From Pun to Satire

Piers Anthony Yon Ill wind is a novel full of puns. Indeed the puns propel the plot. It was published in 1996 and has this passage in which a character, the husband of a woman sucked almost dry by a vampire is seeking revenge upon the vampire. The character creates a dummy to snare the vampire but the attractive dummy attracts undesired attention:

Soon a man came along the path. He was a cool character, which was obvious because he wore snowshoes. But the snow almost melted when he spied the lovely dummy. "Well now," he said, and took a step towards her. [...]

But this was the wrong man. He wasn't the vampire. He was just a typical sexist lunkhead whose elimination wouldn't make any difference to anyone. It was necessary to make him go away in a hurry.

"Oh, thank you, kind sir!" the husband cried in his cracked falsetto voice. "I never thought a man as handsome as you would take an interest in me. I'm just one of several aides to the cruel vampire."

The lunk paused. "You're a what?"

"One of the aides," the husband cried. "Aides! AIDES!"

"That's what I thought you said! I'm not touching any aides. I'm outta here!" and the lunk took off, leaving behind chunks of snow from his cold feet."

For me the shout out capitalization clinches the interpretation.

Interesting to note that full capitalization of the acronym is not universal. In the UK only the initial letter is presented in uppercase (Aids). Either way, the passage is "capital".

And so for day 447
04.03.2008