Transcript

A short time from now in an alternate universe where meaning relies not on context but is as malleable as hot Silly Putty, a meeting convened between Autumn Stanley, Robert Ray of The Avant-Garde Finds Andy Hardy, Douglas Adams of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (this doesn’t refer to the universe in which the meeting was convened), Balzac of Lost Illusions, and Richard Evans of In Defense of History.  Freud of On Dreams appeared late, with a strange but attractive gloss in his hair.

They all spoke directly from their texts, with no variations or deviations. The attendees voice attributes were apparently a result of a group reading of a famous but unknown screenplay that Freud had dreamt up after his death called, Revelations in Plastic.  The purpose of the meeting was to debate the credibility of Stanley’s text: "Women Hold Up Two-Thirds of the Sky."

Stanley (17)

Over two centuries ago, Voltaire declared, "There have been very learned women as there have been women lawyers, but there have never been women inventors."

Ray (127-128)

(indignantly)

As quotations mount up at articles’ beginnings and section breaks, collage juxtaposition begins to sneak in.  When the chosen quotations, shining with the particular brightness of unmounted stones, begin to overwhelm the pallid texts they introduce, conventional dissertations have begun to undermine themselves.  Epigraphing is the Trojan Horse of the traditional essay.

Evans (51)

Thus, in practice the historical law of revolutions broke down because people in one revolution used the memory of previous ones to change the way they occurred. 

Balzac (421)

(mumbling)

Poets are more apt to receive sensations themselves than to enter into the experiences of others, or to study the mechanism of sensation.

Stanley (19)

The taming of fire is one of the most important technological advances of prehistory.

Evans (95)

(acerbically)

The textual metaphor can easily be unhelpful to the discussion of history, by suggesting that history depends on the analysis and composition of literary texts just as much as literary criticism and scholarship do.

Stanley (20)

(looking apprehensive)

This of course would not explain myths ascribing fire first to women in cultures using other fire-making methods.

Balzac (327)

There was little excuse for this cowardly monologue ...

stanley (19)

Coming as it did (in Europe) in the midst of an ice age, between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago, it enabled Neanderthals to compete with large animals for cave dwellings ...

Adams (80)

Inside, all was gloom, dust and confusion.  Giant cobwebs lay over everything.  Part of the infrastructure of the building had collapsed, part of the rear wall had caved in and a thick choking dust lay inches over the floor. 

Stanley (26)

In still more recent times, women have contributed significant inventions or innovations in the battle against cancer, on many fronts.

Ray (45)

(reverently, quietly)

That they might also prove useful has not always been so obvious.

Stanley (29)

Our task now is to carry that systematic study of woman’s achievement through to the present so that we can, once again, let her own works praise her in the gates.

[Freud dashes into the room and throws a stack of paper at Stanley.  Stanley falls to the ground screaming for her "medicine."]

Freud (44)

The nonsensical character of this dream will be even more glaringly obvious ...

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