Laughing while reading

A few weeks ago, we posted the very funny piece that shocky had written in response to true madness. Didn't think too much about it at the time, but one of the greatest things about that piece is that in order to understand the humor, one must actually read it. I (Lily) was talking to Bret Bernhoft, a podcaster with The Face of Media, while at Wordstock. He was asking what place the written word has these days, and I immediately thought of those delightful experiences that have to be consumed in the privacy of one's own head, and I used shocky's piece as an example of that.

In a delightful followup to those thoughts, I would like to share this piece by brand-new Typetrigger member wingback. When we scheduled the trigger "ay yi yi", suggested by a member, we didn't know what to expect, but....

In desperation, he snatched the phone and punched 0.  "Can you get me IT please?"

"Berkley IT, Ben here."  The voice was irritatingly smug.

"Yes, this is Professor Liebman in S232." He did not usually resort to title wielding, but the situation was dire.

"How can I help you, Professor?" Ben asked, smugness oozing.

He took a deep breath and tried to sound rational. "I'm using the microphone IT provided me, assuring me it would work perfectly with Dragon, even though, as I pointed out at the time, the Dragon website does NOT list it as one of its 53 preferred microphones.  Now, thanks to your assurance, my entire grant, due TO-MOR-ROW, is filled with gibberish."

There was a longer-than-necessary pause. "I'm not sure I understand what IT has to do with this.  Is there something I can help you with?" the Ben voice asked.

"Yes, you can QUICKLY provide me with a FUNC-TION-AL microphone and help me fix my grant!"

"We don't edit grants," the Ben voice oozed.  "Did you mean to dial IT? Perhaps you-"

"YES I MEANT TO DIAL EYE-TEE!" the professor exploded.  "Thanks to you MORONS, my grant,  which I have worked on for six months and which is due TO-MOR-ROW, now says "Ay-yi-yi" instead of the word EEE-WHY-EEE, as in eyeball, which appears approximately 632 times!  I did not say "AY-YI-YI", I said "EYE"!

He waited.  His heart pounded wildly.  A spray of saliva covered the phone receiver.  "HELLO?  ARE YOU GOING TO ANSWER ME?"

We are still laughing

Typetrigger writer Shocky is always good, but response to the trigger true madness still has us laughing over here.

That name is unpronounceable.  Do you actually expect your readers to tolerate that for 450 pages?
   Which name?
   What do you mean which name?  Are you fucking kidding me?
   It's a real name.
   It doesn't matter if its a real name  .  No one can even begin to pronounce it.  By the second page it's annoying, and by the second chapter I was ready to throw the book out into traffic.  I bet you don't even know how to pronounce it.
    O'hIonmhaineain.  See, not that big of a deal.
    You're a prick.  I swear you do this kind of thing just to piss me off.  I can't believe you get away with writing this shit.  You use this impossible Irish name in every other sentence, you reference all of these works that he supposedly wrote,  absolutely preposterous plots filled with these gross Irish caricatures...it's like you're trying to beat the reader over the head with a cudgel.
    You mean a shillelagh?