For over a year, my pal Dan and I would play this game: we'd take turns thinking of the most bizarre titles and forcing the other guy to write a short story about that title. These stories would generally take less than ten minutes to write, hence the heading.

 


 

MEANWHILE, IN THE CRAB NEBULA...

STYLE: sci-fi
CAST: Carl Sagan, Hydrogen, Chester
RATING: 3

Meanwhile in the crab nebula, Carl Sagan's ghost paused to interrogate some stray hydrogen cluttering up the supposed emptiness of space: "So, you kids were in one of the hugest supernovae of all time. What was that like?"

Silence.

"I bet that hurt like the dickens, eh? Really smarted, I bet it would....I mean, boom!!"

Then, for emphasis, "Kablooie!!"

Finally, one of the hydrogen atoms turned and drawled, "Looky here, stranger, I don't know nothin' about no nova NOR any nebula. I'm just passin' through and I suggest you do the same... a lot of the good ole' elements hereabouts don't like strangers, especially when it comes to ectoplasmic Jewwws."

Sagan got really pissed and threatened to write a letter to Maximumrocknroll: "I've come three billion light-years on a quest for eternal truth and all I get is some surly, anti-Semetic atoms too dumb to even have a neutron??? You better tell me the whole truth about that nova or I'm gonna tell the ectoplasmic Tim Yohannan and MRR will kick you out of the whole scene and won't even print your cruddy nebular scene report!"

Thus noodged into submission, the local hydrogen cluster prodded one special atom to the fore: "Chester will tell ya. He's the wordy one."

Chester, needing no further prompting, leapt up, shouting, "Yes! Yes! We exploded, so painful that a sensitive element like me was scarred for life! I find expression for my pain in poetry!! Let me share some with you... (ahem)

Star!
Bursting with hate!
Oppressing me, the puny..."

But by then, Sagan was 3 parsecs away, his unremitting terror and embarrassment lending wings to his insubstantial feet. The other gaseous atoms slyly guffawed.

THE MOLASSES COOKIES OF HATE

CAST: Pepe Le Pudenda, midget, Homer Simpson, Nikki Sixx
RATING: 4

Pepe Le Pudenda, the misanthropic confectioner, made his way across the gleaming, newly renovated three-million-franc, five-star Frog kitchen, the solid gold Cuisinart not able to assuage the slow, bubbly sauté of his anger. "How dare zey? How dare zey mock me, zee great Pepe LePudenda?? EH?!?" he screamed at a terrified midget hired to replace the sous chef when Pepe had dumped boiling sous all over her head. The midget crawled inside an upended tureen and, turtlelike, scuttled off to the pantry.... "Eet was just a rhetorical question!!" shrieked the irate chef, his perpetual flame of pique rising to a boil and causing the soggy remnants of his self-control to froth up and over the edge of his, uh, metaphor. "How dare zey send Nikki Sixx-- my arch-enemy-- to the opening night of Le Pudenda Grande to review my creations??? Only last month, he wrote an essay on my truffle sorbet calling it twee, and intimating its jen-nay-say-quaw was jejoon!! The Philistine!!! 'Ee is not worthy to lick fwah grah from the toes of my midget!!!! He thinks Pepe is bad, eh?? I will show heem what bad cooking REALLY is!! I will bake the molasses cookies of HATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a HEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE, hee."

"hee."

Ignoring the horrified whispers of the waiters, Pepe donned the half-inch-thick gloves and iron face mask, grabbed the unwieldy six-foot tongs and commanded two assistants to simultaneously input the combination codes and turn the keys in the locks. As the vault opened before the astonished crowd, seated inside was a drowsy and bloated Homer Simpson wiping drool from his stubbly mouth and sighing, "MMMmmmm, haaaate..."


FAKE BIBLE STORIES

STYLE: theology
CAST: Princess Shanana, Umber Hulk, Jehovah, Ishkabibble
RATING: 4


Yucalepth begat Zinfandel who begat Gorbachev who begat Yancovic who begat three children: Jubudum, Papadam and the princess Shanana.

Shanana was granted a dowry of fifteen sheep, an elk, and some nachos. When the Lord saw that the Israelites had been forsaking the Sabbath, taking his nickname ("Pinky") in vain, worshiping not only a golden calf but also a brass monkey and an umber hulk... he grew angry and spoke thus to Queen Ishkabibble:

"Ishkabibble, thy kingdom is full of sin. Have I not made they fields grow and thy armies strong and moreover have I not made every third example a punch line?"

"Yes, my Lord."

"And have thou kept holy my commandments and rituals, or have thou slacked off and allowed the vines of idolatry to bloom with the grapes of, uh... MORE idolatry, and thence stamped on thine grapes to produce a foul wine of, like... uh... REALLY REALLY BAD idolatry which.... you are drunk with the ... uh..look, just shape up,OK?"

"Roger that my Lord, over."

"Over and out."

And so Queen Ishkabibble went to Princess Shanana and told her to sacrifice the elk to please Jehovah. Spake Shanana: "This will be the end of the Royal Bloodline of the Israelites: who will marry me with an elkless dowry? "

"I will!" yelled the umber hulk, holding aloft the Plus Three Ring of Engagement in his mandibles and reeking of Brut....

 


"MY PEN HAS A FORESKIN...!"

CAST: doctor, patient (who's also a doctor...)
RATING: 2

"My pen has a foreskin!" declaimed the doctor.

"Yes, yes, everyone's pens have foreskins," replied the patronizing psychologist, sliding back the shiny membrane of his own stylus to reveal the glowing nub beneath. "But, tell me why you find this... exceptional?"

At this, the doctor twitched nervously, causing the burly orderly to expertly slide back the foreskin on his syringe, should thorazine become necessary...

The doctor howled, "Because... I circumcised MY pen yesterday morning!" The doctor rocked back in his straightjacket, lifting one large, prehensile foot in the air, clutching the still-inky scalpel between the toes...

 

"OH GOD NO, NOW IT'S MY TURN!"

CAST: benzene molecule, Princess Di
SLANG: nano-ascots
RATING: 3

We exited the escalator, the benzene molecule and I, when all of a sudden, well maybe I exaggerate, perhaps it was more like a couple of minutes... but, come to think of it, the mall had long since been abandoned, windows busted out, grass growing through the cement floor, so more likely it was 60 or 70 years, but ANYways, like I say, all of a sudden Benzene turns to me and says, "Man, I left Princess Di back on the escalator," and I look down, sure enough, past the long-broken escalator, the peeling paint. to the bottom, in what now appears to have all the makings of a nascent peat bog, floats the remains of Diana's body. Normally I don't expect ol' Benzene to carry her far, as he's just, like, one molecule, but to just DROP her, like, for 80 years and not TELL me-- that's uncouth!! In a fit of pique, I crush the little fella into the ground, breaking all his rings (Sounds a bit like bubble wrap) and only then do I realize... it was MY turn to carry her all this time!! We were in front of Wet Seal, where Benzene would of gone shopping for nano-ascots... oh God!! What have I done??

 

"SHIT ON MY DREAM, WHY DON'T YOU?"

STYLE: carbet tune
CAST: Hans, Old Widow Gotterdammerung, Mad Gunter, das Ohlburger Twins
RATING: 2

The cabaret singer was performing. All the strudel would remain uneaten now, thought Hans. This was the crowd's favorite song. Old Widow Gotterdammerung was already weeping discreetly into her pudding.

Shit on my dream why don't you, dump all your stool in the bowl
I was naive to believe
You had a soul
You've made me see, I'll never be queen
So shit on my dream
Why don't you?

Even crusty old Gunterfrass was subtly weeping, his composure only perturbed by the glint of tears drifting through his walrus moustache. The Ohlburhger twins, long drunk past the point of being sober, were busily sawing at their wrists with the pretzels, festooned as they (der pretzels) were with sharp salt crystals, as the song reached its climax.

Cum in my eye why don't you? I never had any reason to live
I was so weak to think you were chic
You were merely glib
So stomp on my scheme,
Suppress my whole meme
Shit on my dream,
Why don't you?

By this time all the Bavarians in the joint were crying so heartily, no one even noticed that Mad Gunter had crept to the kitchen for more 'experiments' with the dough....


A PENCIL, A PEA, AND A BOTTLE O' BRANDY

STYLE: shaggy dog
CAST: the same guy from JUICE SPASMS
RATING: 4


A pencil, a pea, and a bottle o' brandy walk into a bar, and the pencil-- or was it the bottle? No, it was the bottle but they were in a WHOREhouse, so the bottle says to the Madam-- or was she a pilot? I think the whore house was in a crashing plane... yeah, with the pencil, the bottle, the spoon, and the Madam, and the Madam replies, "No, YOU go first!" Wait, I told it wrong.... the BARtender is on the plane, with a pencil, a priest, and a Triscut, except it's a, like, shipwrecked boat, in the middle of the desert, and the poodle says to the cop, he says, he says... uh... "Hey, that poodle can talk!!" Oh wait, I guess the COP said that. So anyways, they go in the house and the farmer's daughter's spoon's pea says "Hey, where's the brandy?" Get it? No. Of COURSE not; I left out the part, the part about the rabbi... he's eating a pea with a spoon-- you're not Jewish, are you? OK, I'll change it... uh, Minister Farrakhan is eating a pea with a Triscut and the Madam and he says, "Oy gevalt, such a Triscut they gave me, I should plotz!" and the dog-- he's a TALKING dog, right? He goes up to the lesbian priest, I mean rabbi-- this is the GOOD part-- and he says, he says, hahaha, says...hehhehhehheh, oh GOD-- he, uh, hugmmmph-heeee heh heh AR-AK - AK- AKAKAK HAHAHOHOHOHOHHRRRR-RRRRR-uhnnNNN----aaaaAAAAAAAHHCKKK--- oh GOD.. (gasp)--- cough... heh heh...

 

 


AN UNHEALTHY FIXATION ON MARLYN MANSON

STYLE: true confessons
CAST: Amy, Mom, Danzig
SLANG: 'Violated Soul' book of poems
RATING: 4

Any minute now, he's going to come rescue me from my shitty parents and my shitty teachers and the lame normals which, if I might be redundant, populate my school. He's the only one who is capable of understanding my personal pain-- and I know he DOES understand because I sent him a book of my poems, "Violated Soul" it's called, so it's CLEARLY only a matter of time before he reads it, and concludes we're kindred spirits, undead spirits trapped in the hell of the living, by some savage accident, and then he'll whisk me away to become his child bride and majik disciple.

Or maybe he'll just kill my whole family.

Either way, I'm easy. He'll just roll up in his limo with his bodyguards and knock on the door, "Is Amy there? Amy, my immortal soulmate?" and Mom will go, "Honey, your obsessive fixation is here to solve everything, dear," and he'll ask me why it took so long for me to send my poems which, like, he desperately needed to finish his work on this planet, and I'll be like, "Sorry, I had to do lots of homework and stuff," and make big sad eyes at him and he'll relent and I'll grab my backpack, my skull bong, and my journal and off

we'll go. Any day now. Oh shit!! Oh,GOD!! There's the limo-- my Mom is calling me!!!!!! THIS IS IT!!!!!! Oh, it's just Danzig again....

 


LOOKOUT FOR WOOL...!

STYLE: commercial
CAST: wacky faux-pitchman
SLANG: terrycloth ballgowns
RATING: 3


"So here's the pitch: A very perplexed yokel enters, screen right. He's got a wool jacket on, wool spats, and he's got a sheep in his pocket.

CUT TO:

A batch of models at a fashion shoot, wearing various terrycloth ballgowns.

Yokel busts in through the window, stage-diving on the assembled photographers, sherm-soaked cigarette dangling from his lips, yelling "LOOKOUT FOR WOOL!!! LOOKOUT FOR WWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!" as he brandishes the sheep at horrified models.

SFX: Black Sabbath's song "Black Sabbath", where Ozzy wails , "No, no, please God help meeeeee!"

Fade to black.

Slogan reappears on screen, with names of local retailers. So whaddaya think, guys?"

....

"Um, are you... are you actually with the ad agency?"

No. No, not really.
(Pitchman scampers out, tittering like schoolgirl)

CUT TO: close up shot of open front door.

ENTER REAL AD MEN;

"Who was that, Earl?"

 

HORRIFYING DISEASES WE KINDA LIKE

SLANG: the boil-sponge-slushee-filled-colostomy-bag
RATING: 3

It's always the same thing: Get up, lance your boils, drain the fluid into a trough which empties into a sponge which you sauté with onions and then make a smoothie out of, (adding wheatgrass), and then drink it all down, day after day, and yet every day there's a new sponge on your doorstop, with the cutest pink ribbon wrapping it. And you know that it's payment left by the same "Secret Admirer" that pilfers your pus-smoothie-soaked colostomy bag every night. In earlier years, you might have been curious enough to lay awake until they "dropped in" and took them by surprise as they were bent over your trash can, and looked into their eyes, and whispered, "I love you," but those smoothies make you SO DARNED DROWSY...

Little do you know how hard I personally work to get those sponges hooked on Quaaludes: I don't WANT you to look in my eyes, and tell me you love me. I don't love you: it's just my damn job... my sponge-leaving, pus-filled-colostomy thieving job. Always the same thing, day in and day out...

 


MY SO-CALLED NEUTRON

STYLE: review
CAST: Claire Daines, sodium
RATING: 3

This show features Claire Daines, tragically miscast as a featureless nucleoid of a Sodium atom, dealing with typical adolescent problems like hydrophilia, changing valences, and the angst of constantly emitting virtual gluons. Not to mention the looming threat of beta decay. This week, Claire becomes even more sullen and angst-ridden when she discovers she's in a salt crystal in a pastrami sandwich that Judd Nelson has eaten and is about to pass. Luckily she gets osmosed into Judd's bloodstream... and falls in love with an 'alterna-Higgs boson' that's emanated from the nucleus of a nearby magnesium atom. But it's a one-sided romance: bosons merely carry forces between fermions and have no desires of their own, so it's just another teen trauma on... MY SO-CALLED NEUTRON!

 

GLASS SHARD TOOTHPICK

STYLE: dialogue
CAST: hank (-ity, dankity, etc.)
RATING: 4

Hey, Hank!

Hey, Hankity-dankity!

Hey.... Hankity-dankity, babababan-an-an-shplazan-kazanka-banka-dan-dan-fandankity, witty, witty, witty, wit, wit, wittywitikins!


Hey, Hash-pla-zankita-zalaka-zanka, wanka, panky-wanky,hank-a-dee too day day-lee, bay-bee, sawalla, shmollah, lolla-ga-gana-ga-babba, wagga, wankity dank, dank, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dank hank, hanky-pank-pankity papanka-spanks, wankalanka, bib-bing-boyyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoy-bonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg-ka-danketty, banketty, boo!


....

"Yeah?"

Glass shard toothpick!!

"Glass shard toothpick?"

Yep!

"Glass shard-a-parda toothpick?"

Uh-huh.

"Glass shardy-pardy toothpick-a-nicky, winky, dum dee dum dum pinky-woo?"

...uh... sure...

"Glaz-naz-idy, pazz-idy, shaun cassidy, spazzily-ily-ily-il-yyyyyyyyyyyotardy-shardy, shard-shard-a-pard-pard-nard-ity, winkle-tinkle-toothy-moothy, tooth-a-pickle-ickle-ickle-ickle-ickley-nickley-woo, shama-la-la-la-ma-la-ma-la-ma-ma-ma-ding-dong deedle-dumm-dum-day?"


CHAMBERED NAUTILI

RATING: 4

Chambered Nautili are kind of stand-offish, don't you think? Have you ever seen one? Recently? Not like their cousins, the affable cuttlefish. I can't tell you how many times I've "afffed" a cuttlefish... and I still enjoy it. Octopi are pretty outgoing too but they tend to be overly avuncular, always giving unwanted advice, draping their tentacles around your shoulder and chortling at their own jokes, until I say, "Mr. Octopus, you're not my uncle, and I have no intention of investing in plastic, plastic, plastic!"

Squid can be very friendly at first, not like the stereotypical stuck-up, clannish Nautilus, but don't be FOOLED!! They just want to strike up a conversation so they can hint that they're related to the famous archetuthus (the giant squid which possesses eyeballs up to fifteen inches in diameter; the largest eyeballs in the animal kingdom) . After subtly and then directly boasting that their cousin can beat up your Uncle Clem, squid tend to lose interest in the relationship...as I know from bitter experience.

But better a thousand squid than one nautilus. How dare they lurk in the ocean's depths, by their heat vents, superciliously eating phosphorescent flatworms? Granted, it's very hard to eat phosphorescent flatworms with any degree of modesty, but -- come on! There's not a lot else to do down there. Of course they're going to be good flatworm eaters, must they be so smug???

 

"DO IT TO ME WITH THE BUTTON FINGER!"

CAST: Reagan, Gorbyachev
RATING: 2

"Do it to me with the button finger!" hissed Gorbachev, startling Ronald Reagan who was impatiently waiting for Nancy to remove his pants. "I want the finger that's on the button that can kill all five billion people up my Communist cornhole!!"

Reagan was nonplussed. "That wasn't part of the plan!! We came to Iceland to sign a disarmament treaty and give some simple hand-jobs! Just like a dirty Stalinist you have to complicate the negotiations with some cockamamie request about your kiester... this is the most powerful finger on the planet-- what if you got a KGB device implanted in your anus? You could trap my finger and cripple our whole first-strike capability!! We'd have a finger gap...!"

Gorby smiled shyly... "In that case, Mr. President, I could also put my button finger up your cornhole. It too could kill everyone, many times! Look at how deadly it is... and how well-trimmed the cuticles are. We could have a mutual prostate massage pact...."

"Well, ok, but only if you also massage my polyps!"

 

PAUL

CAST: Paul, pirates, shark
SLANG: Hannla Blarbarra
RATING: 4

Paul put the 'l' in lanky. Plus he put the 'l' in 'spacey', turning it into 'spacely', of "Spacely's Sprockets" fame. But then he got sued by Hannla Blarbarra so he had to take the 'l' out, and put it back in 'lanky', but he was still spacey and because he was still spacey he walked into walls, often with such force that one of the wall's 'l's would rub off on him and he'd become "Paulll", or sometimes, "Palul." Then he got- as a result of dragging the extra 'l' around all day-- he got so pooped he put the 'p' in lanky as well, turning it into 'planky', at which point pirates were made to walk him, but then an over-hungry shark (who at one point put the 'h' in 'ungry', at which point people had a word for the feeling when you want to eat) bit of the tip of the plank when a pirate took too long to jump. The shark has bitten off the 'pl' of 'planky', turning it into 'anky' and turning Paul into a paraplegic, but then it was no longer hungry. So it no longer put the 'h' in hungry. The rogue 'h' was left on deck, where it was grafted onto the dying, much-bitten-off Paul and made him into 'hanky.' So Paul the hanky was sopping wet with salt water. SO wet that he put the 'v' in moisture? Now having lost 'l', 'd', and 'u', all that remained of the original Paul was 'a' which was promptly circled by some junior-high punk rockers with a sharpie, and that was the last we heard of Paul.


TATTOOS IN STRANGE PLACES

STYLE: character study
CAST: Gweniveve and the analyst POTENTIALLY SAME ANALYST AS 'MY PEN HAS A FORESKIN'-MAKE UP WACKY NAME???
RATING: 3


Gwenivere grew up in a small town in Iowa and threw up into a Faberge egg in Beverly Hills. Bits of still-recognizable calamari frothed out of the egg as if a very flamboyant Cthlulhlu was hatching. Strange as it was to wake up bilious and squid-filled in Jaques Cousteau's mansion with no recollection of the past week... stranger still to glance over to your bare underarm and find a burgundy tattoo depicting the same exact tableau of calamari frothing out of a Faberge egg!!! Such a coincidence could wreck one's sanity... of course it would come out later-after years of therapy-that her entire perimeter was inked with squid, squid emerging from every conceivable object. A shitty purple jailhouse tat of a tentacle protruding from a tuba; a livid Rococo rendering of an archetuthus arm dangling out of a radio-telescope dish, a cubist piece on her thigh of a cuttlefish nesting in a sugar cone... in fact, the artist had at one point tired of tattoos altogether and started erecting bas-reliefs of squids on her vertebrae, and a collagen-injection frieze on her instep of an octopus wedged into the concavity of Jughead's buttocks...

"So you see, Gwenivere," intoned the analyst "It was hardly through the unspeakable artifice of Lovecraftian dark forces that you found yourself tattooed with the same exact scene you woke up disgorging... not matter what you puked the squid into, you would have a tattoo of it somewhere on your perimeter."

"So... I'm not nuts?"

"You're covered with the entire history of western art in the form or regurgitated cephalopods... of course you're nuts!! Now scram, kid! Get off my lawn!!!"

 

"VEGAS SHOWGIRL TITS"

STYLE: plot summary
CAST: ocelot, voice-over artist, worried producer
SLANG: 'bravenard'
RATING:4

The story of the rise and fall of an announcer... a troubled 'voice-over' artiste whose baritone urgency caused thousands to see "The Hunt For Red Octember" and "Bravenard" but who found out that life at the top of the voice-over biz was too lonely. When his wife found him in bed with Siegfried, she told Roy and Roy sicced an ocelot on him, causing him to lose hiss marriage, his mind and his prostate. From that point on, he'd introduce every movie as "Vegas Showgirl Tits", like: "From Alice Walker's extraordinary tale of a family torn apart by slavery comes this emotional and uplifting film: Vegas Showgirl Tits!" Fired from that job, he did an ad for: "They never should have messed with Rambo! They killed his wife and took his child hostage, but now they have to deal with Stallone! And Stallone IS.... Vegas Showgirl Tits!!"

The producer gets worried, rubs his forehead: "Hey that's uh.. almost perfect. Fantastic. Brilliant. But could you maybe say 'Rambo'?"

"I just did."

"...Again."

"Vegas Showgirl Tits."

"Rambo!"

"Vegas Showgirl Tits!"

... and so on until he's living in a Maytag box on skid row. But in a freak twist of fate, all the prominent voice-over guys catch strep throat at the annual convention so he has to come out of 'retirement' and with the help of a speech pathology therapist (played by Luke Perry), he finds he can LIMIT his insanity, and so every summer film that year is called 'Vegas Showgirl BOOBS.'

 

DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE SUN AND JUPITER

STYLE: dialogue
CAST: sun, jupiter

RATING:2

SUN: Why doesn't Woody Allen make funny movies anymore?

JUPITER: Who?

 

"STOP, YOU DIABOLICAL FIEND!"

CAST: Irma Willendorf, Buzz Aldrin, 'mooose', 'hebrivore'
RATING: 3

Irma Willendorf was reaching for the Drano when she was interrupted in mid-guzzle by a shrill cry from a passing hang-glider whose 'mooose' was being loudly lactose intolerant all over stilt-walking moon personality Buzz Aldrin. Buzz suddenly defenestrated Irma's second-story boudoir, knocking the Drano from her grasp in a last ditch effort to evade sampling the bowels of the North-American 'hebrivore', and incidentally causing the quick-thinking suicidal-maniac to leap out of her now-open window (plan B) directly onto the hapless hang-glider, letting the Drano bottle pivot unattended and inertially in midair, about to deposit its goo on Aldrin. "Stop, you diabolical fiend!!!!" all three shouted simultaneously.*


*Not the mooose.

 

ANGRY CRICKET SALESMAN
STYLE: rant
RATING: 2


FUCK YOU! I am angry cricket salesman! You want cricket? CRICKET?!? EH?? You no get cricket!!! My balls! You get no cricket! Balls! I am angry cricket salesman! You buy cricket? Yes? Cricket, yes? NO!!! You no buy! I not let you buy! SUCK BALLS! You sheep loving fat cat. You not worthy of cricket. You make me so ANGRY
..........CRICKET SALESMAN!!! All day long, selling crickets, try to selling to, to morons and lepers, never stopping. Never wanting crickets, even fresh juicy ones... in clusters or alone, coated or no, predigested or no, (unintelligible)

 

INKA-DINKA-DON'T

CAST: Raul, Ikey (royal family members)
SLANG: inka-dinka-don't (game), cracklin' goat bran.
RATING: 4


Raul and Ikey were sitting on the castle moat on an improvised catamaran made from duct tape and some of the more docile moat-gators, playing Inka-Dinka-Don't for the 3,000th time that lazy summer, when Ikey- uncharacteristically hyper after a big bowl of Cracklin' Goat Bran (or just out of a sense of bored hubris that only >3,000 lazy summer consecutive games of Inka-Dinka-Don't can engender)- suddenly grabbed his notepad and used his one functioning claw to scrawl, "Let's raise the stakes, Raul. Next one to get Inka-Dinka has to enter the hammered dulcimer chamber and he can't come out until he acquires virtuosity in every key!" Now, Raul was taken aback and stopped counting his chips to consider. This gamble was somewhat one-sided, seeing as how Ikey was the hammered dulcimer enthusiast in the Royal Family and he (Raul) tended to be more of a fan of improvised free-jazz metronome solos (which primarily consisted of arbitrary changes of tempo punctuated by cries of "Way out, man!") but he, watching Ikey's other blackened, blistered claw drift around the moat towards them, he, Raul, felt pity overcome his sense of sportsmanship and said "OK, two games out of 3" and prepared to hide several extra Dinkas in his collapsible rear legs.

 

WHY YOU CRYING, GEORGETTE??
STYLE: dialogue
CAST: Georgette
RATING:4


Why you crying, Georgette?

---Uh... I'm sad

Why you sad?

---Because my man done left me

That's LAME, dude!

---Yes, it's the deep-down lameness of that man which leaves me blue

Why'd he leave you?

---He said he was having sexual relations with a small coterie of nubile girls and it was too much work to hide it from me, time which could be better spent fornicating in his parents' basement with a paraplegic and debauched fifteen-year-old


No offense, Georgette, but that's sound reasoning! If'n I was keeping a whole stable of passionate and nubile yet wretched and malformed girls secret I wouldn't have much time left over neither!

--BAWWWW!

Now Georgette honey, I'm not saying he made the RIGHT decision, only that he made the most practical one.

---BAW (sniff...)!!

Although obviously it would have been better if he'd only seduced and fornicated with one or two underaged, armless mutations while rectally violating himself with their canes, crutches and what-have-you, (or at most three) But sixteen of these disturbingly oversexed, basement-bound nymphets kept on a rotating basis according to an algorhythm so complex he had to subcontract the math to NORAD's legendarily secret terraflop mainframe to determine which basement gets snuck into and how often to most equitably satisfy everyone's sordid desires, that's clearly no good.

---BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!

 


UNIVERSITY SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE, 1214 BUTTERFIELD ROAD
STYLE: complaint letter
SLANG: 'rectom' 'munthly'
RATING: 4


Dear Sir,

I've written several times about your failure to send my magazine, but I refuse to accept your cop-out excuses! The mere, so-called 'fact' that, as you put it, "There IS no such magazine as 'Transparent Rectom Munthly'" is absolutely moot to the last iota! I have sent you the money for 17 years worth of T.R.M. and clearly- having cashed the check (see enclosed Xerox)-the responsibility lies on your shoulders to create said magazine. It's not that hard: it's about transparent Rectoms, and it comes out every Munth! Do I have to hold your hand the whole time? Just get some pictures of disembodied poop floating in midair- there's your transparent Rectom!! Now please send me my magazines!!

Sincerely....

 


CUT! PRINT IT! THAT'S A WRAP!
RATING: 1

"Cut! Print it! That's wrap."
"OK boss."
"That was wonderful!!"
<meow>
"Who let that kitten in here?"

 

FAKE COUNTRY NAMES I'VE HEARD....

STYLE: list
SLANG: all of it...
RATING: 4


1) Lavteria
2) Ottokar
3) Harmenia
4) Estonia
5) Bolognia
6) Span
7) Protugal
8) Afghanispam
9) United States of France
10) El Salvadork
11) "Who let that kitten in here?"
12) Witzerland
13) C@n@d@
14) Labia
15) Viet Nuge

 

ON THE OVERABUNDANCE OF FLABBY UPPER ARMS

STYLE: dialogue
RATING: 5

I still say they make me nauseous.

---So don't look then.

Maybe not so much nausea but vertigo I think is the word, watching them flap back and forth, I get dizzy,

--So don't look then!

I can't help it; it's like the swinging of a hypnotist's watch... it just draws me in!

---Aren't you the one always saying, "If you're against abortion , don't have one!"? Do you see the irony here?

OK, but I never said the pro-life people had no right to complain it made them naeusous. I mean nauseous.

--- But still, the implication of that slogan is "Mind your own business"- the obvious analogy here is, "If you value tight upper arms, tone your own upper arms. Don't beef with the flabby arms of others!"

No, that analogy is so far from obtaining-I'm not going to get hypnotized by my own damn arm flab, cus it's out of my line of vision! I'd gladly sign some Slaytanic pact to have my own upper-arms distend and sag grotesquely if only everyone else could just wear long sleeves!

---So maybe my analogy is crap, but my basic point (your hypocrisy) is apparent even in your own scenario-you'd let other people, everyday working people of this great nation of Protugal, gag and faint at the sight of your Satanically distended arm flab, great curtains of it, just to spare yourself the sight of their arm flab. How selfish you are, my friend!

Vut?!?! Vut you say selfish? I am about to wax apoplectic with indignation! Curtains of arm flab, vast sheets of it yes, yes, of course, but this is not something I would do just to offend fellow Protugeese! This is a martyrdom, a martyrdom I would endure so strong is my desire for others to have healthy, toned, seismically stable arm tissue! And who are you to speak on behalf of the Protugeese anyway, my friend? The entire village knows your mother came from Span!

---Would you like to know where your mother came from last night?

(Gendarmes intervene)

 

SHOOTING AT FLIES

STYLE: techno-thriller
AUTHOR: Schultz
CAST: Gina McMooter, the Mossad, Golda Maier
RATING: 3

As the maggots hatched on what was once Golda Maier, several disaffected Spice-Girl-audition-runner-ups stood poised, caryatid-like, holding above them not a marble Greco-Roman roof but an array of laser-sighted automatic munitions. "Fuck this," hissed Gina (passed over --incredibly!-in spite of her ability to lip-sync so well you almost couldn't tell (unless you'd had the misfortune of hearing her emit so much as a note), for the role of Posh) McMooter out of the side of her mouth, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the flies, to the other Girls. "Fuck ALL this... Golda Maier did more for women's rights than a million so-called girl-power bands and nowadays, no one even knows who she was because she didn't walk around in her underwear enough!" and as the first confused, nubile maggot-turned-fly rose naively from the recently-exhumed body of the ex-Isralei Prime Minister such a fusillade went off- as the bitter ex-feminists blasted the Drosophilla Melogasters, ex-P.M. and Styrofoam KosherKoffin to kingdom come in what was later described as "the Mossad's most embarrassing nightmare," "the worst melogaster-related markspersonship of the new millennium," and "A brilliantly evocative, Foucault-ian post-Spice performance piece." Despite the subsequent apprehension and overeager interrogation so viscous (sic) that it was decried by even Yassir Arafat as being "Hella lame, bro," the four "anti-Spices" never made clear whether their original intention was to protect the corpse of a REAL feminist heroine from melogaster-related depreciation, or to use the flies as an excuse to desecrate Meier's memory as payback on feminism in general for their humiliations at the hands of the nefarious Spice Audition Cabal. Or whatever.

 

THE BIG GRUNTING STONE* SPEAKS!

STYLE: monolog
AUTHOR: Schultz
CAST: The Big Grunting Stone which guards Whomp's Fortress in the Supermario 64 game by Nintendo
RATING:3

Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!


Guh!
Guh!
Guh!


Guh!

Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh!
Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh!
Guh! Guh! Guh! Guh! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!! GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!

I STOMP AND STOMP AND STOMP.
AND GRUNT AND GRUNT AND GRUNT, AND GRUNT.
EVERY PIXILATED CENTIMETER OF ME, EVERY GRANITE OUNCE OF MY 14 TONS BURNS WITH STOMPING, GRUNTING HATE!
COMPARED TO ME, MILK AND CHEESE(tm) ARE RENNISANCE-STYLE DILLETANTES!!
I DO NOTHING BUT STOMP-I LIVE TO CRUSH. FOR ME NO WORRIES OF DEATH, TAXES, THE AMBIGUITY OF LIFE, GUCCI-VS.-PRADA,
NOTHING TO COMPLICATE THE PURITY, THE CERTAINTY OF MY LIFE.
MY ENTIRE RAISON D-ETERRR HAS BEN NARROWEDTO ONE RAZOR-SHARP, INFINITELY DENSE DESIRE; ONE GOAL WHICH I KEEP WITH THE SORT OF ABIDING FAITH THAT MAKES POPES AND PROPHETS QUAKE WITH THE IMMATURE ENVY OF A LEGO-DEPRIVED TODDLER:
I LIVE TO CRUSH!!!!
CRUSH ANYONE WHO COMES UP THESE HERE STAIRS!!!!

And yet...
I've been hopping up and down on these same stairs, staring at these same overly-precious puffy clouds for over one thousand and twelve years, trying to do THE ONE THING I'M GOOD AT,
AND YOU KNOW WHAT?
I HAVEN'T SEEN ANYONE COME UP HERE YET!!!!
IT MAKES ME SO----!!

GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!
GUH! GUH! GUH! GUH!!


 

LOZENGE OF MERRIMENT

CAST: Chlamidia LeBuh, the ambiguously-specied ex-air force lady, Eartha Kitt, lozenge
RATING: 4

Crossing and uncrossing her eyes at the Eartha Kitt wall-mural which bedecked her sumptuous, festering kitchenette, Chlamidia LeBuh tried to envision the lozenge crossing back and forth, zig-zagging down the two-dimensional Eartha's distended esophagus. "My God, her left ear is by the Osterizer, and her right ear by the In-sink-erator... at least 10 feet apart; her esophagus must be abut 2 1/2 feet wide at least!! Such a delicate, festering lozenge as I hold in my furry right paw could execute many aerial maneuvers in such a maw... barrel rolls, 720s, zippidy-hee-haws..." LeBuh mused, mentally reciting from a dimly-remembered lexicon of barnstorming terms from her air-force days, days which ended in a blaze of glory when her now-withered back left hoof accidentally kicked the prosthetic kneecap of the traitorous co-pilot- which co-pilot was later dragged from the wreckage of the F-17 Tomcat with top-secret documents sequestered in his now-exposed and previously PUM-altered femur... "Why, were it only the 3-dimensional feeding tube of a live, 60 foot 3D Eartha Kitt, this esophagus would be the quintessential lozenge barnstorming arena!" A minor chord played on the soundtrack's dulcimer as Chlamidia suddenly narrowed her diaphanous, festering eyebrows and thought... "Or would such a gargantuan Kitt require a correspondingly vast, throat-clotting, and unmaneuverable lozenge?"

 


N.L's W.O'K.R.

STYLE: true confessions
CAST: Bill Pothead, Jimmy Ismokecrackallthetime, and friends
SLANG: all of it
RATING: 5

"Naughty Lorenzo's World O' Kayak Rental" was our pet name for the matchbox inside the shoebox inside the closet of Bill Pothead's room where we hid our communal stash. In fact, we were so paranoid, we'd seldom even talk about "visiting Lorenzo" or even "Renting some kayaks" for fear some of the more square students of the dreaded Headmaster had cracked our 'code.' We'd just refer to the shoebox or the closet-but we couldn't even call THEM their right names. The shoebox (originally containing some Teva sandals from Jimmy Smokecrackallthetime's room) was called "Roy Rogers' Ambiguously-sexed Relationship With A Stuffed Pony" and the closet, "Fifteen Lunar Landers Stranded At An Esso Station Closed For Lent." So to arrange a clandestine rendezvous with some "rentals" from "the world of the Naughty One," we'd have to say, "Hey Pothead, why'n't you go to the 'closed Esso station' and find the 'ambiguously sexed relationship with a stuffed pony' and then meat us in Ethan Itakedrugsconstantlyandwithoutqualms' room" which would think would throw them off the track but still the teachers looked at us with a certain amount of suspicion; we don't really know why... all that's in the damn matchbox is some harmless lozenges, really. We just like to watch them glisten.

 

A SLICE OF CHEESE TOAST TOO FAR

STYLE: 40's war movie
CAST: Sarge, Krauts, Ubertoastenmachin
RATING: 3


Meanwhile in the trenches of Normandy...

"Sarge, look out for that toast!!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

 

 

"Sarge?"


"Sarge.... A-are you OK?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHH!!!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

"S-S-Sarge??"


"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AAAAAAAAAAAAA-A-A-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! !
!"


"But Sarge, it-it's only a little piece of Nazi toast."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-wha?

Oh. (chomp, chomp)

Mmmmcheesy."


(leaning up over trench) "Can we have more?"


"Nein!!"

"Der Tosten bin nicht fur Amerikanisch!! Es bin nicht Kriegstosten!! Not even ein bischen! Wir kranked up das Ubertoastenmachin im das Trensch un das Ubertoastenmachin mach Toasten flyen zu far im dein air, zu fiel all dem way to Amerikanisch trennchen-von being zo Uber und all... aber NICHT MEHR TOASTEN!!"

"JA, NICHT!"

(Sarge and private Ng together): "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA... etc."

 


THE WINNING ENTRY OF THE 'FLORID FLORA PROSE CONTEST (HYPRBOLE DIVISION, BEGATABLE SECTORY, THISTLE QUADRANT)

STYLE: advertising
RATING: 4

Behold the immense might of the Artichoke. Gaze in rapt, reverent, bladder-evacuating awe at this mighty fortress, this Bastille of spiny plant material! Genuflect in mortal, breeches-befouling terror as you merely imagine the impossibly wretched fate of the simpleton who tries to penetrate the stegosaur-sized armor plates of this Fort Knox of a thistle, each capped with a mighty Excalibur of a spine, infinitely dense and sharp as that +5 Vorpal Blade your half-elf always wanted. Multiply this (Stegosaur+Excalibur mightiness) x 3,000 leaves to even begin to comprehend the immensity, the sheer senses-shattering brain-blistering defense system that this truly miraculous flower uses to safeguard its sanctum sanctorum!!! Exhaust your puny brain trying to puzzle out what treasure- surely more than King Solomon's wealth- would merit such audacious, preternaturally lethal, impregnable-type defenses? Weep with relief, with seer cowering imbecile relief that the omnipotent, ravaging power of this vegetable is tempered with and equally majestic sense of magnanimous-uh---NESS, and uses its might to merely safeguard the sublime treasures therein, instead of laying waste the vast armies of all the lands (what with the armor plates and spikes and all...) and above all, ask yourself,,, what sublime, transcendent, numinous, unspeakably holy treasure could be at the heart of the artichoke? What splendid, Kublai-Khan style delights would merit such unprecedented, protection? It's (gasp!) a lozenge???

 


BREEZEWAYS OF THE DAMNED

STYLE: horror
CAST: Mustafa O'Houlihan, Lockjaw, Vespasian Brotherses (sic)
RATING: 5

Mustafa O'Houlihan had done a lot o killing in his short life, a lot of larceny, adultery, sins both venal, mortal and some experimental sins attempting some sort of never-articulated-but-obsessively-sought-after veno-mortal synthesis; said v.-m.-s. being just the sort of unholy grail (unholy douche-bag?) which would sent him (Mustafa OI'H.) apart from other, less ambitious sinners.

So it was with great surprise that he- upon plummeting out of his blood-drenched-and-Graham-Cracker-encrusted (long story) physical shell- passed through layers of metamorphic and the slightly more Satanic igneous rock under the cracker factory owned by his arch-nemeses the Siamese tag-team champs and veal parmesan magnates the Vespasian Brotherrses (sic) (long story also), passed down through the magma into the hellish core, only to wind up on a slightly run-down breezeway painted a dull, institutional gray. Dazed, his first real insight that he was truly dead was the institutional stencil on every third pillar-- "of The Damned" (every OTHER third pillar reading "BREEZEWAY," naturally). The second most salient supernatural feature of said b-way was, of course, its stretching to infinity with no means of support.

M. O'H. was beginning to parse this turn of events, still reflexively shooing crumbs of imaginary graham off his soul, when he heard the voice... "Meow"
His first thought ("How'd that kitten get in here?") was prematurely abolished by the realization that a fifteen-foot demon was holding the kitten in its tender meaty paws (the demon's) and then absently tossing it into an infinite pit of lava extending along the left of the B. (O.T.D!), the demon looking as puzzled as M. at the feline intrusion.

"Anyway," huffed the demon, trying to salvage his awkward entrance by belatedly playing off the kitten-infinite-magma-tossing as yet another deliberately planned and wonton act of cruelty, "I'm so glad you've finally arrived. We had to build this breezeway just 4 U... actually it's and add-on 2 the Shopping Mall O.T.D> where we keep the aborters, but you can't see it since it's infinitely faraway... if only you could!! It's a gas-- full of kid's stores, Gymboree, Gapkids, Toys-R-Us, rack after rack of jumpers and feety pajamas, and demons disguised as packs of gum-chewing preteen girls that herd the D'd 2 the Food Court (O.T.D.-- natch!)"-- the demon abandoning all pretense of ruthless evil and grinning like a goofy, overeager Jeopardy contestant, "The food court where incubi in Hot Dog On A Stick uniforms feed the starving, guilt-racked Damned deep-fried embryos 4 eternity!!!" *

"But, anyhoo, you get this "B-way" all 2 yourself because you- Mustafa O'H.-han- finally succeeded in synthesizing a veno-mortal confab that defies orthodox theological taxonomy!"

Mustafa, now excited and grinning like a Ritalin-dosed and multi-limbed Vanna clone, "Was it lighting the Pope's ass on fire?"

"No, 2 mortal."

"Rubbing my third nipple on Gideon Bibles in all 48 contiguous states?"

"2 venal! And frankly I'm alarmed you'd guess that."

"Was it,... uh... Oh! The time when me and Lockjaw went to the hospital of terminally ill kids and--"

"U R so right! We don't even know what the heck that was. It might not even B a sin. Hence this breezeway...
On one side- as U saw, a hundred kilometer** fall into molten magma, and -- if you'll look over starboard- a 3 foot drop into an infinite collection of tooth-marked Legos from children of many lands."

And it was true.... a kaleidoscopic panorama, 180 degrees of a Lego sea, all lost by absent-minded juveniles through the years and drifting spectrally down to the earth's cores. I mean core.

"You mean..." Mustafa again.. "Lego has a soul?"

Demon's only reply was to vanish in a cloud of tandoori-scented flatus.

EPILOUGUE: 3,000 years later, a wizened and spectral O'Houlihan soul, still intently snapping block after block creating the underworld's longest ladder....


*Mustafa realizing that the alphanumeric shortcuts ("4," "U," etc. ) being a universal hellish idiom just recently showing up on earth shortly after Prince sold his soul.

**M. OhH.'s eyes narrowing as a long-standing suspicion of the metric system's true origin was confirmed.

 


30,423

CAST: Herman the sperm whale, gibbons, barnacles,Santa
SLANG: 30,423, bubonic ass-plague
RATING: 4

VERSION 1.0
30,423 moved shakily down the hall, its many serifs catching on the thick shag carpet...


VERSION 2.0
30,423 barnacles lived on the lips, dorsal fins, navel, and vast, frustum-shaped body of Herman the sperm whale (and roughly 3,400 more on the flukes, but no one was sure since census takers refused to "risk their delicate, plankton-catching fronds" in this bad neighborhood since the Remora Incident) (flukewise, the consensus that anything south of the dorsals was pure hard-ass ghetto). Herman, last name Melville (the product of two very ironic and somewhat pretentious parents), viewed the 30,423+/-3,400 squat little squatters as the least of her problems. Right now she had just ingested a spastic archetuthus which itself had recently et a whole troop of hopelessly marooned 4-H Club students whose panic-stricken sea-diving would (even if it were successful in out-swimming the rabid gibbons who strenuously resisted all efforts to be groomed, husbanded and ranked in an impromptu, "Let's-make-the-best-of-a-bad-situation" judging contest) would not have saved them (the 4-H kids) from the lozenge Bubonic Ass-Plague which was now infiltrating Melville, via the necrotic and semi-digested membranes of the star-crossed archetuthus, and stuff.

At the exact moment Herman, the squid, the various now-jellied 4-H parts and the 34,000-odd conical freeloaders perished, Santa laughed, a deep, jolly "Ho, ho ho ho!" and loaded his sleigh high with boxes of gaily festooned Ass-Plague.

 

SEAGULL IN A PLASTIC BAG

STYLE: auto-biography
SLANG: midgets inside of slot machines, 'thum'
RATING: 5

" 'Seagull in a Plastic Bag' is my name", chortled the beefy man in the skintight Sansabelt slacks, giving you a glimpse of truly cheap bridgework (his) as he grins with sweaty, false jollity and pounds you on the back, nearly squishing you into our slot machine, which moans uncharacteristically as your knees impact on the midget therein....

"Yesiree, I know, it's a weird ole name, but there's kinda a funny story behind it," he slurs, juggling his gin fizz with a varicose and pinky-ringed hand, and juggling a dozen poker chips with the three fingers and "thum" remaining on his other hand... "Y'see my mama told me that when I was born..."

...but by then, you're already at the airport.

VERSION 2.0:
"When Mo(m2)a lay there on the hospital, " (voice now lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, beady eyes close enough for you to count their 30,423 burst capillaries with your Scannin', Tunnelin' electro-microscope nestled in your flesh-colored left socket) "The doctor pulled a gaw-damn seagull in a plastic bag out of her tummy. I shit you not, mister!! My Paw was convinced the bird, she'd just shoved it in there some months prior- some escapades with the next-door neighbor (a retired taxidermist)... my Paw done flew off the handle, never mind that the fella next door was 90 years old and gay as a Koala bear, he was fixin' to get his shotgun, when the doctor notices that this ain't no ordinary seagull in a plastic bag extruding (sic) from a lady's snatch, pardon my French, this plastic bag" --(he's now misting you with his spittle, which is flying from the translucent white webs at the corners of his mouth-jowl intersection, and thus occluding your S.-T.E. Microscope, but there's no wiping it off- you're transfixed like Moses before the burning bush). "This plastic bag, had an umbilical cord going into Mom(m2)a's uterus-Doc persuaded Popa to stick around long enough to see the placenta ooze out, and sure enough there I was, curled up inside. Naturally I wasn't but three inches tall then but I grew fast. We didn't have no Ovaltine back then, it was sink or swim! Popa, thinking fast, he done grabbed a bicycle pump (it was a very poor hospital) and pumped the placenta into my gullet, expanding me to a full 12" in size. I guess I turned out OK, except for the crazy name, eh buddy?"

You nod dumbfounded, at last finding your voice, croaking, "But, uh, why did they call YOU "Seagull in a Plastic Bag' if you were just the placenta OF... uh.."

"Well, see that there is another funny story," he says, lifting up his lymph-stained Hawaiian shirt to reveal a glistening gray flesh tube sprouting from where his navel should be. As he tugs upwards on the cord, you vault the slot machine (midget and all) and trundle your IV stand up the down escalator to 'safety' where you're accosted by burly security guards. Your troubles have just begun.

 

IN THE REALM OF GREY MEAT

STYLE: tall tale
CAST: MC Hammer, Cap'n Mushy
RATING: 3

MC Hammer lurched pendulously towards the poop-deck as the typhoon dumped a stray mackerel into his Jheri-curl. "Ahoy there captain! What be the fate of this vessel? If we proceed, this'ere squall'll surely send us to Davy Jones' Locker, but if we turn back, Her Majesty's Navy'll do the same!!" Cap'n Mushy-- so called because of his spongelike consistency (reportedly the result of a short-lived liaison twixt a mermaid and a stoned Pillsbury Doughboy) replied, "Thewe is a thiwd awtewnative... we can go hawd-apowt."

"Hard aport?" replied a shaken, ashy Hammer, dropping his Pepsi and fried chicken, his harem pants distending in the high wind. "You mean... TO THE REALM OF GREY MEAT??"

The beleaguered crew stopped work as one to gape, and even the squall seemed to pause at the mention of this, the most dreaded name on the high seas! "Aye," sighed Cap'n Mushy, looking sheepish. "Aye" he repeated, thrusting the tiller hard aport.

Thirty minutes later, all hands on deck were shocked senseless when storm clouds parted to reveal a colorless island, vast towers of cold cuts and cyclopean canyons walled with ribs, and broad mesas of fillets: all moist, gray, and kept from decaying only by the giant prehensile tongue periodically emerging from the Veal Volcano, covering everything with an insulating patina of drool.

"It's not so bad," opined the Cap'n.

 

TOOTH-CAKES

AUTHOR: Schultz
CAST: portly wemble, doctor hulk merkin
RATING: 3

Portly Wemble squeezed her gelatinous bulk into the dentist's chair, finally settling in with the audible "Pop" of a Snap-Tite model, causing the dentist (one Hulk Merkin, cousin of the wrestling star, whose own grappling career was derailed shortly after flossing the Gnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnghhhhhhhhhhhhh Brothers with the turnbuckle ropes, dislodging thereby several kilos of valuable bridgework) to wonder, in his own dental way, whether extrusion would be the only way to remove her. "Zo, you have a toothaches, yes?"

"No, Doctor Merkin, I want TOOTHCAKETH!"

"Tooth-cakes?"

"Yeth, I want to have my teeth removed so I can eat them, baked with frothtin' and eh uh eh coconut thavin's."

"No, it's outrageous, Portly Wemble!! You can't eat your own teeth, no matter how sweet, mmm mmm sweet and mmmmm tangy and lo-cal they are! It's too meta! It's like using your ocular fluid to paint... it's...."

"I'll let you have one, Doctor. GLAZED."

Viewers around the world were shocked at what happened next!!

 


MISS AMERICA PERSONALITY QUIZ

STYLE: Q&A
CAST: Miss Idaho
RATING: 5

Q: So you grew up in a small town in Idaho. What was that like?

A: Mgpththth fth pthhhhhhhhth sspthhhhhhhth fth. Mff. Pththhhhhhhgggggggggh. Mbmmmmm fthhhhhhhhhhhpppppph, pthh!

Q: Past Ms. America winners have used this very public position to campaign for social causes such as literacy, AIDS awareness and world hunger. If crowned Ms. America, what would YOU do?

A: MMMMpthghhhhth, mpff. Ffffffffffffff. MMMpth fff-ffff-f-f-pth mbmmm, spthhhhhhhph mmf. Mff, MMMMMMMMMMFTH mm, mmmmm.

Q: (wiping spittle from face) Uh... young women today face many tough choices. What would you tell a woman who was pregnant with no husband?

A: FFFPHMG!! Gggg-gg-hhhhhhhhh-MMMGH! Hghpth, gmpth, g-g-g-gpth, MMFFgh. Gthph?? MMP! Thgpth, mfffffthph-hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Gpthah, MPTH! M-ff-ff-pththhhhhh! Pthfffffffffffffffffffffffffff-f-f-f-f-fffffffffff-ff-fffffffffffff-fffffffffffffffffffff-fff-f-f-ffffffffff-fpth!!

Q: (hosing self down with mixture of Bactine and cortisone) Er, excuse me. In your biography, you talk about the challenges you faced growing up with no face, just and exposed alimentary canal with a vestigial brain stem affixed to it with Legos and twine (all your hillbilly parents could afford) and being fed pig slop through a funnel. Yet you've just won both the ball gown AND swimwear competitions by the widest margin in pageant history. Do you have some words of advice for the other head-and-or-faceless, alimentary-underdeveloped beauty queens out there today?

A: MMMpthgh, ghhh. (giggle.) Gththph!! Gffffffphth, gh, nnnn-nnn-nnnnnnnnn-ftagn.

Q: Thanks a lot, and good luck! Let's have a big hand for Miss Idaho. (grabs scouring pad off nearby dispenser.)

 


VYNYL FLUFF

STYLE: true crime!
CAST: Jiminy Hooplinsnot, Bruno Ong, Hootie Vathqueth, Fucko the Klown

SLANG: the 'stat' of "Uthah"
RATING: 5

Exactly 23 days to the minute after he'd donned the PVC mummy suit, ex-Marine colonel Jiminy Hooplinsnot keeled over stone-cold dead in his dungeon cage. The 45-year-old dominatrix who had been alternatively administering IV-drips and high-velocity foot-spankings was already on a bus to Uthah (sic) to start a new, clean life (financed with Hooplinsnot's vast Kaiser Willhelm-era flatware collection, the irony of which did not begin to disturb her until years later when... oh never mind) by the time detectives Ong and Vathqueth arrived, still clutching with grim tenacity their supersized canisters of circus peanuts; Ong absent-mindedly dangling a "Fucko the Klown" balloon from one prosthetic finger. Hootie Vathqueth, hauling her wheelchair into the dungeon cage, whistled an appropriately minor-key dirge version of the flamboyant seal-trainers' theme as she carefully cut the vinyl suit off the bloating Korean war vet, while Bruno Ong whispered vehemently into his recorder, "Deceased Paraguayan-Viennese colonel... Fucko the Klown tattoo on philtrum .... strapped to IV drip ... no obvious cause of death." (Vathqueth pointing at the corpse's belly button) "No, wait, cause of death: suffocation. Victim had an appalling 3-week buildup navel fluff which- sealed inside the skintight mummification shit, burrowed inwards, strangling his lungs." (Vathqueth, brandishing a very specialized and thus far never deployed pair of forceps, proceeded to deftly extract a boa-constrictor-sized, lymph-clotted column of sodden, menacing lint.) Ong, thinking of the endless hours of filling out requisition forms for skeptical Seargaent (sic) Doolittle and his squad of Internal Affairs cronies, couldn't suppress a twinge of pride at the vindication of his lint extractors, which would become even more vital in the weeks to come....

 

RULES FOR 'FIFTEEN-CARD NUH'

STYLE: rules
RATING: 3

1) Player A deals 16 cards to himself and 14 cards to player B.

2) Both players put all their spades face-up on the table.

3) Each player adds their spades together and extracts the function of the square root of that sum.

4) Whoever's function "(S+S2)!" is closest to the sum of all the cards (multiplied by PI) can take the other player's diamonds. If the other player has no diamonds, he must forfeit a number of turns (T) equal to (product of all spades remaining undealt)X(square root of prime-numbered hearts currently in play).

5) During the intervening "free" turns, (turns forfeited by player B), player A may draw one card (divided by cube root of the integrals of diamond-faced cards plus joker (if wild)) per turn from the deck and, by interpolating between the whole-number integer values of those cards, create a function (F) where S= the mean of the series of vectors on a graph (G) where the X axis is suit, Y axis is number. If the series as plotted on the graph is optimally greater than the STANDARD derivation of the Minkowski series, player A can place ANY two of his OR any three of player B's cards in the "Maladroit Pile" where they will continue to count for the purposes of calculating sums of all spades as per Rule Number 3, but will be otherwise shunned by the rest of the cards.


UNLESS

Player B did have diamonds, thus not forfeiting any turns, in which case player A can only compute the function (fD) of his OWN diamonds or put one card in the Maladroit Pile, but not both.

6) Last person to break down and buy a Cray Mainframe wins.

 

BOMBARDED BY FRAGMENTS

STYLE: French novel
AUTHOR: Schultz
RATING: 2


V 1.0:
"Oh no, Le Fragments!!!"

 

VIBRO-FRY (DIRECTIONS FOR USE)

STYLE: helpful pamphlet
SLANG: tons
RATING: 5

1) Unplug all appliances which use Tesla-coil power, Nano-amps, 64BU capacitors (this includes ALL Virtual IronLungs and the 8900 series of Bee Prostheses). FAILURE TO DO SO COULD RESULT IN ACCIDENTAL PREGNANCY of the equipment thus powered.

2) In order to ensure that the fries stay properly "vibro-" we strongly suggest you purchase the Pud-Nuh brand VIBRO-FRY APPLICATOR, which has settings of both 2200 and 4400 Mhz! For those WITHOUT a myriad of externally gestating Quoom fetuses, Pud-Nuh also manufactures a transdermal Vibro-fry applicator, which comes with a free packet of Nair.

3) Run a background check on your Medi-puter to determine if any of your

a) family
b) clones
c) corporate gene-solution providers
d) host organisms

HAS EVER SUFFERED OR BEEN REPUTED TO SUFFER FROM THE FOLLOWING ADVERSE EFFECTS:

a) sympathetic vibrations@ 2200 or 4400MHz leading to sudden mass dispersal
b) sudden shifts in polarity
c) accidental tentacle deletion
d) epiglottal nano-hernia
e) yaws

FROM ANY OF THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS

a) Inter-Nuhhhh brand Vibro-Shakes
a1) mmmmm....vibro-shakes...
b) Micro-Pal Vibro-Chimp (2.0 or higher)
c) Professor Gimcrack McNutty's Old-style home-cooked Cyborg Mints
d) "Spiro's Own" multi-axial Gyro-Gyros

4) To avoid oscillation conflicts with your Vibro-Fries, make sure your internal chest-mounted centrifuges (or those of your host-organism) are switched to standby mode. If you lack standby mode, to avoid sudden mass dispersal, simply reach into your chest cavity and disable your limbic system altogether. If disabling your limbic system could result in necrophagy (and thus lessened enjoyment of Vibro-Fries), new Limbic Chest-mounted-Centrifuge-drivers are available from FryTech's site, which will enable the Vibro-Fries to actually take over the Limbic Centrifuge IRQ bio-ports as they pass through your alimentary canal (or facsimile thereof). It may be necessary to first disable the StoolTrak peristalsis-synchronizer since the nanobots in versions 4.0 or older are still in open rebellion against The Coalition.

5) Sit back and enjoy the crisp taste of Vibro-Fries, and don't forget to reconfigure your Colon-Pro to reactivate the default limbic settings after excrement renders the fries non-Vibro.

 


OBSERVE MY FROND

RATING: 4

The first openly ectoplasmic governor of Louisiana floated to the rostrum clutching an equally insubstantial giblet and grinning with the flush of victory.

(that might be enough right there, but if you really need to see how it ties in with the topic, there's some background...)

"My fellow Louisianianians," he began, "I come here not to gloat but to mourn a tragedy. Not the tragedy of my opponent's navel-lint-and-mummy-suit related asphyxiation, for this is a matter of public record. No, I today mourn the passing of this'ere fine cut of meat! Just yesterday this giblet was on the plate of little Latoya Skruggs. I received this letter from her just yesterday: she wrote:

"Governor, something evil be killing my meat. Our whole family is starving as our vittles turn to ghosts. I got nothing against what y'all ectoplasmic folk choose to do in private, but my giblets aren't choosing to go all spectral, it's pure devilment! Won't you help me? I'm only three years old."

And I promised that little girl like I promise all you fine citizens I won't rest until this matter is resolved. Louisisnsnsnsnsnans will not starve under an ectoplasmic administration! In fact, only a spectral governor could communicate with the ghost of this'ere meat as I have been doing, and hear first hand the account of its untimely demise. Straight from the horse's mouth, or in this case, the chicken's ass. This giblet, like so many of its noble brethren, was killed by a rare meat eating spore. The spore comes from insidious and genetically-altered ferns which thrive in our humid climate. These spores eat the meat and lay their eggs in the GHOST of the meat! The next part of their life cycle comes in the afterlife, when an ectoplasmic fern grows out of the ghost and infects another member of the Insubstantial Community who then converts back to a physical corpse, which apparently nourishes the next generation of ferns.

Now, only one organization has both the ruthless cunning and techno-genetic je-nay-say-qwah to pull off such a fern-altering stunt: The Numinous Rebels of..."

Before the Governor could name the nefarious culprits, the giblet screeched "Governor.... OBSERVE MY FROND!!" As, on national TV, ethereal-yet-malignant flora sprouted suddenly from the marrow of the traitorous meat ghost, infecting the first undead governor of Lousianananana and setting the Ectoplasmic Party back 20 years.

Meanwhile, in the shantytown of Drekville, a malourished Latoya Skruggs reached under her filthy straw mat of a bed and pulled out a gleaming, high-tech PalmPilot
. bearing the PUM logo.... "mission accomplished" she wrote.

 


THE INVENTION OF SENOR BRANE

STYLE: sci-fi
CAST: Li'l Timmy, Piglet Ninjinski, Nafta Gatt, Veronica Limbaugh-baugh, Lili Kartopfel-Vathqueth
RATING: 3

You'd think the first sentient talking computer would be invented by a top-notch team of engineers working around the clock in a high-tech lab with the latest technology, not by an illiterate, narcoleptic Indonesian pirate working in his spare time in the bowels of a flea-infested Llama-smuggling sloop using only a Farsi Speak-N-Spell and the dental retainers of his teenage victims as sotter.

But you'd be wrong.

The first intelligent machine WAS invented by a top=notch team of engineers, but they weren't in a nigh-tech lab with the latest technology, they were in the sigmoid colon of an unusually large and experimental infant named Tommy. Their resources limited to the various cars, computers, rostrums, circuits, mainframes and Vibro-Fries he'd eat long with his staple diet of cow. Piglet Ninjinski would use her archaeology training (9th level) to carefully scrape the mung off any inorganic components, passing the most useful to Nafta Gatt, who would use Timmy's own stomach acids to weld them into a primitive thinking-machine. Veronica Limbaugh-baugh dug a shaft to Tommy's lungs to use the air-power to power the apparatus, while Lili Kartopfel-Vathqueth programmed the code, using Tommy's own responses as the feedback for an evolutionary self-smartening AI algorhythm.

The four super-scientific (and super hhhhot!) women knew that together they had the intellect to create artificial consciousness but- to quote Ninjinski (now Ninjinski-Gatt)

"We knew that unless our very lives were in jeopardy, unless a talking computer named Senor Brane was literally the only thing that would save us, we'd never summon the intense concentration and willpower to actually make one. The sigmoid colon of this exaggerated infant proved the ideal spot for our research, not just because of the life-threatening aspects, but also because, as an infant, Tommy has something in common with Senor Brane: they are both in the process of acquiring language skills. The emerging intellect of Senor Brane could communicate with Tommy far better than with any of us gorgeous science babes. They grew up together in a sense, each learning from each other. Lili's Self-Smartening feedback loop was not only instrumental in getting Brane to learn to talk, but also in making this normally recalcitrant and ill-tempered mutant dependant on Brane, his only friend . So when Senor Brane finally asked Tommy to eat a full subway car, Tommy did this without hesitation. Naturally the car pierced his abdomen and we were free to walk to safety.

The only thing we didn't count on was the bond between them had become so strong we couldn't break it afterwards. Brane refused to leave, claiming that curing cancer and finding ways to detoxify spent uranium rods wasn't nearly as rewarding as using his vast intellect to calculate Tommy's diaper-soiling algorithms based on his consumption of 15 cow a day. On the other hand, Nafta claims that Brane's moderating influence is the only thing keeping Tommy from running amok in a ceaseless ID-driven rampage, but I'm like :'Neutron bomb, bitch!' I swear I'm going to leave her one of these fuckin' days."

 


SLIPPERY INSIDE, APPEARING NIGHTLY

STYLE: Concert Review
AUTHOR: Schultz
CAST: Slippery Inside, Elton John
RATING: 4

Over 300,000 people turned out to see Slippery Inside's unique brand of folksy grindcore; a spectacular turnout for a band which only yesterday was still practicing in their mom's living room. The three gangly 14-year-olds ambled on stage, apparently unphased by the stadium full of fans , and proceeded to play an out-of-tune thrift shop guitar and bang on pots and pans, just like at Mrs. Inside's house. Some critics announced that in this age of pre-fab pop idols it is precisely this naive and authentic vibe that drew the huge numbers of people to the Pud-Nuh arena. I , however, think the explanation could be simply that the band snuck into a sold-out Elton John show with a vial full of Ebola virus and a list of demands..

After a few songs such as "Papa's Got A Brand New Colostomy Bag," and "Kill Mumia Already," the crowd response was so ugly (50-year-old grandmothers ripping out seats and lighting the cushions on fire) that the band was forced to form an impromptu Elton John cover band (the ironically named "Appearing Nitely") to appease them. This was no ordinary cover band-since it consisted of the REAL Elton (wearing only a mop on his skull, flippers, and a prosthetic hunchback), crying and blubbering his way through Slippery Inside songs with a Mossburg shotgun in his ass crack. Since the guitarist had to hold the gun and the percussionists were busy holding up the hastily scrawled lyrics for Elton, the 'professional' backup band was pressed into service, playing a thirty-minute version of 'Candle In The Wind' through a ring modulator, all this while Elton tried to sing lines like "Queen Mum, you're next!"

The crowd was skeptical at first but eventually grew resigned to their fate after Elton 'revealed' that these tunes were all going to be on his new album, "I'm a Horrible Bald Loon and Phil Collins Can Kick My Nuts." A fun evening was had by all who mattered.

 

LETTER FROM KOFI ANNAN (U.N. Chief) TO PORKY PIG

STYLE: Diplomatic letter
AUTHOR: Schultz
RATING:3

July 16, 2000 UN Plaza
10001 Bilde Blvd
NYC NY

Dear Monsieur Pig,

It is with the greatest pleasure that I write to inform you that the sanctions have been lifted. After extensive negotiations with BOTH ayatollahs and the also the head of the Warner Brothers network, an agreement has been reached. If you'll sign the papers I've enclosed, the fatwa will be lifted and you can leave the sanctuary of the Catholic church in Bangladesh after all these years. Of course you will have to stop testing the nuclear weapons (as we discussed last Walpurgisnacht...) and turn over your vast arsenal of biological weapons to Slobidan Milosovec, but most importantly, the embargo will be lifted and the other Ayatollah will finally stop using your tag line ("Th-th-th-th-that's all, folks!") at the end of every prayer.

Sincerely,

KOFI ANNAN

 

SPEECH TO EATON GRADUATES BY WAVY GRAVY

STYLE: speech, fool!
AUTHOR: Schultz
RATING:2

V. 1.0
"Honk!"


V. 2.0

"Thank you so much, class of 2000, for that deafening round of applause. Revel in my rotund greatness.... I am the shit!!! None of you fools would last three days in Klown Kollege. Take that!! And that!! And that!!! (pant, pant...)

uh...(pant, pant)


AAAAAAAieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEE!!! (pant, pant, pant)

That's.... (pant) more like it. Not so smug now, are you? Well then, I'll be nice. Here, have a balloon puppy. Oh, did I say 'balloon'? I meant 'baboon!!' HAHA!! See him clawing and biting and such!!! That's right. Run away-but you can't hide... one of these days you'll go to your car and find me and fifteen of my close personal friends inside... We're gonna find you, class of 2000, find you and give you and education --- IN PAIN!!!! You preppy fucks!!! I was working in carnies biting heads off chickens while you were driving your dad's Bently to prep school-well who's laughing now?? You been warned, kids... you might wake up and find a little Klown nose in your bed. Now it's your turn. That's right; call the cops!! I did a party for the niece of the Chief of Police-now he's in my pocket! Hey, class of 2000- ever see a drive=by on a unicycle?? Fuck using a silencer, you're gonna hear me honk!"

 


THINGS THAT HAVE MANGANESE IN THEM

STYLE: list
RATING:3


1) Boeing Model X9-MANg006 26,000 PSI Dioxide-filtration capacitor

2) Spectroscopic volume-generating analyzer

3) Zumwalt Maga-chloror-flouro-floridator

4) Malt of Manganese

5) Manganese Pie

6) Manganese Pie With Cherry on Top

7) That's not a separate thing!

8) Yes, 'tis!

9) Nuh-uh!

10) Faith, neither 'tis nae manganese in yuir 'Nuh-uh' me boyo!

11) I never said there was, dude....

12) Aye, it's on the LIST, me lad, as sure as it says '9)' before 'Nuh-uh'. An' sure if 'tis on the list, it must purport to have least a smidgen o' manganese, Begorrah!

13) Dude! As if there's, like, fuckin, manganese in 'Begorrah!', dude! Shit!

14) Actually, Zumwalt brand Begorrah has over 3 cc's of manganese used in the hydrating-electroplaing process used to overcome the negative polarity of the adjacent 'r's in the second syllable. That's why OTHER, brand-X 'Begorrah's tend to fracture into 'Begor.....ruhhh' after one use, me lad! Sure an' if ye don't believe me take home a Zumwalt Begoorah TODAY and I'll even throw in a FREE Zumwalt "Top O' The Mornin'" beta version that's been run through an experimental new desalinizing electro-coating flouro-manga-carbonizer for greater tensile strength without sacrificing conductivity, me boyo. WITHOUT SACRIFICING CONDUCTIVITY!!!! And that's no blarney!!

15) Uh...

 

HALF-MELTED LOOK

RATING:2

He shot her a smoldering glance across the darkened room... she returned a lukewarm ogle. He responded with a tepid glare which heated up to a burning peer and eventually cooled into a half-melted look which caused her to emit a series of fully-melted blinks which he- understandably- interpreted as a sticky, viscous leer and so he expelled a dripping, soggy stare at her and that was that.

 


ATTACHE CASES OF THE GODS

STYLE: style of Ralph Nader
AUTHOR: Schultz
RATING:3

First of all, I'd like to thank professors Higgenbotham and Chipathathathy once again for excavating the single least trivial find in archaeology and single-handedly proving the existence of god-in fact, the existence of an entire pantheon of gibbering, multi-faced elder gods, which I'd like to discuss from the standpoint of consumer safety.

First of all, the dozen forty-foot tall petrified attaché cases found in the lower crypt are capable of protecting the dread secrets of cosmic power from many (now unfortunately deceased , 'disappeared' or merely driven to madness) archaeologists, are nonetheless very informative on the subject of the elder gods' safety habits. Not only that, it appears they were quite safe indeed! From the triple locks on top to the reinforced corners of some unknown extra-dimensional alloy, to the many secret doors hidden in the folds of their non-Euclidian geometry (accidentally discovered to his chagrin by Ms. Chipathathathathy's husband, Mr. Ssp.) doors used, no doubt, for storing recyclables- these great old ones were certainly 'great' when it came to workplace safety and security!!


WALNUTS I HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED

STYLE: Victorian Poetry
AUTHOR: Schultz
RATING:4

O Walnut pure--
How wrinkled like a summer's breeze!
Ever so dry and crusty, I beseech you:
Take off your shell like.... uh, a summer's breeze!
Discard the nut of tenderness
Like a walnut
Falling upon a cloud. ...of love!!
Beautaeous and dimpled like Her Majesty's nether cheeks,
and bilaterally symmetrical to boot!
O Walnut, ever so tan and brittle
Like a horse
Whose hooves crack upon the marsh of love
I would be ever so grateful to sup once more 'pon thy graceful convolutions
And to once again lick the mold from their crannies,
The spores wafting through my delicate nasopharynx like, like a uh, summer breeze!
....Of love!
And spores!
But mostly love,
Until I start hallucinating and stab a Bronte!

 


GAY DISCO DIALOGUE ON ARBOR DAY

STYLE: dialogue
CAST: Rick, Mel, Ethel
RATING: 3

RICK: Can I just say, "Gymnosperm?"

MEL: The 'naked seed'!!

MUSIC: DUNT, chiggy DUNT, chiggy DUNT...

RICK: Right, cus the ancient Greeks would exercise naked in the gym

BILL: Were they gay? These ancient Greeks?

MEL: What an odd question! Say, here comes Ethel. Hi Ethel, happy Arbor Day!

MUSIC: DUNT, chiggy DUNT, chiggy DUNT...

ETHEL: What? Why are you young fellas all wearing bark?

RICK: Why aren't YOU wearing bark?

MELVIN: It's ARBOR DAY, you old queen!

BILL: Hence Melvin's eucalyptus g-string

MEL: Observe my frond!

MUSIC: DUNT, chiggy DUNT...

ETHEL: What? The music's too loud

MEL: I said, "Observe my frond!"

MUSIC: chiggy DUNT...

BILL: He said, "Frond!"

RICK: So you know what happens to bad girls that don't wear bark in a gay disco on Arbor Day, don't you?

ETHEL: Put me down, you botanical rapscallions...!

MEL AND BILL: PEAT MOSS ENEMA!!!!

MUSIC: DUNT, chiggy DUNT, chiggy DUNT...

 

 


MESOPOTAMIAN SUPERHEROS

STYLE: comicbook
CAST: The Human Ziggurat, Captain Cuneiform, Parchment Lad
RATING:4

"Moo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hahahahahhhh!" exulted The Human Ziggurat, laughing so hard that his top two tiers shook with mirth. "I have at last dethroned Hammurabi... the Fertile Crescent is mine!!"

"Not so fast, villain! As long as I, Captain Cuneiform, stand fast to defend truth, justice and the Mesopotamian Way!" This merely caused The Human Ziggurat to exult some more, to wit: "Puny hero, your best archers' arrows bounce off my wall-like skin! You're just one man! Kiss my buttress!"

"Don't worry, Parchment Lad," the Captain whispered to his inevitable sidekick, "he doesn't know about my secret weapon." and with that, he said : "IT'S CHISELIN' TIME!" and, whipping out his bronze stylus, he leapt up The Human Ziggurat and carved 'YO MAMA' on his head in Sanskrit.

And the multitudes lost all their fear of T.H.Z, and laughed and pointed and said, "It says, 'his mama'!!! Har har har!" Humbled, the weighty villain roared, "Ouch, that's taught me a thing or two," and scampered off to Latin America...

 

THE MYTH OF THE FROTHY STUFF

STYLE: epic myth
AUTHOR: Schultz
SLANG: he-wolves
RATING:5

...and Odin the Allfather told Siegfried, "If thou wants to marry my immortal daughter, thou must slayeth a hundred rabid he-wolves and collect all the frothy stuff that cometh thuth, er, thus out their mouthes, and then put it in a hollow ram's horn so's I can chug-a-lug it. I heard you can get wasted on that shit, dude."

"Fuck You, Odin! Ten wild terriers maybe, but a hundred rabid he-wolves? Are you meshuggah, already? For a hundred wolves, I should get Angela Lansbury! Vavoom!"

"Forsooth, what am I? Chuck Woolery? This isn't The Dating Game! I'm the fuckin' Allfather, bro, and if I sayeth a nundred, or even a hundred he-wolves, that's a fuckin' hundred wolves."

"Why?"

"Cus it's a MYTH, shmuck! Who's gonna sit around the fire and tell their grandkids about the nebbish who klopped a terrrier?"

"I said TEN terriers."

"Oh for the.... I DON'T GIVETH A FUCK! DON'T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE!!! Look, terriers just aren't myth material, and besides I already tried their frothy stuff and it was bunk, dude. Some guy in People's Park said it was good shit but it was really really schwageth. But rabid wolves, I get my buzz, you get some immortal nookie--- what's not to like??"

"Have you looked at your daughter lately? She got three teeth. She got one nose lower than the other. Bitch! I ain't lyin'! She's so ugly, you make her wear an oversized helmet that comes down all the way to her clavicle just so your ravens don't get scared away-- this is a bargain??"

"Look, Hugin and Mugin are just very sensitive birds. They don't like a crowd. I don't know why she wears the helmet so big... all the kids do it... Look, are you gonna kill these hundred wolves or no?"

"Couldn't she just sit on 'em, keep 'em from escaping? Or look 'em straight in the face so they're paralyzed?"

"Look, enough with my daughter already! She's immortal, Siegfried. You know how long that Awkward Age is when you live forever? I used to have a whitehead the size of a Storm Giant all through the Precambrian Era... Give her a couple hundred thousand years to mature, she'll turn out fine."

"Fuck this shit, dude, I'm marrying Roy."

 

ETEMOLOGY OF 'NOOKIE'

STYLE: linguistic thesis
AUTHOR: Schultz
RATING:4

This preposterously happy and diminutive vulgarity presents a contradiction to many armchair linguists, as well as those who may talk to actual humans: How did such a patently taboo subject associated with terms like 'cunt' and 'gash' accrue such a perky, non-hateful synonym; it's like finding a Care Bear at Geto Boys show. Apparently Professor Emily Nuh has found the most exciting clue yet in this ancient mystery: a pair of 6,000-old tablets (signed "Captain Cuneiform") bearing the original term for nookie: yoni, which became the default term of abuse for prehistoric Indian construction workers. Yoni became mistranslated into ancient Greek as yanni, which is why New Age music even today is strictly for pussies. Yanni became yanamono when Greeks eloped to South America (Thor Heyerdahl at the helm), which is why the Yanamono tribe of the Amazon River basin is also called 'the fierce people'-- similar to the unfortunate schoolchild named Harry Butts, they had to fight all the time.

When the Yanamono went north for the summer, the northerners corrupted the name to eskimoto, because you 'ski' a lot up there. After realizing that the Alaskan natives were essentially calling 'em 'pussies who ski and listen to yanni' the Eskimoto warriors kicked everyone's ass and moved into their igloos. The most famous Eskimoto (later shortened to Eskimo by French explorers) was no doubt Nanook. Being the Head Dude In Charge, he had his pick of the blubber-enclosed babes, and every lesser tribesman knew that the organs of his wives were nookie, or - literally- 'that which is Nanook's'

 

POKE AND PROD THE LYNX

CAST: Janet Reno
SLANG: prematurely ending words with the syllable 'nuh'
RATING:4


"Poke and prod the Lynx! That's right, step right on up folks, you'll be thrilled and a-mazed by H' P' Barnuh's in-credible, proddable Lynx! Five dollars and any man, woman, or child can poke and prod the lynx! Yes sir! We've got twigs, plungers, fire-pokers, #2 lead pencils both 2H and HB, every irritating, poke-oriented object for our prodding convenience! Vex and irk this hapless yet captivating feline! Step right up, sir. Wouldn't you like to...."

"That's no lynx! That's Janet Reno in a lynx costume... and it's not even a good costume. It's a paper hat that has 'lynx' written on it with a Sharpie."

"She's got a matching tail, too! Look, it even says 'lynx tail' on it-- is this truly your idea of a 'half-assed' costume??"

"What a preposterous question! You're the worst showmuh ever! Your lynx blows.'"

"Hey, you'd better give me respect, citizen! Now poke and prod me before I call in an FBI air-strike n your whole family."

"Lynxes can't be Attorneys General! I won't poke you. You admitted your phony-ness!!"

"Nonsense! You don't have to be an Attorney General to call in an air-strike. Lynxes, I mean, we lynxes do it all the time in the wild; that's how we catch our tasty prey in the wild: 'Hey, there's a bunny-- boom!' 'Hey, there's a Thompson's Gazelle-- boom!'. Totally natural. That's why we just wear these HATS. Once we evolved thanks to a symbiotic relationship with Bill Clintuh and the ATF, we didn't need fur and fangs anymore. Now, really poke my eye!"

"Uh..."

"I mean it, really jab me, you fuckin' human!! Vex and irk me with a #2 lead pencil or it's curtains!"

"Aw, ok... what the hell..."

 

MARKET ST. 3000

STYLE: sci-fi
CAST: Shrum Nebula Locust Guys, sentient gangs of roving breast implants
RATING: 4

Ever since the Urban Preservation Act of 'ought six, the "Market-St.-Uber-Decay-Platz" has been one of the most popular national parks. It's a vivid and ironic reminder of the economic, environmental and social dung out of which our fine cantaloupe of true civilization has grown. Although now a small island in the Sea of California, visitors may take one of the many monorails and thus find themselves hip-deep in Schizophrenia-Land, "Spare-change?"-Land, Crack-Whore-Land, or, Nude-Hose-With-Petroleum-Byproduct-Skirt-And-Matching-Shoulder-Pads-Land. A quick visit to the Yuppie Museum of natural History will satisfy the morbid curiosity about this horrendous epoch in earth's past, and, after a quick top in Random-Violence-Land visitors may even find their mutilated cadaver, bedecked as it is with cryptic screwdriver-carved insignias, has become an exhibit as well.

Although conditions aren't exactly the same as in the Second Millennium, every effort has been made to keep the various ecological niches intact, including trimming the roaches' opposable thumbs and stuffing them into police uniforms. The plastic shopping carts (long since eaten by the Shrum Nebula Locust Guys, of which the less said the better) that homeless people use have been replaced with the husks of SUVs and the occasional mohair humvee. But 'shopping carts' wouldn't be much use without homeless people, so we've hired many highly evolved fungal colonies to roam, asking the animatronic faux-pimps for spare change. However, as in nature, some evolutions are inevitable:
The sentient gangs of silicone implants bowling over hapless tourists, the various and Oedipally conflicted VDT's asking your intestinal parasites for their "web sites" in whiney nasal voices spoil the fun for many. But fortunately we can eat them with our razor-sharp, constantly growing incisors, before going back to our civilized burrows on the mainland.

 

"IT'S SO HOT YOU COULD COOK AN EGG ON THE SIDEWALK"

STYLE: Marin yuppie style
CAST: Buffy, the protagonist too
SLANG: lots o' it: Bundlestorff air conditioner, Fahrunkugel stereo, scrimshaw multi-axial vibrator, etc.
RATING: 4


"I'm turning up the Z2100 Turbo Bundelstorff air conditioning-humidifying-de-ionizing crystal powered unit mounted in the faux-teak dashboard ($3,400, Sharper Scrimmage) of my S12100a-series, Rainforest Green BMW ( license plate 'BONDLVR'). I'm adjusting the temperature lever to "Luxemborg" and the humidity nub to "Paupa New Guinea," but I can still see the miserable, sweating, unwashed bums outside looking at me with what could only be envy, couldn't it? Even though I know that this was their own karma for having persecuted ME in my past life (Marie Antoinette, naturally), their Neanderthal glares are still, you know, still unsettling my chi so I'm putting my Tony Robbins "12 Dynamic Management Techniques for the 21st Century to Bring Out the Dynamic Inner C.E.O. in your Bad Self" CD into my Fahrunkugel 15-CD-changer-Parametric-EQ, octa-speaker audiophiliac system ($7,500 on sale). Get out my way, you slowpokes, drive more proactively!! Running that short bus full of crippled orphans off the road so distracted me, I forgot which slot I put Robbins in, so I'm playing Kenny G by mistake-- try slot 9-- Eddie Burkhell--no, try again, Tipper Gore's "Don't Trust Anyone Under Thirty" spoken word CD-- no!! Try again!! I must find my mentor and god Tony Fucking Robbins!! But my CD system is so fucking huge it could take me hours to navigate the elaborate Teutonic system of buttons, and I left my In-car Remote at my acupuncturist's! Look, I gotta go now, Buffy, page me later. I need both hands just to deal with my hideously expensive imported Nazi sound system, I can't talk on the phone right now. Especially since I'm going like 75 MPH. Why isn't everyone getting out of my way faster? Can't they see I'm having a hideously important audio guru crisis? I'm so fucking importan--"

The coroner's report later revealed that the mysterious 'Buffy' was also at that moment using both hands to adjust her 56-speed, multi-axial, $8,000 faux-ivory scrimshaw "Authentically Handmade by Native Peruvian Endangered Whalers" vibrator parameters while driving her Range Rover, and thus ran over the lane divider, directly into the victim she was talking to, killing both instantly.

 


RONNIE'S POLYPS AND NANCY'S LEFT TIT.... WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

STYLE: national enquirer
CAST: Agent Googolplex, the ominous offspring about to be born
SLANG: be-smocked
RATING: 3

For reasons of national security, Ronnie's anal polyps were given directly to the latex hand of a be-smocked Secret Service agent in the operating theater. Who knew what MX launch codes these polyps were privy to? Given the cold war paranoia of the time, it was deemed necessary to put them in a vacuum-sealed hayperbaric nutrient broth canister to be kept in Lenin-like stasis at the bottom of a 'hardened' Peacemaker missile silo in Nevada. But, while exiting the top secret Stealth-Bomber prototype used to transport the canister, "Agent Googolplex" was tripped and, falling down the steps, knocked unconscious by the rapidly advancing tarmac. Creeping around the side of his now still Reeboks came the gelatinous, velvety culprit: the disembodied, decadent left tumerous teat of Nancy Reagan! The malign growth having achieved a form of sentience, still governed by "Mommy"'s power-driven mania, it oozed viscously across Washington, sucking the lifeblood from ankles of Congressmen, leaving its putrefying stains in the seams of $400,000 Dior ballgowns, and now--! Now, like a nudebranch cracking open an oyster, if that's what they do, it curls around the canister and releases its mate, the Presidential anal tumor, from its unconstitutional imprisonment... the grayish, moss-encrusted nipple opening wide and swallowing each frozen, purple-brown veiny nugget in a necrotic orgy of cannibal tumor-lust, until the teat, pregnant, sated, and slipping into a sort of post-coital coma, tumbles into the very MX silo that was meant to dispose of the rectal polyps. What bastard offspring, what hideous new life incubated by the leaking radiation from a 2000 megaton warhead above, would emerge nine months later??


THE DUMBEST STAMP

CAST: MC Hammer, Marian Elk, Kiesha
SLANG: Hamburgular Smegma, "kill the Amish" stamp
RATING: 5


1999- The lynching of "Postmasta" General Hammer, of "MC" fame, long thought an outbreak of millennial mob frenzy has, according to philato-archaeologist Marian Elk, a better explanation:

"Well, Keisha, thanks for having me on today. In fact, the lynching was due to Hammer's release of The Dumbest Stamp. People were already angry at the Second Dumbest Stamp (Larry Flynt sucking Puerto Rican Tit memorial three cent) and the Most Utterly Pointless Stamp ( Ocelots of Ventura County Collectors' Series), but when the "Postmasta" denounced the new "Kill The Amish" 32cent stamp as "Not stupid enough," angry mobs began camping out in front of his lean-to. We're excavating several meters deep into these camp-sites, and finding very interesting results, I tell you! The final straw came in Marc 1999 when he unilaterally approved his own thirty-two cent design, "Hamburgular Smegma, " causing riots nationwide. The stamps resulting from Hammer being extruded into an offset-litho press are now worth their weight, ironically, in Hamburgular Smegma, so prized are they by collectors of postal rarities while, uh.."

I'm sorry, Marian, that's all we have time for today.


'CHOCO-TACO' MITH-HAPTH

STYLE: memoir
AUTHOR: Schultz
CAST: Molly Ringwald
RATING: 3


We interrupted our stegosaurus excavation when it became apparent that Molly Ringwald wasn't doing her share. Her rhinestone-studded pure-elephant toothbrush was barely soiled and she kept going on what she insisted on calling "Choco-taco breakth" every fifteen minutes. At first we ascribed this indolence to the bitter malingering of a washed-up actress whose paleontological career lacked the glitz of the "Brat Pack" days of the early 80's, forcing her to express her mediocre acting skills by pretending to work hard excavating shit.

However, after nearly half a year and two Volkswagen-sized femurs had passed, we realized that Ringwald didn't have another toothbrush!! Scrubbing her teeth with a brush full of Mesozoic-era shmutz, combined with her addiction to sugary "Choco-Tacoth" had resulted in a complete loss of teeth and many festering sores that made it painful to work! Thankfully we were excavating the head by this point and managed to retrofit the ex-teen idol's skull with the petrified molars of the extinct vegetarian. Except for a constant craving for Mesozoic-era kelp, she turned out to be a fine scientist after all, and I take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of the whole crew for hazing her with the, you know, bear forks.

 

FAMOUS RUSSIAN SHRIMP ASTRONOMERS


STYLE: Sylvia Plath
SLANG: Anatoly the Northern Lobster of Bolshevik Revisionism, Sasha, the Trotskyite co-conspirator Crab
RATING: 4


Mordant and insignificant
Crustaceans scanning the rim of the Baltic
Trapped in exoskeletal mortality
Forever cursing the Tartar hordes
Microscopic tentacles
Scribbling Cyrillic constellation-names on sandy star-charts
Made impossibly complex by their compound vision
Multiplying each star a hundredfold
The charts--
Lost a low tide--
The futility of existence!!

Gazing at mighty Antares
With compound eyes
But seeing only the left claw of "Anatoly the Northern Lobster of Bolshevik Revisionism"
Brutal Nordic gales
Churning inky frigid water
Obscuring their tiny telescopes' feeble vision
Of
"Sasha the Trotskyite Co-conspirator Crab"


And even the huge galactic mass of "Breshnev's Unibrow"
Is obscured by the savage clouds
Preying on their visibility
Like a hungry grouper munching their kin

The shrimp's kin
I think you know what I mean
Don't be coy

Anyway

Tomorrow they will be all sold on the black market
Lifeless shrimp
Eaten by dyslexic Mafiosi

 


TOO MANY HEAD CLICHES

CAST: Helen McNakagawawitz, Sidney Chinalini, the Cray Mainframe
RATING: 3

Dr. Helen McNakagawawitz, curator of the esteemed Zurich Head-Cliché Repository, was tearing out her hair as she gazed vexed-ly at the broken TRS-80 that had held all of the archives. "Fuckin' shit, dude!!! What the fuckin' FUCK am I gonna use to store and retrieve the myriads of cranial-linguistic idioms? The plethora of puns, the cornucopia of metaphors, the gunny-sack of slang, the near-infinite multicultural proliferation of skull-related syntax? The redundant, the sub-humorous, twee, cloying, fuckin', ..uh...flogged-in-the-manner-of-a-dead-equine, contrived, perfunctory verbiage pertaining to a certain bodily protuberance to various degrees of abstraction? They won't fit on a fuckin' Radio Shack, no more, blood! You feel me??" And so she promptly (owing to the typical Scottish-Swiss-Japanese-Jewish punctuality encoded in her far-too-exotic genes) detached her own head and sold it to the nefarious C.I.A-owned Wackenhut corporation, in exchange for a Cray Mainframe! However, all 3.2 trillion gigs of RAM were still run off the TRS-80's tape-recorder data-retrieval system... and that's where I came in. Me, Sidney Chinalini, Hong Kong Hassidic Paisan sysadmin, me and my lovely assistant, Chuck!

 

INTESTINAL FLORA AND FAUNA

STYLE: Tennesseeee Williammmms
CAST: Dre, E. Coli
RATING: 3

"I am the Earth Mother and you're all a bunch of flops... except I'm actually a microscopic e.cola bacteria living in Dr. Dre's stomach, and you're all a bunch of infinitesimal, cillia-encrusted algal life responsible for rendering "The Mothafuckin' Doctor's" Frito Lays into complex carbohydrates... but still, I'm not afraid of Virgina Woolf... after all, she can't possibly crawl down here on her own and kick my invertebrate ass. First off, she wouldn't fit in Dre's alimentary canal and besides- the bitch is dead. Yeah I said it! And it's extremely unlikely, I mean, the possibility is in-fan-a-tes-i-mal that Doc would go, like, buck-wild kray-zeee, go to England, dig her body up and eat the bones, and the bones and the aforementioned cillia-encrusted algal flora would team up and kick my ass, right?

Right???

Hey, quit running! That's just Emily Dickinson's bones comin' down, you big coward!!"

 

JUICE SPASMS

STYLE: Hollywood movie pitch
CAST: Ernie Goldwattersteinskiwitzbergenkleinowitz, "Jasper"
SLANG: "The Spasming"
RATING: 4


Okay, Mr. Goldwattersteinskiwitzbergenkleinowitz.... uh, I mean Uncle Ernie, here's my, um, 'pitch': It's like this, you know, horror movie, or something? And it's got this guy? I mean the guy has got this... this juice, see? I man, it could be any kind: mango, prune, papaya, you could really go wild with the creative freedom angle there.... I mean... I was sort of thinking grape would be nice, but... whatever? Anyway, the juice-- and lemme back up a little bit here, OK, the guy is like some sort of.... secret agent, or something? Like a buxom blonde transvestite drag-king ninja dwarf, see, and he-- I mean she-- is about to drink the juice, which is really a pivotal scene? Really gripping? And I haven't really figured out what happens before this part, but, like I say, it could be any, literally any kind of juice, so maybe you could pick a kind of fruit which has lots of terrorists working for it, and that would determine the plot? ANYway, it's so important that the dwarf ninja drag-king secret agent blonde bombshell-- let's call him Jasper-- Jasper's about to drink this juice? Okay? But as he picks it up it starts to, like, spasm on him? Like, right out of the glass, or jug or, like, vat or whatever of juice, like frothy juice strands, effervescent bubbles, schizoid scintillating nodules of geysering iridescent goo come out and.... get him!!! Like all the others... oh, did I mention the juice gets other people too?

Well anyway, it's called "The Spasming!" Get it?

 

HARDER OOMPA-LOOMPA RIDDLES

CAST: Jeremy Pluntkin, Pre-Teen toe star
RATING: 2

" Oompa-loompa oompidy doo,
I've got another riddle for you," recited the quartet of disturbingly cheerful and irate midgets.

Little Jeremy Pluntkin looked on in bemused horror as he sank deeper into the caramel death-trap of the chocolate pitcher plant, the sudden numbness in his once-famously-nubile toes (stars of Pre-Teen Boy Toe Suck-N-Insert Action volumes IV-VIII) belying the presence of deadly neruo-toxins at the bottom of the pitcher.

He never heard the rest.


THE LESS OBVIOUS REASON FOR LOBBING A FRESHLY MADE COCKTAIL O'ER A FENCE

STYLE: shaggy dog
CAST: Dr. Yamamotortellini, Toby
RATING: 3

...Meanwhile, somewhere in the Andes, a rabid Vicuna ( or is it, tantalizingly, an alpaca?), while chasing a Toltec shepherd boy for kicks, plunges off a cliff, landing on the head of an unfortunate Soviet sniper who is laying in wait for the fateful carrier pigeon. His shot is ruined, and with it, Russia's last hope of stopping the message from the captive Dr. Yamamotortelini! But, when it stops in Mexico City for water, the pigeon is run over by a Mack truck full of surplus uranium... ironically headed to Yamamotortellini's lab! The dead pigeon is scavenged by street urchins, glazed and sold in Tijuana to a small herd of vacationing Viking ice-pirates, who bring it with them to Oslo. On their way, they stop to plunder Fort Lauderdale, killing all the cops. The cop orphans are put in a big foster home in rural Louisiana and retrained as sea-monkey ranchers. Toby, the lead orphan, sees and opportunity to escape when the freeze-dried sea monkeys are shipped to wholesalers. He has the other boys create a distraction (something involving a ram's horn and the guards' pet ocelot, Liza) while he buries himself in the box o' monkeys and reseals it from the inside. By the time the box gets to Wichita , Kansas, Toby has long since suffocated but his anaerobic tapeworm has eaten orphan, monkeys and all, and grown to 112 feet. After eating the entire Wichita postal service, it dies from exposure to oxygen. As a result, a "Dear John" letter to a certain gulf war G.I. never gets mailed-- and so it is that when Ingmar Bergman Jr. comes home, he finds his gal in bed with Ricardo Whitherspoonovsky... peeking through the window, he discovers them, and goes back to his Humvee, pops the trunk and gets the M-79 flame-thrower, pilfered from Uncle Sam. Rudolf, the pesky alcoholic next-door neighbor who no one ever thought would amount to shit, was pissing on the fence (being unable to at present locate his house). Seeing Ingmar angrily attempting to ignite the flame-thrower, Rudolf hefts the martini over the fence in a life-saving act of heroism. Unfortunately for all concerned, Dr. Yamamotortellini's latest atomic robots kill everyone minutes later.

If only the pigeon hadn't stopped in the middle of the street...!


IN LOVE WITH THE LITTLE MONOPOLY HAT

STYLE: true confessions
AUTHOR: Schultz
RATING: 2

Eunice couldn't believe her eyes-- was this a cruel hoax? But she had been ashamed to tell her fetish to anyone. Yet there it was, in the "other" section of the 'personals':

'YOU: SKILLED MONOPOLY player. Me: chrome-plated 1/2" icon: car, hat, iron, whatever your fantasy desires!'

She picked up the phone and dialed. Ever since she was six, she'd been in love with the hat. While the other kids raced their markers around the board she just kept stroking the metallic chapeau. Teasing ensued. She hid under the porch, oblivious to the plunder of her play-money assets above: "At last we're alone now..!" Fitting the nub of the tongue, nose and eyes inside the tiny metallic brim where the clitoris would someday go, a bond was formed that day.... a sort of 'us-against-the-world' bond.... an unspoken passion that a woman can only have for a centimeter of cast-iron headgear.

Eunice was still reminiscing when she got through to the hat's voice-mail. In a daze she said,
"I don't know if you remember me... I used to rock you back and forth on your Pringle-shaped brim, stroked your shiny veneer, cleverly maneuver you through the various real estate areas of my anatomy... and you couldn't respond, until now! I understand that you're an inanimate hat-shaped playing piece, but still I've been waiting so long, I think I deserve a bit more than an anonymous classified ad and a ... a goddamn voice mail! AFTER ALL THESE YEARS?!? You think I'd get a little respect-- seeing as how I've put all the effort into the relationship so far, but NO!! I'm not jumping through hoops for any faux-chapeau, hoity-toity headgear, FUCK YOU man, man, I'm checking into the hotel on Baltic Avenue with the iron, see if I don't!!"

 

THE MAN WITH THE RICHTER-SCALE MOUSTACHE

CAST: Ricky McLogjam
SLANG: NASSSA
RATING: 3

Most people knew him as Ricky McLogjam, medieval historian; a lesser number knew him as Rachel Rocksoff, avid "Supremes" fan and gaff designer to the stars. But only an elite few NASSA scientists knew him as.... the Man With The Richter Scale Moustache!! Unknown to Ricky him (her) self, the outlines of his pencil-thin 'stache revealed the next day's Richter scale readings for Lima, Peru, which manifested themselves (the readings) as peaks and valleys of stache hair, something McLogjam attributed simply to 'static.' But which nonetheless held seismological secrets capable of saving untold thousands of lives.

Unfortunately Ricky/Rachel was also profoundly racist and refused to let the government study his 'stache. So one day, three of NASSA's top-trained transvestites kidnap Rachel Rocksoff in the middle of a lip-synched nightclub medley, two dragging Rachel backstage and the third blinding potential witnesses with a a sequin barrage and some nifty dance moves. McLogjam-Rocksoff was put in a waiting NASSA van and his/her stache hooked up to electrodes. "Your moustache is vital to national security, honey! If the U.S. saves Peru form quakes, NASSA gets ten kilos of pure coke a week to get the "Area 51" aliens strung out and pimp 'em to a horny Bigfoot."


But it was not to be, for by hooking up the stache to the Richter machine, the electrodes caused the 'stache to bristle something fierce. This bristling caused huge earthquakes all through Lima up to Ecuador, killing millions, starting a war, and eventually resulting in the outlawing of all lip-synching by a coke-addled Bigfoot who's Generalissimo of the North American Junta.

 


TERMITE PHOBIAS

CAST: of thousands
RATING: 3

V.1.0
"Well, let's get started. Shall we go around and introduce ourselves by our caste and phobia? Then once we've bonded, we can commence the healing process."

"I'm a soldier and I've been suffering from a fear of heights.."

"I'm a royal pupa and I have claustrophobia... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


V.2.0

"I'm a worker and I have a.... fear of Lapland"

"Where?"

"Lapland, the arctic tundra between Russia and Finland; ancestral home of the fearsome Lapps!"

"I don't see how this affects your duties as a colony member..."

"Well, it was either join a 12-step group or do 30 days in the county, and this looked like the funniest one..."

"Mr. Worker, I don't feel you're into the spirit of healing right now. Your negative energy is inhibiting the nurturing process."

"No, nonoonono, I can be phobic, really-- look!-- 'OH NO. LAPPS! HERE COME THE LAPPS! With really... uh.. REALLY SINISTER REINDEER! I'M SCARED!' See? Can I stay now?"

"No, you'll definitely have to go back to the county jail."

"Well ... at least I have closure now."

" NO YOU DON'T," bellowed an unfamiliar voice, as the


MY FIRST TIME SHOPLIFTING

STYLE: true confessions
CAST: it's a secret!
SLANG: 'wurst
RATING: 2

Me and my friend used to boost from the porn racks at 7-11... this was around 69-70. I musta been 8. 8 or 9. We'd hit the 7-11 on 67th and Muhammad and then run down to the Kmart on 71st and pull these denim overcoats on. We'd find all the bratwurst and just pile it in the sleeves of the coats, which we'd stitched shut. Our real arms, you know, under the coat. Get ten pounds of 'wurst, you know, buy some taffy and split. One time a flatfoot caught us. He thought we as gonna be scared cus we was girls. While I distract the guy with my appendectomy scar like LBJ, Molly- actually her real name was Molybdenum, like the element (embarrassing egghead physicist parents, which always made her feel like she had to compensate by being the craziest bitch on the block) kayos the klown with a 3-foot slab of 'wurst. Sent his false teeth arching over Sups, Soap, and Feminine Needs, right into Dry Goods. Man, we were crazy. This was before I became "Belinda Carlisle"-- nobody thought I'd make it out of my life of crime.... and I didn't! I'm a washed-up has-been... broke as a motherfucka... now hand over your wallet, Jerky! This is a jack move!!

 


DRIVING TOO LONG IN ONE PLACE

STYLE: rant
RATING: 2

Driving too long in one place? Oh, I know what means: GRIDLOCK! You're undergoing all the alienating, claustrophobic, environmentally unsound aspects of car transport without any of the utilitarian counterpoints... namely MOTION, shit-for-brains!! Now hit the GAS!! The FUCK is wrong with you?!? I can see it's fuckin' GREEN half a mile back! You're in front and you can't tell?? hey, AAHOLE, in OUR country, green means GO!!! If you don't have a fuckin' destination, get off the fuckin' ROAD!!! WALK, if you're in such a not-a-hurry!! FUCK!!!!! Assholes like that take 30 seconds to cross an intersection, and all the people that SHOULD of had plenty of time to cross are stranded just cus some old fart in a Cadillac, no-reflexes-having, video-game-losing, palsied, chicken-shit, non-driving, 16-RPM fuckwit can pretend they're alone on the road!! The SELFISHNESS of these motherfuckers...! Everybody (in an ideal world) would hit the gas AT THE SAME TIME and roll out wit military precision. Those in the back would have to go a LITTLE slower to prevent tailgating but SHIT--! If we can learn to drive the normal fucked way we can relearn! Plus all traffic signals need a bit stopwatch on 'em so you can see how long you've got before you can hit the gas. SIMPLE. Why do I have to think of all the GOOD shit??

 


CENTENNIAL NOSE-HAIR CAMPAIGN

RATING: 4

With the eve of his 100th birthday fast approaching, the neo-nazis were aflurry with activity trying to locate and unify all the collections of Der Fuhrer's nasal hair-- hidden in backyard bunkers and bomb shelters, stashed in safe-deposit boxes, Nordic Churches and trailer parks nationwide. Frantic militia pleas covered the email bandwidth: "Only by re-uniting the nose hair can the white race be reunited and uplifted to breathe the clean air of racial purity!" But, alas, it was not to be... the combination of fake nose-hair purveyors, regional sectarianism ( "All RAT, Yankee-boy, but yew just' brang YORE haars daaown HEAH fuhst!!") and the usual hard-core fanatics claiming the whole affair was just a Zionist plot ("Once they have ALL the hairs in one place, they'll steal 'em and lock 'em in one of their International Banks forever!!") doomed the whole campaign. Bumper stickers reading "They'll take my Hitler Hairs when they pry 'em from my cold dead nose" began to appear with alarming frequency on pickups north and south. Hope for the salvation of the white race is now transferred to the search for Adolph's single syphilitic ball, rumored to be in a jar of Vaseline in Santa Monica.


MONDALE: HIDDEN CONTRIBUTIONS

STYLE: biographical
RATING: 3

Although mocked by many, the ineffectual anti-Reagan campaign and abysmally anonymous vice-Presidential term were in fact a well-disguised ply to divert attention from Mr. M.'s real mission on this earth! As the world's foremost rolfer, his ability to give deep-tissue massage to world leaders might have caused a war between superpowers competing for his attentions. In the interests of peace, Mr. M. was forced to practice his considerable talents only on himself, with the result that his liver is almost completely blocking his left eye and his small intestine is so deeply lodged in his cuticles that he can't wave to his supporters: his political career has thus been effectively stalled at the very post-cold-war moment that it would have been the most diplomatically useful...


IF THINE EYE OFFENDS THEE, PLUCK IT OUT...

RATING: 2

If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out... and put it up a badger's butt. And if the other eye offends the badger, who, let's face it, is bound to be a li'l irritated anyway, what with the unsolicited ocular enema and all, then pluck IT out (the other eye) too, and put it on a stick and tell some kids it's the new Tootsie Roll Pop flavor that isn't out yet, but thee can't find a stick cus thee got no eyes left, punk!! So the kids are yelling "Where's my Tootsie Roll, mister??" and the badger is trying to gnaw through they Achilles tendon and this offends thee to no end-- losing two eyes is penance enough without being martyred by greedy woodland creatures and harassed by small fry, thee grabbeth the badger who offends thee and squeezeth it like an accordion playing "Cum On Feel The Noize" and when you hit the first "WIIIIIIIIIIIILD" the eye ops out its ass and give the hungry kids tetanus.


ABOUT EYELASH WORMS

STYLE: talk show
CAST: billy ray cyrus, ice cube, meir kahane, connie chung
RATING: 4

BILLY RAY CYRUS: Oh you can take my worms
They ain't nothing but germs
You can tell my lashes throw 'em out...
You can tell my e. coli
Tell 'em to just go die
But symbiotic relationships between multicellular organisms of various degrees of anatomical and neuro-chemical complexity is what it's all about...!

CONNIE CHUNG: Shut up, peckerwood! "Eyelash worms: parasitic threat or unwanted blink generators on the next 'EYE TO EYE WITH CONNIE CHUNG.' "

ICE CUBE: Ho, you gonna have two black eyes if you keep woofin' that 'parasite' shit!! Eyelash worms are the kind of symbiotic motherfuckers that ain't hurting shit! It's Jews that's the parasites, sucking the blood out the community!

MEIR KAHANE: You meshuuge schwartze! Such lies shall be met with swift retaliation of the army of highly-trained Mossad-backed Isralei eyelash-worms ready to give your tuchus such a klop if you say ONE--! MORE--! WORD--!

CONNIE CHUNG: "Eyelash worms-- instigators of 21st century race war of only hope for Middle-East peace?" on the next EYE TO EYE...

MEIR: Was I finished? Your media conspiracy will fall before my mosaic truths! Please send money now. Jewish faith is no longer enough! Our killer worm squads need gelt for munitions!

ICE CUBE: Bitch, shut the fuck up. Worms are supposed to help us live in symbiosis, not help us kill. You devil motherfuckers got war on the brain, cus you uncivilized grafted crackers!

CONNIE CHUNG: I'm not, but I married one.

MEIR AND CUBE TOGETHER: Race mixing be damned!!!

CONNIE CHUNG: "Race mixing between humans and eyelid worms: the possible origin of Billy Ray Cyrus??"

BILLY RAY CYRUS: ... But don't tell my eyeworms
My achey-breaky eyeworms,
They just might not understand
An' if you tell my eyeworms
My achey-breaky eyeworms
They might blow up and kill this man, a-wooooooooooooooo.


FOOD OBSESSIONS

STYLE: e prime ( no verbs or something)
RATING: 3

I like to arise and greet each morning with a tahini bath. Oh, sometimes a tahini Jacuzzi or an evaporated-lambs'-milk sauna will do the trick, but not even the exoticism of 5 laps through my Olympic-sized tapioca pool can provide the subtle (and yes, welcoming!) comfort of the tahini bath. Sesame seeds generate thick moist oils that languish on my skin all day, leaving it wrinkle-free and not unsurprisingly encrusted in boils and whiteheads. But what care I, the Contessa de Milquetoast, for mere beauty? Eh??? It amazes me that the poor huddled masses, when not engaged in yearning to breathe free, would actually EAT tahini.... the blasphemous cannibals!! Worse than cannibals, filthy parasites that masticate their betters in this life will be punished in the world to come! YES!! While my paridisial pontoon barge sails the Adriatic-sized vat of pure Egyptian tahini for eternity, the lukewarm, oily fluid gracing my acne-infested limbs will carry only the dimmest reminder of the charred broken remains of the millions of heathen tahini-eating proletarian scum who are even now burning in huge pyres below the vat, worming it for my imperial convenience....


TEATIME

STYLE: Kids' TV show
AUTHOR: Schultz
CAST: bongo tiki, tex sharpstein, the Emperor
RATING: 3

It's the BONGO TIKI show, with your favorite Tiki Bongo: BONGO TIKI!! And his human sidekick, Tex Sharpstein, the human HUMAN!!

TIKI: Hey kids!! We've got a real treat for you today, isn't that right, Tex, you old faggot??

TEX: Huh?

TIKI: That's right. Emperor Hirohito is with us today to teach the ancient and sacred Japanese tea ceremony! Let's give him a big BONGO TIKI welcome!!

KIDS: Moshi-Moshi, you old faggot!!

HIRO: I am most honored to be in your uncivilized, filthy, hairy, round-eyed ghost-faced foreign devil country!

TEX: So, Emperor, how do you make the tea over there? In Japan? Where you're from?

TIKI: We've flown in an authentic Edo-period tea-temple from Hokkaido province just for your old, WWII-starting, Nanking-raping ass. Now civilize us already! The kids are getting nervous.

HIRO: First, one must enter the correct pious state of contemplation. Next, one must lay out the sacred tea leaves and contemplate the illusion of time, while waiting for the leaves to soak in the Shinto-inspired, purposely flawed clay jar... feel the peace and harmony washing...

HONK HONK HONK HONK

TIKI: Hey kids!! "Shinto-inspired, purposely flawed clay jar" is our phrase of the day!!

KIDS: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

TIKI: And what do we do when we hear the phrase of the day?

KIDS: Pelt the Emperor to death under of a mount of clay jars, each bearing the likeness of a baby seal shooting craps!

 

REACTIONS OF A CROWD OF STRANGERS UPON WITNESSING THE BEHEADING OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

STYLE: man-in-the-street
RATING: 4


VERSION 1.0:
"Hey, look! A puppy!"

"No, up there!"

VERSION 2.0

there is no version 2.0

 


TOLLROAD BINGO

STYLE: Cajun cookbook
RATING: 2

Greetings, fellow Cajuns. Don't you love to eat, you fat Cajun bastards? Well of course you do, sweaty! And nothing's tastier than home-cooked fresh toll-both bingo! First kidnap a booth attendant and fry it in Bisquick. Yeah, I said it! If a cop stops you, just say, "Hey, I'm a Cajun, and it's in my cookbook!" If the fuzz is still not mollified, offer him the tollbooth attendant's liver, saying "MMMM, liver!" Anyway, next you cut the crispy deep-fried toll attendant (we call 'em kiosk monkeys) apart at every major joint; finger, elbow, shoulder, and so forth. Then get all the bingo players together and (like in bingo) you randomly select a Bisquick festooned body part by lottery, and put it on the first fat-ass greasy Cajun's plate. Keep putting pieces on everyone's plate in turn, until someone gets enough that he (and it's always a 'he!') can reconstruct an entire limb by putting all the pieces in a row. This person then calls "BINGO!!" and gets the Hello Kitty panties.

 


'MOO-HOO-HOO-HOO-HA-HAHAhahahahahahh!!"

CAST: the villain, 'tex'
RATING: 4

'MOO-HOO-HOO-HOO-HA-HAHAhahahahahahh!!" laughed the villain, twirling his moustache. He liked it so much, he reiterated: "MOO-HOO-HOO-HA-haha!" this time while twirling his moustache like a baton, casting it up in the air and doing some high-kicks for good measure.

By now, Tex had showed up to save the day, only to find that the villain was so into his laugh, he had been unable to cause any malfeasance. "Moo-hooo-hooohooo-hooooooooooooooooooooooo-haha!" cried the villain at his old nemesis, twirling his moustache on top of his head like a propeller beanie, levitating slightly.

Tex was confused. "Moo-hoo-hooo?" he enquired tentatively... "Moo, hoohoo, ha, ha??"

"Moo!" the villain assented, and as if to explain, added, "Hoo-hoo-hah-hah-ha!" Tex nodded sagely as he rode off into the sunset. "He won't bother no one no more" he said, and the thought that his work was finally done made him ecstatic. "Tee-hee-hee," he said.

 

" \ "

STYLE: biography
RATING: 3

This 1/4" diagonal line was born to an itinerant ampersand and a down-and-out em-dash in 1982. Despite its humble beginnings it always strove for greatness: Quoth the young line while still being dandled on its father's serif: "When I grow up, I want to be on of the absurd horizontal strokes that bisect the "Z"s in the OZZY logo!"

Although showing great promise, its grades were too poor to merit entry into the prestigious T-shirt or Poster divisions, and it wound up working in Doodles instead. Still optimistic, it said "Maybe I'll wind up in an idly-scrawled OZZY logo on some junior-high desk..." but a tragic accident involving a sadistic ligature left the line permanently bent at a 45 degree diagonal, disqualifying if from all but the most inept, besotted OZZY doodles, and finally an overseer, tired of the line's now-hollow boasting assigned it to me to doodle here in this binder. Tough luck!

 

WITHER CLAMS?

STYLE: graduation speech
RATING: 4

"The fate of the noble clam rests in our hands of tomorrow, or more precisely out laps.

"Your laps.

"I am old and decayed beyond belief and hence have no lap of tomorrow. Or at least if I do live, I won't have enough laps of tomorrow to aid and abet the clams the way that you, the Class of 1999, can abet the clams, the clams of your future, which begins now.

"With them.

"The clams.

"Yes, Class of 1999, you must open both hearts and laps to these pathetic, greasy little bivalves. Just hearts alone will not do, because of the hemorrhaging, and so forth. Just opening your laps, frankly, makes you look cheap. But both at once--no! This is not an act of wanton, slutty hemorrhaging, this is an act of generosity! A heartwarming commitment to the clam community of today from, oh God" (passes out)

 

POKER ANTS

STYLE: how-to
SLANG: 'belowdecks'
RATING: 4

When gamblers play sufficiently high-stakes games, we leave NOTHING to chance. A good opponent has a dozen ways to penetrate the so-called 'poker face'. Tics, lip-twitches, minute changes in vocal timbre, all become dead giveaways. But now we 'up the ante'-- haha!!-- with POKER ANTS! Like the beard-of-bees of Ripley's Believe It Or Not lore, a mask of ants can coat your whole face simply by applying a layer of this sweet, sticky lichen (applicator sold separately). No one can read your expression (except perhaps the queen ant, who receives chemical messages directly from the workers, and who the hell is she going to tell anyway? I mean, your opponent could have a queen ant of his own hidden "Belowdecks" in constant chemical communication with your own queen, but what are the odds? C'mon now). Anyway, instead of the usual blank, un-revealing poker face, the Poker Ants works on the EXACT OPPOSITE principle: since one can never hide ALL one's emotions, one must baffle one's opponent with a SURFEIT of emotional affect: the pain, agony and utter, utter discomfort of a thousand fiery ant bites. Did I mention they bite? Plus, ants cover you eyes, so you can never be sure WHAT cards you're playing, thus DOUBLY making your strategy opaque to your human foes, even if they DID have a queen "belowdecks" which they probably don't. At least not more than one.

 


MONOTREME OVALTINE

STYLE: advertisement
RATING: 3

Kids HATE it but it WILL in 4 of 5 cases get them to give birth to eggs, which they can incubate at home or in their natal pouches. YES! It's made from 70% REAL platypus, plus the wholesome cocoa which has made Ovaltine the leading brand to date. Except for Quik. FUCK THEM!!! Would that stupid rabbit have the balls to go... go out to the , the fuckin' OUTBACK, kill and skin wild platypi just so your wholesome American kids could (in 3 of 5 cases) sprout bills and webbed feet ( webbing may be partial and is contingent on swallowing or mainlining 3 or 1 quarts of Monotreme Ovaltine per day, respectively)? FUCK NO!! Maybe to Quick it's not important to turn the vast majority of God-fearin' American toddlers into wholesome, waddling, half-reptilian mutants by means of a sort of insidious reverse-cannibalism but to us it's axiomatic . Everyone's going to be monotremes one day, and let's face it, Mom and Dad, would you want your child to be a platypus or watch them wind up a Spiny Echidna, digging for ants with its tiny pointed bill? In the mud? Well then, the choice is clear, there's no middle ground! Drink up!


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