"...rather long," said the volcano.
Old man Wimsy spat out his wood and said, "Long, you know, that's funny. A lot of people use the word long and yet well it's funny not that many people know too much about where the word long came from - pretty funny. Hilarious really. Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh ha ha. Oh, ha ha ha. Oh ha. Oh ha. Oh ha ha ha."
"Tell us the tale of long!" cried the volcano and a nearby horizontal line not appearing in this story.
"Oh, OKAY," said old man Wimsy with a disgruntled head. "Long began many moons ago, back before we had all these fancy saunas and dogs and all this. There used to be a woman who would do nothing but bathe... but I digress. "In any case, there was this Jerry fellow, who happened to be (yep!) a scientist. So he gets up to the front of the room and the other scientists are like 'what the......'. That's when he pulls out this curtain, right?"
The volcano nodded with dynamic, furious vigour. "Yes."
"So out comes the curtain," concluded old man Wimsy with a flourish.
T H E E N D
"Just kiddin'," old man Wimsy said with a chuckle filled to the brim
with wryness. A little may even have overflowed. "In any case it doesn't
matter. On with our tale. The curtain came out is all I'm saying."
"Alright. The curtain is officially Out," the volcano stated.
"So we're agreed - the curtain's out. So the other scientists are looking at Jerry and thinking 'what the......'. I mean literally they are looking up there and thinking 'what the......'. So there's just a room full of all these scientists all sitting there, thinking, 'what the......'. Pretty good story so far, eh?"
"Mighty fine," cried the volcano.
"So the curtain's out. Now, apparently, this curtain's actually some sort of inter-dimensional-gateway-dealie. So, what does Jerry do? He goes through. So now the scientists are REALLY thinking 'what the......'. And Jerry's off in the other dimension. This other dimension is pretty much the same except they still write 'ae' as one letter. So naturally Jerry is spending all his time just desparately trying to SURVIVE," old man Wimsy screamed in desparation.
"Ye gods," croaked the volcano.
"Ye gods indeed. Ye gods indeed. Jerry is taken before the council of their elders, all of whom just-so-happen to be blue bat-wolves made of leftover spokes and wool. The wolf-elders push Jerry into a pool of curious yet pink syrup and dive in after him. So then one of the wolves is designated the 'bread' and another the 'mantle'. Naturally, the other wolves try to put the 'bread' on the 'mantle'. Somehow, this communicates to Jerry that he should somehow travel beyond the cosmic box and steal the mystic lozenge. But Jerry just isn't in the mood. So he leaves. And when he came back, we had the word 'long'. Before that we had to say 'really not short'. So I guess it was worth it..................." said old man Wimsy with a sigh.
"That was the best story EVER," said the volcano - and indeed it was.