We read the newspapers every day. But do we truly think about the stories therein?

Mothers Busted in Bus Stop Pokemon Brawl

Two mothers are facing charges of harassment and disorderly conduct after a shouting match at a school bus stop over Pokemon cards their children traded turned violent, police said. Charges against another woman who attempted to break up the Tuesday brawl were dropped today, officials said.

Around 8:50 a.m., Dawn Marie Herbert, 30, and Maria Grazilla, 37, both residents of Gold Key Estates in Dingman Township, Pennsylvania, were at the bus stop with their children when Herbert started a verbal argument with Grazilla and her son over Pokemon cards the children had traded in school, said Dingman Township Police Officer Steve Coleman. The confrontation turned physical, Coleman said, when Herbert threw a large, full cup of coffee at Grazilla, striking her on the shoulder. Coleman said as a dozen women and children looked on, the two women charged at each other, but no blows were struck.

"Witnesses said they each grabbed hold of the other's hair, but that was about the extent of it. It looks as though one of the mothers felt that her son had been cheated into trading a card for one of lesser value," Coleman said.

One rather suspects there's another story lurking here. Don't one's readers sense it? A heart of darkness lurking within this precautionary tale of Pokemon moms gone bad?

Let us consider the Gold Key Estates. Everyone knows that only trailer parks and subsidised housing call themselves 'Estates', these days. And given that the news item took place (of course) in the United States, we have the setting . . . a lowly, fly-by-night trailer park in Pennsylvania.

Now, the two working class antagonists, Dawn and Maria. One surmises that Maria is the older and wealthier of the two, a woman feeling her looks slipping away day by day. And Dawn . . . she is the platinum-haired tramp of the Gold Key Estates, hunting married men the way a cat goes after cream. Eventually she sunk her claws into the hapless Mr. Grazilla, using him for her own tawdry pleasures, then discarding him.

Maria, of course, told everyone in the Gold Key Estates about the wench, and their haughty, disapproving stares followed her whenever she went to the beverages machine for a cold Yoohoo. Oh, the shame of it all! Why, it made it difficult for her to purchase her daily lottery tickets, and even the solace of Wheel of Fortune could not drown out the disapproving tongues.

One is certain that this story was much more than about Pokemon cards. It was about a dark, seething morass of resentment and class conflict that culminates in a Pokemon-fueled war between two trailer park Amazons.

One keeps filling in the story with the characters who one is certain hover around the fringe. A woman named 'Velma,' the hard-bitten, chain-smoking manager of the trailer park who laughs uproariously, smoking 'Camels,' while she watches the encounter from her front window. Maria's older daughter, a serious and searching girl who yearns for a life beyond the Gold Key Estates. The daughter's teacher, a young man fresh out of college who wishes that this intelligent young woman was more than just a student to him. The former husband of the strumpet Dawn, a small-time lawyer with dreams too big for his head. Oh, I see them all in Technicolor.

A pity the news reporters feel it necessary to stick to 'facts,' rather than report the story as it should be told, eh?

Sighing wistfully, one remains for yet another week,
Sir Charles Grandiose

Alexander writes:

Salutations Sir Charles. Pardon my pompous smattering, but it is somewhat incumbent upon me to bequeath onto you, a concept concerning which, I require a trenchant response. I find myself in grave turmoil and sometimes tumult, owing to the maelstrom in which I am immured in the vicissitudes my life, and all the inveracities and verisimilitude that accompany this ominous condition. Such a recondite concept underscores that of love and about which I shall further accentuate.

Sir Charles, it seems quite evident to me, that the vortices that submerge the indelible and sometimes ineluctable experience called love, are many times awe-inspiring and ineffable to speak of luculently. Being wound tightly into the mystique of this quagmire with an amorous woman, one Zeudi Munroe, I find it increasingly difficult to permanently and efficaciously extricate myself from the parameters of such an illusory state of affairs. The central problematique, concerns the fact that one Zeudi, does not overtly appear to be enraptured in my presence, as do I in her presence.

And that internecine and somewhat perennial feeling of deep love and sultry passion, associated in part
with concupiscence, and in part with an authentic desideration of affection, seems to be immanent solely
within me, but not her. The pregnant question therefore, is: "What shall I do?".

Sir Charles, it is you, perforce, before whom I prostrate myself, with the hope that you will proffer
a stringent and pungently penetrating response to these most conceivably exigent and peremptory demands of my predicament. It is therefore my behest that you respond as assiduously and as perspicaciously as you possibly can, by adumbrating principally, what you consider to be an apposite reply. By extention, I request that you elucidate what is the best nepenthe or panacea, and if you will the most effective palliative, for such a superordinate circumstance within which I find myself. I requisition you to therefore do some intense rumination and ratiocination regarding such solutions, before tendering your response.

The abovementioned epistle was inscripted by the one and only
Alexander Ferdinand Verboso-Malanczuc

P.S: Additionally, it behooves me to predicate the axiomatic instance that many, including myself, greatly apotheosise the authentic components of the quintessential literature incorporated within your illustrious website. One as sagacious as yourself undoubtedly deserves at most, the highest omnipotent reward and notably, the most memorable guerdon for all your intellectual endeavours and extensive lucubration.

Sir Charles replies:

Mr Verboso-Malathingummy,

What a jolly good thing it is that unemployment is so high these days, and that jobs are at a premium, for one is fortunate to have no less than three fellows of Cambridge, two with graduate degrees, mucking out the stables for a potato a day and a cup of skim milk on Sundays. One asked them to translate your missive from whatever strange and Frenchified argot you speak into the Queen's English.

From what one could read of the translation, after one had dipped it into disinfectants (one did mention these finest minds of Young Britain mucked out the stables, didn't one?), one gathers that the correspondent fancies himself, like most Frenchies, in love with some hapless young woman. Well, attendez-voo, you. The sort of mooning you describe might go over very well for a young man in the throes of first love over there, but on this fair isle, none of the men experience calf-love. (Except perhaps in remote and lonely regions of Wales.)

For the love of Methuselah, man. Get off your Londonderry Air and ask the girl out, already.

Secretly hoping she slaps your froggy little face back to the OED, one remains,
Sir Charles Grandiose

Sandra writes:

Dear Sir Charles,

Can you help me write a sympathy note? No one's died. But my grandmother was in a traumatic situation and I don't know quite what to say, although I do wish to cheer her up.

You see, she was stuck in a car wash whose conveyor belt broke down, and she had to sit in her car for over two hours without good ventilation while they struggled to turn off the wax and water and get her out. She's been terribly shaken, but I don't exactly know how to cheer her up without sounding frivolous.

Thank you in advance.

Sandra

Sir Charles replies:

Dear Sandra,

One has the perfect solution.

How about: "Dear Grandmama. I bet you haven't seen so much hot wax since your last moustache removal."

You're quite welcome, in hindsight, and one remains,
Sir Charles Grandiose

Emmanuel  writes:

Dear Sir Charles,

If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?

Emmanuel

Sir Charles replies:

O mindless wonder,

If the two wizened nuts, the sole remainder of your prehensile brain, rattling around in your empty cranium suddenly disappeared, would you miss the pretty maraca music?

Ignoring the fetid smell, one remains,
Sir Charles Grandiose