Vocabulary Playsheet: Dinosaur Pageant

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After the Ministry of Erroneous Assumptions was decreed for the purpose of dispelling misconceptions, specifically those posited by the Ministry of Extraneous Folkloric Perversions in its interpretation of the Mancunian engraving as the blueprint for a sprawling three-acre Tiddlywinks court, little was heard for many months. The ignominy into which that ministry had sunk as an indirect result of Boadicea's comedic thespian diatribe had made her Uncle Cuthbert extremely wary of following the time-honored tradition of frivolous and pointless pettifoggery lest he and other members of the new ministry be similarly subjected to demeaning public ridicule.

Uncle Cuthbert had dealt with disparagement very effectively in the past, largely by equivocation and obfuscation, resorting only occasionally to the bureaucrat's ultimate weapon -- classifying (in the interest of national security) all details that could potentially result in embarrassment. The latter course being extremely hard to justify, and Boadicea and her growing cabal of cohorts eagerly anticipating any effort to obscure and mislead, it seemed that he might be forced to produce something unassailable and of lasting value. However, the spirit of public office was far too strong in Uncle Cuthbert who instead took the route of inaction, as that would, if used in moderation, provide little fuel for parody, and if prolonged, might outlast the fervor generated by her previous production - ploys clearly preferable to having to fabricate anything valid.

Far from diminishing, the ardor of the rebarbative cadre increased through some minor interstitial successes including a water ballet in protest of the College's decision to enter into an exclusive agreement with CocaCola for the installation of vending machines to dispense exorbitantly expensive toxin-laden stimulants.

Forced into action, a half-hearted attempt at placating detractors was made but it failed miserably to evade an opprobrious onslaught. A pageant of squamous Brobdingnagian papier-mache colossi was designed, conceived, constructed and paraded - each reptilian visage bearing an unmistakable likeness to a member of the ministry, including one very baffled looking diplodocus (indisputably Uncle Cuthbert) - through the campus and up the avenue. Boadicea, acutely aware of, and reveling in, the anachronism (millions of years before the appearance of eohippus), dubbed it a Jurassic cavalcade.