<\/p>\n
Wilhelm Schmendrick, who in the last local election had been appointed President of the Nose Party and had previously served two years as the Minister of Nasal Affairs, was sitting at his desk sorting through the papers for which he would be prosecuted when the officers came. The fat paperwork stacks held listings of all sorts of noses\u2014Caucasian, Italian, Armenian, Jewish, Gypsy, homosexual, Estonian, Pakistani, Mexican\u2014that had been collected by the Ministry. They were organized further by their components: cartilage, base, midpoint, bridge, flesh cluster, phlegmrod, nostrils. All that this noble ministry had gathered, for the good of distributing noses among the general populace that were free of racial bias, and that the institution had so fastidiously documented, was to be brought to nothing by two officers in dunce caps.<\/p>\n
By Cyrus Pacht Nov. 21, 2016 Wilhelm Schmendrick, who in the last local election had been appointed President of the Nose Party and had previously served two years as the Minister of Nasal Affairs, was sitting at his desk sorting through the papers for which he would be prosecuted when the officers came. The fat paperwork stacks held listings of all sorts of noses\u2014Caucasian, Italian, Armenian, Jewish, Gypsy, homosexual, Estonian, Pakistani, Mexican\u2014that had been collected by the Ministry. They were organized further by their components: cartilage, base, midpoint, bridge, flesh cluster, phlegmrod, nostrils. All that this noble ministry had gathered, for the good of distributing noses among the general populace that were free of racial bias, and that the institution had so fastidiously documented, was to be brought to nothing by two officers in dunce caps. The first officer, Belbog, was a massive man, having been a heavyweight boxer as a schoolboy, who was terrifically scared of intimidating anyone with his bulk and thus always feigned a full-body limp. The second was Troy, a tiny cracker of wisdom who was more impressed by, and duly more suited for, his job. \u201cYour Nosiness,\u201d sputtered Belbog nervously when he intruded into Schmendrick\u2019s office, leaning heavily on one knee; his voice was deep and barely audible. \u201cI would like to have a word with you.\u201d \u201cThe preferred nomenclature nowadays,\u201d interjected Troy, \u201cis Your Nasality.\u201d \u201cIrregardless, Your Nasality, I must have a word.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve already told me over ten,\u201d President Schmendrick replied, irascible. \u201cWhat harm can one more do?\u201d He knew the answer to his own question. \u201cMore specifically,\u201d Troy specified, \u201cwe must read to you aloud in a cautious, condescending, and pedantic monotone the intricacies of the interanatomic public law practiced in the town of Katzenellenbogen, as expressed in the region\u2019s landmark consensus-written text, The Intricacies of the Interanatomic Public Law Practiced in the Town of Katzenellenbogen.\u201d \u201cWhat crime have I committed?\u201d President Schmendrick asked. \u201cWhat statute have I violated?\u201d \u201cIn accordance with the Verbal Flogger Handbook,\u201d mumbled Belbog, \u201cwe must tell him, regrettably, the truth.\u201d \u201cThe whole truth?\u201d his partner responded. Even Troy was uneasy. \u201cAnd nothing, bar nothing, but the truth.\u201d \u201cThe truth does not concern me,\u201d Schmendrick said, eagerly flipping through papers. \u201cJust tell me what the law says I did and I will account for it.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s brave, mighty brave of him,\u201d Belbog whispered to Troy. \u201cIsn\u2019t that brave?\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t confess to anything,\u201d Schmendrick said. \u201cI just want to know what I did, then maybe I\u2019ll confess.\u201d \u201cWell, sparing you nothing, it says here that you did everything,\u201d Belbog declared. He grabbed his pancreas painedly. \u201cEverything?\u201d \u201cThe Ministry of Nasal Affairs, under your administration, has broken every law, every statute offered by The Intricacies of the Interanatomic Public Law Practiced in the\u2014\u201d \u201cAnd what has that, pray tell me, to do with me?\u201d \u201cIt says here,\u201d said Troy, pointing at a statute somewhere in the early forties of those listed in The Intricacies, one which, going by the look on President Schmendrick\u2019s face, he had neglected to read, \u201cthat there must not be more than two Jewish noses to a village, due to spatial concerns, in the case of a Jewish population of between three and four in a village of six to eight, given that the Jewish noses in question are of average size, i.e., eight to twelve cubits long, assuming height and width to be conventional with the other races, supposing the possibility that any substantial number of persons, i.e., some adequate and indeed formidable number, purchase nose insurance in ample amounts, with an emphasis on Jewish nosery, such that their revenues in the case of a village with a disproportionately high Jewish nose concentration lead to the rhinal bankruptcy of other villages, causing the olfactory market to rapidly plummet. . .\u201d President Wilhelm Schmendrick was not listening anymore. He had never listened to any inferior officer in his life and he was not going to start now. He harked back to the time of his election, the first one, not to the nasal presidency, but to the Ministry, after he had won the Gogol scholarship at university and put a pair of fancy goggles on that pertinent nose of his. He had buried his nose in books, if the pun be pardoned, about the nature of judicial and inter corporate and interanatomic law, but there were shallow insights and oversights. He realized, with more than a sorry, snotty pang of regret, that in reading The Intricacies of the Interanatomic Public Law Practiced in the Town of Katzenellenbogen, he had given up on page nine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2747,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions\/2747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chicagoshadydealer.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}