Wile E. Coyote v. Deletion
An animated dog (shades of brown) and a cartoon bird (shades of purple) passing the time in an orange landscape under a yellow sky.
WILE E. COYOTE: They tossed it out.
ROADRUNNER: Meep. Meep?
WEC: They questioned our numbers. They didn’t see how we arrived at $38.75 million.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Now we’ll never know.
RR: Meep. Meep.
WEC: Thank you, but a genius should have seen this coming.
RR: Meeeeep.
WEC: Sure, I’m literate. I’ve read The History of Speed, cook books, and instruction manuals aplenty.
RR: Meep.
WEC: That was all just following instructions.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Yes, I did put together a UNIVAC mainframe computer–analog switchboard and everything.
RR: Meep. Meep.
WEC: It spit out information. I don’t think it was capable of downloading or saving video files.
RR: Meep. Meep.
WEC: Yes, I guess the cliff was always there like a proverbial rug.
RR: Meep.
WEC: No, not even Prometheus faced deletion.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Easy for you to say–you’re the one with a beak.
RR: Meeeeeeeeep!
WEC: The desert is already painted and plastered with my silhouette.
RR: Meep?
WEC: I guess they’ll destroy the landscape too–do what even atomic energy could not fathom.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Hyperbolic?
RR: Meep!
WEC: Maybe you can’t imagine what lies before us. This isn’t a flattening or a Sisyphean boulder. Nor is it an explosion. Did you even see Oppenheimer?
RR: Meep. Meep.
WEC: Asteroid City?
RR: Meep.
WEC: Yes, I know how much Barbie made. Concern yourself with Tom and Jerry’s box office.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Money in reserve? I gave nearly all of it to ACME.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Dignity? I built a giant robot of myself and called it an idiot for failing in my likeness. We are beyond the parameters of self-respect.
RR: Meep.
WEC: If anything, I have been committed fully to the bit, dangerously so. I have risked everything, but now I see that everything was never enough. Perhaps being a cartoon I misunderstood the very fabric of the word.
RR: Meep. Meep.
WEC: But I have been a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Yes, Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” still stands up, and I stand on business.
RR: Meep?
WEC: I couldn’t see it before, but I am experiencing a moment of clarity–
RR: Meep.
WEC: Yes, perhaps seeing my old friend Joni Mitchell at the Grammys helped free me from the white lines of the highway.
RR: Meep?!?
WEC: Yes.
RR: Meep. meep.
WEC: They don’t realize it now. I wouldn’t expect ACME to see it, much less Warner Brothers. Don’t you see it clear as day?
RR: Meep.
C: Deletion is how I win.
RR: Meep.
WEC: A coyote needs only to win once to be a genius. That’s what bundles all those failures into a unified process.
RR: Meep.
WEC: Are you with me, old friend of a feather?
RR: Meep. No.
[A note on the above exchange: the Coyote in me wrote it, but the Roadrunner hit publish when no one else would, especially Warner Brothers. Meep. Meep.]
