EthicalDative

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/10/31/quest-to-quell-the-demotic/)

Dominic Sixtus Venable Regulus bin Pugh-Fuchs, Fourteenth Montmorency, inaugurated the Lunation Gala. A zillion needles of light shafted the fête. Gentlepersons in radiant attire milled among eureka palms. Tables bulged with platters of candied fungi, trayed chalices of inebriant. Couples, triples, quadruples coalesced and dispersed in recombinant chat groups.

The Posse of Matrons, stars of the night, beamed on the dais, bussing well-wishers, miming vanity rituals with period kit, gesturing reciprocation to gallant toasts flung from across the vast hall. They lolled by rank on Watteau-inspired settees draped with 3D-printed shot silks: Astrid bint Wanda, Brilliant Emeritus; Lavendar Larchmont, Brilliant; Dido Harding, Brilliant; Topeka Toombs, Medallion; Jocasta Montmorency, Medallion; Lambent Pym, Pippa Trelawney, Talulah Pierpont, Worth Arbuthnot, Legends. (Annunziata D’Avenant, Legend, had accompanied Philemon to the Riviera, so could not be present for the shot.)

In exquisite disguise Claw Hammer perambulated, dispensing languid body language and genial nods. From a hermetic chamber Siddhartha Huff monitored his doppelgänger on myriad screens. Sidd had drilled his minion in the sequence to be played out: When Astrid brandishes the Escutcheon, a third fanfare will sound. A hush will ensue. Stand on the mark. Intone the spiel. Aim the ancient device. Click it. Bow to the Posse. Fade gracefully to shadow as the crescendo of huzzahs engulfs the dais.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/10/24/a-toil-of-two-tongues/)

The spiel for the ceremonial dais shot was drearily familiar by now:

I, Siddhartha Huff-bin-Chuck, Shootist of the Dais Pose, do petition Astrid-bint-Wanda, Matronissimx of the Posse, for leave to seize their Effulgencies in bi-polaroid fanfare to the Fore-Founding Yachters — may their lordships ride at anchor in pristine astral coves.

Sidd would scream at Claw Hammer, “Too singsong! Again! Too mechanical! Again! Your fricatives are not plummy, idiot! Again!”

Claw had contracted larynx, tip-tongued alveolar ridge, exhaled labially, nasalized high mid-vowels, sharpened schwas, domineered glottal stops until the muscles throbbed.

One day it came to pass his rendition was passably Rees-Moggish. Sidd slapped Claw approvingly in the face and growled, “Better! Again!”

A tear burnt Sidd’s eye. He would shrug it off, but the oafish tyke plucked from the swart nethers of the duchy had earned a bit of bucking up, he must allow. Sidd ordered the kitchen staff of his Shalimar snuggery to double Claw’s ration of organ meat that evening.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/10/17/where-noise-is-canceled-and-air-is-free/)

An aristo catwalk posture could be coached into a cack-handed nonentity, Siddhartha Huff surmised. Dialect was a horse of a different color. Sidd knew he must stifle Claw Hammer’s classless koine — the drawling pidgin of dinghy-spawn pullulating like maggots beyond the gates. Otherwise, the kid would never pass for highbrow amongst the real McCoy.

The way forward was to go for broke. Sidd would saturate the hapless ding with fossilized audio of a Jacob Rees-Mogg speech excavated from silicon hacked out of meso-diluvian flotsam calcified in substrate. Acquiring a semblance of the sculpted consonance and vocalic resonance of Old High Dulcet just might enable Claw Hammer to feign distinction when the time came.

Taking the Dingo out of the ding was akin to taking the monkey out of the simian — a steep climb — but not beyond the powers of a Rhipidistian bent on transitioning to Mamasutra. “By thunder!” Sidd murmured to himself. “Siddhartha Huff-bin-Chuck is a creature bred for challenge!”

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/10/03/claw-hammer/)

Claw Hammer studied a handful of prehistoric photographs preserved in the Museum of Ancient Technology. “Why do barbs ape-grin in the pografs?”

Siddhartha Huff processed the uppity punk’s patois for a moment. “Where did you learn about apes?” he said, more to himself than to Claw. “Apes did not grin. Maybe that’s why they’re extinct,” he retorted aimlessly. “Well, barbs did, and they are, too,” parried Claw.

The allusion to barbarians — the dead races — startled Sidd. The Pandemiad, the ancient chronicle of the horrors that had decimated bipedalism, was heavily redacted by the governor. Unvarnished history would only stoke restiveness in the lumpenproletariat. Isthmia’s origin story was garlanded evangelically with doughty ranchers and perky frontier wives conjured from the epistemic hubris pulpits of the Alamocracy.

Sidd learned belatedly that Claw Hammer was a black bean — i.e., surreptitious member — of a ding gang roaming the warrens that styled itself the Freeholies. The low-born pack of fact freaks scavenged scraps of truth from the steaming silicon dumps and pieced them into haphazard realities in their noisome gaming dens.

Sidd enjoined Claw Hammer from further contact with the Freeholies. “Whore don’t gotta love it, just gotta do it,” he thundered in dingo over Claw’s protestations. Dressed down in his own dialect, the ding burst into tears and returned a sneer of acquiescence. The matter was (it seemed) closed.

(c) 2021 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved