Poet Herds

I often enjoy the daily humor piece over at McSweeney's. Here's one by John Moe on the Ripple Effects of The Writer’s Strike. My two favorite worst case scenarios:

Grocery-store produce managers
Unable to skillfully phrase sales like "Grapes—$1.99/lb.," retailers panic and choose instead to throw fruits and vegetables at customers while screaming, "MONEY NOW!" Frightened by the prospect of facing a grocery store full of wild-eyed produce managers clutching rotten bananas while cloaked in ersatz-broccoli cloaks (fashioned after long bouts of existential madness), customers stay away. Consumer economy collapses.

Poets
With their natural predators, the screenwriters, out of the literary ecosystem, poet herds thrive and proliferate, soon overrunning their native habitats and exhausting their food supply. Before long, having any unlocked windows in one's house becomes an invitation to poets to bust in, which they unfailingly do, spouting some goofy-ass nonsense while grabbing whatever is in the fridge. All are shot on sight, of course, creating an unwelcome sanitation problem.


I'll have to alert dw, the only poet I know, to be careful from now on when rooting around in my refrigerator. It would be a shame for something bad to happen, especially since it would be his his own beer that he would most likely be grabbing. Having just sent for the roto-rooters today, I've learned that I don't like sanitation problems in my house.