My pet dinosaur, Noam, as I've explained many times, never wanted to be in our time . She just got sucked into a time-vortex puddle about a hundred million years ago. How did she become my "pet"?- well, I myself was swept into one of them puddles in the guise of a dumpster. How I made it back is in the fossilized archives of this blog.
My relationship with Noam The Dinosaur is astounding and complex. Invigorating. Infuriating. For starts, this massive critter has a keen nose, and as anyone whom has ever time traveled garners a scent distinguishable only to other time travelers, the ole lizard sniffed me out, and slouched on my porch- confused, desperate, overwhelmed, needy, lonely. My body odor is her only refuge.
If some ya'll already know of all this, please excuse the lengthy introduction, but I was aghast to learn that this dinosaur eats books. Noam is also enamoured of sangria wine. I've tried giving her pinot noir, cotes de rhone, gewurtztraminer, to no avail. She sneers at anything that is not really cheap, watery sangria, with a twist-top cap.
Likewise, my experiments with my pet dinosaur's diet have led me to conclude she's quite fussy about the literature she devours.
Tolstoy is a culinary delight for her, as is Dante, Virgil, Chaucer, Kafka, Plutarch, Thackeray. Epictetus, Noam the Dinosaur greedily devours, though she snarls at Darwin, picks daintily at Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Stephen King, James A Michener, and Judy Blume go careening over the fence, with a single whack of her formidable tail.
Okay, let me back up here- MY PET DINOSAUR IS NOT INTELLIGENT. I cannot explain why such a creature feeds as such. I just can't do it. But what is truly astonishing- there are but two writers that affect Noam differently from all other prose or poesy. These would be Melville and Nietzsche.
Usually, when Noam has something to say, it is along the lines of "WAAAAGGHHH". But when feeding on Nietzsche, she belches profusely, and one can hear the sentences devoured!
"WAAAAGGHH I DESPISE YOUR CONTEMPT WAAAAGGH THEY CALL YOU MY APE YOU FROTHING FOOL BUT I CALL YOU MY GRUNTING PIG WAAAGGHHHHH."
Intrigued, I feed my pet dinosaur a few more pages of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". She masticates it vacantly, swallows, and burps "WAAAAGGHHH YOU SHATTER MY HEART MALICIOUS UNKNOWN GOD WAAAGGH A CRY OF DISTRESS CALLS ME HURRIEDLY AWAY FROM WAAAAGGH YOU. "
Hmm. "Can you repeat what you just said, my sweet good Noam girl? Sweety precious little mama my pretty-good lizard can you say that again? Please?" Nothing but a stupid bovine stare in her yellow feline irises, subjugant thump of a 2 ton tail. "Waagghh?" is all Noam really has to say.
Next time I'll tell ya'll what insues when she munches on Melville!
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1 comment:
Good thing we have a large library. But if Noam comes near my Pynchon I'm gonna go ballistic.
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