The Serpent & The Sceptre

I was looking at some of my old blog posts today because I am vain. I came across this tweet from a couple of years ago, that I couldn't remember having written:

Scaly baguette fakery; a double-take at a snake in a bakery.

I was impressed with myself, but I didn't know why. It's not quite a poem, and it's not quite a joke. It's more of an extremely short story.

The main thing I like about it is that it doesn't make enough sense to justify its existence. The two parts of the sentence (or "clauses" if you're Tim Allen) have a strange relationship. They both contribute to the evocation of the scenario, but neither explains the other. I've thought about switching them around, but it doesn't make it any better.

A double-take at a snake in a bakery; scaly baguette fakery.

That's no improvement. Though it does make it sound more like a 'red sky at night'-style idiom.

The main thing I like about it is that the rhythm is all awkward. We have "at a" and "in a" in the same sentence. That's not right. It has rhyme and assonance, but not in a pleasant way.

But the main thing I like about it (I just realised that I've already posited two main things I like about it, so I might as well add a third main thing) is that it vividly conjures up the scene. Everything you need to know about the situation is in the one sentence. And the reader can extrapolate all kinds of extra details:

• a customer(?) is shocked to see a reptile in place of his bread
• the baker is complicit
• people have been fooled by the ruse in the past
• was the snake drugged, asleep, or just well trained?
• what species of snake was it (presumably a brown one)?

And what next? Legal action? RSPCA involvement? Has someone already eaten some brie with a hunk of crusty snake?

And WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS?

It really is a masterpiece of a tweet.

This may all seem very arrogant, but keep in mind that I didn't remember writing it. So it's basically the work of a stranger. A handsome, handsome stranger.

***

We saw Thor: The Dark World yesterday. It was pretty good. For those of you keeping track, this is the objectively correct list of the Avengers-related Marvel films, from good to bad:

1. Iron Man
2. The Avengers
3. Captain America
4. Thor
5. Thor 2
6. Iron Man 3
7. Iron Man 2
8. The Incredible Hulk

It's inarguable.

I've used bullet points and a numbered list in this blog post. That makes me King of Formatting.

...

Damn. I wanted to include a second numbered list interspersed with non-numbered items, but I couldn't work out a way to do it.

I abdicate the Crown of Formatting.

Plain text is my Wallis Simpson.

***

Here's a good comic by Sean T. Collins & M. Crow. I'm not sure what the etiquette of posting it here would be, so here's just the beginning of it. Read the whole thing here.

As you can see, it's really in tune with my way of thinking.

I'm going to purchase a mug of hot coffee now, and possibly something sweet. If I'm horribly scalded and/or my teeth fall out, I'll let you know in a future edition of Headscissors - The UK's Longest-Running Ironing Web Log.