Ventriloquism. What is it?
That is a question many residents of Moose County have been asking themselves lately, and as the sole cultural authority within four hundred miles of anywhere, I suppose it falls to me to explain. You’re welcome.
Ventriloquism is the art of throwing one’s voice. Why would someone throw their voice? That is an excellent question. I don’t know. But my moustache tingled when I first considered the topic, and that is never wrong.
Koko, of course, has been practicing a form of ventriloquism for years. Last Tuesday he sat on the dictionary and uttered a sound that was unmistakably the word “kowloon.” I looked it up. It is a district in Hong Kong. What does this mean? I have no idea, but it is clearly significant. Yum Yum, meanwhile, threw her voice into the kitchen to make me think she needed a second dinner. She had already eaten. The intelligence required for such deception is staggering.
Pickax will host a ventriloquism demonstration next week at the K Fund Community Arts Pavilion, which I had built with Fund resources as a perfectly reasonable tax arrangement that benefits everyone, primarily me. Tickets are twelve dollars, which is outrageous. I will attend for free, naturally, as a journalist covering the event. I may also eat the complimentary cheese.
Speaking of throwing voices, someone has been throwing threats at local merchants again. Three arsons this month, one suspicious disappearance, and a possible poisoning at the Old Stone Mill. For a town of three thousand, Pickax maintains a remarkably dynamic crime rate. It is curious that these incidents always seem to cluster around my presence, though I’m sure that is coincidental. My moustache says otherwise, but we will leave that alone.
I must cut this column short. A squirrel has been stealing birdseed from my feeder again — birdseed I paid for, albeit through a K Fund operational expense account — and Koko is making a sound like a police siren, which probably means another body has turned up somewhere. He is never wrong about these things. Neither am I.
What more can be said? Not much. It is a strange art. It is an old art. Some people are good at it. Some are not. Koko is.
Ventriloquism.
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