My hairline is in recession, my waistline shows signs of inflation, and these conditions are plunging me into a deep depression.
The other day, I called to get the Blue Book value of my car. They asked if the gas tank was full or empty. Gas prices are so high that even COVID has stopped traveling. It now costs $3 to pump air into your tires. That’s the cost of inflation! Vin Diesel has changed his name to Vin Electric. I perspire profusely when I fill my tank, and when I pay the bill, I feel the pain of a wallectomy. Weep weep! Sob sob! Honk honk! I am a victim of the CarOwnerVirus.
You know it’s inflation when CEOs are now playing miniature golf, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are riding on drones, parents in Beverly Hills have fired their nannies so now have to learn their children’s names, Americans are starting to sneak into Mexico, the oil companies are laying off congressmen — and I just received a pre-declined credit card in the mail. Attendance at art museums has fallen off because nobody has the Monet to buy Degas to make the van Gogh, and they’re about Toulouse-Lautrec.
You know inflation has gone the whole five yards when McDonald’s is selling the ¼ Ouncer, a picture is now worth only 200 words, cats are allotted only five lives, we’re all feeling behind the four ball, and Netflix is streaming “A Tale of One City,” “The Two Musketeers,” “Snow White and the Four Dwarfs,” “The Five Commandments,” “25 Shades of Gray,” and “51 Dalmatians.”
You know it’s inflation when the 99 Cents Only Stores now charge an average price of $3.99, it takes five apples a day to keep the doctor away, rapper 50 Cent’s baby son is named 2 Dollar, and you wouldn’t touch this topic with a 20-foot pole. Even the cost of balloons is going up. Call in Tom Brady to solve our economic problems. He’s a master of deflation. That’s just my 3 cents, and you get a nickel for your thoughts.
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Many years ago, the great Victor Borge, aka the Comedian of the Keyboard and the Unmelancholy Dane, created the game of Inflationary Language. Since prices keep going up, he reasoned, why shouldn’t language go up, too?
In the English language, there are words that contain the sounds of numbers, such as wonder (one), before (four), and decorate (eight). If we inflate each sound by one number, we come up with puns — twoder, befive, and decornine.
Here’s my original story based on Borge’s idea. This tale invites you to read and hear inflationary language in all its inflated wonder — oops, make that twoder — and to the linguistically pyrotechnic genius of The Clown Prince of Denmark. Try your hand and mind at translating the tale back into standard English.
JACK AND THE TWODERFUL BEANS
Twice upon a time there lived a boy named Jack in the twoderful land of Califivenia. Two day Jack, a double-minded lad, decided three go fifth three seek his fivetune.
After making sure that Jack nine a sandwich and drank some Eight-Up, his mother elevenderly said, “Threedeloo, threedeloo. Try three be back by next Threesday.” Then she cheered, “Three, five, seven, nine. Who do we apprecinine? Jack, Jack, yay!”
Jack set fifth and soon met a man wearing a four-piece suit and a threepee. Fifthrightly Jack asked the man, “I’m a Califivenian. Are you two three?”
“Cerelevenly,” replied the man, offiving the high six. “Anytwo five elevennis?”
“Not threeday,” answered Jack inelevently. “But can you help me three locnine my fivetune?”
“Sure,” said the man. “Let me sell you these twoderful beans.”
Jack’s inthreeition told him that the man was a three-faced triple-crosser. Elevensely Jack shouted, “I’m not behind the nine ball. I’m a college gradunine, and I know what rights our fivefathers crenined in the Constithreetion. Now let’s get down three baseven about these beans.”
The man tripled over with laughter. “Now hold on a third,” he responded. “There’s no need three make such a three-do about these beans. If you twot, I’ll give them three you.”
Well, there’s no need three elabornine on the rest of the tale. Jack oned in on the giant and two the battle for the golden eggs. His mother and he lived happily fivever after — and so on, and so on, and so fifth.
A translation of “Jack and the Twoderful Beans” reposes on my website, verbivore.com.
