Caught Grease Handed

Boy howdy, fightin robot ninjas every day is harder'n wrestlin gators, which is the part time job I had just after I gradjiated high school and lit out for the territories, as it were. I found myself, after some thumbin and train jumpin, down in Louisiana, broker than a dropped record on a cold day. I was out in the middle of nowhere with no one comin to pick me up and with the sun fadin fast into the swamp. Now, you don't want to be caught in them Louisiana swamps at night because they've got that musk ape down there that'll come out and rip your arms off if you can't answer his three riddles. If you ever find yourself in that position, the answer to his first riddle is "barking spiders". My uncle Ted told me that when I was young and I never forgot it. He never did tell me what the riddle was, though, so if you lose your arms because of that, don't blame me for tryin to be a good Samaritan. I wasn't intent on losin my arms, either, cause I figured my arms had come in handy up to that point and I might be needin them for things later in life, kinda like a swiss army knife that you somehow manage to find a use for every day. Sure enough, the day you're without either you're gonna find somethin you need it for. You leave your knife at home, you know you're gonna have to open a box or punch a hole in a piece of leather. You lose your arms to a musk ape, you're probably gonna need them for somethin the next day like liftin a box or scratchin your nose or standin up outta bed. I started walkin down the highway a bit and, just as the last sliver of sun was dippin below the horizon, I stumbled upon one of them roadside zoos. It smelt like they was raisin a whole family of musk apes by feedin 'em burnin tires ala skunk, but it was shelter. There was a little tar-paper shack just inside the gate, so I knocked at the door, told the owner, Jim Bob, about my predicament and asked if I could sleep there for the night. He said that was all right by him, but if I wanted to eat anything, I'd have to work for it. So started my career at the roadside zoo. In the 6 months I was there, I learned to slop tiger cages, milk a two-headed snake and wrestle alligators. That last one is the most exhausting of the three. You gotta jump on the alligator, hang on while he's thrashin around and get his eyes covered as quick as you can. After that, though, it ain't too hard because alligators don't have very strong muscles to open their jaws. The real exciting part is when you jump off again. Sometimes, they get mad at havin lost, alligators are poor sports, after all, and they try to flip around and bite you. On a side note, I ended up leavin that job because the star attraction, the two-tailed albino gator ran off in the night. I thought she was taken by the musk ape, but Jim Bob said they'd probably eloped. Up to this past week, that was the most tirin thing I'd done, but, as I said, fightin robot ninjas is more tiring.

Yesterday's ninja ambushed me with a stick when I went to pour out the donut oil. I was carryin a 50 pound drum of oil, on a dolly to save my back, and this guy just jumps out of the bushes with no sorta preamble or conversation or anything. Well, I just holler and jump back, lettin the dolly go so I could block my face. Now, I never got hit in the face with a big ol' stick, but I don't need to touch a fire to know it's hot, if you know what I mean. So, there I am tryin to ward off the attack when, out of the corner of my eye I see the barrel reach the apex of it's arc and slowly tip over.

Now we got oil all over everywhere and we're slidin all over the place. I got no idea how to get inside the range of his stick so I can punch him or somethin and I start thinkin I'm gonna need a shield of some kind. I'm desperately lookin around for somethin, anything to help me while gettin my arms pretty banged up when I see this camper shell for a pickup sittin over by the wall. I'm tryin to slide my way over there, windmillin my arms with every step when, by some miracle of physics or somethin, I manage to grab the stick while it's in mid-swing. Now, I may have goofed around in school thinkin about girls and whatnot, but I paid enough attention to still remember my Newton to this day, so I gave that stick a shove, sent the ninja out of range and propelled myself towards the camper shell. I picked it up and held it in front of me while I walked towards the ninja, hopin to back him up against the dumpster. He kept swingin that stick and punched a couple of holes in the fiberglass, but he didn't land anything on me, which was a definite improvement. I finally got him backed up to where I could do somethin when I started to smell smoke. I looked down and saw that the ninja's foot was on fire and, me bein wet to he waist with donut grease, I turned and ran as fast as I could. When I felt like I was a safe distance away, a couple hundred feet or so, I turned to see that ninja goin up like 4th of July, Chinese New Year, Chernobyl, the heart of the sun and Richard Pryor combined. I never saw nothin go from normal to pile of ash quicker, even in them cartoons with that martian that's always tryin to blow up the earth. You know, that one that fights that rabbit and the rabbit always turns the laser back on the martian and he's like Lot's wife, only he gets made into ask instead of salt. This ninja was just like that, minus the rabbit, laser and bein a martian. Also, it wasn't drawn and he wasn't a person-shaped pile of ash, just a regular pile. And he was covered in donut grease. Other than that, it was exactly the same.

I later figured out that the plexiglass windows on the camper top, bein curved, concentrated the sunlight into a small point, like a magnifyin glass will do over an ant hill, if you're a young man and disposed to that kinda thing, which I am not, but I've heard about it from some people I used to know.

After defeatin the ninja with help from my friend, the sun, I turned around to go change my pants and who was standin behind me tryin to catch flies in his open mouth but Jared. He was just gapin, lookin back and forth from me to the pile of ash and the still burnin donut grease, his jaw just flappin up and down like a bass that's just been caught. Finally, he squeaked out a little, "Oh.....my....GOD!"

Well, I just didn't know what to say, so I just told him, "Don't worry, that fire'll burn itself out." And then I walked back in the shop, mutterin "Durn it all! Consarnit! Flippin Flapjacks!" Under my breath. I'm sorry for the foul language, but I figure y'all can handle it after bein exposed to whatever else on the internets.

I didn't tell no one about what had happened, because I didn't know what to say. I thought I'd just blown the whole operation. I was pretty jumpy there for a couple hours. Then Jared's mom called. I went to high school with Brenda. She's a couple years younger than me, and we didn't run in the same circles or anything, but we see each other at potlucks and cake walks every now and then, but I doubted she was callin me to buy a raffle ticket this time.

She began, "Hello, Pat, this is Brenda."

I decided to play it cool. "Hi Brenda, it's been a long time. To what do I owe this pleasure? Is it Girl Scout Cookie season again?"

"Actually, Pat," she wasn't havin any nonsense, "I'm calling about Jared. I've heard some disturbing things this afternoon."

"Is this about those extra bear claws?" I asked. "Because I gave those to him."

"No, Pat, it's not about that." She took a deep breath. "Look," she sighed, "I know we don't know each other that well, but I'm worried about Jared. He spends all his time in his room playin them video games of his and I think it's starting to harm him." Her voice went all shaky and I think she started to cry. "I think the divorce has been really hard on him. I mean, he used to be such a sweet kid and now he's always wearin black everywhere and he's listenin to this music that sounds like people are hittin their guitars with cats. And then today, he comes home and says he saw you fight a man with a stick and then BURN him to death."

My mind went blank. "Well, uh, Brenda," I stammered, "I, um, don't...uh"

She interrupted me, "I know, Pat. It's ridiculous. I think those video games got into his head and now he's hallucinating or something. Maybe, I don't know, maybe he's on the drugs or something."

Then I heard Jared in the background yellin, "Mooooooooooooaaaaamm! I'm not making it up! Jeez! Why can't you believe me?!"

She covered the phone with her hand, but I heard, muffled, "Jared, I am on the phone!" She said this last stucatto, like all moms know how to do when they're angry. Then, she returned to me. "I'm at wit's end here, Pat. So, I was wonderin, could you sit him down and talk to him or something?"

I don't know what came over me, but I agreed to talk to him. He's comin in tomorrow morning at 7. I don't know what I'm going to say, but I'm sure I'll let you know.

Ninja Fights in the New Year

Well, friends, the holidays have come and gone. The presents are all opened, the champagne is all drunk, the balls are dropped. We shut down the shop for a week or so during this time so the employees could spend time with their families. Bein as the only two "official" employees is me and Douggy and seein how Douggy came over to my family's house for the festivities, as he's done every year since we was knee high to a nutcracker, it prolly wasn't the best business decision I've ever had to make. O' course, I don't really need to be concerned about makin this a terribly successful business; well, not the up front part of it, anyway. The stuff goin on in the back, with the ninjas and the fighting and the zeppelins and everything, I'd like that to go successful, but it seems on an even keel lately. But, not everything's been popcorn and cake for Pat O'Neil lately. I been fightin these durned robot ninjas almost daily for the last coupla weeks. Every one's been pretty much the same; ninja comes in the shop, says he's gotta fight me, then I offer him a donut, he takes it and then he starts shootin sparks and stuff. Lindbergh says that he's tryin to give the robots some sort of autonomy so they can make decisions for themselves while they're fighting, but he keeps running into the problem he's calling the "donigma". As it was explained to me, it's something like this: robots can't eat nothin cause the got no stomach or throat or teeth, they know they ain't supposed to eat nothin but if a robot's gonna fight or do anything, really, they gotta have their minds programmed right and, unfortunately for robot ninjas, no one in their right mind can turn down a free donut. So, the robots, because they're in their right mind, they gotta take the donut and try to eat it, which causes all sortsa sparks and stuff. It's usually ok, but Friday Jared, the goth kid in town, came in to rustle himself up a mess of bear claws cause he said he was gonna "play wow" on the internet all weekend. I told him that I didn't need that kinda honesty, but I gave him a couple of extras because I remember when I was a lad and I'd "play wow" all weekend, 'cept I had to use the Sears catalogues, and how I needed to keep my strength up. Anyway, when he walked in, there was a headless ninja robot just layin on the floor. I tried explaining that it was one of them vacuuming robots that I'd got for Christmas, but I don't think he bought it. Now he's been lurking around all weekend. I guess headless robots are more interesting than wow to today's kids. How times change.

So, anyway, I finally roused myself from my holiday ham and cookie coma to check in at the shop today. When I got in, I saw there was a message on the answering machine. Well, to be honest, it wasn't right when I got in, a man has to have his coffee, eat his donut and solve his crossword in the morning, after all, so, let's say, about an hour or two after I got in this morning, I got the message which had, itself, been left about a week ago, so I don't think that couple of hours made a difference. Turns out a friend of my cousin's roommate's niece's dog sitter had gotten a new car for Christmas and wanted us to come tow away the one she had, which was a pretty decent 1971 Lincoln Continental with most of the original interior actually in the car. Sure, most of it was wadded up in the back seat or had been cut into strips to patch leaks in the engine, but I'd say a good eighty percent of it was still attached to the vehicle itself in one form or another. Alistair and I talked about this for awhile until Douggy came in. I thought we should repair it, but Alistair pointed out that, as of yet, we do not have any refurbished cars and so we were really letting the middle part of Pat O'Neil's Body Shop, Refurbished Car Emporium and Donut Eatery really sag; sag like carrying a bowling ball on a rubber band; a real wide rubber band, not one of them thin ones. It would be too hard to carry a bowling ball on one of them thin rubber bands. It may work if you kinda pulled it tight and set the bowling ball in the space in the middle. But then, the rubber band would be taut, and wouldn't sag that much. Let's start over on this metaphor. Let's say sagging like a granny's triceps and leave it at that without worrying about some really strong granny that is capable of juggling fully grown trees, like Douggy's grandma used to until she was hit by a meteor one day back in '71. So, ignoring that, Alistair's point was that we needed to refurbish at least one car, in order to go with the name. In order to refurbish it, we needed to get it in the shop, and that meant we needed Douggy to drive the tow truck. I was gonna give him a couple more days off, because he had some project he was working on for his wife, I don't know exactly what it was but it involved macrame and egg crates, but I gave him a call and he was there in a half hour.

When he got there, I didn't want to rush him, so we had some coffee and a couple donuts and then, because I'd already solved the crossword, I let him go ahead and solve the sudoku puzzle in the paper. I usually like doing them, but Douggy needed something after getting involved in one of Geraldine's big craft projects. Last year about this time, she decided she was gonna knit scarves for all the kids down at the orphanage, but she got a little carried away and ended up knitting one big scarf that all the orphans had to share and it had bells in it. The nuns down there said it helped them out, though, because they always knew where the kids were and that they were warm. So, after bein in that kinda environment, I thought I'd give Douggy a little Douggy time. After he got that puzzle solved, I talked to him about towin in the Lincoln and he was ready for it.

"There might be a problem though," he told me.

"Whassat?" I asked.

"Well, I don't see any body layin around," he gestured to the clean floor, "so it looks like your ninja hasn't been here today. What do we do if he comes while we're out?"

"That's a good question," I thought about it for a time, "How about we leave a sign?"

"A sign that says, 'gone to tow a car, robotic ninjas wait here until we get back'?"

When he said it that way, it did sound like less of a good idea, so I told him, "When you say it that way, it does sound like less of a good idea."

We debated it for a bit and ended up leavin a sign that said, "Gone to tow a car. We will return in an hour. Anyone in all black can help themselves to a donut." Then, we left a plate of donuts sitting just outside the front door. We figured that, this way, if a roboninja came, maybe I could defeat him without even confronting him. Also, if Jared came by, he could keep his "wow" energy up, just so long as he washed his hands after the last time playing wow. So, that bein done, we grabbed Albert and headed off.

As we were ridin in the tow truck, Douggy asked me some about how the training was going. I told him about the 'donigma' and how that was making it less of a challenge than I'd expected. He pointed out that Charles was the guy who figured out sweet potato burritos on sea monkey tortillas would extend life and so he'd probably be able to find a way to get robots to stop eating donuts. Then, he offered to give me some fighting tips, to which I agreed.

"When your fighting," he explained, "don't expect. If you expect your opponent to strike with the right hand, but they strike with the left hand, you have to react to the fact they're hitting with a different hand and then figure out what to do. But, if you wait with a clear mind, then you can react much faster no matter which hand they strike you with."

I didn't really get it, but he said he'd show me some things when we got home. After that, we got to the car and, even though we weren't going to do any of the repair work ourselves, we opened the hood and stared at the engine for awhile. After a few minutes, Douggy chimed in with the obligatory, "Well, I think we're gonna have to pull it," thereby fulfilling our manly duties in front of automobiles. When that was completed, we hooked up the Lincoln to the chain and headed back towards the shop. Everything seemed fine except Douggy kept lookin in the rear view mirror.

Eventually, he tells me, "Pat, I think there's somethin movin around in the car back there."

"Oh, yeah?" I ask.

"Yeah," he responds, "I thought it was the ceiling lining flappin at first, but now I think something's in there. You wanna go back and check it out?"

I can't help but notice that we're still moving, so I inquire, "What? Now?"

"Well, wait for the next stop sign," he concedes.

"Ok," I tell him, "is it dangerous?"

He scoffs, "Nah, it's usually just a cat or a drunk that crawled in there to get warm. Just open the door and shoo it out."

I hop out at the next stop sign and open the door to the car. I don't see nothin at first, but I push the interior around a bit and I finally see what was movin around. It turns out Douggy was wrong, it wasn't a cat OR a drunk. Instead, it was a ninja. It jumped out and grabbed my arm.

"Pat O'Neil!" yelled the ninja, "I must fight you!"

I knew how to handle this. "Sure, that sounds fine," I tell the ninja, "But you want a donut first?"

"No Donut!" screams the ninja.

"Are you sure?" I ask, "It's free!"

"No Donut!" screeches the ninja again. "Diabetic!"

It looked like Charles had solved the donigma. It was pretty clever, too, making the ninja diabetic. It looked like I'd have to actually fight this one. I was tryin to remember what Douggy had told me when the ninja clocked me a good one across the jaw. I haven't been in that many fights, but I know now I don't like bein punched in the face. I wasn't about to take another one of them, so I pushed the ninja back in the car and slammed the door. Then I went and hopped back into the tow truck.

"Cat?" asked Douggy.

"Ninja," I said.

"Huh," he grunted. I figured I wouldn't bother him with the fact that it was a ninja with a head still attached. I figured we could do something about it when we got back to the shop.

We'd gone about a block when the back window of the truck cabin shattered and a black clad fist followed the cold air through to grab me by the beard. Before I knew it, I was standin on the back of the tow truck with the robot ninja takin swings at me. Douggy was a little discombobulated and so he was swervin, which actually helped me some. Every time the ninja would swing, Douggy would swerve and I was pushed out of the range of the fists. This couldn't last long, I knew, before I would go skidding off the truck and onto the road like that chicken from that joke about the chicken and the road, only I would be crossing it on my face. To avoid that, I grabbed the chain that was holding the Lincoln on to the back of the truck. You think a bowling ball puts some tension on a rubber band, you should try grabbing a chain pulling a 2 ton car by its axle at 30 miles an hour. Douggy took the next turn pretty quick and my legs flew out from under me, sticking straight out the side of the trick. This knocked over the ninja, too, but he didn't have no chain to hold on to. He went sprawling on the back of the truck, but he managed to hang on pretty well. He got up in a squatting position and started to take swipes at me. The best I could do was keep my legs and face out of harm's way and try to kick his fingers when I could.

That lasted a couple of blocks until he looked up at my hand. Then he got this horrible gleam in his eyes. He stood and grabbed the chain with one hand while he started pryin my fingers with the other. Now, I don't know if you were aware of this, I wasn't until just today, but it turns out robots are incredibly strong. That bein the case, I couldn't resist him when he separated my fingers from that life-giving chain. I was in desperate straits, grasping anywhere I could with my other hand, and I guess I grabbed his hood just as Douggy braked for an old lady in the road. I was thrown back at the cab of the truck, which I hit my head on, but the ninja ended up with his body on one side of the chain and his head, in my hand, on the other side. As soon as I shook the cobwebs out, I could see that his head had come clean off in my hand and his body neck was sparking and spilling goo everywhere. I'd won my first actual fight against a robot ninja. I'll tell ya, except for the bump on my head and nearly dying being thrown from the back of a truck, it felt pretty darn good.

When we got back to the shop, everyone congratulated me, even Charles via telephone. This evening, Douggy and asked him if all ninja fights are like that.

He told me, "Yeah, pretty much, except their heads usually don't come off that easily. Also, most don't take place on the back of a tow truck, and there's usually weapons involved, plus, both people usually know how to fight. Come to think of it, most ninja fights are little to nothing like that fight. But that's ok, you have time."

Just a note

Hello readers.
I just want to let you know that I will be making a sincere effort to get back to more regular updates after January 9th or so. I've been reveling in being home and seeing family and friends and, unfortunately, I haven't had the time to sit down and write as I would like to. However, I'll be back on a normal schedule in about a week and I will do everything I can to keep the story coming. Thanks for hanging in there.

A strange customer

Had me a weird customer in this mornin. We was havin a special wherein we was blowin out all the 2008 donuts to make room for the 2009s. I realize that it just means we're selling donuts made today, but Douggy said it'd be a good marketing tool. He also said that we should start releasin our model years in the summer, because that works so well for car makers. Well, I was arrangin the donuts to spell out 2008, most of which is easy in donuts, what with most of them numbers bein round and all, though the 2's kinda hard to make and I was thinkin of cuttin a donut in half and then usin a long john for the stem, but then Alistair just bent a long john funny and, viola, there was a 2. I tried to do it, but I got fillin all over myself. That was ok, though, cause I got Albert, and he helps me clean food stains off my clothes while I'm still wearin 'em. The only problem with this system is that Albert, bein a hound dog, leaves my clothes flooded with dog spit for about a half hour or so. Normally, that ain't a problem, but now I gotta worry about the health inspector and appearance in front of the customer and all that nonsense. So, I usually keep a spare set of clothes with me in the shop, but in the back so no one can come in and accidently see me in my skivvies, which I wouldn't wish on anyone, least of all someone who was out lookin for food. That could not only ruin their entire day, but it would likely lessen their craving for donuts for awhile.

So, I'm in the back, changin into a new pair of overalls when I hear the beep from the front door. We wired up one of them things that beeps when the front door is open, so if I'm in the back or droppin a load off or somethin, I can know that someone's come in the shop and we can get it staffed quick enough the people won't help themselves to a free donut, except, that is, off the plate with the sign that says 'free donuts, help yourself'.

So, I finish changin quickly, which is pretty easy in overalls since there's just a coupla buttons and, it bein winter around here, I'm wearin boots that slip on and off, and then I go out to the front. There's this guy standin there, just lookin at me. I figure he must be one of them goth or emo types that I read about on the internets or somethin akin to that because he was dressed up all in black and had this funny kinda voice. You know, since I'm on the topic, I always wondered why them emo kids, if they was tryin to act all sad and lonely and whatnot, would name themselves after a little red guy on Sesame Street. I remember when that Emo guy was popular, because I always had to buy Emo stuff for my nephew for Christmas and his birthday and all. As I recall, that Emo was one happy little guy, right upbeat, if'n you know what I mean. Now, I ain't watched children's programming in neigh on 15 years now, but what is this world coming to if a little red children's character has become the name for a group of depressives who, in my opinion, just need some hard work under their belts? I guess it's just been too long since I been young.

Anyway, I come out buttonin up my last button when I see this guy standin in my shop like a shadow with no person attached to it. This is not the first time I saw that event though. When I was a lad, me and Douggy was playin shadow tag with this boy Hammish from down the block. He and his family had just moved from the old country and he was kind of a sickly lad, pale and skinny and he had them red rings around his eyes that look like he's got a giant lamprey at home that sleeps on his face, which is a great cure for oversleepin. We was playin shadow tag, wherein one guy has to stomp on the shadow of another guy to make him "it". It gets more challenging to not be "it" as the sun starts goin down and shadows, especially in this part of the country, can stretch for four miles or more, sometimes obstructing the view of traffic passing in another city. Well, we was havin a good ol' time, stompin each other's shadows when some combination of a hard stomp and Hammish's natural sickliness caused his shadow to rip right off. We got all panicky and told Hammish to stay where he was, so he didn't lose the shadow. He kept scrabblin at the ground, tryin to roll up his shadow before a truck on the interstate carried it off for good. We got it in a little roll which Hammish clung onto like he was drownin and that shadow was the only log in the lake. Then Douggy ran back to his daddy's garage and got the duct tape. We didn't know if that'd work or not, but duct tape seems to work pretty well for most things, except for taping ducts. Well, he ran right back and we duct taped Hammish's shadow right back on his feet and he went home good as new. Course, for the rest of his life, he had to wander around with duct tape around his heels and he had to be super careful when taking a shower so his shadow didn't slide down the drain. Eventually, he just stopped taking showers and opened a landfill. He ran that until '78 when he was eaten by a bear on a unicycle, but that's a different story. Incidentally, that bear went on to become the mayor of the next town over, but that is a different story altogether.

So there's this shadow standin in my shop, and I say to it, "Y'all want a donut? Maybe a bear claw?" We got this goth kid in town named Jared. He's the only goth kid I ever seen, and he's a good enough kid. But he loves him some bear claws. He didn't useta like bear claws very much, but that's all he orders when he comes in. I don't know if it's cause he's older and his taste has matured or if it's a goth thing, but this seemed like my chance to find out.

"Pat O'Neil?" ask the shadow in a voice like he's speakin to me through a tin cup telephone.

"Well, you are in Pat O'Neil's Body Shop, Refurbished Car Emporium and Donut Eatery," I says to him, "and I'm the only one here, so that must make me Pat O'Neil. What can I do ya for, friend?"

He looks around slowly and squeakily. It sounds like he's got an old weather vane in his pocket or somethin of the kind. Then, he looks right at me and says, "I must fight you."

I can tell ya, I was quite taken aback at this. Not at the fightin, I was in a number of tussles in my youth. I was surprised at the 'must', like it was his job or something. So I shot back at him, "You must, must you? And why is that?"

"Because that is my nature," he calmly explains.

"It's your nature to fight me?"

"Yes."

"And how long has this been your nature?"

"Since I began."

"So," I asked with logic and reason on my side, "what have you been doin since you began and now, if it wasn't fightin me?"

"I don't understand." He was beginning to twitch.

I decided it was best to begin at the beginning again. "You said it's in your nature to fight me, right?"

"Correct."

"And it's been that way your whole life, right?"

"Correct."

"But if it's your nature to fight me, and you haven't been fighting me, what have you been doing?"

"Walking," he admitted.

"Walking where?"

"Walking here, to fight you," he explained.

"And have you fought me yet?" I asked.

"No, but I must fight you! It is my nature to fight you!" He began yelling and flailing wildly and smoke started to come out of his ears.

"So, you been walkin all this time and you haven't fought me at all. Sounds to me like it's more your nature to walk than to fight me. You been doin it for so long and you haven't fought me once. Just by the percentages, it seems it's not in your nature to fight me, you follow?"

Then his head exploded. I ain't never seen nothin like it. I seen a lot of wild stuff in my time, I seen a bear become mayor, I seen Amelia Earhart become a giant, I even once saw a man eat a bowling ball for $50, but I ain't never seen no explodin head before. His head shot all over my shop and a shower of spark erupted from his neck, lookin like Vesuvius or somethin. His body stiffened up and fell over backwards like a 2x4 stood up on end. Then some sorta green liquid started leakin out of the neck and all over the tile.

Right then, Alistair and a couple other squimonk come runnin in, ready for action. They looked at the headless body in the middle of the shop, leakin goth goo on my floor, then they looked at me and Alistair asked, "What the heck happened here?"

I wasn't too sure myself, so I just decided to stick with the facts. "Head exploded," I explained.

"Could you be more specific?" He was still pretty geared up, but I didn't know what to say to get him to calm down.

"Well," I scratched the back of my head, tryin to sort it all out, "one minute he had a head, and the next he didn't. That's on account of it exploding."

"Ok, back up and start from the beginning," he asked. So I did, but he stopped me, "I know about me showing you how to shape the donut into a 2, I was there."

I tried explaining that was the beginning, but he had me skip ahead a little bit. While I was explainin what happened, some squimonk were lookin over the body and moppin up the floor. One of 'em, I think it was Victoria, shouted over to Alistair, "We can stand down, have a look at this."

We wandered over to the body and looked where Victoria was pointing. There, on the neck just below the ragged hole where the head used to be, were two letters, C and L.

"C.L?" I asked, "The only person I know with a C and an L is Charles Lindbergh. But why's he sendin somethin to fight me?" I was mighty confused.

Then a voice came out of the headless man's chest, makin me feel like that Ichabod Crane feller. "Because I think it's time to train you to fight ninjas," said Charles' voice.

I leaned down and spoke into the chest. "How's sendin an explodin goth into my shop gonna train me to fight ninjas?"

"It's not an exploding goth, it's a robotic ninja," came the voice, "I must have set the fighting level too low."

He went on to explain that, after my injury at the end of the NAMSU competition, he got worried that Clan Platypus might come and attempt to do me bodily harm. So, in the past couple of days, he devised a plan to send a series of robotic ninjas for me to fight so's I could learn how to defend myself. So, he's gonnna be sending robotic ninjas to fight with me at random intervals and he's gonna make them a little harder every time, so I can get better.

"I'll try and do something about the logic circuit, too," he told me from the dead robotic ninja's chest, "I think you shorted it out and that's what made the head explode."

So, it looks like I'm gonna be learnin to fight ninjas for awhile here. Douggy and Alistair both said they'd give me tips and help me out, so that's nice.

Well, Happy New Year, readers and y'all be safe with your partyin and carryin on and whatnot. Thanks for makin 2008 a good year to write a lame blog.

Final Round and Subsequent Follow Up

Hey there, people. I hope y'all had yerselves a nice Christmas. Me, I ate some ham, lounged around, watched my nephew open some boxes and stuff and then brood because he got a game where you kill people one way when he really wanted that other game where you kill people another way. I told him if he wanted to learn how to kill people different ways, he should join the CIA or somethin instead of wasting his time sittin in front of the TV. He just rolled his eyes and scoffed at that, then put his headphones back on and slunk away. I mostly just stayed on the couch and watched the lights twinkle. That'll make more sense here in a little bit. Also, Charles sent me a nice summer sausage and cheese log set, so, I been eatin a lot of sausage and cheese. Now, I'm sure y'all didn't pop in dyin to know that I was eatin sausage, but because I promised to tell you how the final round of the Makin Stuff Up Championship went. I'm gonna warn ya, it's gonna be bad there for a couple of minutes, but your ol' pal Pat got through it just fine, I can assure you. If not, I wouldn't be sittin here writin this now.

So, there I was, gettin Squimassaged by Alistair, who was encouragin me to get back out there and do my best. We was also brewin a pot of coffee, into which Douggy added this 'Red Bull' stuff that he says he likes. I'll tell ya, that was the horriblest coffee I've ever tasted. It was as if you come into the office bright and early Monday mornin to discover that Edna has left the coffee pot on all weekend and that coffee has hardened to a solid powder at the bottom of the pot and, instead of rinsin out the pot and havin it explode on ya nearly costin you your eye, for which Edna later apologized pretty profusely and then offered to buy you dinner in recompense, which you accepted on a friendly only basis because Edna's married to a friend of your from elementary school named Marky who owns the biker bar in town and has always been a pretty tough cookie, but who is nice enough if you're on his good side, and so, when you go out with Edna, she starts touchin your hand and playin with your feet under the table and you can't figure out what to do so you get up to go to the salad bar and you spend 15 minutes starin at the beats before you notice Marky is sittin at another table in the restaurant and so you gotta try to slip out somehow but you can't go through the bathroom because Marky's table is on the way to the bathroom and you can't go through the front door because Edna's over that way and so you have to go through the kitchen and you get back there and can't find your way around and then the manage comes and yells at you and you think it's because you're not supposed to be in the kitchen but it's really because he thinks you work there and are just slackin off and so he keeps yellin until you spend the rest of the night washin dishes and then things are really awkward with Edna at work after that, instead of that, you just pick up a spoon and eat the coffee. It's just like that, only with a week old orange in it. 'Course, after drinkin that muck, I felt ready for anything because my mind was workin again.

"You know what I just realized?" I said aloud, hopin someone would ask me, 'What?'

"What?" someone asked me, and that someone was Douggy.

"Every time it's Earhart's turn to tell a story, she takes a swig from that water bottle and then her breath smells like she's been drinkin seawater," I explain.

"Why didn't you say anything before?!" yelled Alistair. "That bottle's not water, that's orphan tears! She's gaining strength before each round!"

I didn't think that was very good for me, so I said, "Well, that ain't good for me."

"Unless..." prodded Alistair.

"Unless..." thought Douggy.

"Unless we can find a way to get that bottle away from her!" I blurted out triumphantly.

"That's how you're going to beat her, Pat," explained Alistair, "You just keep talkin your stream of nonsense like you do and we'll work out a way to get the bottle away from her. Be prepared to run, though, you don't want to be up there on the stage faced with an angry Ice Giantess."

So, armed with a belly full of burnt-awkward-semi-date-and-week-old-orange coffee, a group of squimonk ready to steal a bottle of orphan tears and a penchant for telling long winded, pointless stories, I returned to the final round of the competition.

I had to pick up the story where it left off, which had Captain Duck and his men of the SS Shoe wrapped in grey blankets searching for a magic potion to lift the curse of the were-polar bears, which had been shaved in areas to give them spots. I came out heavy with the men falling through the ice and being rescued by the arctic mermen, who would have like to soothe the travellers with their stunning viola skills, but couldn't because the strings on their violas kept freezing and snapping and the wood kept warping, what with it being underwater and all. So the mermen offered to help Capt. Duck and his crew if they would bring something to keep their violas warm and dry. After that, and some lingering on the way that arctic mermen would have gained any sort of skill in the viola with the enormous obstacles that stood in their way and then some pontificatin on whether mermen would play stuff more like "Oh, Susanna" or "Danny Boy" or even "The Rite of Spring," it was Amelia's turn to go. She took a big swig of orphan's tears and shot back with the problem of size. The container for the viola needed to be warm and dry, yes, but it also had to be big enough and pliable enough to play the viola in. The only thing that met this qualification, and which generated its own heat was the bladder of the Giant Arctic Chimera, which one could only see when snow blinded. That bein the case, the men had to take a volunteer to stare at the snow for hours and then lead them to the Chimera. As she was speakin and gesticulatin and whatnot, I saw a squimonk being lowered from the ceiling on a bunch of rubber bands that had been tied together, carrying a water bottle in his, or her (it's really hard to tell unless you pick them up and they get really offended when you do) paws. It looked like someone was remaking mission impossible with genetic mutants and a budget of four dollars and eighty two cents, a dollar of which was spent of catering. Before Earhart could get to the Chimera tracks, bingo bango switcheroo, the bottles had been swapped and the squimonk was away into the ceiling again.

I got up for what was to be my final story, telling myself not to get nervous. I was a little woozy and I'm not entirely sure what I said, but there was something in there about the Giant Arctic Chimera being a fan of things wrapped in bacon and a search for the only bacon in the Arctic circle, which I said was available at the only gas station near the North Pole, which charges exorbitant prices. Well, after spinning this out for awhile, I took my seat and tried to scoot as far away from the center of the stage as I possibly could.

Amelia grabbed her bottle, took a big swig, wrinkled her nose up, smelled the bottle, took a smaller swig, then looked around suspiciously.

She was taking her sweet time with the water, so the judge said, "Miss Earhart, it is your turn."

Well, she started lookin under her seat and pokin around the table where her water was, then she went into the audience to look under their seats.

Finally, the judge said, "Miss Earhart, if you do not begin your tale in 30 seconds, you will be disqualified."

This didn't phase her one bit. She kept wanderin around and lookin around and stuff until, with 5 seconds left on the clock, she returned to the mic and said, "I will have my revenge!" Then, she tore off her face! I kid you not, she reached up, grabbed her own face and pulled it off. I thought I was gonna see that coffee again. But then, it turned out that her face was actually a mask. It came off and revealed a hideous head. It was shaggy and bearded, with white skin and pink eyes, like a baby rat. The whole face was flat and broad, like she'd been hit repeatedly with a shovel, and she had two long fangs poking up from her swollen bottom lip. When the mask came off, she started to roar like that tornado that ripped through town when I was a kid. Then, she just started swingin. She pulverized everything in her path.

I turned to run and heard Douggy yell, "Pat! Duck!" just as she hit me in the back. It felt like I'd been playing dodgeball and someone filled up one of the red balls with concrete. The wind got knocked out of me and everything went dark.

When I woke up, we were back on the zeppelin, on our way back to Iowa. Alistair told me that Douggy had carried me out of the building as the squimonk swarmed over the Giantess, distracting her long enough for me to reach the Zeppelin. A couple of them were hurt, but those little ones recover pretty fast. As for me, that strike in the back cracked a couple of my ribs and knocked by back outta place again. So for the past week, I been sittin on the couch watchin the twinkling lights and takin this pain medication, which makes the lights sparkle even more and has got me in a serious Christmasy mood. Also, NAMSU called and told me I'd been officially declared the 2008 Makin Stuff Up champion and they'd get me a trophy as soon as the funerals were over and a new president was found and all.

It also turns out that we gout ourselves a nice write-up in the local paper:


As I was layin there on the couch, thinkin about that trophy, I asked Alistair what set Amelia off so much. I mean, I knew she'd be weakened by the lack or orphan tears and everything, but I didn't think she'd go off like a badger with a burr in his butt over gettin water.

"Actually," Alistair told me, "That wasn't water, we peed in the bottle."

So, that was the championship. I'm gonna recover for a few days, see what happens, but I'm sure I'll be back out on the road for Lindbergh in the next couple of days.

Some comptetition

Well, it was a pretty wild weekend. We got to Tallahassee on Friday night. I was asleep by the time we got there, so I didn't get a chance to see much. Saturday mornin, though, I got up pretty early and got to walk around, do a little sightseein, you know. From that walk, there's two things I have to say about that city. First, it's warm. I never been to a place so warm in December. With it this warm in the winter, though, summer's gotta be murder. Summers in Iowa is bad, what with the Mississippi right there throwin off 110% humidity and that sun beatin down. Last August, it got so humid one day that Douggy swam to my house through the air. He was up there doin loop-de-loops and whatnot, just havin a good ol' time. I thought I'd had a touch too much of the moonshine, but then he grabbed a coupla catfish right outta the air. We fried them up and it was the lightest, tastiest catfish I ever had. There was some sorta extra flavor they got by swimmin around in the air. It's hard to describe, but there was a certain kind of birdiness to it. So, that's the first thing about Tallahassee. The second thing about Tallahassee is that it's dark. I said I got up early and wandered about. Early for me is about 4 am, and the sun had yet to peek it's head over the horizon, tip its hat, give us a wink and bring the new day in its suitcase to try and sell. That bein so, it was dark and, since that's the only time I got out of the hotel all weekend, I will just assume that Talahassee is dark until I am proven otherwise.

After I walked around a bit, I had to get back to the hotel for registration. The Makin Stuff Up championship didn't actually start until 9 am, but once you were registered, you had access to all the free food and shirts they were givin away and things. I was pretty hungry, so I wanted to register right away and then take a crack at the pancakes they had sittin out. There was also a tray of donuts there, but the squimonk have really spoiled me when it comes to donuts. They turn out about a thousand donuts each day, but we only sell a coupla dozen. The rest, we all eat or we give away to charity. Douggy and I take the donuts down to the soup kitchen and drop them off every mornin. Since we been doin that, though, those people down there have been gettin a little bigger. Maybe I'll talk to them squimonk about addin more fruit or somethin to those donuts. But right then, I was focused on sinkin my teeth into some of them pancakes, and then defeating the Queen of the Ice Giants. Man's gotta have his priorities, after all.

After I got myself registered, I was standin there at the food table, tryin to choose between bacon and ham with my pancakes when a woman walks up next to me and grabs an apple. She was a long woman; long nose, long face, skinny and tall. She looked a bit like she'd been trapped in a room with the walls closin in and she'd escaped just in time. At first, I thought I recognized her from somewhere. I was lookin closer when she started talkin to me.

"You hear for the competition?" she inquired, genially.

"I sure am," I shot out, not really thinkin about it, "and yerself?"

"Yeah, and I'm gonna win," she stated confidently.

"Huh," I grunted, still distracted. Right about then, I noticed she was wearin one of them leather caps that come down over the ears and a pair of goggles on her head. To top it all off, she was wearin this long white scarf and a leather jacket. I don't know why I didn't notice it before, 'cept for the fact that the decision between bacon and ham with pancakes can affect your whole day. If you make the wrong choice, you may get picked up by a giant eagle and carried to Minnesota, where you gotta hitchhike your way back home by bribing a guy carrying a truckload of chickens with a twelve pack of red bull and a giant foam finger that says "We're #1" on it, because the guy has to stay awake and he wants everyone to know that he and some others are #1 at all times. And then, by the time you get back, your bacon has been sitting out for hours and has gotten all congealed in the fat and it smells kinda funny, but you go ahead and eat it anyway and you end up in the hospital overnight and they ask you why you ate bacon that'd been sittin around that long and you tell them the whole long story and they don't believe you and you gotta go see a shrink for six months and he ends up quittin the business because he's writing a book, but don't worry, he won't use your name. What I'm sayin, though, is that you gotta think carefully about the bacon or ham question. The smallest distraction can have consequences beyond your imagination, even if you've got a pretty active imagination. Sometimes, sausage is thrown in there, as well, but that opens up the whole "link or patty" debate, which I didn't have time to deal with because I had to be fresh for the competition.

Well, after I'd had my pancakes and ham, which I decided on after testing the consistency of the syrup, I went back to the room to prepare for my first round. While I was there, I let Alistair know that I'd spotted Earhart at the breakfast table.

"I know," he retorted. "We've been tracking her since we arrived. Just stay out of her way until the final round, we don't want problems."

So, I tried to do just that. I went back down to the conference room, where the competition was bein held, and listened to the opening ceremony. There was a bunch of hullabaloo in there about past winners and some things about presidents and rulers of banks and whatnot, but I wasn't really payin attention that much. Then came the part about the rules. Now, one thing about the makin stuff up championship is that the previous year's winner gets to make up the rules for the current year's competition. The winner ain't allowed to write anything down or prepare in any way beforehand. The winner, in this case Stuart Shepardson of Casper, Wyoming, just hasta step up to the mic and list some rules off the top of his or her, in this case his, head.

Stuart announced, "This year, the rules are as follows; first, each round will have three competitors, the first competitor will be given a topic to tell a story on, the second competitor must give an alternate explanation of the story and the third competitor must claim to have been an eyewitness to the story and explain the real situation; second, one competitor from each round will be chosen to move on to the next round by a panel of 4 judges and a stuffed hippopotamus; third the final round will not be judged, the three competitors will continue telling the same story until they can no longer think of things to say or add, the last one standing wins the championship; finally, every story must contain a duck...in a shoe...for some reason..a.a.and it has to be part of the story, it can't be just layin around somewhere."

Well, that didn't sound too difficult to me. My only worry was that I'd never told a story to a stuffed hippo before and I didn't know the kind of stories they liked. Other than that, it all seemed pretty straightforward.

I ain't gonna tell you about all the rounds, 'cause there were, by my closest estimate, twenty to thirty thousand. It was a long coupla days, I tell ya. I just wanna tell you about the first, because it was my first time competing in this sorta thing, and then I'll skip ahead some.

In my first round, I was with this little nerdy guy who was a literature professor at some community college or something and this mousy woman who ran some sorta business on the internets. I don't remember exactly what it was, but something containing the words "erotic" and "macaroni". 'Course, she coulda been making the whole thing up. We sat on the stage and Professor McLiterati got pulled to go first. He was told to talk about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He told some dark detective story about a plot to overthrow the world and how John Wilkes Boothe was some sorta visionary magician thing that was really savin humanity. I dunno, it all sounded like a bunch of hooey to me. When he was done, though, he was disqualified for not having a duck in a shoe in his story. He looked pretty crestfallen at that and slunk away. Fortunately, I pulled second position.

"That wasn't the way that happened at all," I explained, leanin back in my chair some, "you see, he wasn't so far off in the plot to take over the world, but it wasn't Lincoln that was doin it, it was actually a race of space ducks from Andromeda. They'd destroyed their water-like world through over fishing and had to come somewhere where they'd have a chance to breed and thrive. Sadly, their space technology wasn't really up to intergalactic standards and so they just took an old shoe and wrapped it in plastic wrap. They gave the astroduck a couple of tanks of air and a tuna sandwich and sent him on his way. When he landed in Booth's backyard, he used his crazy spaceduck mind ray on Booth, who he mistook for a leader because Booth, being an actor, was practicing a monologue from Henry V and the space duck thought that Booth had an invisible army that he was leading into battle. However, when the duck learned the truth, he used his mind ray to get Booth to kill the president because the duck thought that whoever killed the leader became the next leader, which is what happens on Andromeda. Well, fortunately, Lincoln's spy network had detected the presence of space ducks on the planet and had taken precautions. They made a steam powered robot that was basically a bag of oranges and some 2x4s to impersonate Lincoln for a period of 2 months. Lucky they did, because Booth showed up at the theater and everything that night. After the shooting, the secret service caught the space duck, caught Booth, had a glass of fresh orange juice and got Lincoln out of hiding and he ran the country in secret for the next two years. At least, that's what I read in the encyclopedia."

The audience sat in silence for a little while, and I thought I'd lost the competition right then. But then the room burst at the seams and there was applause all around. It felt good knowin that I'd just impressed a bunch of story tellers with my story, I won't lie. After the applause died down, Mousy woman wasn't really able to say anything, so she forfeited. After the round, I went and had a snack with Douggy. I told him that, if I'd known how easy this thing was, I woulda entered years ago.

After that, the rounds went pretty smoothly until the final round on Sunday evening, just before which Alistair told me that they didn't know what was gonna happen when Earhart lost this thing, so the squimonk were gonna be hiding in the ceiling and Douggy was gonna be in the audience to whisk me away if anything bad happened. Well, that made me a little nervous going into the round. I had a little time to settle my nerves, I thought, since I'd drawn number three in the round. It would allow me to get into the swing of the competition. The guy who'd drawn first was an older gentleman from New York, apparently he was some sorta aspiring writer, but had just never made it. Instead, he ran store that sold Cardigans, pipes and used books. It was apparently very popular with the intellectual crowd there. We were all anxious to hear the topic for the round, so we could begin makin our stuff up. I kept glancin over at Amelia, seein if I could see any sorta Ice Giantiness about her, but she just looked like a normal woman to me. Finally, we were given the topic; spotting polar bears in the Arctic.

Sweater guy told a long and fairly interesting adventure story about the SS Shoe getting caught in the ice and how the men, led by Captain Duck (which I thought was a nice touch, I'd heard so much about ducks and shoes that I hoped I'd never see a duck in a shoe again), had to keep the ice away from the boat for the entire winter, working in shifts with picks and shovels to keep the boat clear of the deadly, crushing ice. All the while, though, a man had to stand in the crow's nest looking out for bears, who would appear out of nowhere and devour the men. It was full of adventure and heroism and, I'll admit, I got a little teary when Sam died.

When he'd finished, it was Amelia's turn. She pulled a water bottle out of her jacket and took a swig. Then, she took a deep breath and began on her version. She left the SS Shoe and Captain Duck, but, this time, it wasn't the ice that was most worrisome, it was the fact that they were fighting were-polar bears. And, she said, when a polar bear attacked a human, that human became a werebear as well. Then she said the only was to kill a were-polar bear is with a bullet made out of mercury, which is impossible to do in anywhere but the coldest climates, because mercury has a very low freezing temperature. So, the men forged mercury bullets to wage war on the were-bears.

Well, I was just stunned. I wasn't sure what to do, when inspiration suddenly hit me. I remembered watching on some nature show that polar bears actually have black skin, it's just their fur that was white. So, I started sayin that Captain Duck, worried about the invisibility of the were-polar bears asked for volunteers to sneak up to the bears and shave small circles in their hair, thereby spotting the polar bears, which would make them completely visible on the ice and would give them men the time they needed to prepare the mercury bullets.

Well, after a couple of rounds like this, which involved visiting the king of the were-polar bears to ask for a truce and a witch of some sort, Sweater And Pipe had no more to say and so dropped out of the competition. I was now just me and Earhart. We went back and forth for awhile, her jabbing with a magical curse that had to be lifted and me countering with pirate treasure containing a map to the secret ingredient needed in the potion to lift the curse. She'd shoot forward with a ghost army protecting the treasure and I'd come back with the fact that ghosts are color blind and so the men wrapped themselves in grey blankets to get past them. We went back and forth many times, and I could feel my brain getting tired. Fortunately, 4 hours into the competition, a dinner break was called.

I stumbled into the room and flopped down on the bed. "I don't know how long I can hold out," I mumbled into the pillow.

"I felt Alistair running up and down on my back, giving me a massage. "You can do it, Pat," he encouraged, "We all believe in you."

"She's just too strong," I said, feeling hope slipping away.

I'm gonna leave it there for now. There's more in the final round. I want you to know, though, with Christmas coming up and everything, I may not get back to this story right away. I'll do my best, though, to deliver the ending some time this week.