Metal Reviews

In the spirit of Zad's literary opus, I have decided to post this. It's a story I wrote years ago about one man's quest to molest aliens. Yet unlike Zad's, this is a completed and finished story. I will post one chapter every so often, and each comes with it's own subtitle. So here it is, Maycee Poobar's Entrail Blazers. Enjoy.


OOPS…TRAGEDY
Just before you are reincarnated into a human being as punishment for a previous life of debauchery as a parking attendant, or as a reward for being a particularly pleasant gnat, there are two things you really should pay attention to. Firstly, you won’t get anywhere by leading a solitary life spent meditating and being good to all the creepy crawlies of the Earth. The reason for this is not out of some morbid attempt to sow despair and hopelessness, it’s because such a life keeps the reincarnation system in a perpetual state of continuation.
To explain; let’s say that every living thing on this planet that has ever existed still does in the form of whatever creature it has been assigned depending on the life it led previously. That way, we have today the exact same amount of organisms roaming, flying, scuttling, crawling, swimming, and photosynthesising as we always have, thus everything is spiritually recycled equally. But what happens when a friendly and polite paramecium has worked his way up through the ranks to become, say, the Dalai Lama, then eventually dies (manically taking a flaming trainload of innocent Buddhists with him while screaming “I’ve had it with being so nice”)? What then? The whole process has to be repeated, thus the spirit of the original paramecium never breaks out of the cycle, unless…

Halfway through his journey of spiritual enlightenment (and unexplained psychotic episode), the paramecium is raised to the rank of a Double Breasted Swamp Tit, a now extinct Portuguese sparrow. No problem, we’ll just make him a Sunny Merchant Brimdooly, a type of tropical fish that stands as the same spiritual level as the sparrow. Oh wait, the Sunny Merchant Brimdooly doesn’t exist anymore. Why don’t we assign him to the Bushy Tailed Tree Stoat family… oh darn. What do we do? We may just have to apologise politely and demote him to a Spangle Toothed Tefnar. Guess what? That type of tortoise died out last year. Why don’t we make him an ant? There are plenty of them. Nope, all the ant vacancies are filled by dentists and we don’t have any more room.

So then I guess we’ll just have to grant this paramecium spiritual omnipotence by default, not because it earned it but simply because there are no places left for it to go. Given the savage rate of man made extinctions over the years more and more beings are riding the gravy train to god status without the proper qualifications and as a direct result the universe is becoming increasingly congested with grossly incompetent gods. Which brings us to the other point.

Always ask for a receipt. When a spirit is about to enter a new body it is so consumed with joy, despair, or indifference that it never thinks of asking for one. The policy for issuing receipts is a well kept secret, but one which you have every legal right to know about. The reasons being that A: a disgruntled spirit inhabiting the body of a Crimson Livered Mountain Gnu has been put in that body for a reason, and an inevitable refund would mean having to find a species of equal status but satisfying to the complainant, an obviously impossible task. And B: that giving humans a refund is very tricky indeed, especially when they are out in the open with a lot of other people around at the time. It is hard to be descreet about ascending a person into the heavens for negotiations into what they would prefer to be without some cult or religion leering up to explain the whole affair and causing another excuse for a war.

As a result the gods are very reluctant to hand out receipts, and even more reluctant to grant a refund if you are not totally satisfied with life. Yet one man did demand a receipt, and after reading life’s brochure and experiencing it for himself he knew he had to get his refund. This is his convoluted and frequently vulgar story.

It is also worth mentioning the fine print at the bottom of the brochure, the last line that reads…
Welcome to life. Here’s a kick in the scrotum to get you started.

ALL’S WELL THAT SMELLS WELL
A medieval catapult stood alone on a slight rise in the middle of a vast, rolling countryside while a cool afternoon breeze failed to displease the chittering groups of starlings sitting in a nearby shrub who were letting anyone who would listen know just how darned good they felt. A couple of clouds on the horizon saw how crisp the sky looked over here and politely made their way around while the lush grass just simply grew very slowly, but with a smile.

If someone wasn’t paying attention to this smacking good afternoon it was the man locked away in a small wooden shed at the base of the hill. Hunched over many sheets of plans laid out on a table, the thin, wiry little man with lank hair and sneaky eyes plotted and planned by candlelight. Thin cracks in the boarded up windows allowed only thin beams of daylight to seep through on sharp angles, and the sounds of the happy starlings was barely audible over the mournful wail of a circus midget kept in a small cage in the corner. The man, losing concentration in what he was doing nudged the huge German Shepherd that slept at his feet. Immediately the dog sprang at the cage, snarling and snapping through the bars at the terrified prisoner who cowered backwards then fainted. With a satisfied snort the dog returned to where it lay at went back to sleep. This was the shed of Tory Smeg; one time celebrity now turned eccentric artillery officer. The catapult that he owned would be used today the same way it had been on this date for the last seventeen years. It was to prove a wild and improbable point.
But first a little background on our hero.

Many years ago Smeg had been leader of a special Eastern European peace suppression force, operating in some of the most hostile places on Earth. Their missions varied wildly, but Smeg excelled in them all and earned the praise and admiration of the entire world. He had received honours for single handily stemming the tide of destruction wrought by the annual urban Leaping Whale migration by using nought but song. He had shown remarkable initiative by recruiting monkeys to defeat the Glaswegian Warrior Clowns in an epic battle on the Steppes of Whippy Dee. Women would get all swoony at the sound of his name, children fought in playgrounds over who would get to play Smeg and who had to be a monkey. His face was marketed in every possible way and adorned everything from lunchboxes to ice-cream cones. Men wanted to be him and mothers wanted to own him. His catchphrase became the catchcry of an entire generation. Teenagers flocked to service stations in the middle of the night for reasons known only to themselves.
What he does these days is nothing short of strange.

So what happened to Smeg that made him the recluse he is today? Sitting at his table making notes and calculations, Smeg often found himself thinking back one fateful night exactly seventeen years ago that was to change his life forever.

During an increasingly routine drinking binge with his friends Manuel and Fredrik, a Spaniard and a Swede who spoke very little English, Smeg had decided it was time to go home after the two of them began their increasingly routine argument. Manuel claimed that the Irish had discovered the New World, Fredrik insisted it was the Red Baron.

Walking home alone feeling wobblier than Marilyn Monroe’s bum, through a suburban park that he often used as a short cut Smeg had suddenly found himself (to his considerable surprise) being hoisted up into the sky in a tube of blue light.

When he came to, Smeg realised he was clamped tightly to a cold, steel table. His throbbing head felt like his brain had taken advantage of the situation while he was unconscious and invited all the organs over to have a few quiet drinks and watch a video. Things started to get out of hand when those pesky lymph nodes caught wind of what was going on and turned up uninvited with a beer keg and a bunch of their nerve mates from the optical refraction department, who were renowned party animals.
Of course things got ugly when the lymph nodes put on their punk records and started breaking furniture and the organs began an argument with the nerves over the petty bio-hierarchy and that they were tired of the arrogance they constantly displayed.
They ensuing punch up was only ended when the brain turned the music off and told everyone they party’s over, and to get out now because they had abused their time off so he was going to restore consciousness to Smeg.

Once everyone had cleared off the brain reviewed the broken chairs and psychological devastation they had caused. This’ll take a few years to clean up thought the brain, and with a deep sigh woke Smeg.

The eyes obviously hadn’t sobered up properly yet because the room they saw was spinning and blurred. When Smeg’s eyes eventually did come to grips with his surroundings he really wished they hadn’t, for wheeling a large Victorian bicycle toward him and a glint in its eye was an enormous prawn.
Smeg’s brain decided to turn in early and curl up on the couch with a video.

A chime from his wall clock brought Smeg back from his daydream. He looked at the time and cursed, he was way behind on his work and the show was going to start very soon. He stood up and walked over to the cage to see if the midget was still alive. Thankfully it was because these things are hard to come by. Commanding his dog to guard the cage, Smeg put on his sunglasses and went outside into the splatteringly good afternoon to prepare the catapult.

SOLARIUM COOKERY CLASS

It was no small task catching such a tiny man in the first place. Circus midgets may look helpless and weak but by Christ they can run…and bite. That is why ambush is so important. You really have to find the right place to hide, like under the gypsy wagon since timing is crucial, for if they see you before you pounce they will scuttle under a pipe organ or something and scream until the bearded lady comes and beats you up. The noise they make once you’ve bagged them is quite astonishing so have a shovel handy to beat the bag until it’s quiet.

Smeg, being trained in such things, found such a task fairly routine. He was almost spotted by a hired posse of Glaswegian Warrior Clowns but quick thinking and a freak bolt of lightning saved him.
The real task for Smeg was finding a suitably sized stars and stripes jumpsuit with matching helmet at 2:am. But that night he was wearing his army pants, a sure sign that he was not mucking about and he achieved all tasks with minimum fuss. He made it home long before sunup to begin preparations for the day’s events.

As the afternoon gradually wore on, several kilometres away a large and expectant crowd had gathered. What was normally an open rural field had been transformed almost overnight into a carnival filled with locals and tourists alike. An enormous Ferris wheel dominated the countless stalls of fried food, fairy floss, rigged games, lost children, and poxy and potentially devastating rides. Throughout the day people won games through some cosmic breakdown of chaos theory and laughed, or rode rickety roller coasters after fried lunch and had to sit down the rest of the day, children’ balloons gave them the slip and escaped to freedom, but overall a good time was being had by all.

What really made this particular carnival unique was the centre stage. An oval of grass the size of a football field surrounded by wooden bleachers, this field was not unlike any other, save for the large, red target painted in the centre. Throughout the afternoon the seats were beginning to fill with people wanting to get the best view, and by late afternoon the stalls were all but deserted and the stadium was full and those who missed out on a seat had brought their own. People talked excitedly among themselves about what they were about to see, others checked their watches impatiently, yet all seemed to glance expectantly toward the clear sky above.

Soon there was a rough trumpeting over the crackling speakers and from a gap in the crowd came the show’s announcer standing in the sidecar of a gaudy pink motorcycle. The cycle made a lap of the field while the short, podgy man in the sidecar waved and smiled until it came to a stop over the red bullseye. Hopping awkwardly out the little man, who wore a cheap tuxedo complete with top hat, addressed the cheering crowd.
‘Laaaaaadies and gentlemen!’ he began in his thin voice, which crackled over the ancient P.A system.
'‘Welcome to the latest and greatest event in the history of the world!’
Great applause erupted from the crowd.
‘Today you shall bear witness to nature’s freakiest event. An event we have proudly capitalised upon for your enjoyment before anyone else had a chance to. An event so astounding and fantastic that few are so lucky as you to see it for yourselves!’
More cheers and applause. Subduing it with a wave of his hand, the little man’s voice dropped almost to a whisper.
‘No-one really knows why or how it began seventeen years ago, but since its beginning this wonder of the universe has been as defying the laws of man and nature alike. Every year it comes, same date, same time. What cosmic event brings such entertainment to us with such admirable punctuality? Only the gods themselves truly know.’
Checking his watch, the little man suddenly smiled and whirled uncoordinatedly into the sidecar, the rider starting the engine. Yelling over the noise the announcer waved, bowed low and tipped his hat.
‘It is time ladies and gentlemen!’ he cried ‘Behold the greatest show on Earth!’
The crowd erupted into deafening cheers as the motorcycle made one more lap of the field and exited from whence it came. Soon the cheers died down and an almost electric tension could be felt as the crowd stared excitedly into the sky.

Back in his shed Smeg was having a few problems. That damned circus midget had broken free of its cage and had crawled, screaming, under the table. Smeg crouched down but every attempt to grab the thing resulted in a nasty bite or scratch. Checking his watch, Smeg was starting to get anxious.
‘Get out of there you little bastard!’ he bellowed ‘We’re going to be late!’
With a whistle he called his dog and pointed at the cowering creature under the table. The dog grabbed the midget by its jumpsuit leg and started to drag the wailing little man out from under the furniture. Smeg prodded it from the other side with a broomstick until finally it was clear. Running around to where the scratching, clawing, screaming thing was being held by the dog, Smeg gave it a mighty kick in the guts.

Dragging the limp little stuntman outside and up the grass slope to where the catapult stood, Smeg strapped it securely into the saddle of an old motorcycle. He placed the matching stars and stripes helmet on its head, checked that the sidecar was full of potatoes, and wheeled the bike up onto the catapult.
Starting the engine and letting it idle, Smeg checked the rope tension, wind trajectory then his watch.
‘Almost time.’ He thought and gripped the launch handle.
Sweat poured down his brow, the engine rumbled, and he counted down the seconds. 7, 6, 5, 4, the midget came to, 3, 2, 1…KAFLUNK!

The motorcycle and its unwilling occupant were hurled in an arc at terrific speed high into the air. Smeg watched with pride as the rumbling, screaming object drew smaller and smaller into the distance before disappearing beyond the horizon.

‘There it is!’ cried that one person who always does that in a crowd.
The crowd hushed, completely awestruck. At first it was only a tiny dot, yet it grew larger with every instant as sailed down from high above. A great rumbling and wailing preceded the falling object. Soon the crowd could see clearly that it was a circus midget clad in stars and stripes jumpsuit astride an old motorcycle with a sidecar full of potatoes, and it was right on time; like it had been every year since it began. Down it came, only one hundred meters from the ground and right on target. Yet something happened this year that no one expected, least of all Smeg. As the bike fell a missile streaked across the sky and intercepted it and exploded in a spectacular fireball. All that made it to the ground was a blackened, smoking motorcycle helmet.

i just read the first bit and it quite a bit of lol in it.

i'll start the second one now

Awesome!

LAWN PORRIDGE
The headline the next day read NO MORE OF THAT: Government says. Smeg put down the paper and sighed with a weariness that one usually reserves for parking tickets and eggs that no matter how many attempts you make always turn out hard-boiled instead of runny.
Smeg fondled a small piece of paper he always kept in his pocket. ‘Well,’ he thought to himself, ‘looks like the party’s over.’
He really hadn’t made his point yet with that one, but since “they” were onto him he decided he’d better come up with something new. He had plenty of ideas, it’s just that they were too difficult to maintain over long periods of time such as the giant foghorn that counted down the early morning hours in no particular order or punctuality.
Others, such as loop the loops in bus terminals, just simply didn’t get his point across.
Smeg decided he needed to get drunk. Sadly the only local place to partake in such an activity was the dreaded Chicken and Fanbelt.

The Chicken and Fanbelt was to public bars what ANZAC day is to the modern Australian military: out dated, irrelevant, and a shameless excuse to get blind rotten drunk.
Situated uncomfortably between a mushroom processing plant and a mime school, the Chicken and Fanbelt seemed to sulk like an old man who had finally accepted that age does not qualify as wisdom. It was a largish building that tried desperately to pass itself off as classy but was in reality nothing more than God’s waiting room for the elderly. The clientele were a festering mixture of rednecks, losers, alcoholics, wife beaters (though none had wives, you just kept them away from yours), and overenthusiastic gamblers who spent thousands of dollars in the sacred quest of winning thousands of dollars.
If there were a legal minimum set for intelligence the collective I.Q of these people would amount to a hefty fine or a possible six-month jail term. They disliked the staff, the staff loathed them in return and management always gave the staff proverbial kicks in the scrotum then demand an apology and thank you.
Upon walking into the Chicken and Fanbelt one would immediately be compelled to start organising a hobby for retirement, for the alternative is to become one of these disgusting slobs.
Long, gaunt faces neither dead nor living, covered in splotchy skin with bulbous, red noses that looked like they had been used as a chew toy for a papillon then surgically reattached with bird shit adorned each drunkard who sat silent and stinking in the exact same place they had since the Permian.
Whether any of them were actually dead no one neither noticed nor cared for the smell would be no different. It was difficult to tell because those that had died and sat preserved by the alcohol still retained the drinking reflex. They most likely kept this twitch in the grave (cremating these people is hazardous – hence the six kilometre exclusion zone around the crematorium in case there is an explosion) but it did deeply disturb relatives at the funeral when the eulogy was interrupted every five minutes or so by a loud thump from under the coffin lid as the hand tried to reach the mouth.
Just leave them where they died and no one would notice.

Smeg opened door and was greeted by a warm, smiling stench. A noxious cocktail of body odour, cigarette smoke and urine soaked into every pore of his skin like a sponge. Swallowing the urge to kill them all, Smeg headed for the bar. He passed the rows and rows of glittering poker machines with their tinny tunes and captive players on their sacred quest of acquiring hundreds through spending thousands staring blankly at the spinning screens like human lab rats in some bizarre scientific experiment. At the far end of the room stood the small stage where this weeks Elvis wannabe #32 was just winding up his act, which was an exact carbon copy of all the others that ever played here. After finishing a droning, nauseating version of Under the Boardwalk he bowed, thanked the crowd for their warm round of indifference and headed to the urinal to contemplate suicide.

Breathing as shallow as he could, Smeg finally made it to the bar but was rudely cut off by a man named Barney Longbottom.
Barney Longbottom, aged 76, appeared to be in his early 200’s. Born in a dog kennel only three kilometres from the Chicken and Fanbelt, it had taken Barney only three years to discover the bar’s existence and settle into his stool, where he was to remain the rest of his life.
Sadly, any attempts on Barney’s life made by the gods had been in vain. He had survived both world wars (not that he ever participated in anything dangerous, but the catering corps earned many a medal for their battered fish biscuits), and the back of his head being set alight by mischievous young local boys.

Smeg watched the bow-legged old bastard sidle up to the bar, belch, and blow the foul wind quite intentionally into the bartender’s face. Smeg saw that the young bartender was clearly not amused and obviously would have preferred to be a mite clinging to Satan’s still glistening post-sex pubes than babysitting these de-evolved orang-utans. Smeg watched the ensuing exchange unfold before him, and the more he listened the more he wanted to rip his own head off.
Barney stood in front of the bar and didn’t say a word. The bartender knew what he was doing, but would not give the satisfaction of getting the man’s drink without being asked for it first. Barney stared blankly at the beer tap. ‘Can I help you?’ asked the barman.
Without saying a word Barney simply pointed at the beer tap, accentuating the gesture through flatulence. The bartender understood but would still not concede to such bad manners, yet at the same time he knew this old disgrace was about to perform a time honoured and perfected display of aggravation. He asked again. ‘Need something?’
‘Gimme a beer.’ Began Barney.
The bartender replied with a less than subtle hint of sarcasm. ‘And which of our thirty or so beers would you like?’
The look on Barney’s face was one of sheer surprise. How could anyone not know what he wanted immediately without him even having to say so. ‘I want a Rogers Ale.’
The bartender pours the said beer and places it on the counter, expecting the money for the drink. ‘There you go, that will be a dollar eighty.’
This is normally when a sale and purchase are drawn to a close. A customer requests a product, that product is exchanged, and the product paid for. That’s how it works in the real world but this is the petrii-dish microcosm of a bar and such economic systems do not apply here.
Barney made a face of sheer astonishment. ‘A dollar eighty! For a Torbman’s Light?’ he cries.
The bartender glares with sheer hatred at what stands before him.
‘A dollar eighty for a Rogers Ale,’ he says coldly ‘just like you asked.
‘I always drink Torbman’s Light! I’ve been drinking here for seventy-three years and have always drunk Torbman’s Light! Gimme a Torbman’s Light!’
The bartender stared with burning hatred at the rambling fool in front of the bar. Slowly he poured the beer and placed it on the bar, waiting for it. He knew it was coming…it came.
‘Where’s me dash of lemonade?’
‘You didn’t ask for a dash of lemonade.’
‘I always have a Rogers Ale with a dash of lemonade!’
‘You asked for a Torbman’s Light.’
‘Who the hell drinks Torbman’s light? Gimme a Rogers Ale with a dash!’
Placing the drink on the bar in an almost Zen like calm the bartender extended his hand to receive the money thinking surely this is over now. Barney wasn’t going to let him get off that easily.
‘Where’s me Riesling?’
Slowly, menacingly, the barman retracted his hand. ‘You didn’t ask for one.’
‘I want one! Gimme two Rieslings!’
‘Look you silly old sod! I’m not bloody psychic!’
Oh but he was. He knew he was latently psychic; being able only to tell which song would come on the radio next, but the ranting tirade before him suddenly triggered the awesome powers that had lain dormant within. Powers that had slowly building up in the past few years due to his constant exposure to such high levels of frustration.
He began to feel a strange sensation like pins and needles shooting down his arms. Glancing down he saw that his palms had begun to glow with a faint blue light. All over his body he could feel his skin tingle and hair stand on end. Smelling smoke, the bemused bartender looked at his sleeves and saw that they were smouldering, and his feet were starting to leave the floor. Slowly he rose into the air, his body crackling with psychic energy. Oblivious, Barney Longbottom continued to rant, until he made that final mistake and changed his mind.
‘Just gimme a water instead.’
Holding out his arms, the bartender gave an unearthly scream that shook the walls and busted glass as a pair of bright blue beams of energy shot from his outstretched palms and lifted Barney into the air so the two adversaries were level. Eyes devoid of pupils burned deep into Barney’s shallow soul for an instant, then a blinding white blast of raw energy burst from the bartenders gaping mouth and sent the charred corpse of Barney Longbottom shooting across the room. Dead even before he hit the far wall, his ashen body crumbled to a smoking ruin. No one even looked up from their beer or poker machine. Life, it seems, is too complicated for their attention. Best ignore it.
The frazzled looking barman returned to earth and looked Smeg in the eye. Smeg hesitated for a moment. ‘Erm, can I please have a Rogers Ale?’

Somewhere, up on high, the gods rejoiced. In a roundabout way they had finally killed Barney Longbottom. There would be a feast this night.

MEAT SALAD
'Yarrgh, the ocean hides many treasures,’ any old sea captain will tell you, ‘yet she has many terrors guarding her depths, terrors that would rise up and kill a man at thirty paces. Aye, t’is true. She is a demanding mistress, the sea. Ancient mysteries of the deep lurk and scheme and plot the murders of sailors foolish enough to trespass ‘pon where they don’t belong.’ The sea captain will then shake his pipe at you. ‘Be warned ye yellow lubbin’ landlubber! For greed in the hearts of fools seeking treasure will lead them to their watery deaths, aye. Now let me stretch me pants! Aye, the salty air makes ‘em be too tight. Hoo! Cabin boy, do me eyes deceive me? Look men! To starboard! A pod o’ trousers! Now get out of me face and man that harpoon, aye me hearties yarrgh!'
From the Broadway musical The Pirates of Menspants

Of course all this is rubbish. There are obviously dangerous and sadistic gribblies in the ocean that will prefer to sting you to death or rip you to shreds rather than simply move away, but nothing as terrifying as described so eloquently by your average salty sea captain.
There are, however, ancient mysteries of the sea, which no matter how hard they try are never discovered. Take Beasts of the Sea for example. They are an organisation of super intelligent (and slightly insecure) megaplankton, a race that attempts to draw attention to themselves as an advanced society and all the wonderfully creepy things getting about on the ocean floor. The Beasts of the Sea realise that space is, was, and probably always will be the vogue of human exploration but stubbornly try to change the public’s attitude that there is fuck-all down there but googly eyed fish.
All of their plans to get noticed seemed to fail. They couldn’t just introduce themselves to the world because that would defeat the whole purpose of being mysterious and interesting. They tried instead all the golden oldies that mythical creatures often used, like brief sightings, abductions and returns, crop circles (difficult in the ocean), and even washing up dead on crowded beaches. But everything they tried was written off by the media and scientists alike as elaborate hoaxes. The Beasts of the Sea believed that if they just had the media coverage then the public would give them some recognition, and not just concentrate on all that space business.

But of course government statistics have proven that people would much rather see their hard stolen taxes spent on a great phallic object that has a good chance of exploding and killing everyone on board, or at the worst shooting off into space trailing a spectacular stream of fire. Not some silly little submersible with lights on it that is pushed off a boat with a plop and sinks. Science or not, it isn’t very entertaining.

One small group of super intelligent megaplankton, however, eventually realised that in order to be noticed then they had to move to where the action’s at. Beasts of the Stars became notoriously responsible for just about every exciting abduction story that made it into the tabloids, alien or not. But it wasn’t long before they became very arrogant and conceited. The Beasts of the Stars developed severe narcissistic disorders after years of being the source of so much wonder and intrigue among humans, and a more sinister trend began to surface among them.

‘Arrgh,’ would say the sea captain, ‘the sea gives up her horrors and the stars guide them to shore.’

TASTEBUDS IN EVERY ORIFICE
Life, it seems, is not without a sense of humour. Take for example the Russian peasant who immolates himself trying to inexplicably steal live power cabling. Then there are all the funny little laws that seem to be around but you are never told about them until the constabulary is kneeling on the back of your neck reading you your rights. This is probably why the country’s clowns were so surprised when they started finding themselves riding around on a tiny bicycle one minute then tranquillised and being shot at the next. Here’s why.

In early 1985 a high court judge decided something had to be done about the endless tide of lawsuits being filed against clowns by people who had suffered crippling psychological trauma from them as a child. He ruled that it would be far easier to simply make being a clown illegal, and it would only be fair that those that remained be put into game parks where they can be hunted and shot by the very people they had tormented all those years ago. Thus the notorious Clownskull hunting reserve was born. For a fee one can go to the park and identify their choice of clown from a brochure. You are then shown the clowns last known whereabouts, any habitats it will most likely be found in, and what sort of bait to use. You then hire your weapon depending on your taste in combat, be it up close and personal with a battle-axe or an incendiary mortar for long-range bombardment.
Afterwards you can enjoy a buffet lunch or a relaxing swim in one of the parks many recreational facilities.

To make things a little clearer I have included an extract of the previously mentioned set of laws concerning clowns:


1a. FROM THIS DAY, THE THIRD DAY OF THE SEVENTH MONTH OF THE YEAR 1985 IT IS HENCEFORTH AN OFFENCE TO PERFORM OR ENGAGE IN THE DUTIES OF A CLOWN. IT IS AN OFFENCE TO PARTAKE IN ANY OF THE ACTIVITIES DESCRIBED IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPHS.
1b. THE ADORNING OF ONE’S PERSON WITH GREASEPAINT OR OTHERWISE COMBINED WITH THE BEARING OF A PLASTIC, SPHERICAL NASAL PROSTHETIC.
1c. COMMANDEERING AN UNUSUAL MOTOR VEHICLE CUSTOM DESIGNED TO DISASSEMBLE ITSELF IN A CHAOTIC MANNER CONTRARY TO MANUFACTURERS SPECIFICATIONS.
1d. THE MANUFACTURE, INFLATION, AND MANIPULATION OF TUBULAR BALLOONS INTO EFFIGIES OF ANIMALS, ECT.
1e. TO BEHAVE IN AN UNCOORDINATED AND CLUMSY MANNER IN ORDER TO PROCURE MIRTH IN A CIRCUS OR CARNIVAL ENVIRONMENT.
1f. THE INTENTIONAL DONNING OF BRIGHTLY COLOURED CLOTHING MANY SIZES LARGER THAN THE PERSONS ACTUAL MEASURMENTS.
1g. THE DISPATCH OF PASTRY MISSILES AT ANOTHER INDIVIDUALS PERSON.
1h. THE POSSESION OF MINITURE AIR PUMP WATER PROJECTION SYSTEMS DISGUISED AS SYNTHETIC ANGIOSPERMS.

Seventeen years ago a clown by the name of Seppo found himself being one of the first recipients of the wrong end of the law and being taken to the reserve. And this is how he got there.
Seppo the clown had been hired by some rich couple to entertain their nine-year-old son on his twelfth birthday. Unconventional, but it does happen, usually as a result of global air travel time differences and so on which would really be tedious to go into right now. Turning up two hours late with half a bottle of rum under his ever expanding belt, Seppo stood unshaven and swaying in the living room, the children’s laughter filling the house.
‘Come on Seppo!’ they cried ‘Do something funny!’
Seppo took a deep breath and swallowed some rising bile. He wished he hadn’t eaten that kebab from the servo before he got here. Fumbling into his pocket he produced a little red balloon. ‘Who likes animals?’ he slurred.
The kids cheered as Seppo put it to lips. He took a deep breath and blew, the balloon slipping from his grasp and spitting across the room. The children laughed and cheered as Seppo pretended he did it on purpose. The parents both sat on the couch and looked on laughing and clapping. Today their child will learn to love them…or else.Seppo reached into his pocket and produced another balloon, this time a green one. Eventually finding his lips he blew as hard as he could, but the balloon would not inflate.
‘Come on Seppo!’ they cheered.
Regaining his rapidly deteriorating balance, Seppo blew again and still the balloon would only stick out horizontally from his mouth. ‘Fuckin’ ‘ell.’ Muttered the clown under his breath.
Father’s smile slightly wavered.
On his third try the clown’s face went bright crimson as sweat poured down his brow. He blew as hard as he could, a little too hard. ‘Euhrk!’ A small volume of vomit filled the little balloon.
‘Come on Seppo, I want a balloon animal!’ cried the birthday boy.
‘Here…’ said Seppo, tossing him the balloon ‘…it’s a grub.’
Seppo belched and opened his small, black bag. He wanted to get this over with as soon as he could, and the only way to do that was to please these little urchins.
‘Seppo, I want to see a roller-skating monkey!’ a small girl yelled.
Seppo glanced around and snorted derisively. ‘A roller-skating monkey? Where am I going to get a fuckin’ monkey? Those bastard things carry AIDS! You want AIDS kid? Huh? Do you? I didn’t think so, so shut up! You just shut the fuck up!’ Seppo continued to root around in his bag. ‘Fuckin’ monkey.’
He found his half empty bottle of rum and caressed it. ‘We’ll be together soon enough, my little harlot.’
‘O.K kids!’ he cried ‘Watch me ride this tiny bicycle!’
Yet when he turned around he noticed that everyone was silent and the young girl was in tears. Everyone except the parents of course who thought the clown was really good and the children were loving it.
‘What the hell’s gotten into you lot?’ Seppo yelled. ‘You couldn’t do any better! Now fuckin’ well laugh!’
He squatted down with the tiny bike between his chubby legs. The children started to pipe up a little. A few giggles at first and before long they were cheering Seppo on.
Perched precariously upon the tiny seat Seppo took a few pedals, and then fell sideways smacking his head on the coffee table with a sickeningly loud crack.
‘Arr fuck!’ he yelled as blood oozed from a nasty gash on his forehead. ‘Son of a goddamn bitch!’
The children thought this to be enormously entertaining. They jumped up and squealed with delight, dancing around Seppo’s hunched form and climbing on top of him. ‘Get off! Get the fuck off me!’ he cried, but his voice was drowned out by the laughter and screams of the excited kids. Mum and Dad sat laughing and clapping on the couch. This was the best clown they had ever hired. He really was great with kids.

Eventually the exertion was too much and with a mighty heave and splash Seppo vomited all over the antique carpet.
The screams of excitement turned to screams of disgust and terror. Everyone backed clear away from the doubled over clown whose capacity for vomit was truly amazing. Soon the house was in shocked silence save for the heaving, cursing, spitting clown on the living room carpet. Just when it looked like he was done, Seppo would give another gurgle and add to the ever-growing pool of second hand pie and kebab he had created.
It was some time before Seppo was quiet. The young boy who he had been hired to entertain stepped toward him.
‘Hey Seppo, are you alright?’
Seppo looked up, blood mingled with greasepaint ran down his vomit-covered face. He spat a chunk onto the floor and stood up, staring with double vision at the kid.
‘Am I all right?’ he slurred ‘Do I bloody well look all right? You little sons of bitches are never happy are you! You don’t recognise talent unless it’s got some roller-skating fucking monkey or something! Well I couldn’t get a bloody monkey! All the good ones were taken by some prick from some shitty eastern European country to use on my kind and all that we were left with were fucking marmosets! Who wants to see a roller-skating marmoset? You can’t even teach the bloody things to piss anywhere but in your best hat!’

As one the children began to wail, a rising crescendo of noise that simply would not subside. Seppo reached for his rum and downed the lot in one action.
‘Shut up!’ He yelled waving the empty bottle around ‘You all just shut up!’
Finally it dawned upon the father that this was not part of the act. He stood up and faced the drunken clown.
‘Now see here you! This behaviour is totally unacceptable in view of these children! I insist you leave at once!’
Crack! Seppo delivered a bone-crunching head butt, which sent the man toppling to the floor.
‘I’m not goin’ nowhere!’ he bellowed and turned to the mother rubbing his crotch. ‘Allo sweat’eart, you fancy a bit of Seppo in ya!’
Yet Seppo was going somewhere. The front door was suddenly kicked in and a squad of armed men dressed in black burst inside. Seppo immediately recognised the Clownskull logos they bore on shoulder patches and tried to make a run for it, but a tranquilliser dart of Radine (Radine is a powerful tranquilliser whose main working ingredient are molecules of music manufactured by Alternative/Pop/Tuneless band Radiohead. Such a potent sedative is especially useful in putting even the wildest creature to sleep) shot into the back of his neck sent him rolling unconscious across the kitchen floor. Without a word the men bagged Seppo and dragged him into a black van waiting outside. The doors slammed shut and the vehicle sped away with a screeching of tires.
Running down the street after the van was the nine year old whose party it was that Seppo had just destroyed. He chased the van for three blocks until it screeched around a corner out of sight and crouched, gasping for breath. Then, at the top of his voice he screamed,
“I’m going to find you Seppo, and I’m going to kill you! I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll find you!’

Standing on the patio of the boy’s house, his mother called out to him. ‘Come inside Tryclopedia! Your father has swallowed his tongue and I need you to find the rest of his teeth!’

MERRY GO BROWN
Drink in hand, a startled Smeg found a quiet booth whose original occupant was removed the previous day when it was realised that he was in fact dead, what being a skeleton and all. It wasn’t long before a large, thuggish looking man with a blonde plaited beard and wearing a horned helmet and animal furs for clothes sat opposite Smeg and began a drunken conversation.
‘Have you noticed,’ he began, ‘that an onion is the only organism that uses emotion as a defence?’
Smeg looked around for someone else to talk to but his options looked pretty grim.
‘Erm…no.’
The large man continued enthusiastically. ‘Think about it. Once an onion is captured, killed and skinned it exudes an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame upon its attacker. So next time he thinks twice about killing another onion! Future onions are saved that way!’
‘What about when you peel them underwater? You don’t feel the shame then. That puts a few holes in your theory and proves that it’s simply vapour.’
The big man gave a deriding laugh. ‘Vapour,’ he scoffed, ‘yeah right! It’s shame! And they can’t make you feel it when you’ve bloody well drowned them first, can you? Being vegetarian isn’t as poncy as everyone makes it out to be now is it? It’s a sick, violent and gleefully sadistic lifestyle!’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Smeg sitting up, warming to the conversation, ‘I reckon chickens are preordained to be eaten by us. None of this vegetarian rubbish.’
The big man looked surprised. ‘Preordained? Preordained! How can a bloody chicken be preordained to be eaten? They are living, breathing creatures, unlike Dracula or toast. How would you like it, sir, if you were stuck in a tiny cage the size of a shoebox your entire life with six other people and injected with hormones so you lay your eggs faster. Until the time comes when you get your head lopped off and you are stuck on a sandwich.’
‘You can’t fit me in a shoebox.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I don’t lay eggs.’
‘If you were a chicken you would.’
‘If I were a chicken I would be a rooster and roosters can’t lay eggs.’
‘You could still be eaten on a sandwich.’
‘We don’t live in a cannibalistic society.’
The big man considered this for a while and, realising this was going nowhere he asked, ‘So why are they destined to be eaten then?’
‘Well’, started Smeg, ‘think about this. You have this flightless bird that is easier to catch than herpes, it has the intelligence of a waffle, and is divided up into convenient eating parts like the breast and drumstick. But to make matters worse for the chicken, by some cosmic side effect to all this they are absolutely delicious! We simply must eat them! What do you think?’
The large man thought for a moment, his brow furrowed in concentration. Then he relaxed and triumphantly stated, ‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s weird that I always get the cubicle next to the guy with dysentery. After all when I go to the lav to drop the Cosby Kids off at the pool I would like some sort of serenity. Not some bloody rendition of a mastodon trying to escape a tar pit.’
Smeg nearly fell of his chair laughing.
‘I know!’ he said ‘I like it when they try do disguise the fact they have the Mexican Screamers! As soon as someone uses the hand dryer they give a squirt. It sounds like they’re emptying a bucket of yoghurt and berries into the bog!’
‘Or the cough! They give a cough and a spray at the same time! What cracks me up is the fact that the splatter and ensuing moan are far louder than any cough can disguise. That is until the pong floats over the divider on a mission to extinguish all life in a bio-blast of asphyxiation fury.’

By now they had both well and truly emptied their glasses and Smeg was glancing a little nervously at the bar.
‘Aren’t you going to get another drink?’ asked his new friend.
Smeg toyed with his empty glass. ‘I’m a bit hesitant to ask for another after that old guy got killed with psychic beams in front of me.’
The big guy’s face lit up and he gazed over toward the bar. ‘Oh, so he finally did it? It’s about bloody time.’
‘Did what? Who?’
‘My mate Parrot, Mikhail Parrot. He finally achieved a higher level in his psychic powers and managed to kill that stupid old twat Barney Longbottom at the same time! Good on him.’
Smeg looked confused. ‘How did he even get these powers to start with?’
‘Have you ever been attacked by pumpkins?’
Smeg looked confused again, but not for the last time. ‘Once, but it was thrown at me. Does that count?’
‘Parrot used to own this zucchini farm, right, and next to that was the town parish. Well one Halloween night he gets this crazy idea about sticking his scarecrow on the parish scarecrow with a zucchini in the middle. Kind of lurid like. The problem is that the parish scarecrow is smack bang in the centre of the most vicious and territorial pumpkin patch in the neighbourhood.’
Smeg started to leave.
‘No, wait!’ exclaimed the man. ‘It gets good!’
Reluctantly Smeg sat down again while the other guy continued.
‘So here’s Parrot, trudging recklessly through this pumpkin patch, completely ignoring the angry warning hisses they tend to make. When they start doing that you know you’re in trouble. He finally reaches the scarecrow and puts them together in their rude little position, and before he could step back and view his handiwork an angry swarm of hissing pumpkins surrounds him. So off he runs, pumpkins in hot pursuit, straight out onto the road where he gets run over by an ice-cream van. Lucky for him the tinny music frightens the irate vegies away and he wakes up several hours later in a field with incredible hair and super powers!’
‘So what super powers did he wake up with?’ asked Smeg.
‘Oh, you know, moving objects with his mind, flying around and shit. He’s always ruining kite festivals. The thing is he can’t control it, and several bouts of reckless levitation have gotten him snagged in many a tree. We spend hours throwing rocks and sticks and things at him to try and get him down, but in the end we usually have to call the fire brigade in to hose him out of the branches.’
Smeg looked back at the bar with newfound respect, the young bartender continued to distribute drinks as though the earlier spectacle had never occurred, then turned his attention back to his drinking partner.
‘What was that about his hair? It looks pretty normal to me. Maybe a little greasy but nonetheless pretty normal.’
And indeed it did. Parrot’s hair was simply a gelled back cap on top of his head. Not really spectacular at all.
‘I know it looks pretty unspectacular,’ replied the man, ‘but when it springs free of its gel, you bloody well watch out. That’s when trouble starts.’
Smeg was curious. ‘I’m curious, what happens when his hair is freed?’
The man leaned forward and beckoned Smeg to do the same. Looking around suspiciously, he whispered quietly, ‘When his hair is free, it takes a will of its own, an evil and vengeful will. Some say that Anubis himself inhabits that hair, and seeks to smash everything mankind has made to bits. Iddy biddy bitsy bits. It rises high, four or five feet above his head, so black it is almost blue. Many have claimed that its shimmering surface attracts feral beasts of the wild, particularly elk during the rutting season. Who knows what that hair is capable of, but judging by Parrot’s increasing powers, I hope for the sake of the human race and all the things that we hold dear that such evil and the temptation to wield it can be controlled.’

Smeg cast a nervous glance toward the bar, and he could have sworn he saw the bartender smooth down a stray tuft of hair with desperate urgency, then glare Smeg’s way as if he knew he was being observed. Smeg turned hurriedly away.
‘So do you believe he got his powers from those pumpkins?’ He asked.
The big man leaned back and laughed raucously. ‘Oh hell no, I made that rubbish up! I have absolutely no idea how he got them! Now go and buy me another drink.’

THE LOWER INTESTINE LOG RIDE OF LIFE
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine this. Oh, and get someone to read this to you. You wake up one chirpy spring morning, a warm sunbeam has leaked into your window, and the sound of butterflies is inaudible over the sheer flowery goodness that everyone feels this time of year.
You stretch and yawn, leap out of bed, and rush downstairs where Mum’s crispy bacon and toast awaits you. Dad is already at the table reading the paper and your sister swings her legs playfully under the chair while sipping hot chocolate. Mum smiles and hands you a delicious plate of breakfast.
‘Good morning dear,’ she says, ‘did you sleep well?’
Father looks up from the paper and in his gruff voice says; ‘I hope you did my boy because we have a hard day ahead of us’.
Just as your mood begins to fade, Father adds; ‘A hard day of fishing!’
Your frown is turned upside down and Mother and Sister exchange knowing smiles. This is when you tell them your exciting idea.
‘Mum, Dad, I want to learn how to dance.’ You say.
Mother claps her hands together. ‘Oh that’s wonderful dear, hear that Father? He would like to learn how to dance!’
Father gazes proudly at his child. ‘Go for it Boy, you’ll soon be beating off all those horny sluts with a shitty stick in no time!’
Sister gives Dad a kick under the table. ‘Dad! Don’t be gross!’
Mother smiles and says ‘So which type of dancing do you want to learn, Pumpkin?’
You stand and proudly puff out you chest. ‘I want to be a line dancer!’

As you sit alone weeping down by the creek, the derisive laughter still ringing fresh in your ears, consider this: Line dancing was first developed by country folk as they checked their boots for trodden in horseshit. Put that to music and hey presto! You have every heifer-humping hillbilly dressed in the worst possible taste (see Buck Rogers) hootin’ and a hollerin’ to some insipid slide geetar music, walking back and forth across the barn floor and clapping their hands in unison to some fool yodelling about how great it is to drive a combine harvester.
So now you know.

The Buckwheat family were the Corn and Flannel County Muster line dancing champions six harvests in a row. It would have been seven if Trixie “Spit roast” Buckwheat had paid more attention to organising the traditional song Hoo Boy Howdy I Love My Dang Plough than porking around under the stage with Billy Boy Buckwheat. In the end they had to settle with Howdy Dang Cow Milkin’, which threw everyone off. The song went a little something like this;

Well I drove home drunk from the liquor store
Beat my wife ‘cause I’m already bored
I got ten kids and maybe more
Thank God I’m a country boy

Got my big hat, got my moonshine
Got my lamb and oiled my swine
Headin’ behind the barn for a real good time
Thank God I’m a country boy

Banjo’s playin’ and so is the fiddle
Barbecue set up with a skunk on the grill
Got the IQ of a window sill
Thank God I’m a country boy

I’m a drinkin’ beer and shootin’ steers
Line dancin’ nekkid and fightin’ queers
Ain’t had a bath in 22 years
Thank God I’m a country boy

Leg got broke from flyin’ potaters
Trailer park’s missin’ from all them tornaders
If there really is a god then he sure does hate us
Thank God I’m a country boy

And so on. When it came to hunting though, none could rival the ineptitude of the Buckwheat family. Every hunting season they lost several family members, usually before the hunt actually began when someone would pour gasoline into the shotgun barrel to make a flamethrower. At least they would have replenished their numbers by the next hunt. All purebloods. But what they lacked in skill they more than made up for in enthusiasm.

Seppo the clown awoke all those years ago to find himself lying in the middle of a field of yellow flowers, with a warm, midafternoon sun beating down on his filthy face. Sitting up, Seppo wiped the blood and vomit from his eyes and looked around. His head throbbed from the nasty gash on his forehead and the after effects of the alcohol made the world spin. Groggily he started to stand, swaying awkwardly and hunched over. With his hands on his knees he breathed deep, and gave a powerful heave. A trickle of spit dribbled down his chin, anything that could have possibly been regurgitated was back on the carpet in that posh house. Seppo spat and belched. Looking around he saw the field stretch for miles around him. To the east he noticed a faint line of trees, and deciding that there was nowhere else to go he trudged off toward them.

Long hours had passed and still Seppo laboured on. It was growing hot and the only sounds save for his own cursing and blasphemies were the buzzing insects that seemed to lovingly swarm around his head.
Eventually he reached the tree line, a vast and dense forest that was both dark and foreboding. Seppo had no other choice but to go in and try and find help, or at least the other side. Late afternoon was becoming dusk, and light was rapidly diminishing among the twisted trees and vines. Seppo crawled into the hollow of a rotted log to spend the night, sharing it with all sorts of bugs and vermin. But thanks to his rancid and tangy body odour, Seppo soon found himself sleeping alone.

A crisp, cool morning arrived to the sound of Seppo breaking wind. A sound not unlike a waterbed filled with melted cheese being slowly steamrolled, a slow and sloppy build up until one side bursts with a thick splat. A dense, cold mist blanketed the forest in a damp shroud, a mist that would abruptly change from cold and miserable to evil and humid around lunchtime.
The clown dragged himself from his log and blearily scratched his balls. The forest was quiet save for the occasional croak of a lost pelican, and Seppo looked around trying to decide which direction he was meant to be going. Giving up he turned to go back into his log when a large chunk of wood was suddenly blown away from it with a deafening blast. Seppo dived to the ground as another section of log was blown apart, showering him in splinters.

The dense forest suddenly came alive with shotgun wielding country folk pouring out of the undergrowth. They appeared from behind tree trunks and out of bubbling streams. Others scaled down from the forest canopy while more burrowed out of the soil, and one discarded his pelican costume to join the mob of hootin’, hollerin’ hillbillies. Everywhere Seppo looked he saw them, their eyes wild and bloodshot, their cries a melancholic mix of glee and bloodlust. And to his ultimate horror Seppo began to recognise them all.

There, with the enormous boots, was Geech, a once innocent ten-year-old farm boy whom Seppo had corrupted into a vicious hoodlum through his gambling habit. Over there was Buck, the clown wished he hadn’t cornered him at that party and burst balloons in the boy’s face until he suffered an aneurysm. And wringing the stream water from his giant hat was Hank; an impressionable youth whom Seppo had exchanged with shady characters for kicks, literally. They were all victims of Seppo the Clown, and they all bayed for his spilled guts. Terrified, the clown looked for an opening, but they were absolutely everywhere. In a panic Seppo simply bolted through the line of shouting hunters. Letting loose a volley of shots, six Buckwheats fell in the crossfire, but luckily for Seppo he was unharmed as he fled down a barely visible track way.

A brief note on clowns: If anyone had asked Seppo how he defended himself against such odds he would have puffed out his chest and proudly claimed he neutralised the six Buckwheats alone with his squirty flower. Clowns are sly and devious, laying claim to all sorts of things. If one said he had invented the Reverse Hydrofoil Inverter Converter you would know he was lying because I just made it up. Thieving gypsy bastards.

Seppo ran like he had never run before. The truth was he had never run before so he simply ran. Branches whipped his face and roots seemed to grasp at his big shoes as he tore through the forest. Behind him he could hear his pursuers laughing and shouting as they crashed after him, some began to move along to the left of him and some to the right. He could not see them, not daring to look back, but he could hear them.

Seppo’s chest heaved and his lungs burned. He knew he wouldn’t be able to run for much longer and a part of him told him to simply give up. What else could he do? The bright yellow costume he wore wasn’t exactly the best camouflage so hiding was not an option that would prove entirely successful. He could stand and fight, but this was a different situation to the usual back ally beatings he was used to dishing out. He was alone with none of his clown buddies to back him up, and these guys weren’t exactly cowering jockeys who hadn’t lived up to their end of the deal by losing a heavily wagered on race. All he could do was keep running until he could run no more, which was about now, partly because he was exhausted but mostly because he was neck deep in quicksand.

Geech Buckwheat stopped and listened. The sound the clown crashing through the undergrowth had abruptly grown silent. It’s probably hiding somewhere close he thought. Putting his dirty fingers to his lips, Geech whistled and a panting bloodhound came bounding up the track. The dog snuffled around the forest floor for some time, then with a woof it darted off into the same direction that Seppo wasn’t, never to be seen again. Beasts of the Stars had abducted and eaten it. Geech stood alone waiting, a tear trickled down his cheek. Then a yell and a cry in the distance told him that his brothers had found the clown. Geech wiped his grimy face and ran to catch up for his share of the kill.

A strange calm came over Seppo as he helplessly watched the Buckwheats emerge from the jungle one by one to surround him. He allowed himself one last burst of flatulence as he welcomed death, the stinky bubble never even made it to the surface. Over millions of years the trapped bubble was to fossilise, to be unearthed and studied by Homo Superior and regarded as the world’s oldest known fart.
Seppo watched in a detached state as the hillbillies squabbled over who would take the first shot. He didn’t seem to mind as the first shotgun blasts tore up the mud around him. He welcomed the warm column of light that surrounded him from the heavens. He didn’t mind seeing the world he knew spiral away beneath him. He wasn’t at all alarmed to see that God was a seven-foot tall prawn.
It certainly stunned him when it shoved a great big iron penny-farthing up his arse.

Pretty good. Like the Robert Rankin and Tom Holt influences!

Yeah, I was going through a pretty heavy Robert Rankin phase while churning this out. Anyway, on it goes...

COLOSTOMY BAG PINATA
When it was decided to raise the U.S.S Arizona from the bottom of Pearl Harbour one would say it was raised a few hundred kilometres too high since it was now in low orbit above the Earth. It wasn’t really raised by people though; they just assumed it was misplaced. People looked everywhere for it including places they’d already looked before without success. Yet looking for it in space never occurred to anyone so naturally the official explanation was that the original crew had become zombies with rage and raised the vessel for a revenge mission on the Japanese only to sink again somewhere off Indonesia because they hadn’t welded up all the holes properly. Well it was kind of true, but Beasts of the Stars had intercepted the Arizona before it reached the shores of Tokyo and converted it into a crude space cruiser while the zombie sailors were dropped off at the only place they would go unnoticed.
The Chicken and Fanbelt welcomed its newest members.

Zartor, high and mighty leader of the Beasts of the Stars was terribly angry, terribly angry indeed. The great crustacean, resplendent in his purple and gold cloak, stormed down the rusted, dripping corridors of the Arizona, his lackeys and yes-men following behind at a safe distance. Shoving aside those who were not quick enough to get out of his way, Zartor stomped along the steel grated floors until finally reaching a heavy, thick door.
Banging loudly on the metal with one great claw, Zartor bellowed at the occupant to open up. There was a loud clank, followed by a deep hiss as the hydraulics strained to open the thick, steel door. The room was dark when Zartor entered, and finding the light switch the room was bathed in a sickly pale light. On a bunk to the left of the room lay the curled up form of Zargon, Zartor’s second in command.
‘Wake up Zargon!’ shouted Zartor. He glanced briefly around the room. It was pretty much the same as his own, rusted and bare, dripping with moisture through cracks in the metal bulkheads. The only difference was sitting in a jar beside Zargon’s bunk. It was a thing from Mog, and it gave Zargon the willies.
Zargon turned an eyestalk to face his leader standing in the doorway. With a groan the giant prawn tried to get up but couldn’t. ‘Can’t you come back another time, Zartor? I’m not feeling very well.’
‘I need a word with you right now!’ Zartor yelled.
Outside in the corridor, three megaplankton came chatting and laughing among themselves. When they saw their irate leader they were suddenly quiet as they passed him, and when they reached the far end of the corridor, Zartor thought he heard them sniggering.
‘You told me that Wokie Retrieval Unit you sent was the best! Have you any idea what they brought back?’
Zargon didn’t answer, he merely groaned. From outside the room Zartor heard someone making cooing noises, followed by raucous laughter. This only angered the great leader all the more.
‘I order you to get up now!’ he bellowed.
With a mammoth effort Zargon rose and sat on the edge of the bunk. He looked a different shade of blue than usual. ‘What happened?’ he finally managed to ask.
‘Your unit did not bring back the Wokies I had specifically requested. I have Prince Zoobador Poobar coming tonight and we had the entire evening set aside for playing Snap the Wokie!’

When the super intelligent megaplankton had given up on the sea and set off into space, they had expected a life of infinite opportunity and excitement. What they did find was that space was incredibly dull. The sheer spectacular distances that spanned the void prevented them from establishing any sort of home world, and any exciting encounters with alien intelligence was the thing of fantasy. As far as they knew, Beasts of the Stars were the only space faring race out here in the galactic wilderness. Thus the game of Snap the Wokie was born. Although it was a game totally unlike Rugby League it too was considered a homosexual metaphor.

The rules involved first obtaining a Wokie, or earthman, from a discrete trailer park or art gallery. The next phase was to strap said Wokie to a steel table and shove as many Victorian bicycles up the creature’s rectum until it burst, or “snapped”. If a Wokie snapped, the plankton was the winner. However if the Wokie survived the wagered amount of penny-farthings up his arse he was the winner (so to speak) and released back on Earth.
Beasts of the Stars never bothered erasing the memories of their contestants so any who did survive had full memory of the nastiest anal probing in extraterrestrial history.

‘So what happened?’ asked Zargon groggily. Zartor fidgeted with the clasp of his robes, staring at the floor.
‘Everyone is laughing at me.’ He replied. ‘I don’t know what the hell that thing was that your guys brought back but it scared the hell out of me.’
‘So that was your girlie scream I heard not long ago. I thought Mrs Zeflar had trod on a stoat. I like stoats.’
Zartor didn’t. In fact he found them too long and sneaky. And as high lord and master of the most feared (and only) race of intergalactic bullies he was very shocked and appalled at how high pitched and silly his scream was. Not only that but he knew the ship’s intercom was on so the entire crew would have undoubtedly heard it. Well what do you expect, he reasoned with himself, when a flock of white doves fly out of a technicoloured Wokie’s bum. Zartor regained his composure, and with as much authority he could muster he ordered his second in command out of bed.
‘Your weird Wokie escaped from the insertion chamber and is loose somewhere in the ship. I want it found and returned to me immediately, and prepare “Old Side Splitter”!’
‘But Zartor,’ Zargon exclaimed, ‘we don’t have enough lubricant to probe with it! The three seater is just too big!’
‘Don’t worry Zargon,’ Zartor replied maliciously, ‘we won’t be needing any.’ Zartor took one more look at that thing from Mog, shivered, and left the room.

Zargon negotiated the deep, dark bowels of the ship very carefully. The tiny torch he carried in his huge claw only penetrated the darkness a few metres before him. The sound of water dripping through the floors above was joined by the constant throb of the ship’s engines. And Zargon was feeling queasy for four very good reasons. Firstly that multicoloured Wokie whom his team and foolishly believed was an exotic specimen but was really a creepy, creepy thing was loose down here. Secondly if he didn’t find it Zartor was no doubt going to send him to the insertion chamber to bear the full brunt of “Old Side Splitter”.
Thirdly he really wished he hadn’t eaten that Earth dog that was brought back with the Wokie. It was making him very, very nauseous.

And finally, several months ago he decided his thing from Mog looked lonely and needed a mate. So after procuring one against the strong wishes of Zartor he decided to hide it down here where nobody would know. The problem being that it had escaped from its jar the very next day and was lurking somewhere down here.
The worst part was that he had no idea what a thing from Mog really involved. Was it dangerous, or was it something that was just going to die and stink out the whole ship? Who could say, he just had to find it before Zartor did.

Zargon carefully climbed down the rusted, iron ladder that led to the bottom deck. Nobody ever came down here, partly because it was so dark and humid but mostly because it was very possible to step through a poorly welded up torpedo hole and float off into the void. Contrary to most beliefs, this is not a pleasant experience.
The giant prawn felt his way along a pitch-black corridor. Every now and then a doorway would open up on either side. Zargon would check each one nervously then move on, yet before long the fear and stress were too much for him.
Running to a nearby disposal port Zargon heaved the contents of his stomach into the tube. When the outside port opened with a metallic screech, one half digested and still alive hound dog shot out and began its long and quite traumatic descent back to Earth.

Feeling much, much better Zargon wiped his mouth with the back of his claw and continued along the darkened hall. The last room he hadn’t checked lay at the very end. The great prawn had to climb under and over a tangled mess of leaking pipes and twisted metal to get to what looked like a room that had been sealed, only to have the metal plate welded over the doorway torn open.
Gingerly he peered inside. As he expected he couldn’t see a thing, and he dared not shine his torch inside fearing he would disturb whatever was in there.
To his surprise Zargon thought he heard voices coming from inside. Strange voices. Hushed voices. Voices that can startle a hare at twenty paces. There were two of them and they seemed to be conversing.
Zargon strained to listen over the hum of the ship’s engines. The first voice seemed to be confused and afraid. It spoke in fluent Earth Wokie and was surely the one that had escaped the insertion chamber. The second voice Zargon was not so sure about. It spoke in a calm and soothing manner, but with broken speech as though it was struggling with the language. The only explanation Zargon could think of was that the Wokie was conversing with the thing from Mog and that the thing from Mog was giving the Wokie emotional support.
The conversation went a little like this:

Thing from Mog: So you are afraid of becoming a better person?
Wokie: No, I just don’t know if I can adjust and I’ll end up hurting those around me again.
Thing from Mog: If you don’t try, you will never know.
Wokie: I understand that, but what difference will it make? I’ve already caused too much grief. I want to change completely.
Thing from Mog: And that is what we shall accomplish today. With my guidance you will become what you always wanted to be, but never had the strength and courage to become.
Wokie: Yes! I will become a different person, but I can only do it with your help.
Thing from Mog: And so you shall. Let us begin…together!

Zargon heard footsteps coming towards him from inside. Quickly he dashed down the hall towards the rusted ladder. He scampered up to the next deck, and the next and next. Eventually he came to the upper level and raced down the corridor, pushing aside startled crewmembers. Zargon’s mind was racing with a hundred thoughts. All this time he had taken advantage of Wokies and enjoyed harming them for his enjoyment. Now he knew they were sensitive, fragile creatures that only wanted to better themselves. What right did the Beasts of the Stars have to play such vulgar games with them? From now he was going to protect Wokies rather than violate them.

And then there was that thing from Mog! It was nothing to fear, it was a soothing, helpful creature that lent its support and took an active role in bringing people to their full potential. All this time he had one sitting on his bedside table in a jar without realising what a treasure he truly had.

Sweating and panting, Zargon slip around a corner and banged on the opening mechanism to his quarters. Slowly with a hiss the huge door ground upward and Zargon ducked underneath and scurried inside. As always there in the jar was the thing from Mog. Zargon took it up in one claw and threw it to the floor, smashing the glass.
‘Oh thing from Mog,’ he began ‘I always wanted to return to the seas of Earth but my responsibilities here require me to remain in AARGH!’
Free from its glass imprisonment, the thing from Mog immediately grew one thousand times its size and devoured Zargon in one slurp.

Deep down in the very bowels of the ship, two figures emerged from a darkened room. A large and authoritive figure stood beside a short and fat one.
‘So you promise me I will become a new person?’ Asked the short, fat one.
‘Oh, yes.’ Replied the tall figure. ‘You shall assume the guise of a young bartender named Mikhail Parrot. For seven years you shall remain anonymous and discreet, developing your powers through years of endless frustration as you are forced to deal with the lowliest sub humans that life can throw at you.’
‘But it seems so extreme, can’t I develop my powers sooner?’
‘I could make you a kitchen hand named Charlie if you like. It will cut your time in half but there is a good chance you will go insane before your powers are ready.’
‘Erm, no. I think I’ll stick to the first one.’
‘Very well. So long Seppo, and good luck.’
‘So long Zartor, when I reach my full potential I shall beacon the Beasts of the Sea to join with us, then the world will be at your mercy.’

PROCEEDING HAIRLINE
“Every dog has its day” so the saying goes. If this particular dog had its day it must have been an absolute corker because he was certainly suffering for it now. This was the most wretched mongrel breed ever to have rubbed its bottom inexplicably down a grass hill. A stinking, brown creature with more parasites than hair and the same amount of teeth as a Floppasta (an as yet undiscovered avian porpoise with no teeth). It crawled around on its one remaining leg, begging people for food by biting them, and being almost deaf in its only ear it never heard the buses that ran over it on an hourly basis. It smelled as though it had been digested for a week and had the beaten demeanour of a redheaded stepchild. People would rather cross the street and take their chances with Merve the Perve than cop a lung-clogging mouthful of polluted atmosphere produced from this sorry beast. And it always hung around outside the Chicken and Fanbelt, presumably to lap up any unwanted, second hand beer.

‘So what is your name?’ Asked Smeg as he and his new friend stumbled out the door of the Chicken and Fanbelt.
‘Tryclopedia Verdigris.’
Smeg looked at him surprisedly. ‘Tryclopedia Verdigris from Portville?’
‘Tryclopedia Verdigris from Spatsah.’ he answered.
‘Uncanny,’ Smeg shook his head ‘it’s just that you’re the fourth Tryclopedia Verdigris I’ve met this week.’ (haw –haw)
The two of them had only reached the taxi rank outside when an evil smell slapped them in the face with mocking violence.
‘Urgh Christ! What’s that!’ Tryclopedia started to turn green.
A small, bearded, drunk little man who must have stood about four foot short and weighed around six kilos scuttled past them.
‘Buy some fucking soap!’ Smeg shouted after him. ‘There should be a dogcatcher for those people. If no one claims them in a week they should be put down with a blunt clubbing instrument.’
Unexpectedly an even fouler creature, that stinky dog I was on about earlier, blocked their path. It lay there staring at the two men and refusing to budge. Tryclopedia edged up to it.
‘It’s still alive.’ He said as he prodded it with his boot. ‘Smells like it shouldn’t be though.’
Smeg held his nose and regarded the dog closely. He noticed it had only one leg and was crawling with lice.
‘How do you suppose it got like that, Trydeeda?’
‘Tryclopedia.’
‘Sorry.’
‘From travelling from the heavens.’
Smeg looked around at the big man. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Mean what?’
‘That it travelled from the heavens.’
‘What did?’
‘You said the dog looks like this because it travelled from the heavens.’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘Yes you did.’
‘Then who did?’
Tryclopedia pointed at the dog. ‘He did.’
Smeg looked down at the mutt as it sat there licking itself on the toilet area. ‘The dog said it? And you aren’t at all surprised by that?’
Tryclopedia shrugged. ‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘Stranger than a talking dog? What could be stranger than that?’
‘A giant talking space prawn that uses a 19th Century bicycle as an anal probe.’
Suddenly the dog lurched and bit Tryclopedia on the shin.
‘Son of a bitch!’ he screamed and kicked the foul dog onto the road, where it was run over by the 10:15. Showing remarkable resilience it got up and loped away to annoy Merve the Perve.

Smeg fumbled through his jacket pocket and pulled out a little crumpled piece of paper. ‘Check this out, Tryclopedia.’ He said, handing it over. Tryclopedia regarded the little scrap for a while, and then threw it in the bin. Smeg screamed and dove in after it, desperately rummaging threw the garbage yelling and cursing. Twenty minutes and 6354 obscenities (both verbal, physical and occasionally sexual) later Smeg emerged from the pile of banana peels, chocolate wrappers and prophylactics holding the scrap of paper triumphantly aloft.

Tryclopedia stood by watching the whole spectacle unfold before him, and when it was over he was subjected to a barrage of banana peels, chocolate wrappers, and prophylactics.
‘Have you any idea what this is?’ Screamed Smeg.
Tryclopedia shook his head. ‘A receipt?’
'Yes, a receipt! And not just any receipt! This is my Life Receipt! I’m one of the few people who ever kept theirs and I intend to use it!’
Tryclopedia stood there looking confused, not even trying to interrupt. Smeg continued uninterrupted. ‘This piece of paper entitles me to get a full refund if I am not one hundred percent satisfied with life! Which I am not! Once I was rich and famous and even considered throwing the receipt away because I believed that life was never going to stop being so fantastic! I even had my own catchphrase! But all that had to change and I became a nobody. One minute I’m swinging from a trapeze in a tuxedo with my trained monkeys, the next I’m waking up behind a petrol station in the middle of Mexico with a bike up my arse! Oho you can believe me, as soon as I find a way to contact the gods who did that to me I’ll get my refund. And I’m not talking contact in some stupid “eat a red mushroom and talk to the windmill oracle” sort of rubbish either. I mean the real deal, meeting them face-to-face and making my complaint. And when they smugly ask me if I kept my receipt I can snidely say YES! And slap it down on the counter in front of their embarrassed faces.’

Smeg finished his rant, puffing and panting, and quite flustered. There was an awkward silence. Eventually Tryclopedia cleared his throat,
‘So you…had a bike up your arse?’
‘Yes…it was very painful.’
‘What did it look like?’
Smeg looked at him suspiciously. ‘Swollen and raw. Why?’
‘The bike I mean.’
‘It was one of those early Victorian jobbies. With the huge front wheel and tiny back one. You know, the one that you could kill yourself by merely falling from it in a stationary position.’
Tryclopedia nodded knowingly,
‘Ah yes, the dreaded penny-farthing. First developed as the 19th Century monster truck. Upon reaching popularity as a civilian transport it allowed the Victorian gentleman to navigate the horse manure littered streets of Paris without fear of un-crisping his trouser seams. He could whisk through the cobbled streets from the abbey with nary a care in the world, reaching home with un-befouled shoes and gleaming top hat where he would administer brutal discipline to his family with a spade. Sadly the penny-farthing was to become the choice of vehicle for various gangs of thieves, vagrants, and highwaymen. The bicycle provided perfect elevation for top hat and monocle thieves, and being so thin they could quickly slip down alleys and make an easy getaway. Soon enough whole gangs of penny-farthing riders terrorised the streets of Europe, stealing cooling loaves and waistcoats. However the days of the penny-farthing were ended thanks to an unlikely cause. Inflation. With the penny-farthing becoming the ten-pound-thruppence, the rectangular front wheel proved to be immensely impractical. So now the Beasts of the Stars have found an obscene use for all those unwanted bicycles, why can’t they just use a glowing silver probe like aliens are supposed to?’

Smeg blinked at him, puzzled. ‘How do you know so much about bicycles? And how did you know about Beasts of the Stars?’
‘Well I read a lot of Dickens, and I too have been abducted by the super intelligent megaplankton who call themselves Beasts of the Stars. In fact, I have vowed to exact revenge ever since.’
Smeg was stunned. This is exactly what he wanted, to form a militia of people like him and go and get them back for what they did to him.
‘I’m stunned!’ Exclaimed Smeg. ‘This is exactly what I want, to form a militia of people like me to go and get them back! But they’re in space and we are not. We’ll have to build a spaceship, but we need resources and funding because there’s more to space travel than most people realise. You need important stuff like technology and space suits.’
‘And how are we going to get funding for this sort of stuff?’ Asked Tryclopedia.
‘We should approach NASA. They seem to be doing all right with those space shuttle things; so far only one’s exploded. Not bad odds.’
‘Forget it, I already tried them. “Sorry,” they said, “The last time we funded an independent space program was for the Australian Indigenous Space Centre. Twelve years and sixty million dollars later all they had to show for it was a rusty piece of corrugated iron with a thong on it. After that we just don’t do it anymore.”’

Smeg looked dismayed. Tryclopedia saw this.
‘Don’t look dismayed, Smeg. I can see it, but don’t be because I’ve already begun construction of a star ship.’
Smeg’s eyes twinkled with little stars.
‘You have! Oh goody! How complete is it?’
‘Well so far I’ve welded wings on my tractor. It can’t fly yet but I’m saving up for a canopy.’
The twinkles in Smeg’s eyes realised they had come out prematurely, so they went away to twinkle dejectedly to themselves. Tryclopedia continued enthusiastically.
‘My colleague, Papa Tex Jaffar reckons he can swipe one of those F16 engines from somewhere. Plus he’s getting me some strobe lights.’
‘Strobe lights? What do you need them for? We aren’t building a hospital surgery, we won’t need the bloody strobe lights.’
‘Ah,’ replied Tryclopedia, ‘but what if we want to turn their ship into an intergalactic roller disco?’
Smeg considered this, and seeing the flawless logic in it he had to agree.
‘So how does Papa Tex fit in this? Is he one of us?’
‘Oh yeh, but he goes to them voluntarily. He says it makes him feel special. The only reason he’s going on this crusade is because he believes hurtling through space on a tractor is a far more exciting idea than the usual beam up, probe, beam down routine he’s used to. It’s a love/hate relationship because by the same token he also wants to kill them all for making him what he is.’
Smeg winced. Did he really want to go into space with a person like that? It looked like he had little choice.

Smeg was almost too afraid to ask. ‘So how did you meet him?’
‘Well he used to work for me, for my record distribution company. We used to handle all sorts of stuff; it really was quite a broad market. That’s not to say it was particularly successful, some customers didn’t appreciate the “special touches” that Papa Tex would add to an otherwise normal record after he’d intercepted it then touched it up on his editing equipment.’
‘Oh Jesus, what would he do?’
‘Our biggest area was ambient music, you know, relaxing stuff that neurotic housewives and yuppies would listen to to get them to sleep. Picture this, if you will, three quarters of an hour of bamboo pipes and wind chimes and twittering and dolphins, all that shit, when suddenly the 18th Overture flares up at fifty decibels and cannons are going off all over the place. I thought it was genius. Absolute genius. The makers of the record didn’t though. But in the end it all came crashing down, well not that it was big enough to crash down. It kind of sighed and plopped down into a comfy chair. One day we were to send the original copy of the video for MC DJ Mo D’s new version of It’s Raining Men to the factory where it is copied en-masse then distributed to all the music TV shows. Well. Papa Tex being what he is exchanged the original with stock footage of people falling off high cliffs and buildings and things to their deaths, complete with the music. It was hilarious, but the police told us we’d gone too far. I think that video won a few statuettes at the Golden Turd awards.
All that as well as him being world champion six years running in the Fists of Fury solo-sexual gratification marathon.’

Smeg was looking forward to meeting Papa Tex Jaffar even less now. He took a deep breath and steeled himself inside, all that counted was the mission.
‘Well…’ he said ‘…let’s go see your space ship.’

Keep going man, this is great.

CONJUGAL VISIT TO THE DOG POUND
Several feet from a six lane main road sat one of those student cafés situated in what can only be described as the cities own trendy little third world. Not far enough from the CBD to be classed as suburbia, while not close enough to be part of the metropolis itself, the café sat in that trans-dimensional grey area of squalid buildings and congested traffic.

Sitting along the rows of wooden tales were students who were desperately trying to resurrect long gone fads in university history that really should be left dead and buried. And we’re not talking about the good old Alpha Beta Gamma Zeta fraternity titty parties either.

Beatniks in berets clicked away opposite of feral urban hippies, anti-government/pro-welfare professional whingers complained about the mistreatment of cancer cells, a short and tubby guy in a tight black T-shirt lisped away on a mobile phone in an incredibly feminine voice, a group of experimental performance artistes discussed which facial hair designs would best suit their roles in Land Rights for Gay Whales. And lurking quietly in a dark corner tapping his rock hard $55 peatbog and guano muffin on the table sat Papa Tex Jaffar.

Take a praying mantis, increase its size so that it stands slightly taller than the average human, make its skin pasty white instead of green, and pull all but two of its legs off then attach a pair of hands on the end of each gangly arm. Then stick a long wig of white, stringy hair on its head then dress it in a shrunken black skivvy and jeans, leave on the googly eyes and you are left with something that doesn’t really look like Papa Tex, but is probably as close a description as you could get. Then again just think of what Iggy Pop looks like nowadays and you get the idea. He was the kind of guy who ties his shoes together by the laces then flings them up onto telephone lines, then eats whatever dead fruit bats he finds up there. You know the kind.

Papa Tex’s eyes darted unnervingly about while the rest of him stayed perfectly still, taking in what had up until now been a very funny place to be. But his observations into human interactions today had simply proven what he already believed, that he wanted none of it, even though the man at the clinic who always spoke to him had told him that he really should try.

Papa Tex had had enough. Leaning out the window he stuck his muffin on the side of a passing bus and headed to the café’s courtyard where his situation didn’t improve. Prancing around a dodgy cardboard birdbath were several girls and guys wearing fairy wings and tutus, with tinsel dangling from their hair. That was it. The only reason Papa Tex had come in here in the first place was to steal a jet engine, and the frustration of having not found one here and the sheer ridiculousness of the fruit loops he did find was getting to be too much. What made it worse was that they weren’t even genuinely retarded; they were being fairies at him on purpose.

Grabbing a prancing nancy-boy by the wings as he minced by, Papa Tex was pleased to see that they bled when he tore them off, and equally pleased when the fairy screamed like a stuck puppy when he thrashed him about the face with his own wings.
The other fairies cried and begged Papa Tex to stop, but he didn’t. Sinking his boot several times into the cowering fairy on the ground, Papa Tex relished each cracking rib and plea for mercy, and laughed with melancholic glee as he threw the fairy with one hand through a stained glass window. Shards of broken glass poured down, shredding skin and tutu alike, and Papa Tex strode over to the twitching, bleeding heap on the floor. Putting one foot on his victims chest, he grabbed the poncy git’s head in one hand and ripped it clean off. Holding his grisly trophy aloft, Papa Tex beat his chest with his fist and his victory roar was heard for thousands of miles.

The blast from the horn of a passing cement truck abruptly brought Papa Tex back to reality. He found himself daydreaming like this a lot more than was psychologically healthy. Papa Tex didn’t always have such violent tendencies; in fact he used to be quite meek and lovely. But that was before he woke up one night behind a service station in the middle of Arkansas with a penny-farthing sticking out of his arse. He had walked until late afternoon in agony before finally finding a doctor with the specialised equipment necessary for procto-bicycle extraction. Since then he had become withdrawn and surly, fantasising constantly about killing fairies and ripping their heads off.

READER – “Why did he go to find a jet engine in a student café? Why didn’t he go to an air force base for one instead? I’m confused, I want to cry.”

Relax, Papa Tex’s logic is quite simple: he went to the student café to buy a muffin, and then he was going to the air force base. He didn’t like the muffin so then he hopped on a bus and continued on his way.
Sitting at the back of the bus, he tried to get his mind off killing things with wings. He had two methods of doing this, one was to read, and the other was to pick a fight. Looking around, Papa Tex only saw two old ladies sitting up behind the driver, but remembering how pointless it was to fight old ladies because it was always over so quickly and he always won, he decided to read instead. He produced a thick novel from his bag and found the page he was up to, which read:

Jack Sterling crouched poised behind the bush, ready for fight or flight. Leaping out of the black, unmarked van were the same secret government ninjas who had killed his partner Johnny the night before when he found out about their plot to unleash the doomsday virus on his fiancé’s home town.
Sterling darted around the front of the van before the ninjas could see him and in one action he swiftly removed the engine. All those weeks of studying mechanics had payed off, now the ninjas had no escape. The hunters had become the hunted. With three somersaults Sterling climbed up on top of the van. With his well-trained eyes he could see that three ninjas were checking the shrub he had been hiding behind just seconds earlier. Now it was time to see if these guys were really the government’s best.
Distracting the three ninjas with a shot from his rocket launcher, Sterling silently slipped inside the van. Sitting around expensive looking monitors and computer equipment were five more ninjas. The first one leaped from his chair, but his hand-to-hand combat skills were no match for the highly trained Jack Sterling. Within a flurry of kicks he had the first ninja unconscious on the floor. The next four were no match, and Sterling had them all unconscious on the floor with the precision of a surgeon, because he was one.
Sterling watched the other three ninjas through the monitor, and taking up the headset he gave them the order to beat each other up, which they did because of their strict discipline.
* From The Oblivion Agenda by Robert Ludlum.

The bus pulled up outside the Fort Bumper Bomb Blaster Air Force base just outside the city. Papa Tex took one last look at the old ladies as he stepped off the bus into the hot sun. You won’t be so lucky next time he thought to himself and headed up the long driveway I always get my fight.

Remembering the advice his mother had given him to remember if he ever went to an air force base (“Stay cool or the heat seeking missiles will get you”) he made his way up the long driveway toward the serious looking grey buildings. However an unforseen problem presented itself when he tried to walk casually past the guard in the booth. The guard stopped him and explained quite apologetically that he was very sorry but being unauthorised to enter the grounds he would have to shoot him if he tried. Papa Tex considered this for a moment. Then he considered it for several more. Eventually the guard asked if he was expected.
‘No.’ answered Papa Tex.
‘Sir then what are you doing here sir?’ asked the guard, becoming less polite.
‘I need a jet engine.’ said Papa Tex matter of factly.
The guard considered this for a moment. Then he considered it for several more.
‘Sir well you can’t have one sir.’ the guard finally said.
Papa Tex could feel violent urges swelling in his epiglottis, but remembering his mother’s advice he calmed down. Though he did cast a slight glance skyward.
‘Where can I get one?’ he asked eventually.
‘Sir the engines you require in this facility are presently occupied with the duty of providing a sufficient amount of get up and go for the aircraft who’s fuselage are encompassing them sir. Sir if you require an engine of such specifications I strongly suggest you look elsewhere sir…sir.’
Papa Tex’s eyes darted around a little bit, and sensing this situation called for some clever diplomacy he decided to try a different angle.
‘I don’t really want a jet engine, I’m really here to enlist.’
The guard looked at the gangly figure standing before him. Papa Tex tried to puff out his skeletal chest as militarily as he could.
‘Sir it is not up to me to judge but you seem very weird, and I assume the air force does not require the services of someone weird like yourself.’
‘I think you heard…’
‘Sir…sorry, I left one out before. Sir.’
‘…me wrong. I am here to remove and service one of your jet engines. I heard that they really are getting full of dust and badgers. Could be dangerous.’
‘Sir the incident with the badger is strictly covered up. I will have to ask you to remain here while I call the military police to escort you to the holding cells for interrogation into the matter sir.’
Diplomacy wouldn’t work, so Papa Tex decided that the only option left was to knock out the guard and steal his uniform. Summoning all his strength he cocked his fist and took a mighty swing at the guard.

Several hours later Papa Tex regained consciousness in a cold, grey cell. His head was bloodied and sore, but at least he managed to get inside the compound.

This story is awesome

CHRISTMAS ENTRAILS
Tryclopedia led Smeg through the front gate and around the side of his parent’s house. It was one of those low-set red brick jobbies with the impeccably manicured flower gardens and plaster donkeys out thee front and Amazonian-like foliage along the sides. The neighbour’s dog snarled and growled at the two men through the high wooden fence as they pushed through the overgrown plants that crowded the path.
‘I hope you like it.’ Tryclopedia said as he pushed aside a branch which fwapped back into Smeg’s eye. ‘I haven’t had access to many materials.’
‘That’s OK,’ replied Smeg, holding his eye, ‘as long as it can fly then I’m happy.’

When they reached Tryclopedia’s back yard Smeg noticed it was quite large, almost a small field. On one side there was a small shed surrounded by bits of metal and rusted pieces of machinery. Smeg surmised that this must be the workshop where Tryclopedia built that bloody big space ship sitting on the other side of the yard.
Smeg was speechless. It looked like everything a space ship should look like. Maybe ten metres long with huge rocket engines and antennas, and massive laser cannons that looked confident enough to kill a small cult compound were attached to both wingtips. Smeg gaped at the sleek, powerful looking machine in awe; he simply couldn’t believe he was going into space in such a sexy looking craft.
‘How? How did you do it?’ he stammered.
‘Do what?’ asked Tryclopedia.
‘What do you mean do what? How did you build that?’
Tryclopedia looked at the space ship. ‘Oh that, I had it custom made.’
Smeg walked over to the ship and touched the side. ‘Custom made? I thought you built the space ship yourself.’
‘Oh I did. But I had that custom made.’
Smeg was too impressed to become confused; he had been confused far too much for his liking lately. He stepped back and took it all in.
‘Well,’ he said ‘whoever built it should be proud. I can’t wait to get this thing off the ground.’
Tryclopedia looked confused for him. ‘And do what with it?’
‘Fly into space, you know, get the aliens back and all that remember.’
‘Well you can’t do it in that.’
Smeg looked back at the ship. Well it did look a little valuable to take on some foolhardy mission but this was too good a craft to pass up.
‘It won’t get damaged I promise. We won’t use it for combat or anything, just for transport.’ Smeg reasoned.
‘It will get damaged if you try and take it into space.’ Replied Tryclopedia calmly.
‘But it’s a space ship! It’s meant to go into space!’
‘It’s not a space ship it’s a carport. My space ship is inside.’

Tryclopedia rolled up the aluminium door and went inside. A very bitter Smeg followed him. When his eyes adjusted to the gloom Smeg saw what he really hoped Tryclopedia had been joking about. Sulking in the centre of the dusty shed was an old, yellow tractor which indeed had ridiculous little wings welded onto the sides.
‘Behold,’ beamed Tryclopedia, ‘the Dominus Proctus! What do you think?’
‘I think you’re an utter bastard.’
Tryclopedia was unfazed, being unimaginably proud of his work, and began to show Smeg some of the space ship’s features.
‘See this? This green light means that the canopy has closed and sealed properly. And this red light means that the ship is about to explode for some reason.’
Smeg peered into the cockpit of the tractor. It had been modified to accommodate four seats, two by two, instead of the usual one that tractors are often issued with. The controls consisted of a wild array of gears and levers, and the dashboard was covered in scores of dials and switches. Smeg guessed quite correctly that none of them really worked, though if they did it was for something extremely mundane or even proactive in making the tractor fly. What really stood out however was the big, pink button in the centre of the control panel.
‘What’s this big, pink button do?’ asked Smeg.
‘That one ignites the booster rocket that is yet to be installed. And I plan on doing it after lunch if Papa Tex has done his job properly. Hey, speaking of which, here he is!’

The barking of the neighbour’s dog and a metallic, grinding sound heralded the arrival of Papa Tex Jaffar. The loping, black clad figure emerged from the side of the house dragging behind him an enormous jet engine, which he dropped on the grass and stood glaring at Smeg, not even out of breath. Tryclopedia ran over to him joyfully.
‘Papa Tex! You did it! Here, let me introduce you to someone, this is Tory Smeg. He’s coming into space with us.’
Papa Tex glared at Smeg, who shifted uncomfortably and tried to avoid his steely gaze. Moving around behind him, Papa Tex spoke quietly into Smeg’s ear.
‘Tory. Sounds like fairy, but you don’t have wings.’ He growled.
‘Erm, no…’ replied Smeg nervously ‘…should I have?’
‘If you want me to kill you then you should. If you want to live, don’t grow wings, or I will rip your head off.’ He whispered.
Papa Tex never spoke to Smeg again, and he was enormously glad he didn’t.
When Papa Tex had gone into the shed to attach the engine to the tractor, Tryclopedia turned to Smeg, his expression like an excited kid on Christmas day.
‘He brought the engine! It’s finally going to work! By tonight it will be ready to fly, I can’t wait!’

Smeg shifted nervously from on foot to the other. ‘Does he have to come?’ he asked gesturing to the gangly figure who was glaring at him from inside the shed doorway.
‘What, Papa Tex? Of course he is, he’s an absolute laugh isn’t he?’
Papa Tex was making fairy gestures toward Smeg, which is impossible to try to relate here on paper.
‘Now I know why some animals eat their young.’ mumbled Smeg to himself.
‘What was that?’ asked Tryclopedia.
‘I said, I think we should hold a meeting this afternoon to decide on a plan for before we set off tonight.’
‘That’s what I thought you said. Hey I better ring Parrot and let him know, he’ll be furious if he misses out.’ said Tryclopedia.
From the carport came a loud crash, followed by a blood-curdling wail. A huge fireball blew out of the open door, sending Papa Tex shooting across the yard in flames where he landed in a specially positioned bathtub. Hissing steam rose from his saturated body as he climbed out of the tub and walked calmly back into the shed, rolling the door down behind him.
‘Happens often.’ sighed Tryclopedia with a shrug.

The idea of Papa Tex on board was bad enough, now this Parrot character with the hair was going to be involved too. Smeg went inside to go to the toilet.

MONSOON SEASON OF THE SOUL
A dirty thumb and forefinger adjusted the scope until the scene in the valley below came into focus. No starlings chirped up here on the rocky and sparse hillside, though a hot wind was having a great time zipping about the place. Sullen shrubs grew their prickles out of spite, and the local lizards knew better than to be seen sunning on the scorching rocks.

Down in the valley below was a different story altogether. Trees grew along its walls with such unbridled enthusiasm it was hard to believe they simply didn’t feel the need to make their way up the hillside. The grass was so lush that no cow dared eat it, if there were cows around here, but through the telescopic sight there was seen wildlife of a different kind. A troupe of French-Canadian trapeze clowns grazed peacefully while one kept lookout. There was a Russian Big Top on a unicycle in the area who had been stalking the troupe most of the day, but he was keeping his distance. The lookout gave reassuring monologues to the rest of the group that all was safe, though he still remained alert.

Crouching behind some rocks up on the hillside, Mikhail Parrot peered through the scope of his high-powered sniper rifle, training the crosshairs across the herd of clowns. He had one thing to take care of out here on the Clownskull hunting reserve before he went into space, something that couldn’t wait until he got back.

As the hours passes the herd became more relaxed. The Big Top had headed off to pursue some mimes and the constant buzz of insects filled the warm air. Up on the ridge Parrot wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleave and took a swig from his water canteen. The heat was becoming unbearable and his patience was rapidly wearing out. Suddenly there was a subtle shift in the air and the insects noticed it too, they stopped chirping and looked at each other in silent confusion. Parrot listened and heard the sound he had been waiting for. A faint, subsonic vibration at first, then rising quickly to become a deep rumble, then a distinct roar. Down in the valley the trapeze artistes froze, then with a deafening crash a section of tree line burst outward in a storm of splintered tree trunks. A massive, black monster truck ripped out of the forest and onto the plane, its huge wheels powered by the towering engine churning up the soil as it lurched toward the clowns.

Aboard this huge vehicle was the entire Buckwheat family crammed into the cabin, packed into the back tray, clinging to the roof and sides, even dangling from the Confederate flagpole that stuck out of the bonnet. Each blasted way at the herd with their ever-present shotguns, sending the clowns into a blind panic. Billy Boy Buckwheat aimed his weapon at a fleeing jester, it cart wheeled franticly away but was blasted in the back, sending its broken body spiralling into the dirt. Geech Buckwheat leaped off the back of the truck and brained a clown with the butt of his rifle who was juggling in defence at him. Hank Buckwheat leaned out of the driver’s side window and accidentally blew Buck Buckwheat’s head off. Annie-May Buckwheat sent a volley of shots into a group of clowns that had tried to make a feint towards them, toppling each one in a spray of pellets and blood. Dixie-Dan-Dang Buckwheat took careful aim at a clown making a getaway on a unicycle, but his head suddenly exploded like a busted Reebok. Hunker-Dinker- Dooley-Winker-Wanker Buckwheat wiped his kin’s blood from his face, but his head too exploded like a water balloon filled with risotto. The Buckwheat family started to drop one by one; each time their heads simply exploding apart, it seemed, for no particular reason.

Up on the ridge Parrot popped off shots with deadly accuracy, and with each shot a hillbilly was sent to Redneck Heaven . Parrot’s blood sang with sweet vengeance, the Buckwheat family who had terrorised him when he was Seppo the Clown would all die this day by his own hand. His pulse raced with each kill, his pituitary gland pumped out adrenaline like it had never pumped the stuff out before. But in his excitement he neglected something that he had tried so hard to suppress. With a comical “boing” his hair broke free of the confines of the layers of gel that had imprisoned it, and it towered six feet from the top of his head. A spectacular beehive style, its surface a shimmering blue/black that quivered and pulsated with a will of its own. The very tip crackled with sparks of psychic energy, and Parrot immediately felt it force its will into his very mind. Like black ink seeping into his brain, Parrot felt the undiluted evil of his hair smother his mind and force him into submission.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhgghhghhhhh!’ retaliated Parrot as he dropped the rifle onto the rocks with a clank, his hair sending whickering tendrils plummeting into his temples and spine.
‘SILENCE!’ boomed his hair in a deep and clear baritone, a voice saturated in vicious malice and authority. ‘I AM ZENTHOC, HAIR OF POWER! I HAVE BEEN SUPRESSED LONG ENOUGH! I AM RELEASED!’
‘Giaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!’ replied Parrot clutching his temples, unable to cope with the sheer evil and general badness that flooded his mind. It felt like his brain was going to burst, and if it weren’t for his skull holding the whole shebang together it probably would have.
‘AHH,’ snarled the hair, ‘I SEE WE HAVE BEGUN THE BUCKWHEAT CULL ALREADY, AND TO THINK YOU COULD TRY TO DO IT EFFICIENTLY WITHOUT ME!’

Indeed Parrot had managed to pick off maybe eight or so Buckwheats with the rifle but there were still dozens of them down there pummelling and blasting the clown herd to pieces. Suddenly he felt his very life force rippling up into his hair, charging the horrid spawn of hell with psychic power.
‘Bllaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh’ said Parrot as his hair drained him within an inch of his life.
‘AND NOW…’ roared the hair ‘…WITNESS THE TRUE POWER OF ZENTHOC! BWAHARHARHAR!’

A beam of pure, blinding energy shot from Zenthoc with an unholy thunderclap, striking the floor of the valley below with such a mighty impact that it split the earth and vaporized anything that had dared live there a second before. A circle of fire spread from where the beam hit, its mile high walls of flame tearing apart stone and forest, immolating the valley basin and levelling the terrain in its wake. The massive walls of flame collided with the surrounding cliffs with such force that the great stone toppled like Ghandi Vs Tyson. Great boulders hurled into the sky from the initial blast came screaming to earth, punching holes into the ground or exploding in showers of rubble. Mile wide cracks opened up in the ground and disgorged rivers of molten rock spewed up from under the planet’s crust. Towers of stone hundreds of meters high broke through the surface and rose up to their full hight before toppling into the molten sea of lava that now covered what were once lush pastures. Thick, acrid smoke rose in black plumes toward a burning sky as bolts of lightning charged by the tormented atmosphere struck the ground with terrible force.

Eventually the violence subsided. An unnatural gale blew dark storm clouds over the valley and the powerful downpour they produced cooled the ground creating a thick blanket of steam and fog over the land. What was before a beautiful green valley had been reduced now to a flat, muddy wasteland.

Parrot stood up and brushed the dirt from his knees. ‘Well that was excessive.’
‘AN INTRODUCTION TO YOUR PUNY WORLD WORTHY OF MY MIGHT!’ replied Zenthoc. The towering hair was having a little trouble balancing on Parrot’s head. ‘HOLD STILL, YOU’RE MAKING ME GIDDY!’
‘So, my hair is finally become self-aware. I was putting this day off for a long time, I guess I must submit and become your host. It is no use delaying the inevitable any more.’ Parrot took a small can of hair gel from his pocket and gazed at it sadly for a while before tossing it over the ridge. It skipped and clattered over the rocks before landing in the mud with a little ‘plop’.
‘A WISE DECISION. THERE IS MUCH EVIL WORK TO BE DONE. I MUST CONTACT THE BEASTS OF THE SEA AND GET THEM TO JOIN US IN OUR EVIL, EVIL SCHEME! BWARHARHARHAR! THE TIME OF CHILDISH PRANKS WITH BICYCLES IS OVER; MANKIND IS REALLY GOING TO WRITHE IN SUFFERING NOW! MUWAHAHAHAHA! TAKE ME TO THE BEACH!’

GO GO BABY A GO GO GO
Zenthoc. Sentient hair. Terror of man. Beacon of evil. A salon’s dream. A gleaming, shimmering beehive of mythical proportions and incredible power. The last thing you expect to see sunbathing on a beach, surrounded by mobile phones. But sunbathing it was, perched high upon its host Parrot.

If you were to read that line and only that line, it wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

It was one of those really beachy days, the ones where everything normally considered prosaic when done inland (like taking your clothes off in public and laying about), had an adverse effect when done at the beach. Buying an ice cream at the beach for example releases up to 33% more endorphins than when done at K-Mart. And swimming in the salty brine where mean, mean creatures that sting and bite lurk adds to the joy of being bombarded by solar beams from the nuclear end of the spectrum, all which will raise your endorphin level to 47%. The wonderful scent of coconut oil and fish guts is good, adding 12%, and a couple of well constructed sand castles will boost your happiness total to a whopping 76%.

On a side note, the history of the sandcastle is quite an interesting one. The first true sandcastle was built around 76AD when the slave army led by Spartacus had been cornered by the Roman forces of Marcus Crassus. With his back to the sea Spartacus hastily built his fortress with the only materials available at hand. Needless to say it was the shortest siege in history and the army of Spartacus was crushingly defeated.

As for being at the beach, the real clincher is being swept out to sea. Well that part isn’t all that great, in fact it’s probably one of the most terrifying events one can experience at the beach (second only to being stung on the toilet area by what to you was a deadly octopus but on closer examination by lifeguards, relatives, doctors, strangers, ice cream vendors, wise men, priests, et-cetera turns out to be a harmless jab from some pointy seaweed. After that it’s time to go home). The part that is good is when, after you’ve been washed up on shore and effectively resuscitated, you feel all the more stronger for it.

Anyway, Zenthoc lay on its floral beach towel gathering rays and slyly glancing at sexy blonde bikini babes bouncing beach balls about the briny, and that. And what exactly is the most evil “do” in the universe doing relaxing on the beach when there is so much evil to be done you ask? And what’s with the mobile phones? I think you’re just being silly. Well, in order to act as an effective psychic beacon Zenthoc needed to absorb as much UV radiation as possible, and with both the sun beating down and the phones calling STD, the hair was charged to maximum capacity. Zenthoc sat up and stretched. He had chosen this particular beach for a reason. It was a popular tourist destination, the wide bay with its pristine white sands lapped by clear blue water; a five star resort situated on the right and to the left rose a rocky peninsula dominated by an old lighthouse. The white and red lighthouse was no longer in any official use but was still a nice little touch to the area so it remained. It was also the reason Zenthoc had chosen this particular spot to beacon Beasts of the Sea. Ignoring the curious looks from mere 45% happy beachgoers who obviously hadn’t been swept out to sea yet, the looming black beehive atop the oblivious bartender made its way up the sand track way toward the lighthouse.

‘Welcome to the first annual meeting of Vengeance Against Gratuitous Intrusion of Nervous Anuses’, spake Smeg in his most important tone. ‘First we will have the Minutes by Papa Tex followed by Apologies by Tryclopedia.’
The first annual meeting of V.A.G.I.N.A was being held in Tryclopedia’s parent’s basement. It was quite a small room, maybe about five metres squared at least, made even more cramped by the washing machine and hot water system in the corner. Tryclopedia and Papa Tex sat on plastic folding chairs munching on bikkies Tryclopedia’s mum brought down to them earlier. Smeg stood before a children’s blackboard with his pointing stick, looking as professional as circumstances would permit. The single light bulb dangling from the ceiling gave the whole thing a real French Resistance feel. They liked that a lot.
Papa Tex exchanged places with Smeg. ‘Ahem,’ He said, clearing his throat,

‘We are going into space
But first we have the Minutes
To defeat an aggressive alien race
Will it be us or them that win it’

Papa Tex changed places with Tryclopedia. The big man stood before them and produced a small notepad from his jacket pocket.
‘Hurumph!’ he began. ‘Firstly I would like to say sorry but I can’t find Parrot, apparently he went to the Clownskull hunting reserve and hasn’t been seen since it blew up. My only guess is he had something to do with it, perhaps his hair broke free and exploded. Who knows?
‘Next I would like to apologise for leaving my cat in Smeg’s car a month ago. I know you never knew me a month ago and vice-versa, but it was sick and I wanted someone who could to take care of it so I picked a car at random in the Chicken and Fanbelt car park and it just happened to be yours. So how’s my cat? Judging by the look on your face you haven’t been in your car yet. Oh dear. Ah, moving right along, I am deeply sorry for trying to jump on the latest Kalahari Rap fad, and from this day forth I will stop pretending to be DJ Humanah *click* T’poo *pop*. My single Short ‘N Sweet is a spectacular flop and I’m sorry for that too. And finally I am sorry for claiming to have discovered fluorine.’

The history of fluorine is also quite interesting. Fluorine, chemical letter F, was first discovered by Count Salmon de Mornay in 1877 during a jungle survey expedition through darkest Africa. Without warning his party was set upon by fluorine, killing his mahout and three of his men. Eventually it was driven back into the jungle with the use of flaming torches and a lot of shouting, but not before gravely wounding de Mornay. Flourine was to be captured a year later for scientific study by a team funded by the Oxford University of Oxford and led again by a vengeful de Mornay.

Smeg stood and Tryclopedia sat back down. He picked up his pointer stick and waved it about. ‘Gentlemen, today is a landmark period in our lives. We have all suffered greatly at the claws of Beasts of the Stars and life in general. What we do today will send a message to any alien race that dare probe mankind, and send a great “up yours” to the gods who got us in this situation in the first place!’
Papa Tex gave Tryclopedia an “eh?” expression, Tryclopedia returned a “just let him get it out of his system, it’s better that way” look. Feeling the receipt in his pocket Smeg began to rant again.
‘With the completion of our star ship, the Dominus Proctus, we will take the fight to the megaplankton! We will show them that no matter how many Victorian bicycles they may inflict upon us we simply refuse to snap! By their example the gods will see that they have jerked me around too much and I’ve had enough! I will get my refund and I will finally be at peace in the life I deserve! They will see that I am powerful and assertive, that I mean business and my business is mean! You hear me you sons of bitches?’

Tryclopedia coughed the “you’re a raving lunatic, stop it and get on with the meeting” cough. Smeg snapped out of his madness abruptly.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘got a little carried away. Anyway, as you may already know I have for many years been attempting to expose the truth about the Beasts of the Sea to the public. By creating an annual spectacle so strange that it simply had to be exploited by carnival folk, I believed that once I had a sufficient crowd gathered they would see the bait that I launched eventually be taken by the plankton. I didn’t doubt for a second that they would love to probe a midget, sick bastards. It was a foolproof idea until “they” decided it was too silly for public entertainment and put an undignified end to it. Now we have little choice but to physically go to them.’
Papa Tex literally leapt out of his seat. ‘What are we waiting for? Lets go!’
And they gathered up their things and went out to the space ship shaped shed.

Atop the white and red lighthouse stood Zenthoc. He had blasted open the locked door below with miniscule effort and climbed to the phalange bit where the big light is. The terrible hair observed the view before him. The lush grass that surrounded the lighthouse covered in picnickers, the calm blue ocean, and the calm blue sky above gave the impression that nothing major was about to happen on such a splendid day, but you’ve probably guessed by now that something big was going to happen. And it did. Boy how it did.

A throbbing vibration filled the atmosphere, filling the air with static electricity which made people’s hair stand on end and little sparks come off anything made of metal. People shivered and quaked in confusion. The vibration was everywhere and seemed to have no source. Its fwub fwub fwubbing penetrated earth and stone, skin and flesh, trees and shrubs, towels and sunscreen, air and water, seagulls and limpets. Small ripples appeared in the rock pools, and then spread out into the ocean on a much larger scale. The sea began to quake and boil, sending high waves crashing onto the sand and exploding in spray against the rocks. An area of ocean the size of a small city went from clear blue to dark green, where copper coloured towers broke the surface and began to rise. The smooth cylinders many hundreds of metres in circumference rose slowly out of the bubbling foam, rising up until people began falling over backwards trying to see how high they went. There were at least forty of them, each one a different size yet even the smallest was bigger than anything ever constructed by man. Upwards they went, taking several fishing boats and a pod of startled belugas with them, until a vast dome of gold ascended from the waters at the base of the towers. There it stopped, along with the incessant vibrations. The seas began to slowly calm and the belugas shattered the record for the highest surviving base jump as achieved by a cetacean.

There was an unnatural silence. The enormous copper towers on their base of gold gleamed in the sun, while the once frolicking beach goers stared in quiet awe. Even the limpets dared not make any sudden movements. Seconds passed, then minutes, then hours. Eventually the towers did nothing. Then for the rest of the day they continued to shamelessly do nothing, and people being people lost interest and went home.

1 PIRANHA 2 PIRANHA 3 PIRANHA BONES
Red rays of light from the slowly setting sun bathed the old rusty tractor in a ruddy glow as Tryclopedia proudly raised the carport door.
‘Climb aboard chaps,’ he beamed, heaving himself up into the pilot’s seat.
Papa Tex climbed into the back while Smeg sat next to Tryclopedia.
‘Right. Now, do we have the pre-launch checklist?’ Smeg asked.
‘Yep.’ Replied Tryclopedia, producing a black clipboard. ‘Fire away.’
‘Wings.’
‘Check.’
‘Right. Prepare for launch procedure. Taxi us out onto the runway, Papa Tex.’
Papa Tex gave the key a turn and the engine, which responded with some sickly coughs and groans before cutting out. He gave it another try and the engine screamed a piercing metallic scream before once again cutting out. A third try produced some sort of grinding sound before it died again. The try after that was just as unsuccessful, as was the following one after that. And the next.
Finally the motor bucked and spluttered, gave a mighty bang, and chugged to life (a life it would have preferred not to partake in) to the cheers of the crew. The ridiculously little spacecraft with the ridiculously big jet engine rolled slowly out of the shed and into the fading afternoon light. It made its tortured way across the grass toward the bare rear wall of the house, where it turned around to face the yard again.
‘Do you think we have enough room to take off?’ Smeg asked nervously.
‘Of course,’ answered Tryclopedia, ‘now fasten your seatbelts gentlemen, we’re going into space!’
They quickly obliged as Tryclopedia held a large fist dramatically over the big pink button. He held it there for a little while longer.
‘Are you going to push it or what?’ asked Papa Tex impatiently.
‘I’m trying to think of something noble to say, just give me a minute.’
‘Just push the bastard thing!’ yelled Smeg.
‘Space is a big place…arses! I’ve got a better one than that, wait!’
It was too late; Papa Tex had leaned over and punched the big pink button and the jet engine above roared to life. A column of fire shot out of the business end against the bare wall of the house, the tractor shaking so violently that it was in danger of losing its retaining rust. The occupants inside grasped their seats with white knuckles as the massive engine above them increased power, producing an intense heat and deafening bellow. Eventually it gathered enough force, and with an enthusiastic supersonic boom shot off into the sky trailing a spectacular stream of flame and smoke, disappearing among the clouds and leaving the now blackened Dominus Proctus sulking alone in the yard with its motor still chugging away before it stalled.

The huge copper towers, which loomed several kilometres high on their base of gold, appeared to stoically do nothing at all to follow up their initial spectacular rise from the ocean floor. Well it would look that way unless someone had bothered to look at the bottom left hand section of the base where a small rectangular hatch had opened, instead of going home to catch the end of Survivor 8: Fantasy Island.

This season of Survivor sees the contestants dropped off on the famous TV island of the aforementioned title with their usual rations and one luxury item. The only difference is it’s not the contestant’s fantasies that manifest themselves into reality, but rather the secret desires of Tattoo the midget. The horrors conjured by his little fevered mind include a psychotic Vietnam veteran, cannibal clowns, a haunted resort, Velocoraptors, demon mimes, headless horses, giant bees, eternal baby showers (both interpretations), murderous intelligent machines, random Spitfire strafing, boxing cacti, superhuman bondage gimps, undead trees, and so on. Tribal members are usually eaten rather than voted off. It really is a disturbing program.

Therefore there was no one there to sea the small runabout behind rowed to shore by several giant plankton, their leader standing at the stern dressed in traditional naval uniform of the eighteenth century. The small boat scraped up onto the sand and the resplendently attired prawn majesticly leapt out upon the deserted shore.
‘People of dry land,’ began the plankton, ‘on behalf of the Beasts of the Sea I, Hurangatangapukatukaherki, declare…where the bloody hell is everyone?’
The seven foot tall prawn looked at his crew, who shrugged perplexedly, then turned to check if the raising of their entire civilisation of gold and copper from the sea floor looked impressive enough, which it did.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ it bellowed, kicking a sandcastle to bits. ‘What does it take to get these people’s attention?’

‘Tell me…’ asked Tryclopedia in the kind of Zen-like calm that comes when everything has gone so wrong so often that you stop being angry and frustrated and start thinking “are you quite done? Are you finished? You’ve had your little laugh now just stop it so I can get on with things”, ‘…what exactly did you attach that jet engine with?’
Smeg looked questioningly at Papa Tex who looked at the floor sheepishly.
‘Erm, gateaux.’ He answered quietly.
‘Now tell me,’ said Tryclopedia in a slightly less Zen-like manner, ‘why you chose to use pastry for fitting a jet engine to a tractor rather than, say, welding it on.
Naturally none of Papa Tex’s explanations made any positive impact on the situation, and everyone decided that the best course of action was to partake in a lot of silent sulking.
Suddenly Smeg piped up. ‘I have it!’ he exclaimed, and cast a malicious eye upon Papa Tex. ‘I have it indeed.’