the Funnelwhich

“Les Misérables actually about bread,” says Victor Hugo

After the astonishing revelation from Ray Cadbury Egg that Fahrenheit 451 was actually a treatise on pyrotechnics, many authors like Noah Webster have also stepped forward to claim their original literary intent, most notably Victor Hugo, who claims his seminal work of redemption, justice, and wee French babes with cherub cheeks was actually a recipe for bread-making. “It is clear to any literary dilletante that Jean Valjean and his desire for bread guide and shape the plot like the bundt pan shapes the bundt cake’s sweet, soft caresses of forbidden love,” Hugo said, crying a bit like a big baby.

From then, Hugo says, Valjean enters an epic hallucination caused by his lack of carbohydrates and fiber, key and abundant nutrients in French bread. “That entire redemption and bildungsroman shit? Merely to move the plot along. I thought the readers would look past it! It was satire of the books of my time, with their stupid Romanticism and societal commentary! My books was a book of knowledge, a book of bread and fine wine, meant to instruct and not relate to the crass milieu of my time!” he spat, raising his fists and eyebrows at me, standing upon his heavy, mahogany desk from which he would read and translate The Funnelwhich every Sunday.

These days, Hugo sits quietly at desks when not denouncing his readers online via the Vanilla Café forum where he battles with the forum’s heavyweight contributors including i_heart_jeans and javert4ever. When I mention these names, he scowls and darkly mutters curses against his faceless enemies. “javer4ever continually fails to understand that Javert symbolizes the overkneading of bread, a mistake many novice cooks commit during their first breading session whereas Cosette and Marius represent yeast and baking soda, both crucial to leavening and without which bread cannot find salvation!” Then he crumpled. “I am too old for this. I am to die a lonely death, misunderstood by thousands of people.” “Actually, sir,” I say. “Millions if not a billion people have read your book.” Then, Victor Hugo punched me.

As I sat there rubbing my body, amazed at how the old man could throw a rabbit punch, I realized that even with countless theater adaptations and interpretative dances Victor Hugo—and not his flawed characters in Les Miserables—was the real hero. I wonder if he knew that, but looking at his sad face and his shaking hands writing his shaky memoirs, I think he’d be happier not knowing.

Other books unhappy with Harry Potter glory

[RATANGARH, INDIA] Books everywhere, from Vanity Fair to Mary Ashley & Kate Kick Bad Guy Nuts, have united in outrage over the accolades readers have rewarded to Harry Potter. Says The Pickwick Papers, which represents the Dickens Union, “We were promised increase book readings across the board. What did we get? These stupid promotional Harry Potter Voldemort action figures!” To stress his point, he then squeezed Voldemort, producing a sort of bile from the plastic nipples, bile that dripped onto my black and white and waddling shoes.

Indeed, library checkouts of ordinary books have dropped by 3% since 2000, while Harry Potter has increased steadily by 2% per year, says Statisticks and Numericks About Libraries, whom I also interviewed.

When reached, the International Literature Council, currently headed by humans for the first time in three centuries since the Adobe buyout, refused to respond. They would only ominously speak of a day when all books would be gone and only electronic memory disks would be needed, disks that were compatiable with your 8-in-1 card readers and government databases. Also, eBooks.

Trapped Utah miners find Narnia

After eight hours without food or water, trapped Utah miners from the Mormon Construction Company began to wander aimlessly about the coal corridors that underlined much of the Southwest America. As they began to feed on the flickering, fluorescent light bulbs, I interviewed them. Says one, “We found a patch of light coming from one corridor. When we went to investigate, we saw a glowing Victorian drawer. Inside was Narnia.” Soon after the miners visited Narnia, they exited through the Victorian drawer inside Granny Antique who lives on West 94th street down by the docks in Massachusetts. “Oh, people are always coming and going,” said Granny Antique. Then she chuckled and gave me cookies smeared with coal. I declined, and she stuffed me into a non-Narnia drawer.

Doctors say Granny Antique is blind, violent, and delusional. Close inspection of the Victorian drawer reveals that it is actually a porpoise. Closer still inspection would reveal that it is not a porpoise but a dolphin-king. When scientists investigate this problem, they are ultimately confronted with the chicken-and-egg problem: Did Computer Science Lewis draw his imagination from the portal that lays beneath the Utah desert or did someone construct this portal from one of the timeless, propagandas that Lewis meticulously wrote with nothing but a Bible and his blood? The dolphin-king may be the key to this entire riddle, but he brays and laughs at all attempts to interview him. And so I must unsheathe my cute-creature harpoon.