Thus I have Heard

Right now, we're zeppelinin our way down to Tallahassee, Florida for the 2008 annual NAMSU (that's National Association of Makin' Stuff Up, for short) Makin Stuff Up Championship, wherein I am to defeat Emelia Earhart in a makin' stuff up challenge. Well, right after Charles told me that, I had to ask him why I needed to defeat Amelia Earhart, who is a national treasure as far as some people are concerned. He explained some mighty strange and terrible things about that Earhart and why I needed to defeat her, and I mean to relay those things to you. I know I've got a reputation for expandin the truth a mite now and then, and maybe you're not gonna believe all that I'm about to tell you, but I'm gonna make an effort to stick as close as possible to Charles Lindbergh's story. If it seems like I'm gettin into some weird territory, don't blame me. So, here goes.

Lindbergh had himself a young son, Charles Jr. You may or may not know some of this, stick with me a bit, and I'll probably wander into some stuff you don't know. It'll be a little like when you go campin and you start out in your driveway, which is stuff you know pretty well, then you drive onto some dirt roads for awhile, eatin some beef jerky and singin along to Freebird or Dust in the Wind or somethin, which is stuff that you still kinda know, but you know less and less as you go on, then you drive into a black hole for some reason, which happened to me once, but that's a different story, and in that black hole, you and light and time get all spun around and you get all stretched out in body and mind and you get super heavy even though you haven't eaten nothin since last night because your sister Frank called you up early in the mornin, before you'd had time to have a decent breakfast, all in a tizzy fit because it's her son's 3rd birthday party that day and she bought white cake and her stupid husband Earl, who you don't think is all that stupid because he always beats you when you're playin cards with him and his buddies from the ammunition plant, bought white frosting and any fool knows that you can't put white frosting on white cake, and your sister Frank has to call you at 5:30 in the mornin to fix it and tells you that you got to go to Wal Mart and buy some strawberry frostin knowin full well that you ain't allowed into the Wal Mart in town anymore because of that thing with the rabies, and then you tell Frank where she can get her frostin, if you catch my drift, and she yells at you and makes you feel bad about some stupid thing you did when you was kids and then you feel guilty so you got to go all the way over to the next town to get to the Wal Mart there but you want to be back in time for the game so you take a shortcut your friend Douggy (who later turned out to be half ninja) told you about, but he didn't warn you that if you turned left instead of right on CR 114, you'd drive yourself into a black hole and so you're spinnin around thinkin about all of this and you don't know what's what anymore but then you're somehow magically spit out of the black hole and somehow you got a tub of strawberry frosting while you was in there. That's like the stuff later that you don't know nothin about, so just pay attention and we'll get there.

So, anyway, like I was sayin, Charles had a son names Charles Jr. Sadly, Charles Jr. disappeared one night. It was all the thing in the news for a long time there. There were all sortsa reports on the Lindbergh baby and the search for the kidnappers and whatnot, but nothin was ever found out. A little later, a coupla people came out and said they was the Lindbergh baby, but that was probably just to inherit the Lindbergh fortune Charles left behind as a decoy after he faked his death. As I said, though, no kidnapper or anything was ever found. Nothin was ever found publicly, that is. Charles used his massive fortune, which was enough to buy, at my nearest estimate, one hundred thousand gold toilets, to buy only a single gold toilet and then make inquiries about the real people responsible for the loss of his son. Charles soon learned that his son was kidnapped by a group of drug selling ninjas, which later turned out to be Clan Platypus, in order to harness the navigational power of his mind. They knew that they could never twist an adult Charles' mind, so they did the next best thing and kidnapped his son, who they planned to raise as one of their own. Upon further investigation, Charles learned that his flying rival, Amelia Earhart, had used her connection to him to break into his house and actually take his son. She was not a ninja, though, just working with them for reasons that will become clear soon. When Charles learned of this, he had her plane "disappeared" as she traveled around the world. That flight was itself a cover for the delivery of a new drug formula that would have been more addictive and potent than any known substance. As he told me, meth is a pale replica of that drug they produced. Fortunately, they were sending the formula to their factories in Siam in the cargo hold of Earhart's plane and so they lost it in the ocean. If that hadn't happened, we could all have been zombies right now.

But then, why was Earhart working with the ninjas, you may ask. I know I sure did but, then again, I am a naturally curious person. I'm not the kind to be deterred by a sign that says "Danger, Black Hole Ahead". If you are not that kind of person either, you may be interested to know. This is a tale that goes back a long ways; a real long ways.

When the Earth was young, and I'm talkin days old here, just after it congealed out of the space dust of the big bang, it was just a small ball of rock hurtlin through the cosmos at billions of miles an hour. It had yet to be caught in the gravity of our sun because our sun had yet to form. So, there's this little ball of rock, no air, no trees, no nothin, shootin through space faster'n you can shake a stick at. You with me? That little rock, which was to become our Earth, was covered in ice and was ruled by the Ice Giants. No one knows where the Ice Giants came from, this bein only days after the Big Bang, but the fact is that they were there, wanderin on this little rock of ice. Now, these giants had themselves a king named Ymir. Ymir was a good ruler, he always made sure his giants had enough ice and rock, which is what Ice Giants love best, and found ways to entertain them during the long, cold nights of the early universe. Interestingly, he invented the games of Cribbage and Risk during those times, because the giants needed games that would fill up their time, and those two games can really do the trick.

The giants lived in relative peace, that is, just the occasional scuffle when someone cheated at a game, and happiness for a couple of million years as the stars and suns formed around them. In time, though, the rock they were on got trapped in the gravity of a giant red star and their ice began to melt. Now, it's durned near impossible to have ice without ice giants, but they managed to scrap along. Soon, though, their rock began to heat, and the ice started to disappear. At first, they had enough to go around if they rationed it. In a matter of months, though, even rationing couldn't help them. Soon, real fights broke out among the giants, and they weren't even playing games any more. The fights got more and more brutal until, one day, the unthinkable happened. The giant Vafthruthnir picked up a rock and threw it at Surt, but Surt ducked and the rock hit Ymir in the head, killing him. This is the origin of the phrase "stone dead", which I was surprised to learn. When they saw their leader dead, all the giants armed themselves for war; real war, not Risk war. They also began looking for chemicals and formulas to strengthen themselves. Ymir's wife, Imla, stayed out of the fighting proper, but encouraged the giants to kill each other with a horrendous array of weapons. She found, that when a giant was killed, their children would automatically run to her, she being the only giantess, and they would cry. When this first happened, one of their tears crossed her lips, and she felt the strength that came from it. She bided her time, manipulating the giants and becoming strong off the tears of orphans.

When the battle was finally over, only two adult giants remained, Vafthruthnir and Imla. Vafthruthnir took it into his head to have Imla as a bride, not knowing that she was stronger than he. When he grabbed her to carry her into a cave, as was giant courtesy, she tore off him arm, beat him with it and then ripped him in half. Then she ripped the halves in half. Then, she did that again. She kept doing that until Vafthruthnir was nothing but mush, which she then mixed into the porridge of Vafthruthnir's children. After they ate the porridge, she told them what she had done. They cried and wailed, and she drank their sweet, sweet tears.

As the giant children grew, so did Imla's cruelty. She would promise the children puppies, which all children love, even children who were around before puppies. Then she would deliver a box, wrapped up nice as you please. The children would get excited and tear into the box finding not puppies inside, but razor blades. Sometimes there would actually be a puppy in the razor blades, which was even worse.

I'm gonna interrupt myself here for a second. I know this sounds like some sorta wild tall tale that Pat's just makin up, which is somewhat likely given that, on an average day, I spin enough yarns to make sweaters for all the penguins in Antarctica. I just want to assure y'all that ain't the case, though. This is all from the mouth of Charles Lindbergh, I swear on my aunt Rita's remaining leg.

Imla survived through the history of the world. As the Earth grew older, she found more ways to gain power and strength, but she always preferred orphan's tears. When the dinosaurs were around, she called down a comet in order to orphan millions of children. She took used an army that she had enslaved to gather the tears and store them in a cave. She gorged off those tears, growing fat as the life on Earth recovered. She was responsible for the Fall of Rome, for Attila the Hun and for the fall of the Qin dynasty. Through it all, she harvested and drank the tears of the little children. In the 13th century, she had an entire crusade full of children kidnapped and their parents killed. She hung the children by their ankles and let the tears drip on her as she rolled and laughed for over 10 years.

During this time, Imla began to hear of Clan Platypus and their desire to make zombies out of drug addicts. She met with their leaders and they formed an alliance. She would help them turn more and more people into zombies as long as they let her harvest the orphan's tears. They couldn't say no to the queen of the Ice Giants. Even ninjas know that killin one of them things is tougher than gettin rid of a hornet's nest usin a stinky sock on a long pole. So, they made themselves an alliance, she transformed herself into an aviator and changed her name from Imla to Amelia. The rest, I guess, is history.

Course, now all I gotta do is make up stuff better than a woman who's older than the sun and has prolly seen more than a fly in a house of mirrors. But I'm pretty sure I can do it.

Pat's Mission

I got up pretty early yesterday mornin. Round about 4:30, I got me some terrible heartburn. It felt like I'd swallowed me a cup of lava with some chopped habanero peppers in it, then threw in some fire demons from the 4th circle of hell down in there to stir it up with some light sabers. In short, I needed me some antacids right quick. I'm a wanderin' this way and that in Lindbergh's mansion, lookin for a medicine cabinet or whatnot. I don't ever find one, but I find this weird lab thingy that's got all these heads and arms and gears and stuff in it. I was a little scared at first, you know, thinkin this was just a plot to steal the head of Pat O'Neil and put it on display or whatnot. But then I figure, first, why would anyone want to display my mug anywheres that wasn't Halloween related or otherwise meant to scare kids away from something or another, second, who's gonna be visiting a display of heads in a secret underground bunker in the middle of no where. It's not like Lindbergh encourages visitors here, what with the razor wire and Siberian tiger and giant ball that chases people around. That last one, he said he got a good deal on it when The Prisoner wrapped production. The funny thing is, he says, is that the ball was actually a people eating ball. They just pretended that it wasn't because people would be horrified to learn that such a thing existed. In fact, so Charles tells me, the entire tv series was originally aired as a documentary, but people were so offended at what their country was doing that there were riots at the focus groups. Fortunately, members of MI5 were there to ship the troublemakers off to the island. Later, when they simply repackaged the show as fiction, people loved it. Why, you may wonder, did they show it in the first place? Well, this was in the '60s and even world governments were experimenting with openness. Plus, England was a little strapped for cash after their secret war with the moon spiders and thought a TV show could help them recover in time to have a beneficial trade alliance with the mole people, who were asking for a down payment of 5%. With all that, I felt confident that this was not all some wacky secret plot to steal my, or anyone else's head. So, I looked a little closer and saw that the heads were all filled with machinery and whatnot. It seems that Lindbergh has some sorta robot lab or something in his basement. There was one robot that looked kinda complete layin next to the door. It was slumped against a wall with its hair over its face, so I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, or a manwoman, like I saw at the circus that once. It was droopin like Dali's mustache after a shower and I could see a little switch in the back of its neck. Now, I'm like anyone in that, if there's a switch around, I just gotta flip it. I mean, what if it were an antacid delivery robot or somethin like that? Then I would be missin out on two things, seein a robot and gettin an antacid. So there I was, reachin out to touch the switch. I could feel its cold metal switchiness under my ring finger. As I started to apply pressure to the switch, I heard voices.

"Are you sure he's ready?" That was Lindbergh, I could tell because he sounded human, and he didn't sound like Douggy.

"I'm positive." That was Alistair. I could tell because he sounded just like you think a creature that was a combination of squirrel, monkey, some donkey, a little spider and a dash of giraffe thrown in there for good measure, what designed and built his own voice box would sound like, if you were the type to imagine those kinds of things. "He's been ready for this before we recruited him."

"I'm still not sure," Lindbergh said, "I want to..."

Their voices faded away in the distance. When I thought it was safe, I left the robot lab and followed the direction they went. I figured one of them would know where I could get somethin to fix the molten metal that was exploding in my chest. You know, now that I think of it, I bet that sandwich had something to do with this. I knew I shouldn'ta finished it all in one day. Honestly, I didn't really want to, but it was just too good not to eat. Plus, you know how it is when you have somethin deep fried. It's just not the same when you reheat it. The taste is there, but the crunch is all gone. Anyway, I followed the sound of voices until I reached the kitchen. There, I saw Alistair standing up on his hind legs on the counter while Charles was makin himself a sea monkey tortilla, I suppose for one on his burritos. Charles was in the middle of sayin somethin low and conspiratory when I caught his eye.

"Oh, hey, Pat!" he said. He's usually very nice, but he's got a weird way of speakin. Sometimes, he's real quiet, so it's hard to hear, and other times he's just a little too loud and friendly. It's like he doesn't know what a normal tone or level of voice is. That's OK with me, because my grandpa was sorta the same way. He lost his hearing because of a bomb in the first world war. The bomb itself didn't really damage him, but there was a German runnin right at him at the time. The bomb actually hit the German and his pointy helmet flew off his head, bounced off two ot three trees, flew up in the air and knocked out another piece of artillery that was headed right for the hospital tent, careened off another group of Germans who was about to rush my grandpa's position, knockin all of 'em flat, and makin the helmet shoot offa one of their heads. Then, the helmets flew two separate directions, each caught in the barbed wire that was surroundin pappy, and flew back at him at the exact same time with just enough force to pop both his eardrums. He was rushed to the hospital tent right away, which is where he met my grandma, and they saved as much of his hearing as they could. Later, he was one of the first people to get a hearing aid. He got one of the early, gas powered models that had to be wheeled around in a wagon. I was never sure if it worked because it made his hearing better or if it just made everyone yell louder to be heard over the gas engine. But, because pappy was always luggin this hearin aid around, and he could never really hear right anyway, he would shout when he was talkin to other people or mumble when he was talkin to himself. Charles is a bit the same way, only minus the gas engine, the wagon and the trumpet lookin things attached to his head with leather straps, at least so far as I've seen.

"Mornin' Charles. Mornin' Alistair," I said, "What are you two gents doin up so early?" 'Cause of the heartburn, I was squinchin and squeezin my face up a little.

I think Charles noticed that somethin was wrong, 'cause he asked, "Is something wrong? You're squinching and squeezing your face up a little. It looks like you've got some discomfort."

"Yeah," I told him, "I got some horrible heartburn here. I was just up lookin for an antacid or somethin."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle, which he tossed to me. "That one works pretty quick for me."

"Thanks," I told him, chewin a coupla tablets. It was like someone dumped ice water down my throat and I was instantly better. "Wow," I said, surprised, "That worked fast."

"Yeah," he said, almost silently, "It's a recipe I invented myself. Eating these burritos thrice a day is murder on my digestion. Sometimes, I wonder if it's worth it. But then, I think about the sheer horror of ninjas selling meth, and I realize that it is. Speaking of which, would you like a burrito? It's made with sea monkeys."

"No thanks," I tell him, "When I was a kid, my uncle Charlie bought me a Sea Monkey set from the back of a catalog. We was gonna raise them together for a sea monkey circus. The day the sea monkeys came, though, a civet cat got caught in the mail box, quite unbeknownst to Uncle Charlie. He was so excited to get the sea monkeys that he reached into the mail box without lookin, which was contrary to his usual habit after he got bit by that cottonmouth that once and the poison went right to his heart and he had to have it replaced with a baboon heart, which wasn't really that bad 'cept he always got a little worked up when people smiled at him because he thought they was challenging him to a fight and he beat up those teenagers that once when they mooned him and he went to jail for a month where he met aunt Sally who was in there for throwin feces at a guy at the supermarket because she had a baboon heart too and he was flirtin with her. They used to always say they were two people with one babboon heart, which was kinda sweet. Oh yeah, they lived in a tree, too. So, anyways, uncle Charlie reached in for the sea monkeys without looking and the civet cat took his arm right off, all the way to the shoulder. He was runnin around, hootin and hollerin and shakin his shoulder when the civet cat, poisoned by the baboonieness of Charlie's blood, died right there on his arm. He went right straight to the doctor, who told him that they coudn't remove the civet cat because it had latched onto his artery and if the cat was removed, uncle Charlie would die. So, instead, Charlie went to this guy Tom he knew who was a great taxidermist. Tom preserved that civet cat while it was still attached to uncle Charlie. So, for the rest of his life, Uncle Charlie walked around with a preserved civet cat stuck to his arm. I tried to raise my sea monkeys and train them in circuslike things, but it just wasn't the same without uncle Charlie helping me."

Charles looked a me for a second, then shook his head quickly. He asked me, "Pat, is any of that true?"

Well, I was a little chagrined, "Nah, not a word of it. It just came spillin out, really." I was afraid he was gonna be mad at me or something.

But instead, he turned to Alistair and said, "Amazing!"

Alistair responded, "I told you. He will never be more ready!"

"Ready for what?" I inquired.

"Pat," Charles began, "We have a very special mission for you. One that you are uniquely qualified to perform."

"Oh yeah? What's that?" I was getting intrigued.

"It has come to our attention that Clan Platypus is attempting to open up new markets. The rural areas are already saturated with meth, and so their distribution is progressing slowly there. They are attempting to market their product to writers now. They have formed a diabolical plan to start with the lower level writers, get them hooked on meth, and then work their way up the literary ladder until they can capture the minds of tenured literature professors at major universities. They can then use the influence of these professors to encourage meth use in the students, capturing a whole new generation of college educated adults who will then spread their meth use through new economic and social areas, destroying society as we know it."

"That sounds awful," I say, knowing how the liberal elite have done the same sorta thing, which is why no one college educated have ever voted for anyone but a liberal, because, we all know, tenured university literature professors are the most influential of all people anyone can ever meet in their lives, "What can I do to help?"

Charles and Alistair explained to me that the National Association of Makin Stuff Up (NAMSU for short) is holdin their annual Makin Stuff Up contest in Florida next week. Clan Platypus has put up some pretty tough competition who, on winning the championship, will credit her success in makin stuff up to meth. Their hope is that some people will start doin meth to get leg up on next year's competition and the snowball will start rollin. Even if there's someone better, the ninjas will assassinate them before the final round and Clan Platypus' ringer will win.

"This is very dangerous, Pat," Alistair explained to me, "and you don't have to do it if you don't want. However, there will be thirty squimonk in the ceiling and Douggy will be disguised in the audience in case something goes wrong. We will make your safety our only priority. All you will need to worry about is beating their ringer."

"I'll do it," I said, fully committed, "I trust you and Douggy with my life, and I want to do what I can to help defeat the evils of meth ninjas. Just one question, though. Who's their ringer?"

Charles looked at me and shouted, "The most evil woman in the history of time! Amelia Earhart!"

I was just as confused as you are now, but I gotta go practice my makin stuff up, so I'll fill you in on those details tomorrow or the next day.

Mystery of the Flaming Couch, Solved

I just had the most succulent, delicious, crazy go nuts fantastic meal I've ever experienced. It was a whole buffalo stuffed with a cow which was itself stuffed with a pig stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a quail stuffed with an apple. The whole thing was wrapped in bacon and sausage, battered, then deep fried. Then it was boxed in a giant box of waffles, wrapped in chocolate, re-battered and deep fried a second time. Then, it was sliced thin and piled up on a 40 foot long piece of rye bread, slathered in thousand island, sauerkraut and 15 kinds of cheese. Then, that sandwich was itself wrapped in bacon and deep fried, covered in powdered sugar and served with a side of nacho cheese for dipping. And that was just the appetizer! The main course had all sortsa weird ingredients like gecko sweat and snails' eggs. I wouldn't have eaten it, but I wasn't told about all that stuff until afterward. Boy howdy am I stuffed. I just wanted to put that out right up front so that y'all know that I'm OK after the flaming couch attack. I don't want you to worry yourselves needlessly. I also wanted you to know right up front that that Charles Lindbergh is one stand up guy. Now, I suppose, though, that I should tell you about the couch attack.

When we got hit yesterday, I wondered to myself why someone would be firin flaming couches at us and how anyone saw us to shoot flaming couches in the first place. But I couldn't ask no one because there was all this bleeping and whooping and this flashing red light that just kept spinnin around, makin me think about that time my redheaded cousin Chester got stuck on the tilt-a-whirl when the operator guy started havin some kinda crazy seizure and shakin around like a knock kneed, hypoglycemic, communist spy in Central Park on the Fourth of July whose eaten nothin but cotton candy and sweet tarts all day and has just spotted George Washington pumping iron and polishing a gun at the same time. And iron pumping George Washington knows. That's right, he knows what you're up to. Well, this guy's all shimmying and shaking like that and he's got his hand on the lever that makes the tilt-a-whirl tilt and whirl, so it's speedin up and slowin down like a first time driver whose water just broke, but who still don't know how to work a clutch. Chester's head is just swingin this way and that and he starts gettin really scared. It gets even worse when the guy's arm flies out an his hand gets bit off by one of the sitty places on the tilt-a-whirl. Well, after five minutes and about eight thousand gallons of vomit, the guy drops to the ground and Chester is free. Funny story, that guy ended up movin into tow and he and Skeeze had themselves a one hand band for awhile. But, with the slow, relentless passage of time, big band music fell out of vogue and they was forced to find other jobs. Currently, I think he's teachin the third grade down at Edward R. Murrow elementary. That red light was spinnin around just like that. (I don't know if you noticed, and I don't wanna toot my own horn or nothin, but that was a double metaphor I did right there. Don't be tempted to go out and try that right now, though. It takes years of practice in bein folksy to pull that off. If you try it too soon, your nose may try to eat itself. I swear, I seen it happen once.)

Well, with all the lights and sirens and whatnot, I don't have no time to ask anyone what's happenin. I catch some small snippets of conversation;

"...stealth damaged!"

"...thirty meters and closing..."

"...tanks still at full..."

"twenty five meters and closing!"

"Drop ballast! Drop Ballast!"

"twenty meters!"

"We're not going to make it!"

"Hide Pat! Hide Pat!"

"10 meters!"

"Brace for impact"

"In the thing! Under that thing! No, not that thing, the other thing! Yeah!"

"Impact in 2 seconds!"

Then, everything went dark as I was shoved into some kind of secret compartment thing in the floor. I didn't know what was happenin, but I could hear it. First, there was this big thump and the ship rocked a little. Then, there was a whole messload of footsteps, like goin to a centipede ball, 'cept these footsteps were pretty quiet and centipedes usually get themselves fancied up for a ball, wearin ties and heels and tap shoes and whatnot. You may not believe me, but them centipedes are excellent tap dancers. They learned everything they know from watching Gene Kelly movies and copying his moves thousands of times. So, I guess it wasn't quite like a centipede ball, but maybe more like a centipede sock hop, which are currently out of fashion in the centipede world. Then, it sounded like a bunch of men with hernias were slappin a boys' choir with steaks. It was all wet smacks and grunting and high pitched screaming. Along with that, there was a lot of bangin on the floor, like goin to an NBA game when someone's replaced all the balls with bowling balls. After that, there was silence.

After a couple minutes of this silence, the door to the secret chamber was opened and they let me out. I looked around and saw a bunch of guys with mullets and Lynard Skynard t-shirts layin on the floor everywhere. They was thin as rails and ghost white. Most of 'em was missin their teeth, too. They looked like a bunch of anorexic vampires what stopped by the dentist on the way to a monster truck rally or somethin. Over by one of the windows, there was a couple of gents all in black PJs with their shirts wrapped around their faces lyin very still.

"What's all this, then?" I ask.

"This," said Alistair, "is a platoon of meth zombies led by their ninja handlers."

"Well, didn't you say this was a stealth zeppelin?" I asked, surprised at the apparently dreadful state of squimonk stealth technology. "For all the good it did ya, you might as well have painted 'We're not here!' on the thing."

Alistair glared at me. "The cloaking device worked just fine until the flaming couch damaged it."

"Well, like I said, how'd they see us to shoot a flaming couch at us in the first place?"

"They didn't," he explained, "it was just a coincidence." He went on to explain that the meth ninjas had, for a brief time, experimented with large cannons as a way to deliver their products speedily and accurately. They gave up on the idea, though, after discovering that the math necessary to shoot a 200 pound package across two states and have it land safely within a 5 yard radius was just too much work. Plus, everything they put in it caught fire for some reason. So, they retired the cannon and went on to other things. The problem, though, is that they never took the cannons apart and sometimes the meth zombies, when they were tweakin pretty hard, snuck a couch into the gun and shot it off at random. Where they got the couches from, though, was a mystery. No one could ever trace where the couch had come from because, when a flaming couch shoots through a home, the last place you really look is two states away. So, since it didn't do their clan any harm, the meth ninjas let the zombies have their fun every once in awhile.

"Is that what happened to my Mable Lou?" I asked.

"Yes, it is," replied Alistair, and yet another mystery was solved for me. Now if I could just figure out how that one armed guy played the clarinet so pretty, I may be able to die happy. Alistair went on to explain that we just happened to be in the path of the couch gun when it went off. When it hit our zeppelin, it knocked out our cloaking device and, since we were in meth ninja air space, they boarded their bi-planes and attacked us.

"Don't worry, though," he finished, "we've got the situation well in hand. All we need to do is clean up some and we'll be right back on track."

Well, we ended up having to fly around for awhile more while the squimonk cleaned out the meth zombies and ninjas, dislodged the now smoldering couch from the zeppelin's hull and repaired the cloaking device so that Clan Platypus couldn't discover the whereabouts of Charles Lindbergh's secret base. After all that was done, we finally navigated our way to what appeared to be a stretch of desolate wasteland in the middle of Montana, set the zeppelin down and stepped out.

I looked around at the scrub brush and dust and told Alistair, "Y'know, 'cept for not havin any corn or soybeans, this looks a lot like Iowa."

He looked about to say somethin back when there was a rumbling from under the ground, like the earth had just eaten a mess o' bad oysters and a whole house lifted up from below. When I say house, though, it's like callin Notre Dame a church or Gettysburg a tiff. This house sprawled out like a 400 pound housecat in the last patch of sunlight. It stretched wide as the Montana sky. When it had finished rising up out of the ground, Charles Lindbergh himself came out and shook my hand.

He said, "Sing, oh muse, of the donuts of Pat O'Neil, son of Leonard, sweets that brought to the Iowans countless cavities, and hurled down into the bags pockets of cream and frosting, left to the children and pets to lick off and the desire of their parents for sweetened breads and coffee sated. Sing from when they first encountered one another, Alistair of the squimonk and noble Pat O'Neil."

To which I replied, "Whozawatsitnow?"

Alistair leaned over and whispered to me, "The Iliad. He likes to meet everyone with a quote from classic literature. I didn't feel like bringing it up. I was going to mention it just before we landed, but, you know, meth zombie slash ninja attack and all."

"Oh, that's quite all right," I told him, feeling lost in this strange new world.

"You must be tired!" announced Charles.

"Actually, sir," I responded, "I am feeling a might peckish. You mind if I get a sandwich or somethin?"

Then, he had that great meal made and sent me off to rest before he tells me any more. It's been a mighty exciting couple of weeks and I'm kinda excited to see what's next.

Zeppelining to Montana

I got up on Monday morning expectin to have some donuts, maybe some coffee. Also, there's a '42 International that came in, and I was thinkin that I'd watch the squimonk fix it up. They was thinkin about paintin it pink with red flames, but I told 'em that the guy who owned it couldn't be drivin around in a pink truck. It's old man Johnson from down the way. When he was a kid, his dad used to get the most awful heartburn. His ma always kept tellin his dad to stop drinkin the booze, but he had the Irish curse on him, so what could he do? Well, he kept drinkin and his heartburn kept gettin worse. Then they come out with that Pepto stuff, and it cleared old man Johnson's old man's heart burn right up. After a bit, he came into some money, no one really knows how, but there's something about balloons. Well, when he gets this money, he splits it pretty evenly between good whiskey and Pepto. He orders himself up a whole truckload of Pepto and has it delivered. Well, when it comes it, the driver turns out to be a distant cousin of some kind or another. They start drinkin and carryin on, as they were bound to do. After a couple of hours and a couple of bottles, they decide they're gonna go for a drive. Well, right when they start the car up, they get convinced they're bein followed by a red ghost, even though that's just the tail light shinin. They get the fire scared out of 'em, and floor the truck in first. The truck ends up burstin in through the living room of the house, and, because it's so much warmer in the house, this bein Christmas baking season where it's roughly negative hundred billion degrees outside and a cozy 350 degrees inside the house, the Pepto expands from the heat and starts to burst. There's pink and glass all over the place and Christmas is ruined for everyone. Eventually, the driver and old man Johnson's dad was picked up for trafficking in illicit helium and lived the rest of his days up the river, which may have been good for him. Ever since that Christmas, though, old man Johnson couldn't be near the color pink without weepin and he could never eat Christmas cookies without heavin a deep sigh beforehand. Well, since Christmas is supposed to be a happy time, the women down at the local church would make some special bunny cookies for old man Johnson so that he may think it was Easter. It would never work, because they couldn't resist and would always put hats and scarves and mittens on them bunnies. It wasn't good for old man Johnson, but their piping abilities always amazed me. Because of that, I told the squimonk they should paint his truck blue.

I never learned if they did or not because, as Douggy and I were enjoyin ourselves some cinnamon rolls, Alistair came out of the back and told me, "He wants to see you."

I shot back, "Well, he's sittin right across from me, if he wants to see me, he can look at me. I think he's more interested in the crossword than seein me right now, though."

Alistair cocked his head a bit and furrowed his brow. Then he told me, "Not Douggy! Good lord, why would I come out here to tell you Douggy, who is sitting across from you, wanted to see you?"

"That's what I wanna know," I respond.

"What?" he says.

"What?" I reply, thinking maybe we were havin two different conversations.

We both sorta reset and gird ourselves to try again. "Lindbergh," Alistair begins, tentatively, "Lindbergh wants to see you."

"Is that so?" I'm surprised at this. I get to meet myself a real hero, but I'm not quite ready. What if I say somethin stupid? I don't think I'm very prone to that, but it always seems like a possibility. "When's he gonna be here?"

"He's not," Alistair responds, "Follow me. You too, Douggy."

We follow him out of the shop, where there's a rope just hangin there. I look up, but the rope doesn't seem to go nowhere. It's like one of them magic tricks where the guy climbs the rope and disappears 'cept no one's climbed that rope that I can see. Course, if he really disappeared when he got to the top, I wouldn't be able to see him, so maybe there was a whole bunch of them yogis up at the top of that rope that were just waitin for me. I was hopin there was a lot of room up there, because yogis may be quite bendy, but I'm not. I'm no spring chicken and my joints don't bend all the ways they used to.

Alistair grabs that rope and tells me, "Hold this."

I do. That Alistair's got a pretty commanding way about him. He sorta reminds me of my mom when she'd call me by my full name. That would put the water in my knees and sometimes in my eyes. Even when I was 40, she could strike the fear of the lightnin into me. Sometimes, when Alistair talks to me, he sounds like that, only his voice ain't so high as mom's. Well, when he talks like that, it's like my body just goes ahead and does whatever he tells me to do without consultin my brain. Before I know it, I'm bein hauled up in the air into who knows what kinda weird yogi room in the sky. When I get up there, though, it's not packed full of yogis, there's just 5 squimonk, one who's foot is bandaged up.

I'm lookin around, gawkin at the secret room in the sky the squimonk seem to have, when Douggy and Alistair come in behind me.

Alistair yells, "All accounted for?"

"Sir," responds the bandaged squimonk. I think her name was Victoria, if I remember right.

"Then cast off," Alistair commands.

There's a couple of loud bangs and I can feel we're movin upwards, albeit slowly. It's like we're sittin in a living room that's on top of a basement full of jello that's not quite set yet.

"What's goin on?" I ask. "Why are we floatin in mystery room in the sky?"

"First," says Alistair, "it's not a mystery room in the sky, we are in a zeppelin. Second, we are in this zeppelin because we are on our way to Montana so you can meet with Charles Lindbergh. He's been looking following our mission and he feels you're ready to take on more responsibility. We've got to go to him because he never leaves his ranch. He's pretty paranoid, and rightly so. If Clan Platypus knew he was behind our turning on them, they would stop at nothing to have him tortured slowly and then killed."

"Well, if we're in a zeppelin, why couldn't I see it? Them things are bigger than a rhino after it crashes thanksgiving dinner and stays for extra pie."

"That, I suppose, is true, in its way," he begins slowly. "But you couldn't see the zeppelin because it's a stealth zeppelin. We have fitted this zeppelin with the latest squimonk cloaking technology. We have had one of our fleet of zeppelins parked over your house since our first meeting, for protection."

I understood that and asked some questions about zeppelin operation, so as to look interested. Then, I got to the point. I learned that day that it takes 4 days to fly a zeppelin from Iowa to Montana. I wondered why we didn't just drive. I figured we could be there in 18 hours or so, but the squimonk have a hard time driving anything but semis because people have a tendency to swerve wildly after seeing a squirrel monkey driving a car.

So, since Monday, I've been riding in this zeppelin on the way to Montana. Me and Douggy have been playing a lot of cribbage, too. I double skunked him one game, but he says I cheated. Other than that, it's been smooth sail...hang on, there's a noise outside.

HOLY MOTHER OF CLAMBAKE! Things have just gone all haywire! I think we've just been hit by a flaming couch! I gotta stop now!

The Unkindest Coffee of All

Until about 6:30 or so, it looked like it was gonna be a normal day. I'd gotten up about 5:30, tellin myself "Time to go watch the genetically modified squirrel monkeys make the donuts." That's a little joke I tell myself in the mornings. Course, it's not totally a joke because that's really what I'm gonna be doin. Whatever it takes to get you out of bed, though. I knew this woman long ago who had to sing Rocket Man to herself every morning before she went to work. She also had to flip the light switch on and off twelve times before she left a room and had to wash her hands a couple dozen times a day, but none of that really bothered me as much as hearin Rocket Man every morning. Not that it's an unlistenable song or anything, but she didn't ever bother to learn all the words, so she would sing the ones she did know extra loud. I can hear her now, "ROCKET MAN somethin somethin somethin EVER KNOWN!" So now, whenever I think of Rocket Man, I hear her version and can't ever hear nothin different, like that Bob Marley Exodus song that, in my head, goes "Exodus, second book of the Bible." Fortunately, they don't play a lot of Bob Marley on the radio out here. The Rastafarian lifestyle never really took off in the Midwest.

Boy howdy, I sure am off track. I was talkin about this morning. So I go out to the shop, that's Pat O'Neil's Body Shop, Refurbished Car Emporium and Donut Eatery, if any of y'all wanna stop by, it's just off the 15. We're sellin day old donuts for $2 a dozen. If you don't buy 'em, we'll have to give 'em to Albert, and he's already gettin a little chunky. Like I says, though, I go out to the shop to make a big ol' pot of coffee. It ain't just for me, a number of them squimonk loves them some coffee, but they don't know how to make it. It just blows me away, they're supposed to be hyper-intelligent, yet not a single one of them can make a decent cup of coffee. They've tried, oh how they've tried, but it always ends up tasting like coffee you'd get at some lonely convenience store in the middle of nowhere on a night black as pitch while you're drivin to see some great uncle or whatnot whose name you don't know and who'll just tell you about how big you were last time you were there. You know, that pot of coffee that's been sittin there so long it's turned solid, then, due to the forces of time and pressure, has turned back into a liquid that has more in common with the platonic ideal of mud than coffee. Now, go one step down on the coffee ladder from that cup, and you'll have squimonk coffee.

So, there I am, waitin for the coffee to brew, when a dozen squimonk come runnin in, holdin one squimonk in the middle. It's got a bandage around its foot, and it looks to be bleedin pretty bad. They all look a little panicky and Alistair's runnin around chatterin orders in some sorta squirrel monkey language I can't understand, but he's sorta wildly gesticulatin this way and that, sendin them squimonk runnin every which way. I sorta shout whisper, "Alistair, hey Alistair!"

He turns and glares at me, "Not now, Pat."

But I'm too curious to let it go, "Alistair, what happened?"

He turns all the way around and snaps, "I said not now Pat!" Then he turns and goes back to giving orders. Chastened, I sit and watch. The squimonk work quickly to patch up their companion. They cauterize the wound with this tiny laser thing, and then they patch up the foot with some gauze and bundle her off to the back room. Then they clean the entire shop in two minutes flat and all but Alistair disappear into the back where they do heaven-knows-what.

After that, Alistair comes over, pours himself a cup of coffee near as big as he is and sits on the donut display case facin me. "Pat, I'm sorry I yelled at you. I've been up for three days now and everything fell apart this morning."

"Well," I say, willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here, "you wanna tell me what happened?"

"It's a long story, and I don't want to go into the whole thing right now, but I can give you a sketch."

"Couldn't you just tell me?" I ask, "I ain't so good at interpreting art. That is, unless you want to give it in comic book form, then I would be ok."

"No, Pat," he sighs, sounding more exhausted, "a verbal sketch. I can give you an overview, an outline, if you will."

So I tell him, "I will."

He just shakes his head and moves on. Sometimes, that's the best way to deal with me. "It started out with Douggy's request. We stayed up for awhile tracing his family line; we're still waiting for complete results, which should be done here soon. Then, Charles needed to see me. So, I ran all the way to his place only to find out that he was worried about a new pocket of Platypus operating in this area, so I came all the way back and organized a scout party. Last night, we went to check them out and found out too late our intelligence was outdated. The Meth Ninjas have a new alarm system that we accidentally tripped. Since we were just scouting, we weren't really prepared for combat, but we fought anyway. The squimonk fought valiantly and were in the process of drawing out, when Victoria was hit in the foot with this," he took out a sorta disc with points all over it and threw it on the counter. In the middle was some creature that looked like some fella with a cannon talked to another fella with a cannon and said, "Hey, I've got an idea, how's about I load a beaver into my cannon, and you load a duck into your cannon, and we'll point the cannons at each other and see what happens."

"Good gravy, what is that thing?" I asked, sorta startled.

"It's a throwing star, sort of a classic ninja weapon," he responded.

"Uh huh," I said, pretending I'd already known that, "and what about that thing in the middle, the one that looks like a goose truck and a beaver truck collided?"

"That's a Platypus, symbol of Clan Platypus," he explained. I could tell his patience was wearing thin.

"How 'bout that," I said. "Learn somethin new every day."

"You sure do. Look Pat," he segued, "I'm gonna go see if the Douggy report is in and try to get some sleep, I'm running on fumes here."

"Sounds like a good idea, buddy," I responded.

So he slid off the counter and into the back.

I'd barely had time to digest this when Douggy comes through the door, yellin', "Three!"

"Three?" I ask, on more level footing. I always know Douggy's gonna say somethin weird, so I'm sorta prepared for it. A lot more prepared than hearing about a scoutin mission gone wrong or seein a new kind of creature on a new kinda weapon.

"We've sold three shirts!" he exclaimed proudly.

"Good work, Douggy," I congratulated him. "That's pretty good."

"Yeah," he said, slipping downward a little, "but I'm beginning to think you're right, it's not gonna be enough. Say, has your partner said anything about hiring me yet?"

I picked up the star thingy and started to fiddle with it, "You know, Douggy," I begin, "these things take time and--"

He looks directly at my hand, "What's that you're playin with, Pat?"

"What? This?" I gotta think quick, I think, but then that thought really takes up all my thinkin time. It's a real shame when all your thinkin time's taken up by thinkin about thinkin, I think. But then I realize I'm thinkin about thinkin about thinkin, and then my head hurts and I forget what I'm supposed to be thinkin about in the first place.

He takes advantage of my ontological paralysis, "It's a throwin star!" he says.

"What? This?" I ask, tryin to act innocent, "Nah, this is a hubcap off one of them Smart Cars. You know them tiny little cars what look like someone cut a car in half and slapped an extra set of wheels on the half car. They only need tiny little hubcaps and this is one of them. It's special order for a lady who lost one on her way to Rapid City. She couldn't stop and wait just then because she was on her way to a used battery collectors convention and she had to get there before the auction started because she had her eye on this mint condition '68 9-volt that was starting at a very reasonable price. I offered to sell her a perfectly good 9-volt for $.98, but she told me she had to have that '68 to complete her collection of 9-volts from the '60s. She said she'd pick it up on her way back. It just got delivered and I wanted to see if it was mechanically sound."

"Pat, I know a throwin star when I see one," he says, "Give it here, lemme see."

I can't keep nothin from Douggy; somehow, he always knows when I'm makin stuff up. So, chagrined again, I hand over the star thingy.

He takes one look at it and says, "What are you mixed up in?"

"Whaddya mean?" I'm still tryin to play innocent, even if it seems like it ain't goin so well for me. I'd think of a different strategy, but after before, I'm kinda scared to start, I may get lost in the maze of my mind where some half man, half bull thing will eat me. Maybe I should put string in my ears so that doesn't happen. Then I could spool it out behind be when I was thinkin and I could find my way back, like that guy did with that maze that once.

"I mean," he says coldly, "that this is a throwing star from Clan Platypus, the most evil, most feared clan of meth selling ninjas ever to walk the earth."

"You mean there's more than one?" Consarnit! He had me! I'd just given it all away.

"There used to be more," he said, "but they were all copying Clan Platypus and so they were wiped out."

"How do you know all of this?" I ask.

And he tells me, "I've been keeping a secret from you all these years, Pat. I'm gonna tell you now, but you gotta promise not to tell anyone else."

And because I promised him, y'all have to keep this under your hats, which you should now hang on to. When he told me this, my hat flew off my head, buzzed around the room like a UFO or something, then it landed and tiny men came out, stole a donut, pulled Albert's ear, then reboarded my hat, flew around some more, stuffed string in my ears and finally landed back on my head.

"I'm half ninja," he says.

"What?!" I'm quite surprised. After my hat returns, I ask, flabbergasted, "What does that even mean? How can you be half ninja? Isn't it an occupation?"

"Kinda," he explains, "my mom was a ninja and my dad was Irish. That makes me half ninja. Also, my mom trained me in the ninja arts when I was young, but when it got to the final test, pulling out a man's beating heart and showing it to him before he dies, I just couldn't do it. I mean, I pulled out the heart and showed it to the guy, but then I felt pretty bad for him, so I worked fast and put the heart back, reconnecting everything. Then I sewed his chest up and put him on a regiment of antibiotics, to ward off infection. After six weeks of recovery, he was good as new. It worked out in my favor because he started telling people that I could have killed him, but I didn't, so I got the reputation for being dangerous without having to really kill anyone. However, because I had not technically done what was asked of me, I could not be promoted to the rank of full ninja and would have to remain half ninja forever."

I pondered that for a bit. Not thinkin, mind you, but just ponderin. They're different. Ponderin is just like flyin an airplane over the surface of your mind. Gettin the lay of the land, if you will. Thinkin, on the other hand, is like walkin through your mind hoppin the Minotaur ain't gonna get you. Finally, I decided, "You're pullin my leg, Douggy."

"No he's not," said Alistair, coming from the back room.

"Whoa!" he yelled, "is that a squimonk?"

"Yes I am. I am Alistair of the squimonk, and you are Douggy, half ninja of Clan Coconut Crab," said Alistair and then they both bowed to each other.

All I could ask was, "Clan Coconut Crab? Why don't these clans name themselves after normal things? Why's it always Platypus or Coconut Crab or Banana Slug?"

"Shhh!" Douggy said, "Unless you want every bone in your head broken, don't let anyone hear you speak poorly of Clan Banana Slug. They are a clan of honor and wisdom!"

"Sorry, I didn't know," I murmured, thrice chagrined before finishing my first cup of coffee. "But still, why all the weird animals."

"Long ago," Douggy began, "when ninjas were first around, there was only one clan, Dragon Clan. They chose that because the Dragon is really the best of animals. It can rise high into the air or sink into the earth, it can wind its way on through the clouds on the breath of the wind or torpedo its way through the waters. It is bold when the time for boldness is at hand and it is hidden when the time for hiding has come. It is, at turns visible and invisible. On top of all that, it looks super stylish on a uniform. Dragon Clan was the first, but then a new way was discovered. Soon, Tiger Clan was founded by Takahiro Morimoto, who is like the Martin Luther of ninjas, and there were only two for a while, so they had to fight each other. Eventually the clans proliferated to such an extent that they started to run out of animals to name themselves after. Clan Coconut Crab was formed late in the game, due to dissension within Clan Featherless Chicken. Even if we did have to take a freaky crab that can climb trees, I think we're still a lot better of than Clan Anthropomorphic Representation of a Food Item. I mean, that's not even a real animal."

I couldn't really say much. First, there was just too much information. Second, Douggy had never sounded so smart and informed before. I just ninjology is really his subject.

"Douggy," Alistair said, "As you know, we squimonk are locked in a deadly battle with Clan Platypus, who created us to be their messengers and drug carriers by combining elements of squirrels, monkeys and various other animals. They are attempting to take over the world by using Meth to turn people into mindless zombies who will do the bidding of the Ninjas. We squimonk have vowed to wipe this clan from the face of the earth and are being assisted by Charles Lindbergh, who faked his own death after Clan Platypus kidnapped his young son, and who posed as a reclusive meth buyer in order for the squimonk to run an obstacle course designed to raise us into sentience. You know, now that I say all of that out loud, it sounds kind of silly and convoluted. Were anyone to want to know more, perhaps it would be best to start from the beginning. We don't have time for that now, but if that person were to have a slow day at work, or possibly a free evening at home in which they wanted to laugh so hard their shoes came out their nose, they might be able to catch up on the full story in a week or so. Alternatively, they may want to print out some pages and read them in the bathroom, I wouldn't be hurt by that."

"Me neither," Douggy said.

"I'm fine with that," I chimed in.

"Now that you know the whole story, Douggy Yamamoto-McBride, will you join us in our fight? Will you also drive the tow truck? We're really trying to get this Refurbished Car Emporium going, but we don't have cars to refurbish because we've got no way of gettin 'em here."

Douggy didn't even hesitate, or maybe he did, it's hard to tell with Douggy because everything happens so fast. "I would be honored."

So, that was my morning. After all the hubub, I was able to sit and enjoy my coffee and a maple long john.

The Douggy Dilemma

Douggy comes into the shop today, hootin and hollerin. Normally, I woulda just offered him a donut, or maybe a fender from 63 Cadillac that I got sittin in the back that I was savin for a special occasion. This would only work with Douggy because he's a fender collector. I've got my suspicions that he kept the fenders he pulled off Mable Lou and that he's been hidin them from me somewhere, but I can't confirm anything. Sometimes, I pretend I'm just stoppin by to say hi, so that he doesn't have time to prepare or cover anything up or maybe hide the fenders in the root cellar or whatnot. Problem is, though, you can't sneak up on Douggy. He can hear people coming from a mile away. Now, I may be prone to exaggeration every now and again, but Douggy can really hear you coming a mile away. He's like an eagle, only with hearing. Or maybe it's a shark, but with hearing, not smelling blood. Albert's pretty good at smellin blood. 'Course, he can generally only smell it if it's inside a steak or something. I don't think Douggy really listens to steaks or anything, but I could be wrong, he does some weird stuff. It's pretty convenient for him, this hearin thing, because he lives out by the drive-in, and he can watch all the movies without payin nothin. Everyone else has to pay their two dollars, but Douggy gets his drive-in movies for free. When the drive-in first opened, though, he ended up goin to the city council to try and get a law passed that they couldn't sell nachos or popcorn or anything, but they didn't listen to him, partially because you gotta have popcorn at a movie and partly because he didn't actually talk to them in a meeting, he just waited around in the parking lot of City Hall until they came out and then he jumped out wearing a gorilla mask and ringing a bell. When they looked at him, he'd yell "Ain't this annoying? Not as annoying as hearin everyone chew their popcorn! No on 48!" His campaign lasted about a week or so in the fall of '82, but since then, he's not allowed to go near City Hall or contact government officials of any kind. If the cops come, and they do come, he's gotta stand 500 feet from them. This didn't work out at first because they used to shout their questions and answers back and forth. That got a little old for everyone, so now all the cops took a semaphore class and the city made Douggy take a semaphore correspondence course. Of course, then all his neighbors took the course, too, so they'd know what was goin on and they could gossip about it.

Anyway, like I says, I usually woulda just offered Douggy a donut and a fender to calm him down, but I seen he didn't have his flags with him, so I knew the police wasn't involved. I also never once heard him use the word "gummint", which is how he usually gets real worked up. So, instead, tell him to shut his yapper, sit his split ham down in a chair and try to git straight. Once he done that, I told him to tell me what got him so worked up this time. I woulda sat him down and asked about his feelings, but I'm not Oprah or anything.

"That durned internet!" he yelled.

"What's wrong with the internet?" I asked. "Do we need to call the guy to come clean the pipes out again?" We've got this guy who does that. He only charges $20 or so, unless they're really clogged up. He's good, too. He's usually only under the house for ten minutes or so and then it's all fixed.

"Nah," he scoffed, "there ain't nothin wrong with the pipes, 'cept they're too big."

Well, I didn't know what to say to that. I was kinda worried the guy had been adding extra pipes down there and charging me without tellin me, and I don't wanna get ripped off.

Finally, Douggy took a couple breaths, had a cup of coffee, which calms him down, but that's because Douggy's so hyped up all the time because of that moose attack or clown-drowning-in-the-toilet-when-he-was-nine nonsense that caffeine actually slows him down. Then, he told me. "They're closin the paper," he says, "All the guys from the back room are gettin laid off. They tell us there ain't a market for paper papers anymore and they're puttin the whole thing online. So, I shoot back, 'What're you gonna call it, the news screen?' and they tell me that's a good idea. So now I'm not only gettin laid off, but they stole my idea and I'm not gonna get paid jack for it! And, that smarmy reporter who doesn't do nothin but make lists gets to keep his job!"

"Wow, Douggy, that's terrible," I said, not knowin what else there was. "You want a donut? Maybe a fender?"

"Nah," he tells me, disconsolate, "they ain't gonna help me none. But I have an idea to get by."

"Oh yeah?" I asks, "What's that?"

"T-shirts," he tells me.

"T-shirts?" I ask.

"Last night, I designed a shirt for your grand opening, and I thought maybe you could sell 'em on your writin thingy that you do."

"Oh, you know about that?" I ask, worried the whole thing about the meth ninjas was out.

"Yeah, of course I know about it," he tells me, "everyone in the world knows about it these days."

"You're kiddin me," I respond, knowing full well I've got a readership of three, two of 'em bein myself and Albert, and Albert only read it a couple times and quit, mostly because it didn't have nothin about blood hounds and partially because he's illiterate. "Did you read it?"

"Nah," he replies, "I heard on MSN that it was pretty lame, so I didn't bother."

Well, that was a relief right there, so I diverted. "What's that got to do with shirts?" I asked.

"You can sell 'em for me," he tells me, "just put a link up there and people can get a shirt to wear to your grand opening. I put your picture on it and everything. 'Course, I'm not great at these picture things, so it might be a bit blurry. But, like I says, maybe they can wear it to your grand opening and it will be like a party. If that works out, maybe you could get an artist or somethin to design another shirt for you. You know, make a contest."

"Douggy," I says, "the grand opening was last week."

"Oh, right." he says, "well, we might as well try anyway. I hear kitsch is all the rage with the kids today."

Well, I don't know what kitsch is, but I assume it's got somethin to do with shirts. I hemmed and hawed for awhile, but Douggy's been my friend since we was three and he pulled me out of that tractor engine I got stuck in when I was lookin for the little men inside ridin tiny bicycles, like my dad told me. So, I'm obeyin his wishes. If you want a grand opening shirt, you can get one here. I also sorta liked his contest idea, so I'm gonna think about that some more, cuz I cannot draw a squimonk for the life of me. They're very oddly proportioned, and they don't have stick figure bodies, which is all I can draw. That and penguins.

After agreeing to that, I tell him, "Douggy, I don't think this thing is gonna work out. You may get enough to buy a donut or somethin out of it, but you don't need to be buyin donuts, so, you'll have enough to buy a donut and not have to buy a donut, which seems like slaughterin a pig when you have a BLT in your hand. Not only is it unneccessary, but it's hard to do, and your sandwich might get all soggy and you could get poisoned or whatnot. And, if it goes really poorly, you may fall slip and fall over and your sandwich would be inedible and you may get eaten by pigs. It happened to my great uncle, 'cept he was eatin a ham sandwich."

"I ain't followin you," he says.

"Yeah," I respond, "that metaphor breaks down after a bit, doesn't it?"

"Sure does," he says.

Then we sat in silence for a while.

"I know!" he burst out, startlin me, "I could work for you!"

"Whaddya mean?" I ask.

"Well, you got this body shop and stuff, and I got a tow truck. You know I could be on call 24 hours a day, and I would only ask for enough to get by, you know, until you hit the big time and everything."

I was trapped. On the one hand, Douggy's my best friend, he's been there for me through thick and thin. He was there when I had to carry Aunt Rita to the hospital in that snowstorm after the deer bit her leg off. He didn't help me carry her or nothin, but when I got home at 5:30 in the morning, he had coffee ready for me. He'd even already poured himself a cup to make sure it was good. Plus he made me some waffles. On the other hand, though, I don't know how Alistair and the squimonk clan will feel about this plan, seems like they wanna keep in the shadows. So, I told Douggy I had a silent partner that I would check with. He seemed to take that OK. Once he was gone, I asked Alistair, and he said he'd do some research and check Douggy out, to make sure he was clean. I said that clean is a pretty relative term when it comes to Douggy, but Alistair meant that he'd check to see that Douggy didn't have no connection to Clan Platypus. If Douggy comes out clean, then we can give him a job. 'Course, I don't know why he wouldn't. Meth would probably only make that guy sleep. So, I guess I'm gonna have to wait a couple of days to see how it all turns out.

Flabbergastery

Hello. This is the author of Pat O'Neil. I was wondering to myself whether I should write this in character, but I decided it would work better in my own voice. Up until a week ago, I thought no one was reading the ridiculousness that I was putting up here. As of Sunday, I was aware of only three readers. That brought the total of people who had ever read my blog to 8 or so. Then, Sunday evening, I was told I'd been put on a "lamest blog list" on MSN. After some research, though, I discovered that it was actually PC World magazine's 11 Lamest Blog list. At the time, my heart sank a little. I consoled myself with the saying, "There's no such thing as bad publicity," but it did hurt some, I've got to admit. I mean, it's not as if I'm writing erotic One Piece slash fan fiction or anything. However, I was still going to just let it slide.

Then, this afternoon, I find 14 comments awaiting moderation. All of those were posted in roughly three hours. To those who like what I'm doing, thank you. To those who don't, I know this is not for everyone. I would like to make clear up front, and this seems as up fronty as this is going to get, I have no illusions about what I write. I know this is not literature. I am not expecting to change the world with the tale of a guy from Iowa fighting ninjas with an army of hyper intelligent, genetically modified squirrel monkeys with the financial backing of Charles Lindbergh. If you're expecting to find literature on the Internet, you should navigate over to the Gutenberg Project's homepage right now. I suggest starting with the Odyssey and working your way forward in history from there. When you get to Huckleberry Finn, follow Hemingway's advice and quit reading before the boys free Jim. He was right, everything else after that is cheating.

The reason I began The Adventures of Pat O'Neil, and the reason I will keep writing, whether anyone reads it or not, is that our world needs a little ridiculousness. Stand up from your computer and look around you. Our world looks like its falling apart. Our economy is failing because no one was on watch. Much of the time, it seems our government is out to make our lives as unlivable as possible (don't believe me? Go to the DMV. Better yet, try dealing with DHS sometime). Our children have forgotten how to go outside on a nice day and just stare at the sky for an hour or so. Now, when you stack all of that up, maybe we need something we can acknowledge as utterly, totally insane. We can, and I include myself in this, live for a little while in Pat's strange world, knowing that, when the insanity is too much for us, we can step out again. That's why I write it. I need that. I need to know that there is a place that weirdness can have a safe home. A place that weirdness can live its brief life in our heads, make us simply happy, and then blow away like crushed leaves. From everything I've seen in the past couple of years, the natural home for weirdness is the Internet.

I am not ashamed of Pat or my writing. I am not ashamed that it is silly, confused and frantic. I do not feel bad that some people don't like my brand of humor. I've been dealing with that since I was a wee lad. I am going to continue Pat's story because I enjoy it. If you enjoy it as well, you are welcome to come. If you don't, that's all right. Maybe you could try out Dave Barry's blog. He's pretty consistently funny. If that doesn't work out, keep trying, you'll find something you like.

For those who stay, thank you. Now let's fight some Meth Ninjas.