Intermezzo: But Not Really

Once upon a time there was a boy named Joe the horny

He had miles and miles of files

He listened to Miles Smiles while trimming his piles and visiting the Rials

until one day, he died.

Poor Georgina, his widow...

...

...was a whale.

In that, she was blubbbery.

Not as in a disparaging denotation for an obese person

No, she really was a whale.

She had large quantities of blubber and was quite proud of it

Joe the Horny liked folds of skin

so it was okay with him.

He could spend all day molding Georgina in his hands, and it was soothing for her.

Suddenly John Scot burst in with a fishing rifle!

Which, is code, of course, for...

https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEEX59Qd2GcA&h=7AQHe0Pvy

THis is better though

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"Haven't heard this in ages" thought Georgina as the song blasted from loudspeaker s on the shore

Let them eat cake, but give me buttered toast!

Declared Carolyn the Pig, John's former mistress, as she waddled onto the shore.

Carolyn the Pig wasn't actually a pig, that was just her title.

She took off her wet pink cat hair sweater and let her hard goose bumpy skin shimmer in the sun. Then she snorted and ate some cupcakes mixed with truffles.

it may seem odd for a Chinese Crested to wear a cat hair shirt, but that was just how Carolyn rolled.

It took a long time to remove.

For Joe, that is. Carolyn couldnt remove I at all.

https://youtu.be/KiDD0o8nWCQ

Carolyn wanted to get wet, so she rolled over the edge of the pool into the water and vomited marshmallow mixed with cupcake/truffle mixture all over Joe the Horny, who of course got kinky wit it

 

As Joe's last name was Kurtz, the pool attendant watched and turned to the hot dog stand cashier to ask: "Mr. Kurtz? Isn't he dead?" 

"The Horror." out of the steamy dark jungle the voice came

"The Horror."

Joe smirked.

"Yeah, he's dead"

said Joe, "but he'll keep for a few days. Anyway, the whale likes it."

"But he's - but you're -" stammered the pool attendant, and her brain promptly short-circuited.

For she was but a robot, as all other beings were around Joe. He was trapped in the Piers Anthony book Race Against Time.

But nobody had read it, so all the robots died.

Mainly the pool attendant robot.

The drugs took effect, and Carolyn rolled up out of the pool like a film in reverse. Joe blinked, and his blink started skipppppppint

skipping

He finally stopped blinking, and blinked.

"It must be the Negativeland," he said, "i'll turn it up."

Now let's turn it on and see if the record changer is working there.

"There, that oughtta fix it."

Yes

Georgina had a music request.

byooiinnng

Carolyn did too.

https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSmW17QvUhRM&h=7AQHe0Pvy

HEY THAT WASN"T IT

screamed Georgina

who had a crush on the whale from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

and still thought Fugazi were the punkest thing ever

"Speaking of HGTTG," interrupted Bob,

"I'm going to write another chapter of JOE wherein the number 43 is discussed with Lemmy and Cat"

Then he grinned like a character in a David Lynch experimental film

Which is to say, a tad scary and very unnervingly.

Your turn

[AN ANIMATED GIF OF JIMMY KIMMEL HOLDING BOTH THUMBS UP SCREAMS ACROSS THE SKY. IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, BUT THERE IS NO WAY TO LINK TO IT NOW.]

Candace wandered past the pool admission counter, neglecting to pay. "I demand my Bechdel Rights!" she shouted - but good-naturedly.

She stretched lazily, like a character fresh out of the freezer.

A nearby scuba diving mask named Jeremy turned violet and hollered.

"CAMA-GO SHITSA DUMUNGA KO"

Joe looked askance at it and continued with his task at hand.

Candance was from another story, but not.

Candace sauntered up to the pool attendant, who was not sitting in a pool chair to recover from the ongoing onslaught of surrealism. And who hopefully still existed. "You got a name?" asked Candy.

was sitting*

The pool attendant, being a short-circuited robot, did not reply, but Mama Brain did, through a combination of elemental sorcery and Radio Shack electronics,

and the help of Jose, who had finally stopped playing Trans Pac when he had to shit.

"My name is Coco," spoke Mama through the robot pool attendant. She wasn't quite willing to reveal her true name yet to a random stranger that she was just messing with.

"I come from Acapoco," she continued,

Candy stopped. She'd heard this before.

Somewhere...

John Scot was waking up, having passed out when he snagged his fishing rifle on his bootlace and shot his pinky toe off.

"Good day, sirs and madams," he began. Candy shot a nasty glance at him and turned back to the robot.

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"You like to waterski, Coco?" asked Candy.
"Not really, I get really nervous. I'm not very waterproof," answered Mama-Coco.
"No way! You're a gyndroid? That's SO AWESSOME!!"
"Y--yyeah. I don't like to talk about it much though."
"Well it just so happens that I'm a roboticist, and you're about to get the waterproofing of your life!"

"Yes Rocks!" said Mama-Coco, "Make with the proofifying!"

Candy didn't have any tools or materials on hand, so she had to raid the pool's maintenance supplies and water filtration systems. "Sorry," she muttered in the general direction of the remaining pool staff, who were unable to respond because nobody would write about them.

Plus they were mainly robots and the recent short circuit had knocked out most of their mother boards. Joe was humping the humpback and not paying any attention.

"Hey, wanna put on some tunes?" said Mama-Coco. Mama was getting a pretty good hang of Coco's actual personality, which was relieving for her, because she HATED being fake.

"Sure, yeah!" said Candy distractedly.

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Mama-Coco had been looking for Candace for a few weeks. After she was rescued from Pennybagswise and his ballooney corpse floated down and was dragged off and shoved in a dumpster, there was much partying and celebrating and frankly, the night became a bit of a blur.

The next thing she knew, it was the next day, and Mama Brain had woken up in bed next to a Mexican biker with a bad tattoo of a parrot on his chest.

She really needed to unwind and have some girl time.

And this was it.

https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D6-OWCI3HK84&h=7AQHe0Pvy
But now here she was, talking to her beloved Candy through a dead robot.

"For she had just remembered that Candy was not a complete stranger, but beloved," said Anal Man, doffing his "John Scot" disguise.

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It was quite a hangover.

"I'm not keeping up with all these videos!" raged a discarded pack of Camels next to the trash can.

"And man, that ain't no joke," said the piece of lichen, "You could disappear in smoke."

"The first thing I want to point out to you is the need to connect to your customers in a new way," chatted Candy as she and Coco prepared to strap on their waterskis.

"Whaaaat?"

"Oh, sorry, that was just an ad. I'm sponsored nowadays."

"Oh."
"Try to separate yourself from the pack, make YOUR brand stick out by cross market-- oops sorry there I go again..."

The boat took off. Holographically, of course.

"Are you sure YOU'RE not a robot?" said Mama-Coco quizzically.

Candy first rejected the idea out of hand, then grew unsure. Stupid newfound friend overturning her unspoken certainties!

They got accustomed to the bouncy clips of the waves and their legs grew used to the stress, and wallah they were waterskiing!

(voila)

Candy blushed. "Uh... no homo... but they did a REALLY good job on... you know."
Mama-Coco blushed too. "Uhh... thanks."
It was a gorgeous day and their eyes soon turned to the skies and the spray. Rainbows formed among the splashes of slightly vomit-polluted water.

It smelled faintly of marshmallow and Arthur Fonzarelli brand cologne.

It may have been a dream, thought Candy.

A Cessna flew by to skywrite a big-ass "LOL".

Jose, thought Mama-Coco.

"Candy," she said.

"Yeah?"

"I actually... know you."

"What do you mean? I've never seen you before."

"Yeah, I'm actually not in control of me... I just robot died a while back. Sorry for fooling you."

"WHo are you, then?" incredulously inquired Candace. She imagined some 44 year old perv just wanting to go skiing with--

using a robot to-- the thought disgusted her.

'Luke, she's your sister?" screamed the boat.

A pair of gadgety arm extended from the boat and it donned a top hat and burst into song.

arms*

"I am a rowboat and I'll sing this song

I, rowboat, will sing, and you'll sing along!

I'm your doctor" -

"OW! Stop hitting me!" the boat cried, as every character in the vicinity began attacking it to make it stop singing.

"Anyway, yeahhhh, this is Sis."

"MAMA J!"

"But you really-- Where are you really!? I woke up all the way over in Hoboken with a gandydancer and a midget guitar luthier.

And you were gone!"

They went over a little waterskiing ramp and over a couple sharks in the water and landed on another little ramp and back down into the water. The boat muttered to itself, its feelings hurt.

Bob yawned in the Co-Creator realm, sorry that he had to go to bed soon.

Erik, sitting bare-chested and cross-legged on his bead, swabbed sweat from his right armpit, then sniffed it. "Why the fuck do I always do that?" he wondered for the millionth time.

Mike Myers stuck his head in as the Austin Powers character and said in a bad British accent "But we all love our own brand, don't we?" and farted.

Mama Brain went into the tale of the rest of the night that she could remember and got to the most important detail, where she was currently.

"When did Mama and Candy last see each other?" whistled the pool filter.

The piece of lichen twitched.

"I think in the department store, they were reunited after they beat Pennybagswise, then they all went out partying" improvised the lichen,

"But I thought we were a billion years in the past, in 2013?" mumbled a homeless man who had wandered in now that nobody was staffing the pool entrance.

I mean, the original 2013?

"Wait, WHAT year is it again?" mumbled the lichen. "I'm so high."

"Wanna get high? Again?" asked a nearby towel hopefully.

"Oh you betcha!" chimed in the pool filter.

"She was talking to ME!" snapped the lichen.

"Oh, we can all get high," chirped the towel. He and the lichen plopped down next to the pool filter since it was, yknow, immobile.

A variety of herb was dumped out of trash bags, on the tiles next to the pool. Some got wet. They set about cutting it all up with scissors.

The wet weed smelled pretty dank.

Then the pool boy, one of the only robots still functioning brought out a set of giant Cheech and Chong brand papers the size of a double bed sheet. "I hate sheets, cuz they make me mad!" screamed the lichen.

The four of them broke into a barbershop quartet, singing "I Hate Sheets" by BobbenAirick.

"Available on cassette and 8-track!" shouted Candy.

Joe showed up, covered in Whale spoo.

"IT'S SO GREAT TO BE UNDEAD!" he whispered.

"What year is it?" asked the pool filter.

"Are you high?" taunted the lichen. "Anyway, it's 2013, except there's robots and shit."

It paused, lost in thought, for two minutes.
"Uh... Wanna get high?"

"Yeah, we gettin' high," said the towel. It was almost done with the blunt.

"Me first first!" shouted the lichen, and lit up. It burned up immediately, because it was a piece of lichen.

Bob fell asleep, and then his computers battery died.

He couldn't find the plug.

"Hey, we should plug this into the blog!" said a piece of ash that used to be lichen.

"Good work, team!" said the boat.

A paper moon and paper stars on strings fell down from the sky and bounced in mid-air.

Period.

G'night! 🌙

Seclusionary Tactische

     Jens sat on the frozen ground, body limp, surveying a herd of lazy goats that were chewing what little cud they could scrounge up on the side of this godforsaken rock in the middle of the Carpathian peaks. The sky was a sullen grey and a vicious wind blew hard and fast.  A goat glanced at Jens as it walked close to him, but Jens didn't move a muscle to catch it, to feed upon it, to nourish his starving body.  He was trying to die, a feeble attempt to thwart this curse. 
     He had been on his way back to the cave where he had made a home for so long, before Glenn had come and took him for that whirlwind of a world tour with the band.  Jens had found a bit of enjoyment in the spectacle, and his role as a roadie afforded him sex and drugs whenever he liked, which turned out to be more seldom than not.  After the first few hundred thousand blowjobs it became boring, and after the first few thousand would-be-overdose-sized servings of pure grade heroin, drugs were just as boring.  Not even a bloodfeast (the Misfits song of that name started running thru his brain) was exciting to him any longer.
    Jens thought of Wolf Mozza and his lucky run in with that falling piano.  How he wished something or someone would come along and put him out of his misery.

   "Wish? Did someone say wish?" asked a voice somewhere above and behind him.  Jens was only slightly startled.  He had intended to return to his seclusion, but had been struck down by the worst depressive episode ever. Only a hundred meters to his hidden cave home, and he'd just dropped his pack, sat down and gave up.  He had slowed his breathing and removed heavy fur coat and other outer wear in the vain hope that he would freeze to death.  No such luck. 
He craned his neck behind him to see the approaching figure.  It looked like Merle Haggard.  This did not make sense, and he gawked again. It still looked like Merle.  Little did Merle know that Jens could tell that it was a disguise, that Merle was actually MR. PcP!
    "You wanna talk about it, hoss?" the demon said, and laughed maniacally, spittle flying and horror echoing through the surrounding hills.
     "How d-did you esc-c-cape?" managed Jens feebly through icy lips.

Intermezzo: Health Class

"Hopefully Mr. Smitty won't see us... knock on formica..." Erik whispered nervously. A fly buzzed by on the hot May day. Bob swatted it. Everyone sweated. Mr. Smitty droned boredly on about the human endocrine system.

"Mm," Bob answered, and scrawled a new sentence in red pen on the half-crumpled piece of paper that held the latest page of the latest Joe story. Erik had been carrying it in his bookbag, which was disorganized as always, so it was a miracle it was only crumpled.

Bob passed the paper back to Erik... who saw red. What do you mean, "Cheryl chewed on a doughtnut?!" HOW DARE BOB NOT EXPLORE MY AWESOME NEW IDEA! (Also, what the word-I'm-not-allowd-to-think-of is a "doughtnut?") He angrily scribbled his follow-up sentence: "BUT NO! JOE DIDN'T DO THAT AT ALL!" Which was, of course, two sentences. Fortunately, this was one of the few things the two of them were never completely anal about in Joe stories.

Bemused, Bob continued the Epic of Joe thusly: "Suddenly the universe filled with rage!"

Little did he know that, in a story to be written decades later, that was actually the secret code phrase that Mr. PCP was waiting for to go into action.

Revelations 9:6

Merle picked up the revolver, turning it over and over in his hands, and thought of Hemingway.

     "A Smith and Wesson snub nosed .32 revolver.  A simple yet effective classic," he chimed, "but in chrome.  Hmph.  I woulda taken you for a black finish type.  Get it?"  Merle tossed it back onto the bed and reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his smokes.  Camels.

     "Everybody thinks I gave these damn things up five years ago.  You want one?" He held out the pack to Cash, who shook his head, staring at the floor.
Merle shrugged and lit one up.
     "You want to talk about it, hoss?" he asked.

Johnny Cash sat for a moment and then looked at his friend.

     "They thought it was Parkinson's.  Turns out it's some shit called Shy-Drager syndrome.  The doc gave me 18 months.  Eighteen MONTHS!!!" Johnny screamed this last part and, in a brief nod to his wilder days in the late 1950's, overturned the bedside table.  The lamp shattered, the drawer flew open, sending the Gideon's bible to land open on the beige shag carpet.  Merle was unfazed as he walked over to pick it up.  He looked at the passage and chuckled.

     "Well, John, I think you have your answer right here," and he began to read.
"Revelations 9:6-- And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."  He smirked and closed the book and gingerly sat it on the other bedside table.
     "John, we both lived way longer than we ever thought we would, back in our youth.  You in particular should have died several times over in 1958, 1959, 1960 and a few other times.  Remember how close to hell you used to come, and try to be thankful that you made it this far.  I know this isn't easy to hear, but you have to be strong right now.  How is it going to look if the Man in Black offs himself?  Weak, that's how.  You have a responsibility to your fans, to your family, but most of all, to yourself, John.  You still have work to do...hey, you got an ashtray anywhere?  Damn non-smoking hotels."

Johnny Cash smiled for the first time all day.
     "Nah, I already checked earlier when I was going to toke up.  Just ash in that empty cup on the table over there. In response to what you said," Johnny turned around to face Merle, "God doesn't--"

Merle was gone.

     "Merle?"  He walked into the bathroom, the only other place Merle could be.

But Merle was no longer in 1997.

Kangaroo Pocket Calculator

Cathy and Lemmy went up to her second-story room in the Cat House so she could make love to him in return for a payment of one million air molecules, but they ended up talking for hours instead. The sky-day become a sky-evening. They calmed and grew drowsy, but still were in no hurry.

Lemmy stood up and gazed out the dimly lit window - out of Brothel Cloud #79 - towards the bar cloud he'd just abandoned, wondering idly. He had all the time in the universe. It was relaxing, being dead. He could get used to this.

"I hate to disturb your peace," said Cathy, standing behind him. She sounded strange. Lemmy turned around.

"Oh. You're a kangaroo."

"Yeahhh," answered Cathy. She didn't sound too alarmed. Lemmy immediately figured this was just something that happened to her sometimes. "Look, can you call the operator on my pocket calculator? She'll know what to do."

Lemmy was a bit miffed. "Can't you call your own damn operator?"

"Can't. Hands," answered Cathy, looking down.

Lemmy conceded. "And your pocket calculator... is?"

If a kangaroo can glare superciliously, then that is what Cathy did.

"Right. In your pocket." Lemmy reached into Cathy's pocket, turned his back, and, having no better idea of what to do, pressed the calculator's most special-looking key. It played a little melody, and then the operator answered. She sounded like a human trying to sound like a computer.

"FORTY-SEVEN IS A MAGICAL NUMBER."

Lemmy coughed. "'Scuse me?" Annoyed, he began mashing the 2 key rhythmically, producing a piano's middle-octave D# each time. It was squishy, like a Moog stuck in a whoopie cushion.

"FORTY-SEVEN PLUS TWO EQUALS FORTY-NINE."

"You know, Mrs. Operator, I once knew some folks from an infowar unit what was really into the number eleven. But I don't know anything about forty-seven. Also, my ex is a kangaroo. And she's right here. And she's still hot. And I'm not a zoophile."

Lemmy thought he heard an "ahem" from behind.

"FORTY-SEVEN TIMES TWO EQUALS NINETY-FOUR."

"Right. So what do I need to do, to make her not a kangaroo?"

"FORTY-NINE AND NINETY-FOUR. NINETY-FOUR AND FORTY-NINE. IT'S... MAGIC." Somebody who must have been standing in the room behind the operator mumbled audibly: "Forty-seven."

Desperate for an answer, Lemmy listened to this bullcrap for several minutes. People continuously wandered up behind the operator during her spiel to say "Forty-seven" in English or foreign languages. Just when Lemmy had just about enough, it stopped. He turned around to chew Cathy out for having made him put up with this crap.

Now she was 49 again, but with the voice of a 94-year-old woman.
She stammered sheepishly and blushed. "Thanks! It always turns me back when the Operator does that. Isn't it a coincidence?"

"Limbo Lounge with Merle" Illustration #3333

"Remember eating oranges?  Betcha wish you'd savored those lil' guys a bit more at the time, eh?"

EOJ Illustration #765-- View from The Cloud Lounge.