Sunday, February 22, 2009

The Kaufman Joke

A disembodied voice says, “Hello. I am Charlie Kaufman.”

A second voice says, “No, I am.”

A third voice says, “Lies.”

“You're both imposters,” the first voice says.

“Are you joking?” asks the second. “I can't tell if you're joking.”

The third says, “It's impossible that I'm not Charlie Kaufman. I grew up awkward and wrote a movie about John Malkovitch.”

“Those memories are false,” says the first. “Someone implanted them with a brain portal.”

“This is a joke, right?” the second voice asks. “Someone is joking. The punchline will arrive and everything will make sense, but we'll be terribly embarrassed.”

“You're wrong,” says the third to the first. “I implanted those memories when I lived them. Go away already.”

“You're the one who's wrong,” says the first. “I remembered those things until someone erased them. Now I'm a sad puppet with a typewriter.”

Echoing sound of headscratching.

“Wait,” says the second voice. “I'm confused.”

2 comments:

  1. Did you know that Professor Boylan at Colby knows Charlie personally? Though I'm not sure now which one she knows...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hadn't heard that. She probably knows the integrated Charlie entity. I bet he's a fascinating person.

    ReplyDelete