No more bacon!

I think I will never have anything to do with bacon every again as long as I live. I will eat no more BLTs, no more bacon cheeseburgers and quite indubitably no more bacon chocolate chip cookies. Now, I ain't never thought I'd reach a point in my life where I'd be swearin off bacon like it was tobacco and I was a canary running on a treadmill in an asbestos lined coal mine, but that's exactly what I am doing starting yesterday. So, goodbye bacon. You were my friend once, but now I got you pegged for what you truly are; foodstuffs of the devil.

No, bacon, I don't mean that. I just got all worked up. I can't let you go, bacon. Even if you done me wrong lately, I gotta take you back. It's like you, bacon, are a hot twenty-year-old blond with shapely gams and I'm a wheelchair-bound octogenarian with a billion dollars and a bottle of Viagra, no matter how bad you treat me, I gotta take you back. Except in this case, you're not a hot twenty-year-old blond with shapely gams, and you are, instead, a smoked, cured meat product.

I apologize, people. I seem to got a little ahead of myself there. I didn't want for you to be a part of my breaking love affair with bacon, but I had to get it off my chest right up front. As you'll see, bacon has done me wrong over the weekend and I aim to get it back somehow. Maybe I will get my revenge by eating a pack of it a day from here on out. I seen on the tv where there was this 108 year old man that eats a pack of bacon and smokes a pack of tiny cigars every day and he's still goin strong. I figure that's the right kinda diet for me. I could do that one. It would certainly have to be better than the "eat only oranges and mucilex" or whatever diet Frank is on this week. There I go gettin distracted again.

I suppose y'all may want to know how the whole Jared situation shook out. I just wanna warn ya up front that there's gonna be some more adulty-type stuff in this one, but nothin too dirty. If it were a movie, I'd call this one pg-13. Now ya know what's goin on right up front, you can't blame me for this later. If you don't care for that kind of stuff, I'm not hurt, you should just skip ahead to the last paragraph of the next update. If you are all right with that kind of stuff, read on, because the kind of stuff I've got in here that made me warn you about that kind of stuff is exactly the kind of stuff I was talkin about. Just so we're clear, we're talkin a little nudity, nothin graphic, and some vomit here.

After Jared disappeared, we were frantic at the shop. Alistair began the search usin some of them latest investigative techniques like you can see on CSI, except this was real and didn't use them weird CGI shots. Actually, if you were watching it, maybe it would have them shots, but I was involved and didn't get to see them edited in later. Even with his super Nasa space technology stuff, he couldn't find anything. Apparently, ninjas don't really leave traces behind. I didn't know that before, but you learn somethin new every day. They wear gloves so they don't leave fingerprints and their heads are all wrapped up so the don't drop any hair or nothin. Alistair told me that when I was gettin too nosy and a little too CSI about what I was askin, he explained that what he was really lookin for was vegetative spores that would give us a clue as to where the ninja who took Jared was comin from. It took him a couple hours and work with some of the tiniest, cutest tools I've ever seen. I wouldn't suggest tellin a squimonk his tools are cute, though, unless you want to wake up with a squimonk pulling out one of your nose hairs with his tiny little pliers yellin, "Who's got cute tools now!?" If that's your thing, though, go right to it.

After gettin nothin on the whole spore thing, Jared's mom came by the shop. She was there to pick him up after work. She was askin where he was and I said that he had to run down to Wal-Mart to get us some more powdered sugar for the donuts. Then she told me she had just come from the Wal-Mart and Jared most certainly wasn't there. So I told her that he had to take my truck and they won't even allow my truck into the Wal-Mart parking lot these days and she asked me, "The rabies thing?" and I responded, "Yeah, the rabies thing." But then she pointed out that my truck was in front of the shop and I ran out of things to tell her at that point. As I was reaching into my magical sack of hot air, she closed her eyes and fell right to sleep. I thought she was either tired or a narcoleptic. It turns out that it was actually the tranquilizer dart in her neck. It was put there by Douggy. When I discovered it, I looked up at him and he just shrugged and told me, "Half ninja," as if that explained everything. What was done, was done though, so we trussed her up, and kept her on a steady drip of knock-out drops until we could figure out where her black-nailed kid had gone.

Following another coupla hours of waitin, the squimonk found their first clue. Even though they hadn't found any plant spores, they did find animal droppings. They sent it through some special analyser or something and finally had an answer.

"Penguin poop," Alistair announced.

"Really?" I was surprised. I'd never really had a penguin in the shop. One day last week, a seagull flew into the window, but I don't think that counted. "How do you know?"

"First of all," he explained, "we found an unusually high level of mercury in the droppings, which led us to thinking it was a marine creature or fed on marine creatures. Second, we analysed the substance of the droppings and found that the mercury was coming from herring, which is a favorite of all types of sea birds. Finally, we checked composition and found that the scat itself was black and white, leading us to the penguin."

I learned yet another new thing. "Penguin poop is black and white?"

"Oh certainly, penguins are the only purely monochromatic species in the world. Scientists used to believe that Zebras were also entirely monochromatic, due mostly to their striped poo, but, since the advent of the color camera, we have discovered that Zebras are red inside, putting them in the 'partially monochromatic' family of animals with polar bears and orca."

"Wait, wait, wait! Penguins are black and white on the inside, too?"

"Oh, most definitely," he stated evenly. It was at that point that he lost his composure and started laughing. "I'm sorry, Pat, I couldn't resist trying to get one past you. Victoria bet me ten dollars I couldn't do it. Regardless, we just analysed the DNA and found it to be penguin."

I was shocked. He was pretty convincin at that makin stuff up stuff. It's a good thing he's on my side. I asked him what this meant for Jared and he didn't know right then so he went and did some additional research that proved fruitless. We then had to call Lindbergh, who put all of his computers and his spy network towards the effort of finding Jared. On Saturday, he called us back to tell us he had discovered that Amelia Earhart kept a secret snow base a mile below the antarctic, the only entrance to which was through a volcano that only she had the control to.

I thought it looked hopeless, but Alistair and Douggy felt that we just needed the right plan. After some pretty serious back and forths, three of which ended in blows and one of which ended in a balloon animal making contest, it was decided that, in order to penetrate the volcano, we needed to drop in on it from above, falling fast, while covered in some sort of combustible material that would burn off as we torpedoed our way though the lava. Ideas were bandied about as to what the combustible material would be. It would have to be something that we could coat ourselves with, but nothing toxic. It would also have to be something that would not freeze in the antarctic air that we were falling through. I only knew of one material that had those properties, and that was bacon grease. I do regret saying anything about it now, but at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

The final plan was this: we would fly the stealth zeppelin to the Antarctic, jump from a mile up wearing only flight suits and a four inch thick layer of bacon grease. We would then plummet through the heart of an active volcano, going fast enough that we would penetrate into Amelia Earhart's secret lair before the bacon grease was burned off and we were consumed by fiery liquid magma. Then, we would attack the ninjas, find Jared, see if we couldn't steal some secret plans or something while we were in there, boogie out and get back home in time for Idol.

There was one small snag to the plan. I was informed, just a little too late, that squimonk are vegetarian creatures who cannot stand to see any food wasted. This meant that only two of us going on this mission had to eat all the bacon we had to fry up in order to render it for its fat, and those two were Douggy and me. For the four days it took to get here, Douggy and I did nothing but fry bacon, eat bacon and regurgitate bacon. Now, we are preparing for our assault on the Antarctic Volcano base. Wish us luck.