That first night in the Pirockate ship was one of the worst I've ever had. There we were, rocketing through space towards the moon, not in water at all, but that boat was still a rockin and a creakin all night. And, on that rocky, creaky boat, I was expected to sleep in a hammock. Sure, a hammock is all well and good if you're a sailor from the 1500s, out to explore new lands if you don't get eaten by a sea monster or thrown of the end of the world to fall, tumbling through the blackness of space, seeing only a stack of turtles for the rest of eternity. But this is the 21st century, or maybe the twentieth century. Wait a minute, let me see here. We're startin with 20 here, so, maybe it's the 20th. But then again, the first would have to start with nothin. So, then, we'd have to go back all the way to the year zero, when dinosaurs fought mammoths all over the Earth, everyone wore tiger skins and all the sexy cavewomen looked like Raquel Welch. Then Jesus came and Satan turned all the dinosaurs into stone to trick the Romans and then Jesus taught everyone English. So that was the first century, I think. Look, I'll be honest here, I ain't much of a historian. Most of what I know about history is stored in this biography of Charles Martel that I read for an eighth grade project, and sometimes I confuse that with that episode of Growing Pains where Alex and Snuffleupagus journeyed to Math Land to play pool. Or maybe I'm mixing that with something else. I guess that doesn't matter, though. The point is that, in these advanced times, you'd think that someone could make a rocket ship shaped like a pirate ship that didn't have to rock back and forth all the time. I mean, there's not even any water, for heck's sake! How does a ship rock without water?
I imagine the hammocks are a great help to others on that ship, but me, I got that weird sleepin habit where I like to wedge myself into a corner, rest the top of my head on the top of my feet, and slowly drift to sleep with my back end stickin in the air like mailbox flag. Except my heiney ain't as square and red as a mailbox flag. It's just square. And because I sleep like that, I spent most of the night bangin into the walls, bangin my head on the floor and fallin over. It wasn't till neigh on three in the mornin that I discovered the secret. I'd been sittin in the corner, refusin to open my eyes because I knew that the moment I did so, my entire night of tryin to get to sleep would be wasted.
Eventually, rounds about three like I say, I gave up tryin to sleep and opened my eyes. What I saw was both brilliant and disturbing. Line after line of Pat was sleepin just like I do, but none of em was bumpin into walls or nothin. In fact, they was standin comfortably in their hammocks, gently rockin with the swell of the ship. The secret, as I shoulda known, was duct tape. Them Pats had made themselves harnesses out of duct tape and taped the ends to the hammocks. They was each held in place by about a roll of tape, but they looked mighty comfortable. I decided that it couldn't make me sleep less that what I'd already slept that night. The worst that could possibly happen would be the duct tape becoming detached, allowin me to slip out of my harness, fallin on the ground and breakin open my head, causin me to think that I was a giant chicken for days, leadin the other Pats to have to corral me everywhere they wanted to go until they got sick of my antics and locked me up in the Bellview Home for insane Pats, where I would spend my golden years scratchin at the ground and tryin to lay eggs. But, like I says, that was a worst-case-scenario and so, with a roll of duct tape and sleepiness (which is when all the best ideas happen, in my opinion), I was ready to take the risk.
I gotta say, tapin yourself to a hammock so you can sleep standin up like an ostrich isn't easy to do. You gotta make sure you got stabilizin points at the waist, knees and ankles if you don't wanna be a crazy chicken man, which I don't. I mean, sure, just like anyone, I think about it now and then; how it would help me get out of all this responsibility I have, how it would give me more time to get into my hobbies of scratchin at the ground with my feet and swallowin small pebbles to help me digest my food, and how it would help me with the one thing I've always wanted to do, give birth. Sure, I know now that I wouldn't really be layin eggs, but if I were crazy chicken man, I wouldn't be able to know that my eggs weren't real. And even if I did only fill my pants with fudge, I'd like to think the joy I took in motherhood would still be real. But I wasn't ready for that yet, so I taped myself up nice and secure and, I have to say, I had the best night's sleep I've had since that time I got the job as a tester in the down pillow and blanket factory.
I don't know if it's the kind of life I lead or what, but I get myself some pretty disturbing dreams. Most nights, I dream that I'm in some big warehouse-like, windowless room with exposed pipes runnin over the ceiling. There's all sorts of other people in this room wearin some weird clothes. For some reason, the men is all wearin these strips of silk around their necks. I don't know what they're called, but they look a little foppish. For the time being, since they're tied around the neck, I'll just call them 'tienecks'. All the people in this warehouse place are sittin in their own little territories that are marked off by these things that look like walls, but are cheaply carpeted and only come up about three feet. In each little cube, there's a desk, a phone and a computer over which each person is hunched, trying to ignore everyone and everything around them. I look down at myself and see I'm dressed just like them, in this weird tie neck thing and wearin shiny black shoes that hurt my feet. When I reach up to my face, I find my beard's gone and my hair's cut short. "In accordance with company policy," I think to myself, not knowin where it comes from. I know that any minute, the "boss" is gonna come and "chew me out" for misplacin a comma on "Form 800" and that it's gonna get me a "writeup". I don't know what any of these words mean when I'm awake, but when I'm dreamin, they all seem to make sense to me. In the dream, I start gettin the shakes. The worst part about it all is that I know I can't leave this place of soul destroying horror.
It's usually then that I wake up screaming.
That morning, I learned that the only thing worse than screaming yourself awake out of a nightmare is doin it while about a hundred copies of you are doin the same thing. Well, that and panickin from all the screamin, forgettin you've taped yourself to a hammock and losin about a yard of leg hair when you stand up. The only thing that can make your day go well at that point is the timeless remedy of two packs of bacon, a cup of coffee and a jelly donut.
When breakfast was over, I went back to Captain Pat to hear more about the fight with the moon spiders.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Pirockate Ship
I don't know about y'all, but I ain't spent a lot of time flyin around in rocket powered pirate ships (which I like to call pirockate ships). In fact, takin off outta Planet Meth was the first time I had to experience somethin like that. I mean, sure, I been on the rocket ride at the State Fair, but that really only goes up a couple thousand feet or so, and it barely cracks 3 gees. But this was an actual rocket ship goin to the actual moon. Unless, of course, I was just dreamin all of this in a donut-induced haze. It didn't seem that way, though, because, so far, I hadn't been chased by any giant donuts tryin to devour me and I wasn't twitchy and jumpy like I can get after eatin two whole boxes of two-day olds that we couldn't sell, so I was ready to take this all at face value and call this my first real space rocket ride. And, on first impressions, I didn't much care for it.
"But Pat," you're probably sayin, "how many times do you get to ride in a rocket?" To which I would respond, "Go and get a rag and wipe your eyes off or somethin. I just told you this was my first ride. Jeez!" And then, after bein properly apologetic because you're a nice person and your parents raised you right, you'd give me some advice to just sit back and enjoy the ride. I'd say that, normally, that'd be good advice, exceptin all the things you don't know about bein inside a pirockate ship. First thing that made the journey unpleasant was all the unwashed laundry layin around. I know sailors and spacemen ain't known much for their cleanliness, and I, myself, have been known to let my unmentionables pile up, waiting until I have to shoo away sherpas and old British explorers before takin it all down to the local land-ro-mat and spendin enough quarters to sink and/or buy a small island nation. Still, the state of the quarters on this ship was down right deplorable. There was sherpas everywhere, I tell ya. Some of 'em had even brought their oxen with them and were building pastoral, isolate communities among the hills and valleys formed by cast off skivvies down it the hold. I swear I even saw some of 'em herdin sheep.
Second, and I don't know if this is the same on all pirockate ships or just the one I was on, but the only place they gots to sleep is in a hammock. Now, I ain't opposed to takin an afternoon nap in a hammock, specially in the middle of summer with a frosty barley pop in one hand and a morning of lawn work behind me. But you ever try gettin a good night's sleep in a hammock? It's durned near impossible. Even more so given that I like to sleep standin up with my head tucked between my ankles and that's not easy when you're in a hammock that's swayin back and forth.
Lastly, and I didn't know this before, but it takes two and a half weeks to get to the moon. So, after all that rushin around, gettin past the cop, drivin insane speeds, rowin across a sea full of garbage, fightin that sea monster, gettin pulled down into the depths, meetin a mermaid that fell in love with me, angerin her father, bein exiled back up to the surface, havin a tense long-distance relationship with that mermaid for a time until she moved on and found someone else named Chuck, who's a whale wrestler, findin out she was havin Chuck's baby, becomin Godfather to the merbaby, realizin time for merpersons runs a lot faster than time for people from the surface, writin a letter of reference for my God-mer-kid to get into college, findin out before the end of paragraph one that he'd already graduated and had his own private medical practice and was flourishin as a merdoctor, learnin of the fall of the entire merempire due to their love of watchin mermen wrestle whales, watchin the mer-dark ages fall over their species until such a time they experience their merrenaissance, which I had to miss because it was take off time. I know I skipped over that whole mermaid thing in the tellin and went right from the car to bein on the pirockate ship, but, really, after the fifth or sixth mermaid to fall in love with you, the whole idea of it becomes old hat, and I didn't wanna bore you with all the details of our torrid affair and strained but polite relationship followin it. Point bein, that after all that rushin around and whatnot, I was expected to just sit there for two and a half weeks and twiddle my thumbs.
Now, I may be a world champion thumb twiddler, and I got the shirt to prove it, but there's only so much thumb to be twiddled in a given day. There's a twiddlin limit that cannot be exceeded even by the most dedicated thumb twiddlers. I may have the stamina to twiddle for an hour or two but after that I start gettin cramps and, if I'm not careful, I may just aggravate my twiddler's thumb that ended my career in competitive twiddlin. Not wantin to injure my thumbs, I went for a quick twiddle and then wandered around to find someone to chat with. While amblin below decks, I found out there's a surprisin amount of stuff that needs to get done on a pirockate ship every day. There's rockets what need to be maintained, decks what need to be swabbed and horns what need to be swaggled. Not to mention all the brass that needs polishin. Them pirate Pats was all so hard at work maintainin that ship that none of em had time for a chat or a game of cribbage. So I decided to apply my knowledge of organizations to the situation. As far as I can tell, in most businesses, the higher you get up the ladder, the less you have to do in a given day until, once you reach the top, you're pretty much just there to be dragged out at ceremonies, like the corporate logo or respect for the customer. Armed with this inferential knowledge, I went and knocked on the Captain's door.
Just as I suspected, Captain Pat was sittin at his big ol' desk, just kinda starin out the window. I asked him if we could chat about some things and he jumped at the chance. He ushered me to sit beside his fireplace, which he was all too happy to explain didn't burn an actual fire, but just used lasers to simulate a fire. I gotta say, the simulation was pretty solid. I always thought the only thing lasers was good for was pointin at things you was too far away from to point at with a stick and gettin dogs to chase somethin around without gettin your hand all drooly. But it turns out they got other uses as well. So, there we sat by the laser fire and Captain Pat asked my what I wanted to know about.
"Well sir," I said, "back at the base, I was hearin about the whole war with the moon spiders when Clan Platypus rudely interrupted us. I was just sorta wonderin how that whole thing turned out."
He leaned back in his chair and said, "Ah! Yes. The spider war. I'd just been sent here by a cloud of Dale's gas when that was all goin on, so I didn't understand a lot of what was happenin. It was an excitin time here. And not excitin in that whole I-just-won-the-lottery-twice-on-the-same-day way, but excitin in that whole I'm-just-about-to-be-run-the-heck-over-by-a-bussload-of-Dom-deLouise-impersonators sorta way. That is to say, it was pretty frightenin on a whole number of levels.
"The Squimonk was convinced that the spiders was mostly peaceful. Reason bein, them spiders could prolly have killed all the people and genetic mutants they captured, but, instead, they just kept them in suspended animation the whole time. Also, with their ability to transport themselves anywhere at any time, they could easily have wiped all of us out any time they wanted to. But they chose to hide instead. Them Squimonk thought that maybe the spiders was just scared and that, if we could get them to stay in one place for a time, maybe we could reason with them and get them to stop kidnappin us. Me, I just wanted to be able to sleep without fearin that a spider was gonna bite me in the butt."
"You sleep standin up, too?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Then why you got everyone sleepin in hammocks?"
"Oh, that. That's just for historical accuracy. We grow lime trees up on deck, too, even though we all take vitamin tablets to keep us from gettin rickets," he explained. "Alistair's all about gettin things right, historically speakin. Me, I just make the ship go and don't think much about it. Actually, most of what I do is tell that there GPS," he pointed to a panel on his desk, "where we wanna go and then I sit here playin solitaire or whatnot until we get there."
"Sounds boring," I commiserated.
"You don't know the half of it."
We sat in silence, nodding slowly at each other for some time until he jumped a little. "Right, where was I?"
"Spiders," I told him.
"Right," he confirmed, "spiders. Like I says, the biggest problem was that they just kept runnin away. The Squimonk tried everything to get them to hang around for a bit. They tried just talkin, then holdin up a sign that said, 'We won't hurt you,' which the spiders ignored, or so we thought. We later learned that moon spiders is incredibly near sighted and don't go much for written communication, what with their telepathy and all.
"So, one day, one of the Alistairs gets frustrated and decides he's gonna lasso one of them things. Well, we didn't have no rope around for him to do the lassoin with, so he weaved one himself out of the mounds of spider silk we found in the chamber where all them Pats and others was bound up. Right as he gets his lasso done, a spider pops into existence right in front of him. To this day, that Alistair says it was his quick reactions and smart thinkin that got the lasso on, but most of us think it was just luck. I'd say it's best not to bring it up. Regardless of whether it was skill or blind luck, that Alistair got that spider lassoed, but it still popped out of existence. Weird thing was, it took part of the lasso with it. Not all, mind you, just part. But, and here's the thing I never get, the part that went with it when it popped wherever it was goin was still attached to the part that was in the Alistair's hand. That rope was just stretchin out in from of the Squimonk and disappearin right into thin air, lookin like it was tied to the world's calmest gnat, but he could still feel the spider on the other end.
"So he started pullin, and he could feel the spider fightin him. And them spiders is mighty strong, let me tell you. They got this game they call "Car Ball" that's a lot like football, but there's no pads and the ball is made of ten wadded up cars. It's right excitin to watch a match, I tell ya. Anyhoo, Alistair kept pullin and pullin on that rope like he was landin the world's biggest catfish, the catfish bein a spider, mind you. Then he felt the rope go totally slack and the thought to himself, or so he tells us, 'Oh, no! I've popped its head clean off with my mighty strength!'
"He started reelin that rope in as fast as he could, hopin to heck that it didn't have a spider head thrashin around in the noose. But, when he got it past whatever portal it was stickin through, he saw the spider had chewed clean through. He was pleased that he'd found something that could connect us to the spiders, even though it didn't make them stay in place. But we combined that with a discovery from the far side of the moon base and changed our relationship with the moon spiders forever."
"And what was that?" I asked.
"Just settle down," he scolded me. "We got a long coupla weeks ahead of us. Don't make me use up all my stories on the first night."
So I went below decks again and tried to sleep.
"But Pat," you're probably sayin, "how many times do you get to ride in a rocket?" To which I would respond, "Go and get a rag and wipe your eyes off or somethin. I just told you this was my first ride. Jeez!" And then, after bein properly apologetic because you're a nice person and your parents raised you right, you'd give me some advice to just sit back and enjoy the ride. I'd say that, normally, that'd be good advice, exceptin all the things you don't know about bein inside a pirockate ship. First thing that made the journey unpleasant was all the unwashed laundry layin around. I know sailors and spacemen ain't known much for their cleanliness, and I, myself, have been known to let my unmentionables pile up, waiting until I have to shoo away sherpas and old British explorers before takin it all down to the local land-ro-mat and spendin enough quarters to sink and/or buy a small island nation. Still, the state of the quarters on this ship was down right deplorable. There was sherpas everywhere, I tell ya. Some of 'em had even brought their oxen with them and were building pastoral, isolate communities among the hills and valleys formed by cast off skivvies down it the hold. I swear I even saw some of 'em herdin sheep.
Second, and I don't know if this is the same on all pirockate ships or just the one I was on, but the only place they gots to sleep is in a hammock. Now, I ain't opposed to takin an afternoon nap in a hammock, specially in the middle of summer with a frosty barley pop in one hand and a morning of lawn work behind me. But you ever try gettin a good night's sleep in a hammock? It's durned near impossible. Even more so given that I like to sleep standin up with my head tucked between my ankles and that's not easy when you're in a hammock that's swayin back and forth.
Lastly, and I didn't know this before, but it takes two and a half weeks to get to the moon. So, after all that rushin around, gettin past the cop, drivin insane speeds, rowin across a sea full of garbage, fightin that sea monster, gettin pulled down into the depths, meetin a mermaid that fell in love with me, angerin her father, bein exiled back up to the surface, havin a tense long-distance relationship with that mermaid for a time until she moved on and found someone else named Chuck, who's a whale wrestler, findin out she was havin Chuck's baby, becomin Godfather to the merbaby, realizin time for merpersons runs a lot faster than time for people from the surface, writin a letter of reference for my God-mer-kid to get into college, findin out before the end of paragraph one that he'd already graduated and had his own private medical practice and was flourishin as a merdoctor, learnin of the fall of the entire merempire due to their love of watchin mermen wrestle whales, watchin the mer-dark ages fall over their species until such a time they experience their merrenaissance, which I had to miss because it was take off time. I know I skipped over that whole mermaid thing in the tellin and went right from the car to bein on the pirockate ship, but, really, after the fifth or sixth mermaid to fall in love with you, the whole idea of it becomes old hat, and I didn't wanna bore you with all the details of our torrid affair and strained but polite relationship followin it. Point bein, that after all that rushin around and whatnot, I was expected to just sit there for two and a half weeks and twiddle my thumbs.
Now, I may be a world champion thumb twiddler, and I got the shirt to prove it, but there's only so much thumb to be twiddled in a given day. There's a twiddlin limit that cannot be exceeded even by the most dedicated thumb twiddlers. I may have the stamina to twiddle for an hour or two but after that I start gettin cramps and, if I'm not careful, I may just aggravate my twiddler's thumb that ended my career in competitive twiddlin. Not wantin to injure my thumbs, I went for a quick twiddle and then wandered around to find someone to chat with. While amblin below decks, I found out there's a surprisin amount of stuff that needs to get done on a pirockate ship every day. There's rockets what need to be maintained, decks what need to be swabbed and horns what need to be swaggled. Not to mention all the brass that needs polishin. Them pirate Pats was all so hard at work maintainin that ship that none of em had time for a chat or a game of cribbage. So I decided to apply my knowledge of organizations to the situation. As far as I can tell, in most businesses, the higher you get up the ladder, the less you have to do in a given day until, once you reach the top, you're pretty much just there to be dragged out at ceremonies, like the corporate logo or respect for the customer. Armed with this inferential knowledge, I went and knocked on the Captain's door.
Just as I suspected, Captain Pat was sittin at his big ol' desk, just kinda starin out the window. I asked him if we could chat about some things and he jumped at the chance. He ushered me to sit beside his fireplace, which he was all too happy to explain didn't burn an actual fire, but just used lasers to simulate a fire. I gotta say, the simulation was pretty solid. I always thought the only thing lasers was good for was pointin at things you was too far away from to point at with a stick and gettin dogs to chase somethin around without gettin your hand all drooly. But it turns out they got other uses as well. So, there we sat by the laser fire and Captain Pat asked my what I wanted to know about.
"Well sir," I said, "back at the base, I was hearin about the whole war with the moon spiders when Clan Platypus rudely interrupted us. I was just sorta wonderin how that whole thing turned out."
He leaned back in his chair and said, "Ah! Yes. The spider war. I'd just been sent here by a cloud of Dale's gas when that was all goin on, so I didn't understand a lot of what was happenin. It was an excitin time here. And not excitin in that whole I-just-won-the-lottery-twice-on-the-same-day way, but excitin in that whole I'm-just-about-to-be-run-the-heck-over-by-a-bussload-of-Dom-deLouise-impersonators sorta way. That is to say, it was pretty frightenin on a whole number of levels.
"The Squimonk was convinced that the spiders was mostly peaceful. Reason bein, them spiders could prolly have killed all the people and genetic mutants they captured, but, instead, they just kept them in suspended animation the whole time. Also, with their ability to transport themselves anywhere at any time, they could easily have wiped all of us out any time they wanted to. But they chose to hide instead. Them Squimonk thought that maybe the spiders was just scared and that, if we could get them to stay in one place for a time, maybe we could reason with them and get them to stop kidnappin us. Me, I just wanted to be able to sleep without fearin that a spider was gonna bite me in the butt."
"You sleep standin up, too?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Then why you got everyone sleepin in hammocks?"
"Oh, that. That's just for historical accuracy. We grow lime trees up on deck, too, even though we all take vitamin tablets to keep us from gettin rickets," he explained. "Alistair's all about gettin things right, historically speakin. Me, I just make the ship go and don't think much about it. Actually, most of what I do is tell that there GPS," he pointed to a panel on his desk, "where we wanna go and then I sit here playin solitaire or whatnot until we get there."
"Sounds boring," I commiserated.
"You don't know the half of it."
We sat in silence, nodding slowly at each other for some time until he jumped a little. "Right, where was I?"
"Spiders," I told him.
"Right," he confirmed, "spiders. Like I says, the biggest problem was that they just kept runnin away. The Squimonk tried everything to get them to hang around for a bit. They tried just talkin, then holdin up a sign that said, 'We won't hurt you,' which the spiders ignored, or so we thought. We later learned that moon spiders is incredibly near sighted and don't go much for written communication, what with their telepathy and all.
"So, one day, one of the Alistairs gets frustrated and decides he's gonna lasso one of them things. Well, we didn't have no rope around for him to do the lassoin with, so he weaved one himself out of the mounds of spider silk we found in the chamber where all them Pats and others was bound up. Right as he gets his lasso done, a spider pops into existence right in front of him. To this day, that Alistair says it was his quick reactions and smart thinkin that got the lasso on, but most of us think it was just luck. I'd say it's best not to bring it up. Regardless of whether it was skill or blind luck, that Alistair got that spider lassoed, but it still popped out of existence. Weird thing was, it took part of the lasso with it. Not all, mind you, just part. But, and here's the thing I never get, the part that went with it when it popped wherever it was goin was still attached to the part that was in the Alistair's hand. That rope was just stretchin out in from of the Squimonk and disappearin right into thin air, lookin like it was tied to the world's calmest gnat, but he could still feel the spider on the other end.
"So he started pullin, and he could feel the spider fightin him. And them spiders is mighty strong, let me tell you. They got this game they call "Car Ball" that's a lot like football, but there's no pads and the ball is made of ten wadded up cars. It's right excitin to watch a match, I tell ya. Anyhoo, Alistair kept pullin and pullin on that rope like he was landin the world's biggest catfish, the catfish bein a spider, mind you. Then he felt the rope go totally slack and the thought to himself, or so he tells us, 'Oh, no! I've popped its head clean off with my mighty strength!'
"He started reelin that rope in as fast as he could, hopin to heck that it didn't have a spider head thrashin around in the noose. But, when he got it past whatever portal it was stickin through, he saw the spider had chewed clean through. He was pleased that he'd found something that could connect us to the spiders, even though it didn't make them stay in place. But we combined that with a discovery from the far side of the moon base and changed our relationship with the moon spiders forever."
"And what was that?" I asked.
"Just settle down," he scolded me. "We got a long coupla weeks ahead of us. Don't make me use up all my stories on the first night."
So I went below decks again and tried to sleep.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Ninjacop
I ain't never been much of a fan of the muscle car. I mean, sure, they gots themselves big ol' loud engines, which I like, but they're kinda impractical when you need to haul lumber or donut grease or a pack full of half-wild chipmunks that need to be released far enough away from man that their little landmines will no longer threaten our hound dogs and various other pets. That's why I've always preferred either a pickup, a boat car or, when all else has failed, an El Camino. I ain't tryin to disparage the American auto makers or nothin like that. I think they do plenty well with their own disparagin, actually. I'm just sayin this to let you know that, when I say that the Camaro I was shootin over the meth plains in was, without a doubt, the rip-roarinest, tire-squealinest, pants-fillinest car I've ever had the pleasure of ridin in, that ain't no hyperbole. Imagin that you lived in the future. I ain't talkin, like, next week future, neither. Like, way way in the future. Like so far in the future that flying cars have become obsolete because now, to get to work, everyone just uses their shrink rays on themselves, climbs into the barrel of a .45 Magnum, settles down in a tiny little seat inside the bullet, puts a little "Barracuda" on the radio and just shoots their way to work. Now imagine that, inside that bullet, there was another tiny little shrink ray and another tiny magnum that shot a smaller bullet that same speed, and it all got added to that first shot. Now, on that tinier bullet, put a blower and paint some flames on the side. Now you got some small idea of what ridin in this thing was like.
That's why I was shocked when the cop caught up to us and pulled us over. I ain't no physicist or nothin, but I woulda thought we were travelin fast enough that the sound of his siren couldn't catch up with us, let alone the car in which his siren was travellin. But catch up, he did. I ain't sure if the other Pat was ignorin the lights or if he was tryin to outrun them, but when that rocket was fired across the front of the car, bounced off the hood, shot into the air, swerved around for awhile and ended up landin on what, accordin to the sign, was a strip club/bar/boxing ring/barbed wire wholesaler and changin it into a crater/ditch/smokin hole in the ground, his mind got changed right quick.
As we were rollin to a stop, Pat looked over and told me, "Try and act like a meth addled junkie. Follow my lead."
He started squirmin in his seat and itchin himself like he'd just run a marathon through a poison ivy patch and followed it up by a cooldown roll on a red ant hill. Last thing I wanted was to get into problems on this planet, so I joined right in.
In between pretendin I'd been the main dish at a mosquito wedding and tryin to pass myself off as an unsprung jack-in-the-box, I saw a figure get out of the car behind us wearin a cowboy hat and reflective sunglasses. I had about four nanoseconds to wonder why he was wearin sunglasses on a planet of perpetual night before he hit us with what could loosely be called a flashlight beam but would be more accurately described as a thousand suns pushed into a tube and then pointed directly in my eyes. By the time the light spots had faded enough for me to be more that half confident I wasn't gonna be blind all my remainin days, the man was tappin on our window. Pat rolled it down and I could see that, despite the cowboy hat, reflective shades, and shiny tin star I could now see pinned to his chest, the cop was in full ninja dress and carryin enough weapons to supply a whole village of starving orphans with the means to rise up against the oppressors and establish a new world order in which orphans called the shots. Sure, they'd try to be good leaders at first, showin compassion to others and tryin to level the playin field, but then they'd get their first tastes of power and soon it would be "All Hail Orphans!" and goose-steppin and tanks rollin through the streets.
I was just workin up some orphan propaganda posters in my head when I was rudely interrupted by ninjacop hittin Pat with the standard first line, "Sir, do you know how fast you were going?"
Now, I don't know a whole lot about theater, and I ain't never taken any sort of drama class down at the community center, even though Frank kept tellin me to, but mostly because I was suspicious she didn't care if I acted or not, but she was really tryin to set me up with this friend of hers, Bernice, that's into this weird new-agey stuff where she calls herself a Buddhist but keeps statues of Vishnu in her house and dresses like a gypsy. I don't wanna sound like I'm some sorta anti-gypsite, but, honestly, how many silk handkerchiefs and gold bracelets does one woman need? So, anyway, I may not know a whole lot about actin, but this other Pat was so into character that I almost believed he'd snuck in some actual meth while I wasn't lookin. He pretended at first not to hear the cop, lookin straight into my eyes and askin, "Did you hear somethin?"
The cop, somehow emoting a frown despite wearin layers of black cloth over his face, asked again, "Do you know how fast you were goin?"
Pat whipped his head around, past the window and ended up lookin at the back seat. "I think the invisible dog is back again!" he yelled. "And it's talkin now. You won't get me this time, invisible dog!" Then he started throwin punches into the empty air.
I thought to myself, "When in Rome..." popped the five point harness and jumped into the backseat elbows first yellin like a banshee ridin a guy from Braveheart into battle.
The third time, the cop had to yell, "DO YOU KNOW HOW FAST YOU WERE GOING?!" I think he was gettin a little mad by this point. Either that or he really wanted to be heard over Pat cheerin me on in my fisticuffs against the imaginary talkin dog.
Over my wrestlin, I heard Pat shout out, "Woah! When did you get here?!" Then he put a hand on my shoulder and said, "Be cool, man, it's the 5-0"
I sat bolt upright in the back seat, hands in my lap. I sat prim and proper like an elementary school librarian who's never happy about nothin sits in church.
Pat turned back to ninjacop and said, "Gee, officer, I'm not exactly sure, but I think it was somewhere up around 145."
The ninja nodded slowly, "Yeah, it was. And how high does your speedometer go?"
Pat rocked a little in his seat. "Um, let me see. See? See. See's a funny word. So's word. Word, herd, turd bird. Turd bird! HA!"
I took my cue and yelled out "TURD BIRD!" as loud as I could.
The cop, obviously gettin fed up, leaned into the car and said, almost to himself, "200, huh?" Then he leaned back again. "Your speedometer goes all the way up to 200, why were you only goin 145?"
Giggling nervously, Pat said, "Oh, that? That's nothin. We were just tryin to stay in the middle of the cheetah herd so them giant carnivorous zebras didn't get us before we got to the dynamite store. I swear, when we get to the dynamite store, we're gonna stick it to them zebras. Right boys?!"
"RIGHT!" I confirmed exuberantly. And then, realizin he's said "boys", I yelled, "RIGHT!" again, just to be safe.
The cop leaned back and put his thumbs in his belt, "Well, allright. I'll let you guys off with a warning this time, but if I see you come back through here goin less than 180 tonight, we're gonna have problems. Understood?"
Pat scratched his neck. "Yeahyeahyeah, I got it. EAT RUBBER ZEBRAS!" And with that, he peeled out in a trail of dust.
We didn't say nothin for awhile. I was busy trembling like a fawn without a coat in Siberia and checkin to see if I was gonna need to borrow a pair of overalls when we got where we were goin. Once that passed, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to ask, "Hey, other Pat?"
"Yeah?"
"Why was that ninja wearin a cowboy hat?"
"Universal law," he explained, "like gravity or the speed of light or fat kids likin cake. All sheriffs have to wear a cowboy hat and reflective sunglasses."
"Huh."
I sat in silence the rest of the way. I mainly occupied myself by thinkin of more orphan propaganda posters for my imaginary world. While I was doin that, I must have drifted off to sleep because, after some darkness and dreams involvin spiders and Heidi Klum that I shouldn't discuss in mixed company, I heard Pat up front say, "Pat, honey, put your shoes on. We're at grandmas."
I sat up, rubbed my eyes and looked out the front of the car onto a black sea that looked like someone had split open a million gorgon hearts with a million bic pens and then covered the whole thing in velvet. Floatin on top of this sea was all the flotsam and jetsam that you'd expect on meth world; dolls, plastic cartons, boxes, cigarette butts and dead whales among them.
"What are we doing here?" I asked. And then I saw it. Amid the debris and dirt, floating near the shore, was a three masted pirate ship bristling with cannons.
Pat nodded at the ship. "We're gonna put you on that there boat and take you to the moon."
That's why I was shocked when the cop caught up to us and pulled us over. I ain't no physicist or nothin, but I woulda thought we were travelin fast enough that the sound of his siren couldn't catch up with us, let alone the car in which his siren was travellin. But catch up, he did. I ain't sure if the other Pat was ignorin the lights or if he was tryin to outrun them, but when that rocket was fired across the front of the car, bounced off the hood, shot into the air, swerved around for awhile and ended up landin on what, accordin to the sign, was a strip club/bar/boxing ring/barbed wire wholesaler and changin it into a crater/ditch/smokin hole in the ground, his mind got changed right quick.
As we were rollin to a stop, Pat looked over and told me, "Try and act like a meth addled junkie. Follow my lead."
He started squirmin in his seat and itchin himself like he'd just run a marathon through a poison ivy patch and followed it up by a cooldown roll on a red ant hill. Last thing I wanted was to get into problems on this planet, so I joined right in.
In between pretendin I'd been the main dish at a mosquito wedding and tryin to pass myself off as an unsprung jack-in-the-box, I saw a figure get out of the car behind us wearin a cowboy hat and reflective sunglasses. I had about four nanoseconds to wonder why he was wearin sunglasses on a planet of perpetual night before he hit us with what could loosely be called a flashlight beam but would be more accurately described as a thousand suns pushed into a tube and then pointed directly in my eyes. By the time the light spots had faded enough for me to be more that half confident I wasn't gonna be blind all my remainin days, the man was tappin on our window. Pat rolled it down and I could see that, despite the cowboy hat, reflective shades, and shiny tin star I could now see pinned to his chest, the cop was in full ninja dress and carryin enough weapons to supply a whole village of starving orphans with the means to rise up against the oppressors and establish a new world order in which orphans called the shots. Sure, they'd try to be good leaders at first, showin compassion to others and tryin to level the playin field, but then they'd get their first tastes of power and soon it would be "All Hail Orphans!" and goose-steppin and tanks rollin through the streets.
I was just workin up some orphan propaganda posters in my head when I was rudely interrupted by ninjacop hittin Pat with the standard first line, "Sir, do you know how fast you were going?"
Now, I don't know a whole lot about theater, and I ain't never taken any sort of drama class down at the community center, even though Frank kept tellin me to, but mostly because I was suspicious she didn't care if I acted or not, but she was really tryin to set me up with this friend of hers, Bernice, that's into this weird new-agey stuff where she calls herself a Buddhist but keeps statues of Vishnu in her house and dresses like a gypsy. I don't wanna sound like I'm some sorta anti-gypsite, but, honestly, how many silk handkerchiefs and gold bracelets does one woman need? So, anyway, I may not know a whole lot about actin, but this other Pat was so into character that I almost believed he'd snuck in some actual meth while I wasn't lookin. He pretended at first not to hear the cop, lookin straight into my eyes and askin, "Did you hear somethin?"
The cop, somehow emoting a frown despite wearin layers of black cloth over his face, asked again, "Do you know how fast you were goin?"
Pat whipped his head around, past the window and ended up lookin at the back seat. "I think the invisible dog is back again!" he yelled. "And it's talkin now. You won't get me this time, invisible dog!" Then he started throwin punches into the empty air.
I thought to myself, "When in Rome..." popped the five point harness and jumped into the backseat elbows first yellin like a banshee ridin a guy from Braveheart into battle.
The third time, the cop had to yell, "DO YOU KNOW HOW FAST YOU WERE GOING?!" I think he was gettin a little mad by this point. Either that or he really wanted to be heard over Pat cheerin me on in my fisticuffs against the imaginary talkin dog.
Over my wrestlin, I heard Pat shout out, "Woah! When did you get here?!" Then he put a hand on my shoulder and said, "Be cool, man, it's the 5-0"
I sat bolt upright in the back seat, hands in my lap. I sat prim and proper like an elementary school librarian who's never happy about nothin sits in church.
Pat turned back to ninjacop and said, "Gee, officer, I'm not exactly sure, but I think it was somewhere up around 145."
The ninja nodded slowly, "Yeah, it was. And how high does your speedometer go?"
Pat rocked a little in his seat. "Um, let me see. See? See. See's a funny word. So's word. Word, herd, turd bird. Turd bird! HA!"
I took my cue and yelled out "TURD BIRD!" as loud as I could.
The cop, obviously gettin fed up, leaned into the car and said, almost to himself, "200, huh?" Then he leaned back again. "Your speedometer goes all the way up to 200, why were you only goin 145?"
Giggling nervously, Pat said, "Oh, that? That's nothin. We were just tryin to stay in the middle of the cheetah herd so them giant carnivorous zebras didn't get us before we got to the dynamite store. I swear, when we get to the dynamite store, we're gonna stick it to them zebras. Right boys?!"
"RIGHT!" I confirmed exuberantly. And then, realizin he's said "boys", I yelled, "RIGHT!" again, just to be safe.
The cop leaned back and put his thumbs in his belt, "Well, allright. I'll let you guys off with a warning this time, but if I see you come back through here goin less than 180 tonight, we're gonna have problems. Understood?"
Pat scratched his neck. "Yeahyeahyeah, I got it. EAT RUBBER ZEBRAS!" And with that, he peeled out in a trail of dust.
We didn't say nothin for awhile. I was busy trembling like a fawn without a coat in Siberia and checkin to see if I was gonna need to borrow a pair of overalls when we got where we were goin. Once that passed, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to ask, "Hey, other Pat?"
"Yeah?"
"Why was that ninja wearin a cowboy hat?"
"Universal law," he explained, "like gravity or the speed of light or fat kids likin cake. All sheriffs have to wear a cowboy hat and reflective sunglasses."
"Huh."
I sat in silence the rest of the way. I mainly occupied myself by thinkin of more orphan propaganda posters for my imaginary world. While I was doin that, I must have drifted off to sleep because, after some darkness and dreams involvin spiders and Heidi Klum that I shouldn't discuss in mixed company, I heard Pat up front say, "Pat, honey, put your shoes on. We're at grandmas."
I sat up, rubbed my eyes and looked out the front of the car onto a black sea that looked like someone had split open a million gorgon hearts with a million bic pens and then covered the whole thing in velvet. Floatin on top of this sea was all the flotsam and jetsam that you'd expect on meth world; dolls, plastic cartons, boxes, cigarette butts and dead whales among them.
"What are we doing here?" I asked. And then I saw it. Amid the debris and dirt, floating near the shore, was a three masted pirate ship bristling with cannons.
Pat nodded at the ship. "We're gonna put you on that there boat and take you to the moon."
Monday, October 12, 2009
Back into it.
It was right about this point in hearin the story that I got a mite distracted. I ain't sayin the story was borin, in fact, it was the dickenest thing I ever did hear. And I ain't tryin to say the tellin of it wasn't great. If anything, it convinced me that this whole "multiple Pat" thing was true as the day is long, or as the sky is black, dependin on which planet you're on. And after all the coffee they fed me, it wasn't because I was tired or unfocused or nothin like that. Nah, what really distracted me from this fine tale was the thunderous, repeated hammering that came from the opening hatch and the sudden panic that followed. Now, I like to think of myself as a considerate listener, but it becomes mighty difficult when there's red lights flashin, alarms blarin out with their whoop-whoopin and Pats poppin in and out of the room like they was kernels of dried corn sittin in a plate full of simmerin bacon grease and yellin things like, "They've found us!" and "Code 3! Code 3!" and "Get him outta here, quick!"
I didn't wanna get in the way or nothin, so I just sat where I was while all of this was goin on. I learned my lesson about that when I was at the Wal-Mart last year. You know how it is. You're just sittin there at the Wal-Mart snack bar, waitin for your nephew to wander around the store and pick up whatever new game he's lookin at so he can shoot aliens or steal cars or shoot alien cars or whatever it is he does all day. So, there you are, drinkin your coffee, maybe readin the paper if you're lucky enough to sit at a table where someone left one behind, and people just start screamin. At first, you just tune 'em out, thinkin the Montana Brothers have just put out a new poster, or whatever crazy new thing the kids are into these days. I don't really keep up that well. But, just as you finish doin the sudoku puzzle (which you gotta do in your head because the last guy did it in ink, but did it all wrong), you look up to see some kind of slimy tentacle thing crawlin its way out of housewares, its pseudopods ripplin overhead like grandma's arm flab and all you can think is that, if your nephew doesn't get back with his game soon, you just may have to wrestle with this thing.
So, you go back to readin the paper, catchin up on local high school sports and whatnot and, when you look up again, you see that this tentacle thing has devoured all of housewares and isn't so much as movin as it is growin towards the toys section, where you assume the games is, which would mean that's where your nephew is and, if you lose one more nephew to crazy alien and/or demon spawn while game shoppin at the Wal-Mart, your sister Frank's prolly never gonna speak to you again, so you figure it's time to take action. Now, as you're prolly well aware if you spend as much time waitin in the Wal-Mart snack bar as I do, that every Wal-Mart keeps an assortment of weapons just behind the popcorn machine, in case of alien invasion or zombie attack or whatever else can go wrong. So, you jump the counter, which is usually without employees, and start sortin through a cardboard box full of creature killin devices. Now, when in this situation, seein a tentacled creature devour the back of the Wal-Mart, you ain't likely to know right away if the creature is from another dimension, another planet or is just the product of some combination of genetic tinkerin and a lousy sewer system. Now, it's mighty kind of the Wal-Mart people to mark each weapon with its name and uses, but seein a tag that says "Nuclear Destablilizer; for use on multi-dimensional creatures or minor Great Old Ones" ain't gonna help you a whole lot if you ain't got your "Guide to Creatures What May Devour and/or Destroy the Earth" handy. If I were in this situation, and I was, I would just grab myself a roll of the duct tape and get to work tapin all them weapons together to make yourself one massive super weapon. Sure, it's gonna be heavy and unwieldy, like tryin to oil wrestle an elephant with no legs, but that's what carts are for, right? And you already got the duct tape out, so why not tape a couple of them carts together to give yourself a little more stability? And, while you're at it, why not tape that super gun you just made to the cart, in case you hit a bump or somethin? I mean, you don't want that thing fallin of the floor, misfirin and mutatin all the cheetos into a big orange monster, now, do ya?
So, there ya is, runnin through automotive, screamin like a banshee and bearin down on this thing thats got as many eyes on each tentacle as it has tentacles, and every eye is turned to look at you. The sweat's rollin down your back like a you're a flock of ducks in Noah's flood and you're gettin a little hoarse because you been yellin all the way from the snack bar and you forgot how big the Wal-Mart really is.Then this tentacle comes sweepin out of nowhere behind you and picks you up along with the cart like you ain't nothin more than a kernel of popcorn in its shoe. Now, as you prolly know, this is the time for panic. So, you start shootin your gun off every which way and, just as you suspected, when it hits the food section, the cheetos, owin to some chemical properties, you spect, mutate into a cheeto monster what leaves orange streaks on the ceiling as it moves and which is pretty angry for somethin that's just been created. You can't help but feel relieved as you get flung aside because, apparently, Captain McTentacles needs all his thrashin power to take on Orangey O'Cheetohead. What you don't know, and what, in all fairness, the manager at the Wal-Mart shouldn't have really expected you to know and it's pretty unfair of him to think you could possibly know, is that when Pseudopod McGee and Cheeto Orangystuff there collide, it sets off some kind of sciency nuclear reaction that causes both to stop existing dramatically, explosively, and gooily.
Now, you'd think when this happens, people would come around and thank ya by shakin your hand, covered in black slime and orange cheese dust though it may be. But there, my friend, you would be wrong. Instead, what's gonna happen in this situation, is there's yet another Wal-Mart you ain't allowed into because the manager is on some sorta power trip. So now, you gotta drive a whole hour whenever your nephew desperately needs to fight aliens on the tv because heaven forbid he help you when you need to do it in real life. So, long story short, when the panic erupts, it's best to just stay out of the way. If you've ever been to the Wal-Mart, I'm sure you can relate.
And that's precisely what I was doin amid all the hammerin and whoopin and yellin hubbub that was goin on down in the bunker, stayin out of the way. I figured, when I needed to do somethin, I would be informed. In the meantime, I might as well get myself ready by finishin that sandwich that was just sittin in the center of the table and drinkin my coffee. I was on the last bite of said sandwich when a Pat popped in, tossed a shirt and a small can on the table and told me, "Here, put on the shirt and use the makeup to black out your teeth. We've got to get you to the ships."
I ain't usually one to argue with myself, even if myself isn't myself, so I did as I was told. I slipped the shirt, which I saw said "Slayer" on it and had the sleeves cut out, and opened the can to find black goo inside, which I covered my teeth with. As soon as this was done, I was hustled into a grate in the floor. It turns out that, as an army, I'm pretty darn resourceful. I even dig tunnels under my tunnels. I don't wanna brag or nothin, but I'm pretty darn proud of that. There was a whole tunnel complex underneath that there grate. I didn't get much time to look around, but from what I could see, it appeared that there was cubby holes and whatnot set in the tunnels where the Pat army was keepin paintings and statues and books. It all looked sorta high-fallutin to me, but I'm a simple man. But I was curious so I made a note to ask about it later.
After runnin through what felt like miles of tunnel, the Pat leadin me stopped us and did some fiddlin with the wall, which turned into a door through which we walked. On the other side of that wall was a perfectly normal garage with a couple of muscle cars sittin in it. Pat nodded at a 69 Camaro with slicks on the back and a chrome blower stickin out of the hood and told me, "Get in."
I slid into the passenger seat, and was hookin up my five point harness as Pat told me, "We're gonna drive like Indian food outta a man with irritable bowel syndrome. If we're lucky, we won't be caught. If we're not lucky, then we will be caught and you gotta act like a junkie. Just itch and twitch, buddy, just itch and twitch."
And with that, we were rocketing through the night.
I didn't wanna get in the way or nothin, so I just sat where I was while all of this was goin on. I learned my lesson about that when I was at the Wal-Mart last year. You know how it is. You're just sittin there at the Wal-Mart snack bar, waitin for your nephew to wander around the store and pick up whatever new game he's lookin at so he can shoot aliens or steal cars or shoot alien cars or whatever it is he does all day. So, there you are, drinkin your coffee, maybe readin the paper if you're lucky enough to sit at a table where someone left one behind, and people just start screamin. At first, you just tune 'em out, thinkin the Montana Brothers have just put out a new poster, or whatever crazy new thing the kids are into these days. I don't really keep up that well. But, just as you finish doin the sudoku puzzle (which you gotta do in your head because the last guy did it in ink, but did it all wrong), you look up to see some kind of slimy tentacle thing crawlin its way out of housewares, its pseudopods ripplin overhead like grandma's arm flab and all you can think is that, if your nephew doesn't get back with his game soon, you just may have to wrestle with this thing.
So, you go back to readin the paper, catchin up on local high school sports and whatnot and, when you look up again, you see that this tentacle thing has devoured all of housewares and isn't so much as movin as it is growin towards the toys section, where you assume the games is, which would mean that's where your nephew is and, if you lose one more nephew to crazy alien and/or demon spawn while game shoppin at the Wal-Mart, your sister Frank's prolly never gonna speak to you again, so you figure it's time to take action. Now, as you're prolly well aware if you spend as much time waitin in the Wal-Mart snack bar as I do, that every Wal-Mart keeps an assortment of weapons just behind the popcorn machine, in case of alien invasion or zombie attack or whatever else can go wrong. So, you jump the counter, which is usually without employees, and start sortin through a cardboard box full of creature killin devices. Now, when in this situation, seein a tentacled creature devour the back of the Wal-Mart, you ain't likely to know right away if the creature is from another dimension, another planet or is just the product of some combination of genetic tinkerin and a lousy sewer system. Now, it's mighty kind of the Wal-Mart people to mark each weapon with its name and uses, but seein a tag that says "Nuclear Destablilizer; for use on multi-dimensional creatures or minor Great Old Ones" ain't gonna help you a whole lot if you ain't got your "Guide to Creatures What May Devour and/or Destroy the Earth" handy. If I were in this situation, and I was, I would just grab myself a roll of the duct tape and get to work tapin all them weapons together to make yourself one massive super weapon. Sure, it's gonna be heavy and unwieldy, like tryin to oil wrestle an elephant with no legs, but that's what carts are for, right? And you already got the duct tape out, so why not tape a couple of them carts together to give yourself a little more stability? And, while you're at it, why not tape that super gun you just made to the cart, in case you hit a bump or somethin? I mean, you don't want that thing fallin of the floor, misfirin and mutatin all the cheetos into a big orange monster, now, do ya?
So, there ya is, runnin through automotive, screamin like a banshee and bearin down on this thing thats got as many eyes on each tentacle as it has tentacles, and every eye is turned to look at you. The sweat's rollin down your back like a you're a flock of ducks in Noah's flood and you're gettin a little hoarse because you been yellin all the way from the snack bar and you forgot how big the Wal-Mart really is.Then this tentacle comes sweepin out of nowhere behind you and picks you up along with the cart like you ain't nothin more than a kernel of popcorn in its shoe. Now, as you prolly know, this is the time for panic. So, you start shootin your gun off every which way and, just as you suspected, when it hits the food section, the cheetos, owin to some chemical properties, you spect, mutate into a cheeto monster what leaves orange streaks on the ceiling as it moves and which is pretty angry for somethin that's just been created. You can't help but feel relieved as you get flung aside because, apparently, Captain McTentacles needs all his thrashin power to take on Orangey O'Cheetohead. What you don't know, and what, in all fairness, the manager at the Wal-Mart shouldn't have really expected you to know and it's pretty unfair of him to think you could possibly know, is that when Pseudopod McGee and Cheeto Orangystuff there collide, it sets off some kind of sciency nuclear reaction that causes both to stop existing dramatically, explosively, and gooily.
Now, you'd think when this happens, people would come around and thank ya by shakin your hand, covered in black slime and orange cheese dust though it may be. But there, my friend, you would be wrong. Instead, what's gonna happen in this situation, is there's yet another Wal-Mart you ain't allowed into because the manager is on some sorta power trip. So now, you gotta drive a whole hour whenever your nephew desperately needs to fight aliens on the tv because heaven forbid he help you when you need to do it in real life. So, long story short, when the panic erupts, it's best to just stay out of the way. If you've ever been to the Wal-Mart, I'm sure you can relate.
And that's precisely what I was doin amid all the hammerin and whoopin and yellin hubbub that was goin on down in the bunker, stayin out of the way. I figured, when I needed to do somethin, I would be informed. In the meantime, I might as well get myself ready by finishin that sandwich that was just sittin in the center of the table and drinkin my coffee. I was on the last bite of said sandwich when a Pat popped in, tossed a shirt and a small can on the table and told me, "Here, put on the shirt and use the makeup to black out your teeth. We've got to get you to the ships."
I ain't usually one to argue with myself, even if myself isn't myself, so I did as I was told. I slipped the shirt, which I saw said "Slayer" on it and had the sleeves cut out, and opened the can to find black goo inside, which I covered my teeth with. As soon as this was done, I was hustled into a grate in the floor. It turns out that, as an army, I'm pretty darn resourceful. I even dig tunnels under my tunnels. I don't wanna brag or nothin, but I'm pretty darn proud of that. There was a whole tunnel complex underneath that there grate. I didn't get much time to look around, but from what I could see, it appeared that there was cubby holes and whatnot set in the tunnels where the Pat army was keepin paintings and statues and books. It all looked sorta high-fallutin to me, but I'm a simple man. But I was curious so I made a note to ask about it later.
After runnin through what felt like miles of tunnel, the Pat leadin me stopped us and did some fiddlin with the wall, which turned into a door through which we walked. On the other side of that wall was a perfectly normal garage with a couple of muscle cars sittin in it. Pat nodded at a 69 Camaro with slicks on the back and a chrome blower stickin out of the hood and told me, "Get in."
I slid into the passenger seat, and was hookin up my five point harness as Pat told me, "We're gonna drive like Indian food outta a man with irritable bowel syndrome. If we're lucky, we won't be caught. If we're not lucky, then we will be caught and you gotta act like a junkie. Just itch and twitch, buddy, just itch and twitch."
And with that, we were rocketing through the night.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Moon Spider Poison
Accordin to Pat 2 (I ain't callin him Pat 1 because I think of myself at Pat 1, mostly because I come up as number 1 when you search Pat O'Neil on the Google, unless that computer science teacher has gamed the system again, in which case I still think of myself at Pat O'Neil 1 by virtue of not bein a sneaky cheater. Who uses computer science to help them rise up on Google stats, anyway?), fightin an enemy that can materialize and dematerialize at will is a bit like tryin to wrestle a bowl of jello into submission. It ain't never gonna submit, you can't understand its motivations and, in the end, you're just gonna wind up sticky and tired. At first, the moonbound army of Pats, squimonk and Douggies didn't know anything was wrong. Sure, there was constant rumors of squimonk disappearing, but everyone wrote it off as confusion. This was in the halcyon early days of interstellar travel, mind you, and no one had yet come up with a good system for tellin one Alistair or Pat from another of the same kind. Well, that ain't exactly true. There was some of em that stuck out like a hand full of sore thumbs lookin for a ride on the highway. Due to differences in Earths, some Pats were taller, some shorter, some a little older, some a little younger and some of em was even females. Tell the truth, that was about half of em; the female ones. But, besides them differences, most of the Pats fell into a sort of average range. Characteristics were usually shared by up to 90% of Pats, including the need to grow a beard to cover up a superfluous second chin. That bein the case, when one Alistair or a Pat or, occasionally, a Jared disappeared, everyone would say that they were lost in the mob or one Pat had mistaken his Alistair and another's. In a situation like this, confusion is liable to run rampant.
The Pat army figured out somethin was wrong when, diggin deep into the moon soil in order to install the swimming pool that would be vital to their operations, they came upon a chamber the size of Cleveland that was as perfectly spherical as Cleveland isn't. As I said, they'd seen them some spiders before, and they'd been hypothesizing all along where they was from and what they was doin on the moon, so they wasn't too surprised to find the spider chamber, though that meant some of the Pats owed other of the Pats part of their salary. Instead, what was most surprisin about the chamber was the little white balls that covered its interior. Pat 2 there explained that it was like bein inside a basketball that had been covered on the inside with a fine coating of golf balls. Well, they just had to know what was inside them little balls, so they started unravelin em. The first Alistair that got to the inside fainted and nearly died from the shock of seein himself paralyzed but alive. This was repeated over the hundreds of times they opened them balls. Inside each one of them, there was a perfectly preserved Pat or Alistair or, occasionally, a Jared. It was a bit like goin to the store and buyin one of them Homiez figures from the vending machine except this didn't cost a quarter, the homie inside was life sized, it was you and it was alive. Come to think of it, it's not at all like buyin one of them Homiez. I guess I just brought that up because I put all my Homiez up for auction on the E-Bay the day before I got sent here, and I was wonderin how the auction was goin. They're all in mint condition and I got the whole set from series one and two. I thought it was worth about $500,000, but I thought I'd start the bidding at $400,000. You know, play it cool for a bit. But now, I'm afraid the auction might be over and if I haven't contacted the buyer, they're not gonna buy it. I was gonna retire from all this ninja fightin business and by myself a little place somewhere with a porch that men like me could whittle and tell each other stories on. I guess I'll just have to start the auction all over again when I get back, but it's gonna hurt my seller rating.
Regardless, after openin up all their spider homiez, the Pat army knew they was in for some trouble. Them big ol' crazy warpin spider things obviously meant business. And it wasn't the kind of business that was gonna provide high returns on low investments, it was the kind that was gonna suck your soul out of ya and leave ya tied up in a big wad of silk unable to move, but no dyin. Somethin like insurance, but not as bad, if you know what I'm sayin. The real question was how on Earth, or on the moon, as it were, were they gonna fight an enemy that could dig perfect spheres and pack it full of people and animals without anyone knowin. It's sorta like askin how you're gonna fight Dick Cheney except, far as I could tell, the moon spiders wasn't big on shootin people in the face. The answer came to them all too quickly.
You see, as soon as they was finished gettin their buddies out of the shells and into the ICU, one of the spiders popped in to the chamber, saw what they was doin, dropped its newest package, and bit the nearest Pat. She screamed through her beard and fell to the ground, seemingly lifeless. As everyone ran over to help her out, she rose to her feet, said, "I'm feelin right funny," and then blinked out of existence. Wide-eyed, everyone stared at the space she used to be. Then they heard a voice from behind them sayin, "Hey, whatchyall lookin at? You been standin there the whole time?"
They all turned around to see a tanned, happy lookin Pat wearin a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops, holdin a coconut in her hand and lookin mighty strange. When questioned, she told them that, after the spider bit her, she thought she might want to spend a week in Maui, restin and recuperatin, and suddenly found herself in Maui. It wasn't as nice as people made it out to be, she told everyone sagely, there was too many cyclops there these days and they spent all their time throwin rocks at the passin ships and tryin to sink em. After sittin down and doin some math, the squimonk figured out she'd been on an Earth where the time passed much faster, where two seconds here was a week there. They also ran some tests on the Pat that was bitten and saw that, while she was bitten by the spider, she had taken on their abilities instead of goin into a coma. Test after test was performed after that, but they couldn't see any physiological difference between that Pat and most of the others that had been bitten by the spider. So then they figured maybe diet was a factor. They quizzed her about what she'd eaten that day and she told them she'd had her usual meal of two packs of bacon for breakfast followed by a jelly donut. The squimonk doctors checked this against the stomach contents of the frozen ones and saw that, among the Pats, most had less than two full packs of bacon in their stomachs with some having as little as one measly pack, though all had the jelly donut. It's nice to know there are other people out there like you, you know?
Once they got this figured out, they gave the sleeping ones an I.V. drip of bacon and they soon started wakin up and bouncin all over the universe. Pats were scattered hither and yon. Most often they showed up after spendin some time on Maui, but occasionally got into weirder stuff. Well, the squimonk decided that they couldn't wait around for passing spiders to randomly bite at them, and they sure as heck couldn't abide these spiders kidnappin their doppelgangers, so they got busy with the sciencin. Right away, they put all the Pats on a strick diet of two packs of bacon and a jelly donut for breakfast every mornin. It didn't put the Pats out too much, but there is now a new moon around Jupiter in this system that is made entirely of bacon grease. Every once in a while, they will fly their space piratin ships over to it and make popcorn or whatnot with their leavins. It's supposed to be a lot of fun to go slidin down the great grease mountains on your belly. After that, it was a simple matter of the squimonk isolatin the spider poison, synthesizin it in a lab, running experiments, sequencin genomes, mapping the knows universe, teaching the Pats what was on the map and how to use their jump powers for somethin more than quick vacations, and makin enough quantities of their chemical to give to all the Pats, and they were in business. The playing field had been leveled some. Now most of the Pats could bounce through space at will and it was just a matter of findin where the spiders were hidin, what they wanted and how they could be reasoned with or defeated. All in all, a pretty easy day's work for a hyper-intelligent creature, I should think.
The Pat army figured out somethin was wrong when, diggin deep into the moon soil in order to install the swimming pool that would be vital to their operations, they came upon a chamber the size of Cleveland that was as perfectly spherical as Cleveland isn't. As I said, they'd seen them some spiders before, and they'd been hypothesizing all along where they was from and what they was doin on the moon, so they wasn't too surprised to find the spider chamber, though that meant some of the Pats owed other of the Pats part of their salary. Instead, what was most surprisin about the chamber was the little white balls that covered its interior. Pat 2 there explained that it was like bein inside a basketball that had been covered on the inside with a fine coating of golf balls. Well, they just had to know what was inside them little balls, so they started unravelin em. The first Alistair that got to the inside fainted and nearly died from the shock of seein himself paralyzed but alive. This was repeated over the hundreds of times they opened them balls. Inside each one of them, there was a perfectly preserved Pat or Alistair or, occasionally, a Jared. It was a bit like goin to the store and buyin one of them Homiez figures from the vending machine except this didn't cost a quarter, the homie inside was life sized, it was you and it was alive. Come to think of it, it's not at all like buyin one of them Homiez. I guess I just brought that up because I put all my Homiez up for auction on the E-Bay the day before I got sent here, and I was wonderin how the auction was goin. They're all in mint condition and I got the whole set from series one and two. I thought it was worth about $500,000, but I thought I'd start the bidding at $400,000. You know, play it cool for a bit. But now, I'm afraid the auction might be over and if I haven't contacted the buyer, they're not gonna buy it. I was gonna retire from all this ninja fightin business and by myself a little place somewhere with a porch that men like me could whittle and tell each other stories on. I guess I'll just have to start the auction all over again when I get back, but it's gonna hurt my seller rating.
Regardless, after openin up all their spider homiez, the Pat army knew they was in for some trouble. Them big ol' crazy warpin spider things obviously meant business. And it wasn't the kind of business that was gonna provide high returns on low investments, it was the kind that was gonna suck your soul out of ya and leave ya tied up in a big wad of silk unable to move, but no dyin. Somethin like insurance, but not as bad, if you know what I'm sayin. The real question was how on Earth, or on the moon, as it were, were they gonna fight an enemy that could dig perfect spheres and pack it full of people and animals without anyone knowin. It's sorta like askin how you're gonna fight Dick Cheney except, far as I could tell, the moon spiders wasn't big on shootin people in the face. The answer came to them all too quickly.
You see, as soon as they was finished gettin their buddies out of the shells and into the ICU, one of the spiders popped in to the chamber, saw what they was doin, dropped its newest package, and bit the nearest Pat. She screamed through her beard and fell to the ground, seemingly lifeless. As everyone ran over to help her out, she rose to her feet, said, "I'm feelin right funny," and then blinked out of existence. Wide-eyed, everyone stared at the space she used to be. Then they heard a voice from behind them sayin, "Hey, whatchyall lookin at? You been standin there the whole time?"
They all turned around to see a tanned, happy lookin Pat wearin a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops, holdin a coconut in her hand and lookin mighty strange. When questioned, she told them that, after the spider bit her, she thought she might want to spend a week in Maui, restin and recuperatin, and suddenly found herself in Maui. It wasn't as nice as people made it out to be, she told everyone sagely, there was too many cyclops there these days and they spent all their time throwin rocks at the passin ships and tryin to sink em. After sittin down and doin some math, the squimonk figured out she'd been on an Earth where the time passed much faster, where two seconds here was a week there. They also ran some tests on the Pat that was bitten and saw that, while she was bitten by the spider, she had taken on their abilities instead of goin into a coma. Test after test was performed after that, but they couldn't see any physiological difference between that Pat and most of the others that had been bitten by the spider. So then they figured maybe diet was a factor. They quizzed her about what she'd eaten that day and she told them she'd had her usual meal of two packs of bacon for breakfast followed by a jelly donut. The squimonk doctors checked this against the stomach contents of the frozen ones and saw that, among the Pats, most had less than two full packs of bacon in their stomachs with some having as little as one measly pack, though all had the jelly donut. It's nice to know there are other people out there like you, you know?
Once they got this figured out, they gave the sleeping ones an I.V. drip of bacon and they soon started wakin up and bouncin all over the universe. Pats were scattered hither and yon. Most often they showed up after spendin some time on Maui, but occasionally got into weirder stuff. Well, the squimonk decided that they couldn't wait around for passing spiders to randomly bite at them, and they sure as heck couldn't abide these spiders kidnappin their doppelgangers, so they got busy with the sciencin. Right away, they put all the Pats on a strick diet of two packs of bacon and a jelly donut for breakfast every mornin. It didn't put the Pats out too much, but there is now a new moon around Jupiter in this system that is made entirely of bacon grease. Every once in a while, they will fly their space piratin ships over to it and make popcorn or whatnot with their leavins. It's supposed to be a lot of fun to go slidin down the great grease mountains on your belly. After that, it was a simple matter of the squimonk isolatin the spider poison, synthesizin it in a lab, running experiments, sequencin genomes, mapping the knows universe, teaching the Pats what was on the map and how to use their jump powers for somethin more than quick vacations, and makin enough quantities of their chemical to give to all the Pats, and they were in business. The playing field had been leveled some. Now most of the Pats could bounce through space at will and it was just a matter of findin where the spiders were hidin, what they wanted and how they could be reasoned with or defeated. All in all, a pretty easy day's work for a hyper-intelligent creature, I should think.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Moon Spiders
Right about know, you may be askin yourself why in the known and unknown multiverse would you need to go to the moon to make what amounts to a simple telephone call? Sure, there's all sortsa advanced physics involved and I don't know a whole lot about advanced physics, or any physics for that matter, but ain't you, meanin me, Pat, really just pickin up a cb reciever and contactin your ol pal Douggy? To which I would respond, first of all, if your addressin me in your question, you ain't askin that question to yourself. That is, if you ain't traveled through space and met up with alternate versions of yourself. If you had, and you was me, you would be askin that question to yourself. Q.E.D. I was askin that very same question myself to, well, myself. And the answer that I gave me was, first of all, ain't no Pat O'Neil in the known universe what knows a whole lot about physics. Apparently, many of us didn't ever pay attention after the sixth grade because we was too busy makin up excuses about why we wasn't able to be at school any day we would possibly have a test. Despite that, I explained it to me the best I could. Turns out, the call is travellin faster than light through a whatchmacallit in space. This is only possible because the squimonk from all over got together and fixed the whozawhatsits to respond to the thingamajig but Clan Platypus has this thingy in the sky that blocks the other thingies from goin right and so the whole thing gets all messed up. To go around that, we Pats have ourselves a big ol' moon base that's been disguised to look just like the moon. The was done with a kind of pointy doohicky that had some knobs. Then, they used a different pointy thing to make the whatchamacallit open up wherever they want it to. Now that it's all set up, all ya gotta do it turn a couple knobs and the computer does the rest. I'm sorry for gettin all technical on ya there. I just couldn't really think of a simpler way to say what was goin on.
I gather there was some big problems buildin that moon base, too. I ain't never been to the moon on the Earth I come from, so I don't know if it was just here or if it's everywhere, but the moon is infested with moon spiders. No big deal, you say, just go on down to the local Ace hardware store and buy some spider repellent. But hold on there, Mr.I-know-what-they-keep-in-the-hardware-store, don't be jumpin the gun. Them moon spiders is as big as a train; and I ain't talkin about one of them tiny toy trains that bald men with too many kids spend all their time buildin in the basement, nor am I talkin about them weird midget trains you see at the zoo that was desinged so only kids could fit in it even though their parents, or perhaps uncles, are expected to ride the train with the kids "for the kids' safety" and the parents, or uncle, have just drunk 64 ounces of iced tea with lunch because there was only a Thai restaurant next to the zoo and no parent, or uncle, of that kid is going to order anything less than the hottest food because who wants their son, or nephew, to grow up orderin food like a girl and so there's the parent, or uncle, wedged into this tiny little seat with his knees goin straight up his nose and feelin like his bladder's about to explode and, after seein all them snooty otters splashin around it the water and havin a good ol time, the parent, or uncle, gots to get up and run to the bathroom, but can't get his legs outta the tiny train seat and he's sittin there thinkin he's about to have an accident (which is much worse for a kid to see than watchin his parent, or uncle, orderin mild food) and so, to avoid this tragedy, he kicks his legs straight our from under him, punches through the bottom of the train car and takes the whole train with him into the bathroom for the fifteen minutes it takes to get rid of all the iced tea. The moon spiders are definitely bigger than that kind of train, and I would appreciate it if you would not bring up zoo trains again after what happened with me and Uncle Marty.
No, them moon spiders was as big as a real, genuine, honest to goodness train. They was smart as a whip, too, for spiders. Usually, spiders ain't that smart. When I was a kid, I had this pet spider named Timmy that lived in a little box in my room. Timmy was always eatin crickets and spinnin webs and doin all those other things spiders do. Sometimes at night, I was woken by the sounds of Timmy crying, but I could just yell, "Be quite, Timmy!" and he would. I was never too good in school, as I may have mentioned. I just never really had the attention span for it. My worst subject was math. Them numbers never did make any sense to me. So I'd always try to get Timmy to do my math for me. He did pretty well until I got into sixth grade or so and we started multiplyin and dividin fractions. I was pretty angry at Timmy for sinkin my school career. I figured the least he could do after all them crickets I gave him was to help me a little with my math. He kept tellin me he'd never learned fractions because he hadn't been in school when they taught that. He tried makin it up to me by teachin me math. He'd wait until I got home every night and then he'd spend an hour tutoring me. I think that was a happy time for Timmy because he almost never cried at night anymore. Then, one day, just like that, the police showed up at the door and took Timmy away. They told me some lame excuse about him not really bein a spider, but actually bein a little boy in a spider costume that I'd mistaken for a real spider. I think they just wanted to take my pet away. I did get a bit of consolation for losin Timmy, though. Right after that, I got to change schools and go to this new one where I didn't have to do any math I didn't want to or nothin. It was a great school and we had ice cream every friday if everyone used the bathroom for its intended purpose all week. It never stopped me missin my old spider Timmy, though.
Thing is, these moon spiders was way smarter at math than Timmy ever was. Other me told me that they had their own counting system based entirely on eights, cause they had eight limbs. Also because they had eight limbs, their national game was crazy eights, and they's wild about that game, lemme tell ya. It's on teevee almost every weekend. But I'm getting off topic. I guess their unique counting system allowed them to discover all sortsa math and physics that the Earth never got to. Sure, they prolly would've, but the whole planet went and got itself hooked on meth instead. If they wasn't all hopped up on the goofballs, I have no doubt that these Earth people could have whipped them spiders in their distended hairy butts when it came to science and engineering. After all, look at all the crazy stuff I saw before. And they built that when they were on the meth! Imagine what they can accomplish without it. But I digress. These spiders, with their whacky eight counting system, dug cave systems all through the center of the moon to collects atoms and neutrinos and whatever else kinda crazy space junk went flyin through there and used quantum computers to connect themselves to these atoms using what they called "string theory" so they can, at any time, see what them atoms are doin and even swap place with them if they want. Like I said, them spiders is smart as a whip; a whip with a PhD.
None of this was discovered until the squimonk and the Pats had built their skyships to travel back and forth between the moon and Earth. They wanted to be able to disguise the ships real quick in case Platypus tracked them or whatnot, but they still wanted to give a big ol' finger to the Clan, so the Pats designed their ships to look like pirate ships because, as everyone knows, pirates and ninjas are mortal enemies. If they needed to, they could set down in the ocean among the floating piles of junk out there and hide out with no one ever being the wiser. They built themselves a whole fleet of space pirate ships and were busy relocatin to the moon when they saw their first spider.
I ain't never had the experience myself, but I imagine that havin a spider the size of a train suddenly materialize before you is fairly vexin. Their first response was to start firin, but they didn't hit nothin but vacuum. Which is to say, they didn't hit nothin. But the simple act of them openin fire irked off the moon spiders somethin awful. They'd been watchin what was happenin down on the Earth. They knew it was a bunch of tweak junkies down there and thought that the junkies had built themselves some ships and brought their soul destroyin powder with them to offer to the moon inhabitants.
Word about this went out pretty fast; partially because it was the most excitin thing to happen on the moon since teleportation was discovered a hundred years before, and partially because they moon spiders communicated with each other through telepathy. They didn't attack the Pats and squimonk right away. The moon spiders was a peaceful lot and they preferred runnin away instead of fightin. Once the squimonk started to implement their plan to build the moon base, well, that's when the fightin started.
I gather there was some big problems buildin that moon base, too. I ain't never been to the moon on the Earth I come from, so I don't know if it was just here or if it's everywhere, but the moon is infested with moon spiders. No big deal, you say, just go on down to the local Ace hardware store and buy some spider repellent. But hold on there, Mr.I-know-what-they-keep-in-the-hardware-store, don't be jumpin the gun. Them moon spiders is as big as a train; and I ain't talkin about one of them tiny toy trains that bald men with too many kids spend all their time buildin in the basement, nor am I talkin about them weird midget trains you see at the zoo that was desinged so only kids could fit in it even though their parents, or perhaps uncles, are expected to ride the train with the kids "for the kids' safety" and the parents, or uncle, have just drunk 64 ounces of iced tea with lunch because there was only a Thai restaurant next to the zoo and no parent, or uncle, of that kid is going to order anything less than the hottest food because who wants their son, or nephew, to grow up orderin food like a girl and so there's the parent, or uncle, wedged into this tiny little seat with his knees goin straight up his nose and feelin like his bladder's about to explode and, after seein all them snooty otters splashin around it the water and havin a good ol time, the parent, or uncle, gots to get up and run to the bathroom, but can't get his legs outta the tiny train seat and he's sittin there thinkin he's about to have an accident (which is much worse for a kid to see than watchin his parent, or uncle, orderin mild food) and so, to avoid this tragedy, he kicks his legs straight our from under him, punches through the bottom of the train car and takes the whole train with him into the bathroom for the fifteen minutes it takes to get rid of all the iced tea. The moon spiders are definitely bigger than that kind of train, and I would appreciate it if you would not bring up zoo trains again after what happened with me and Uncle Marty.
No, them moon spiders was as big as a real, genuine, honest to goodness train. They was smart as a whip, too, for spiders. Usually, spiders ain't that smart. When I was a kid, I had this pet spider named Timmy that lived in a little box in my room. Timmy was always eatin crickets and spinnin webs and doin all those other things spiders do. Sometimes at night, I was woken by the sounds of Timmy crying, but I could just yell, "Be quite, Timmy!" and he would. I was never too good in school, as I may have mentioned. I just never really had the attention span for it. My worst subject was math. Them numbers never did make any sense to me. So I'd always try to get Timmy to do my math for me. He did pretty well until I got into sixth grade or so and we started multiplyin and dividin fractions. I was pretty angry at Timmy for sinkin my school career. I figured the least he could do after all them crickets I gave him was to help me a little with my math. He kept tellin me he'd never learned fractions because he hadn't been in school when they taught that. He tried makin it up to me by teachin me math. He'd wait until I got home every night and then he'd spend an hour tutoring me. I think that was a happy time for Timmy because he almost never cried at night anymore. Then, one day, just like that, the police showed up at the door and took Timmy away. They told me some lame excuse about him not really bein a spider, but actually bein a little boy in a spider costume that I'd mistaken for a real spider. I think they just wanted to take my pet away. I did get a bit of consolation for losin Timmy, though. Right after that, I got to change schools and go to this new one where I didn't have to do any math I didn't want to or nothin. It was a great school and we had ice cream every friday if everyone used the bathroom for its intended purpose all week. It never stopped me missin my old spider Timmy, though.
Thing is, these moon spiders was way smarter at math than Timmy ever was. Other me told me that they had their own counting system based entirely on eights, cause they had eight limbs. Also because they had eight limbs, their national game was crazy eights, and they's wild about that game, lemme tell ya. It's on teevee almost every weekend. But I'm getting off topic. I guess their unique counting system allowed them to discover all sortsa math and physics that the Earth never got to. Sure, they prolly would've, but the whole planet went and got itself hooked on meth instead. If they wasn't all hopped up on the goofballs, I have no doubt that these Earth people could have whipped them spiders in their distended hairy butts when it came to science and engineering. After all, look at all the crazy stuff I saw before. And they built that when they were on the meth! Imagine what they can accomplish without it. But I digress. These spiders, with their whacky eight counting system, dug cave systems all through the center of the moon to collects atoms and neutrinos and whatever else kinda crazy space junk went flyin through there and used quantum computers to connect themselves to these atoms using what they called "string theory" so they can, at any time, see what them atoms are doin and even swap place with them if they want. Like I said, them spiders is smart as a whip; a whip with a PhD.
None of this was discovered until the squimonk and the Pats had built their skyships to travel back and forth between the moon and Earth. They wanted to be able to disguise the ships real quick in case Platypus tracked them or whatnot, but they still wanted to give a big ol' finger to the Clan, so the Pats designed their ships to look like pirate ships because, as everyone knows, pirates and ninjas are mortal enemies. If they needed to, they could set down in the ocean among the floating piles of junk out there and hide out with no one ever being the wiser. They built themselves a whole fleet of space pirate ships and were busy relocatin to the moon when they saw their first spider.
I ain't never had the experience myself, but I imagine that havin a spider the size of a train suddenly materialize before you is fairly vexin. Their first response was to start firin, but they didn't hit nothin but vacuum. Which is to say, they didn't hit nothin. But the simple act of them openin fire irked off the moon spiders somethin awful. They'd been watchin what was happenin down on the Earth. They knew it was a bunch of tweak junkies down there and thought that the junkies had built themselves some ships and brought their soul destroyin powder with them to offer to the moon inhabitants.
Word about this went out pretty fast; partially because it was the most excitin thing to happen on the moon since teleportation was discovered a hundred years before, and partially because they moon spiders communicated with each other through telepathy. They didn't attack the Pats and squimonk right away. The moon spiders was a peaceful lot and they preferred runnin away instead of fightin. Once the squimonk started to implement their plan to build the moon base, well, that's when the fightin started.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Pat on Pat
I ain't never been a handsome man. On occasion, I have been called striking, but that was shortly followed by a month in the pen for assault. That ain't to say I'm no elephant man or nothin like that, it's just that I ain't no Sean Connery, neither. I ain't never worried much about it, though. I ain't some bird of paradise that spends all his time preenin and pokin at himself. Frank once suggested I try that there Botox, but I explained to her that I got ethical and medical disagreements with takin the deadliest poison known to man and injectin it in my face. If that makes me old fashioned, so be it. Point bein, since I ain't no metrosexual, I never did have much need for mirrors around my house. Sure, I kept the one that was in the bathroom when they built the house, but I didn't go and add a whole lot on top of it. This made the situation I was in slightly more difficult. I was facin two guys who were callin each other Pat O'Neil, and looked like I remembered myself lookin, but it was hard to know if they looked exactly like me or just mostly like me. I don't know which would have been more disturbin, especially given the fact that they made tuna sandwiches the exact same way as me; by mixin in a little red onion and bacon fat into the tuna salad. I ain't never seen anyone make it the same way and I really only started doin it because I was eatin a lot of bacon.
I know a lot of people'll tell ya bacon's bad for ya, but I spent some time watchin that Wilfred Brimley lookin guy on the Good Morning, USA show, you know the one who wishes happy birthday to anyone over a hundred? I was watchin his interviews every day there for awhile when I was employed in the shoe factory, and he asked every hundred year old how they lived so long, and you know the answer? Pack each of bacon and cigarettes every day. I don't hold no truck with no smokin, specially after sharin a room with Smoky Joe Robinson in college. Contrarywise to his name, Smoky Joe weren't no smoker. In fact, he had himself a pretty severe asthma. No to say he was undeservin of the name, though. You see, Smoky Joe came from a long line of brimstone farmers. His father and his father before him worked in the Georgian brimstone fields. Before that, all the men in his family worked in the brinstone fields in the old country, Georgia. That's Georgia the country, not Georgia the state, mind you. They would cut and haul brimstone from mornin to night, fashionin all sorts of things out of it, from lighters that never went out to stoves you never had to turn on. In the 60's, Smokey Joe's dad saw the huge market for pet rocks and lava lamps and decided to combine the two. Thus was born the pet lava rock. It was a mild success among people who wasn't in their right mind and it gave the family enough money to send Smoky Joe to college. They wanted him to make a good impression that first day so they dressed him in his finest brimstone suit and sent him off into the big world. I don't know if y'all was aware, but you show up to your first day of college wearin a suit made out of a rock that smokes all the time, you're gonna end up bein called Smoky somethin-er-rather. Smoky Joe, comin from a hale and hardy line of brimstone farmers, took it all in stride and with good humor. Throughout his college career, he won people over with his rugged good looks and his happy-go-lucky attitude. He really sealed the deal when he closed out his Valedictorian speech with the line, "Now put that in your pipe and smoke it." I hear tell Smoky Joe got his MBA and went on to start Smoky Joe's barbecue down in Georgia, the only barbecue cooked on natural brimstone. It was wildly popular among people from the old country and Smoky Joe's become a powerful man in Georgian politics. I'm proud of him, and I get myself a little giggle every time I think of him at them fancy schmancy political swarays in his brimstone tuxedo. Long story short, because of his asthma, Smoky Joe couldn't abide smokin in the dorm room. I'd been tryin to act sophisticated by rollin my own tobaccy, but Smoky cured me of that right quick and I ain't been able to stand it since. After I saw them reports about people livin to a hundred with a pack of bacon and a pack of ciggarettes a day, I thought that I would replace the ciggarettes with a second pack of bacon.
I tell ya, you eat two packs of bacon a day, and that bacon grease will pile right up on ya. I never was comfortable throwin all that good flavor out, so I kept it in empty bean cans, just like ma used to do. When I got to the point I was sleepin on the porch in the winter because my house was full of bean cans stuffed with bacon grease, I figured I needed to find a way to use it up.
"And that's how I started usin bacon grease in my tuna salad," announced one of the other Pats. I wasn't even aware that a) I'd asked a question or 2) that he'd been answerin it with my own story. There was somethin pretty wild goin on here.
"Somethin pretty wild goin on here, huh, Pat?" asked the Pat to my left.
"How did you..." I began to say.
"I still think that way, and I been at this eight years now," he cut me off. "The surprise'll wear off some, but I don't know if you're ever gonna get used to it."
"Get used to what?!" I think I was gettin pretty hysterical by this point. It ain't easy...
..."to eat lunch when people are finisin your sentences, is it?" Pat to my left asked.
The Pat to my right piped in, "Just let it happen, buddy. The sooner you start goin with it, the easier it's gonna be."
It made some sorta weird sense, but I still wanted to know what was goin on. Why was I sittin around a table with two of my doppelgangers eatin a sandwich only I could make?
"You want the short answer or the long answer?" asked left Pat.
"Let's try the short answer and see how that goes," I told him.
"Allright. You're on an alternative version of Earth several light years from your home planet. As far as we can determine, thousands of Earths just like this exist in the space imaginable around your Earth. That ain't to say space ends there, it's just where your thinkin ends. Theoretically, and this ain't accordin to me, there should be an infinite number of every possible Earth somewhere in space. You just happened to find yourself a crappy version. I'm guessin you ran into a half man, half lobster meth dealer called McClawenstein and he farted you here. The planet you find yourself on is one of about a hundred in this light cone that Clan Platypus has dominated, so a lot of Pats end up here. We've got Pats roaming this planet looking for other Pats landing. When we find them, we bring em here or to another facility we run in the southern hemisphere. Here, we do the debriefin, which I'm doin now, and then we try and get a lock on which version of Earth you're from. Then we'll send a signal to your Lindbergh and your Allistair, lettin' em know where you are. Then, if they have the tech, they'll come join us, if not, we'll send em the tech, they'll have to build it, and then they'll join us and you. On this version of Earth, we're buildin ourselves a Pat army to get rid of Clan Platypus and then we're sendin in an army of Jareds to act as drug counselors for the planet. If all goes to plan, this Earth'll be back on its feet in a couple of years and we'll move on to the next one. How's that sound?"
I really only had the one question. "Are you sure you're a Pat O'Neil? That explanation was pretty succinct and was kind of out of character. At least, it would be for me."
"Yeah, I am," he responded, "and let me tell ya, learnin how to do the short version almost killed me. That right there is the product of three years intensive speech givin trainin. A whole year of that, I had to wear a shock collar cause I wanted to keep tellin about that time Douggy lived in a bomb shelter for two years because he thought the Russians were comin after drinkin a bit much and fallin asleep while watchin Red Dawn."
"I remember that!" I cut in, "That was the same year I was practicin to become a bear wrestler but didn't have no bears to practice on so I dressed Douggy's great dane up as a bear and just wrestled that. Course, I didn't know Douggy had taught Big Red to wrestle. In the end, I had to give up that idea."
We went around the table for awhile tellin all them stories from that year. I won't bore you with all the details. The last thing I wanna do is tell a long-winded story that don't have much to do with the actual happenins. I do wanna tell ya that there was a couple of them stories I ain't experienced. Pat to my right told me that, when he first met McClawenstein, the monster killed Douggy, but Lindbergh saved his brain and put it in a robot and now his best friend insisted on bein called Robo-Douggy. Pat to my left had a story about them penguins in Amelia Earhart's base joinin forces with the squimonk and assaultin Clan Platypus' underwater base, eliminatin 'em from the planet, and then stealin their technology to join forces with the other Pats. That, he said, was nigh on ten years ago.
"Well," said one of the Pats after story time was over, "you ready to get in contact with your buddies again?"
"Why sure," I said, "I'd like them to know I'm ok at least."
"Allright, then put this on," said the other Pat, tossin me what looked like a space suit.
"What for?"
"Because," he told me, "we're goin to the moon."
I know a lot of people'll tell ya bacon's bad for ya, but I spent some time watchin that Wilfred Brimley lookin guy on the Good Morning, USA show, you know the one who wishes happy birthday to anyone over a hundred? I was watchin his interviews every day there for awhile when I was employed in the shoe factory, and he asked every hundred year old how they lived so long, and you know the answer? Pack each of bacon and cigarettes every day. I don't hold no truck with no smokin, specially after sharin a room with Smoky Joe Robinson in college. Contrarywise to his name, Smoky Joe weren't no smoker. In fact, he had himself a pretty severe asthma. No to say he was undeservin of the name, though. You see, Smoky Joe came from a long line of brimstone farmers. His father and his father before him worked in the Georgian brimstone fields. Before that, all the men in his family worked in the brinstone fields in the old country, Georgia. That's Georgia the country, not Georgia the state, mind you. They would cut and haul brimstone from mornin to night, fashionin all sorts of things out of it, from lighters that never went out to stoves you never had to turn on. In the 60's, Smokey Joe's dad saw the huge market for pet rocks and lava lamps and decided to combine the two. Thus was born the pet lava rock. It was a mild success among people who wasn't in their right mind and it gave the family enough money to send Smoky Joe to college. They wanted him to make a good impression that first day so they dressed him in his finest brimstone suit and sent him off into the big world. I don't know if y'all was aware, but you show up to your first day of college wearin a suit made out of a rock that smokes all the time, you're gonna end up bein called Smoky somethin-er-rather. Smoky Joe, comin from a hale and hardy line of brimstone farmers, took it all in stride and with good humor. Throughout his college career, he won people over with his rugged good looks and his happy-go-lucky attitude. He really sealed the deal when he closed out his Valedictorian speech with the line, "Now put that in your pipe and smoke it." I hear tell Smoky Joe got his MBA and went on to start Smoky Joe's barbecue down in Georgia, the only barbecue cooked on natural brimstone. It was wildly popular among people from the old country and Smoky Joe's become a powerful man in Georgian politics. I'm proud of him, and I get myself a little giggle every time I think of him at them fancy schmancy political swarays in his brimstone tuxedo. Long story short, because of his asthma, Smoky Joe couldn't abide smokin in the dorm room. I'd been tryin to act sophisticated by rollin my own tobaccy, but Smoky cured me of that right quick and I ain't been able to stand it since. After I saw them reports about people livin to a hundred with a pack of bacon and a pack of ciggarettes a day, I thought that I would replace the ciggarettes with a second pack of bacon.
I tell ya, you eat two packs of bacon a day, and that bacon grease will pile right up on ya. I never was comfortable throwin all that good flavor out, so I kept it in empty bean cans, just like ma used to do. When I got to the point I was sleepin on the porch in the winter because my house was full of bean cans stuffed with bacon grease, I figured I needed to find a way to use it up.
"And that's how I started usin bacon grease in my tuna salad," announced one of the other Pats. I wasn't even aware that a) I'd asked a question or 2) that he'd been answerin it with my own story. There was somethin pretty wild goin on here.
"Somethin pretty wild goin on here, huh, Pat?" asked the Pat to my left.
"How did you..." I began to say.
"I still think that way, and I been at this eight years now," he cut me off. "The surprise'll wear off some, but I don't know if you're ever gonna get used to it."
"Get used to what?!" I think I was gettin pretty hysterical by this point. It ain't easy...
..."to eat lunch when people are finisin your sentences, is it?" Pat to my left asked.
The Pat to my right piped in, "Just let it happen, buddy. The sooner you start goin with it, the easier it's gonna be."
It made some sorta weird sense, but I still wanted to know what was goin on. Why was I sittin around a table with two of my doppelgangers eatin a sandwich only I could make?
"You want the short answer or the long answer?" asked left Pat.
"Let's try the short answer and see how that goes," I told him.
"Allright. You're on an alternative version of Earth several light years from your home planet. As far as we can determine, thousands of Earths just like this exist in the space imaginable around your Earth. That ain't to say space ends there, it's just where your thinkin ends. Theoretically, and this ain't accordin to me, there should be an infinite number of every possible Earth somewhere in space. You just happened to find yourself a crappy version. I'm guessin you ran into a half man, half lobster meth dealer called McClawenstein and he farted you here. The planet you find yourself on is one of about a hundred in this light cone that Clan Platypus has dominated, so a lot of Pats end up here. We've got Pats roaming this planet looking for other Pats landing. When we find them, we bring em here or to another facility we run in the southern hemisphere. Here, we do the debriefin, which I'm doin now, and then we try and get a lock on which version of Earth you're from. Then we'll send a signal to your Lindbergh and your Allistair, lettin' em know where you are. Then, if they have the tech, they'll come join us, if not, we'll send em the tech, they'll have to build it, and then they'll join us and you. On this version of Earth, we're buildin ourselves a Pat army to get rid of Clan Platypus and then we're sendin in an army of Jareds to act as drug counselors for the planet. If all goes to plan, this Earth'll be back on its feet in a couple of years and we'll move on to the next one. How's that sound?"
I really only had the one question. "Are you sure you're a Pat O'Neil? That explanation was pretty succinct and was kind of out of character. At least, it would be for me."
"Yeah, I am," he responded, "and let me tell ya, learnin how to do the short version almost killed me. That right there is the product of three years intensive speech givin trainin. A whole year of that, I had to wear a shock collar cause I wanted to keep tellin about that time Douggy lived in a bomb shelter for two years because he thought the Russians were comin after drinkin a bit much and fallin asleep while watchin Red Dawn."
"I remember that!" I cut in, "That was the same year I was practicin to become a bear wrestler but didn't have no bears to practice on so I dressed Douggy's great dane up as a bear and just wrestled that. Course, I didn't know Douggy had taught Big Red to wrestle. In the end, I had to give up that idea."
We went around the table for awhile tellin all them stories from that year. I won't bore you with all the details. The last thing I wanna do is tell a long-winded story that don't have much to do with the actual happenins. I do wanna tell ya that there was a couple of them stories I ain't experienced. Pat to my right told me that, when he first met McClawenstein, the monster killed Douggy, but Lindbergh saved his brain and put it in a robot and now his best friend insisted on bein called Robo-Douggy. Pat to my left had a story about them penguins in Amelia Earhart's base joinin forces with the squimonk and assaultin Clan Platypus' underwater base, eliminatin 'em from the planet, and then stealin their technology to join forces with the other Pats. That, he said, was nigh on ten years ago.
"Well," said one of the Pats after story time was over, "you ready to get in contact with your buddies again?"
"Why sure," I said, "I'd like them to know I'm ok at least."
"Allright, then put this on," said the other Pat, tossin me what looked like a space suit.
"What for?"
"Because," he told me, "we're goin to the moon."
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