stiff
you can't even lick your back paws for emphasis, are incapable of
comprehending proper Feline, let alone speaking it. I hate to butcher a
sublime language down to that level, so I must make do with this inferior
method of communication. Nonetheless, I can but try. It is my duty. Pay
attention!

Humans merely assist in the birth of clarinets and cannot be said in any
meaningful way to "make" clarinets. Evil spirits make clarinets and direct
in the birthing process. Clarinets grow fat on spit and cork grease,
whereupon they not only breed and evolve but mutate and metamorphose in their
grotesque fashion. In secret orgies I forbear to describe, clarinets commit
all manner of foul miscegenation with other breeds of Screech-Sticks, such as
penny whistles, recorders, saxophones, even v*c**m cl**n*r devils that make
obscene offerings to the g*rb*ge tr*ck demon. If you keep one of these
creatures, you will soon have more infesting the place, and for every one you
can see, a dozen more lurk under the beds and in the closets.

(They invite their creepy friends in, too. We've got a disgusting cornet
yelling and screaming obscenities at all hours. My humans think I don't know
that there's an old, filthy, smelly, half-dead trumpet passed out in the
shed. If my humans had any sense, they'd just lay the trumpet in the
driveway and back the car over it, but no, sooner or later, the fools will
let the Horn of Horror into the house and nurse it to health.)

Clarinets are very clever at lying there and innocently posing as inanimate
objects, but as soon as I get my hooks on one, I will make it squeal and beg
for mercy and then everyone will know the Truth. Naturally, I will expect
credit for my labor in torturing the monster, interrogating it and killing it
with exquisite slowness. I shall drag the carcass around the house with
appropriate pomp and ceremony and then I want the cadaver properly mounted
and displayed as my trophy. Humans need to get into the spirit of exhibiting
the corpses of the vanquished enemy. Lelia hasn't even got a clarinet lamp.
A dead clarinet would make a nice towel rack, don't you think?

Shadow Cat

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