Jalopy

There was once a clown who worked at a cir­cus fac­to­ry that made clown parts. This clown was a qual­i­ty tester at the fac­to­ry.

Her first duty in the morn­ing was to make sure that the water-squirt­ing car­na­tions squirt­ed water and that the creme pies were just the right amount of creami­ness. Then she would remove her hair and nose and try on new clown hair and noses. The clown did­n’t real­ly like her own nose; it was a rub­ber sala­mi. When she test­ed the oth­er noses, she would think about how they set off the pol­ka dots on her jump­suit and the spots of col­or that were her cheeks.

Then she would take off her feet and put on the newest clown feet. She test­ed these by slip­ping on banana peels and falling into tubs of pud­ding. The larg­er the splash, the bet­ter the shoes. She want­ed new clown feet too, hers were start­ing to cor­rode a bit.

All in all, her job bred much dis­con­tent. She was a poor clown, unable to afford the excel­lent and effec­tive gad­getry that she con­front­ed her each day. She owned a bright pur­ple jalopy that nev­er worked cor­rect­ly and could only hold three oth­er clowns. Even­tu­al­ly this clown became the dri­ving force in what became known as the Great Bal­loon Ani­mal Upris­ing. After this failed attempt at world dom­i­na­tion was quashed all clowns were com­plete­ly erad­i­cat­ed by vig­i­lantes who were retroac­tive­ly par­doned by pas­sage of the Dehar­le­quin Act.

The clown is dead. Long live the clown.