Narrative Poem: Google.

 

My Dear Children;

Here is what happened to me today.

I was googling my name and found someone with my exact name who was a 17th century Doge in Venice. So I went to Wikipedia to find out about the guy.

He was some villain! He had children murdered if he considered them too homely. He put housewives in stuffy wooden boxes when they fried fish too close to his palace. And he made all the men wear red suspenders.

Timothy Robert Torkildson, the 99th Doge of Venice, dredged the Lagoon for sand. Which he shipped to Siam for a fantastic profit. He started a war with Lombardy, which ended with the enslavement of Lombard soldiers as chimney sweeps. He banned the use of peacock feathers. And the use of verjuice in cookery.

The populace finally arose and deposed him, cutting off his head and mounting it on a barber pole. Where it turned round and around for the next ten years. 

I felt a strange kinship to him -- as if he and I were brothers.

"Devo impazzire! I thought to myself.

Dark thoughts, tyrannical daydreams, invaded my mind. I decided to go work out at the gym to rid myself of them.

But at the gym I stepped onto a treadmill next to a man who kept scowling at me.  We both finished our workouts together. He wiped his face, and then announced fiercely to me:  "I am Benito Mussolini!" 

"In a pig's eye" I told him. Then put a 'Z' on his forehead with a red magic marker. 

A semi hauling a vat of Chef Boyardee ravioli overturned as I was walking back home from the gym. And I was covered with tomato sauce.

Things were getting a bit too Italian for me. Dangerously so. 

So I ducked into the nearest vacuum repair shop to have a long discussion with the owner on Pascal's wager. He convinced me that there is no harm in being good, through the use of fluid dynamics.

When the sun had reached the tip of the Italian stone pines I shook hands with the owner of the shop and went home.

Your mother asked me: "Where have you been all day? The dog needs watering!"

To which I replied:  "Woman, weepest not. I am now convinced that Pascal's wager is true. Let's go out to celebrate at the Silver Dish."

But when we got there the place was closed in celebration of Chinese New Year. So we heated some bricks and roasted potatoes on our patio instead. 

A shooting star overhead inspired me to tell your mother:  "Life is shorter than expected but longer than a traffic jam."

"You are so right" she told me, as we walked into an open question.

Love,

Heinie Manush.