Hypothetically Speaking (or, "You Wrote WHAT To Neil Gaiman?!")
Dear Mr. Gaiman,
I have been a fan of your works now for respectively 3-4 years, and seeing as how you are considered by many, myself included, to be such an insightful and respected author (though if for some reason you are in fact not, you certainly have one of the most impressive publicists the world has ever seen, and that unto itself is a compliment, though probably more for the publicist) of things both of the real world and of the somewhat surreal, perhaps you can help me in puzzling out a conundrum.
It’s all a hypothetical conundrum, of course, since these sorts of things simply do not happen in the “modern and civilised” world, and we would not want to lead the gentle public into believing such farcical, faerie things. It just would not do! And imagine the lawsuits it might garner for false advertising and/or misrepresentation of the real world. I shudder to think! (Though only regarding the lawsuits; I’m actually quite fond of thinking as whole, you must realise.)
Now again, this is all hypothetical, you must understand. What would you say if, hypothetically, I were to wake up early one morning to the most peculiar of noises coming from my backyard, which incidentally has a very nice hypothetical wooden fence, a rather elegant, hypothetical birdbath made from some sort of greyish stone, and a well-manicured hypothetical lawn.
If we were to suppose that I crawled out from my nice warm bedsheets and stared out my window, what would you say if, hypothetically of course, I discovered that my wonderful birdbath had been taken over, infested if you will, by pixies.
Now I would not be entirely sure if they were, hypothetically, pixies or instead some other form of small, winged faerie-creature, but they would seem to be generating a fair amount of hypothetical noise, what with their splashing and water games and all that hypothetical pixie nonsense.
So here we come to the crux of the conundrum, good Sir. Hypothetically, I would not necessarily want to have to explain the hypothetical commotion to any neighbours, as they would think that I had lost my hypothetical mind. So, how exactly would one go about ridding oneself of pixies frolicking in a hypothetical birdbath, where they are certainly not most welcomed (or even least welcomed, as I’m sure no one would appreciate a rather garrulous tournament of pixie water-volleyball at six in the morning), hypothetically speaking and all?
I thank you for your time, your patience, and any future hypothetical answers you might be willing to give.
Yours,
P.R. Smith (who is, of course, NOT actually trapped in this hypothetical situation, since it’s all hypothetical and naturally could not be real because it is simply too fantastic to be believed)
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FOOTNOTE:
For those of you wondering, Neil Gaiman is the acclaimed author of
The Sandman graphic novels, as well as the novels
Neverwhere,
Stardust and
American Gods. He's been an incredible influence on not only the way I write, but in how I try to see the world in general. You can visit his homepage here: http://www.neilgaiman.com/index.asp
And I really have no idea what Mr. Gaiman will think when he reads this, let alone whether or not he will make any sort of response to this. But I had fun with it, and would like to think that I helped make his day a little more surreal than usual--which unto itself is difficult, since this is Neil Gaiman, after all.
(Apologies for no hyperlink to his homepage, as my Little Bit O' Nowhere seems to think I have somehow vexed him mightily, and refuses to post the link so you can simply click and go.)
posted by Phillip at 4:09 PM
