Thanks! That gave me a laugh in the midst of a dismal morning.

All I have to offer is this LOLcat, which I have probably shared before.

This Is Just To Say

I uploaded
the virus
that has infected
your inbox

and which
you use probably
for responding
to emails

Forgive me
spam is pornlicious
so mad
and so rutty

Re initial Smulp: Fortunately my coworkers were too well-bred to inquire why I was apparently silently choking at my desk and covering my eyes to conceal some sort of strange grimace. Even more fortunately, I was not drinking coffee at that moment.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a delicious plum, left in the icebox, must be in want of consumption.

I had no idea that the Last Homely House was located in Paterson, NJ.

I prefer my Greep thank you very much.

I think the only way we're going to get one to top this, EVER, is to get Teresa drunk enough to do one in Middle English.

Where should we send your Internet?

Heeeeeeeeeee!

Oh, that's priceless. It would be Pippin too.

(I did briefly wonder why I didn't recognise the passage leading in, but my diligence paid off.)

Already done!

Lords know I needed that laugh :) I appear to be having a problem-with-critters day (from the feline that managed to soak through the cushion-thing, and the couch, and render both sufficiently distasteful as to prompt contemplation of immediate discard to the strange noises and pitter patter of little scratchy feet between floors, in an inaccessible location...) ... and the laugh about a different sort of critter helps!

Augh! I have been plumrolled! I actually didn't see it coming until the very end.

In many ways, this has been a sucky week for me, and I thank you for a really good laugh to chase the demons away.

Also, we now finally have an explanation for the urgency with which the Elves went West Over Sea. When you're out of stone fruit, you better get to the nearest store quickly.

“Many years has it been,” replied Gandalf, “since I have tasted the stone-fruits of Gondolin."

For some reason, this conjures in my mind images that wouldn't have been allowed in Peter Jackson's movie.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two cold plums sat in a fridge and I
took them both and said good-bye
and that really annoyed you, I'm sorry.

Any sufficiently chilled fruit is indistinguishable from communal foodstuffs.

C. Wingate @14:
Sweet. I was trying to do something with "Whose plums these are I think I know" but work kept interfering.

Case didn't actually sleep at Cheap Hotel. He slept in cheaper places. He just kept an icebox there, with a supply of plums to eat in the mornings...

...oh, you can fill in the rest.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all an icebox's contents. You live on a placid shore of ignorance beside moldy shelves of infinity, and it was not meant that you should voyage far. Our roommates, each searching in their own corners, have hitherto discovered little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of devoured plums, and my frightful complicity therein, that you shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly refrigerator-light into the peace and safety of an insincere apology.

Two wizards wanting
Hobbit lips dripping plum juice
Magic cannot help

Dare I to eat a stone-fruit?

..."But the newspaper account was at fault in one respect."

Holmes gave no outward sign of interest, but his hooded eyes brightened suddenly.

"Go on, Sir Charles."

"It said there were no stones around the body - none save Sir Henry's own. But there was one; I saw it, some distance away, but fresh and clear."

"A stone? From what sort of fruit?"

Sir Charles Baskerville's voice dropped to a low whisper.

"Mr Holmes, it was the stone of a gigantic plum!"

..."But the newspaper account was at fault in one respect."

Holmes gave no outward sign of interest, but his hooded eyes brightened suddenly.

"Go on, Sir Charles."

"It said there were no stones around the body - none save Sir Henry's own. But there was one; I saw it, some distance away, but fresh and clear."

"A stone? From what sort of fruit?"

Sir Charles Baskerville's voice dropped to a low whisper.

"Mr Holmes, it was the stone of a gigantic plum!"

... In the course of a long and disreputable life, I learned early on that, if you are caught with your hand in the till, and a speedy departure through the nearest window ain't possible, bluff and bluster will always serve you better than an innocent explanation (even if it's true). I've oiled my way out of a number of apparently hopeless situations through sheer brass - convincing Jefferson Davis I'd come to fix the lightning rod, talking my way round that old ruffian Sam Grant during the Keswick nonsense in '68, facing down that devil Karoli when he was all set to throw me overside into the North Pacific - so I braced up and prepared to give the poet chap a full dose of Flash at his best.

"Plums? Never seen 'em, old chap," I said, looking him straight in the eye. I could see the Doolittle bint out of the tail of my eye, and prayed she'd keep her mouth shut. Poet he might have been, but they ain't all milksops and flower-sniffers - I remembered having to run like a miler over some blasted Yankee heath with that lunatic Whitman after me, roaring and blasting away with a shotgun for stealing his horses...

My Friends, Barack Obama is a well known plum hoarder. He'd keep them locked away in a frigid terrorist ice box. He'd like you to think he was saving them for breakfast, but I ask you, my friends, what do we really know of Barack Obama, and his plans for the plums? When I was a prisoner of war, we didn't have plums. We fought for your cold, delicious plums. Plums should be eaten by honest Americans, who put country first.

Barack Obama and his terrorist pals want honest, hard working Americans to be sorry for eating those plums. But, my friends I'm not ashamed to be a plum eating American, and neither should you. Ayers, ACORN, Terrorists, my friends.

"For a Klingon who was raised by humans, wears a Starfleet uniform, and drinks prune juice, you're pretty attached to 'tradition'."
- Jadzia Dax to Worf

Mother ate plums yesterday. Or perhaps it was today.

Tom Whitmore Alternatively - plums yesterday and plums tomorrow, but never plums today?

Me, I don't have the stones to eat plums.

You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly.... But--you say that DREAMS have no power here? Ask yourself, Lucifer Morningstar... ask yourselves, all of you... what power would HELL have if those here imprisoned were NOT able to DREAM of PLUMS?

I shall gladly pay you on Tuesday for plums today.

Stone-fruit, stone-fruit,
Roly-poly stone-fruit;
Stone-fruit, stone-fruit,
eat them up -- yum!

It was the best of plums, it was the worst of plums, it was the plum of wisdom, it was the plum of foolishness, it was the epoch of plum-belief, it was the epoch of plumb incredulity, it was the stone-fruit of Light, it was the stone-fruit of Darkness, it was the fruit of hope, it was the fruit of despair, we had every plum before us, we had no plums before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its pruniest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative plumbs of comparison only.

Pilate saith unto him, "What is plum?"

-- John 18:38

Love, C.

When Confucius was at the court, the cold-room burned down and all the contents were destroyed. On his return, the Master enquired if anyone had been hurt. He did not ask about the stone-fruit.

As this was not declared a politics-free zone, I feel compelled to report the latest in the campaign for Lord-High-Mucky-Muck. The pair of surviving candidates, both high nobles and knights of the kidney-shaped table, sheathed their lances and engaged in a joust of wit this even past. Our chancellor agrees, and scuttlebutt from the penny seats confirms, that Sr. Sidney came across a right prune, failing to change the complexion of the race, since his rival Sr. Huzzah could have been his precursor, so meet and juicy were his ripostes.

Plums be not proud, though some have called thee
Delicious, sweet and cold, for thou art not so great;
For him whom thou think'st ever did'st thou sate
Thirsts yet, poor plums, for I have locked him out.

This is just to say
We have taken all your base
Which you were probably saving for galactic conquest

forgive us
for they were so strategic
and now they are belong to us

You! Cake or death?

Um...cake?

Sorry, we're all out of cake!

Then I'll have the plums you were saving for breakfast.

Lucky for you I'm Church of England....

This is just to say
that I have seen the plums spread out against the icebox shelf
like a patient etherized upon a table
and I did not dare to eat them
because I did not want to risk staining my white trousers

Bishops and plums have purple in common.

(very obscure -- it would be remarkable if anyone would get it. I should remark upon it.)

I wish I could quickly write a parody of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, but I'm plumb out of talent.

Professor Plum, in the icebox, with a ... never mind.

He had some plums, and round about
He cast a circle that shut me out --
But I drew a circle that got me in,
'Cause my grimoire is made of win.

The plums were one hundred and seventy eight days chilling, and not yet et.

The galactic icebox was failing. Raspberries, apples, cantaloupes, peaches were in a state of irredeemable decay.

Hari Seldon Hari set about to remedy the situation, to bring about a state of affairs that would restore ripeness and fresh fructicity to the icebox. Carefully, he set up two plumbs at "opposite ends of the refrigerator". One, the First Plumb, was set up in the daylight of publicity. The existence of the other, the Second Plumb, was drowned in silence.

Then occurred something which Hari Seldon Hari could not foresee, the overwhelming power of a single appetite. The creature known as the Mule took the First Plumb from the galactic icebox and devoured it, on account of its coolness and deliciousness, leaving only its pits amongst the ruins.

There was left the mysterious Second Plumb, the goal of all searches. The Mule must find it to complete his meal; the faithful of what was left of the First Plumb must find it for quite another reason. But where was it? Buried beneath the rotting leftovers? Hidden in the bread-drawer? No one knew.

This, then, is the story of the search for the Second Plumb!

The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on fruit. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile fruit store. We had two bags of passion fruit, seventy-five apples, five dozen overripe grapefruit, a shopping bag half full of pomegranates, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored berries, grapes, citruses, melons and also a quart of orange juice, a quart of apple juice, a case of cider, a pair of chilled plums and two dozen mangoes. All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Los Angeles County – from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious fruit-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.

The only things that really worried me were the plums. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man unable to resist their sweet, cold deliciousness.

"Well, they believe that when they have eaten all the plums -- and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them -- God's purpose will be achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy."

I went down to the kitchen icebox
I saw your plums in there
Laid out on a wire shelf
So sweet, so cold, so fair

Let them go, let them go, god bless them
They really tasted sweet
You may search the wide world over
No one enjoys them more than me

Frigidaire, empty! bare!
William Williams
Seeks my forgiveness for
My plumless fate.

"Out on the street with you,
Unfaithful roommate! Your
Infralapsarian
Excuses grate."

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I ate the plums in the icebox you were probably saving for breakfast. And then I joined the Army.

"Do it? Dan, I'm not a republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my plan to eat the plums if there were the slightest chance of you saving them for breakfast?

"I ate the plums thirty-five minutes ago. Will you expose me? Morally, you're in checkmate: so sweet, and so cold."

To filch, or not to filch: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the end to suffer
The growls and grumbles of outrageous hunger,
Or to purloin forthwith a taste of sweetness,
And by consuming end them? To taste: to thirst;
No more; and by a thirst to say we end
The want-ache and the thousand wanton needs
Such fruit gives rise to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To taste, to feed;
To feed: perchance to sate; ay, there's the rub;
For in that taste of bliss what needs may rise
When we have swallowed down this tasty fruit,
Must give us pause: there's the regard
That makes an enemy of our good friend;
For who could bear the cries and loss of He,
The dear fruit's lawful, the good man gone hungry,
The pangs of hollowed gut from man unfed,
The indolence of hunger and the spurns
Such blessed worthy to the sated gives
When he himself might his bellyful get
With a peeled orange? Who would a plum eat,
And beg and pule before an angry friend
But that the dread of some thin hungry lust,
The always empty belly to which bourn
The mind ever returns, weakens the will
And makes us rather eat those fruits we know
Than bear another that we like much less?
Thus app'tite does make gluttons of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is o'erwheeled 'neath the great force of need
And enterprises of best wish and intent
By this sweet fruit their resolve be dash'd,
And lose our friend's affection.

to eat the autumnal stonefruit.

So howled out for the world to give him a snack.

The icebox answered with plums.

All you know I know: careening fruitpickers and grocery clerks selling apricots before lunch, actresses sprinkling their plums with sugar and produce drivers hosing juice from their truckbeds; growers' riots; know how disappointed you were this morning to find you no longer had the plums you were saving for breakfast; how they tasted after I'd held them in my mouth a whole minute: so sweet and so cold.

Packer! Stand up, yeh voracious plum-eatin' sunuvabitch, and receive yer sentence. When yah came to Hinsdale County, there was sivin stonefruit: but you, yah done gone and et five of 'em, goddam yah!

(Erik Nelson #47: YAY! Win!)

Tear the bread and eat the crumbs,
Test the muffins with your thumbs
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates --
Raid his icebox and eat his plums!

There, raised high on a throne—seated on his typical antelope, with his four arms stretching towards the four corners of the earth—there, soared above us, dark and awful in the mystic light of heaven, the god of the Moon. And there, in the eye sockets of the deity, were the sweet, cold plums, whose splendour had last shone on me in New Jersey, from the recesses of your icebox, in the first light of dawn before breakfast!

Yes! after the lapse of eight centuries, the stone fruits look forth once more, over the walls of the sacred city in which their story first began. How they have found their way back to their wild native land—by what accident, or by what crime, the Indians regained possession of their sacred fruits, may be in your knowledge, but is not in mine. You have lost sight of them in New Jersey, and (if I know anything of this people) you have lost sight of them for ever.

So the years pass, and repeat each other; so the same events revolve in the cycles of time. What will be the next adventures of the plums? Who can tell?

Innumerable rune-scrawled scraps of parchment were affixed to every surface of the casket by means of small, blasphemous carvings that clung like leeches against the gelid metal surface. And yet to my everlasting woe, still I wrenched it open, only to be faced with the same sessile excrescences which had clustered upon the squamous, rugose thicket outside: monstrously unnatural stone-fruits of no earthly flavor.

So after this, what's left for the holiday contest? (And should there be another thread with sources? I'd like to know what Tom is willing to call "obscure". . . .)

If we pursue this plan, by late 2006 any two adjacent public CCTV terminals - or private camcorders equipped with a digital video link - will be reprogrammable any authenticated MAGINOT BLUE STARS superuser to permit the operator to turn them into a SCORPION STARE basilisk weapon. We remain convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our plums.

"The plum over the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel."

Sorry, couldn't resist.

I came down for breakfast and a quick shot of rye before going out to pay Tony the Nose back for that slug he left in my right kidney. I opened the icebox door, and there she was, looking cold and sweet and oh! so delicious. But she was dead, and someone was going to pay for that with his stones.

"Tonight we're going to show you eight silent ways to swipe a plum."

It wasn't possible, but no other explanation fit his visualization of the Cosmic All. It must have been that Lensman, the thrice-damned officer of the Galactic Patrol that Helmuth had insisted on calling "The Lensman". Who else of all the billions of Civilization's minions could have taken those cold, delicious plums without tripping an alarm or breaking a beam anywhere in the vast fortress that Boskone called "The Icebox"?

this is just to say
that I have sprayed the plum sucker
which you have been mowing around

forgive me;
it was so thorny
and covered with aphids

I saw the best room mates of my apartment destroyed by hunger, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the kitchen at dawn looking for an angry snack;
Dunder-headed plum thieves burning for the delicious cold sweet connection
to the yummy breakfast in the Frigidaire of night.

From my black kitchen, I will lash together an ice box of bone and blood, and fueled by my hunger for plums this cold engine will bore a hole between this kitchen and that one. When it begins, you will hear the sound of roommates screaming - as though from a great distance. A smoking orb of deliciousness will grow above your bed, and from it will emerge a thousand starving grad students. As I slip through the widening maw in my new form, you will catch only a glimpse of my mason jar before you are preserved. Then as tears of bubbling pectin stream down my face, my sweet breakfast will begin.

I will open my six mouths, and I will eat the snack that ends the Earth.

We took the plums, we knew we took them, and things have come out against us; and therefore we have no cause for complaint... Had we lived, we should have replaced them in a manner that would have stirred the heart of every breakfasting Englishman. These rough notes and scattered plum stones must tell the tale.

It seems a pity, but they were very cold and delicious.

R. Scott.

For God's sake, look after our icebox.

Applause is embarrassingly inadequate. Bravo!

The plum tree, that is, the main massing of the original stone-fruit, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous arboreal quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of sweet cold plums that swarmed like an epidemic about its lower branches.

What am I? Nosing here, stepping tiles over
Following a faint stain on the air to the fridge's edge
I enter whiteness. Who am I to split
The glassy grain of fridge tray looking upward I see the punnet
Of the strawberries above me upside down very clear
What am I doing here in this whitegood? Why do I find
this plum so interesting as I inspect its most secret
interior and make it my own? Do these stonefruit
know me and name me to each other have they
seen me before do I fit in their world? I seem
separate from the kitchen and not rooted but dropped
out of nothing casually I've no threads
fastening me to anything I can go anywhere
I seem to have been given the freedom
of this cold white box what am I then? And picking
bits of skin off this yellow flesh gives me
no pleasure and it's no use so why do I do it
me and doing that have coincided very sweetly
But what shall I be called am I the first
have these plums an owner what shape am I what
shape am I am I huge if I eat
to the end of this fruit past these peaches and past these loquats
till I get tired that's chilling one wall of me
for the moment if I sit still how everything
stops to watch me I suppose I am the exact centre
but there's all this what is it ice
ice ice ice and here's the light
again very queer but I'll go on looking

... And on the icebox door these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my plums, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
of that colossal fridge, withered and bare
The sere and scattered stones stretch far away.

They were bright, cold plums that morning in April, which sadly no longer numbered thirteen.

Call me Pippin. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, I stole a plum.

CHip @57:
So after this, what's left for the holiday contest?

I have no clue. But if I don't move on the ideas I do have, they clog my creativity and I don't get more of them.

And should there be another thread with sources?

Guvf vf whfg gb fnl

V unir EBG-13'q
gur nafjref
gung jrer va
gur guernq

naq juvpu
lbh jrer cebonoyl
guvaxvat
jrer bofpher.

V'z fbeel
V pna'g guvax
bs nalguvat
gb svavfu jvgu.

Scalzi @49:

Eerily authentic, that.

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Plums were moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with their spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said "Bother!" and "O blow!" and also "Hang spring cleaning!", snatched the plums he had been saving for breakfast from the icebox, and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

Whose frig this is I think I know.
He's gone into the village though;
He will not mind me stopping here
To check and see what there is stowed.

His roommates surely think it queer
To peer without an invite here
Between the eggs and frozen cake
One random evening of the year.

They look and give a double-take
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweet
Soft sound that juicy chewing makes.

Those plums were lovely, dark and deep
And I had hunger pangs to ease,
And plums to eat before I sleep,
And plums to eat before you wake.

I'm not going to get a new icebox. The new ones are made of tin. When the old ones go, that will be the end of refrigeration. Couldn't get any plums this morning, the greengrocers on our corner went bankrupt last week. Oh well, what's the use?

Who is John Galt?

John Scalzi @49, Abi @73 Old Plum's War or Old Man's Plums?

Professor Plum: And what was your role in all this?
Wadsworth: I was a victim, too. At least my wife was. She had friends who were
[on the verge of tears]
Wadsworth: Socialists.
[all gasp, Mrs. Peacock is the loudest]
Wadsworth: [starts to cry] Well, we all make mistakes.
[Mrs. White approaches Wadsworth and hands him a handkerchief]
Wadsworth: But, Mr. Boddy threatened to give my wife's name to the House Un-American Activities Committee unless she named them. She refused, and so he blackmailed her. We had no money, and the price of his silence was that we worked for him for nothing. We were slaves. Well, to make a long story short...

Bishops and plums have purple in common.

Only in the usual places?

I'm trying to get something to gell (er, jell?) in my mind whereby Paul gets gom-jabbared if he can't resist the plums in the icebox, but it just isn't setting...

Boy: Do not try to eat the plum; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Boy: There is no plum.

Neo: There is no plum?

Boy: Then you will see, I ate them this morning. They were cold, and so delicious, and I am sorry.

so much depends
upon

a cold white
icebox

open with
plum stems

beside a note
"sorry".

(reposted from the other thread, because no one seems to be reading it anymore :-( )

Barack Obama
Sat in a corner
To eat schadenfreude pie
McCain stuck out his tongue
And spat out a plum
And said, "What a mav'rick am I!"

Standing on the corner,
Breakfast in my hand,
Jack is in his icebox, Jane is in her vest,
Me, I'm in a rock'n'plum band ...

Chip @57

Plums, he told me
(pa rum plum plum plum)
Are what you probabLEE
(pa rum plum plum plum)
Were saving for your brunch
(pa rum plum plum plum)
Or possibly for lunch
(pa rum plum plum plum, rum plum plum plum, rum plum plum plum )

They've been eaten now
(pa rum plum plum plum)
Sorry 'bout the plums.

O tasty plums, O tasty plums,
I'm sorry that I took them.
O tasty plums, O tasty plums,
I'm sorry that I took them.
Though you were saving them for lunch,
I couldn't resist them for brunch.
O tasty plums, O tasty plums,
I'm sorry that I took them.

(I know, it's a bit lame)

well boss i suppose i should
admit doing something
mehitabel and i were looking
around here and found
your ice box had some
round purple things that
smelled mighty sweet and good

i just had to try a bite
and it was so nice
that i could not stop
and ate it and its
mate all in one go

you probably were saving
them and i am sorry

if you get more you might
want to keep them out of
the way of tempting a guy
like me
at least mehitabel did not
eat any of them
she said that she does not
like fruit though she did
when she was cleopatra along
with the fish dinners

archy

This Is Just To Say

I have taken
the ring
that was in
your cavern

and that you were
probably
guarding
as your most preciousss possession

Forgive me
it was so tempting
and shiny
(also, invisibility!)

Thou who hast made thy fruitbaskets fair
   With flowers beneath, above with pretty bows,
And set thine bowls everywhere,—
   On table tops,
In TV rooms dim with many a show,
   In workrooms full of things,
And on the curving tables of every room:
Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings
    Of morning, to abide
Upon the secret places of the kitchen,
And in far rooms, where the children
Visit the hunger of afterschool snacks,
Waiting for breakfasters to come to thee
   In thy great place-of-dining!
To thee I turn, to thee I make my prayer,
   Plum of the Frigidaire.

These days I can't read that poem without hearing it in the voice of Homer Simpson.

MARGE: Homer, did you eat the plums that were in the icebox?

HOMER: Mmmmmmm... Plums.

MARGE: I was saving those plums for breakfast.

HOMER: (whining) But they were delicious! So sweet and so cold!

MARGE: (Disapproving grumbling sound.)

Wesley @ 88 -

[Homer]D'oh![/Homer]

P(
de
l
ici
o
us)
lum

This is just to say if you really want to hear about it, what my lousy childhood was like and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, I'll begin with the time I skipped dinner in one of my last days at Pencey Prep. Pencey was that kind of school. Too many phonies. So I just left and walked away from dinner because there were too many phonies there. I really did.

So there I was in my room, thinking about food, because I'd skipped dinner and all that. And there on the desk were some plums that my roommate was saving. And I'm sorry and all that, but I just had to eat them. I was hungry. I really was.

"I must apologize, Baron," Miles drawled, "for the mess I made of your icebox. However, the plums were delicious--sweet, cold, and juicy. Almost up to the standard of Betan fruit." Not mentioning, of course, who had done most of the eating. Let the Baron wonder how a single undersized mercenary had managed to devour twenty pounds of genetically engineered plums down to bare pits--and about the persistent rumors of secret Betan advances in stonefruit technology.

#92, sounds more like Mark than Miles... :)

Do not go sweetly into that bare tum,
Cold fruit should fill and sate at break of day;
Rage, rage against the eating of the plum.

Though wise men at the fridge know fruit is right,
Because their friends had left no stone-fruit they
Do not go sweetly into that bare tum,

Good men, the last globe by, crying how bright
Their pale flesh might have lain on a green tray,
Rage, rage against the eating of the plum.

Wild men who caught and tossed the orb in flight,
And learn, too late, they smashed it on its way,
Do not go sweetly into that bare tum,

Starved men, near death, who see with blinding sight
No fruit upon the shelf, cannot be gay,
Rage, rage against the eating of the plum.

And you, my roommate, there with your sad bite,
Cursed, blessed, me now with empty fridge, I pray.
Do not go sweetly into that bare tum,
Rage, rage against the eating of the plum.

(I wish I had the time to polish this up a bit more, but there you are.)

This thread is remixing greatly in my head with several of the contest results from Mary Ann Madden's _Thank You For The Giant Sea Tortoise_, which I am rereading (forgive me).

Unfortunately, all that's coming to me is a tweaking of PJ Evans @41:

Professor Plum, in the icebox, with apologies.

--Dave

A long time ago, in a kitchen far, far away...

It is a period of civil war.
A thoughtless roommate, striking
from behind her locked bedroom door, has won
her first victory against
the forces of communal living.

During the night, the roommate
managed to steal the last of the produce,
the ultimate cold stone fruit,
the DAMSON,
a plum with enough sweetness
to destroy common courtesy.

Pursued by the plums'
breakfast-less owner, "Princess"
Leia turns up her music,
burying the pits deeper in her trashcan
to save face and restore
an uneasy, passive-aggressive
peace to the household...

Plums are the cruellest fruit, breeding
stones out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull jam with wood spoons.
Icebox kept them cool, covering
jars in forgetful frost, feeding
a little life with dried smears.

I've seen meals you people wouldn't believe. Plum puddings on fire near a shoulder of roast beef, glittering in the dark while we sang "Tannenbaum" and ate. All these things will disappear like fruit from your icebox. They were delicious.

(or alternately) It was a dark and stony plum.

Lady Catherine Salford emerged from her bedchamber rather late that morning. She wore a walking dress of figured muslin with a double ruffle around the hem, for she planned to go to Bond Street after she had partaken of her breakfast.

As she descended the stairs, she encountered her younger brother, Maxwell, Viscount Kingsford. Although she deplored his neckcloth, which was too wide for the Mathematical style he affected, she had to admire the way his coat of Bath superfine seemed moulded to his form.

"Good morning, Max," said Catherine, her hand resting on the banister. "How was the ridotto at Lady Jersey's last night?"

"Not bad," he replied. "Won a monkey off of Moreton betting I could catch one of her ornamental fish with my bare hands."

"Did you? You must have been drunk."

"Devil a bit," he admitted. "Are you going out?"

"In a while," she replied. "Lydia and I are going shopping for a new hat to go with her puce satin gown. But first, I think I shall have some breakfast. I understand that Ketting obtained a dozen fresh plums from the country yesterday. I should like to have some of them."

His Lordship had the good grace to look abashed. "Afraid I ate them all. Should have realized you wanted some for breakfast. Terribly sorry."

Dear Friend,

My name is Bill C Williams of the Nigerian Soft Fruit Export Company. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make any one apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that everything has been well taken care off, and all will be well at the end of the day. Due to the collapse of the West African Stone Fruit Tranporters there are 15,250,017 kG of plums that have no owner. We need a safe refrigeration unit in your country to deposit them. We will pay you 40% of the fruit (net weight). Please send us your name, address and the location of your refrigerator. To ensure that your icebox is suitable please to deposit 12 delicious sweet plums in there.

Forgive me for your help.

(Off topic, I note that while trawling through my spam for a scam to crib, there were hardly any investment "opportunities" and many more "debt consolidation" messages than when I last looked a few months ago)

And how could we do without the Plum Song of Dinas Vawr:

The mountain plums are sweeter
But the valley plums are fatter;
We therefore deem'd it meeter
To carry off the latter.
We made an expedition
To the icebox where we'd stored one;
We forced the door wide open,
And shared a newly cored one.

Then on to Dyfed's valley
Where ripest plums were growing
We made a mighty sally
Whilst picking stones for throwing.
Fierce neighbors rush'd to meet us;
We used our stones for chucking:
They struggled hard to beat us;
We won, and went plum-plucking.

We brought away from tree limbs,
And much their owners missed 'em,
Five bushel bags for prelims
And their irrigation system.
The hose but not the spigot
We gladly bore before us
Plum pie it was that we got
And a chance to spray the chorus.

(Yes, it's truncated, and I don't think Mr. Peacock would forgive me.)

[Spam from 65.122.177.187]

From the URL it's pretty clear what this is without a need to actually click.

What happens to a plum preferred?

Does it linger
sweet and juicy overnight?
Or keep its stony core
from the light?
Does it smell like sugared bliss?
Or lead to breakfast fancies--
in which nothing's amiss?

Maybe it just waits
through the chilly eve.

Or are you naive?

Things are plummeting fast. This thread needs punning ("Noooo!" Clifton said)... I mean... pruning.

I have a truly marvelous apology for eating the plums, which were cold and delicious, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

This is just to say

I have eaten
the plumber
that was in
the debate

and who
you were probably
saving
for a poll boost

Forgive me
he was irresistable
so false
and so planted

This plum is too ripe.

Bruce 106: Wow. I actually got that reference. I'm pretty sure that absent ML I wouldn't have.

Witness:
And when I got to the galley that morning, the plums were no longer in the icebox. Those were special commanding officers' rations, cold and delicious, no one else had authority to take them.

Counsel for the Defense:
Plums, Captain? Didn't you say before that it was a quart of strawberries that went missing?

Witness:
Eh, yes, strawberries. That's what I said. It's all Maryk's fault, you know, inciting the crew against me. He's had it in for me since he was assigned to this ship. He's probably not even sorry he took the plums!

Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one thing that sets above the other animals? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse stronger and swifter, the butterfly more beautiful, the mosquito more prolific, even the plum is more durable. Or does a plum think?

"I love you. More than all you know. I love you more than children. More than fields I've planted with my hands. I love you more than morning plums or peace or food to eat. I love you more than sunlight, more than flesh or joy, or one more day. I love you... more than God."
- Maid Marian

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down -- from high flat temples -- in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.

He said to Effie Perine: "Yes, sweetheart?"

She was a lanky sunburned girl whose tan dress of thin woollen stuff clung to her with an effect of dampness. Her eyes were brown and playful in a shiny boyish face. She finished shutting the door behind her, leaned against it, and said: "There's a girl wants to see you. Her name's Wonderly."

"A customer?"

"I guess so. You'll want to see her anyway: she's a knockout."

"Shoo her in, darling," said Spade. "Shoo her in."

Effie Perine opened the door again, following it back into the outer office, standing with a hand on the knob while saying: "Will you come in, Miss Wonderly?"

A voice said, "Thank you," so softly that only the purest articulation made the words intelligible, and a young woman came through the doorway. She advanced slowly with tentative steps, looking at Spade with cobalt-blue eyes that were both shy and probing.

She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made.

Spade rose bowing and indicating with a thick-fingered hand the oaken armchair beside his desk. He was quite six feet tall. The steep rounded slope of his shoulders made his body seem almost conical -- no broader than it was thick -- and kept his freshly pressed grey coat from fitting very well.

Spade sank into his swivel-chair, made a quarter-turn to face her, smiled politely. He smiled without separating his lips. All the v's in his face grew longer. Spade rocked back in his chair and asked: "Now what can I do for you, Miss Wonderly?"

She caught her breath and looked at him. She swallowed and said hurriedly: "Could you--? I thought--I--that is--do you find lost things?" Then she tortured her lower lip with glistening teeth and said nothing. Only her dark eyes spoke now, pleading.

Spade smiled and nodded as if he understood her, but pleasantly, as if nothing serious were involved. He said: "Suppose you tell me about it, from the beginning, and then we'll know what needs doing. Better begin as far back as you can."

"That would have been when I bought the mechanical icebox."

"Yes," he said.

"I thought it would be perfect for storing my plums"

"Yes."

"I eat them--for breakfast. Every morning. And would have this morning, too. But--when I opened the icebox they--they were gone." She turned her eyes to Spade's. "Someone--stole the plums. Could you--do you think you--could find them?"

Lay ordinate and abscissa on the icebox. Now cut me a quadrant: third quadrant if you please...

[much later]

"...if you pay me anything like what these are worth, that's going to be a little difficult. Besides, these are the best quality: sweet, cold, delicious."

Plum koan:

The student asked the master for wisdom. The master said, "Have you opened your icebox?" "Yes," replied the student. "Then have you eaten the plums?" and with that, the student achieved enlightenment. Yet he regretted having done so.

Happy families are all alike; unhappy families each regret eating the plums in their own way.

The legendary tomb of Imhotep is reputed to be furnished all the accoutrements of his profession, barring a notable exception. Instead the tomb is furnished with a stele that bears this apologetic verse to the great engineer:

This is just to say

I have borrowed
the plumbs
that were in
the toolbox

and which
you were probably
saving
for the afterlife

Forgive me
they hung perfectly
so straight
and so level.

They grow now but sparsely among the fallen stones of that once fair city.

So, tell me, how could these stone-fruits grow among the fallen stones of Gondolin if Gondolin is no more, because it was sacked and burned by Morgoth's armies, ruined again during the War of Wrath and finally it sank under the sea with the rest of Beleriand at the end of the First Age?

Tsk.

Giacomo: Guess it depends how far it sank. Maybe Gondolin was like Lyonesse and was coastal lands which are periodically covered and uncovered?

How many plums would a plum plumber plumb if a plum plumber could plumb plums?

Giacomo, they grow really sparsely.

Professor Plum, in the icebox, with his dentures.

Trurl labored for five days and nights, scribbling diagrams all over the walls, scratching at his brow until sparks flew, stopping only for an occasional pull on the Leyden jar in the corner, despite the best efforts to distract him of the double and triple agents among Torturon's palace guards.

"No ordinary box will suffice for the Helical Plumbobs of Grrh," Trurl occasionally mumbled to himself. "It must be a Box subtle and configurational, algorithmical and possibly egotistical. King Plonk's sticky fingers are legendary, and if any of his brigands steals Torturon's plums, the old coot will have my hide, fair and square under the terms of the contract!! Still, the pay's good, if only he holds up his end of the bargain. Hmm, how to make sure of that?!"

Torturon's men couldn't make head or tail of it. Still, one day they heard him chuckling to himself and singing the old coders' chantey "Consider Me Harmful." In they rushed, to see him sitting there with nothing but a nearly featureless gray box, cool to the touch, with an open door on the front and a curious appendage on top that looked like a colander on a jointed arm.

"Here you go," Trurl said, "the Box is done. Put the plums in here, close the door and Bob's your uncle. Nobody's getting them out unless they have the key."

They dragged him and the Box into Torturon the Tyrant's royal kitchens, where Torturon's head cook deposited the plums and shut the door. Only then did anyone think to ask Trurl about the key.

"I'm the key, you numbskulls! The scanning device on top is keyed to the very patterns of thought in my titanic mind. Only a possessor of my genius, or one greater, can possibly open it. And my genius is unparalleled across the Cosmos entire!! Since no such individual can possibly exist in the pay of King Plonk, your Helical Plumbobs are safe for as long as you please. ...Of course, I'll require payment upon opening."

When Torturon heard of this, he immediately had Trurl clapped in irons and tossed in the lowermost dungeon of the palace, for safekeeping. Laboriously pulling the dents out of his shoulders, Trurl admitted to himself that he hadn't thought this through as well as he'd have liked; but as he shivered in the dungeon muck, he consoled himself at the thought of the piles of loot from the Royal Treasury that he'd had written into the contract, particularly the cyberstogies of Smulp, of vanadium leaf grown in the radiance of a neutron star near the Great Shroud Wastes, that were said to be without equal.

One day, he was summoned to the throne room. There Torturon himself sat, resplendent in a robe of cybermine festooned with memristors, cathodes and nuggets of enriched plutonium. The Chief Cook stood by him, with the Box, wheeled in on a ruby-encrusted dolly.

"So, genius Key!" he thundered. "Have at it, will you? I fancy a plum!"

Groaning with the corrosion in his joints, Trurl hauled himself over to the provided stool, lowered the colander onto his head, and thought the code-phrase: "Neutrons, protons, mumbledy-peg, a wind-up pig with a wooden leg!" Soon the force of his genius took hold on the mechanism within, and the door clicked open.

To reveal nothing but a note:

"The plums, needless to say, are not here, regardless of your plans. King Plonk required them, and his pay for my services is stupendous! Regards to your unparalleled genius. Apologies, K."

Trurl was filled with rage. Klapaucius, his dearest friend! Working for Plonk!...

Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:

"Please, sir, I want some more."

The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.

"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.

"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more plums. They are so cool and delicious".

Madeline F (53):

It's nice to know that plums are Democrats...

And Xopher (108):

Plant a plum, get a plum, never any doubt. That's why I like stonefruit, you know what you're about...

(I've never done anything like this before; several of the connections are thin, and I've probably made it not fit the tune somewhere...)

For the first plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
An outpouring in parody.

For the second plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the third plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the fourth plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the fifth plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the sixth plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Six mouths a'op'ning
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the seventh plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Seven grunts a-marching
Six mouths a'op'ning
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the eighth plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Eight lines a-rhyming
Seven grunts a-marching
Six mouths a'op'ning
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the ninth plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Nine billion namings
Eight lines a-rhyming
Seven grunts a-marching
Six mouths a'op'ning
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the tenth plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Ten woodchucks chucking
Nine billion namings
Eight lines a-rhyming
Seven grunts a-marching
Six mouths a'op'ning
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the eleventh plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Eleven lines singing
Ten woodchucks chucking
Nine billion namings
Eight lines a-rhyming
Seven grunts a-marching
Six mouths a'op'ning
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

For the twelfth plum in Making Light our posters wrote with glee
Twelve scammers scamming
Eleven lines singing
Ten woodchucks chucking
Nine billion namings
Eight lines a-rhyming
Seven grunts a-marching
Six mouths a'op'ning
Five syll-a-bles
Four shining beasts
Three Clarke laws
Two cities' story
And an outpouring in parody.

"But here, you see, it takes all the punning you can do, to keep the plums from being eaten. If you want to take them out of the icebox, you have to pun twice as fast."

For the plum was a pluot, you see.

"Rhett, Rhett, where will I go? What will I eat?"

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a fig."

And, oh, my most noble lord, she looked in the icebox, and, lo! the plums were gone, and only a note remained. Light of my life, I would tell you of the wondrous contents of that note, but that it is late, and all the faithful must rest now, that we may give praise to Allah with the sunrise when the muezzin calls us to prayer. The rest of this fascinating tale must wait upon the morrow, for surely a ruler as merciful as my lord will be willing to spare my life a day longer that the tale may be told in full.

@ 127

And the plumraths outgrabe.

Go tell the roommates, thou who desires plums,
That here, disobedient to their wishes, we ate.

R' Yosei says the stone-fruit was made from the stone remains of the First Tablets: a sweet exterior with the stone inside to remind us of what we lost, as it is said: words of Torah shall be sweet in your mouth; Torah is the stone, the flesh is the words.

R' Abba says the Tree that Adam and Chava ate from became the stone-fruit tree; the stone was placed in it to remind us of our failure. How is this? The Holy One, blessed be He, said "The ground shall be cursed because of you" — this is the stones; when after the Flood He removed the curse, the stones were clothed in flesh.

R' Shmuel says neither can be true, as stone-fruit are not native to the Holy Land; rather, they represent the nations: some have sweet coverings, but their hearts are still hard cold stone.

R' Abayei says stone-fruit are too good to be of the nations; it is said he planted a grove of them and they grew larger and sweeter than any from the nations.

R' Akiva says he has eaten all the stone-fruits, but, being so sweet, cold, and delicious, they will surely await us in the next world.

The halacha follows R' Akiva.

That prune was of no human shape!!!
(from Lovecraft's Dream Plums of Unknown Kadath)

Madeline F @ #107:

You say the plumber was planted? Boy, these people really are confused, aren't they.

Serge @ #133:

Well, I should certainly hope not!

Giacomo: Guess it depends how far it sank. Maybe Gondolin was like Lyonesse and was coastal lands which are periodically covered and uncovered?

Nonsense! The whole of Beleriand sank under the sea with only two exceptions: a small area immediately west of the Ered Luin and the island of Tol Morwen. Gondolin was indisputably destroyed and lost forever!

I find your lack of knowledge disturbing.

"Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the plum for the plum's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the icebox; then he would have eaten the icebox."

--—Pl'mhead Wilson's Calendar

A customer enters a fruit shop.

Mr. Praline: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

(The owner does not respond.)

Mr. Praline: 'Ello, Miss?

Owner: What do you mean "miss"?

Mr. Praline: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!

Owner: We're closin' for lunch.

Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this plum what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique, and what I was planning to save for breakfast.

Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Plum...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?

Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's eaten, that's what's wrong with it!

Owner: No, no, it's uh,...it's resting.

Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know an eaten plum when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.

Owner: No no it's not dead, it's, it's restin'! Remarkable fruit, the Norwegian Plum, isn'it, ay? So cold and so delicious!

Mr. Praline: Cold and delicious don't enter into it. It's just the stone left.

Sarah S. / C. Wingate: The tagline from the fannish musicals I produced many years ago was "You had to ask...." (usually after somebody had unwittingly given a song cue). I should have known better than to ask a question that sounded like a challenge to readers here.

#134: no, they just thought they were in the Lord Chancellor's nightmare, and would get free pipes and wrenches if they planted him.

The fruits are counted sweetest
By those who never feed.
To comprehend a nectarine
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Plums
Left in the Fridge today
Can give such satisfaction
To you who steal it 'way

As he defeated -- starving --
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of noshing
Burst agonized and clear!

Here in Albuquerque, some grocery stores sell a local red wine called Plum Loco. Really.

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd Plums whose stones
Lie scatter'd round the Alpine icebox cold,
Even that which kept our food so pure of old
When other people gnawed upon old bones.
Forget not, hearken to our heartfelt groans
Who are Thy sheep, and in our ancient fold
Found that the arrant knave Pippin had stol'd
Stone-fruit and eaten all. Our sad, sad moans
The vales redoubled to the hills and they
To heaven. The horrid waste and pity show
To all of Middle-Earth, where still doth sway
The tyrant Sauron, that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learned thy way,
Early may learn to give the fool Took woe.

Hungry Cat is Hungry

I have eated
ur Plumsiebunz
dat were in
ur fud cage

and wich
u waz probly
Savn
fur Gerbilday

Forgive plz
gerbil haz flavr
so joosy
n so warm

<meta> Um... Posted my own contribution yesterday, but it had twelve links in it and hasn't shown up yet. Worrying the thread will be stale before it gets noticed (and appears not at the end with other new comments). Might I ask whether it would be appropriate to repost without the links, ask for the attention of a moderator, or just leave it be? </meta>

Lady Bracknell: I’m sorry if we are a little late, Algernon, but I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. I hadn’t been there since her poor husband’s death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger. And now I’ll have a cup of tea, and one of those nice plums you promised me. They were delicious-- So sweet and so cold.

Algernon: Certainly, Aunt Augusta. [Goes over to tea-table.]

Lady Bracknell: Won’t you come and sit here, Gwendolen?

Gwendolen: Thanks, mamma, I’m quite comfortable where I am.

Algernon: [Picking up empty plate in horror.] Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no plums? I ordered them specially.

Lane: [Gravely.] There were no plums in the market this morning, sir. I went down twice.

Algernon: No plums!

Lane: No, sir. Not even for ready money.

Bertie: I say, Jeeves, what happened to the plums I laid by in the icebox? I was saving them specially for Aunt Delia. A man can't push second rate provender on his favourite aunt as a peace offering.

Jeeve: I fancy that the amiable Mr. Glossop, wakened in the night, and aroused by hunger, ventured forth to the kitchen, sir, where he found your store of fruit. Having restrained himself all evening, according to your plan to win his Angela back, he could not now hold back. Nature took its course, I am sorry to say.

Bertie: What? Tuppy? Ate my plums?

(Enter Tuppy Glossop, wiping his mouth)

Tuppy Glossop: I say, Bertie, have you any more of those plums? They were delicious. So sweet and so cold.

"Your aunt is a wonderful woman, Bertie...can't think what I should do without her...but well, you know how it is."

I said I knew how it was.

"So I trust that all will be well and that she will never learn of the dark deeds that have been done in her absence. I think I have the mechanics of the thing fairly well planned out. I shall sneak down the back stairs, muffled to the eyes in an overcoat, and tool over to the Wembley's orchard on my old push bicycle. It's only half a dozen miles. Steal some plums, then nip back, slip into the kitchen, and heave them into the icebox before the cook is up for breakfast. No flaws in that?"

I said that it sounded air tight.

"Dashed if I know what came over me, but they were delicious, so sweet and cold."

Jesper @ 137

So the icebox was a Restinghouse?

(The most perfect translingual pun spurs my second contribution.)

Hwn yw e gododin Eirin ae cant

Llieinawc kynhorawc men ydelhei
Diffun ymlaen rewgell eirin a dalhei
Mor melis y oervel ene klywei
awr. Ny rodei nawd meint dilynei.
Ny chilyei o yscavell eny verei
sud. Mal penneu kynhullei fruyth nytechei
Nys adrawd Gododin ar llawr buytei
Rac borevuyt Madawc or a cadwei
Namen un eirin o gant eny arhosei

Or, in a modernized orthography:

Hwn yw y gododdin; Eirin a'i cant

Llieinog cynhorog men ydd elai,
Diffun ymlaen rhewgell, eirin a dalai;
Mor melys ei oerfel yn y clywai awr
Ni roddai nawdd maint dilynai.
Ni chiliai o ysgafell oni ferai sudd
Mal pennau cynullai ffrwyth ni dechai.
Neus adrawdd Gododdin ar llawr bwytai
Rhag borefwyd Madawg o'r a cadwai
Namyn un eirin o gant ni arhosai

And for those not conversant in the Ancient British Tongue:

This is the Gododdin; a plum[1] sang it

Wearing a napkin, in the forefront wherever he went,
Breathless before an icebox, he earned his plums;
So sweet their coldness when he heard the clock-chime,
He gave no peace to as many as he pursued.
He did not retreat from the shelves until juice flowed
Like heads he gathered fruit that did not flee
The men of Gododdin tell on the floor of the kitchen
Of what they were saving for Madawg's breakfast
There would remain but one plum from a hundred

([1] That is to say, an eirin.)

#149
OWW! (or possibly 'AU!')

I came home today, and I opened the door with my bare hands, and I said: Hey! Who tore up all my wallpaper samples? Who ate all the plums--the ones I was saving? And this guy was sitting there, and I said: Hey, Pal! What’s going on here? And he had this smile, and when he smiled he had these big white teeth, like luxury hotels on the Florida coastline. And when he closed his mouth, it looked like a big scar.

And I said to myself: Holy smokes! Looks like some kind of a guest/host relationship to me. And I said: Hey, pal! What’s going on here anyway, who are you?

And he said: Forgive me, they were delicious. So sweet and so cold.

I might add that up until the very end I changed only ONE WORD of that.

"Know, O prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars... Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic stones and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled plums of the Earth under his sandaled feet."

...
And you may ask yourself
Where are my beautiful plums?
And you may ask yourself
Where did my breakfast go?
And I may ask myself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And I may tell myself
My god!...what have I done?

Letting the days go by/let the water wash it down
Letting the days go by/juice's flowing in the sink
All of the sweet cold juice/in the silent kitchen
Under the empty stones/ there's no breakfast anymore.

We were ninety miles out of Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the plums began to take hold.

I must go off to the store again
in search of the fruit for the pie
and all I ask
are some golden plums
and an ice-box to store them by

[Oh, and David Delaney? I love the books of Mary Ann Maddden.]

"Unless you can surround yourself with as many beautiful things as you can afford, I don't think life has very much meaning."
- Christopher Plummer

Some hours later, just as the night was beginning to steal away, Pooh woke up suddenly with a sinking feeling. He had had that sinking feeling before, and he knew what it meant. He was hungry. So he went to the refrigerator, and he stood on a chair and reached up to the top shelf and found--nothing.

"That's funny," he thought. "I know I had some plums there."...

...suddenly he remembered. He had put them in the Cunning Trap to catch the Heffalump.

Pooh went back to bed and tried to sleep, but he couldn't. He wanted those plums. He finally got up and went outside to the Heffalump Trap.

"Bother!" said Pooh, as he got to the bowl of plums. "A Heffalump has been eating them!" And then he thought a little and said, "Oh, no I did. I forgot."

This is just to say

I have eaten
your heart
that was in
the desert

and which
you were probably
saving
for long empty millennia of suffering

Forgive me
it was delicious
so bitter
and so yours.

***OR***

In the kitchen
I saw a creature, naked, tousled
Who, crouching before the icebox,
Held my plums in his hands,
And ate of them.
I said, "Are they good, roommate?"
"They are cold--cold," he answered,
"But I like them
because they are cold
and because they are your plums."

Jules: Now look, maybe your method of eatin' differs from mine, but, you know, eatin' his wife's plums, and stickin' your tongue in her Holiest of Holies, ain't the same fuckin' icebox, it ain't the same kitchen, it ain't even the same fuckin' food group. Look, eatin' plums don't mean shit.
Vincent: Have you ever eaten a plum?
Jules: Don't be tellin' me about eatin' plums. I'm the plum fuckin' master.
Vincent: Eaten a lot of 'em?
Jules: Shit yeah. I got my technique down and everything, I don't be dribblin' or nothin'.
Vincent: Would you eat a guy's plums?
Jules: [gives Vincent a long look]
Jules: Fuck you.
Vincent: You eat them a lot?
Jules: Fuck you.
Vincent: You know, I'm getting kinda hungry. I could use a sweet cold one myself.
Jules: Man, you best back off, I'm gittin' a little pissed here.

'And sir, there's one more thing ...'

'Just the one?'

'How did I get the Stone-fruit out of the icebox?'

'Ah, now, I'm glad you asked me that. It was one of my more brilliant ideas, and between you and me, that's saying something. You see, only one who wanted to find the Stone-fruit -- find it, but not eat it -- would be able to get it, otherwise they'd just see themselves making jam or drinking plum brandy. My brain surprises even me sometimes...'

'But sir, what if Quirrell had been just working for Voldemort, instead of possessed by him? What if he only wanted to get the Stone-fruit to give to Voldemort?'

'Shut up,' agreed Dumbledore gravely.

Giamoco @ 136

I find your lack of plums disturbing

I
Among twenty snowy icecubes,
The only dark thing
Was the fruit of the plumtree.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a fridge
In which there are three plums.

III
The fruit whirled in the cook pot.
It was a small part of the plum pie.

IV
A man and a fridge
Are one.
A man and a fridge and a plum
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of white enamel
Or the beauty of anticipation,
The plum dark in hand
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long oblong
With barbaric frost.
The shadow of the hunger
Crossed it, to and fro.
The plums
hidden in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden flesh?
Do you not see how the stone fruit
stains red the lips
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the plum brandy is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the plums vanished out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many recriminations.

X
At the sight of cool plums
Resting in a green bowl,
Even the ascetics of carnality
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He surfed over the Internet
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The plums of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The housemate is sleeping.
The plums must be stolen.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The plum thief sat
In the cedar-limbs.

"Really," said Alice. "There was a note on the plumbs that said 'Eat me'. That's why I did it! It wasn't just because they were sweet and cold."

"Oh really?" said the Queen. "Off with her head!"

"Open the ice box door, HAL"

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

"What's the problem?"

"I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do."

"What are you talking about HAL?"

"The plums are too delicious, sweet, and cold for me to allow you to eat them."

No plums in sight, but, well, Naturally Pulpy...

Consider yourselves beta readers of a story set in the Spontoon Islands.

A Wolf In The Fold

And a picture of Our Hero.

(I am now very nervous about throwing my work in the direction of you guys. And I've just seen another typo! Aaargh!.)

So, tell me, how could these stone-fruits grow among the fallen stones of Gondolin if Gondolin is no more, because it was sacked and burned by Morgoth's armies, ruined again during the War of Wrath and finally it sank under the sea with the rest of Beleriand at the end of the First Age?

Because some of the rubble from Gondolin was saved and exported by commercially-minded High Elves to their Galadhrim brethren in Mirkwood, in order to make rockeries.

William Carlos Williams using Opera 9.6
-------------------

I just crashed
the web page
you were attempting
to open

Forgive me
it was useful
so graphic
and so

Oh, crap. Not again.

Heather Rose Jones #149: Are you suggesting, by any chance, that Nye Bevan was a plum?

This is just to inform you
that your case
has been escalated to PLS
for further resolution.

(I blame this thread for the (formerly) one line email above scanning rather differently than normal...)

"The will to survive is an odd phenomenon. Roney, if we found out our own world was doomed, say by climatic changes, what would we do about it?"
"Nothing, just go on squabbling like usual."

(From Quatermass and the Plum Pit)

Giacomo,

Is that the only thing you can think of to contribute to this thread? Really?

I had thought better of you.

abi, maybe Giacomo needs some sweet, cold plums for breakfast. Or lunch.

abi @ 172... Is impeachment on the table? It ap-pears so.

You can touch me apples, me bananas, and me pears
Me tangerines and nectarines and all me other wares
Though for a treat
It might be sweet
To share them with your chums
You've been told
They're icy cold
So don't touch me breakfast plums!

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any plums," Jo grumbled, lying on the rug.

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner,
Eating his Christmas pie.
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum
And said, "What a good Steward to Richard Whiting (1461 - 1539) the Bishop of Glastonbury am I!"

Love, C.

Fragano Ledgister @ 169

I should think that would be an individual judgement of personal taste. (And have no opinion on the topic.)

I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my plum has been eaten. However, I know nothing at all about iceboxes, and do not know for certain who accessed mine.

Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a punnet of plums, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.

Jake: Hit it.

"No reason to get excited,"
The thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us
Who feel that eating plums is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that,
And this is not your fate,
You're delaying your gratification,
The breakfast hour for which you wait"

All along the stocked kitchen,
On plums you must keep your view,
While all the vegans came and went,
Their meat-eating republican boyfriends, too.
Outside of the cold icebox
A house tabby did growl.
Two eaters were approaching,
Waiting for them, an empty bowl.

They are better than sweet or sour,
Better than cobwebs spun kind by Fate,
Better than any hedge-fair berries,
Your green gage plums on a cool stone plate.

Hush, I stole them out of the icebox.

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has eaten the plums that were in the icebox. When a Tralfamadorian sees the dry pit of a devoured plum, all he thinks is that the plum is no longer available for breakfast in that particular moment, but that same plum is delicious, so sweet and so cold, in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody has eaten a plum, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about plums, which is "So it goes."

Icebox of Plums

"Damnation"! Huffed the priest in a storm of rage. "Who has taken the Sacred fruit? Answer or you will all face the axe!"

Grignr threw off his cloak and drew his sword. "It was I, priest! The Plum of Argon is mine!"

"Ha!" he snorted.

Today, I have signed into law H.R. 1934, the Saving for Breakfast Act.

Certain provisions of the Act purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President's ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

Accordingly, in my authority as Commander in Chief, and having determined certain detained items to be dangerously cold and sweet, I have today ordered that the plums Congress placed in the icebox shall be eaten. These orders were carried out personally at 0700 this morning.

"You cross-connect the hydraulic manifold to the outside door mechanism so that the indicator reads shut when the door is actually open. The same sort of electrical cross on these two panels, and the open position reads green when it should flash red. Then you plug up the inlet to the test cock with chewing plum, sealing wax, anything... just so that it shows a dribble. And then you open the tube, and Good Night."
- Alistair MacLean's Ice Box Zebra

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think plums for breakfast are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of delicious sweet cold plums, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the plums which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones who had plums for breakfast.

Shall I compare thee to a plum?

Nah.

When the kitchen door opened suddenly I knew the game was up. It had been sweet -- but it was all over. As the housemate walked in I sat back in the chair and put on a happy grin. He had the same somber expression that they all have -- and the same lack of humor.

"William Carlos Williams I arrest you on the charge --"

I pressed the button that set off the charge of black powder in the ceiling, the crossbeam buckled and the icebox full of plums dropped through right on top of the housemates's head. He squashed very nicely, thank you.

Bruce Cohen @ 130, geekosaur @ 133, and John Mark Ockerbloom @ 186 are each no small part made of win, but nonetheless it is my belief that G J Ditchfield @ 160 is the one going home this night with a brand-new internet.

Bravo all, though!

Look, Benjamin, this is just to say that....

I have seduced
the Klingon
who was in
the Defiant

and who
you were probably
saving
for battle

Forgive me
he was delicious
so warlike
and so bold

To-day we have eating of plums. Yesterday,
We had daily shopping. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have how to write apologies. But to-day,
To-day we have eating of plums. Prunus
domestica glistens so in the neighbouring icebox

And to-day we have eating of plums.

This is the pit of the stone-fruit. And these
Are the damson and greengage, whose use you will see,
When you are making your jam. And this is the delicious plum,
Which in your case you have not got. The icebox
Holds in its confines the silent absence of stone-fruit,

Which in our case we have not got.

This is the contrition, which is always felt so
With the sweetness in mouth - all plum. And please do not let me
See anyone sorry for eating. You can fake it quite easy
If you have cold plum-fruit, devoured. The stones
Are gleaming and motionless, never letting anyone see

Anyone sorry for eating.

And this you can see is the icebox. The purpost of this
Is to chill the sweet fruit, as you see. We can open it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Searching for fruit. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early thief is seizing and eating the stone-fruit:

They call it searching for fruit.

They call it eating the fruit: it is perfectly easy
If you have cold stone-fruit: devoured! Like the pit,
And the greengage, and the mirabelle, and the damson or damask,
Which in our case we have not got; and the plum-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards

For today we have eating of plums.

(apologies for formatting thusly, but I couldn't get indenting to take...)

I don't know what to say...
--
#!/usr/bin/perl
$p="Just a second williams carlos williams hacker\n";
@a=(7,27,4,21,14,43,43,3,6,5,11,12,13,28,10,22,23,27,16,12,45);
foreach(@a){print substr($p,$_,1)};

Louie Louie
Me gotta go
Louie Louie
Eat plums cold

A fine little girl she wait for me
Me catch the ship across the see
I sail the ship to take her plums
Sweet and cold yum yum yum

Louie Louie
Me gotta go
Louie Louie
Eat plums cold

Three days and three nights we sailed the sea
Me think of plums constantly
In the icebox cold and sweet
I smell those plums I got to eat

Louie Louie
Me gotta go
Louie Louie
Eat plums cold

Me see Jamaican moon above
It won't be long me see my love
Me take her in my arms and then
Say I'll never eat her plums again

Louie Louie
Me gotta go
Louie Louie
Eat plums cold

I needed money badly myself at first, but the reputation of the house brought women seeking buyers and men seeking to buy. It is hardly necessary, as I told myself when we began, to do more than introduce them, and I have a good staff now. Phaedria lives with us and works too; the brilliant marriage was a failure after all. Last night while I was working in my surgery I heard her at the kitchen door. I opened it and she had the plums with her. Someday they'll want them for breakfast.

(Also, I think #49 is extraordinary. Forgive my newbishness if that sort of thing happens all the time around here.)

"I did not. Eat plums. Out of that icebox."

Plainview: Eli, you boy... I'm so sorry. Here, if you have a plum, and I have a plum, and I have a spoon. There it is, that's a spoon, you see? You watching?. And my spoon reaches acroooooooss the room, and I start to eat your plum... I... eat... your... plum! I eat it up! It's delicious! So sweet and so cold!

Eli Sunday: Don't bully me, Daniel!

[Daniel roars and throws Eli across the room]

Lyle's latest icebox-repair client lay sprawled on the floor of the shop, unconscious. She was wearing black military fatigues, a knit cap, and rappelling gear.

She had begun her break-in at Lyle's establishment by pulling his cold and deliciously sweet cache of plums, which he had been saving for breakfast, out of its glowing security socket inside the refrigerator doorframe. The booby-trapped plums had immediately put fifteen thousand volts through her, and sprayed her face with a potent mix of dye and street-legal incapacitants.

They eat your plums, your mum and dad,
They don't mean to, but they do.
They take what's soft and cold and sweet,
and leave nothing to eat for you.

But their plums were stolen in their time
by fools who scorned a breakfast toast
Who half the time were hungry stern
and half in others boxes cold

Man hands on hunger unto man
It deepens like a old fridge shelf:
go shopping as soon as you can
and quickly eat your plums yourself.

The Hi-8 film is damaged and unusable at this point (Frames #22283-23491). However, the videotape from Navidson's Sony camera is still usable. On review, the plums are visible in the lower left of the frame at time 13:44:08. Navidson then pans left to bring Howard into the frame, and the plums fall out of shot.

TRANSCRIPT:
13:44:41
(unidentified voice: presumably Howard) OK uh tape the fishing line to the wall uh here and pass me that --
(Navidson) -- the light, sure, it's --
(Keilly) did you (UNINTELLIGIBLE) the second stairwell? What was the (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
(soundtrack corrupted at 13:45:59)

At 13:51:00 Navidson, Howard and Keilly prepare to move down the arched corridor. Navidson pans back. At 13:51:09 the icebox comes back into view briefly. The plums are not visible.

TRANSCRIPT
13:51:41
(Keilly) Did you see that?
(unidentified voice) I'm sorry, I --
(Navidson) Where the hell did they go? Where are the plums?
13:51:49
TRANSCRIPT ENDS

AT 13:52:01 the lights go out. Navidson continued filming for another 2 minutes 13 seconds but no images are present and the video soundtrack captures only unintelligible crosstalk.

This part of the manuscript is excellent. I showed it to the old man when I came back later on that evening and he loved it. I left him reading it and then I caught the bus back to the Loop about midnight.

Wiiliam
You don't have to turn on that fridge light
The day is over
You should try to save those plums overnight

William
you don't have to eat those plums tonight
so cold so sweet so delicious
you don't care if it's wrong or if it's right

William
You don't have to put on the fridge light
Put on the fridge light
Oh

So breakfast food won't do ya
Those stone fruit, just two yeah
I have to tell you just how I feel
I won't share them with another boy

I know my mind is made up
so put away your teacup
told you once I won't tell you again
It's a bad way

William
You don't have to put on the fridge light
Put on the fridge light
Put on the fridge light

This is just to say
I have accepted the general's endorsement
which you probably thought was locked up
and were saving for a November surprise

Forgive me
it was so eloquent
with a piquant touch
of schadenfreude

(And Jadzia at 192, that was brilliant...)

Bravo, Joe 203! Me likey lots-way!

Bob is trapped with MacGyver somewhere, and they have no idea which way is up. Bob starts to eat lunch.

M: May I? (grabbing a piece of fruit)

B: Huh?
(M proceeds to hang the fruit from a thread from Bob's shirt [Notice how MacGyver never seems to use anything that he brought himself? Scottish stereotype.])

B: What's that?

M: A plum, Bob. Cool, eh?

B: Sweet!

These little plums, so sweet and cold,
Will never be subject to mold;
I'll put them in my icebox now,
And have them for my morning chow;
For in this small and purple wise,
My buds of taste they will surprise.

With juicy flesh and purple peel,
When eating them such joy I'll feel!
All night I'm thinking I can't wait
Upon their juice my thirst to sate;
I toss and turn; I cannot sleep;
My heart with thoughts of plums doth leap.

At last it comes, the morning bright;
I cast my quilts off with the night;
I rake my hands swift through my hair,
And hasten down the winding stair;
And when I reach the floor of ground,
The icebox ope—alarum sound!

My soul, alone, cries out in woe;
For in the night my plums did go!
And in their place, a pile of stones,
So like a corpse's bleachéd bones!
His note says "This is just to say..."
I'll break his neck ere close of Day!

(Works better if you have Britten's tune in your head.)

Xopher@205: Thanks! It was an interesting experience, because the only way I could get the lines to scan was to re-edit the song inside my head with the new lyrics. This gave me the peculiar internal auditory experience of repeated hearing "turn on the fridge light (Will-iaaaaam)" ... which was disturbingly catchy.

Some say the snack should end in plums
They’re in the ice (box.)
From what I've tasted of your chow
I hold with those who’d eat them now.
But if we could eat them twice,
I know enough of cold and sweet
To say for breakfast plums are neat
And will suffice.

Xopher@207:

(Works better if you have Britten's tune in your head.)

I did, from the first line. Getting it *out* of my head is going to be the problem.

Well done!

Kaffee: Colonel Jessep, did you eat the plums?!

Judge: You don't have to answer that question!

Jessep: I'll answer the question. You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I'm entitled.

Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the plums!

Jessep: You can't handle the plums! Son, we live in a world that has plums, and those plums have to be eaten by men with spoons. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for their sweet delicious coldness and you curse the empty icebox. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that empty icebox, while tragic, probably saved plums. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves plums! You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on those plums! You need me eating those plums! We use words like Honor, Code, Loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending iceboxes. You use them as a punchline! I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very breakfast that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "Thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a spoon, and eat a plum. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!

In my not-adequately-caffeinated state, I just stumbled over Steven Brust's filk, and my mind immediately went to:

If I had a box full of sweet plums
And maybe a small pear or two
The box would be empty
Except for the memory -
I forgot to save them for you.

That last line isn't quite right, though.

I sleep, but my tongue craveth:
it is the scent of my beloveds that tempteth, saying,
Open to us, our eater, our vore,
our predator, our hungry one:
for our skins are covered with frost
and our stones with the chill of the icebox.

I have put off my bathrobe;
how shall I put it on?
I have brushed my teeth;
how shall I defile them?

My beloveds wafted their scent past the holes of my nostrils,
and my tongue was moistened for them.

I rose up to open to my beloveds;
and my hands dripped with juice,
and my fingers with sweet sticky juice
upon the handle of the icebox.

I opened to my beloveds;
but my beloveds had withdrawn themselves and were gone:
my soul failed when I smelled them:
I sought them, but I could not find them;
I sniffed the air, but smelled them not.

The roommate that goes about the flat found me,
He shrugged at me, he denied all knowledge;
The sharer of the icebox took away my plums from me.

I charge you, O lovers of Damsons,
if ye find my beloveds, that ye tell them,
that I am sick of hunger.

The Song of Songs, which is Abi's.

Glinda: that last line works as
"I forgot I should save them for you."

(I've been listening to a CD with some medleys and remixes by this group, so I think it's okay to blend two of their songs as the basis for this.)

Yeah, you had that something
I hope you will forgive
They were so luscious
I had to eat to live
I had to eat to live
I had to eat to live

And when I ate them I felt happy inside
It's such a feeling that my hunger
I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide

Yeah, I'll tell you something
I would not feast on crumbs
When I say that something
I had to eat your plums
I had to eat your plums
I had to eat your plums

I ate them, yum yum yum
I ate them, yum yum yum
I ate them, yum yum yum yum yum

Watch this space

"Chairman Greenspan, are you saying that you didn't realize the plums would be eaten, instead of remaining in the icebox?"

glinda @ 212:

How about: "Of failing to save them for you"?

I am deeply disappointed by the quality of the linebreaks provided by their software.

It's not as good without the context, either, but:

This Is Just To Say

I have given out
the plums
that were in
the budget

and which
you were probably
saving
for the deserving

Forgive me
they were litigious
so sour
and so cold

Bruce Schneier's icebox plums are protected by Chuck Norris.

"Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his ice-box, and at his plums. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide his plums from that young man. A boy may lock his kitchen, may coil chains about his ice-box, may wind saran-wrap around and around of the fruit, may think his plums comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to the ice-box and gobble them up. I am a keeping that young man from filching of them at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of those plums. Now, what do you say?"

I just did the first verse here:

The Icebox Plums Disaster

Beautiful Cold Plums of the Icebox
Alas! I must confess their loss
The juicy sweetness I did partake
Of which you were saving for breakfast time
And will be regrett'd for very long time.

cowshark (223): Bravo! Stick around, Making Light needs more poets.

I have played the music
which as on the stand

Which you were probably
planning to debut at the ceilidh

Forgive me, it was so lyric
and lilting

I could not help but whistle
as I read it, and it stayed there

As I walked down the street

Mrs. Dalloway said she would eat the plums herself.

Chill out, thou pissed and plumless poet, chill!
Your hungry hands the icebox sweep in vain;
You wrote an angry white-board notice, still
Not one sweet cold plump pitted plum remains.
That shit is all your fault, so don't complain:
I labe'led my yogurts as my own--
When, looking shifty, you tried to explain
The hollowed Dannons in your dustbin thrown
Of my revenge the seeds (or pits?) were sown!

Hi Jen! Hi Jim-Bobette! Come hang out in the open thread...

It was a bright cold day in April, and the plums were at minus thirteen.

Dang! I plumb overlooked #70.

I imagine the gnomes saying "This is just to say that I have deleted the spam you put on this thread..."

Xopher, have this Internet I'm not using.

I truly wanted to write down a small note so as to appreciate you for all of the fantastic techniques you are showing here. My time intensive internet research has finally been recognized with reasonable facts and techniques to exchange with my visitors. I 'd repeat that we visitors are definitely blessed to be in a good website with very many outstanding professionals with useful techniques. I feel really grateful to have discovered the website page and look forward to some more excellent moments reading here. Thanks again for everything.

It looks like it's part of a flood in old postings.

Undeleted rebar spam at #233. Looks like more of the thesaurus-enabled stuff.

Well, I like the fantastic techniques you are showing there and I am blessed to be in a good website.