text: [Themes: Wordplay, wordplay, silly, surreal]
  
  > go downward
  You grip the line of sheets and begin your hand-over-hand descent from the sky, feeling the sharp winds against your back. As your biceps begin tightening to the point of pain, you are again close to the land. And none too soon, for a few feet above the ground the tension of the life line is broken, and you tumble down to earth, buried under a waterfall of sheets that comes streaming down upon your head. Restlessly you dig yourself out...
  
  The jean client, having been smashed back into his currently thin man-sized shape, stands here looking disheveled and shaken.
  
  You can see bed sheets, a shiny key, a book of riddles, a square meal and a crushing blow here.
  
  Impulsively, the client dashes nearer, whips a needle out of his pocket, and begins to maliciously sew you to a sheet.
  
  > show yourself to a the seat
  Bumped by the train of your thoughts, the client pokes himself sharply with his needle. To the accompaniment of ripping stitches and popping buttons, the client's ire, along with his stature, is raised to the great height of a giant. Between thumb and forefinger, he smashes the intervening chair into splinters, which drift away above the rural landscape. Almost in slow-motion the giant starts after you.
  
  The giant's nearly upon you.
  
  > get the crushing blow
  Taken.
  
  The giant's nearly upon you.
  
  > hit the giant with crushing blow
  KABOOM! The ground quakes with the staggering of the giant. Appearing like a punch drunk fighter, he weaves round and round, all the while shrinking in size, finally to the lowly hunched figure of the client. Humiliated at his defeat, the man makes a Chaplinesque exit, kicking dust as he walks crookedly away.
  
  > get all
  shiny key: Taken.
  book of riddles: Taken.
  square meal: Taken.
  
  > look
  A page from the imagination of your childhood, an illustration of a country scene, an open field amid rolling hills under blue sky punctuated by cottony soft clouds, next to a simple story punctuated by exclamation points.
  
  An overgrown bean stalk grows thick and tall up into the clouds. Nowadays, sadly, it seems the stalk would have to be rationalized, explained away somehow by experts, as an ominous instance of radioactive mutation, or as a patented, genetically manufactured hybrid -- rather than attributed to, as in the old days, simply, magic. Such a realization stirs a nostalgic longing for the days of yore when imagination reigned in all its grandeur and innocence.
  
  > examine the stalk
  It's coated with melting butter.
  
  > Jean Stock
  A swift cloud of dust blows up from the trackless wastes into your face, causing you to bring your fists to your eyes like binoculars. After much rubbing, your vision, though blurry at first, returns to reveal familiar surroundings...
  
  A sold elf stands here.
  
  You can see a well-oiled bicycle here.
  
  > look at River
  This is the shore of a river, between two tributaries of the Rhine.
  
  Lines of sand-script are scrawled on the shore.
  
  > Roar shine
  [I don't know the word "roar."]
  
  experience on the shore, she instead, by leaps and bounds, sprints toward the Rhine and dives headlong into the river.
  
  > Swim
  You'll have to shake off your toes first.
  
  > take off the shoes
  Though you feel like a real beach nut, it does the trick. You now dive deep into danger and pull out a gritty pearl from the bottom of the river and come back to shore.
  
  > Schep you're a the star
  [What do you want to tell?]
  
  > Pretty girl
  Tiny grains of sand fall from the pearl as it begins to pulse slowly with radiant red light, whose brightness soon becomes blinding. When you're finally able to move your arms away from your face, you can see a beautiful girl before you.
  
  > drop the bike
  Dropped.
  
  > give the meal to the girl
  Wide-eyed, the girl turns the square meal in her hands, marveling at the exactitude of its right angles. She then hungrily devours it in several large neck-stretching gulps.
  
  > Gritty pearl
  The girl withers down into a pearl.
  
  > Clearing
  With all the enthusiasm of a child actor in a Steven Spielberg movie with a percentage, you pedal away...
  
  Clearing, on the bike
  
  There is one door here that is not connected to any building and which is closed.
  
  > exit bike
  You get off the well-oiled bicycle.
  
  > unlock the door with the key
  "Click." As you unlock the door the key is swallowed by the lock. A tunnel of darkness opens up to you, and you cautiously walk inside. You almost vanish into the darkness, it is so black.
  
  But just now you can discern a fuzzy light beginning to shine from the pearl. It brightens to illuminate your upper body, creating a halo of pure white light around you. So astounding is the effect of the brightened pearl, that it spills from your hand and rolls vanishingly away from you, echoing grittily along the tunnel.
  
  Congratulations are in order. Having braved mutable strangeness and having made the heroic gesture of a rescue, you make possible the reuniting in joy of a grateful Punster family. This feat earns you the rank of Kinkering Cong.
  
  It would be prudent to commit to memory this and all ranks you have achieved.
  
  (Truth is, there was one more thing that could've been accomplished shaking a tower.)
  
  You now have the opportunity to do one of the following:
  
  >Go to the Shopping Bizarre
  >Play Jacks
  >Buy the Farm
  >Eat your Words
  >Act the Part
  >Visit the Manor of Speaking
  >Shake a Tower
  >Meet the Mayor
  
  > buy the the farm
  The farm crisis never seemed so desperate as it has this planting season in Punster. One such family farm on the edge of town, the McCleary's, has been especially blighted. The family, though well accustomed to hard work, suddenly lost the ability to perform even the simplist of chores necessary to scratch a living from the soil. They have since been driven from the land, and join with their fellow Punster neighbors in urging you to somehow save the family farm.
  
  The telltail smell of grain and dung drifts by. You're on a dusty road in front of abandoned farm -- a nice-sized spread of land that stretches far out to meet the horizon.
  
  A wooden cart sits in the dusty road here.
  
  An old dog sits in the dust at the side of the road, feeling all of the spirit of gravity, looking dog-eared and worn out by a lifetime on the farm.
  
  > teach the old dog the new tricks
  The old dog perks up one of its dog-eared ears, then the other. Its tail emerges from the surrounding dust and begins oscillating back and forth with such intensity that you'd think it was a case of the tail wagging the dog.
  
  In turn the old boy goes through a series of back flips, chases its tail, walks around on his hind legs, and howls at the moon. The dog, bursting with energy through its shiny new coat, is no longer dry as the dust that surrounds it.
  
  Suddenly by leaps and bounds, the old dog bolts away, and comes back with one stone in its slobbery mouth.