Captain Underpants

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that's a charming little group," he said, pointing. in a grassy bay between tall clumps of mediterranean heather, two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focused attention of scientists intent on a labor of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game. "charming, charming!" the d.h.c. repeated sentimentally.

roy and silo taught tango how to sing for them when she was hungry. they fed her food from their beaks. they snuggled her in their nest at night. tango was the very first penguin in the zoo to have two daddies. at night the three penguins returned to their nest. there they snuggled together like all the other penguins in the penguin house

and all the other animals in the zoo and all the families in the big city around them. they went to sleep. so, words can be like x-rays, if you use them properly–they'll go through anything. you read and you're pierced. everyone suspects himself of at least one cardinal virtue, and this is mine: i am one of the few honest people

that i have ever known. what could be more full of meaning? - for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. from thence it is the storm of god's quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. from thence it is the god of breezes

fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow. dear mr. mccarthy, i am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the drake school board. i am among those american writers whose books have been destroyed

in the now famous furnace of your school. (they literally burnt vonnegut’s and otherauthor’s books in this school's furnace.) certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. this is extraordinarily insulting to me. the news from drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. you now hold the only copy in your hands.

(except for this one) i gather from what i read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. i am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old,

who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. i have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. they have all turned out well. two of them are farmers. i am a combat infantry veteran from world war ii, and hold a purple heart. i have earned whatever i own by hard work.

i have never been arrested or sued for anything. i am so much trusted with young people and by young people that i have served on the faculties of the university of iowa, harvard,and the city college of new york. every year i receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. if you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity

when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books– books you hadn’t even read. you should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped

to make decisions and to survive. again, you have insulted me, and i am a good citizen, and i am very real. kurt vonnegut, on the burning of slaughterhouse-five. and today the white man is faced head on with what is happening on the black continent, africa. look at the artifacts being discovered there, that are proving over and over again,

how the black man had great, fine, sensitive civilizations before the white man was out of the caves. the past and present wilt — i have fill'd them, emptied them, and proceeded to fill my next fold of the future. listener up there! what have you to confide to me? look in my face while i snuff the sidle of everything. (talk honestly, no one else hears you, andi stay only a minute longer.)

do i contradict myself? very well then, i contradict myself, (i am large, i contain multitudes.) the spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me,he complains of my gab and my loitering. i too am not a bit tamed, i too am untranslatable, i sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world the last scud of day holds back for me, it flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. you will hardly know who i am or what i mean, but i shall be good health to you nevertheless, and filter and fibre your blood. it was when curiosity about gatsby was at its highest that the lights in his house failed to go on one saturday night — and, as obscurely as it had begun,

his career as trimalchio was over. only gradually did i become aware that the automobiles which turned expectantly into his drive stayed for just a minute and then drove sulkily away. wondering if he were sick i went over to find out — an unfamiliar butler with a villainous face squinted at me suspiciously from the open door. “is mr. gatsby sick?”

“nope.” after a pause he added “sir” in a dilatory, grudging way. i hadn't seen him around and i was rather worried. "tell him mr. carraway came over.” “who?” he demanded rudely. “carraway.” “carraway. all right, i’ll tell him.” abruptly he slammed the door.

my finn informed me that gatsby had dismissed every servant in his house a week ago and replaced them with half a dozen others, who never went into west egg village to be bribed by the tradesmen, but ordered moderate supplies over the telephone. the grocery boy reported that the kitchen looked like a pigsty, and the general opinion in the village

was that the new people weren’t servants at all. next day gatsby called me on the phone. “going away?” i inquired. “no, old sport.” “i hear you fired all your servants.” “i wanted somebody who wouldn’t gossip. daisy comes over quite often — in the afternoons.” so the whole caravansary had fallen in like a card house at the disapproval in her eyes.

“they’re some people wolfsheim wanted to do something for. they’re all brothers and sisters. they used to run a small hotel.” “i see.” he was calling up at daisy’s request — would i come to lunch at her house tomorrow? miss baker would be there. half an hour later daisy herself telephoned

and seemed relieved to find that i was coming. something was up. and yet i couldn’t believe that they would choose this occasion for a scene — especially for the rather harrowing scene that gatsby had outlined in the garden. when i opened the door, this prostitute was standing there. she had a polo coat on, and no hat.

she was sort of a blonde, but you could tell she dyed her hair. she wasn’t any old bag though. “how do you do,” i said. suave as hell, boy. my eyes are glued together. feet blistered. what have i done? at least i’m not in jail.

lay a bit to get the latitude and longitude. i’ll never do this again. seems like i had something to do with cattle. and with drink. and with several parties. and pints of cider. claws the brain apart. i don’t like this when i don’t even know what month it is.

who’s been meddling with the dresser and pulling out the drawers? and i’ve only got a sheet and coat over me. marion? just a mattress on her springs. he sat up. rubbed the flakes out of the eyes. the doorbell ringing. close the watertight compartments.

latch the hatches. seal up, we’re going down you mad bastards. the back door. and when he came to the place where the wild things are they roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws

til max said “be still!” and tamed them with a magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all and made him king of all wild things. "look, lorax," i said. there's no cause for alarm.

i chopped just one tree. i am doing no harm. i'm being quite useful. this thing is a thneed. a thneed's a fine-something-that-all-people-need! it's a shirt. it's a sock. it's a glove. it's a hat.

but it has other uses. yes, far beyond that. you can use it for carpets. for pillows! for sheets! or curtains! or covers for bicycle seats!" the lorax said,"sir! you are crazy with greed.

there is no one on earth who would buy that fool thneed!" then yertle the turtle was perched so high, he could see fourty miles from his throne in the sky! "hooray!" shouted yertle. "i'm the king of the trees! i'm king of the birds! i'm king of the bees!

i'm king of the butterflies! king of the air! ah, me! what a throne! what a wonderful chair! i'm yertle the turtle! oh, marvelous me! for i am the ruler of all that i see!" i felt a great leaping of joy in my heart.

i knew just what i'd do! i unloaded my cart. he walked in the shallow tide of leaves stumbling. and in the middle of the strangeness, a familiarity. his foot hit something that rang dully. he moved his hand on the ground, a yard this way, a yard that. the railroad track. the track that came out of the city

and rusted across the land, through forests and woods, deserted now, by the river. it was an abundant vermont lunch, more like a dinner, and at first it had no more reality than a meal in the theater. leper ate almost nothing, but my own appetite deepened my disgrace.

i ate everything within reach, and then had to ask, face aflame with embarrassment, for more to be passed to me. but that led to this hard-to-believe transformation: mrs. lepellier began to be reconciled to me because i liked her cooking. toward the end of the meal, she became able to speak to me directly

in her high but gentle and modulated voice, and i was so clumsy and fumbling and embarrassed that my behavior throughout lunch amounted to one long and elaborate apology which, when she offered me a second dessert, i saw she had accepted. “he’s a good boy underneath,” she must have thought, “a terrible temper, no self-control, but he's sorry, and he is a good boy underneath.”

leper was closer to the truth. but the very next minute i proved he was wrong. for, just at that minute, a chap came along, and he thought the thneed i had knitted was great. he happily bought it for three ninety-eight. i laughed at the lorax, "you poor stupid guy! you never can tell what some people will buy." the law forbade sunday drinking; and this had delivered the saloon- keepers

into the hands of the police, and made an alliance between them necessary. the law forbade prostitution; and this had brought the "madames" into the combination. it was the same with the gambling-house keeper and the poolroom man, and the same with any other man or woman who had a means of getting "graft," and was willing to pay over a share of it:

the green-goods man and the highwayman, the pickpocket and the sneak thief, and the receiver of stolen goods, the seller of adulterated milk, of stale fruit and diseased meat, the proprietor of unsanitary tenements, the fake doctor and the usurer, the beggar and the"pushcart man," the prize fighter and the professional slugger,

the race-track "tout," the procurer, the white-slave agent, and the expert seducer of young girls. all of these agencies of corruption were banded together, and leagued in blood brotherhood with the politician and the police; more often than not they were one and the same person,

—the police captain would own the brothel he pretended to raid, the politician would open his headquarters in his saloon. at length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. he softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. there was a religious half light. near the threshold he stopped,

horror-stricken at the sight of a thing. he was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a column-like tree. the corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. the eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen

on the side of a dead fish. the mouth was open. its red had changed to an appalling yellow. over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. one was trundling some sort of bundle along the upper lip. the youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. he was for moments turned to stone before it. he remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes.

the dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. he feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him. “so tell me, harry,” said dumbledore.

“your scar. . . has it been hurting at all?” harry raised a hand unconsciously to his forehead and rubbed the lightning-shaped mark. “no,” he said, “and i’ve been wondering about that. i thought it would be burning all the time now voldemort’s getting so powerful again.” he glanced up at dumbledore and saw that he as wearing a satisfied expression. “i, on the other hand, thought otherwise,” said dumbledore.

“lord voldemort has finally realized the dangerous access to his thoughts and feelings you have been enjoying. it appears that he is now employing occlumency against you.” the next morning i woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as i still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies

were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, i thought i would not go to school. i thought how i would have a malenky bit longer in the bed, an hour or two say, and then get dressed nice and easy, perhaps even having a splosh about in the bath, make toast for myself and slooshy the radio or read the gazetta, all on my oddy knocky. "but i don't want to go among mad people," alice remarked.

"oh, you can't help that," said the cat: "we'reall mad here. i'm mad. you're mad." "how do you know i'm mad?" said alice. "you must be," said the cat, "or you wouldn't have come here." “i say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. she has committed no crime,

she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with.” his voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. and in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose,

ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called piggy. reinforcements have arrived. the vacancies have been filled and the sacks of straw in the huts are already booked. some of them are old hands, but there are twenty-five men

of a later draught from the base. they are about two years younger than us. kropp nudges me: "seen the infants?" i nod. we stick out our chests, shave in the open, shove our hands in our pockets, inspect the recruits and feel ourselves stone-age veterans. for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them

to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. i know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. and yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used,

as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, gods image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of god, as it were in the eye. many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

'tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. we should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that seasoned life

of man preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole impression a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal essence, the breath of wisdom itself,

slays an immortality rather than a life. believe it lords and commons, if it be desired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer cause then your own mild, free, and human government. for books are not absolutely dead things.