Cleanin up

We had some cleanup to do once we got back from the antarctic. First, the squimonk had still been makin donuts every day while we were gone. They say they did it because they weren't told not to, but, I tell ya, I worked at a pizza parlor when I was younger and I know we'd sometimes put the wrong stuff on a pizza and tell the manager "What?! They didn't order extra sausage on this pizza? That's weird. I guess we'll just have to throw it out. What's that you say? We can just eat that pizza instead? How generous you are to us peons who make mistakes." That sorta thing is what we around here call "country dumb". I was thinkin that's what they was doin, but then I remembered that they're the whole reason for the donut shop in the first place, so it's not like they was rippin me off or nothin. Plus, squimonk tend to split donuts into four pieces and share them among themselves. They tell me it's a monkey thing and I got no choice but to believe 'em. The long and short of it, though, is that we had about eight thousand donuts with nothin to do with 'em. Douggy suggested we build ourselves a nice donut fort, but I had to shoot that idea down. Donuts are just not good fort buildin materials. First, some are cake and some are raised, meanin that your building material lacking the similar density needed to form good walls. Plus, some of them jelly filled ones would just collapse, ruinin your structural integrity. Not to mention the vermin that it would draw. When I was a kid, my neighbor's kid tried buildin himself a fort made of cake. We was pretty excited about it at first because we thought we could just sneak over and have a bite whenever we wanted, but it turned out all wrong. He got the fort built, allright, but we never got that bite for two reasons. First, he fortified that cake fort like nothin I'd ever seen. He had motion detectors and alarms everywhere. If you got anywhere close, the searchlights would come on, the dogs would be set loose by some sorta automatic sysem we never quite figured out and then the guards in the towers would begin firing at you. They was deadly accurate, too. I saw them behead a squirrel at a thousand yards once. The most amazing thing about it, if you wanna know the truth, is that he made it all, and I mean all including the dogs and guards, out of delicious devil's food cake. While it was bad for us, it was allright for him to have a well guarded cake fort. This kid really liked his cake and wouldn't share it with anyone. That is, until the ants came. You see, ants also really like cake and cake guards don't have a whole lot of stopping power against an enemy that is both tiny and numbered in the millions. They'd swarm over his cake fort day and night, and he made all sortsa ingenious inventions to try and stop them. One night, just before school started, he was worn out from buildin cake aardvarks all day and fell asleep in his little cake workshop. In the night, the ants carried him off and we never saw him again. We do get postcards every once in awhile, telling us all about how he's been made the ant king and he is worshipped like a god in their little underground chambers, but the postcards are always postmarked from Poughkipsie, New York, so we think he really just moved there. After he was carried away, it didn't take long for the cake guards and dogs to run down and stop firin. By then we had lost all interest in the cake fort; partially because it had gotten pretty gross sittin out in the Iowa summer and partly because the maze of cheese had just opened and that was a barrel full of excitement to us small town folk. The point bein that, unless we wanted to be carried off by ants or some other kinda insect, we shouldn't really build a donut fort.

That idea set aside, we were lookin around for another one. I suggested we go outside and have a nice, ol' fashioned donut fight, but after lobbin two or three old donuts at each other and nearly takin out an eye or two, we thought that may be a bad idea. I've learned, though, that if you take a bad idea and add goin really fast to it, you sometimes make a good idea. Not all the time, mind you, but sometimes. In this case, takin a fast bad idea and tinkerin with some rubber bands and springs and stuff we had layin around and a couple of 2x4s and I'm pretty proud of the result; the donut gun. We was testin it, and it's strong enough to send a week old donut hurtlin through a metal shed from a hundred paces, leavin a perfect donut-shaped hole. After some figurin and poundin, we made a nice clip for it that can hold a baker's dozen in a little tube thingy which is actually a pair of pantyhose that we added some extra springiness to. You just keep pullin that trigger and them donuts keep launchin off zing zing! They go right through thin metal, boards, some thin trees and even geese if you happen to be standin around admirin the gun while talkin to your friend about how you should probably put a safety on the thing when it goes off in your hands just as the first geese are returnin from their travels to warmer climes. I felt bad at first, but I tell ya, goose killed by donut is tastier than goose killed in any other way. We got some squimonk workin on buildin us a couple more guns because we figured they may come in handy in fightin ninjas. I'm think we'll pull the gun on ninjas some day and they'll tell us "Don't you know ninjas can dodge bullets" and we'll say, "yeah" and then; HA! Donut! Take that, ninja! Someday, it will happen.

So, that was really the first of our cleanup and the only part Douggy and I were involved in. The other problem we had was that Brenda had been kept sedated in the freezer for the week we were gone. It didn't do her any physical harm, and a couple of squimonk dressed up as her to go to work and everything, which got her a promotion and a raise. I think she may be confused about it, but it's nothin we can't explain away with some amnesia or somethin. The biggest problem for us is that she'd missed a week of her soaps, and we didn't know how to make her believe that she'd been asleep for five minutes when all the characters on her shows had found lost twins or shot somebody or made a new enemy or whatever it is that happens of those shows. The squimonk are for broadcastin that week of missed shows directly into her brain as she sleeps. They can do it to each other, and let me tell you how much them little guys know about I Love Lucy, but they don't know if the technology is compatible to humans. For now, they've just snuck a tivo into her house and are showin the episodes daily, but a week behind. I'm just hopin she doesn't come to me when she finds out. I don't know what I would tell her.

The last bit of cleanup isn't happenin here. There's a posse of squimonk who are back at the Antarctic mall searchin through all of Amelia's records to see what we can find about Clan Platypus' plans and secret bases and whatnot. They tell me they're looking into the local head of meth distribution for this area to see if maybe we can't shut it down for now. The only thing they've found so far is that he's named McClawenstein. As soon as they know, though, they'll tell us.

Other than that, I've pretty much just been sittin around and restin, practicin my donut gun. I'm sure I'll be back on the road here soon enough.