I had the strangest dream. Was it a dream? I am not sure. One moment, I was sitting with Mr. N. at the Alcove, as related in the previous blog entry. We were reviewing our membership applications to The Bohemian Club when suddenly I was whisked out of space and time and found myself in a cold expanse, landing roughly in deep snow. Where was I?
The sound of chanting woke me up. How familiar it sounded.
Rising from the snow, I startled a very strange explorer wrapped in a blanket, who seemed to have fashioned snow boots out of hares.
"Alger has come!" he cried, falling head over hares and pulling the hares from his head. "The Algernunc, who exists in the here and now; the Alger-non, who negates himself in the here and now; the Algernumen who appears in the near and how-"
"Silence, mongoose!" I intoned in large print.
Once he had settled down, he spilled the whole sad story.
The explorer begged me for some guidance at this fork in his road. "Help me, O Alger-Non-Compos-Mentis!"
I issued him an Algermatum, saying thus: Fear not the forks in life, this is no tine for fear.
"I am cold," said the scantily dressed auslander.
"So am I," I had to confess. "Lets burn this effigy of Moloch."
"What effigy of Moloch?"
"The one beneath this gigantic owl, you unobservant jolthead."
"Oh."
So I lit the fire, and you placed the flowers in the vase that you bought today. "Our house is a very, very, very fine house," I thought...
...and then I came back to my senses. Mr. N. and I were still sitting at the Alcove, and it was beginning to rain ever so gently. "Are you all right?" he asked me.
"I'm fine," I said. "Just went away for a second. What was that sound?"
We both listened intently. We traced the hooting sound to the palm tree that had a security camera bolted to it. Just above it perched an owl.
"That can only be the owl of Bohemia," observed Mr. N.
"If that's the owl of Bohemia," said I, "Who is watching us through the camera?"