“They are rather tasty,” Ignatius conceded, sending out his flabby pink tongue over his moustache to

hunt for crumbs (21).

He scratched the side of the pencil back and forth across the paper and labeled this APOCALYPSE (29).

At the precinct he had borrowed a large and loud one that was all chromium and baby blue, and at the
touch of a switch it could become a pinball machine of flashing, winking, blinking red and white lights.
The siren, a cacophony of twelve crazed bobcats, was enough to make suspicious characters within a
half-mile radius defecate in panic and rush for cover (35).

“I? The incident is sociologically valid. The blame rests upon our society. The youth, crazed by suggestive
television programs and lascivious periodicals, had apparently been consorting with some rather
conventional adolescent females who refused to participate in his imaginative sexual program. His
unfulfilled physical desires therefore sought sublimation in food. I, unfortunately, was the victim of all of
this. We may thank God that this boy has turned to food for an outlet. Had he not, I might have been
raped right there on the spot (164).”

“I shall,” Ignatius said and licked at a crumb that he had discovered in the corner of his mouth.
“Incidentally, Mr. Clyde, I shall be wearing this smock home to prove to my mother that I am employed.
You see, she drinks rather heavily, and she needs reassurance that money from my labors will be
forthcoming in order that her supply of spirits won’t be cut off. My life is rather grim one. One day I shall
perhaps describe it to you in detail (165).

On the dark night of that dubious lecture, the sole member of your audience will probably be some
desperate lonely old male librarian who saw a light in the window of the lecture hall and hopefully came
in to escape the cold and the horrors of his personal hell. There in the hall, his stooped figure sitting
alone before the podium, your nasal voice echoing among the empty chairs and hammering boredom,
confusion, and sexual reference deeper and deeper into the poor wretch’s bald skull, confounded to the
point of hysteria, he will doubtlessly exhibit himself, waving his crabbed organ like a club in despair
against the grim sound that drones on and on over his head (182).

“Not completely as of yet. However, various small bones and ligaments are beginning to wave a white
flag of surrender. My physical apparati seem to be preparing to announce a truce of some sort. My
digestive system has almost ceased functioning altogether. Some tissue has perhaps grown over my
pyloric valve, sealing it forever (210).

Ignatius stood before the building regarding it with extreme distaste. His blue and yellow eyes
denounced the resplendent façade. His nose rebelled against the very noticeable odor of fresh enamel.
His ears shrank from the bedlam of singing, cackling, and giggling that was going on behind the closed
black patent leather shutters (309).

Inside Ignatius saw a seething mass of people. Cigarette and cocktail glasses held like batons flew in the
air directing the symphony of chatter, shrieking, singing, and laughing. From the bowels of a huge
stereophonic phonograph the voice of Judy Garland was fighting its way through the din (314).
“It’s not your fate to be well treated,” Ignatius cried. “You’re an overt masochist. Nice treatment will
confuse and destroy you (364).”

There was a slipshod frenzy of dressing. The red flannel nightshirt sailed up and hung on the chandelier.
He jammed his toes into the desert boots and leaped as well as he could into the tweed trousers, which
he could hardly button at the waist. Shirt, cap, overcoat, Ignatius put them on blindly and ran into the
hall, careening against the narrow walls. He was just reaching for the front door when three loud knocks
cracked against the shutters (385).