I ain't one to tell people what to do. I figure, you do what you're gonna do and I'll do what I'm gonna do and, as long as we ain't gettin in each other's way, we'll all be pretty happy. I used to feel that way about most intoxicants, too. I reckoned that, as long as people was doin it in their homes, and it didn't involve them comin into my home to relieve me of my teevee or whatnot, they could go on and get down with they bad selves. Being on a world surrounded by meth addicts changed my mind about that real quick. Them people didn't seem to have a concept of limits. Runnin through the destruction they'd wrought on their own world, followin a hunched over shadow, I got to see a lot of weird stuff. Here's what I've gathered of Methworld societal rules from my adventures here so far:
#1) No one here owns shirts with sleeves. I seen a couple of stands back round the way that was sellin shirts, mostly for Lynard Skynard and somethin called Slipknot, and every one of em had sleeves attached. Despite that, all the people I seen sittin around jungle fires around here, not a single one was wearin a shirt but it had the sleeves cut out. Also, a surprisin number of people go topless.
#2) Teeth don't seem to make much of a difference in quality of life here. There's people walkin around here with any number of teeth you could think of. The most common number of teeth seems to be right between zero and one, though I did see a guy guardin a pile of teeth big as Aunt Ruth's old woman cleavage. He was holdin a garden rake.
#3) The mullet is the only acceptable hairstyle on this world, and I ain't seen one person I would peg for a hockey or soccer player. It also looks to me that the large or colored mullet is a sign of dominance in this society, like havin a big, red butt marks leadership in baboon society.
#4) Big, red butts mark leadership in this society as well. Don't ask me how I know, I just do, and I wish I didn't.
#5) Every vehicle is, apparently, required to have a big air intake blower and giant tires on it somewhere.
#6) Meth makes you think there's something crawlin on you. I only know that from all the people rollin on the ground, scratchin at themselves yellin, "Get 'em off me!"
Tell ya the truth, under all the scared, I felt sorry for those people. It was like if you was bein attacked by a giant ball of wolves that had their tails tied together and findin out, after you was too tired to fight anymore, that there was a cute little big-eyed bunny at its heart, and that bunny wasn't usin mind control to make the wolves do its evil bidding, like Frank's bunny does.
That ain't to say I was about to go out into the explosions and start givin out hugs like it was Halloween and all the meth zombies was dressed like princesses. Just cause I feel sorry for them doesn't mean I've grown myself a whole new beard made outta stupid. Mostly because, on top of the bunny, there was still a big ball of wolves. And them wolves wasn't gettin any less ferocious as I followed this lady or feller through the fire and pain on that world.
I don't know how long we was walkin, but it was pretty long, I tell ya. It's hard to figure time when the sun doesn't come up and the stars don't turn. We didn't even stop to eat or nothin, which I thought was pretty rude. Any time I've lead someone through an alien world without telling them anything, I always make sure to pack them a sandwich or, if I ain't got no bread, at least a banana and a bag of cereal. By the time we got to the steel door set in the ground where I was told, "Go down the stairs, and watch your head," my dogs was barkin and my stomach was rumblin like two giants was smoothin out boulders by rubbin em together.
I was about to turn and ask my guide if there was food down there when the metal door slammed behind me and there was a sound like a bolt slammin home. I was standin in pitch dark on some hard dark stairs, just waitin for somethin to happen when, in fron of me in the dark, I heard a gruff man's voice sayin, "You're in trouble now, Pat O'Neil."
I went wide eyed and huddled up near the door, thinkin maybe they wouldn't see me. Ahead in the darkness, a door opened and spilled light across the hall. Whoever had spoken was still mumblin and looked to be walking around in a room just off the hallway. They didn't seem to see me, which was a bonus right then. Then he spoke again, "Pat O'Neil, when I get through with you, you're gonna be wearin your feet as a hat and walkin around on your hands."
Then another voice, very similar to the first, cut in. "Oh yeah? I got this Uncle Franky that went through somethin very similar..."
"Can it," said the first voice, "and explain to me why you ate the bacon you knew I was savin."
"Gee, Pat," said the second, "I sure am sorry 'bout that, but it ain't my fault. You see, I was dead asleep there this afternoon and I started havin this weird dream. I dreamt I was home, but it wasn't my home. There was all sortsa machines there that flew around and poked people in the eye. Well, I just wasn't gonna take bein poked in the eye by nothin, so I started grabbin at em and smashin em together and swingin em around. I opened my eyes mid dream and saw I was really in the kitchen and, lo and behold, instead of smashin a bunch of eye pokin machines, I'd made myself a BLT sandwich in my sleep. You know I can't sit there and let a perfectly good BLT go to waste, so I ate it. You woulda done the same, I know you would."
"Yeah," acquiesced the first voice, "I would. Boy do you know me."
"Almost as well as I know myself," the second voice shot back. They had a big laugh over that.
Me, I was still sittin there with my feet hurtin and my stomach growlin. You know how sometimes, when you're in the worst situation, your nose itches? Like you're sittin there in the dentists chair, and he's drillin a hole in your tooth the size of Montana and you know that drill's only an inch or so from your brain, and your nose starts itchin. You try to hold on, but it's tough. Well, as I discovered in a pretty inopportune moment, flatulence can be a little like that. Except there's no dentist and you're not in a chair. Instead, you're tryin to press yourself against a locked metal door at the top of a staircase hard enough that you can just push right through the metal and there's two strangers down the hall sayin crazy things like, "Did you hear that?" and "Sounds like we caught another one" and, finally, "Let's go check it out."
Right then, I thought of this space travel documentary I'd read one time. It was something about a guide for hitchhikers in space or some such thing. It don't really matter what the name was. All that really matters is that, in that book, there's this thing called the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal and, if you don't look at it, it can't see you. It couldn't hurt, I thought. I mean, if they can see me, it's not like they're gonna kill me MORE. So I turned and pressed my face against that metal door and wedged it up there as far as I could get it. I was determined to keep it there. After the lights came on, I tried pressin in farther, even though it made my fillins hurt.
I knew the jig was up when I felt the tap on my shoulder and heard them say, "Pat, is that you?"
"No," I said, definitively. That's what I tried to say, anyway, but it came out soundin more like "SMMMPHN"
"We ain't gonna hurt you, Pat," said the first voice, "just turn around."
And when I did, I was so surprised, I let one rip again. For a second there, I thought I might have laid an easter egg, but, thankfully, it turns out I didn't
"I know what you're gonna say," said the man with the long white beard standing in front of me.
"Oh yeah?" I sat, still stunned. "What's that?"
He replied, "You're gonna say, 'What on God's formerly green but now scorched black as the business end of a leopard is goin on here, and are you gonna finish that sandwich?' The answers are, come into the kitchen and yes, yes you can."
"Ho..how...how..." I couldn't get the words to come out of my head.
"Because I said the same thing."
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Ted's Spring Warehouse
The robot pod I was in split open like the head of a Greek god that's just swallowed a fly. But I found myself to be quite unlike Pallas in two ways. First, there weren't no big ol' black bird perched on a statue of me tormentin some poor writer who misses his wife. Well, not that I was aware of right at the time, anyway. Second, I did not jump out of my prison and into the realm of the gods, which I am pretty sure is all white marble and wine and the occasional bare breast. After all, them togas is hard to keep on. Instead, I jumped (well, if we wanna be honest here, crawled) into a hellishly scorched world full of explosions and smoke. It was a lot like I used to imagine the school cafeteria looking, really, without all the meatloaf.
I wasn't sure when one of them giant ninjabots would spot me, so I tried to get somewhere, anywhere, as fast as I could. I started out at a flat run, but that pretty quickly turned into a trot, which then became a swift walk, which itself turned into a normal walk. All this took right about two minutes. Hey, I ain't no spring chicken anymore. Tell ya the truth, I had my chance at bein a spring chicken, but I wasn't much good at it. It was just after my gator wrasslin had come to an end. I was hitchin my way back up to Iowa to rejoin my family and I just plum ran outta money. I stopped in this little town in Tennessee to see what was what and where I could maybe scratch together a coupla dollars. Bein new in town, I started lookin where everyone looks, Craig's list. Seein as how this was before the internet, Craig was still goin door to door across Dixie askin people if they had anything to sell, any jobs available or any services they would like to render. He got arrested a lot for soliciting prostitutes, but he kept at it and just look where he is now. At the time, though, the only place to reliably find a Craig's list was the bus station. I found the one in this bus station crinkled up, covered in cheeseburger and coffee stains and stapled to the bulletin board behind a map of Kansas and an ad for a used bicycle. There was only one job listing and it was right obfuscated, I tell ya. All it said was, "Need a job? Willing to do something new? Not a prostitute? Apply in person," and then an address. I felt I had all the necessary qualifications, along with the hunger needed to do just about anything, so I headed on down to the address.
When I got there, it was a two story grey building with nothin but a garage door on it. I still don't know the proper manners when faced with only a garage door. I mean, I spose you could honk your horn if you had a car. If not, I guess you could treat it like a regular door and just knock, but that seems wrong somehow. Me, I went for the duck call. It may not have been right, but it was my decision to make and I stand by it, even if the owner came runnin out with his shotgun loaded and cocked, huntin vest slung quickly over one shoulder and shoutin "Where them ducks?"
"Ain't no ducks," I told him.
He seemed surprised at this. "No ducks?"
"Sorry, sir, there are no ducks here," I was gonna segue from that into job talk, but he cut in before I could.
"There was ducks right here! I had 'em in a cage, but I heard 'em out. Who let the ducks out?!"
I was lost. "Who let the ducks out?"
He shouted, "Who?! Who?!"
"I guess I just plumb don't know, sir. I just got here, though, and I haven't seen any ducks. But I did see this here job listing on Craig's list," I held the paper out to him.
"Oh, right, the job," he scanned the skies suspiciously while he talked to me. "That Craig kept comin around and pesterin me while I was workin on my masterpiece, so I gave him five bucks to get out. Instead, he posted that ad. I swear, I've been inundated with prostitutes ever since. You ain't a prostitute, are ya?"
"No, sir," I assured him, "I'm just hitchin my way back home, lookin to make some money."
He seemed to take this well. Sure, we dickered a bit about whether or not I was ready to see his "project", but he finally relented. He allowed me to cross the threshold while shouting, "Welcome to Ted's Spring Warehouse."
As far as I could see, the name was accurate as it could be. It was indeed a warehouse filled to the brim with springs. "That must make you Ted," I guessed.
He looked at me, blinked twice rapidly and shook his head. "No, I'm not, why would you think that?"
"Well, I...uh...the name..." I stammered.
"I'm Gary," he introduced himself.
After that, he explained his business to me. It was pretty basic, just sellin springs, but it took him over an hour and a half to explain it to me. Don't y'all just hate when that happens? You just want to know the short version of a story, but the durned fool tellin it keeps wanderin off and tellin other stories and by the time you get back to the original story, he's only walked five friggin feet and you just want to punch him in the ear. I sure am glad I don't know no one like that anymore. But this guy could talk up a storm. When the hour and a half had passed, I asked him two things; what my role in this whole business was gonna be and if I could have a sandwich. I was feelin hungry enough to eat half a fried goat head with a side of fish stomach. Instead, I got tuna, which is just as well.
When that was finished, Gary told me my place in this business was to dress up as the mascot. He'd arranged for a kangaroo suit down at the costume shop. But, through a combination of to much business and near-sightedness, the costume shop had sent over a chicken outfit instead. It wasn't so bad for Gary, who appreciated a good pun, but it was murder on the Tennessee Fried Chicken that was stuck with the kangaroo suit. In fact, their business suffered so much they had to pack up and move to Kentucky. I dunno what happened to that poor, retired colonel after that, but I hope he found a small measure of success there. Before I come, Gary'd been attaching springs all over the suit. He told me that all I'd have to do was put the suit on, bounce through town until I gathered a crowd and then bounce on back, bringin the crowd with me. For this, he would pay me $10, which was quite a fortune in those days.
I agreed to his terms and changed into the suit. I tell ya what, bouncin around town ain't easy, even for a young man. I got myself right winded and had a horrible cramp in my side. For about a half hour, it felt like there was an angry gnome in my suit punchin me in the ribs. I checked twice, but I never did find that little fella. Instead, I bounced around the town as best I could. I only got caught in trees four times and only one of those times resulted in the fire department comin out to free me from the tree. By the time that happened, I'd gathered quite a crowd. I reckon everyone in town must have been there and they all must have called their aunt Sallys in the next town over, Sallyville. When I bounced on back to Ted's Spring Warehouse, Gary was bowled over by my work, also by the suit because I couldn't stop. I picked him up with the suit, careened around the warehouse for awhile and finally ended up stuck in a pile of springs. Luckily for us, the fire department was there and had us free in a matter of hours.
Gary made darn near $100 in spring sales that day and expected to make a whole lot more. In order to thank me, he gave me a special pair of shoes he'd designed himself with springs in the toe and heel. As he handed them to me he told me, "They'll put a spring in your step."
Gary's business fell apart shortly after that. It was no fault of Gary's, the spring market just bottomed out because cheap springs started comin into the US from Ceylon and he just couldn't keep up. He gained a little infamy in the end, however. That whole "spring in your step" line spread from coast to coast after people saw me hoppin home on them shoes. I still got them shoes. I woulda liked to have em to get around that there meth world, but I just had to walk the regular way.
I was thinkin about all this as I was gettin away from that pod and, hopefully, the giant robot ninjas it would attract like flies to my Aunt Bertha's "pot roast surprise". Near as soon as I started thinkin about those shoes, I heard a voice from the darkness whisper out, "Psst!"
"Psst! yerself," I responded.
"You wanna buy some meth?" the shadow whispered.
I was stunned. I couldn't possibly say yes. I also couldn't possibly say no, because what if it was a ninja trap? I could be killed, or worse, flatulated upon! So, I went with something milder. "Absolutely not!" Ok, maybe I wasn't totally accurate about it bein milder, but a man's gotta take a stand sometime.
"Great," said the voice, "follow me. We've got a great deal to discuss."
"You can just discuss it here," I insisted.
"Not possible," the voice whispered, "the roboninjas will be lookin for that pod and, as soon as they find it, they're going to kill anyone in a 100 foot radius."
I looked back to see how far I'd come. I ain't great with distances, but it looked to me to be about five feet. "Ok," I said, turning back, "let's go."
I wasn't sure when one of them giant ninjabots would spot me, so I tried to get somewhere, anywhere, as fast as I could. I started out at a flat run, but that pretty quickly turned into a trot, which then became a swift walk, which itself turned into a normal walk. All this took right about two minutes. Hey, I ain't no spring chicken anymore. Tell ya the truth, I had my chance at bein a spring chicken, but I wasn't much good at it. It was just after my gator wrasslin had come to an end. I was hitchin my way back up to Iowa to rejoin my family and I just plum ran outta money. I stopped in this little town in Tennessee to see what was what and where I could maybe scratch together a coupla dollars. Bein new in town, I started lookin where everyone looks, Craig's list. Seein as how this was before the internet, Craig was still goin door to door across Dixie askin people if they had anything to sell, any jobs available or any services they would like to render. He got arrested a lot for soliciting prostitutes, but he kept at it and just look where he is now. At the time, though, the only place to reliably find a Craig's list was the bus station. I found the one in this bus station crinkled up, covered in cheeseburger and coffee stains and stapled to the bulletin board behind a map of Kansas and an ad for a used bicycle. There was only one job listing and it was right obfuscated, I tell ya. All it said was, "Need a job? Willing to do something new? Not a prostitute? Apply in person," and then an address. I felt I had all the necessary qualifications, along with the hunger needed to do just about anything, so I headed on down to the address.
When I got there, it was a two story grey building with nothin but a garage door on it. I still don't know the proper manners when faced with only a garage door. I mean, I spose you could honk your horn if you had a car. If not, I guess you could treat it like a regular door and just knock, but that seems wrong somehow. Me, I went for the duck call. It may not have been right, but it was my decision to make and I stand by it, even if the owner came runnin out with his shotgun loaded and cocked, huntin vest slung quickly over one shoulder and shoutin "Where them ducks?"
"Ain't no ducks," I told him.
He seemed surprised at this. "No ducks?"
"Sorry, sir, there are no ducks here," I was gonna segue from that into job talk, but he cut in before I could.
"There was ducks right here! I had 'em in a cage, but I heard 'em out. Who let the ducks out?!"
I was lost. "Who let the ducks out?"
He shouted, "Who?! Who?!"
"I guess I just plumb don't know, sir. I just got here, though, and I haven't seen any ducks. But I did see this here job listing on Craig's list," I held the paper out to him.
"Oh, right, the job," he scanned the skies suspiciously while he talked to me. "That Craig kept comin around and pesterin me while I was workin on my masterpiece, so I gave him five bucks to get out. Instead, he posted that ad. I swear, I've been inundated with prostitutes ever since. You ain't a prostitute, are ya?"
"No, sir," I assured him, "I'm just hitchin my way back home, lookin to make some money."
He seemed to take this well. Sure, we dickered a bit about whether or not I was ready to see his "project", but he finally relented. He allowed me to cross the threshold while shouting, "Welcome to Ted's Spring Warehouse."
As far as I could see, the name was accurate as it could be. It was indeed a warehouse filled to the brim with springs. "That must make you Ted," I guessed.
He looked at me, blinked twice rapidly and shook his head. "No, I'm not, why would you think that?"
"Well, I...uh...the name..." I stammered.
"I'm Gary," he introduced himself.
After that, he explained his business to me. It was pretty basic, just sellin springs, but it took him over an hour and a half to explain it to me. Don't y'all just hate when that happens? You just want to know the short version of a story, but the durned fool tellin it keeps wanderin off and tellin other stories and by the time you get back to the original story, he's only walked five friggin feet and you just want to punch him in the ear. I sure am glad I don't know no one like that anymore. But this guy could talk up a storm. When the hour and a half had passed, I asked him two things; what my role in this whole business was gonna be and if I could have a sandwich. I was feelin hungry enough to eat half a fried goat head with a side of fish stomach. Instead, I got tuna, which is just as well.
When that was finished, Gary told me my place in this business was to dress up as the mascot. He'd arranged for a kangaroo suit down at the costume shop. But, through a combination of to much business and near-sightedness, the costume shop had sent over a chicken outfit instead. It wasn't so bad for Gary, who appreciated a good pun, but it was murder on the Tennessee Fried Chicken that was stuck with the kangaroo suit. In fact, their business suffered so much they had to pack up and move to Kentucky. I dunno what happened to that poor, retired colonel after that, but I hope he found a small measure of success there. Before I come, Gary'd been attaching springs all over the suit. He told me that all I'd have to do was put the suit on, bounce through town until I gathered a crowd and then bounce on back, bringin the crowd with me. For this, he would pay me $10, which was quite a fortune in those days.
I agreed to his terms and changed into the suit. I tell ya what, bouncin around town ain't easy, even for a young man. I got myself right winded and had a horrible cramp in my side. For about a half hour, it felt like there was an angry gnome in my suit punchin me in the ribs. I checked twice, but I never did find that little fella. Instead, I bounced around the town as best I could. I only got caught in trees four times and only one of those times resulted in the fire department comin out to free me from the tree. By the time that happened, I'd gathered quite a crowd. I reckon everyone in town must have been there and they all must have called their aunt Sallys in the next town over, Sallyville. When I bounced on back to Ted's Spring Warehouse, Gary was bowled over by my work, also by the suit because I couldn't stop. I picked him up with the suit, careened around the warehouse for awhile and finally ended up stuck in a pile of springs. Luckily for us, the fire department was there and had us free in a matter of hours.
Gary made darn near $100 in spring sales that day and expected to make a whole lot more. In order to thank me, he gave me a special pair of shoes he'd designed himself with springs in the toe and heel. As he handed them to me he told me, "They'll put a spring in your step."
Gary's business fell apart shortly after that. It was no fault of Gary's, the spring market just bottomed out because cheap springs started comin into the US from Ceylon and he just couldn't keep up. He gained a little infamy in the end, however. That whole "spring in your step" line spread from coast to coast after people saw me hoppin home on them shoes. I still got them shoes. I woulda liked to have em to get around that there meth world, but I just had to walk the regular way.
I was thinkin about all this as I was gettin away from that pod and, hopefully, the giant robot ninjas it would attract like flies to my Aunt Bertha's "pot roast surprise". Near as soon as I started thinkin about those shoes, I heard a voice from the darkness whisper out, "Psst!"
"Psst! yerself," I responded.
"You wanna buy some meth?" the shadow whispered.
I was stunned. I couldn't possibly say yes. I also couldn't possibly say no, because what if it was a ninja trap? I could be killed, or worse, flatulated upon! So, I went with something milder. "Absolutely not!" Ok, maybe I wasn't totally accurate about it bein milder, but a man's gotta take a stand sometime.
"Great," said the voice, "follow me. We've got a great deal to discuss."
"You can just discuss it here," I insisted.
"Not possible," the voice whispered, "the roboninjas will be lookin for that pod and, as soon as they find it, they're going to kill anyone in a 100 foot radius."
I looked back to see how far I'd come. I ain't great with distances, but it looked to me to be about five feet. "Ok," I said, turning back, "let's go."
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Robot Fight
"Sweet Sassy Molassy!" I yelled out, staring at a robot climbing slowly over the stands. My mind was doin somersaults and my stomach was tryin to keep up. It was at least twice the size of the robot I was in and made entirely of a material I'd never seen before. I assumed it was some kind of metal, it bein used to build a robot and all, but it weren't shiny like metal is. In fact, it was the exact opposite of shiny. The whole robot seemed to drink in the light like a linebacker that's just run 98 yards for an interception field goal drinks Gatorade. That robot was so dark my eyes couldn't even really focus on it. It was like there was this robot-shaped hole in space that was shootin fire out of it.
And talk about fire. It's like this big ol' sucker had just eaten a thousand nuclear wings and topped it off my swillin down a curry and Tabasco shake with a habanero garnish. I ain't never seen so much fire in my life. Not even when I went to the "Bring Your Own Flaming Barrel" dance that the 4H threw last year. I tell ya, up until I saw that there fire breathin shadow, it was the most fire I thought even God would ever see. Brian Johnson, runnin late for the dance at which he was plannin on proposin to Peggy Lee Bigbritches, pulled his 18 wheeler right up next to the 4H barn, sorta wedgin it in between the barn and the gasoline covered tinder factory next door. Afterwards, when he was interviewed by the paper and the police, he said sure, he'd seen all them flaming barrels layin around all over the place. And yeah, he'd heard on the radio that the whole dance was sold out and still people were showin up. It wasn't that surprisin, really. In my experience, people'll take any chance you give em to set a barrel on fire. So, yeah, he saw the barrels, but, like he said, he didn't think nothin of it because he was carryin a truck load of fire extinguishers for the factory anyway, so he figured he could just unload in the morning. As we learned later, reading the findings of the government investigators, them fire extinguishers he was carryin were all made in China. I guess product safety standards is pretty loose there because, in a bid to save three cents per extinguisher, they was fillin em with homemade napalm jelly. Brian, not knowin any of this, wanders into the dance, finds Peggy Lee, proposes, she starts cryin and says yes, then we all have ourselves a great time. Brian hits the sauce a little harder than he should and Peggy Lee gives him a ride to Chez Bigbritches in her car, leavin his delivery for the next day. At the end of the night, everyone agreed that the dance was a huge success and, doing so, we all went home, leavin the barrels to burn themselves out. Well, just at dawn, the sun just poked its little head over the horizon and hit Brian's mirrors. He had gotten right sick of people bein jerks on the road that he ordered these special mirrors that let him concentrate a glare into a driver's eyes, makin em back the heck off. The sun hit them mirrors and, instead of blindin some jerk with a comb over in a Porsche, they concentrated a beam of sunlight onto the tinder factory and set it right up. The volunteer fire department came in, saw the extinguishers and went right to work. Once the fire reached a hundred feet tall or so, the townspeople came to help out and they all started grabbin extinguishers, too. That fire climbs all the way to the heavens and burns so hot it starts suckin up all the other air in town. Brian's a good guy, though. He wasn't ready to be responsible for suffocating an entire town so he wrapped his tow chains around the factory, jumped in his truck and gunned it out to the rural roads, leavin a train of 50 foot high flame behind him. When he got far enough away, he threw the truck in neutral and jumped, relying only on luck and the training he got as a Hollywood stuntman to save him. He missed the factory hittin him in the head by mere inches. But he'd saved the town from suffocation and we all thanked him for it by throwin him and Peggy Lee the lavishest wedding you ever did see. The band was so big, it needed TWO washboard players. For the next couple of years, we used to go out at night and stare at the pillar of flame while contemplatin life's mysteries. We had to stop doin that when, in an effort to put the fire out, the National Guard came out and dropped a bomb on it. I ain't no scientist, so I don't know exactly what happened, but I think it reached some sorta fire critical mass or somethin and ended up collapsin into a black hole. For part of the time it was collapsin, it was still shootin giant gouts of flame into the air, sometimes scorchin passin airplanes.
And that's exactly what this new robot reminded me of; a black hole shootin fire. Unlike our black hole at home, though, this one punched me right in my robot suit. I never saw the fist coming. One moment I was there with my eyes crossin and uncrossin, wonderin what the odds are that there was a Bring Your Own Flaming Barrel dance on this world too, and the next moment, I was gettin thrown up and back out of the arena. In some kinda crazy robot acrobatic mumbojumbo, the whole robot suit did a double backflip in the air, landed on its feet and came up firin. Flamin chainsaw nun-chucks met flamin black hole and bounced harmlessly off. The Chainchuck-o-matic suit then went runnin full force straight at the black hole, transformin itself on the way. The cockpit was sucked into the belly of the new shape pretty quickly, so I didn't get to see what it was. From the roarin noise and jostlin motion, I figured it was prolly a chainsaw on spider legs or a robot bear. I never woulda guessed myself, but when you're trapped inside with no way to see, those two sound pretty much alike.
The plus side of bein inside the machine was that all the panels I had heretofore ignored lit up like a day-glo Christmas tree on fire and one of 'em said "Lemme Do the Fightin For Ya, Chuck", which I reckon is a right nice feature. The minus side is that, one one of those screens, I could see the other robot poundin at the outside of the robot I was in. There was a thermal display like you sometimes see on the news when they wanna see inside your house. From that I could see that the big flamin black hole I'd been fightin was really ninja shaped. Also, it had pulled out a ninja sword that I conservatively estimate was a bajillion feet long. He started aswingin that sword and my robot suit stopped movin. Also, it started shrieking like a banshee and flashin red inside the cabin.
I looked around at the screens and saw they all said "Y'all done screwed up now. Y'all had best get on out." I thought that may be good advice, what with a robot ninja comin after me and whatnot. Course, I didn't know how to follow the advice. I looked back up to the screens and saw they also all had an arrow at the bottom pointing to a big red button labeled "Git Up On Out". It seemed as good an idea as any, so I hit it.
For the umpteenth time that day, I found myself flyin through the air. This time, though, at a speed at which everything was blurrier than that time Douggy coated my windshield in Vaseline to keep the rain off. Goin that fast, you feel like your cheeks are sinkin down to flap against your belly. I swore that if it lasted any longer, I woulda gotten out of there wearin my beard as a belt. Fortunately for me, I stopped rocketin up before that happened. Sure, I woulda had myself a nice belt, but my face would been cold all the time and you'd prolly be able to see the tooth growin out of my chin, which is why I grew the beard in the first place.
There was a moment there, just after the rocketin and just before the parachute kicked in, that I felt entirely weightless. I was shieldin my eyes from the sun when I realized that it had been day this whole time. Then, I dropped back down. Floating on the parachute that unfolded from the back of the escape pod, I looked down onto the world that Platypus had built. The land was scarred and black in all directions. On every part of the horizon, you could see columns of black smoke reachin up to heaven and cloudin the sky with their filth. That's why there was no day here. Here and there throughout the land, there were piles of shiny things surrounded in what looked to be barbed wire or hurricane wire or some kinda wire you don't wanna touch. There was no city anywhere to speak of, just ramshackle huts and tents spread over the distance like the last peas left on a plate after an earthquake.
And then there were the explosions. Every five seconds or so, something blew up somewhere. Sometimes it was a small explosion, like a grenade or a doll filled with gasoline that had been lit on fire and thrown at a wall. Other times, and with surprising regularity, it was a much larger explosion, like you'd hear when a factory making timber covered with gasoline went up. As I looked around, I also noticed that, here and there, robots stalked the land, crushing houses, scattering piles and fighting each other. Followin my natural curious streak, I looked around to see if the ninja robot had followed me, and began to spot them everywhere. The patrolled the world like feral dogs, watching everything with a careful eye and destroying what I assume they found unpleasant.
With a soft thud, I landed back on solid earth. The pod I'd been in cracked down the middle and a man's voice echoed from the speaker, "Y'all have a nice day, now, hear?" Alone on this bleak world, there was only one thing I could do, I started walkin.
And talk about fire. It's like this big ol' sucker had just eaten a thousand nuclear wings and topped it off my swillin down a curry and Tabasco shake with a habanero garnish. I ain't never seen so much fire in my life. Not even when I went to the "Bring Your Own Flaming Barrel" dance that the 4H threw last year. I tell ya, up until I saw that there fire breathin shadow, it was the most fire I thought even God would ever see. Brian Johnson, runnin late for the dance at which he was plannin on proposin to Peggy Lee Bigbritches, pulled his 18 wheeler right up next to the 4H barn, sorta wedgin it in between the barn and the gasoline covered tinder factory next door. Afterwards, when he was interviewed by the paper and the police, he said sure, he'd seen all them flaming barrels layin around all over the place. And yeah, he'd heard on the radio that the whole dance was sold out and still people were showin up. It wasn't that surprisin, really. In my experience, people'll take any chance you give em to set a barrel on fire. So, yeah, he saw the barrels, but, like he said, he didn't think nothin of it because he was carryin a truck load of fire extinguishers for the factory anyway, so he figured he could just unload in the morning. As we learned later, reading the findings of the government investigators, them fire extinguishers he was carryin were all made in China. I guess product safety standards is pretty loose there because, in a bid to save three cents per extinguisher, they was fillin em with homemade napalm jelly. Brian, not knowin any of this, wanders into the dance, finds Peggy Lee, proposes, she starts cryin and says yes, then we all have ourselves a great time. Brian hits the sauce a little harder than he should and Peggy Lee gives him a ride to Chez Bigbritches in her car, leavin his delivery for the next day. At the end of the night, everyone agreed that the dance was a huge success and, doing so, we all went home, leavin the barrels to burn themselves out. Well, just at dawn, the sun just poked its little head over the horizon and hit Brian's mirrors. He had gotten right sick of people bein jerks on the road that he ordered these special mirrors that let him concentrate a glare into a driver's eyes, makin em back the heck off. The sun hit them mirrors and, instead of blindin some jerk with a comb over in a Porsche, they concentrated a beam of sunlight onto the tinder factory and set it right up. The volunteer fire department came in, saw the extinguishers and went right to work. Once the fire reached a hundred feet tall or so, the townspeople came to help out and they all started grabbin extinguishers, too. That fire climbs all the way to the heavens and burns so hot it starts suckin up all the other air in town. Brian's a good guy, though. He wasn't ready to be responsible for suffocating an entire town so he wrapped his tow chains around the factory, jumped in his truck and gunned it out to the rural roads, leavin a train of 50 foot high flame behind him. When he got far enough away, he threw the truck in neutral and jumped, relying only on luck and the training he got as a Hollywood stuntman to save him. He missed the factory hittin him in the head by mere inches. But he'd saved the town from suffocation and we all thanked him for it by throwin him and Peggy Lee the lavishest wedding you ever did see. The band was so big, it needed TWO washboard players. For the next couple of years, we used to go out at night and stare at the pillar of flame while contemplatin life's mysteries. We had to stop doin that when, in an effort to put the fire out, the National Guard came out and dropped a bomb on it. I ain't no scientist, so I don't know exactly what happened, but I think it reached some sorta fire critical mass or somethin and ended up collapsin into a black hole. For part of the time it was collapsin, it was still shootin giant gouts of flame into the air, sometimes scorchin passin airplanes.
And that's exactly what this new robot reminded me of; a black hole shootin fire. Unlike our black hole at home, though, this one punched me right in my robot suit. I never saw the fist coming. One moment I was there with my eyes crossin and uncrossin, wonderin what the odds are that there was a Bring Your Own Flaming Barrel dance on this world too, and the next moment, I was gettin thrown up and back out of the arena. In some kinda crazy robot acrobatic mumbojumbo, the whole robot suit did a double backflip in the air, landed on its feet and came up firin. Flamin chainsaw nun-chucks met flamin black hole and bounced harmlessly off. The Chainchuck-o-matic suit then went runnin full force straight at the black hole, transformin itself on the way. The cockpit was sucked into the belly of the new shape pretty quickly, so I didn't get to see what it was. From the roarin noise and jostlin motion, I figured it was prolly a chainsaw on spider legs or a robot bear. I never woulda guessed myself, but when you're trapped inside with no way to see, those two sound pretty much alike.
The plus side of bein inside the machine was that all the panels I had heretofore ignored lit up like a day-glo Christmas tree on fire and one of 'em said "Lemme Do the Fightin For Ya, Chuck", which I reckon is a right nice feature. The minus side is that, one one of those screens, I could see the other robot poundin at the outside of the robot I was in. There was a thermal display like you sometimes see on the news when they wanna see inside your house. From that I could see that the big flamin black hole I'd been fightin was really ninja shaped. Also, it had pulled out a ninja sword that I conservatively estimate was a bajillion feet long. He started aswingin that sword and my robot suit stopped movin. Also, it started shrieking like a banshee and flashin red inside the cabin.
I looked around at the screens and saw they all said "Y'all done screwed up now. Y'all had best get on out." I thought that may be good advice, what with a robot ninja comin after me and whatnot. Course, I didn't know how to follow the advice. I looked back up to the screens and saw they also all had an arrow at the bottom pointing to a big red button labeled "Git Up On Out". It seemed as good an idea as any, so I hit it.
For the umpteenth time that day, I found myself flyin through the air. This time, though, at a speed at which everything was blurrier than that time Douggy coated my windshield in Vaseline to keep the rain off. Goin that fast, you feel like your cheeks are sinkin down to flap against your belly. I swore that if it lasted any longer, I woulda gotten out of there wearin my beard as a belt. Fortunately for me, I stopped rocketin up before that happened. Sure, I woulda had myself a nice belt, but my face would been cold all the time and you'd prolly be able to see the tooth growin out of my chin, which is why I grew the beard in the first place.
There was a moment there, just after the rocketin and just before the parachute kicked in, that I felt entirely weightless. I was shieldin my eyes from the sun when I realized that it had been day this whole time. Then, I dropped back down. Floating on the parachute that unfolded from the back of the escape pod, I looked down onto the world that Platypus had built. The land was scarred and black in all directions. On every part of the horizon, you could see columns of black smoke reachin up to heaven and cloudin the sky with their filth. That's why there was no day here. Here and there throughout the land, there were piles of shiny things surrounded in what looked to be barbed wire or hurricane wire or some kinda wire you don't wanna touch. There was no city anywhere to speak of, just ramshackle huts and tents spread over the distance like the last peas left on a plate after an earthquake.
And then there were the explosions. Every five seconds or so, something blew up somewhere. Sometimes it was a small explosion, like a grenade or a doll filled with gasoline that had been lit on fire and thrown at a wall. Other times, and with surprising regularity, it was a much larger explosion, like you'd hear when a factory making timber covered with gasoline went up. As I looked around, I also noticed that, here and there, robots stalked the land, crushing houses, scattering piles and fighting each other. Followin my natural curious streak, I looked around to see if the ninja robot had followed me, and began to spot them everywhere. The patrolled the world like feral dogs, watching everything with a careful eye and destroying what I assume they found unpleasant.
With a soft thud, I landed back on solid earth. The pod I'd been in cracked down the middle and a man's voice echoed from the speaker, "Y'all have a nice day, now, hear?" Alone on this bleak world, there was only one thing I could do, I started walkin.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The Story So Far
You know, while I was trapped in that there robot suit on Meth World, I had a little time to do a little thinkin. The first thing I was thinkin was "Hey, brother, what exactly is goin on here? How did I get here? What's up with this giant robot suit?" And then I got to thinkin about how much I like cupcakes. I ain't sayin that one had anything to do with the other, but only that thems is the order of my thoughts. And, really, who can blame me? Cupcakes is right delicious. It's like a muffin with all that bran and fiber and chunks of cardboard taken out of it and replaced with sugar and frostin. Plus, you can get sprinkles on 'em. I dare you to go into a fancy schmancy bagel store and try to get sprinkles on your muffin. They will laugh at you. They will laugh and they will point. Then you will start to cry. But you won't want them to get the satisfaction of seein you cry, so you pretend like there's somethin in your eye, forgettin that you'd caught a bee and put it to sleep using the bee hypnosis trick your Great Uncle Mort taught you, so that when you raise your hand to your face to pretend that you've got somethin in your eye, you inadvertently put the bee in your eye. Then, there you are, standin right in the middle of the bagel shop, surrounded by yuppies and hipsters with a durned bee stuck in your eye. So you gotta turn to run out of there, but there's a whole line of people waitin to get their muffins and coffee and you gotta shove your way through. You start shovin and pushin and tryin to get out of there, but havin that durned bee in your eye makes it real hard to see and finally, lookin up, you see that you're surrounded by pirates and you think you may be goin crazy. It's just a sea of frilly shirts, peg legs and stuffed parrots. Someone yells out, "Ahoy, me hearty, what wind has bepuffed yer sails?" And then you scream and fall to your knees, raging at the heavens that have brought you to this wretched state. Of course, later you will find out that it was September 19th, which is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and that the bee in your eye was really a ladybug that had costumed herself up for the annual Ladybug Fancy Dress Ball, but neither of those things will make the experience less traumatic at the time. At least, that's how I imagine the whole sprinkled muffin thing going for you. If it turns out different, feel free to let me know.
After the cupcake thought, which takes a lot longer to explain than to think (it basically just went, "Boy howdy, do I ever love cupcakes!"), I started thinkin about relatin my adventures to people. I figured if it were hard for me to remember how I got here, it may be well nigh impossible for those people astumblin through the internets onto this here blog thingy. Fer those of ya that have been readin for awhile, this is gonna be old information, and I sure am sorry 'bout that. But fer those of you who's just startin out, this is gonna be a little primer on the more excitin aspects of the last year or so in Pat O'Neil's life. If you get interested, you could prolly go back and check up on things, but, after this, you won't be in for a month of readin before readin, if you catch my drift. Also, for those of you who have been readin, and want to get your friends readin, this may be the perfect time. That was a little hint to y'all, in case you didn't catch it. The hint bein, maybe you could git some more people readin this thing so I can live my big dreams of bein a superstar writer like that there J.K. Rowling or that Shakespeare fella or even, if you was so inclined, the guy who wrote Beowulf (not the movie, the long poem). Failin that, I could live my dream of being slightly more well known than the Numa Numa guy. It may not be a big dream, but it's a dream, consarnit. In this here retellin, I'm gonna try my best to stay on track, but I ain't promisin nothin, cause that just ain't my style. So, let's see how this works out.
One day, I flipped my truck over. Longways. I didn't intend to do that, nor was I sauced up or nothin. There was this crazy monkey thing in my truck and I was tryin to combat it while I was drivin. Then I hit a little sapling which bent over and flipped my truck over its own back bumper. Then, me and my buddy Douggy, who doesn't sleep because of some childhood clown trauma, went to flip it back over, which we finally managed to do after pullin the fenders off.
My truck was sittin there for awhile and then it started gettin fixed at night. I stayed up for a couple nights to find out what in tarnation was goin on. It turned out that the monkey what had attacked me was part of a whole crew of monkeys that wasn't actually monkeys, they was genetically modified creatures full of parts of of other things, but mostly monkeys and flying squirrels, which is why they're called Squimonk. Them Squimonk felt right bad about my truck and so they'd been fixin it, even though that wasn't their real line of business.
Even though they was right good as fixin trucks, the Squimonks' real business was fightin ninjas. Now, don't get me wrong, it ain't like they was just wanderin around pickin fights with random ninjas on the streets. You could do that, sure. You may even brag to your friend that you fought a ninja and lived, you know, if you live through it. But it ain't like that ninja was gonna do anything to you anyway. You probably just got him on the way to the office. Here he is, walkin to work, tryin to listen to Morning Edition and catch up with the news when this guy gets all in his face just because he's a ninja. He don't wanna fight, he just wants to finish his project before his boss, Mr. Johnson, yells at him. And now, all of a sudden, he's got to fight a guy in the street. I tell ya, it just ain't fair bein a ninja in today's world. But, like I says, they're not fightin Mr. Johnson's ninja assistant. They're the mortal enemies of a group of ninjas named Clan Platypus. Clan Platypus is, like many ninja clans, bent on takin over the world. Unlike most ninja clans, however, they ain't plannin on doin it with a bunch of throwin stars and smoke bombs. They're much more sinister. You see, Clan Platypus is tryin to take over the world through Meth, the drug that's eatin away blue collar America, and other colors of collars in other parts of the world. Apparently, if you do enough meth, you lose all willpower and will just do whatever the ninjas tell ya to do. Platypus is workin on makin enough of these meth zombies that they can topple society and start sellin meth everywhere.
The only thing stoppin em right now are the Squimonk. Well, it ain't the only thing. Sane people's aversion to shooting a drug made out of battery acid and iodine into their veins is helpin some. The Squimonk are tryin to shut them down forever. They're not entirely alone, though. They recruited me as a front for their operations. They even built me a nice shop, which I named "Pat O'Neil's Body Shop, Used Car Emporium and Good Time Donut Eatery." Where, you may ask, did they get the money for all this? Well, Mr. or Mrs. or even possibly Ms. Impatient Smarty-Pants, I was just gettin to that, if you'll hold yer horses. They've got the financial backing of one Mr. Charles Lindbergh, whose young son was once kidnapped by Clan Platypus. "Wait, isn't Lindbergh dead?" you may ask next. To which I will respond, "that's what he wanted us to think." In fact, in his quest to harm the Clan, he found the secret to life eternal; sweet potato burritos on sea monkey tortillas. It ain't pleasant, but it lets him get his revenge.
So I was all set up with this shop and everything, and I wasn't supposed to do nothin. But my help was needed in defeatin Amelia Earhart. Turns out she ain't really the flyin ace woman we all knew and loved as children. In fact, as I learned, she's really an ice giantess older than the Earth itself that feeds off of the tears of orphans. It may not be a high fiber diet, but I guess it gets ya through. Also, you could prolly put sprinkles on top of the orphans if you wanted a festive meal. Course, that's neither here nor there. She had entered herself the yearly contest of NAMSU. That is, the National Association of Makin Stuff Up, an organization that allows people to come and tell tall tales. It was her intention to infiltrate that contest and, when she won, attribute her success to meth, thus gettin more people to try it out. In the end, I beat her with one whopper of a tale, and she reverted to giantess form and broke out the building.
Later, Lindbergh decided I needed some ninja fightin trainin, you know, just in case. So he started sendin these robot ninjas to fight me. Jared, this Goth kid who lives in town, saw me fightin one and got all hot and bothered. He told his ma, who thought he was crazy and threatened to send him to military school. Well, I couldn't let him go to military school for somethin I did, so I gave him a job. Within the first week, he up and got hisself kidnapped by ninjas and we all had to fly down to Earhart's antarctic base that was filled with these crazy penguins. In the end, we saved him and brought him home. He still works at the shop; mostly sweepin, but we occasionally let him run the cash register.
After that, the Squimonk decided to take down the regional meth distributer, a fella by the name of McClawenstein. Nasty man. To be honest, he's actually only half a nasty man. He's also half nasty lobster. He used to run a travelling carnival and would entertain himself by torturin people with his mysterious flatulant gas. He's taken the simple fart and turned it into an art; an evil art. He's got killer gas that can literally melt the face off an elephant at 100 paces.
McClawenstein had set his distribution up through the local 99 Cent stores, which I already had a problem with because they're a bunch of liars. Eventually, after breakin in and freein some giant slugs, I found out McClawenstein was actually my neighbor Dale. We sat and talked things out for awhile in his living room, but he was really just laying a trap. At the end of the afternoon, he cut the cheese something fierce and sent me hurtling to an alternative Earth. But it wasn't the one he wanted to send me to. Lindbergh redirected me for a time to this great beach and explained that I'd be goin to a different world, and he didn't know where, but he'd try to find me. He also told me that Clan Platypus had figured out FTL travel and was really tryin to conquer all the worlds in the universe with meth.
That came true, sadly. And so here I am, stuck on a world that they've already methed out wonderin how I'm gonna get home. Also, where the bathroom is.
So, that's the story so far. I hope it clears some things up for you and I hope it entices you some to keep followin my life and adventures. It looks like they're gonna get a lot more adventure-ey from here on out.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I got a giant fire-breathin robot that looks like a ninja to fight.
After the cupcake thought, which takes a lot longer to explain than to think (it basically just went, "Boy howdy, do I ever love cupcakes!"), I started thinkin about relatin my adventures to people. I figured if it were hard for me to remember how I got here, it may be well nigh impossible for those people astumblin through the internets onto this here blog thingy. Fer those of ya that have been readin for awhile, this is gonna be old information, and I sure am sorry 'bout that. But fer those of you who's just startin out, this is gonna be a little primer on the more excitin aspects of the last year or so in Pat O'Neil's life. If you get interested, you could prolly go back and check up on things, but, after this, you won't be in for a month of readin before readin, if you catch my drift. Also, for those of you who have been readin, and want to get your friends readin, this may be the perfect time. That was a little hint to y'all, in case you didn't catch it. The hint bein, maybe you could git some more people readin this thing so I can live my big dreams of bein a superstar writer like that there J.K. Rowling or that Shakespeare fella or even, if you was so inclined, the guy who wrote Beowulf (not the movie, the long poem). Failin that, I could live my dream of being slightly more well known than the Numa Numa guy. It may not be a big dream, but it's a dream, consarnit. In this here retellin, I'm gonna try my best to stay on track, but I ain't promisin nothin, cause that just ain't my style. So, let's see how this works out.
One day, I flipped my truck over. Longways. I didn't intend to do that, nor was I sauced up or nothin. There was this crazy monkey thing in my truck and I was tryin to combat it while I was drivin. Then I hit a little sapling which bent over and flipped my truck over its own back bumper. Then, me and my buddy Douggy, who doesn't sleep because of some childhood clown trauma, went to flip it back over, which we finally managed to do after pullin the fenders off.
My truck was sittin there for awhile and then it started gettin fixed at night. I stayed up for a couple nights to find out what in tarnation was goin on. It turned out that the monkey what had attacked me was part of a whole crew of monkeys that wasn't actually monkeys, they was genetically modified creatures full of parts of of other things, but mostly monkeys and flying squirrels, which is why they're called Squimonk. Them Squimonk felt right bad about my truck and so they'd been fixin it, even though that wasn't their real line of business.
Even though they was right good as fixin trucks, the Squimonks' real business was fightin ninjas. Now, don't get me wrong, it ain't like they was just wanderin around pickin fights with random ninjas on the streets. You could do that, sure. You may even brag to your friend that you fought a ninja and lived, you know, if you live through it. But it ain't like that ninja was gonna do anything to you anyway. You probably just got him on the way to the office. Here he is, walkin to work, tryin to listen to Morning Edition and catch up with the news when this guy gets all in his face just because he's a ninja. He don't wanna fight, he just wants to finish his project before his boss, Mr. Johnson, yells at him. And now, all of a sudden, he's got to fight a guy in the street. I tell ya, it just ain't fair bein a ninja in today's world. But, like I says, they're not fightin Mr. Johnson's ninja assistant. They're the mortal enemies of a group of ninjas named Clan Platypus. Clan Platypus is, like many ninja clans, bent on takin over the world. Unlike most ninja clans, however, they ain't plannin on doin it with a bunch of throwin stars and smoke bombs. They're much more sinister. You see, Clan Platypus is tryin to take over the world through Meth, the drug that's eatin away blue collar America, and other colors of collars in other parts of the world. Apparently, if you do enough meth, you lose all willpower and will just do whatever the ninjas tell ya to do. Platypus is workin on makin enough of these meth zombies that they can topple society and start sellin meth everywhere.
The only thing stoppin em right now are the Squimonk. Well, it ain't the only thing. Sane people's aversion to shooting a drug made out of battery acid and iodine into their veins is helpin some. The Squimonk are tryin to shut them down forever. They're not entirely alone, though. They recruited me as a front for their operations. They even built me a nice shop, which I named "Pat O'Neil's Body Shop, Used Car Emporium and Good Time Donut Eatery." Where, you may ask, did they get the money for all this? Well, Mr. or Mrs. or even possibly Ms. Impatient Smarty-Pants, I was just gettin to that, if you'll hold yer horses. They've got the financial backing of one Mr. Charles Lindbergh, whose young son was once kidnapped by Clan Platypus. "Wait, isn't Lindbergh dead?" you may ask next. To which I will respond, "that's what he wanted us to think." In fact, in his quest to harm the Clan, he found the secret to life eternal; sweet potato burritos on sea monkey tortillas. It ain't pleasant, but it lets him get his revenge.
So I was all set up with this shop and everything, and I wasn't supposed to do nothin. But my help was needed in defeatin Amelia Earhart. Turns out she ain't really the flyin ace woman we all knew and loved as children. In fact, as I learned, she's really an ice giantess older than the Earth itself that feeds off of the tears of orphans. It may not be a high fiber diet, but I guess it gets ya through. Also, you could prolly put sprinkles on top of the orphans if you wanted a festive meal. Course, that's neither here nor there. She had entered herself the yearly contest of NAMSU. That is, the National Association of Makin Stuff Up, an organization that allows people to come and tell tall tales. It was her intention to infiltrate that contest and, when she won, attribute her success to meth, thus gettin more people to try it out. In the end, I beat her with one whopper of a tale, and she reverted to giantess form and broke out the building.
Later, Lindbergh decided I needed some ninja fightin trainin, you know, just in case. So he started sendin these robot ninjas to fight me. Jared, this Goth kid who lives in town, saw me fightin one and got all hot and bothered. He told his ma, who thought he was crazy and threatened to send him to military school. Well, I couldn't let him go to military school for somethin I did, so I gave him a job. Within the first week, he up and got hisself kidnapped by ninjas and we all had to fly down to Earhart's antarctic base that was filled with these crazy penguins. In the end, we saved him and brought him home. He still works at the shop; mostly sweepin, but we occasionally let him run the cash register.
After that, the Squimonk decided to take down the regional meth distributer, a fella by the name of McClawenstein. Nasty man. To be honest, he's actually only half a nasty man. He's also half nasty lobster. He used to run a travelling carnival and would entertain himself by torturin people with his mysterious flatulant gas. He's taken the simple fart and turned it into an art; an evil art. He's got killer gas that can literally melt the face off an elephant at 100 paces.
McClawenstein had set his distribution up through the local 99 Cent stores, which I already had a problem with because they're a bunch of liars. Eventually, after breakin in and freein some giant slugs, I found out McClawenstein was actually my neighbor Dale. We sat and talked things out for awhile in his living room, but he was really just laying a trap. At the end of the afternoon, he cut the cheese something fierce and sent me hurtling to an alternative Earth. But it wasn't the one he wanted to send me to. Lindbergh redirected me for a time to this great beach and explained that I'd be goin to a different world, and he didn't know where, but he'd try to find me. He also told me that Clan Platypus had figured out FTL travel and was really tryin to conquer all the worlds in the universe with meth.
That came true, sadly. And so here I am, stuck on a world that they've already methed out wonderin how I'm gonna get home. Also, where the bathroom is.
So, that's the story so far. I hope it clears some things up for you and I hope it entices you some to keep followin my life and adventures. It looks like they're gonna get a lot more adventure-ey from here on out.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I got a giant fire-breathin robot that looks like a ninja to fight.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Feed Change
I don't know what this affects, if anything, but, in a flight of fancy, I changed the feed on this site to run through feedburner. If you've been subscribing (and I don't know if that's true for anyone) and you aren't getting the feed now, please click on the subscribe button again.
Dodging a bullet, er, missle
Y'all may thing that runnin around in a robot suit makes things a whole lot easier when you're tryin to avoid fire from shoulder mounted rockets, and you would be half right. Sure, runnin itself is pretty easy in them things. You lift up a leg and, next thing you know, wind's blowin through your hair and you're practically flyin down the road. So, like I says, the runnin's the easy part. The difficulty comes with tryin to dodge the rockets. I don't know if y'all ever looked down the business end of a surface-to-air missile, but I tell you what, them things ain't messin around none. If you ain't careful, they'll fly right up your nose holes. And you don't want that. If you survived, you'd be sneezin out rocket parts for days. Plus, you'd singe all of your nose hair and you'd be smellin nothin but burnt hair for weeks. You don't want that. I remember when I was a kid, my Uncle Larry was experimentin with a longer burnin match. He'd been havin all sortsa problems gettin the grill goin. He'd light up a match, and by the time it got to the grill, it'd be out or his fingers would be a burnin. And, seein as how Uncle Larry used about a half gallon of kerosene on top of his charcoal when he wanted to get that fire lit, he could usually be found with blisters on his hands and singed eyebrows. So, he decided he was gonna make a match that would concentrate the fire on the tip, so he wouldn't burn hisself up. He tried a little of this, a little of that, more sulfur, less sulfur, saltpeter, but none of it really worked. Finally, inspired by a combination of war films and a half bottle of whiskey, he decided that he would coat the tip of the match with white phosphorous. It took him a heck of a time gettin a little of that stuff. He had to travel to 15 different countries and deal with some pretty shady people. After spendin a couple years on the quest, not to mention the 10 in prison for smuggling hazardous materials, he had his match made. When it hit the 10 minute mark in the burnin, he was so happy he threw his arms into the air, knockin a little phosphorous powder onto his pet shih-tzu, which looked like a beach ball made of hair. The phosphorous, like water or soap, wasn't able to penetrate the dog's thick, long coating of armor-like hair. It just sat on top and burned away. That phosphorous sat on the dog and smoldered for three weeks, stinkin up everything in a three county region and givin Uncle Larry the nickname "Dog Smoke". So, when I tell you you don't wanna be smellin burnt hair for a week, you just believe I know what I'm talkin about. Also, if that rocket gets up your nose and you DON'T survive, well, then you'd just be dead.
At this point, I figure you know I dodged the rocket, because I ain't writin this from beyond the grave. You know because ghosts don't have a sense of humor. You try to tell a joke a ghost, it'll either just wail or rattle its chains at you. They just don't get the subtle humor of the living. I mean, sure, you could go to see the ghost of Curly, and it'll be layin there on the floor doin its wub-wub dance or its nyuk-nyuks, but believe you me, it ain't enjoyin it. In fact, it may be you're witnessin the eternal torture reserved only for insurance execs and slapstick comedians. Then again, maybe you're just seein things and ghosts ain't real.
Anyhoozits, now that you know I dodged that there rocket, you're prolly wonderin how ol' Pat did it. "Pat," you may be askin, "how on Earth did you dodge a rocket in a robot suit you know you don't know how to operate?" And I would say to you, "First, you're readin, so no questions, Mr. Uppity McCurious. Second, it was an accident." "An accident?!?!" you will say, stunned. And I will hang my head and mutter, "Yeah, an accident." Then we'll all move on from uncoverin Pat's secret shame and pretend we took no joy in it.
Here's how it happened. I turned and ran blindly away from the coming rocket, as any normal, sane person in a robot suit would do. People out of a robot suit would prolly just curl into a ball and hope the rocket missed, or they may yell somethin two words long that started with Oh. Well, there I was runnin pretty durned fast in this robot suit when, all of a sudden, I'm headed sideways towards the ground. I look down and see that I have run right into the racetrack I saw earlier and a cursed train has run into the left leg of my robot suit. Then, as I'm still fallin, I look up to see a rocket cruise right through the space my head had been in not a half second before. So, even though it's knocked me down and all, I can't be mad at the train no more.
That robot suit and me hit the ground with a thud. I was all sprawled out, tryin to figure out how to get this thing to stand up when I see the rocket turn around and start headed back my way. That's when I panicked. Usually, people're gonna tell you that, when you're in a dangerous situation, panic is your enemy. Well, panic and whatever it is that's tryin to kill you. In my case, the rocket was my enemy. But, in a twist of fate, my enemy's enemy became my friend. As I was flailin wildly to find a way out of the suit, I slapped my hand on a big red button marked Boomshalakkalakka. With a roar, the chainsaw nun-chuck gun started flingin spinnin balls of death into the night. I also found out, right about then, that it wasn't just a gun that fired nun-chucks made of chainsaws, but it was a gun that fired flamin nun-chucks made out of chainsaws. Somehow, it lit them things on fire just before launch. Well, that rocket turns and starts followin the flamin saws, hits the first one, and explodes like the Death Star, but like in the old Star Wars, not the new one where there's that weird ring thingy that shoots out. There was none of that. Just a good, old-fashioned explosion.
After the sound of the explosion died down, I could still hear a roaring in my ear. At first, I thought I might have still been on that beach, and all of this was just a dream, but after I sat and listened to it awhile it was most certainly not the sound of the ocean. It sounded more like, well, like fifty thousand people cheering all at once. I got the robot to roll over on its back and saw that the crowd was all a hootin and hollerin from the stands. I tried sittin up to get out of the controls, but the robot sat right up with me, then it stood.
I took a bow, as I thought was right when all them people was cheerin. I was takin what I thought was my much deserved praise when the crowd went totally silent. I thought maybe I'd taken in too far in the grandstandin, but the I heard the booming behind me. I turned to see another robot crawling over the stands and into the race track, and that one was breathin fire.
At this point, I figure you know I dodged the rocket, because I ain't writin this from beyond the grave. You know because ghosts don't have a sense of humor. You try to tell a joke a ghost, it'll either just wail or rattle its chains at you. They just don't get the subtle humor of the living. I mean, sure, you could go to see the ghost of Curly, and it'll be layin there on the floor doin its wub-wub dance or its nyuk-nyuks, but believe you me, it ain't enjoyin it. In fact, it may be you're witnessin the eternal torture reserved only for insurance execs and slapstick comedians. Then again, maybe you're just seein things and ghosts ain't real.
Anyhoozits, now that you know I dodged that there rocket, you're prolly wonderin how ol' Pat did it. "Pat," you may be askin, "how on Earth did you dodge a rocket in a robot suit you know you don't know how to operate?" And I would say to you, "First, you're readin, so no questions, Mr. Uppity McCurious. Second, it was an accident." "An accident?!?!" you will say, stunned. And I will hang my head and mutter, "Yeah, an accident." Then we'll all move on from uncoverin Pat's secret shame and pretend we took no joy in it.
Here's how it happened. I turned and ran blindly away from the coming rocket, as any normal, sane person in a robot suit would do. People out of a robot suit would prolly just curl into a ball and hope the rocket missed, or they may yell somethin two words long that started with Oh. Well, there I was runnin pretty durned fast in this robot suit when, all of a sudden, I'm headed sideways towards the ground. I look down and see that I have run right into the racetrack I saw earlier and a cursed train has run into the left leg of my robot suit. Then, as I'm still fallin, I look up to see a rocket cruise right through the space my head had been in not a half second before. So, even though it's knocked me down and all, I can't be mad at the train no more.
That robot suit and me hit the ground with a thud. I was all sprawled out, tryin to figure out how to get this thing to stand up when I see the rocket turn around and start headed back my way. That's when I panicked. Usually, people're gonna tell you that, when you're in a dangerous situation, panic is your enemy. Well, panic and whatever it is that's tryin to kill you. In my case, the rocket was my enemy. But, in a twist of fate, my enemy's enemy became my friend. As I was flailin wildly to find a way out of the suit, I slapped my hand on a big red button marked Boomshalakkalakka. With a roar, the chainsaw nun-chuck gun started flingin spinnin balls of death into the night. I also found out, right about then, that it wasn't just a gun that fired nun-chucks made of chainsaws, but it was a gun that fired flamin nun-chucks made out of chainsaws. Somehow, it lit them things on fire just before launch. Well, that rocket turns and starts followin the flamin saws, hits the first one, and explodes like the Death Star, but like in the old Star Wars, not the new one where there's that weird ring thingy that shoots out. There was none of that. Just a good, old-fashioned explosion.
After the sound of the explosion died down, I could still hear a roaring in my ear. At first, I thought I might have still been on that beach, and all of this was just a dream, but after I sat and listened to it awhile it was most certainly not the sound of the ocean. It sounded more like, well, like fifty thousand people cheering all at once. I got the robot to roll over on its back and saw that the crowd was all a hootin and hollerin from the stands. I tried sittin up to get out of the controls, but the robot sat right up with me, then it stood.
I took a bow, as I thought was right when all them people was cheerin. I was takin what I thought was my much deserved praise when the crowd went totally silent. I thought maybe I'd taken in too far in the grandstandin, but the I heard the booming behind me. I turned to see another robot crawling over the stands and into the race track, and that one was breathin fire.
Monday, September 7, 2009
The Worst Possible Place
Now that I've tried out this interstellar travel thing a couple of times, I've made some decisions. First, I don't like interstellar travel. It just ain't comfortable. You ever see a marshmallow in the microwave? You know how it gets all bulgy and bubbly and finally erupts like a big ol' volcano of melted sugar and then you gotta wait to put it on your s'more, but you don't want to wait too long to eat it because, if you do, it'll turn all hard and crusty and it'll be like eating a graham cracker with chocolate and a brick Frisbee up there on top, so you bite into it too soon and the whole marshmallow explodes in your mouth like an m-80 filled with lava and it shoots out your nose, makin you look like an angry dragon? Well, just imagine you was the marshmallow in that situation; everything inside gettin all bubbly and poppy and bursty until everything goes dark and you feel like you're shootin through a giant nose and you swear that, in the middle, your skin turned 180 while your bones stayed in place and then something that felt like a tentacle brushed against your legs. Second, I've decided that, if I'm gonna go through all that kinda trouble, I'd much rather end up on a beach at the end of all of it than in a wet, mildewy basement that smells like pee and cold medicine. That's especially if, when I finally get into that basement, I'm surrounded by explosions and shoutin that sound like a giant ate a bunch of beans and is puttin on his crazy version of a giant rock show or performance art or somethin for a bunch of cowboys who keep yellin, "YEEEEEEHHHAAAAAAAWWWWWWW!!!" and then firin guns, which I can only imagine are at least 8 meters in diameter, into the air. I tell ya, landin in somethin like that, a man's bound to get a little rattled.
So I started lookin around for a way to arm myself. I don't know if y'all ever been in a fight or anything, but I can tell ya from bein in one or two large scale conflicts myself, a doll's head does not make a good weapon. That is, of course, unless it's got a grenade stuck into the middle of it, which one of the heads in the box did. I didn't wanna mess with it, though, because, when you find a grenade in a box, it's usually best to leave it where it is. If you don't one of two things is bound to happen. One, it won't go off when you want it to or, two, it will go off when you don't want it to. Either one could be fatal. Leavin the box of plastic, starin eyes behind me I poked around further back in the basement. This feller, or lady (I couldn't figure it out from the collection) was the biggest pack rat I ever did see and my Aunt Hildabrand used to live in a house that was entirely made up of newspapers. It used to be a normal house but the she was stuck by the tornado of '74. It ripped all the walls off her house, but it couldn't do anything to her stacks of newspaper that were held together by a natural cement made of mold, dust and cat pee. Hildy never even noticed her house was gone, she had so much newspaper stuffed away, and none of us had the heart to tell her. Eventually she died in a cave-in. She was minin for sapphires in Thailand when the cave supports gave out. Her newspaper palace is still standin and, last I heard, it was turned into a roadside zoo. The long and the sort of it is, I know a pack rat when I see one, and this basement had Hildy beat by a country mile. There were boxes of toothpicks, piles of tin foil scraps, one whole row of nothing but broken Slinkys and, in the back corner, the dangerous looking things. It started small with a box full of slingshots. Then came a stack of boards with nails in them. After that was a pile of pipe wrenches with nails welded to them. That was followed up shortly by a pile of chainsaws that appeared to be connected by a length of chain, which I think was supposed to be chainsaw nun-chucks, then a box of handguns, rack after rack of rifle and finally, looming above it all, a robotic suit that was slumped over. Sticking out of the back of the suit there was two pipes that must have been 100 feet long and five feet around which connected to a double barreled gun mounted on the front of the suit. I just stood lookin at it for a long time, tryin to figure out what could possibly be fired from that gun. When I got up the nerve, I went and looked at the chamber of the gun and nearly dropped dead on the spot of the sheer mad genius of it.
"Well," I thought to myself, "might as well be as protected as I can." Then I went back a couple rows and started loading the tubes with the chainsaw nun-chucks. I fit an unbelievable amount of destruction into that suit before steppin in and flippin the power switch. That little beauty fired right up, locked my arms and legs in its soft, robotic embrace, and stood to its full height of 20 odd feet. I estimate the ceiling of that basement was right about ten feet because, once I was standing, the top of the robot suit brushed against the ceiling of the next floor, too.
The second floor wasn't quite as abandoned as the basement. There was a couple people up there sprawled out on a threadbare couch throwin knives at the wall. At least, that's what they were doin until I broke through the floor. After that, they were doin a lot of yellin.
"Who in tarnation is that?!?!" yelled the first guy, who had a sandy blond mullet and handlebar mustache.
"I dunno, Chuck," said the second, who also had a mullet and handlebar mustache, but his were greasy brown, "but whoever it is, he's ridin in yer chainchuck-o-matic."
"That's right, Pete," yelled Chuck in his heavy drawl, "and ain't no one ride in Chuck's chainchuck-o-matic but Chuck. And he ain't Chuck!!!!"
With that, he jumped up off the couch and came at me with a three foot knife. I just wanted to get out of the way. I 'spose anyone would when they was bein threatened with a three foot knife. Thing is, I plum forgot I was wearin that robot suit. I meant to make a tiny dodge to the side. Wheat ended up happenin, though, is that I jumped clean through the side of his house and out into a dystopian armageddon.
All around me, the world was black and covered in ash. There was couches, cars and chairs layin willy nilly. A good 90% of them was on fire, too. Overhead, there were long trails of smoke from the rockets bein launched from every direction. The only place that wasn't on fire or explodin was a racetrack to my left. There appeared to be thousands of people in the stands watchin supercharged trains race down tracks at blinding speeds and ending by running into dented, charred steel walls. To my right, in the middle of a field littered with tar paper shacks was a billboard so tall it looked like it would block the sun. It had a picture of a ninja with a platypus stitched over his left breast. He was holdin out his hands, offerin a bag of powder. Written above him in 30 foot tall flaming letters was the slogan, "Meth, you know you want it."
I slumped down in the robot suit. This, I realized, was a world totally conquered by Clan Platypus. It was their goal to turn the entire universe into this kind of rotten, stinking sewer. How could I, one small man in a robot suit that fired chainsaw nun-chucks, possibly hope to compete with that? I was almost overwhelmed by futility when I felt something hit the back of the suit.
I turned and saw Chuck standing there. He was dropping a smoking rocket launcher while Pete was getting another one ready for him. So, instead of dropping into a depression, I did the smart thing. I ran.
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