April 23: Just Another Day in the Life...

Once upon a time there was a poet named Marty Saint.  He called himself a poet, even though he spent most of his days out in the Enchanted Forest, cutting down trees for a huge, multinational forestry conglomerate.  That was his job, how he paid for the gruel in his children's bowls and the sackcloth on their backs.  Most evenings, when he got home from the Enchanted Forest, he had only enough energy to slurp down his portion of the gruel, kiss his wife and children, and stumble off to bed.

Marty Saint was tired.

Then, one day, as he was readying his ax to fell the first tree of the morning, an ugly squirrel appeared in the branches above him.  "If you spare my home," the squirrel chittered down at Marty Saint, "I will make you the greatest poet in the land."

Marty Saint lowered his ax.  "Will being the greatest poet in the land put gruel in my children's bowls and sackcloth on their backs?" he asked.

"Are you kidding?" said the squirrel.  "I'm magic, but I can't work miracles."

Marty Saint raised his ax again.  "Then your home must go," he said.

"Wait, wait, wait!"  screamed the squirrel.  "How about if I make you the greatest poet in the land and an adjunct professor of Olde English at Enchanted U?"

Marty Saint lowered his ax again.  "Will that put gruel in my children's bowls and sackcloth on their backs?"

"Well..." the ugly squirrel looked away from him.

Marty Saint raised his ax again.  "I'm sorry," he said.

"One more thing, one more thing!" the squirrel shouted.

Marty Saint lowered his ax to the ground again.

"How about I make you the greatest poet in the land, an adjunct professor of Olde English, and, and, and," the squirrel sputtered.

"Yes?" Marty Saint said.

"And," the squirrel said, "as well-endowed as a horse?"

Marty Saint thought about it for a few moments.  Finally, he reached up and shook the ugly squirrel's paw.  "You have a deal, my hideous little rodent friend," he said.

Marty Saint spared the squirrel's tree.  When the head lumberjack saw that Marty Saint had left a tree standing, he fired Marty Saint.  Despondent, Marty Saint stumbled into town to Ye Olde Tap and got drunk on watermelon ale.  The next day, he marched to Enchanted U and demanded a job as an adjunct professor of Olde English.  The head of the Olde English department gave him a part-time job, which lasted for one week.  Marty Saint knew nothing about Olde English, and his students started throwing mushrooms at him.

Marty Saint decided to write and ode about his lamentable life.  In the middle of composing the ode, he contracted a horrible disease at the local stable that caused his penis to shrink to the size of a seahorse.  Heartbroken, Marty Saint staggered back to the squirrel's tree in the Enchanted Forest, but before he reached the forest's edge, a run-away oxcart struck and killed him.

Marty Saint's wife claimed his body and belongings at Ye Olde City Morgue.  In his backpack, she found his unfinished ode.  Recognizing its greatness, she sent it to the town's publisher, Sir W. W. Norton.  Sir Norton immediately accepted the ode for publication and gave Marty Saint's widow 25 complimentary scrolls in payment.  His widow packed up her children, left the kingdom, and was never heard from again.

The moral of the story:  kill all squirrels.

This is just another episode of a day in the life of Saint Marty.

What were you expecting?  Disney?