No cigar

No Cigar by J.B. Pravda

After so many fitful starts&;#8230;.and startling fits, Chalmers
trembled noticeably at the extremities he knew as his hands: could it
be the Grail-like storied prize coveted for ages by
fetishists-turned-costume-archaeologists, now lovingly cradled in those
self-same quaking members; was it that mythic artifactual remnant of
all physical----and therefore universal----amusements, the incipient
adornment of ancient jest, the pedus hilariosus, only whispered of
since Oppolodorus of Sparta (known affectionately by his sobriquet "Old
Odorus")?![Excerpt from the newly rediscovered 'Clown Shoe Lament', by
Sir Percy Bittsch-Jelley]