by Slim Randles
Nature hates a vacuum, and so does Windy Wilson. The other day, emerging from the drug store, he looked around, and, finding no handy audience, spoke instead to the world.
“Dad-gum ol’ Doc, anyway,” he said. “He’s one-a my bestest pals, but if you go to him for a mizz-ry, he makes you do some things and quit doin’ some other things. Them things Doc wants you to do you don’t wanna do, and the things he wants you to quit doin’ are stuff you bin savin’ up to do a buncha years now.
“Now ol’ Doc didn’t even know he done it, but he proved to me that we had some a-them space alienated bein’s for ancestors. Oh, they’s hidin’ out now, but they got a job … as pill namers!
“Doc told me to quit shoein’ horses, which was jest fine with me. Missable back-breakin’ nasty work, anyway. But then he give me two subscriptions for pills that I am ‘sposed to take for my mizz-ry.
“And when the nice girl here at the drugstore give ‘em to me, she asked me if I had any questions about ‘em. And I ast her how to say the pill names. And she told me, and thass when I knew.
“Ya see, ya can’t jest name them pills in American. Oh no. First off ya gotta give ‘em a name that’s too much and a half too long … like oh … syna-broliam-fester-ine.
“We should take pill namin’ back from them alien guys and create jobs fer Americans! Give them pills names people can actual say.
“It wouldn’t be too awful dang hard to remember a pill for pain if you called it
Mizzryfixer, now would it? And for a hangover cure, ya jest pop ya a happy little pill called Betcha-wish-ya-hadn’t. If ya come down with the sugar diabeets, ol’ Doc could tell ya to bullsnake down some pills we could call Too-sweet-by-half-odone. Now, for a instance, if you get plagiarized by them roamin’ ‘round peewaddles, you could take a pill called Limp-be-gone, or mebbe-so Gimpy-blocker, and you’d know jest what it was for, wouldn’t ya?
“Betcha them space guy’s jest laughin’ theirselves sick. But hey, at least Doc told me to quit shoein’ horses, and that there’s a constellation dee-voutly to be wished on.
“And you kin tell ‘em I said so.”
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Windy sneaked in here courtesy of the nice folks at the University of New Mexico Journalism Department, where they claim they can talk more gooder than him.
