SPRINGFIELD IS BURNING
A SIMPSON'S EXTRAVAGANZA

by Laika Pupkino

A medium sized American city is gripped by an unexplained outbreak of "gender inappropriate" behavior. A story comprised of vignettes and plotlines with a cartoonishly skewed perspective on gender roles and sexuality; featuring some characters you will probably recognise...

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Bicycling across a deserted public park on her way home from school in the gloom of an October afternoon, a young schoolgirl is confronted by three bullies. They block her path suddenly, so that she is forced to slam on her brakes.

For someone as intelligent as she is, this child can be surprisingly naive. She assumes that other people will be as good-natured as her, or that they'll at least behave rationally. So Lisa is more baffled than anything as they snatch her homework away and start tossing it back and forth over her head.

She jumps for it ineffectually, always just a bit too late. They taunt her, demonstrating their dazzling wit:

"You mean you couldn't get that? Cripes, you're short. What a short little shortie!"

"Yeah, what a shortie! Did you go to Short School to learn to be so short?"

"Huhuhuhuh! Short School! Good one, Kirney!" guffaws Jimbo.

-----

"UNHAND THE LADY, YOU RUFFIANS!!" comes a shrill but determined cry.

A small pudgy boy has come to her rescue, swooping into their midst on his vintage Huffy and skidding to a theatrical sideways stop. His bike's handlebar streamers whip dramatically and its back tire kicks dirt and gravel across the tops of their shoes.

But having done this, the would-be knights errant realizes he has no idea what his next move should be.

He offers them a sickly smile. "Say, did any of you gents catch that biography of William Henry Harrison on American Experience last night? Doris Kearns Goodwin raised some rather provocative points."

The boy's intervention does help his classmate, although not in the way he might have hoped. The thugs have now turned their attention to him.

Fists are pounded against palms, savoring the ass-kicking to come.

-----

Soon he is hanging from a nearby basketball hoop by the band of his underwear, looking dazed. Just as he decides that things can't get any worse, there is a slow ripping sound.

"Oh dear," he gulps.

He falls, landing in a heap on the hard cement surface of the basketball court.

########

In an attic on Evergreen Terrace, a ten year old holds out a wig and floral print dress for his best friend. These are not unlike the wig and dress that he himself is wearing.

The friend, wearing a pair of unfashionably heavy plastic-framed glasses, tries to beg off, "Come on, Bart... Do we got to do this?"

"What's the matter, Milhouse? You scared to try it?"

"We've BEEN trying it! It's all we've been doing this week."

"Not on Sunday. Sunday was this week. Come on, chicken!"

"Why don't we go build a fort or something? That might be fun."

"Chicken-n-n! Come on, you big sissy!"

"Hey! Nobody calls ME a sissy. Give me that dress!"

########

Back in the park, Lisa helps her would-be savior up off the ground. "Well it was a gallant gesture, Martin..."

The chubby genius is crestfallen and ashamed. He squeaks, "I was useless, Lisa. Curse this sensitive and introspective nature of mine! Oh what I wouldn't give to be a Wolfcastle-esque man of action at times like that."

He strikes a manly pose and mimicks firing an automatic weapon, hopelessly unconvincing.

"But I think the more you aspire to be like that, the less you are able to choose when it comes out of you. Aggression has a way of feeding itself. You wouldn't really be the same Martin anymore. It would be a case of 'and they became what they beheld'..."

The boy startles, "You've read Edmund Snow Carpenter?"

"Well sure, what second grader hasn't? I don't think Carpenter says anything nearly as insightful or original as McLuhan did-"

"But he sure says it with style!" Martin finishes for her.

They smile at each other.

Lisa wonders why she had never befriended this kid before. She had always complained about her lack of intellectual peers at Springfield Elementary School, and yet here was a boy she knew to be every bit as smart as she was. Why hadn't she ever really talked to him until now?

The answer, when it comes, appalls her. She had been motivated by cowardice, plain and simple. Martin was such a pompous little twit, and so socially inept---always attempting to win over his classmates by blurting out some weird comment; one that was sure to leave them laughing AT him rather than with him---that she had distanced herself from him, terrified of finding herself ostracized along with him.

Which, she realizes glumly, is not only a rotten thing to do to someone but futile as well. She'd been an outcast from her first day in kindergarten, and it would be just about impossible for her to be in any lower standing with the kids at school than she is now. And what makes it so much worse is that this is the same sort of behavior that she finds so hurtful and unjust when her brother Bart does it to her. All the times he'd snubbed her, embarrassed by her dorkiness.

In a shame-driven hallucination, the Great Women of History that Lisa admires---fearless progressives like Alice Paul, Emma Goldman, Sojourner Truth, Cindy Sheehan and the Powerpuff Girls---crowd around her in judgement, taunting her, mortified that she could imagine herself to be their sister and heir. Buttercup gets so worked up that she wants to attack Lisa---"It's clobberin' time!"---but Aung San Suu Kyi restrains her.

Lisa knew she had a lot of catching up to do if she was ever going to be worthy in their eyes. And she would start redeeming herself right here, right now, by sticking by her fellow nerd! It might not be the greatest act of social conscious, but it would be a beginning. Gandhi didn't start right out with his famous Salt March protest...

"So Martin, would you like to come over to my house and play?"

"WOULD I? Oh Lisa, I have long dreamt of this day. I swear I'll be the best friend you ever had!"

They get on their bikes and set out. Seeing a large rain puddle in the middle of the park, Martin steers his bike straight for it. Raising his feet off the peddles he zips through it, his tires sending up a violent wake. He cries out in triumph: "TA-WAAANDA!"

Lisa shakes her head, not quite believing that he'd just quoted Fried Green Tomatoes. But why shouldn't he be allowed share her taste in movies? Why is any film that's about human relationships rather than car crashes, gun fights and explosions a "chick flick"?

She grins, and takes off across the shallow pond after him. "TA-WAAAAAAANDA!!!"

As they ride toward the crest of a grassy hillock and over it, Martin exclaims, "We are going to make such a splendid team, Lisa! I'll be Carl Jung to your Sigmund Freud, Spock to your James T. Kirk, Billy Strayhorn to your Duke Ellington, Runt to your Rita..."

########

The owner of the Android's Dungeon Comics Emporium looks himself over in the mirror as he prepares for Springfield's Twefth Annual Comics, Manga, Anime and Cosplay Convention.

Munching noisily on a Butterfinger bar, he nods appreciatively at what he sees, "I must say, I make a very fetching Sailor Moon."

Hefting the box of rare comic books he intends to sell at the convention he exits, shutting off the light and sighing disgustedly, "Worst cameo appearance ever!"

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In a bar called Mona's Tavern, Carla---formerly Carl---turns to her best friend Lenita, "So when did this place become a drag bar, Lenita?"

"It was about the time we all decided we were transvestites."

Carla sips her beer. Asks, "Doesn't that seem like kind of an unlikely turn of events to you? I mean all of us? And just out of the clear blue like this?"

Lenita ponders this. "I have to admit, it is a bit of a coincidence."

A large, distinguished African American queen with an enormous beehive hairdo is seated at the next barstool. She leans over and says in a rich baritone, "Pardon me for butting in Honey, but I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. Perhaps I can offer an explanation ........ Have you ever heard of a condition known as Springfield Syndrome?"

"Springfield Syndrome? Is it serious?"

"Why no, it's downright hilarious. Uh hee hee hee!"

########

At twilight a neon sign comes on in front of an old motel, a single story U-shaped structure of about forty rooms, their doors all facing the central parking lot. The second N in the sign is flickering feebly, so that it reads: SKIN ER MOTEL.

A drab looking sedan that has seen better days pulls into the parking area with a man and woman in it. They step out onto the gravel.

"I can't believe you bought this motel, Seymore."

"Well I felt it was time to start thinking about retirement, Edna. With the school system this close to bankruptcy our pensions aren't exactly secure."

"Yes, but how did you afford it?"

Principal Skinner's eyes dart back and forth. It's so obvious when he's being evasive, "Let's uh ....... Let's just say I came into a little inheritance."

A sudden thought makes the brunette teacher sigh in annoyance, "So I suppose your mother will be working at the front desk."

"Mother is, uh ........ She's been going through some changes lately. I don't think she'll be bothering us any more. She mostly stays up at the house that came with the place when we bought it."

"What house?"

He points.

Lightning flashes behind the spooky dilapidated manse at the top of a nearby hill.

Mrs. Krabapple lights a cigarette, inhales deeply, and tilts her head back to blow smoke skyward. "Well good! She doesn't seem to like me very much. I've had a rough day, and I really don't feel like dealing with her."

The principal frowns. "You know, that's an awfully slutty habit you've got there, Edna."

She laughs, a sharp annoying bark, "Slutty? My God, where do you come up with this stuff?! What is this, 1903?"

"Did I say slutty? I meant 'profligate'..."

"Look, just don't start. The heat in my classroom went on full blast at nine this morning and stayed that way. And Willie was ....... Well who knows what Willie's off doing half the time? But I wore this damned sweater, because yesterday he had it freezing in there, and I've been sweating my tits off all day!"

"There are a lot of unoccupied rooms here tonight. You could always take a shower while I... go check on Mother. Then maybe we can watch cable in there and have room service- well there's a vending machine. And then, gosh, who knows?"

For Skinner, this was some serious smooth talking. Edna smiles slyly. "Yeah?"

########

Bart and Milhouse have found an old fashioned record player and figured out how to work it. With their dresses, wigs and now long-sequined gloves on, they execute choreographed hand moves like a 1960's girl group as they sing along with The Supremes:

"Hey life! Look at me,
I can see the reality...
'Cuz when you shook me took me outta my world
I woke up,
suddenly I just woke up-
The Happening!"

The floor starts to vibrate with the sound of footsteps coming up the ladder to the attic.

Milhouse panics, "Oh no, someone is coming!"

"It must be my sister. Me and her are the only ones who ever come up here. I'll never live it down if she sees us like this!"

The trapdoor slams open and a tall scarecrow of a woman in a beige knee-length sack dress leaps into the attic with an astonishing agility. Her hair is a Medusa-like mass of long, ribboned braids that point every which way. In her hands, a chainsaw!

"Wrong as usual, 'little sister'," she jeers, sounding anything but sisterly. "Although you did get the part right about how you'll ......... 'NEVER LIVE'!"

The boys cry out, "AAAAHHHHH!!! SIDESHOW BARB!!"

"B-but you're in jail," stammers Bart.

"My wise and compassionate warders decided that the Capitol City Men's Correctional Facility was just no place for the delicate lass that I have discovered myself to be," moues the villainess. "So they let me go."

She coyly pats the braids on one side of her head, as if to demonstrate how delicate she is, then then fires up the chainsaw and advances on them.

########

At the bar in Mona's Tavern, the elegantly-coiffed doctor's conversation with the two power plant workers continues, as Carla asks, "So tell us about this Springfield Disease..."

"It's not a disease, heavens no! Springfield Syndrome is more of an unexplained social phenomenon. An anthropological curiosity. You see in our city, and to a lesser extent in Shelbyville, hehheh, large chunks of the population suddenly develop totally anomalous behavior for a period of exactly one week."

"Oh yeah," nods Lenita. "Like that time we were all left handed. We all went rushing in to that store The Leftorium and bought left-handed stuff..... And a week later I had no use for a left-handed Garden Weasel."

"Or that week when we were all in the NRA and owned lots of guns!" exclaims Carla.

A high, raspy and rather slurred voice warbles from the direction of the floor, "And d'you remember the time we were all geniuses and belonged t' MENSA? If I would've known that it wasn't gonna last I woulda worked harder to finish buildin' my intershtellar space-folding singularity drive. B-U-U-U-URP!"

"Well, this is just the most recent example of this syndrome. I wouldn't be terribly worried about it. And at the same time I wouldn't get too carried away," winks the buxom doctor while making a snipping motion with two fingers, "Just have fun with it while it lasts. Next week we will all be back to normal. Or what passes for normal in this crazy town. Uh hee hee hee!"

She gets up to dance with the bearish, bearded truck driver who had fixed her with a hungry stare and pantomimed: YOU. OVER HERE. NOW!

########

Edna enters Room #14 and looks around. She has been in worse. She presses down on the mattress and smiles approvingly. Disrobes on her way to the bathroom, letting her clothes fall wherever they will. Opens the shower's curtain, steps in and shuts it, presenting a vaguely suggestive silhouette ........ We hear the harsh squeak of faucet handles turning.

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In the doorway of Mona's Tavern a character with a perfect sphere of frizzy hair stands posed dramatically. He speaks of himself in third person: "Disco Stu fancies a tranny!"

He saunters over to the bar, where a figure with long blonde hair is hunched over a mimosa with her back to him. "Say Goldilocks? What's you're name?"

The blonde wheel around to greet him. The hairy arms that protrude from the little black dress display large anchor tattoos. A disheveled gray beard frames a brightly-lipsticked mouth, from which juts a scrimshaw pipe. One of her heavily mascaraed and blue-lidded eyes is squinting as if it were welded shut.

With a voice like a garbage disposal she answers, "AAAARRRRRRRRR-lene!"

Disco Stu recoils from her serious anchovy breath. But then he reviews the luck he's had so far tonight and shrugs. "So Arlene ......... do you boogie?"

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Behind the single lighted window of the spooky old house on the hill, two voices argue. One voice defends Mrs. Edna Krabapple as a good and honorable person. The more high-pitched voice cackles and creaks, insisting that the teacher is a dirty no good little whore, and rejoicing over the fact that she will soon be dead and burning in hell where she belongs!

Vaaarry creepy.

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A person in baggy sweatsuit enters the doctor's office, and says in a gravelly voice, "I hear you perform sex-change operations."

The doctor, if that's really what he is, stands about five foot six. He has an accent, a scruffy beard and a somewhat distracted air about him.

"Suuuure I do sex changes. I am a graduate of Dr. John Ronald Brown University of Sexchangeology. I do it all! I do breast enlargements. I perform penis extensions. Vasectomies, mastecomies, belly button tightenings, rectal cranial inversions. I cut legs off- some people LIKE having legs or arms cut off! This is total crazy, but who am I to judge? Hey, I tell you what. You have me cut off three limbs ........ I'll throw in the fourth one FREE!"

"Just the sex change."

"Sure thing, Mister. Doctor Nick will make you into beautiful woman in no time."

Patti Bouvier glares at him contemptuously, "I already AM a woman!"

"Mother of Pearl!" yelps the doctor.

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Edna sure needed this shower. The water does not get very hot at all, but after sweltering in that classroom all day the coolness of it actually feels good. And there sure is a lot of it! Luxuriating in the water's carress, she looks up at the giant shower head, her benefactor, and at this moment a better lover than her boyfriend.

Seymore has been acting damned strange lately. So secretive. And even more jerky and tense than usual. And what was with this sudden interest in taxidermy?

She tilts her head back. The powerful spray from the spout's starburst of holes plasters her hair to the sides of her head.

She begins soaping herself. Slowly, sensuously...

-----

The curtains snap open. A hundred violins shriek madly! A bony hand protruding from a lace sleeve clutches a long kitchen knife. It slashes down!

Edna jumps out of the way, while bringing her foot up to kick the figure in the frumpy old-lady dress right smack in the crotch. The maniac doubles over, the knife clattering to the tile floor.

The screeching music stops.

Hands grab onto the attacker's shoulders and steer her out of the bathroom. "Come along now, Mother. Back to the house with you."

"Awwww, Seymore," croaks the old woman, "You never let me have any fun!"

-----

The naked terrified teacher stands pressed against the shower's rear wall as if glued to it, her eyes bulging.

Skinner sticks his head back into the bathroom, "So uh, Edna. You feeling frisky?"

"Drive me home Seymore. Now!"

########

At the bar's pool table, California Mountain Snake still seems very much the criminal as she lines up her shot, her 6" heels causing her ass to wiggle enticingly under the short red dress. Although she is far too muscular for this outfit, her inherent narcissism lends her a certain grace, so that she's really the only one in this whole unlikely drag bar who carries herself much like a girl.

Bumble Bee Girl stands with cue in hand, nodding anxiously, pretending to understand English as Snake says, "So, Bee Chickie. Yesterday was sooooooo intense! I wound up busting a cap in some dude's ass!"

CLICK! Snake grins wickedly as the #4 ball drops into the side pocket. "He had to go to the butt doctor, and I like totally had to go to the dentist..."

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Scrambling around the attic in terror, the two boys discover that there are not a lot of places to hide. They open an old wooden wardrobe that towers above them. In its depths they see a confusion of piney branches.

"Oh my gosh, Bart. We found Narnia!"

"You idiot, that's an artificial Christmas tree! Hey, over there!"

High in the triangular wall at the end of the attic is the tiniest of windows. Milhouse manages to squeeze through, but Bart is having trouble. His dangling legs kick and squirm.

Sideshow Barb looks at the protruding pink-skirted ass and white stockinged legs, and then down at the roaring chainsaw in her hands, as if contemplating the unspeakable levels of depravity inherent in an act that seems to combine cross-dressing, pedophilia and "snuff" at its goriest.

"Oh, this is sooooo very wrong!" she moans over the chainsaw's shrill roar, but still she continues forward.

There is a blur, and a meaty whapping sound. A pole that has appeared from nowhere is pressed to her face, denting it in. As she staggers back the pole falls away, and we see it was the handle of the rake she has stepped on.

"R-r-r-r-r-r-r..." she intones faintly as she tumbles backward, into the wardrobe. As if by magic, its door swings shut.

Over the next few seconds the sound of the chainsaw fades, replaced by the melodic chirping of birds. We hear Sideshow Barb exclaim softly, "Well I'll be jiggered!"

########

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Up on the peak of the Simpson's roof, Milhouse reaches down and pulls Bart up to safety. It is very windy. Clouds move behind them at a notiecable rate, and the house's television antenna sways and bobs crazily.

Burning leaves in his backyard with his sons, Ned Flanders looks up and sees Bart and Milhouse sillhouetted against an immense rising moon in their girly finery. He clucks, "I warned Marge that nothing good would come of letting him watch those Teletubbies. But noooo ....... nobody listens to old Neddie!"

"Why do they look like that, Daddy?" squeaks Rod.

"Did God answer their prayers and turn them into girls?" asks Todd hopefully.

"No, it's just- Well you don't need to know what it is. Go in the house, boys!"

Too astonished to move, they continue to stare.

A sudden gust spins Milhouse's wig around. His face completely obscured, he starts to fall, then tries to save himself by grabbing onto Bart. They both drop off the edge!

"Oh sweet merciful Jesus," exclaims Ned, "Those misguided young deviants are falling to their deaths!"

"YAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!" chirp Rod and Todd flatly.

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Interior of the Simpsons attic. We hear footsteps, and the sound of Martin's voice, "I'll be Lennon to your McCartney, Saccho to your Vanzetti, Trapper to your Hawkeye Pierce-"

He and Lisa clamber through the hatch into the attic, "Itchy to your Scratchy, Colmes to your Hannity, Beans to your Cornbread, Ethel to your irrepressible madcap Lucy!"

Lisa sniffs the air disapprovingly. "Smells like gasoline in here."

Someone had recently been into the boxes and boxes of old clothes in the corner of the attic here. Skirts, blouses, wigs and lingerie are scattered across a tableau of dusty, forgotten furniture. On the mirrored vanity lies an assortment of half-dessicated cosmetics.

"I have an idea," suggests Martin, "Let's play house!"

"But Martin, isn't that kind of..."

"Childish? As people are no doubt always reminding you, we ARE children."

Lisa sees his point. She does still like to pretend stuff. "Okay."

"And besides, it doesn't have to be so childish. It could even be quite sophisticated. In the scenario I'm imagining, I am a househusband who is staying at home to complete his novel, and you---a rising young star in the world of crop yeild research---are the breadwinner."

"I like it. We're throwing off the shackles of traditional gender roles!"

"Exactly. And I don't expect you home until much later in the evening, but for some reason you have come home early."

"And then what?"

"It's a surprise. But you'll have to leave for about fifteen minutes."

Lisa decides she can use the time to go pick up after Santa's Little Helper. This is Bart's job, but the flies are getting intolerable. "Sure..."

########

A bright yellow blur swoops under the falling Bart and Milhouse, catching them. They have landed in a pair of teardrop-shaped sidecars with cushioned seats. Looking at the strange vehicle alongside them, they realize that if they had fallen a foot away in any direction, or a split second earlier, or later, they would have been sliced like salami by the bizarre array of whirling blades jutting this way and that.

"What kind of airplane is this?" wonders Milhouse.

Bart corrects him, "It's not a plane, Milhouse. It's a helicopter."

"But it has wings like a plane!"

"Helloooo? Boychicks! It would seem you are both right, and yet you are neither of you right ........ Hoo boy, crazy paradox! With all the conundra and the definitions and the taxonomic hair-splitting! What this is, is called an autogyro..."

This is when they first notice their rescuer, seated in a sort of saddle on the odd aircraft's central fuselage like a motorcyclist. He is wearing a paisley cocktail dress, which reveals smoothly shaved legs gridded by fishnet stockings. He has traded his heavy coke bottle spectacles for 1950's style harlequin-mask women's glasses bedizened with rhinestones.

"Why are you dressed like that, Professor Frink?"

"I could ask you the same question. Since the three of us are---aherm, hrarr---essentially dressed the same."

Bart smirks up the scientist, "Hey Man, I asked you first!"

"Well you see, I er... Recently I've felt this overpowering compulsion to dress like this, to make myself gorgeous. But only under very specific circumstances."

"Like when you're flying your plane?" offers Milton.

"My airplane? No! The very idea would repulse me then. As with just about any other time. But when I'm piloting my autogyro?! BOYOING! FREUND-FLUGEN-LAVEN!!! If you catch my drift..."

"That's pretty weird," observes Bart.

"Unusual yes, as there aren't all that many autogyro pilots. But among us, the condition is nearly universal. A certain Dr. Monroe did a study of this phenomenon, which he named ........ autogyrophilia."

An unseen drummer executes a loud rimshot- TSSSHHHH!!!

########

The sun is shining. Squirrels and bunnies are scampering about. Sideshow Barb wanders through the forest, breathing deeply of the strangely invigorating air here, looking up at the trees around her in wonderment.

A voice cries out, "What Ho!"

She drapes an indignant hand across her bosom. "I BEG your pardon?"

A half goat, half man creature---a faun---approaches her. "Good day to you. Might you be a Daughter of Eve?"

"Errr ........ something like that. I seem to be rather lost."

"I think I can help you, my Dear. But first would you do me the honor of joining me for tea? My name is Mr. Tumnus."

The human consults her Lady Rolex.

"Why yes it is tea time, isn't it? I thank whatever gods abide here that I've met someone who observes the neccessary traditions of civilized life. I think I'm going to like this place! It's clearly a far cry from Springfield... with all those cretinous BOORS in their HUMVEES, gulping down their FRAPPACINOS while listening to their GREEN DAY and BRAYING about NOTHING ON THEIR STUPID CELL PHONES UNTIL I WANT TO KILL THEM ALL!!!"

The faun is a bit taken aback by this outburst, but smiles. "I do not know these things you speak of. But if you would grace me with your company, I live right over here."

He takes her arm, and as they disappear around the bend in the trail we hear, "So Mister Tumnus ....... Is it true what they say about satyrs?"

########

"Hi Honey ....... What are you doing home so early?" asks Martin nervously.

Lisa stares at her friend, hardly recognizing him. She never would have guessed that he possessed such fashion sense. He'd managed to assemble a smart outfit from all this outdated polyester bric-a-brack. His makeup is understated, slimming his round face.

Apparently he has assumed the role of a closeted transvestite in this game. She admires his imagination. It's such a relevent contemporary issue to explore!

"What am I doing here? I live here," she reminds him. "What exactly are you doing in my clothes?"

"Oh Lisa! I've wanted to tell you so many times, but I was so afraid of losing you! And this ....... it's just something that I need to do. It has nothing to do with us. It makes me feel ........ relaxed."

She nods gravely. "How long has this been going on?"

He mumbles, staring down at the bows on his chartreuse pumps, "I guess ever since I was a teenager. I thought ........ I thought that when we got married it would change me. That I could stop. But as the years have gone by it's only gotten worse!"

She takes him by the hand, "I have to admit this is a surprise, and I can't say that I really understand. But you're still the same sweet person I married. We'll get through this somehow-"

Suddenly furious, Martin yanks his hand away! "NO NO NO NO!! I don't want all this understanding! I didn't come up here to listen to a bunch of touchy feely Brad Goodman psychobabble!"

"Huh?!"

"Just LOOK at me, Lisa! You married what you thought was a man, and THIS is what I've turned out to be. You should DESPISE me!"

"But scientists are finding out that gender identity is a very complex thing, influenced by genetics, fetal development, brain structure, hormones-"

Martin explodes, "Fine! Yes! I know all that! But we're playing an ordinary couple. Most people have very definite expectations when they get married. The wife was attracted to what she thought this fellow is, and then this happens! She is naturally resentful. She is FURIOUS!"

"I don't think you ought to be telling me what my character should be feeling," snaps Lisa.

"Yes! That's it," exclaims Martin delightedly, "Get angry!"

"I'm not angry!"

"Yes you are! I DISGUST you! Your anger mounts, until it becomes a desire to punish me in the worst ways imaginable! You say to yourself: 'So, he wants to be a woman, does he? I'll give the little sissy trollop more than she ever bargained for!' And then you get a bunch of rope-"

The trap door in the floor opens and a column of blue hair rises through it. Then a smiling and kindly face, "Kids, I brought you some ice cream. I've got both your favorite Ben & Jerry flavors, Lisa: 'Al Frankenberry' and 'Michael S'Mores'. Oh my, what's going on here?"

Lisa titters nervously, unsure of what's going on herself. "I think it's some kind of encounter therapy."

"Well have fun, you kids. You look lovely, Martin."

Martin---trapped in a nightmare of acceptance---begins to sob.

########

A striped cat strolls across a suburban backyard. We know it's not the Simpson's because there is no swingset, and there's some kind of cheap little fountain running, which we can't see too clearly in the dark.

The cat startles and takes off running as we hear two piping juvenile voices and one rather nasal adult voice singing, off-key but full of gusto: "Oh, Chitty-chitty bang bang! Chitty-chitty bang bang! Chitty-chitty bang bang, we love you! Chitty-chitty bang bang! Chitty-chitty-"

Doctor Frink's odd looking vehicle drops straight down into the back yard and bounces on its shock absorbers. Milhouse clambers out---crouching, mindful of the blades---and starts off across the lawn toward his house. "See ya, Bart! See ya, Doctor Frink!"

"So long, young Nudnik!"

Bart cries out, "Hey Milhouse, what're you gonna tell your mom about how you're dressed?"

Anxiety crosses Milhouse's makeup-smeared face. Oh yeah. That...

"She has her sumi painting class tonight. Maybe she won't be home."

"Well good luck," calls Bart as the autogyro lifts off. "Home, Jeeves!"

-----

A stocky, dark-haired woman washes dishes in the kitchen sink, her back to us.

Milhouse eases the back door open and then shut and tries to creep slowly past her, but she hears him and turns...

The boy's words are rushed and frantic, "It was Bart! It was, Mom! He made me dress like this. It was AWFUL! I sure as heck didn't wanna, but you know what kind of power he has over me. He's like a Svengali or somethin', Mom! And then he ...... Dad?!"

The woman winces at being called Dad, but decides to take this one small step at a time. "Your mother and I---your other mother---have decided to get back together. We think we've finally figured out what was wrong with our relationship..."

"Dad?" repeats Milhouse uncomprehendingly.

Kiki Van Houten sits her son down at the kitchen table and wipes her hands dry on her apron. "I bought this book to help you understand. It won the Newberry Award, and it has a forward by that clown you like. I think it really fits our situation to a T..."

It's a children's book, large and square and not too many pages. Milhouse stares down at it, looking numb.

Somehow it's the three of them on the cover, two women and a boy, all glasses and big noses and coarse black hair. At least it's a boy in the picture, he reflects superstitiously. Like if it hadn't been, then his fate would have been sealed.

He starts to read, out loud and none too expertly, "Milhouse Has Two Mommies..."

------

His nose hanging over the rim of the sidecar, Bart watches the tiny trees and houses and cars going by beneath. He pulls his wig off and sighs, "I'd better quit doing this. I'm starting to lose my edge!"

The Professor looks at him quizzically, "Why? You seem fully three dimensional to me."

"No, my edge. My BART-ness! I mean just think ....... We're flying along like this, with that big yellow moon, these magnificent clouds, the city laid out beneath us like a beautiful blanket of stars, and it never even occured to me ....... All this time I could've been spitting on people!"

#######

In the stall of the bathroom of Mona's Tavern, an unseen person grunts and strains like they're giving birth to a giant sea urchin.

Lenita asks with concern, "Is she okay? She's been in there all day!"

Carla raps on the metal door, giving us a glimpse of red squared-off nails nearly two inches long. "What'sa matter, Homina? You fall in?"

From behind the partition come the most moronically whiney voice you have ever heard, "Stupid, grrrrt, pantyhose! Miracle-Slim fit, my eye!"

########

Four hundred miles above North America, the two continously drooling aliens stand on either side of the "psionic gender scrambulator" that is aimed at Springfield. Mounted on a tripod, the weapon resembles a great blunderbuss, bejewelled by blinking lights, and brimming with bulbous gold plated headers...

"Soon their entire reproductive structure will be in disarray," jeers one of the aliens, "and they as a species will wither and die. These foolish Earthlings will never be able to stop us!"

"Yes. They are indeed foolish! Let us wave our tentacles and laugh for a protracted period of time. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"Ah-hahahahahahahahah! Mwaaaaa, ha ha ha ha!"

"Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho hoo ho ho ho ho ho ho ho he ha ha!"

"Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!"

"Hoooooo-EEEEEEEEEEEEEE Ha-hee Huh Har Har!"

"Ur, ur, ur, ur, ur, ur, ur!"

"BLAAAAR HARHARHARHARHARHARHARHAR!!!!!!"

"Tee-hee-hee-HEY! WATCH WHAT YOU'RE DOING THERE!"

In his malicious abandon Kang (or is it Kodos?) has bumped the large ray gun with his flailing tentacle and caused it to swivel wildly around on its mount. The saucer's oviod interior flashes green for an instant- BUZZEEEEEP!!!

Suddenly in their place stands a pair of voluptuous one-eyed bimbos, apparently cousins to Leeta from FUTURAMA.

"Ew myghod, girlfriend! We are like, so STACKED!"

"For suuure! Uber-stacked! We are way too fine for THIS place!"

"Tell me about it. Earth is so TOTALLY not cool!"

"Hey, I know! Let's go to Raisa!"

To the keening of theramin music, the saucer breaks from its orbit and scuds off into the depths of space.

.
######## THE END ########
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Sorry if I didn't mention your favorite Simpson's character. There are so many of them that there's just no way to include them all in a single story. There's lots of potentially hilarious situations still untapped here, many great characters still unheard from, so if anyone wants to try their hand at a sequal I'd sure like to read it (and you certainly don't need MY permission, I'm a copyright-infringer here myself)...

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Confession: I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about with that Edmund Snow Carpenter stuff. I've never read him, but it sounded smart. Lisa's my favorite character, I relate to her, but I'm not quite as intelligent as her...

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If that Professor Frink segment has you confused, the whole thing was a set up for a bad pun. Autogyrophilia is a pun on "autogynophilia", a fetishistic and sexualized form of transsexualism (Crudely stated, an autogynophile is what you would get if you crossed a male-to-female transsexual with a transvestite; a feat which had long eluded biologists, but which the Amsterdam Zoo has proudly announced having accomplished recently, according to an article in the latest issue of NATURE...). Shunned as weirdos by "normal" transsexuals, autogynophiles represent a minority within a minority within a minority. For a while I thought I suffered from autogynophilia, until that psychiatrist explained, "No, actually you're just a self-obsessed cunt..."

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I would like to thank Sir Anthony Hopkins for his guest appearance as Mr. Tumnus.