***

A textbook writer is a fascinating individual. It can be said without much doubt that textbooks are among the most effective instruments for molding the unformed, clay-like mind of a young learner into something resembling a very abstract form of modern art. This in turn points to the highly important role a writer of such textbooks plays, and sadly, it is a role that has gone unnoticed and unappreciated for far too long.

To put an end to this, The Alarmist contacted one such writer – a topmost one, in fact – who readily agreed to an interview. A middle-aged balding pot-bellied man, he was very open and expressive in his answers, which proved to be of a highly intriguing and ground-breaking nature. The interview follows:

First of all, we must express our gratitude towards you and all other textbook writers out there. It is your textbooks alone that help gather the various strands of a learner’s mind and bunch them up into one confused mess.

Why, thank you. Our policy is to motivate the learners by confusing them as much as possible. This is easily done through throwing a vast quantity of unrelated facts at them, so that what sticks, if anything at all, is essentially un-relatable to anything else in their lives. This forces them to use their minds to un-confuse themselves – this of course results in just the kind of intellect we need – intellect that is constantly finding confusion where none exists and ignoring other more important matters, which goes a long way in helping us do our jobs with almost no distractions.

But has this been successful?

By all means, it has! See the kind of people we have around us. Switch on your TV and see the overexcited and shouty newscaster covering a pointless story that that has nothing to do with anyone. And that’s not all that these textbooks have given us. Of late, when switching on the same news channels, you will find two or more newsreaders sitting there, when it is obvious that only one is needed for the job. So while one reads the news, the other looks grimly at us like a nitwit. So this ‘nitwit-ization’ of new readers is also another valuable contribution of textbooks, as their brains are so overloaded with confusion, they cannot read more than two lines at a time without frothing at the mouth. But there has been one ill-effect, it must be admitted. Some students of these textbooks get so confused that they drop out of college altogether and take to prostitution, alcoholism and drugs. The first two we don’t really mind, but something must be done about the drug addicts.

Is there a plan to deal with this yet?

Of course. We are dedicated textbook writers, we plan out solutions for problems even before they prove to be a problem. This leads to a misconception that we don’t do anything about other problems that do somehow crop up – we’re just busy preventing future problems, you see? With this particular problem, we concocted the blazingly good idea of hiring these drug addicts to provide our illustrations. ‘A bird which would have been killed by a stone in a bush has instead been trained in karate to kill two birds with its bare hands’, as they say.

Yes, who hasn’t heard that old chestnut before. But lets move on: So, what are the results of this blazingly good idea?

Oh, there are many. To show you, I’ve brought two that have already been published in our textbooks. Here’s the first:

As you can see, this is very good indeed for a drug addict. As seen in the illustration, these illustrators seem to think that cats go around performing acts of vigilante justice on poor farmers who depend on buckets of milk for their sustenance. Further, the cats actually talk to the farmer, but being mere cats, they have been unable to master punctuation. As if that wasn’t good enough, the pot-smoking illustrator is so wrapped up in his own created conundrum of whether cats can actually think of such things, he sits and wonders for hours about it, even doing a self-portrait in the process, illustrating how confused his curly haired head is. Which, it must be admitted, is a very good point to bring up in a textbook.

Yes, it is rather good. What else have these pot smokers come up with?

Ah, here’s another:

The illustration, I believe, says it all.

Yes, it does. But just for fun, explain to us what it says.

Well, it is basically just an extension of the first illustration I showed you. See, these illustrators are so darn good, that one illustrator wants to illustrate further on another illustrator’s illustration. While the former brought forth the point about vengeful cats who talk, this one goes the other way and illustrates a bird actually talking to the illustrator. Therefore, even as the illustrator is thinking about whether traditionally non-speaking things can talk, a bird flies in and actually talks to him directly! But ironically, as he is busy thinking, he does not notice that this bird is talking to him.

Yes. It is really quite illustrative – perhaps the most clearly illustrated idea I have come across. So what do you hope to achieve with this plan?

The goal is simple: firstly, to reduce our own workload. As a picture tells a thousand words, so merely five illustrations in one textbook means we need to write 5,000 words less than we would normally write! Secondly, when a learner comes to know that a drug addict is responsible for the illustrations, they obviously wouldn’t turn to drugs themselves if they decide to drop out of college. In fact, all of them would now enter into only alcoholism and prostitution. Which is a good thing.

Very well. So what next for the textbook writer? I mean, since your workload has been reduced greatly due to the illustrations, does this mean that you and your team are working in other areas?

Well…I can’t really say much about that. But I will say this: a great man, unjustly imprisoned by his colonial overlords, is about to be freed by us. That’s all I can say. Thank you.

***

So there you have it. But also in the magazine, was another article which grabbed my attention, and since I’m on the subject already, I thought I should follow the wise old saying about the karate-trained bird mentioned in the interview above and share this other article with you as well:

Daring Prison Break-out in SA
In an incredible feat, a group of scholarly-looking men managed to break into a prison here and escape with one of its inmates. Sources say that the authorities are ‘completely befuddled’ by the incident, and most befuddling is the fact that the people who performed the daring escape repeatedly referred to the inmate as ‘Mr. Mandela’. Investigations are on to find out just how such an act could take place, and sources close to the investigation state that they are just beginning to uncover a sordid web of alcoholism and prostitution. Authorities are however quite certain that the lives of the members of the escape team are in grave danger, having just freed a violent and dangerous criminal who lacked even the slightest desire to reform himself.

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Dear Textbook Writer,

I have thoroughly enjoyed this year’s textbooks. They have brought me much joy over the three months that I have studied them. They are for the most part imaginatively written, and strikingly illustrated. In particular, I was touched by the eloquent appeal contained in one of the textbooks to put an end to the Cold War. The description of the horrors it has caused and the dangers that it can very well result in was chilling, to say the least. It is frightening that even now, after all these years, even after entering the new millennium, this Cold War still continues. It seems to have become so commonplace that one hardly ever reads about it in the newspapers anymore. The same goes for apartheid in South Africa and the wall that separates Germany. And poor Nelson Mandela! My heart goes out to him and I pray that he will be released from prison soon. Perhaps someday, thanks to being educated by these textbooks, someone might do something about it.

But apart from this, there was just one minor flaw that I came across: it seems that the texts for some of the illustrations are missing. An illustration, by definition, must illustrate something, and when the object of illustration is absent, it ceases to illustrate. But often these illustrations just show up out of the blue, with nothing to justify their existence. Rather than just disposing of such well thought out and expertly detailed illustrations, I firmly believe that they should be kept, and accompanying texts added to them which they can illustrate.

I realise that you must be terribly busy, writing all those textbooks out there, therefore I have taken it upon myself to type out some texts which the above mentioned illustrations will illustrate superbly. I have also tried to keep the tone, language and other such things in agreement with the rest of the text, so they will fit right in.

Following are two of the illustrations that I write about, and my texts for them:

***

Explanation For Weather Changes

Weather change is something that has flummoxed mankind for centuries. Several theories has been postulated over the years, most particularly the past two decades. The best theory that we have at present is the Magical Snouted Neuter Creature (MSNC). The MSNC functions like this: whenever an area is in need of a good watery downfall, the MSNC is summoned by an elaborate ritual, in which the elder most people of an area take part. Together they sit and eat large amounts of mildly psychotropic herbs, calling out, “Oh heavenly sexless creature, please, we need new weather! Come here with thy wonderful snout, and bang thy wonderful drum, and make those puffy things in the sky gather round thy head!”

The process can take anywhere between 2 hours to 2 days, depending, among other things, on just how mild the psychotropic herbs are. Then, MSNC appears.

The elders have reported that the MSNC is a very happy creature, although it sometimes performs acts that might seem disgusting to feeble human minds. It even jokes good-heartedly about its disarming lack of any genitalia. As MSNC begins to work on gathering the clouds around its head, the banging of its drum is heard far and wide, inducing fear in the hearts of humans.

However, the elders have reported that MSNC has been missing for the past two years, leaving them bereft of any control over the weather which could potentially lead to unmitigated catastrophe. The general consensus among them is that it has been kidnapped by one Al Gore, who has used it exclusively for shameless self-promotion and to bring himself into the spotlight so that he can get a good, even tan.

***

The success of Prehistoric Man

Prehistoric Man had realised that if he were to have any chance of ever being described as something other than prehistoric, he would have to grab the attention of the Prehistoric woman, with whom it would be possible to create other Men and Women who were not as Prehistoric as he was. This proved to be a difficult task, as Prehistoric Woman found him disgusting and ugly (see fig. 1 above) and refused to go near him, and also constantly beat him with a beating stick. This was perplexing, as Prehistoric Woman was no blonde bombshell herself:

But, he persevered. After trying all sorts of things, like bending over backwards, walking on his hands, gifting her big juicy mangoes, he found that that simply straightening his pose worked somewhat (see fig. 2). This ushered in the phase of slightly less prehistoric man. After a while, woman started to drift away, looking for something better, and particularly, less hairy. This led slightly less prehistoric man to take the drastic step of removing all the hair on his body but leaving the top of his head, bits of his face, chest, armpits and groin area as hairy as possible, for reasons not yet understood. Then he came up with something called ‘clothes’, also not understood, and stood with an arrogant smile on his face (see fig. 3). Woman, amazingly, went crazy for this, thus ensuring the continuation of homo sapiens for ages to come.

***

So there it is. I do hope that you find it useful and that it can pass the stringent quality standards you have no doubt set for your textbooks.

Yours Faithfully,

Avid Textbook Reader.

(And in deafening confirmation that my efforts at initiating change for the better as opposed to sitting in my comfy chair in my underwear, smoking a pipe and complaining were truly the right thing to do, I received this heart-warming reply from Textbook Writer him/herself:)

Dear Avid Textbook Reader,

It is with great gratitude that I write this letter to you. I too had noticed that some of our illustrations lacked any object to illustrate; in fact, I had almost removed these illustrations for a brief revision of said textbooks. But, simply due to your uncommon interest in maintaining the high quality of our books, these illustrations will be included, and yes, with your acutely observed texts.

In this age when people in the cyber world revel in poking fun and making ill-conceived jokes about our books, knowing that there are individuals like yourself is truly heartening and makes it a privilege for us to do our duties.

And yes, we are indeed quite optimistic that we shall see the end of the great evils of the world prevailing today that you mentioned, namely, the Cold War and Apartheid – if not in our lifetimes, then surely in yours. And don’t tell anyone this, but a group of our highly dedicated team of Textbook Writers is planning a deadly prison break-out mission for Mr. Mandela – keep your eyes peeled!

Respectfully,

Textbook Writer.

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1. Textbook writers have evidently never heard of a person called Beyonce. Or even Jennifer Lopez. I reached this conclusion by keeping track of the number of times the word ‘booty’ appeared in my textbooks (26), and how many times the word is used in relation to the buttocks of a person (0). Some examples of the use of this word are: “He conquered India and helped himself to its immense booty” and “Every soldier was able to get a part of the booty”. Unable to understand the writers’ fondness for the word, I investigated a little bit and found the answer. It seems that several years ago, ‘booty’ had another meaning, one that relates to an immense treasure, usually a pirate’s plunder. But I suppose that this meaning is not really that far removed from the word’s newer and more popular meaning, as several people would definitely think of Beyonce’s and Jennifer Lopez’s booties as ‘immense treasures’.
2. The several discrepancies that I found between the information contained in the textbooks and what is actually happening in the world led me to what I believe is the most significant truth that one can walk away with from the world of textbooks. This truth is that textbook writers live in an alternate reality, where Nelson Mandela is still under imprisonment, and his wife Winnie still waits from him patiently to be freed. Further, in this alternate reality, the wall that separates Germany still stands, and the cold war still rages on unabated.
3. The illustrations contained in these textbooks are completely incomprehensible, unless looked at with the knowledge that textbook writers are in an alternate reality. Once this profound yet simple fact in understood, only then do the illustrations make sense. In this way, the textbooks become a wonderful and detailed portrait of life in this universe.
   For instance, a baby in this universe is a horribly grotesque creature with what looks like hair growing all over its abdominal area:
   
   However, this pales in comparison to the next illustration, which is truly remarkable:
   
   This depicts the changes that occur in the life of a typical resident of this alternate universe. Interestingly, the man’s height remains constant from birth to adulthood, with only drastic changes occurring in weight, presence of hair, position of genitalia, and the size of the head, which goes from melon-sized to mango-sized. Most fascinating indeed.

Conclusion
Having spent several years of my life studying these textbooks, I can now say that I possess a formidable knowledge of this as yet unidentified alternate reality that the writers abide in. What this all means is that if in the future I happen to pass into some leaky black hole and also manage to land in this particular reality out of the innumerable possible universes, then I will have a thorough understanding of the current issues facing that universe. This will in turn allow me to do some good, like start a campaign to free Nelson Mandela, at least on compassionate grounds. He must be so old now.

And with that, I bid farewell to the world of textbooks — it’s been a fun, fascinating ride, but there comes a point in every man’s life where his interest moves away from the booty in the sense of a pirate’s plunder and towards booty in the sense of Shakira’s derriere. Also, at this point, he must cease preparing for jaunts to hypothetical universes and start learning something about the universe that he already is in — and textbooks are certainly not the way to do that.

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Tom was a young man, and recently married to someone who I can only deduce was his wife. He was also very welcome at his friends’ houses, because he usually brought with him a tasty dish of beef tongue made by his mother.

So it was that one day he came to my house, and happily, it was with beef tongue. “Oh beef tongue, how nice it is to see you!” I shouted when I saw him.

That evening, we made the beef tongue nice and hot and we sat down to eat it. “How ironic,” I said to Tom, “that we’re eating the tongue of another animal, and we’re tasting it with our own tongues!”

“Yes,” he replied, suddenly turning very sombre, “I often wonder – can the tongue taste itself? Can the eye see itself? Or for that matter, can the self know itself?”

“Yeah whatever,” I said, “but seriously, your Mum makes good tongue.”

That was when he received a call on his mobile phone. It turned out to be his wife, who I guess was the person he married a couple of months back.

Tom had manners, and he knew it was rude to eat with your mouth full, so he did what any person with good manners would do.

“Hi honey,” he said to his wife, “can you call me back later? I can’t talk right now because my mother’s tongue is in my mouth.”

She then hung up. But for some reason, she never called back. She also didn’t answer Tom’s persistent calls. Tom is now sad, and doesn’t know what went wrong and has spent the last few days moping around. And most importantly, the beef tongue is over.

And Tom just won’t leave, goddammit. And I’m beginning to realise that I don’t really know much about Tom. And frankly, I don’t even care. All I cared about was beef tongue; Tom without beef tongue is like Garfunkel without Simon. Can you imagine the kind of response a lonely Garfunkel might have had at his shows? “Ladies and gentlemen…it’s Garfunkel Without Simon!” Yes, I can definitely see people getting excited for that.

After I was through chuckling at my own wit, I went and had a little chat with Tom. “Tom,” I said, as I put a reassuring arm on his shoulder and looked at him compassionately for about thirty seconds. He looked up at me through watery eyes. Having made the impression I wanted to make, I then said, “Get out of my house.”

Tom then left and I never saw him since. I only wish I could get some more of his mother’s tongue. Man, that was some good stuff.

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1. What you require for this experiment is an orange peel and a friend. Hold the peel at about five or six inches from his/her eye and squeeze it into the eye. What do you notice?
2. Ask your friend to observe you and then stick your tongue out towards him. How will your friend interpret it? Then you clap your hands and ask for his interpretation. What is his/her reaction?

Seeing as these two experiments consist of nothing more than doing some goofy crap to my friend, and an orange peel, I say “What the hell!” and, using my newly discovered energy, decide to go out there and perform the experiments. The only difficult part is deciding between a ‘he’ friend and a ‘she’ friend, a conundrum that solves itself quickly enough when I realize that I have no ‘she’ friends. Even if I did, squeezing an orange peel into her eye would certainly leave me bereft of ‘she’ friends all over again. (Note to self: get some ‘she’ friends. A ‘he’ friend tells me he’s been doing some very naughty things with all his ‘she’ friends. Even as naughty leaving burning bags of animal poop on the doorsteps of strangers. Yummy.)

I first get the materials ready for my little experiments. Taking an orange from the fruit basket, I peel it and eat it. Then, feeling slightly ill, I realize that in my unhinged enthusiasm, I have eaten the orange peel and that the naked orange in my hand. Damn, I hate it when that happens. I quickly gobble the naked orange, take another one, peel and eat that orange, and stuff the peel into my pocket.

Having the peel ready, I decide that I should do this experiment ‘properly’, by filling the details into my chemistry laboratory journal from college, which I find to be completely unused. Not surprising, considering that when we supposed to be filling up the journal, we were actually doing other things such as burning our eyebrows with Bunsen burners, rubbing potassium permanganate solutions on the girl’s cheeks, and jokingly pouring highly acidic liquids down unsuspecting classmates’ pants. No wonder I don’t have any ‘she’ friends.

After that, I dial the phone number of a randomly selected friend and, screaming like a banshee, I tell him to come over as quickly as possible. Five minutes later, he arrives, huffing and puffing, and finds me standing motionless at the door. When he is exactly five or six inches away from me, I point to my right and say, “Look, a purple elephant!” to divert his attention so I can go on with the experiment with no constraints. Satisfied with the response, I quickly shove my hands into my pockets, extract the orange peels, and take aim. As it isn’t mentioned exactly how much I should squeeze into my friend’s eyes, I squeeze extremely generously and liberally straight into his eyes. Following the instructions of the experiment, I take an objective stance and observe very carefully as he first screams in incoherent agony and then proceeds to spill his container of expletives all over me, but I remain unaffected, as any interference by me would only come in the way of the objectivity. When he is through screaming and just stands there in baffled rage, I proceed to the next experiment and stick my tongue out at him. This, I’m quick to notice, makes him come forward, and using his strength, he throws me to the floor and begins to strangle me.

Proceeding to the next stage of the experiment, I try to clap my hands. This proves to be a difficult task as his humongous head comes in the way, and I instead end up slapping both sides of his head repeatedly. It is only then that he gets to his feet, kicks me in the groin and goes away, crying tears of shock and rage, and swearing to curse my name till the day he dies.

Immensely satisfied with my great progress, I jot down the results of my experiments into the journal, and then I open up my psychology textbook to compare my results with the ones in the book. For the first experiment it says, “Your friend should exhibit an involuntary eye-blink reflex.” I re-read my result for the first experiment, which says, “Friend exhibited the use of loud screaming, 17 F-words, countless scatological references and a few indecent gestures. Plus, I may no longer have a friend.” Slightly perplexed by the discrepancy, I look at the result of the second experiment in the textbook, which simply says, “Your friend’s interpretation of these acts may be completely different from that of a Chinese.” For a while, I compare this with my results, which say, “Strangulation of the experimenter and severe, perhaps irreversible, damage to said experimenter’s gonads, both done by friend. Plus, now positive that I no longer have a friend.”

I continue to contemplate the astonishing incongruity of the desired results and my derived results. After five minutes of doing so, I give my textbook a severe ass-kicking and throw it out the window where it belongs.

Now I am off to find myself some ‘she’ friends. That skanky-looking one whose cheeks I painted purple with potassium permanganate might be a good bet, I think.

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