Phat and Sharpie

Mark, Mama Brain, and Lem were only looking for a dropped contact lens.

That's when shit went really Tarantino Apeshit on everyone involved.  First of all, man,
she wouldn't have been looking for it (the contact lens) in the first fucking place if the heinous smoke from the dive bar's too-small kitchen wasn't liberally billowing out onto the non-food-ordering public, causing her to rub her eyes uncontrollably, dislodging her lens and causing her to duck down and search--

==

--JUST AS several bullets shattered the window next to Lemtata.

The perp was a waif of a girl man, a skinny, tweaked out trans who just made transexuals look bad.   At least a crackhead and probably an all out junkie omnidruggie, three highs short of an overdose, but that would take too long.  Lemtata stood up suddenly, and grabbed the nearest thing she could think of and lunged at the guy even though he was four feet away, through the newly blasted window, and standing nonchalantly holding a Gatt, on the sidewalk.

In two seconds she was holding the super fat Mega Sharpie she'd picked up off the counter, under his nose with the lid off.  The super fat aroma of the fumes made his nose drool, and he was caught off guard just long enough for Lemtata to root around in her jean jacket pocket and pull out--

--dental floss.  What the fuck!?

Thinking on her feet, Lemtata pulled out length upon length of floss and in three seconds had  fashioned a floss Garott, and was strangling the shemale into submission.  Police had to pry her hands from his throat, but she was never charged.

The incident would live on in infamy as the day Lem became a super cop.

Joe Illustration #1 by R. Rial

"Joe would go into everything at a million miles an hour and then change his mind."-- Bernard Rhodes

Intermezzo: Poe Nutsyfooting Part IVb

Part IVb

"You don't need to punish yourself for drinking with more drinking. You don't need to punish yourself at all!" shouted a nearby can of Perrier.

"You are great and you don't deserve shit from outside, but sometimes you get it, and you can't change that easily, but you can at least not give yourself shit from inside!" it cried, and exploded in a blast of fizz.

"Oh yes I do," said Bugs Bunny, who had just meterialized out of fat air, "I'm a Baaaaaaad Baaad widda boy!"

The punishment fits the crime, thought Bob.

Bob morphed into librettist W. S. Gilbert, and Bugs Bunny into composer Arthur Sullivan. They began singing "A More Humane Mikado."

“It is my very humane endeavour To make, to some extent, Each evil liver A running river Of harmless merriment!” Bob-Gilbert exclaimed.

Hank Williams walked in and said unenthusiastically: "I'm gonna keep drinking until I'm petrified."

Dude.

Seriously though, fuck this shit.

You haven’t committed any sin that needs this kind of punishment.

"Looks like I'm on the wagon for as long as I can hold out." said Bob.

A young Clint Eastwood rode past Bob's horse, singing "rolling rolling rolling, keep them dogies rolling, rawhiiiiide!"

Then he rolled another "dogie", which is kinda like a stogie, but made of wacky weed.

He and his pards rode their horses into the saloon in the next town to the toon of Riders on the Storm. The wind was purple that night.

The saloon-keeper was a little surprised to see five cowboys ride their horses right into the establishment, but... it was the West.

One of his pards, Bob, sat down at the bar and grinned. "I'm thirsty! How's bout a sarsaparilla, Gramps?!"

"Not whisky! I'm on the wagon, day Three!"

• 
  

Clint puffed on his dogie some more. The man sitting next to him morphed into a cartoon dog and threw him a big thumbs up.

So Clint shot him with a Nerf crossbow, then settled down at a rickety table for a game of poker with Bob and Mr. PCP.

Mr. PCP found it hard to interact with people as a giant celestial manatee-bird hybrid thing, so he manifested as a 50-year-old Mexican woman. He was a cheating bastard whose every card was the ace of spades, the ace of spades. The ace of spades, the ace of spades!

Just then, Lenny Kilmister, Lemmy's younger brother and sleazy attorney, walked in and demanded that the narrators cease and desist to describe said cheating. Then he asked Clint if they needed a fourth, to which Eastwood almost imperceptibly nodded a curt acknowledgement.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for 5 minutes, the saloon doors soon crashed open again, this time parted by a 4-member time-travelling biker gang parking right in the saloon.

"Who are YOU guys?!" shouted Lemmy drunkenly. He definitely was not on the wagon

"Kings of speed," said one.

"Kings of speed," muttered another.

"We're gonna make you kings of speed," stuttered a third.

"We're, uh, kinda like the Borg," mumbled the fourth.

"I think we should copy and paste these last days of chat narrative into the blog, and I'll draw a cartoon for it!" shouted Bob into the ceiling.

• 
  
• 
  

• 
  
• 
  

It had been snowing for days in the desert that August, and the roof was nearly at the breaking point. The sonic impact of Bob’s voice gave it that last little push it didn’t need. A spiderweb of cracks began evolving out from above and in front of Bob’s head, growing in strength and weakening the ceiling until with a crash and a sploosh, pounds and pounds of snow fell on all the poker players’ heads.

Clint was completely unfazed, of course.

The biker gang found this development very entertaining, and it became quite obvious that they were all high as kites when they began rolling around in the snow and making snow angels. The barkeep was beside himself and was already on the old fashioned telephone calling the local carpenter.

A few days later, Richard Carpenter arrived on a donkey.

Intermezzo: Poe Nutsyfooting Parts I-IVa

Part I

Be sure to wear a condom when you Fuck the Man

as in Eddie Condon?

oh

I don’t know, can you wear him?

Joe walked in, wearing a Condon. Eddie Condon was as unamused as a mummified corpse could be.

Eddie harumphed indignantly and began strumming his 1912 Gibson Tenor Guitar with fervor, only noticing that his fingers were flaking away when his index bone broke his g string.

"My thong!" he yelled

“Thing, thong

, de witch is thead!” cried an aging Hervé Villechaize.

oh shit, the poor guy committed suicide

never knew

, said Joe to Eddie.

“Eh? Who committed suicide?” said a confused, and still aging Hervé.

“Uh... you?” replied Joe.

"Ah..." said Hervé. Then he keeled right on over! Joe looked at Eddie. "Got any mustard?" said Ed.

“De plain! De plain!” cried Joe.

...that was a *horrible* pun.

Eddie shook his head. An ear fell off. "Dijon,"he uttered, stooping down to pluck the ear from the dirt. "Welcome to Condiment Island!!" hollered Joe.

"It's Condon-ment." Eddie grunted, stuffing his ear into his valise.

The Anti-Tinkerbell fluttered into the smoky bar through a window. “Welcome to Nixyland!” she crooned.

Out of nowhere came a novelty giant flyswatter and smashed her into a post. At the other end stood Dustin Hoffman, dressed as Captain Hook.

"Vermin!" he announced.

The actual Tinkerbell was close behind. She flew to attack him, but clumsily missed and flew into the Anti-Tinkerbell. They exploded in a burst of fairy radiation.

The resulting injuries to the patrons of the bar would not become apparent for fifteen years, when all would die within weeks of each other from cancerous ulcers in the nose, throat, and ears.

But until then, they would wander the world, possessed with an urge to do good. One of those patrons had a cocker spaniel.

That cocker spaniel ended up outliving them all, and is now 132 in dog years. His name is Clarence Harris, and he now lives with his family in Tehran.

He has but one mission: to send a love letter to Taylor Swift. Not a letter of carnal love, or brotherly love, but the purest of platonic affection, the kind that only comes from a mutant dog with just a touch of fairy radiation.

It took him two years to complete, including months of painstaking editing. He contacted Taylor Swift's publicist, who gladly parted with knowledge of her mailing address once Clarence informed him of his identity. How he understood dog language must also have something to do with fairy guts/radiation.

It must have, and it did. For the publicist had been there on the day of that great explosion, and he too, contrary to our previous statements, was still alive to this day, and he too was 132 in dog years. For he was secretly a dog!

I guess, like, fairy radiation does not cause premature death in dogs, maaaaan. Hey, don’t Bogart that!

Hey, man. Bowzer's got the keg.

I sure hope Mom and Frank don't get home.

Part II

Suddenly, everybody died.

All that remained alive in the universe was one hand, clapping.

and half of one anus, crapping

and half of one bitch, slapping

and half of one kitten with a saucer of milk, lapping

and a lone D & D geek, fervently mapping

and a Kanye West CD, vapidly rapping

as of someone gently tapping tapping t my chamber door

The one hand had a lot to clap about.

The End

The curtain rose, and all 232,238,492,203 actors in The Epic of Joe came out onto the stage, causing it to collapse into a black hole.

The black hole, who was named Clare, went on to have a successful film career, with a cameo in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a Disney film called, yep, The Black Hole.

Claude Debussy thought she was from the moon and dedicated to her “Claire de lune,” the third movement of his Suite bergamasque.

Then Claude got tired of waiting on de bussy and decided to hail de taxi. Inside the taxi the driver was listening to the book on tape of The Epic Of John, as read by Leonard Nimoy.

“Johhhhhn, Johhhhhn, leeeeet’s hoooooope for peeeeeeace,” Nimoy wailed in a stirring duet with Yoko Ono.

(out of character - this is very reminiscent of the old Joe stories and their chaoticness :D)

• 
  

  
  

Nimoy and Yoko melded into one misshapen being and started howling "Don't worry, Shatnerrrrr!!!!"

They were joined by Eddie the Cocker Spaniel, who wasn’t a person so he didn’t die when everybody died. Also, he was now 10^234 dog years old. “Hoooome, hooome on the raaaaange,” he howled adorably in human-speak.

Then, he died.

The ghost of Alanis Morrisette raged at the irony of it all.

Part III

Joe?

No, this is Bob. Erik?

No, this is Frank. George_

?

Yes.

George, can you tell Bob that Joe called Sally “Marge”?

Part IVa

PIECES OF NOT CHALK

, said the sad little pebble.

The knot chalk misunderstood and became hurt. Hey Erik, what if I did a Sharpie drawing for Eoj?

PEACE IS OF KNOT CHALK

Drawings fit on a blog just as well as text, have at it, I say!

Once there was a boy named Joe The Imperious. He was pretty sure he'd been referred to in a previous story, but couldn't remember which. So...he got drunk. Then his wife asked him why he'd been drinking so much lately.

“I drink to forget!” he raved.

“Forget what?” asked a Russian blues guitarist.

“I forget!” Joe shouted, and smashed a beer bottle against a passerby’s forehead.

The passerby, Alfred E. Neuman, mumbled, "What, me Forget?" "Isn't it actually 'What Me Worry?" asked the Russian blues guitarist.

Alfred held out his hands like a beggar. "I forget?" he postulated.

Then and there, Alfred and Josif Duma, the guitarist, decided to found Postulism Records, “your source for incomprehensible sounds recorded on wax cylinders.” Hipsters the world over rejoiced and began buying Postulism’s wax-cylinder recordings of washing-machine noises en masse.

When Postulism released Provol's Magic Birds, as well as a series of canary training cylinders, said same ran out and bought out the local pet stores bird population.

Little did they know that was actually MR. PCP!

, the talking manatee.

, disguised as a bird. Somehow.

The talking manatee would record your outgoing answering machine message if you answer a riddlle

The manatee escaped his cylinder and floated in the sky, magically visible to and understandable for everyone in every city and village worldwide, posing his great riddle: “Why do I drink??”

Both Joe and Mr. PCP answered at once, "To kill the pain of longing and heartbreak, and out of frustration, boredom, self spite and general malaise?

GENERAL MALAISE entered in his finest dress uniform, farted, and puked two pints of whiskey onto the floor.

"The Answer!" shouted the manatee.

“Whuk wheezh... needs. Is da sellllf... reinforshing. Problem!” slurred General Malaise. “Thash whatz we need. Thas whatz we... NEEDS,” he insisted to nobody in particular. “Itsh... our... specialty! And I am yerrrr... General Malaise! And whash we need iz a self reinforshing problem! I tellz ya!”

He stumbled into a space-age plastic chair, waving his whiskey bottle pointedly at someone only-imagined.

"The problem intensifies when you drink half a fifth of bourbon and feel as if you've only consumed half that amount." chipped in Jack Nicholson dryly.

"This leads to escalated bingeing as one struggles to attain Te desired effect," he continued.

The desired effect , rather.

"and this problem is called tolerance. What we need is more intolerance!"

I'm Not Synthesizer!

The store's front door creaked open and in walked Lemtata, in her usual intensely-absent trance. She was as usual engaged in intense dialogue with someone who, to mundane eyes at least, was simply not there.

(Jose interrupted his weeping, turned his head to the narrator, and snided, "Yeah. Like her," before returning to his unusual bout of sincere emotion.)

"and George, I told him Slarp! Ghaaaa! Mothafuckah! - Oh hi Mark." Lemtata turned her head a bit to face her new, and in the view of all around her equally imaginary, partner in conversation. "I did not hit her. I did not. hit. her!"

"Damn right you didn't, babe. But you woulda," said Mama Brain, referring to that incident with the black magic marker and the roll of floss five chapters from now. She handed Lemtata a space-age-plastic bag of hardy, white marshmallows off the shelf, and they both nodded knowingly.

Meanwhile, Pennywise had much to mend, and little hope of mending it.

"I - I'm a monster. But - I'm not a monster!" he thought. "Joe?" he said.

"Gurgleblasting. No - waste of life. I'm nothing," Joe babbled.

"Joe. Forget what that said, in this... body? That wasn't me. This isn't me. I don't even know who I am anymore."

"One. Two three. This synthesizer will explode. Waste of life. You... what are you?"

"That's what I'm tryi - Look. I'm not this."

"You... what are you?"

"Why are you rep - oh... sorry.... of course," Pennywisebags said, staring down at Joe with deep concern in his monstrous face. "I suppose you've played the synthesizer too?"

Joe had a new glimmer in his face, like Ronald Reagan being visited by his granddaughter. "Chocolate... so strange... all so strange... how many hours?" His words were as slow as his mind now seemed. "Half-track. My wife missing man talk. Birdmen! Waste of life."

Meanwhile Lemtata was gesticulating like a why-do-Italians and raging in outrage, continuing an ongoing argument with George. "No, it was not empowering to dance in that cage, mister! How dare you!"

She then tapped her foot for a minute, evidently growing ever more consternated at his reply, until she couldn't take it anymore. "WhatdoyouMEANI'maveritableAndrewDworkinlookbusterthat'snotevenaninsultandevenifitwasLOOKbusterI'mnotbelinglikeHER!" I mean, can you imagine youself in that cage? I have no idea how girls put up with that shit! And besides, doing that shit, you're up in the air! And - noooo, I am not interested in your opinion either Mark, you wait your turn - and up in the air outdoors like I was, it's cold! If I catch a chill, it's your, damn, fault, George, and I am not going to be happy!"

Everyone turned and stared. This was the most engaged they'd ever seen Lemtata. No-one was even bothered that it was part of a conversation with an... imaginary... friend?

"Missing man talk maybe good?"

"Maybe good, Joe," answered Pennywisebags, brightening.

"Missing man... maybe... not all missing?"

"It seems your intelligence is returning. I can only hope my body returns."

Entranced, they all overlooked Jose getting up - he'd now overcome the seepage from Joe's tangible hallucination - shuffling over to the old video game, and inserting a pure-energy quarter from Shock City.

The opening jingle played, with a pixelated animation of Mama Brain and Her Electro-Harmonix Work Band playing "I'm Not a Synthesizer" as the opening cutscene. They faded out in 4 shades of gray to be replaced by the action of "Time Pilot Redux," stage 1 - the stage with the World War IV triplane dogfight.

(As curiously similar as Earth's seemingly-carbon-copy second history was to its first history, there were a tiny few, equally curious quirks about it as well.)

"I'm... not... synthesizer. Mama... Brain," Joe moaned.

Vignette # 342: Tubby goes to HawryRoood!

Tubby:  Frankie went to Hollywood. (blinking tears away)

Signore Pizzicato:   Relax!  Don't do it.

Tubby:  B-but m-maybe if I go there, I can get in pictures.

Signore Pizzicato:  You oughta be in pictures.

Tubby:  Do me a favor, d-dump some more of that condensed onion juice into my bell?

Signore Pizzicato:  You oughta be a star! (dumping entire gallon of onion juice in)

Tubby:  B-but I can't even cry on command.  (gargly noises) What kind of film star would I make.

Signore Pizzicato:  But Tubby, you are already a film star.  (motioning towards the film crew and stop motion animation crew) See?

(The conductor holds up his wand and looks around the stage at all the instruments.  All the instruments stand to attention, take a deep breath, and begin.  As soon as Tubby joins in, a geyser of onion juice {mixed with that godawful stuff that gathers in the innermost tubes and resevoirs of Tubby's innards} spewed over the three front rows of the audience, and quite drenches Signore Pizzicato.  The orchestra stops and everyone glares at Tubby).

Tubby:  (sniff) S-s-sorry, everybody.

Director: CUT!!!!!!!  What the fuck was that?!

Turned-tables Boredom (Why Pee? Why?)

“The worst thing about immortality,” Khamisi mulled as the smell of his stew grew savory, “is that everything gets boring eventually.” He felt qualified to think this, as he had tried most of the pleasures and tortures available to humankind so far. Oh, everything felt new for the first few decades he tried it, and sometimes he was surprised by just how refreshing even, say, slavery could be. But nothing lasted forever, except forever. And boredom, it seemed.

He was sure it all went back to that terrible day thirty-three suns after his birth, with that strange animal so far south from its habitat, when he had been so far north of his home—in the years since he had learned its name was “wolf.” But he didn’t consciously think about this now; his mind merely touched it like a chapped lip.

“The best thing about immortality,” his thoughts continued, “is the parlor tricks.” Those were always amusing for at least a brief moment, although like tobacco they always eventually created more trouble than they were worth, even for the unkillable. (“That’s true for the tobacco too. Now there’s an enslavement!”) But no, really, he shouldn’t be so hard on parlor tricks—they were what opened the door to his many years as king. And those years as a king opened the doors to so many pleasures. If nothing else, thanks to them he now knew they could not end his boredom. Women... Bantu women, Arab women, even women from even farther east... he had had his pick in those days. Gold and riches in every combination, though no silver. 

(He said he couldn’t touch the damn stuff, and it was literally true. Every time he tried, his hand pulled away—he couldn’t force it with all his will. He never really explored this strange aspect of himself, unlike his constant broodings on immortality.) 

Yes... all manner of playthings and curiosities had passed by his eyes. He had managed a lot in his few short decades as god-king, but in the end, he was only happy that it had to end. And it did have to end, because by the end, there was too much explaining, too much hatred, too little acceptance of a god-king that was truly immortal, rather than pretending so. They couldn’t kill him, but he found himself wishing he were dead more often than usual by the end of those years. 

So his dearest and most trusted advisor Bakari was true to his name when he concocted the plan with that delightful ignoble defeat and overthrow. Khamisi reaped years of amusement and happiness for his friend’s lovely life when the “traitor” Bakari “found Khamisi’s weakness” and sent him into slavery at the fringe of the empire. Bakari, understanding his subject’s mortal agonies better than his Khamisi had, had been a wise ruler and beneficial, and Khamisi made sure to stay informed on news of his land even as a slave so that he could enjoy it. He found the pain and hard labor refreshing for those years, and perhaps the hardest thing was pretending to truly suffer “losing the short years of the only life he had” to it... and finding a way to be enslaved in a new place several times to avoid, yet again, those inevitable nagging questions about his rock-stable, unaging face.

“It’s so hard to still need when I really should need nothing, he grumbled,” as he ladled the stew into a bowl. And he really did need nothing. He’d never needed to eat, though he still enjoyed food. Nor to drink, nor sleep... nor even to piss. But he still enjoyed all of it. It was just like that goddamned tobacco that these new “Europeans” had showed him oh-so-short ago... decades at the most. Why pee? Why? When it doesn’t do anything that he needs? Because he loved it, more than sex, even.

“Oh, yeah. I’m gonna pee right now.” He journeyed to a not-recently-used spot in his shaman’s abode (even the visceral, lively pain of slavery eventually got boring) in the Amboni Caves, and let out a delicious stream. He felt great. And entertained. For ten tortuously infinitessimal seconds. Why pee, why? Because it was another tobacco.

What was it that trader from “India” had once said of the philosophy of that “Buddha” fellow? “All is Maya—illusion.” 

Yeah. That. 

Damn, that was a good piss, though!