The History of McClawenstein

Three squimonk came into the shop yesterday carryin a folder fatter than a former linebacker with a knee injury who eats burger king once a day. They'd been diggin through Amelia Earhart's records and were compilin doss-ee-ays, whatever that is, on the higher ups in clan platypus. Now, I ain't sure what a doss-ee-ay is, but this thing didn't look like nothin fancy like that, it just looked like a big pile of information. They told me they'd collected all the information they could find about the regional leader, McClawenstein. I ain't gonna tell you all the sordid details, but this guy's got an interestin history, even if he is evil beyond all imagining. So, I'm just gonna try to hit the good bits. I may fill in details the way I think they may have happened because that's missing out of the folder. I promise you, though, at least half of what I'm about to tell you comes straight out of that reading.

There ain't much about McClawenstein before September 5 of 1982. I'm gonna say that he grew up fairly normally, liked playin with cap guns and GI Joe, but there was somethin wrong with him. He wouldn't play those games like normal kids would, but he would take his GI Joe and put its wee little head inside the cap gun, hoping to deafen the doll. He would always play alone because of this and also because he was known as the stinky kid in class. This wasn't his fault, his parents were German and Scottish immigrants who could only agree on one type of food; boiled cabbage. In McClawenstein's house, there was always cabbage boiling; sometimes it was boiled in water and sometimes in vinegar. At school, the kids couldn't get within 10 feet of McClawenstein before they fell down chokin with waterin eyes, overcome by the vinegar and cabbage smell. Even his teachers had to wear special protective suits to grade his homework, which always smelt like cabbage and sadness. This turned McClawenstein into an isolated kid who never got to go to the swimmin hole with the other kids or watch Thundercats at his friends house or have a sleepover or any of the other things normal kids do.

With their cabbage cloud of depression hangin around them, McClawenstein's family had a limited number of things they could really do on the weekends. They spent a lot of time hiking far away and downwind of any other people, at the request of the city and under penalty of exile. Once a month, the local charity for stinky kids, Helping Hand With the Other One Plugging the Nostril (the HHWOOPN, or hwhoopin', for short) would meet and take those poor stinky kids on events. They'd arrange for places to be empty of people and for the area to be cleaned after the stinky kids left. They were kind of like the boy scouts, except for stinky kids. They also didn't have uniforms. They didn't need them because, when you're around a stinky kid, you are well aware of it. During these weekends, McClawenstein and his family felt like they belonged somewhere. HHWOOPN always started the meeting with a chant, called the HHWOOPN Cough, and then let the children run free in pairs. McClawenstein usually teamed up with his best friend Chuck, who smelled like old cheese and socks because his parents were dairy farmers and overactive footal sweat glands ran in his family, and they'd go do whatever exciting thing there was to do; ride the roller coaster, pillage the dump or even work together to corner the goats in the petting zoo so they could pet them before the goats passed out.

Then, on September 3, 1982, the unthinkable happened. HHWOOOPN was taking a tour of the aquarium, which was scheduled to be closed for six months for remodeling and a thorough cleaning anyways. McClawenstein and Chuck were playing their usual games when, due to an error in paperwork or possibly a vengeance complex against stinky kids, the cleaning and remodeling contractors showed up a day early and began unloading supplies. What neither of them knew was that they had leaky supplies. The cleaning agents slowly crept out of their buckets and mixed with the grout and tiling supplies the remodeler had brought, causing a tragic chemical reaction. The entire aquarium exploded, killing all but one survivor; McClawenstein. He was standing in just the right position behind a pillar and leaning close to the crustaceans exhibit. He didn't take the full force of the explosion, but the glass he was looking through exploded and cut his face up real bad. It didn't help any that the lobsters he was looking at got out and started cutting the rest of him up. It helped even less that he was covered in a previously unknown mixture of grout, bleach, tile cleaner, anti-algae powder and nacho cheese, because the contractor had stopped on the way to the job to pick up some nachos and was going to enjoy them before he got down to work, as contractors have the right to do. The mixture performed some sorta weird reaction on him and he began to absorb the lobsters that were crawling all over him. With each lobster he absorbed, he grew stronger and harder. He waded his way out of the aquarium, no longer man or lobster, but some combination of each. And not in the way that you become a part person/part lobster when you eat lobster, or if lobster eats you. This was somethin different. He was surrounded with a red carapace, his eyes were up on stalks and he now had claws for hands. The real sad part, despite the mutation, is that he still smelled like cabbage, but now he smelled like fish, too.

He ran from the scene of the accident and went into hiding on the bottom of the sea for some time. McClawenstein wasn't seen for another 5 years, when he was working for a traveling carnival. He started there in the sideshow, but worked his was up to management through a combination of brown nosing, good ideas and the ruthless murder of anyone who said anything bad about him. Sometime while he was managing the carnival, he made contact with Clan Platypus. They knew he was traveling into rural areas and could help them spread the meth around. They wanted him to make contact, hand out samples to likely customers and then refer them to the Clan for orders. It worked for a couple of years. McClawenstein got meth addiction to thousands of farmers and workers at gas stations in the middle of nowhere that you only ever get gas at because it's one in the mornin and you need a cup of coffee to make it to Tuscaloosa before six and you figure while you're there, you might as well fill up so you don't have to stop for gas again until you have to pee and grab breakfast.

But the early '90s was a bad time for carnivals. The economy was booming after the long, hard '80s and a new president from Arkansas was trying to bring a new era of prosperity, just like the president before him and the president before him and the president before him said they would do, but this time, they meant it. The middle class was more prosperous because everyone started to get into the stock market, which they thought would always go up, and they were happy because of a whole new class of pills that makes people happy that was bein pushed by doctors. That didn't leave much room for the carnival. Who needs to go ride a 50 year old tilt-a-whirl when you can stay at home, take a Xanax and watch Seinfeld? The carnival slowly crumbled underneath McClawenstein's many feet and eventually went bankrupt.

The German/Scottish lobster man was ready to live the rest of his life in the sea when he was recruited by the Clan. They told him that he'd done such a fine job as a salesman that they wanted him in middle management in their organization. He had another offer for middle management at the time, but that was just with Radio Shack and he'd have to wear a tie, work in a cubicle and not make ridiculous amounts of money doing evil. It was an easy choice for him. Sure, Clan Platypus still made him wear a tie, but he got to do the whole money and evil thing, so it was a compromise he could live with. Since the mid-90s, he's been overseeing the production and distribution of meth in this area.

Also in the folder were some satellite pictures of his base and his distribution network. The squimonk are working on a way to get to and defeat McClawenstein. We'll just have to wait and see what they come up with.