Outcast Island

Even though I appointed myself Minister of Education in Beclakia,
I am not likely to remain a citizen in good standing. I'm not bad,
I'm just not a model citizen. Actually, I'm not even a normal citizen.

I am one of those odd folks who would be shipped off to an island
in the center of Beclakia, on a slow boat with long oars, paddled
by a stubble-bearded Popeye-looking old man named "Nub" wearing
a beret and a black-and-white striped shirt, who calls women "girly"
and men "partner."

There I would be left with the other human oddities to marinate in
our "socially unacceptableness" until the government needs us for
testing the medical vending machines. We would simmer in our
collective juices of absurdity, until a winner rose to the top, to be
crowned with a pineapple-stem crown.

You know people like us. The woman who wears an old pair of
panty-hose wrapped around her neck as a winter scarf. The neighbor
who steals your newspaper from the front porch and leaves in its
place a dead bird propped on its wings so it is "looking" at you.
The guy who drives the lawnmower around town, getting a DUI.
The woman with a streamer of toilet paper hanging like a tail out
of the waistband of her pants. The man who talks to himself and
replies. The boy who says, "And then my sister turned up pregnant.
She don't want 'im. I hope she gives me the baby so I can raise 'im
up right." The woman who goes about her daily business with a pair
of panties hanging out her jeans leg like a used fabric softener sheet.
The audio-visual helper who says, "Let 'er eat!" every time you are
about to start a film or a tape or your car. The woman who wears
pants under a dress. The man who blows up the bread sack like a
balloon because air is a good insulator. The woman who boxes up
trash thrown out on her road and mails it back to the rightful owner.
The guy who saves his clipped toenails in an old Vlasic pickle jar.
Okaaay...I think you know what I mean.

We would be kept on Outcast Island, allowed to fly the Beclakian
flag, but only permitted to listen to one song: "It Goes Like It Goes,"
recorded by Emperor Rebecca. This would help us concentrate on
our job of translating Beclakian classics into the national dialect
(which Rebecca has decided is a mixture of Beat Poetry, Horse Race
calling, and Oprah Winfrey). Thus, "It was a dark and stormy night..."
would become:

Girlfriend,
that Stedman horse
is moving up on the inside,
his thundering hooves
glistening black,
slicing nocturnal,
carving the cobwebs
from my brain.
What was I thinking
when I bet all my money
on him?
You go girl!
The prize is under your seat.

As you can see, it is not an easy life for us misfits on Outcast Island.