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Read the following passage carefully. Choose ONE correct answer for questions 1-5.

Having perseverated ad nauseum upon the necessitude of generating more material for this website, I feel no choice but to arrogate the modus operandi of many a scribe who has come before me by chronicling the minutia of my every day life in detail. Perhaps this solution is bona fide seeing as how it will better allow me to describe the wit, wisdom and, dare I say, ribald pluck with which I greet everyday conundrums and happenstance. But fret not, I shall not be wasting your precious time (or mine!) with any crass pronunciations or common jeremiads written in the most turgid of prose; rather, I shall fill this space with my dalliances of the utmost degree. To wit, allow me to recount my midday encounter with a gentlemen of obtuse demeanor and slovenly attire. Should you find yourself in the presence of a lady while reading of my tale, I would strongly suggest you have here retire to the anteroom lest she bear a story that would redden her cheeks and stir her loins!

As fate would have it, I found myself traversing the forenoon toward the library in search of a tome of which I sought to avail myself. While I don’t seek to burden this recount with the details of the aforementioned tome, suffice it to say that it concerned poetry from the Baroque period. I entered the library and strolled to the front secretaire in need of a reference librarian to assist my pursuit of this volume. Indignantly tapping the desk bell, I decried the level of inattention that the levies upon my property and wage were affording. After an interminable delay, a slovenly fellow strode toward me with a dull expression pasted to his visage. He was a portly fellow, bordering upon corpulent, and not so much stout as seemingly withered from a lifetime of dripping confections and oleaginous fares no doubt consumed with gusto by way of plastic cutlery. His dead eyes were like a keyhole through which I could glimpse into the perdition of his mind, an empty wasteland haunted by spirits of televised idiocy and fraternity house antics. I attempted to suppress my disgust at his unpressed clothing, unkempt hair and rancid breath long enough to make clear my intentions. Handing him a slip of paper, I declared in a forceful tone, “See here, boy, I demand you locate and lead me to this book so that I might be loaned it forthwith!”

His gaze diverted from mine toward a computer screen where he entered the particulars of my request. A mildly pained expression crept across his face as his last few functional synapses attempted to interpolate the bad tidings bubbling up from the wretched library database. “Sir, I’m afraid that book has been checked out,” he intoned to me in a somewhat sheepish tone, no doubt sensing the rage already lapping at the shores of my mind. “Balderdash!” I bellowed, “Do you think I would have set forth for this ramshackle pulp depository had I not already confirmed that this tome was in the holdings!” He briefly turned toward the screen then back toward me and meekly uttered, “Well, I guess it got checked out since you looked or something.” I shook with rage at the vicissitude of the situation and the insolence of this dolt but checked my ire just long enough to intone, “Lest we make a scene, I demand that we retire to the gentlemen’s lavatory where I might properly dress you down for this injustice!”

With a sullen countenance, he slid out from behind his carrel and ushered me toward the lavatory. Upon crossing the threshold into the sequestered space, I let loose a torrent of epithets and inculpations with the absolute conviction that I could crush what few nodules remained of this man’s soul. “You blundering troglodyte, what infuses you with such backbone to treat me with a barrage of impudent insolence! I have come to this library to make an extraction and I will not be rebuffed!” With that, I cast off my culottes and demanded that this porcine beast unsheath his flaccid scepter and eviscerate my entrails with gusto. As the now unyielding spoke strained my gut, I impelled rearward until his sloppy paunch pressed into the small of my back. “With alacrity,” I screamed, “With alacrity, you ninny!” With that, his charges escalated until he let loose his viscid essence with a gasp, rendering my cannula boggy with a seraphic mixture of his decoction and my offal. Now drenched in his perspirations, I ordered him out of this sanctum such that I might properly review the amalgam now exuding from my debouchment without being distracted by his raspy exhalations.

Questions:

1. The narrator of this passage was ____ .

a) incensed by a dullard’s lugubrious account
b) buggered by a blunderbuss
c) mortified by his calumnies
d) all of the above
e) none of the above

2. The phrase, “Upon crossing the threshold…” is ____ .

a) a metaphor for death
b) an archetype derived from the early Greek tragedies
c) symbolic of transcendence
d) ironic given the impending circumstances
e) none of the above

3. The library clerk can best be described as ___ .

a) Sisyphean
b) Christ-like
c) Kafkaesque
d) Jungian
e) Joadish

4. The narrator of this passage is ___ .

a) a termagant in the most literal sense of the word
b) reflective of the Renaissance attitudes on man in relation to the universe
c) figuratively paralyzed by his penury
d) evolved from tree-borne apes
e) addicted to opiates

5. A fitting title for this passage is “___ .”

a) The Rosicrucians Built Harlem
b) Evil Dead 4: Army of Darkness II
c) A March of Souls Toward Jericho Hence
d) A Chode’s Load Sowed in Code
e) Computed Tomography….Of the H(e?)art

Answers:

1. b) Buggered by a blunderbuss. The narrator is sodomized by a man lacking any signs of refinement or grace. Although the narrator is angered by the man, a) cannot be considered correct because the library clerk provides information, not a sad story.

2. c) a symbol of transcendence. The threshold is meant as a clear metaphor for the multiplicative effect of two souls combining through the act of sodomy to achieve a higher consciousness. This is an archetype, but derived from Medieval Italian theater, not early Greek tragedies.

3. c) Kafkaesque. The librarian is devoid of the faculties to fully judge the meaninglessness of his existence, thus he remains hopelessly mired in the daily hell of his life with no realistic hopes for escaping it. a) Joadish would be appropriate had his mother been somewhat more heavyset.

4. a) termagant in the most literal sense of the word. The narrator of this passage is a deity bound into the shape of a moon who is eternally cast to wander between heaven, earth and hell. He is not e) addicted to opiates, although his dependence on pornography borders upon addiction.

5. d) A Chode’s Load Sowed in Code. The passage concerns itself with the ejaculation of semen, but described in a florid language. The narrator is not a Rosicrucian, but rather a Knight Templar charged with protecting the Rosicrucian bloodline.

Update

Does not compute. Having now been bested by Maddox and the Blog Readability Test, I hereby resign my position at Catsandbeer.com. May you all prosper and be of sound health. - Keith