David Thayer

Wellington Leg: Ray Legler is the Towne Council’s newest member after the results of a special election were announced late Sunday. Despite issues with Ray’s residency and his alien life form appearance he handily defeated 54 other candidates for the job. “Ray looks like a giant squid,” said towne official Ludmilla Mudhen. “So do a lot of people,” she added.

His Human Form: To “look human” Mr. Legler relies on the rabbit ears supplied him when he left the mother planet bound for Wellington Leg. By adjusting the ears Legler can draw on role models like Harry Truman, The Big Bopper, and members of the Oakland As brain trust. “We can sustain life on earth for pennies a day!” An alien life form brochure exclaims. His initial tasks included the formation of a vanity publisher, RABBIT EARS PRESS. “We received a lot of books by rabbits, books about rabbits, books nibbled by rabbits. They needed a lot of work.”

Helping Rabbits Get Into Print: Ray recognizes now that helping rabbits get into print is not why he was sent here. “I think that phase is behind us,” he says. To that end he no longer encourages fledgling authors to eat a lot of carrots. “I don’t think it matters what you eat,” he said.

Ludmilla Mudhen is a graduate of the Rabbit Writing Course but harbors no bitterness toward Legler nor does she mind her minor obsession with baseball stats: “I lost thirty five pounds on the famous writer course,” she says. “And, I sound like Harry Truman.”

Mr. Legler will attend his first council meeting on Wednesday. The hot potato issue of tubers wearing haute couture continues to confound Wellington Leg. Mr. Potato Head Goes to Paris is the featured film for the evening. T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.

Great Wellington Bog: Writers at the Druidical & Literary are back at work today after a week long lockout halted prose production at the D&L’s grimy headquarters near Enshrouded Bottom on the shores of Gastropod Alley. Legians deprived of content during the dispute are free to march on City Hall, to display signs depicting their displeasure, and chant slogans. “There will be hefty fines if alternate side of the street parking regulations are violated,” warned DCI Borchardt in his first memo since the lockout began.

What went wrong? Upper management has completed a rigourous even glamourous internal investigation during which several executives studied the on-off switch adapted from a Mister Coffee for use as an Internet Tool. When toggled to “on” content poured forth from the staff; when switched to “off” Wellington Leg was plunged into Darkness.

The Blame Game: while the investigation left no stone unturned, no piano untuned, no Visigoth unquestioned, human error is suspected as the prime mover of the debacle. Indeed, the third floor Mister Coffee is believed to be a modified cloaking device whose use is both dangerous and unpredictable. Thus, a Mr. Coffee is in fact a Mr. Cloaking Device mislabeled at some time by persons unknown.

Judge Hamilcar Frist, the Dancing Judge, has ordered the summary execution of the executive summary be expedited and forwarded to the Flying Squad for immediate effect. All of the towne’s Mr. Cloaking Devices are to be rounded up and thrown into Great Wellington Bog.

“Wellington Leg deserves Internet access,” a towne official said. Coffee futures rallied on the news while the price of Live Hogs at auction stabilized. The lack of visibility at the Piltdown Exchange was blamed on a member of the janitorial staff who turned a Mister Stock Ticker off during lunch. T.Rex Love-Handles reporting.

Wellington Leg: While he doesn’t have a book deal Uno the Beagle has captured the Westminster Best in Show, an event that parallels literary ascension into Importance and perhaps serves as a model for how authors should be selected for stardom.

Under the current system soon to be famous authors are groomed at prestigious universities until they are old enough to watch Oprah. The ideal age for Prodigy is somewhere between Marissa Pessl and Benjamin Kunkel but not as old as Jonathan Franzen. Having read the collected works of these Prodigies I can safely say that MFA programs need Westminster Kennel Club’s fabulous sense of drama.

Madison Square Garden, which is nowhere near Madison Square, is the ideal venue for graduation ceremonies. Imagine the excitement as the authors and their handlers make the first orbit of the showroom floor: signs would indicate the number of years devoted to the current masterpiece: 4,8,12, 24 being popular choices. For 25 year old writers it is not wise to choose a number above 24. Let’s keep it real.

Aging prodigies who haven’t produced much lately but whose fame is secure might serve as a panel of non-voting judges to avoid internecine rivalries and fist fights. It might be good to have Bob Costas call the play by play and John Madden choose his All Madden Team based on lyricism, hair style, projection ( it’s no good if we can’t hear you) poise, and the juxtaposition of breeding, optional suffering and mandatory deprivation during the dark years when the only friend you have is Captain Kangaroo.

Uno’s victory proves that size doesn’t matter: Uno is just over a foot tall but graduated from Yale at age One, went on to be the American ambassador to the Court of St. James before returning home to take over as CEO of the Ford Motor Company. Uno loves rubber bones, old boxing gloves, Corvettes, and the works of David Foster Wallace.

That’s what makes a champion.

Wellington Leg: I like conspiracy theories and here’s why: the alternative is to accept my limitations as a person or concede that the Big Bang blew life into existence in a particle acceleration experiment conducted without any supervision at all, and, if that’s true, we’ve created a vast hypothetical construct reduced to the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction. If that’s the case then I’m really not at the dinner table when I’m at the dinner table, it’s an illusion, not a conspiracy after all.

More mainstream thoughts on blogging: like ironing, vacuuming, snowboarding, our ancestors did without this verb or participle or gerund whatever the hell it is in large part because they were fleeing from large carnivorous animals conjured from the depths of their subconscious minds. Now we blog ever mindful of the concern this activity creates in those whose task it is to both be concerned and to express that concern in a conspiracy theory sort of way, ie, that any idiot may now stand on a soap box in this virtual Hyde Park and say anything they want. When did this happen? They wonder.

Existential issues aside, they are dining on the stop sign having  forgotten the fundamental fact that we’re not actually here at all. You’re not reading this! It’s all an illusion. Save yourselves while there is still time. Stop blogging before a Designated Cultural Critic pulls you over and writes a really big ticket.

To add a note of hard news to this dispatch: “A fifteen inch beagle won the Westminster Dog Show.” Conspiracy? Illusion? Would a forty two inch high definition plasma beagle carry the day?