Joined in Progress

We now join our regularly scheduled program, already in progress:

"I mean...can't I just sweep them up, and use cleaning tools to get the rest up?"

"No, you'll eat every damned one of these jellybeans, or face the consequences. Here," and the BingBong Thing produced a giant pumpkin-head cover and plopped it down on our hero's shoulders. "This should aid you in that."

Silence fell across the crowd...except for the sound of the BingBong Thing's foot tapping. Finally, he said, "Cuckoo Newness, my ass."

"No." In a low, cautious tone the first time. Then stronger, from inside the Jack'O'Lantern mask: "NO!"

"Excellent, I've been waiting for you to grow a spine. You get to be our official harmless curmudgeon, disregarded as any sort of threat to the order as exists, but a fine lightning rod for our reactionaries to decry and thus rally their easily upset forces, and as trivial a token of rebellion for our would-be reformers as everyone getting a tattoo. Now, I must go...you don't get to be BingBong Thing by wasting too much time on such nonsense."

And with that, the BingBong Thing turned and stalked away. Tiny robots flitted about, gathering and extracting the scattered jellybeans from the walkways and recesses.

"But!" sputtered our hero. Most of the crowd began to go about their collective business of Conformity To The Man's Law And Desires. Or they went home.

Our hero pulls a jellybaby our of his pocket and pops it through the gaping mouth of the orange near-globe and into his own mouth. All that candy was as expensive as hell...no use for all of it to go to waste.

-'Submitted for your perusal, a tableau of trivial oppression and rebellion, "'Resist, Jack'o'Lantern!' Advised the BingBong Thing"...just one of tonight's tales of creaking disappointment, on Zorro Albañil's Brick Foxhouse. When we return, the tale of a woman so shocking to convention, she was seen as unlikely to be a fit mother to a third-world child...with an intact family...even though she's rich and really wants a baby this week. "Xes and/or Maron Cicculina," just after these messages.'