Copyright © 1999 by Lenna A. Mahoney
And we end this history of The New Theleme Club with cartoons, which should be obligatory after every documentary.
Wile E. Coyote has ratiocinated. His difficulty is that the Roadrunner is so fast that he can readily use distance as a shield by inserting it betwixt himself and said Coyote. Therefore distance has to be entirely obviated if Wile E is to succeed. Therefore a really tremendous explosive device from Acme must be used. No sooner said than done.
Next scene. Wile E. Coyote has been blown off the face of the Earth, which is imploding into itself at the site of the blast. (The world with the galaxy's biggest sphincter!) After a brief emphatic pause, Wile E. is gravitationally sucked back into the hole in the planet, dropping out of sight. A small puff of dust rises. Said globe shrinks smaller and smaller and smaller. Smaller than a pea. Smaller than a molecule. Now it's surrounded by intranuclear space.
Next scene. The Earth, without a doubt still containing Wile E. Coyote among others, is once again the size of a planet. Now it has entered a solar system comprised of the subsubsubsubatomic particles in subsubsubatomic space. The Earth keeps shrinking. Now the size of a small meteor, it is pulled by gravity down to the face of one of the planets in the solar system. Now the size of a seed, the Earth is pecked up. By a Roadrunner.
Beep beep.
HOUSEWIFE WOMAN! THE ANIMATION! THE APPENDIX!!
Screen 1:
ANOTHER Filling the screen in rainbow colors; FANTASTIC the word "fantastic" is replaced in rapid succession by synonyms like "astounding", "stupendous",..., "kind of special", cycling a few times. SUPERHEROINE!
Screen 2:
FOLLOWING IN THE STEPS OF WONDER WOMAN!Picture: our heroine chasing Wonder Woman, wielding an upraised broom (which has a shimmering halo) and yelling "Busybody", "Hussy!", "Scarlet Woman!", "Home-wrecker!" in sequentially appearing thought balloons.
(scrolling from right to left across the top)
Scrolling from right to left across the bottom, "This is a desperately sick lie! signed, DC Comics."
Screen 3:
FOLLOWING MAYBE TOO CLOSELY IN THE STEPS OF SPIDER WOMAN!Picture: our heroine standing and looking clumsily at the bottom of one shoe. Beside her is Spider Woman on her back, torso splattened (and some of the costume color is dripping from HW's shoe-sole). SW's legs and arms are all curled up wrongo like a dead spider's, and twitching.
(scrolling from right to left across the top)
Scrolling from right to left across the bottom, "Libel proceedings have been initiated. signed, Marvel Comics."
Screen 4:
In her mundane, quotidian, sickeningly everyday life Barbara Dahl is an ordinary homemaker, mother of two, CPA, bodybuilder, aromatherapist, and DJ. But because she gets 8 hours of sleep every night, eats the four basic food groups, and always uses raspberry-flavored feminine hygiene products, she has acquired the mysterious and ineluctable powers of an alien form of life. With just one Primal Scream, Barb Dahl becomes HOUSEWIFE WOMAN.
(This all scrolls upward and into a vanishing point in the top distance in perspective white letters on darkness, Star Wars style, with perhaps a few stars and a galaxy or so in the background. A dimly seen mouth at the vanishing point is biting and chewing the words. At the end of the text, a big URP appears, shaped to fill an increasingly bright and bulging circle beneath the vanishing text. Then the words, "mmmm... raspberry!")
Screen 5:
Picture: A mugshot-style color photo, full-face and profile, of Barb Dahl, with her statistics underneath. Name, 38-24-36, charisma 26, intelligence 15, wisdom 12, hit dice 2, BA, MA, PhD, MBA, ETC. She is a smiling blonde with that sickly fashionable lacquered friz hairdo and big dark eyelashes; the descriptive data are "Hair: blonde", "Eyes: blue-blonde", "Teeth: ivory blonde", "Fillings: 5, golden-blonde", "Lips: raspberry-blonde". The light sparkles off her teeth.
(After several seconds for modern "readers", big red rubber-stamp letters appear diagonally across the screen: "BEFORE".)
Screen 6:
Picture: Mugshot of Housewife Woman -- dumpy, permed gray-brown hair, wears a flowered dress. The photos of HW gradually fade dingily into their gray backgrounds. Statistics underneath: name, 46-50-50, charisma 5, intelligence pi, wisdom infinity, hit dice15, PhT.
In a slot at the bottom of the screen a list of her special powers scrolls by, top to bottom: Eyes in the Back of her Head, Voice of Ultimate Nag, Cleaning Powers (pat. pending, void where prohibited by law), (Dowdiness)n = Virtual Invisibility (this comes last as the photos fade to grey).
(After several seconds, big red rubber-stamp letters appear diagonally across the now totally grey screen: "AFTER".)
Screen 7:
SHE SLICES! (The word "slices" gets hit off to the right by a golf club, falling apart in horizontal slices.) SHE DICES! (The word "dices" gets scooped up in a dice cup and spilled out on cubes.) IF THERE'S ANYTHING SHE CAN'T DO, WE HAVEN'T FOUND IT YET!
Screens 8ff:
A title appears: DAY OF CHAOS (PART 2). Caption: "In Part 1, as our regular
viewers will recall..."
"It had been an ordinary day in the suburbs. Birds chirping, sun shining, children playing..." This is all scrolling across the sky on a banner pulled by a flying
frog (plan-view). There's a picture of this simply darling ordinary neighborhood,
trees, puffy clouds, houses, hills in the background, flowers, dog sniffing a shrub
by the front door of the Dahl residence ("Dahl" on the mailbox). POV, which has
looked first at the neighborhood as a whole and then at several charmingly ordinary items (with "ordinary" item captions) now looks hastily away from the dog
and up at the sky. Caption: "Then... it happened!"
BD is giving her kids lunch. Her daughter reaches up for a glass of milk on a
too-tall counter. Glass tips and falls (sound effect of spill: "flisssthh!"), while the kid
says "Mommy!" While BD reaches to clean up the spill (little girl standing cutesy
with dismayed hands to sticky mouth), BD suddenly thinks (thought balloon): why
is this spill not just an easily cleaned-up (picture of circle in thought balloon)?
why is it a (image of spill shape) mess? (She looks up at the irregularly shaped
thought balloons, gasps, bats them off-screen; remainder in circular balloons.) It
must be a conspiracy! Caption says, "And she knew it was time for Housewife
Woman!"
The kids are saying (words spray out) "Where's my milk? Where's my chocky?
Where's my Quality Time?" BD gives her Primal Scream (her whole head turns inside out, starting at the mouth, earlobes flapping) and becomes HW (morphing),
who uses the Voice of Ultimate Nag (jagged lightning-like balloons): "Sit Down!
Shut Up! Just You Wait Till Your Father Comes Home!" The words hang in a multicolored angular mass above the kids' heads, pop, come down in a cloud of dust
that conceals the kids; then they reappear, sitting corks in mouths and chained
to the floor. She exits. Kids with mutual thought balloon, crayoned kid-scrawl
lettering: "Must be PMS."
Caption: "So Housewife Woman went to the Pentagon (which in her infinite
wisdom she knew to be the home of all conspiracies great and small) and found
her first clue, suffering only a slight scald when she was briefly distracted while
cracking a safe." View from above of the Pentagon, succession of doors labeled
"Secret", "Top Secret", "Eyes Only", and "Wouldn't You Like to Know?". HW is
crouched at a safe in a room full of conferring generals. A general looks over at
her; pause while general frowns in concern; he taps her on the shoulder, says
"Scuse me, can I have another cup of coffee?" She says "How do we ask,
General?" "May I have another cup of coffee, please?"
Caption: "From there, Housewife Woman followed her lead to Academia
Tech, where an insufficiently world-renowned mathematician told her how to
enter The Fractal Dimensions... at a price." Picture of the professor, with his frizzy
hair in the shape of a Mandelblot, saying "First door on your left." HW holding her
haloed broom on high, crying "And now I'm going to clean up this messy world!"
And the professor replies "Oh. Could you do the windows before you go?"
Caption: "But HW knew her time was running out..." Here, a flashback to BD's
kids with cobwebs on them.
"AND NOW, PART 2: DAY OF CHAOS" Note that all the preceding flashbacks
have had a little flashing label in the bottom right corner saying "Part 1 Recap".