Poor Kauboi! Jittery and befogged after a night of “editing submissions,” he can barely hold his mug. He sloshes and dribbles, leaving coffee ring after coffee ring on the damask.
Herr Professor watches with amusement as Kauboi tries to pour milk into his fourteenth half-cup.
“It is the fault of this accursed udder-shaped creamer,” Kauboi hisses. “You bought it only because it is ‘camp!’ ”
The Professor smiles and reaches out to scratch Kauboi’s sagittal crest, but he is rebuffed!
He sighs. If his own creation will not accept affection, then perhaps erudition must suffice.
“Udder-shaped creamers are not camp,” says he. “They are kitsch. Perhaps kitsch and twee. At the same time, they are … naff, as the Brits would say! How extraordinary!”
Taking advantage of the coffee-mug rings Kauboi has left on the tablecloth, the Professor quickly scribbles out a Venn diagram to enlighten his patchwork heir:
0. Dame Edna
1. The Irish Rovers
2. Adam West
3. Star Wars
4. Garden gnomes
5. Rocky Horror
6. Paul McCartney
7. David Hasselhoff
8. Ventriloquism
9. Udder-shaped creamers
10. Paul Reubens
11. Commemorative plates
12. _______________
“You see, sweetie, udder-shaped creamers fit here, in area 9, the intersection of the sets kitsch, twee, and naff. Dame Edna, however, fits squarely in kitsch ‘ground zero’…”
The Professor fills in the blanks, oblivious to Kauboi’s smoldering rage:
“At last, we come to the end. Area 13 is simple — there are many things in this world that are neither kitsch nor camp nor twee nor naff.
“But there is only one thing that perfectly fills area 12, the intersection of kitsch and camp and twee and naff, the center of the spinning vortex of cultural effluvia, and that one thing is…”
Unfortunately, we may never know what the good Professor plans to say, because at that moment, Kauboi stabs him in the cheek with a serrated grapefruit spoon. In the ensuing struggle, the answer to 12 is drenched in a slurry of coffee, blood, strawberry jam and extra-spicy ajvar.
ARE YOU IN THE ZONE?
Help reconstruct the Professor’s creation by filling in 12 for fun and prizes.
EXTRA CREDIT:
Provide content for the Professor’s Venn diagram in a fashion more pleasing to you and your minions.
And remember: careful with that grapefruit spoon!