Saturday, March the 13th, 2004

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A Guide to Pointy Town : Part Two

Yesterday we listed some of the things Pointy Town is famous for. Yet it is no Utopia. For instance, you will find in the town no trace whatsoever of quaintness, wry euphonium rehearsals, toffee, yoghurt, ululating idiots, ornithological paraphernalia, athletics, sawdust, dockyard flamboyance, gutters, hedgerows, jugglers, kissing lovers, zealous x-ray-eyed cadets, & “Visigoth”-brand nougat munchies. But who needs any of those things when there are great architectural marvels to be seen? One of the most striking and gigantic buildings in Pointy Town is the Old Wretched Flophouse. The principal front on the land side is considerably more than one-third of a Javan mile in length, and its wings, in depth, extend six hundred and seventy two feet, down to the edge of the Big Frightening River, this noble watercourse forming the fourth side of the quadrangle. Within the three sides (the Big Frightening River and two wings) are ranges of parallel buildings, which form the magazines, artificers' shops, mast and boat houses, offices, &c.; and in the area within these are four slips for building the largest, and two for the smaller class of Tugboats of Pointlessness. The whole of the outer range of buildings consists of lamentable suites of rooms, and long and filthily ornamented galleries, filled with the natural history and curiosities collected in every part of the globe, and brought by the different navigators which Pointy Town, of late years, has sent forth on discovery. In one room are assembled all the different nautical and mathematical instruments; in another all the models of toy brazil nuts of different nations and different eras; in another a complete library connected with every branch of both human and inhuman knowledge. The library's most treasured item is the manuscript of the first draft of Sepulveda's inane Lines Written Upon First Listening To ‘Dr Bogenbroom’ by Jethro Tull.