DEAD ANGEL originally opened up every issue with an editorial section. Starting with # 46, RKF started jazzing it up with the exploits of various "members of the Hellfortress" -- characters (some fictional, some not) floating around the halls of the DEAD ANGEL offices, more or less. The Headless Sno-Cone Girl (aka Antu) was present from the beginning; CyberLieutenant 4-Track (later promoted to 8-Track, then 12-Track) and TASCAM-Girl showed up fairly early on, making their initial appearances in the review section. (You can see those reviews scattered around the review archive.) Once they started showing up regularly in the editorial section, though, things started getting out of hand in a hurry, and you can clearly see.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF THE POSTAL MAGGOT: [#46] ... They practically have a monopoly on the mail to begin with and they can't even get the mail to me without losing half of it, and they think their shitty service mandates being paid twice as much for it? Do they need the $$$ that bad? Have the going prices on blow jobs in Washington from freshly-plucked Capitol Hill pages gotten THAT expensive? It's so obnoxious that i... i... (notices TASCAM-Girl and Cyberlieutenant 12-Track standing in the mike room with him) Hey, how'd you get in here?

TG: We walked in.

TMU: How? The door's locked.

C12 (looking distressed): Um, sir, your maggotship, i forget your actual title... um... the door should be referred to in past tense. I know how you care deeply about proper grammar, so I felt the, ah, need to point this out.

TMU (puzzled): What the fuck are you talking about?

TG: He's trying to tell you that I blew the door up, shithead. There is no more door. The door is toast.

TMU: Dammit, how many times have i told you to hold your training exercises on the Third Level?

TG (suavely inserting the barrel of a .245 Wilmington Revolving Rotomagnum with Extended Magazine under his nose): It wasn't an exercise, maggot. We're taking over. I'm running this show now.

TMU (rolling his eyes): Aw, not again. Abner, why didn't you talk her out of this? I don't have time for this. It hasn't worked out for you the last thirteen times you've tried to revolt and seize the Fortress by force, so what makes you think it's gonna work now? Gawd, to this day i have no idea how the Headless Sno-Cone Girl talked me into hiring you two clowns. If i'd had any idea what Henriette's twitchy trigger finger was going to cost me, i don't care how many years she spent in the same unit with Henriette, i would have told her to find somebody else. Do you know that fully 27% of the Hellfortress annual budget is now taken up by reparations to individuals and foreign nations for all the damage she's done? The United States may have to go to war over what she did to that, where is it, that third-world country... you know which one i'm talking about, dammit....

C12: You mean Fluvonia, sir.

TMU: Whatever! The point is Henriette burned the whole country to the ground and now they're pissed, okay? Government leaders tend to object to that sort of thing, you know. Blowing up embassies or castles or cities or even people, that's one thing, but turning the entire country into Third World Flambe... that tends to bother them, dammit. And they may not have any missiles left now that their whole country looks like barbequed chicken, but their pals do. If we go to war with the entire Third World over this, Henriette, your performance review tanks, you know what i mean?

TG: Will you shut the hell up? For a maggot, you sure blab a lot.

TMU: Abner, get her out of here before i fire her, okay?

C12 (sighing): Sir, with all due respect, I am afraid I must tell you that not only is she absolutely serious, she has my sympathies. We are taking over the Hellfortress and there is not much you can do about it, I'm afraid.

TMU: All right, that's it. I'm calling her to come kick your ass right now. You'd think you'd learn. Every other month or so, you stage a revolt, come in here and make half-assed demands, threaten to throw me down the well, and then i snap my fingers, the Headless Sno-Cone Girl appears, and she wipes the floor up with you. With her umpteen levels of military and martial arts training, you know as well as i do that she could enslave the entire Chinese Red Army and come back with them fixing her dim sum for lunch. She'll make crab meat out of you two one more time and then i'll fire you both. Understand?

TG (laughing): Give it up, you pathetic sex freak. You're going down in the well and i'm going to pee on your head just for laughs.

TMU (snapping fingers to summon the Headless Sno-Cone Girl): All right, i've wasted about as much time as i'm going to on this....

[TG and C12 wait, tapping their feet, as TMU's increasingly frantic finger-snapping brings no sign of the Headless Sno-Cone Girl. Time passes. The sun grows cold. TMU suddenly begins to sweat, somehow sensing pure uncertain doom just around the corner.]

TG (to C12): I told you he'd forgotten. You owe me twenty bucks. Pay up, stiff boy.

TMU (still snapping away): Uh... forgotten what?

C12: That you let the Headless Sno-Cone Girl go on a two-week vacation back to Japan to visit her sister Pym. Just a few days ago, in fact.

TMU (frozen, eyes wide with sudden flood of memory): Uh... I did? Oh, that... that's right. I... did. Oh shit.

TG (digging the barrel of the gun deeper into TMU's face): That's right, weasel-boy. And now you are toast.

MUCH LATER: All is quiet within the bowels of the Hellfortress, save for the frenzied volley of curses occasionally rising from the incinerator well sunken into the floor of the Command Room. The well is the useless leftover of a failed experiment, occasionally used now from time to time for holding prisoners. Its current occupant is the Moon Unit. TG and C12 ignore him as best they can while rooting through the cabinets and files.

C12 (looking at a ledger with great interest): So that's how much she spends on latexwear each annum. Oh my. They could have bought a congressman for that kind of money. Would have been a wiser investment, really.

TG (squirting lighter fluid in a drawer full of confidential papers): Fuck that, have you found anything important about her? Like, for instance, what the hell her name is? I've known her for ten years and and actually worked for her for five and even I don't know what it is. (drops match in drawer) Whoo, look at them go! Yee haw!

C12: In fact, I have. Her personnel file's right here.

TG (looking): Wow, no wonder she doesn't want anybody to know her name. I wouldn't either if it were that.

TMU (from the well): Hey, does it say in there what happened to her head? I'd really like to know. You can't imagine how strange it is to have a headless administrative assistant and not even know what happened to her fucking head....

TG: Oh, that's all here. In detail. It's an amazing story. Too bad you'll never know it. (She holds the file and her lighter over the well opening, laughing as TMU screams when she sets it on fire.)

TMU: NO! NO!

TG: You'll never know now, you maggot.... (shakes ashes onto his head)

C12 (annoyed): If you're quite through, I'd like to ask a question.

TG: What do you want now?

C12: What, exactly, are we doing about the issue? There's an entire lengthy interview to present, CDs to review, who knows what else... who's going to take care of all that?

TG: We are. It's a proven moneymaker; now it'll make money for us. To fund the Resistance. (glances at the well) The less said about that right now, the better. At any rate, i figure that if this slack-jawed monkey boy down there can run the ezine even while the Headless Sno-Cone Girl is out of town, we shouldn't have too much trouble with it, right?

TMU: Man, when the Headless Sno-Cone Girl gets back i'm going to have her beat your wide ass while i watch, devil woman!

C12: She won't be coming back, you fool. We have agents in the field who are working even as we speak to terminate her. They expect to make contact any moment now, after which your only hope for salvation will be buried in a shallow grave somewhere in Japan.

TMU (outraged): So what happens to me, then? 

C12: Oh, we'll be selling you into slavery, i'm afraid. I'm really terribly sorry about that -- it was Henriette's idea, really --

TG: We made a deal with the devil himself and soon you'll be cleaning the toilets in Hell's worst demon biker bar. And it's a really big bar. And you'll only have a toothbrush. You won't believe what the floors look like there. I wish I could be there to see it myself.

TMU: But you don't have the faintest idea how to run this place! The most you've ever done is offer comments in the review section and now you want it all? You don't even know what to do with it!

TG: Nonsense, pig-fucker. All we have to do is answer all this mail and comment on all these notes you've left on this table... my God, where'd you learn to write Swahili? (squints at card) Well, maybe that can be, um, Abner's job. We can read the mail and conduct interrogations --

C12 (looking up from mail pile): That's interviews, dearheart. You can't beat on the band members with rubber hoses the way you do with political prisoners. I'm afraid you'll have to give that up. At least in public, anyway.

TG: Damn! Ah well.... Anyway, we can do this stuff. It's not that hard.

TMU: You don't even know how to rant properly! There's no way you can run this place! My God, you're barely comptetent to blow things up, you have all the introspection of a wave of cholera, and your IQ... well, i've seen your test scores....

TG: I don't want to hear it! (looks at C12) So how's the mail coming?

C12 (looking at card): Slim pickings. Ah, here's an interesting one. Or peculiar, at least. From a fellow by the name of Matthew Silver, who has made a film about toilets and god.

TG: Toilets and God?

C12: Exactly! It's a parody of late-night informercials selling religion. The idea of selling religion as a product, satire, you know, that sort of thing. Those who dare can watch the film at http://www.toiletgod.com .

TMU (from the well): Well, you can try to watch it. I tried and the URL didn't work, but my browser's currently fucked lately, so it could just be my problem.

TG (screaming): SHUT UP! Goddamn it, we're in charge here now, not you! So shut your fucking face, you worm!

TMU: I'm telling you, when i get out of here you're going to be very, very sorry, you grenade-tossing slut....

(TG drops tear gas canister down the well and laughs with jolly malice at the enraged sounds of TMU heaving his lunch across the well walls.)

TMU: You... you evil bitch! (hack, gasp) Just for that i'm... i'm... (wheeze) i'm cancelling your subscription to TERRORIST QUARTERLY and BLACK MARKET ORDNANCE! Buy your own goddamn catalogs from now on! (prolonged bout of heaving)

TG (sliding into place the well cover): Come on, let's get this show on the road. We'll figure out what to do with this idjit later. Now, uh, what are we supposed to be doing here? What's the plan?

C12 (studying Procedures Manual): At this point I believe we're supposed to be ranting. However, as the head maggot pointed out, we are both ... well, I'm ill-suited for it. I'm not so sure about you. Will you put that thing down? Thank you.... I'd suggest we skip the ranting, actually, and go directly into the interview.

TG: He's actually doing interviews again?

C12: Apparently. He and the members of Abunai! are currently scheduled to meet shortly in the Main Conference Room on the Third Level for an in-depth interview. Given that our deposed leader and main interviewer is sitting in the well, and neither of us have any knowledge whatsoever of the band in question, I'm not quite sure how we're going to conduct this interview, either.

TG (fiddling with lots of knobs on the immense Command Panel of Remote-Controlled Doom): Oh, that won't be a problem. I'll dial up the Teleporter and cross it over with the Remote-O-Tron to send his essence across the video spectrum as a redline product of the hallucination engine and simultaneously beam the band to Bonipal Witt when they arrive. That way they'll be able to conduct the interview without physical contact. Given the Moon Unit's history and the band's roots in psychedelics, there's a good possibility they'll all take it to be a flashback anyway.

C12: Um... won't exposing them to Bonipal Witt's sun transform them into cats, the same way it does without everyone else there?

TG: It'll just add authenticity to the hallucination, won't it? (diabolical laughter as she turns the dials all to the right and the control panel begins to shake....)

PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF: [#47] For those of you arriving late to the party, let us recap just what happened in the previous issue. While going about his business, trying to get the issue out on time as usual, the Moon Unit was rudely captured by CyberLieutenant 12-Track and TASCAM-Girl and thrown down an unused well in the Command Center. A helpless captive to their cruel whim, he was forced to listen in ass-shaking rage as they detailed their plan to seize control of the Hellfortress and enact a plan for world domination. They were able to do this only because the Headless Sno-Cone Girl had taken a rare vacation to her native Japan. As the dynamic revolutionary duo were farting around peeking at confidential papers and the like, the Moon Unit was somehow able to send a message for help to an army of death robots, who proceeded to do battle with the upstarts. After much firepower, destruction, and bungled reviews, the duo finished off all the robots and made it to the top of the Hellfortress, only to see the Sno-Copter heading toward them over the ice, a clear sign that their plans to have the Headless Sno-Cone Girl snuffed were a tragic failure.

We rejoin them now, as the helicopter prepares to land, while C12 and TG scramble madly for safety....

[Cue the incoming sound of rotor blades]

C12 (paralyzed with fear): AAAAIIEEEE! We are DOOMED! I can feel the shit running down my pants and into my boots already!

TG: All the more reason to haul ass, hoss. Come on, let's go, let's go, let's GO! [takes off running, gun drawn]

[As they scramble down the stairs and back into the Hellfortress, the Sno-Copter lands. As the rotor blades slowly come to a halt, the helicopter door opens and four figures emerge, two women -- one headless -- and two tall, long-haired men dressed identically in black jeans, black shirts, and black shades. These guests would be the Headless Sno-Cone Girl, her pink-haired sister Pym, and M--w and M--a, mysterious and unnameable agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E.]

Pym: My God, what is that awful smell?

M--w: That, my vision of loveliness, is the raw, stinking reek of cordite. It would seem that mischief has taken place during your sister's absence.

THS-CG (scribbling on her notepad): Look at all these shell casings. Obviously TASCAM-Girl has been running amok. Now it all makes sense -- she and that fat bastard CyberLieutenant 12-Track must have sent the army of maggots who tried to assassinate me. They must have been waiting all this time to attempt to take over the Hellfortress. A pity their miserable little plan failed, isn't it?

Pym (reading note): Wow, I never knew your handwriting was so bad. Are you taking methamphetamines again? [THS-CG jerks the pad away in anger and gives her the finger]

M--a (as they descend the stairs and enter the Hellfortress): Ah, such gaping holes....

M--w: And so many metallic robots that slumber in electronic death, their shells blown out by high-caliber weapon fire! Oh, the ecstasy -- I can only imagine the volume levels that must have been present....

THS-CG (scribbling): Mein Gott, I leave for a few days and look what happens.

Pym: Look at this mess in the Command Center. It looks like they actually set the place on fire --

[A ragged voice howls from deep inside the well] HEY! HEY! LET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!

Pym (peering down the hole): Wow, you look like shit. Are you the Moon Unit?

TMU: Yes! Those evil shits hijacked the Hellfortress and threw me down here! I sent the death robots after them and they blew everything up! The cleaning bills will be immense! Now get me OUT OF HERE!

M--w: It will not be a problem. [whips out scary-looking little black box] I just happen to have upon my person a gravitational inverted phase disruptor with advanced positron filtering. It will free him from his tawdry prison. I must warn you all to stand back, for it is most loud....

[He flips the switch and the room fills up with shrieking, roaring waves of sound. As Pym and THS-CG cringe in a corner with their hands over their ears, he points the device at the well, and the powerful waves of sound reverberate in the well, floating the Moon Unit to the surface.]

TMU (dusting himself off): Ahhhh, the place looks even worse than I imagined. I'm docking their pay into the next century. If I don't kill them first. So, uh, why did two agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E. come back with you? And why is your sister here?

THS-CG (writing): There was an attempt on my life. I was able to defeat the army without breaking a sweat, but the Ministry of Sound officials were so concerned that they insisted M--w and M--a accompany me back home.

TMU: And, uh, Pym?

Pym: I didn't have anything better to do with my time. The club scene has gotten really boring.

TMU: I see. That's a nice leather jacket, by the way.

Pym: Thanks.

TMU (turning to the agents): So, uh, do you guys have some other reason for being here? I can't imagine that Juntaro let you go without giving you something else to do....

M--w: I come in search of the pulse demon.

M--a: And I, my runtlike benefactor, have descended upon your primal fortress to relieve the life essence of that being which is known as Madame Onna.

M--w: Onan? As in the mysterious human from the Bible who dared spite the will of God Almighty by shooting forth the new gold and spilling his seed across the marble stairs of the temple of deliverance?

M--a: No, my noise-loving friend. You are mistaken. It is Madame Onna I seek -- demon goddess of the sine wave, destroyer of illicit planetary orbits, elliptical yet bewitching she-goddess of the ass-shaking psychomatic hydroponic vulpine lipid death groove. She lies in wait beneath the stairway of the celestial heavens, her dark eyes rolled upwards in simulation of divine passage through the doorway of death, her long flowing kimono drenched in the blood of a thousand lusty sycophants -- I tell you she LIVES! Her cruel smile only hints at the depths of depravity of which only she is capable! The robot devil doll of Circle 69 was not able to destroy her! The steel kiss of the bushido blade handed down by generations of samurai was not sufficient to sever her head from her treacherous body! I tell you she is the queen of digital immolation, hellspawn of the frozen ice god, keeper of the space ritual, and she will not rest unless she has enslaved all who walk this earth in her demonic quest for the ultimate orgasm! But she trembles with fear now, for I am on her case! By all that is righteous, in the name of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E., to avenge the honor of the Emperor, to protect the safety and well-being of all those who sleep each night in the land of the rising sun, I have sworn not to rest until her heavy ass is clenched firmly in my hands! Don't let it rest on the president's desk! Rock the house! Rock the house, I say!

M-w: Oh, I see. My mistake, then.

Pym (rolling eyes): See what kind of bullshit we've been putting up with all the way over here?

TMU: Um, what makes you guys think that Madame Onna is here, anyway?

M--a: It is written in the stars. Before leaving our homeland I performed the vestal spacy ritual and the stars spoke to me. They told me that the spirit of Onna rests in the walls of your fortress. Naturally, I will not be able to leave until I have rooted out her spirit and atomized it with one of my many top-secret devices of noise and destruction.

M--w: And I, of course, must travel with him, for we are a team. A dynamic duo, if you will.

TMU: Oh, great. Now instead of two lunatics on hand, I have four. And an additional guest. I sure hope we have enough food in the pantry....

[THS-CG pushes many buttons on what's left of the Command Center Console and scribbles a reply] Actually, it looks like the pantry was vaporized. I may have to go shopping for more food.

TMU (eyes wild): What? WHAT? Are you -- are you saying that my giant stash of Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs is GONE? Tell me you're lying!

Pym: Afraid not.

TMU: Those shit-eating goatfuckers! I'll string them up by their ankles and beat them with the bodies of naked cheerleaders! Aw, why does this horrible shit always have to happen to me?

Pym: Guess you were born under a bad sign.

TMU: And you guys -- what do you fine agents of noise and destruction have to say about this turn of events?

M--w (unfolding small square of origami rice paper): I am so touched, yes, to be in the land of the brave, the free, and the Nike swoosh, that as our helicopter gently ruptured the air around as in flight, I composed this small death haiku in honor of our arrival. I would like now, if I may, to read it for you.

M--a: Please.

M--w: Yes, then. Here it is:

M--a: It is excellent! May I counter with one of my own, then?

M--w: But of course.

M--a: It appears, then, an improvisation:

Pym: Are you guys about done?

TMU: You know, at some point we might actually, uh, want to start doing something about the issue....

THS-CG (scribbling madly): Pym has a talent you may be interested in --

TMU (eyeing Pym's ample curves): Oh, I'll bet she does.

THS-CG: You grotesque pig! That's my sister you're talking about!

TMU: I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to insinuate that her figure was any better than yours....

Pym: Wow, even under the influence of powerful serotonin medication he's still horny all the time. Is it even safe to let him out in public?

THS-CG: Are you gonna let me fucking finish my sentence or what?

TMU: Sure, sure, go ahead... you were saying?

THS-CG: I was going to tell you that Pym can communicate with the dead.

TMU (doesn't believe): Oh sure. And I'm going to crawl into bed tonight with Christy Canyon and Roxanne Hall.

Pym: It's true! Well, I don't know about that part, but talking to the dead, sure. I've been able to to do it ever since I graduated from fashion school.

TMU: Fashion school? They teach you how to talk to dead people in fashion school?

Pym: It was an elective.

TMU (holding his head): Oh, I have a headache now.... Look, if you can really talk to the dead, then how about interviewing Sun Ra? We seem to have gotten off track on interviews and stuff....

Pym (thinking): I can do that. But I'll have to go to Saturn. Can I borrow your Hyperintegrated Dynamic Cold Fusion Plasma Generator and hurl my ions out to Saturn? I've always wanted to see the rings anyway....

TMU (waving impatiently): Sure, sure, I don't care. Whatever. And while you're at it, take these two poetry-spouting noise deviants with you (waves at M--a and M--w). Your sister and I have business to deal with.

THS-CG (who would arch her eyebrows if she had a head): Really? Such as?

TMU: Finding those godforsaken maggots who blew up my Hellfortress and tying them to a table and feeding them a hefty bag of roach kibble while torturing them slowly with hot smoking irons.

[As the Moon Unit shambles off, muttering about roach kibble and dynamite, they all follow except for Pym, who turns to the Command Center's intimidating control panel and begins flipping switches. Soon ion generators hum into life and she begins to feel her molecules vibrate....]

PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF: [#48] After much chasing and excitement, The Moon Unit was finally able to corral TASCAM-Girl and Cyberlieutenant 12-Track and force them to assist in "remodeling" the Hellfortress. We join them now, in the immense lobby of the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice, where the two sullen superagents sit on really tall ladders repairing the ceiling as The Moon Unit "supervises" from below, where Pym, M-a, and M-w are busy repainting the walls and filling the numerous bullet holes with putty.

Pym (wildly splashing paint on the walls): Who picked this hideous shade of blue? Was it my sister? 

M-w: I believe it was, yes.

Pym: Would someone like to tell me why we left the choice of paint colors to someone who doesn't have eyes, or a head for that matter?

M-a: It does seem that perhaps an error was made. (ponders) Do you suppose that when they named this color "eggshell blue" they really meant "the blue of decomposing and maggot-ridden flesh," by chance?

TG (legs swinging from her perch on the ladder): It can't be any worse than what she picked for the bathrooms. Have you seen that? Gawd....

C12: Are those the rooms scheduled to be painted in that yellowish color that vaguely resembles dried vomit?

TG: Yes indeed. (rolls another layer of paper across the ceiling) Funny, I don't remember this ceiling being quite so lumpy and cracked....

Pym: It probably wasn't before you emptied several rounds from the Hyperspasmolytic Freem Gun into it.

C12: So where is your sister, by the way?

Pym: Buying more paint, I think.

TG: Oh, I'm very afraid now....

M-w: So out of curiosity, what is the plan for this fine issue?

TG: Who the fuck knows? The Moon Unit's been so preoccupied for the past two months that everything is behind schedule and he's basically winging it....

Pym: Let's not forget to assign some of the blame to the goat-children at EV1, whose server crapped out, after which they spent two weeks scratching their heads over it, only to take everything offline and erase it all. You should have heard The Moon Unit while he was having to rebuild the whole site....

TG: I did hear him, who can sleep through all that swearing?

TMU (waving for them to hush): Chill your chatter for a minute, will you? I have to get things rolling here.... (addressing the audience) Ah, such an exciting time we have for you this issue! We're just bursting with excitement at all the things we have in store -- a cornucopia of reviews, some pithy observations, and then it will be time to... time to... (turns page over and over again) to, uh, um... (looks around helplessly) to... to... ALL RIGHT, WHERE'S THE REST OF MY NOTES, DAMMIT?

TG: Up here, you cranky little midget. (points to patching on the ceiling) I used it to seal this crack. I can try prying it out of the glue if you want....

TMU: No, no, that won't be necessary. How are you coming on fixing those holes, by the way?

TG: Well... (eyes dart nervously)

TMU: Yes?

TG: It's going okay.

TMU: How many holes have you filled?

TG: Um, three.

TMU (outraged): Three? THREE? You've been working for two hours and you've only filled THREE HOLES? Mein gott, do you think you're a union employee or something?

C12: She's been too busy fantasizing about all her confiscated weapons to pay attention to her work.

TG: Speaking of which, when can I have my guns back? They're lonely... I can hear them calling to me from the lockup... don't look at me like that, it's true.

TMU: And you have the balls to claim I'm weird.

Pym (handing him flimsy paper): Hey, look what just came in over the fax machine. Looks like an article from THE NATION about the leader of the free world...

TMU (snatching paper from her hand with wild excitement): THE NATION is talking about Lori S. from Acid King?!?!

Pym (rolling eyes): Not that leader, you fool -- the President.

TMU: Oh, him. Well, if you say so.... (reads) Huh, this is kind of humorous.

TG: So are you going to fill us in, maggot man?

TMU (ignoring her): Interesting. Normally I figure those perverts at the NATION to be a bunch of pantywaist nancy-boys, but I actually sort of agree with what they had to say lately about da Prez. This guy Miller pinpoints exactly what I've never liked about Bush, and why he's always vaguely worried me; he's a crafty li'l weasel. He's not only smarter than he looks, he's smarter than he WANTS to look. I think he goes out of his way to come across like a country bumpkin or something. I think he long ago caught onto the advantages of appealing to the cult of mediocrity. He's like a politician from an Ayn Rand novel, distracting the public with an aw-shucks, happy-go-lucky persona while sharpening the political knives out of the public eye. The whole Bush clan strikes me as a bunch of devious, brittle backbiters, but they know how to follow the money and how to turn a potential liability into a dazzling political asset.

TG: Yes, but you're a paranoid fanatic. How do we know it's not just you? You think just about everybody in politics is a devious weasel.

Pym: Careful, you'll get him started on Condit....

C12: Or that Democratic senator in Connecticut who just got busted and sent to the pokey for a whole string of DWIs....

M-a: Or perhaps he will feel the need to expound upon the surreal observations of that Democratic senator who recently opened the daily invocation in the House by claiming to have spoken to Chandra Levy from beyond the grave....

Pym: Is all of that true?

M-w: Every bit as true as the fact that El Shrub and his political assassin Mechanical Man Cheney have between them five arrests....

Pym: Really? What for? Were they as exciting as Christian Slater's arrest a while back?

M-a (consulting PalmPilot Web Surf-O-Matic): It would appear that Mechanical Man Cheney fell prey to two DWIs of his own during his flaming youth. Of course, everyone knows now about El Shrub's 1976 DWI, but few are also aware that during his drunken frat-boy days at Princeton he was once arrested for stealing a Christmas decoration from a door, and once for brawling at a Princeton football game.

TG: All right! The two-fisted fightin' Shrub! Maybe he's got more balls than I thought....

Pym: How many times have his lovely daughters been arrested?

M-a: Ah, several. We have here... let's see... offenses for underage drinking... use of false ID for same... Jenna was thrown out of a club for nearly inciting a riot while the band played... these young ladies know how to get down, obviously....

C12: I can certainly see why our fearless leader views the Bush camp with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

Pym: Their deviousness certainly pales by comparison to Burger Bill's, though. We must give credit where credit is due: Burger Bill and his lovely silverware-grabbing wife were High Potentates of Deviousness while renting out the White House for crack parties....

TMU: You know what devious is? Remember when the news of Bush's DWI was "leaked" to the media by someone squarely in Gore's camp just a week or so before the election? It looked like a really blantant attempt by Gore's people to go in at the last minute with a way to taint Bush as people were on the way to the polls, essentially. Overall, it kind of made Gore's side look sleazy, right? Well, I've always been 3/4 convinced that Bush's camp leaked it themselves. because it's never made sense. The whole thing hinges on the idea that Bush's DWI was a big secret that Gore's people stumbled across, but let's get real. The man's been a public figure for a couple of decades, his DWI's a matter of public record, and you're going to seriously have me believe NOBODY knew about it? Hell, Bush was already known when he got the DWI; I think Bush Sr. may have even been President then. And in this day and age when a known drunk is running for Prez, nobody out of all these crackerjack newspapers and magazines thinks to go to the places he's lived and look at the DWI records?

M--a (rolling his eyes): Perhaps it is merely a coincidence, do you not think?

TMU: Nope, i don't buy it.

M--w: I think perhaps the bullet-happy woman in the disturbingly tight latex skirt is correct: you are a paranoid fanatic.

TMU (ignoring him) Which leads to the more interesting conclusion: that people in the political arena, and almost certainly Gore's people, knew about the DWI from the beginning of the campaign... yet didn't elect to play it.

Pym (growing interested in spite of herself): Why not?

TMU: I think it might be because the Bush family, like an octopus, has its tentacles everywhere, particularly in the political arena, and they've all known for being really vindictive. They've got a pretty serious mean streak. I figure most of them were looking at their card and thinking "Yeah, I could play this, and if Bush wins anyway I might as well quit politics (or the news, or whatever)." Because there's no doubt in my mind Bush would step up to the plate to ruin anyone who dragged something out of his closet like that.

Pym: Maybe what happened was that Bush's camp leaked the story and then sat back and let the Republican press machine whip it into a frenzy --" look at those evil Gore people, slinging mud right up to election day!" -- to make Gore look bad. Think of it this way: what did he have to lose? When the news broke, it's not like it was "news" -- more like, "Oh, that's no surprise." And it happened *before* he quit drinking, so he could always point to it as one of the reasons he quit. Plus he got the opportunity to drag his family (and theoretically the public's sympathy) into it by claiming he'd remained mum so his daughters would be spared the trauma of knowing about their dad's drunken past.

TMU (nodding): That kind of thinking is what I associate with Bush. More and more he spooks me. I don't know that Gore would have been any better (he's every bit a champion in the weasel department, but for different reasons), butat least Gore wasn't a thin-skinned, vindictive little ferret.

TG: Gotta admit, I think the Bush administration's biggest PR triumph is not making Bush look like a harmless monkey on a stick, but in making his wife look like the new June Cleaver. Laura comes out in color-coordinated outfits and acts like the domesticated housewife, all fluff and family values, and everybody's like, "Oooo, she's NOTHING like Hillary!" But if you look at her closely and listen to her carefully, you'll find she's no meek jellyfish -- you threaten her family on any level and she'll just smile away while she reaches for the cleaver and then plants it in your forehead.

TMU: All these magazines and papers turning her daughters into front-page news over a couple of margaritas are people who'd best hope they never need a favor from the Bushes, particularly Laura. She comes across at first glance like a Stepford wife -- I keep waiting for her to burst out shouting, "You're the champ, Frank!" -- but I think she's something more sinister than that. I think in private she's another Hillary, but she's just much better at tweaking her public masses than any of the Clintons ever will be

Pym: You could be right.

TG: You could also be a goddamned lunatic.

C12: I'd go with the latter theory, myself.

TMU: I suppose this means I won't get to go to the submarine races with Jenna....

Pym (looking at script): Hey, why is the interview all inked out?

TMU: Because, um, well, see, it's like this.. um... um... (ponders how to fabricate a really big lie)

Pym: I though the really tall Canadian guy was gonna contribute a Spickle interview or something.

TMU: Well, he was, but... uh, he was... um... he was kidnapped by aliens. Brain-eating aliens! That's it! Yes! Brain-eating, soul-munching, seven-lobed monstrosities, the hellspawn of Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth, who spirited him away and are dining on his kidneys even as we speak!

N/A (over loudspeaker): Don't believe him, he's lying. It isn't here because it still needs editing, okay? We'll have it in the next issue.

TG: Don't worry, we all know the runt's every word is pure bullshit. He's just babbling again.

TMU (to TG): Are you finished patching the ceiling?

TG: Not even close, you fawning little shit.

TMU: THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP! I don't know why I put up with this.... (snatches script from Pym) I think I'm gonna do some creative editing here. I don't like this part here... or here... who put this in? Argh, what horrible, soul-stealing crap.... (scribbles wildly, tosses pages out at random) Now, let's see... how about... aaaaah, this....

[The lobby is filled with the sound of celestial guitars playing in slow motion, a choir of dissonance so lovely and hair-raising that everyone in the room except the Moon Unit cringes. As the teeth-grinding sound increases in volume, a golden staircase descends from the ceiling and from out of nowhere, Bree Turner comes down dressed in shorts and a half-shirt so microscopic that to see them would technically require the services of an electron microscope. A baking inferno of lust, she reaches the bottom of the stairs and reaches out one hand to The Moon Unit.]

BT: O precious Moon Unit... take me. I am yours. Plunge your Expanding Sidewinder into my every available orifice at will....

Pym: Oh, right... RIGHT... sure, like this has any bearing on reality at all....

M-a: Perhaps we should seriously be thinking about getting the Moon Unit laid so he will stop being so fixated on Bree Turner.

M-w: I suspect, my noise-loving friend, that he is beyond our help. Perhaps instead we should beat him about the head and shoulders and make off with the lovely Bree and torture her with meat forks and record her dire wails of pain for use in a future noise recording.

M-a (considering): Yes, yes, this could be a plan....

TG: Is that Jenna Bush right behind her? Holding a half-empty bottle of Absolut?

C12 (nervously): Tell me, does the Hellfortress have adequate legal representation?

TG: Only if you count Fat Bob's House of Legal Sleaze. Have you ever met the guy? He has terrible taste in clothes and he needs a better deodorant. You'd think someone so filthy rich could afford something better than polyester slacks, wouldn't you?

Pym (holding her head in her hands): My mother warned me there would be days like this. Can we, uh, get on with the rest of the issue now?

TMU: Uh, sure. Look, you guys can, uh, run things while I take Bree and, um, show her how the Sadotronic Orgasm Inducer works....

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, Main Library of the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice [# 49] :  [We fade in to a part of the Hellfortress we haven't seen before: the Main Library. Located at the far west of the Research WIng, this towering repository of knowledge -- much of it forbidden in many countries -- is lined with endless shelves that reach to the ceiling, a staggering cornucopia of knowledge from every source imaginable. Rumors that the missing Watergate tapes and the real findings of the Warren Commission can be found among its archives have so far proven unfounded; however, given that the Hellfortress hasn't had a proper librarian since the previous one quit over issues arising from a wee bondage mishap, anything is possible. Certainly there's more than enough information overflowing from the shelves to ever properly read and categorize. Most first-time visitors to the Library, though, are impressed by the view of the arctic tundra outside to pay attention to the shelves at first. The library's enormous bay windows face out across an apparently endless plain of white fading to black, a featureless landscape dotted in the distance with glaciers. Brilliant but forbidding pink and gray storm clouds rise in columns across the horizon that fades out to the sea. Against this bleak panorama we see the Moon Unit, standing before the windows looking most disturbed. Across the room, images of terror and carnage flicker repeatedly on the wall screen television.]

TMU: For once the Moon Unit is speechless. He refers you, instead, to these words in THE ONION, which are better than anything else the Moon Unit is going to come up with. Actually, the entire September 26 edition is worth your time....

TASCAM-Girl: Maybe you're speechless, but I'm not. (double-cocks her Freefloating Miasma-Powered Handheld Neutron Evaporator) Bin Laden... tonight... in whatever dung-infested, moth-eaten tent you're sleeping in... whatever disease-ridden, lice-encrusted, undeveloped third-world nation you're hiding in... oh yeah...

M-a: Bring it on!

M-w: That third world nation! (beating on bongos)

T-G: No matter where you are -- mountain high!

M-a: Mountain high!

T-G: Or mountain low!

M-w: Mountain low! (trades bongos for sax)

T-G: Oh yeah motherfucker...

M-a: RIght on sister!

M-w! You tell that motherfucker! You tell him where to take it to the bank!

T-G: Yeah motherfucker, when you lay your sweaty little head down on that scum-encrusted pillow in your tent tonight, as those guards twitch outside your tent, knowing they're responsible for your safety and also knowing that the entire fucking world is looking for you... yeah...

M-a: Tell it!

M-w: You one righteous bitch, sister!

T-G: I just want you to know... as you drift off to sleep....

M-w: Bring it on home!

T-G: Osama... your ass is mine.

[... everybody breaks out into song and dance as strobe lights flash hither and yon...]

TMU (waving arms wildly): Hey! HEY! You up there, kill the lights! All of you, stop that shit RIGHT NOW!

C12: But, ah... won't that eat into the budget?

TMU: Budget? What budget? What the fuck are you talking about?

C12: The video budget. Isn't this a remake of Michael Jackson's "Bad"?

TMU (shaking head): No. Nope. No. This is the real deal.

TG (blinking): What do you mean, the real deal?

TMU: They really did it. The dumb fucks hijacked some jets and rammed the World Trade Center. It's not a movie.

T-G: You mean this is for real and not just another one of your dumb-ass surreal scripts?

TMU: I'm afraid so. For once we can only wish it were one of my stupid attempts at surrealism.

C12 (stupefied): What on earth would possess them to do such a foolish thing?

TMU: Apparently they don't like us. They also apparently they have forgotten what we did to Japan and Vietnam. The winds of change are upon us and they smell like cordite....

FAST FORWARD TO END OF OCTOBER:

Pym: Man, it sure is quiet around here with my sister and those two goofy mercenaries gone.

M-a: Yes, it is most true. When I shout as I chase the Ass of Onna, my voice rings in the halls, so lonely....

M-w: Have you had any contact with them since the CIA called upon them to go kick the ass of Osama?

TMU: Only once. TASCAM-Girl called on a cell phone from deep inside the heart of Afghanistan to tell me how lovely the skies look at night with the constant rain of bombs. They still haven't found Osama and his turdlike henchlings, though.

M-a: I must feel most sorry for Osama, for I saw her strapping on the Telescoping Electroshock Dildo before she left. My understanding is that when she finds the sniveling weasels and plunges it deep into the ass of Osama that the steel head will expand with sharp blades in all directions... he will die slowly in great agony....

Pym: Um, what is it with you guys and this ongoing ass thing? Is this like a guy thing that I wouldn't understand or something?

M-w: The female ass is possibly the finest creation on earth, certainly far more deserving of worship than various irrational mythical deities.

Pym: Does this mean our fearless leader is gonna continue babbling about Jenna Bush's ass?

TMU: No, i believe we'll put that aside for the time being out of respect for the Prez and his ongoing difficulties with the rest of the planet at the moment. We'll get back to that later after we've crushed Osama and his followers like the dung-eating cockroaches that they are.

M-a: Do you think the government is following the proper course of action in this delicate matter?

TMU: For the most part, yes. I think we could all use a bit less jingoism, if only because it's making the media act like an old lady with a bad case of the vapors. But i think Bush has behaved with remarkable restraint so far, and while the military action isn't proceeding as fast as some had hoped, it's helpful to remember that neither did most military actions under previous administrations. I'm not exactly pleased with Ashcroft's reaction -- he looks like a gloating li'l schoolboy now that he's managed to pork the Constitution in the ass, doesn't he? -- and i'm even less thrilled with the tedious behavior of jackasses who apparently think harassing or profiling anybody who's brown or wears a turban makes some kind of sense. I'm even less thrilled that Israel and Palestine continue to behave like li'l boys brawling in the parking lot after school, or that these dumb-ass countries we help all the time suddenly using this as an opportunity to pee on our collective foot. "Oooo, big bad America gets a taste of its own medicine, those poor terrorsts, blah blah blah." The idea of Americans agreeing with them doesn't sit well with me either, but that's what's so beautiful about this country: the freedom to be an absolute, brain-damaged jackass.

On a related note, hysterical bullshit like this (courtesy of syndicated columnist Mona Charen, who could really use the benefit of a better hair stylist and a refresher course in history) sounds remarkably bizarre coming from a Jew, given that you could change every reference to "Arab" in the article to "Jew" and translate it into German, at which point it would look exactly like the articles that appeared in Germany during the Third Reich. Apparently Mona has forgotten (or, more likely, never knew -- it's remarkable how many press pundits seem to be totally unaware of any historical event predating their own personal experience) about that....

And look at Peggy Noonan over here -- what's the deal with these uberconservative women all of a sudden? Is this like some weird mothering instinct run horribly amok or something? I can't tell which is scarier, this dumb-assed column or this purely goofy column. Either way, someone needs to slap this hysterical bitch before she wets her pants in public....

And what's up with this shit? It's bad enough these people are responsible for the existence of my former in-laws, but now i have to see this print-dung? Aren't these shitheads supposed to be pals of ours or something?

M-a: I want to know about the pictures, myself.

Pym: What pictures?

M-w: These most disturbing pictures that showed up on several of the, ah, usenet groups our Fearless Leader frequently, uhhhhh, frequents. Pictures that have absolutely nothing to do with said newsgroups.

TMU (muttering): "stooooone heads, stooooone heads... how did they get there? how did they get there?"

[A moment of silence as they all digest this, then simultaneously decide they probably don't really want to know.]

Pym: So show us the pictures and let's see what the fuck he's talking about. [they look]

M-w: What do you suppose it means?

Pym: I think it's psychological propaganda. A sick form of deviant mindfuck torture, where you bring up the unpleasant in places where it's least expected. Like poisoning the well, if you will. Much, in fact, like the terrorists have done with their first attack on the World Trade Center towers. Either that or someone with a sick need to piss people off. Hard to say which.

TMU: I'm with you on this one. Myself, i find it dumb that they're picking a fight with a country that can squash them like roaches. Apparently they weren't paying attention when we roasted Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Or when we defoliated most of Vietnam. The Taliban may eventually discover that they have violated the First Law of Self-Preservation: Namely, don't start something you can't finish. Because we're definitely going to finish this for them. I feel sorry for all the Afghans still foolish enough to still be there when the US military finally gets tired of wasting bombs and just nukes the whole country and turns it into a radioactive ashtray.

Pym: Um, shouldn't we be thinking about, you know, getting into the actual meat of the issue somewhere along the way?

TMU: All in good time, sweet thing. (snaps fingers) But first... SUSHI!

[This amusing video plays on the Rolldown Wallscreens as they await their feast. Comely asian wenches in skintight pink latex waitress outfits appear bearing a truly frightening number of sushi rolls in all styles and combinations. As they all gather around the table to scarf down the succulent goodies, the burning stench of phosphorus and metallic oxide that gradually fills the room tells them that Fenris-Cthulhu has arrived, in all his many-tentacled glory.]

FC (slithering into a chair): Never shall I understand, Thee Moon Unit, thy fascination for raw fish in rice cakes. (prods happy shiny sushi roll, eel variety, with one dripping tentacle) Why not feast upon something sensible... perhaps peanut-butter and banana sandwiches fried in bacon grease, for instance?

TMU: I may worship the hell out of The King, but i wouldn't have flown halfway around the country for a goddamn peanut-butter sandwich. Sushi, maybe....

Pym: Hey! HEY! (outraged, jabbing at Fenris-Cthulhu with chopsticks) You're dripping slime on my cucumber roll, you hellbound freak from space!

FC (turning his terrifying face, half werewolf and half unspeakable Cthulhuoid monstrosity, to hers): Ah, but my simpering li'l love child, I know that you lie awake at night, burning with lust for the touch of my slimy tentacles.... (moves closer, obscene mouth gaping) In fact, perhaps right this moment you'd like to smooch....

[Pym scowls and tosses her cucumber roll down FC's gaping maw. He falls to the floor gagging and howling, tentacles thrashing wildly.]

TMU: So, uh, did you come down this way for some particular purpose? I thought you were watching a splatter flick marathon or something....

FC (crawling back up to the table): I grew weak with hunger and thought perhaps I might find a... sausage pizza... somewhere down here. Plus I have something on my mind.

M-w: We are perhaps wildly afraid to know such things, O Diabolical One.

TMU: And what might be on your mind, o swami?

FC: Have you ever noticed how annoying the herd is in general? For example, people who make too much noise. You know, I'll be walking down the street and I hear this hysterical, unending screaming from all directions....

Pym: I can't imagine why....

FC: ... and it bugs the Hell out of Me, o moony one.

TMU (shrugging): So eat them. Just like Iscarf down this raw fucking sushi. [gulps down a succession of succulent cakes] Aaaaah.... you know the only thing that tastes better than sushi.... is....

Pym: Don't you dare say it.

TMU (grinning fiendishly): ... is....

Pym (raising chopsticks): I'll fucking hit you if you say it.

TMU: ... Mountain Dew.

Pym: Thank you for not being a gross pervert for once.

TMU: And pussy. Preferably filled with sushi.

[A brief scuffle ensues; M-a and M-w are forced to momentarily abandon their stimulating discussion of the burning philosophical question "Which came first, the Left Cheek or the Right Cheek?" long enough to pull the two snarling opponents apart.]

FC (picking up where he left off): I'm afraid humans are far too unclean to eat without washing them first. And you know I never eat anything uncooked.

Pym: You ate that cucumber roll, didn't you?

FC: Actually, no -- i secreted it in a secret intestinal pocket for safekeeping. I'm planning to regurgitate it on some deserving soul later tonight.

M-a (shuddering): May the Emperor's great and mighty ass prevent you from ever joining forces with the Frightening Ass of Onna.

FC: Or how about those people who get so upset when I eat their offspring?

Pym (horrified): You eat babies?

FC: Offspring. How can I resist? They carry their offspring in those tiny vending carts --

Pym: Those are strollers, you lunatic, not portable vending machines!

FC (ignoring her): ... so convenient, just poke in a tentacle and scoop up a juicy li'l morsel. They taste excellent soaked in buttermilk.

TMU (eyeing him suspiciously): I'm not hearing this. You know i disapprove of baby-eating.

FC (drawing himself to full Satanic height, roaring): I AM THE HELLBEAST OF THEE SIXTH GATE -- I BOW TO NO MAN!

TMU (not impressed): Careful, i'll throw more sushi at you....

Pym: Will both of you SHUT THE FUCK UP and let me eat? Do I have to get up and stick my foot up your asses ONE BY ONE?

TMU: Yep, she's definitely related to the Headless Sno-Cone Girl. [he and Fenris sit down]

Pym: Now apologize to the Moon Unit, okay?

FC (unable to resist commands from saucy Asian wenches): Okay, okay. Moon Unit, I apologize -- I realize you don't allow the discussion of buttermilk in your Hellfortress. I shouldn't have mentioned it.

TMU (eyes him balefully): I suppose that will have to do....

FC (eyeing watch buried deep in a throbbing mass of tentacles): Oops, it's almost time for DARK SHADOWS! I'd better get going.... (He slithers off toward the theater, leaving a trail of slime in his wake.)

Pym: Um, refresh my memory -- exactly how long have you guys known each other? I don't even want to know how you met.... (notices that TMU has zoned out, staring into space in what appears to be a trance) Uh, hello? Hello? Anybody in there?

M-w (nibbling on sushi): It is not likely, for we have seen that look before, have we not, my fine noise-loving friend?

M-a (smirking): It is so true, my samurai brother of noise. This trance, it is known to us -- every time he remembers the stripper, this happens. It is both amusing and tragic.

Pym: Stripper? He saw a stripper? When did this happen?

M-w (studying report): Ah, let us see... Saturday night. Sugars. Stripper in question: insanely tall, blond, gorgeous, ass so wide like the Grand Canyon is deep and ten times more magnificent. Three lap dances, transformation of vaguely unfocused horniness into extremely focused horniness....

TMU: Oooo... that perfect ass.... (eyes glaze over, hands trace curves in the air)

Pym: Must have been some ass.

M-w: It was indeed. It was the mother of all asses. Almost -- but not quite -- the Ass of Onna.

TMU (crazed): The ASS that is the NINTH WONDER of the WORLD! Tits of splendor and the ASS OF FIRE!

M-a: Yes, in a scale of worthiness, this ass may well have been the Holy of Asses. Not, of course, as Holy as the fabled Ass of Onna, but most close. Look at him! (points to jellylike blob of stupor some call TMU) His cerebellum has fused! All his circuits are blown!

TMU: That's not all that would be blown if i had my way....

M-a: It is both humorous and pathetic, how truly he has been enslaved by the Taj Mahal of asses. I find it deeply moving. So moving, in fact, that i have composed a small haiku in honor of the Ass that has so thoroughly destroyed our fearless runt's mind....

Pym (eyes rolling): Oh, please. You guys are such perverts. Can we get on with the actual issue now, or do you feel the burning need to fuck around some more?

TMU (still wrapped up in ass fantasy): Uh, yeah... fucking around with the issue... sure, sure... let's get this ass on the road.... um, what exactly the fuck are we doing?

Pym (consulting notes): Well, we have some stuff Neddal sent....

TMU: Yeah... yeah! That works! Do it! Throw on Neddal's hep shit! Bring on the bass! BRING BACK THE MOTHERFUCKIN' BEAT! O, the ass goes on....

ENDURING THE ENDURANCE OF OPERATION ENDURING ASSFUCK [# 50]: We fade in on a majestic Nordic fjord in the midst of winter -- snow-topped mountains fade into the brooding storm clouds gathering over the sea as birds and animals alike flee for cover from the coming tempest. Great subterranean rumbles of thunder reverberate in the distance, like the booming of war cannons. Gradually a figure becomes visible standing at a plateau halfway up the mountain. It is the Moon Unit, draped in grim black robes, holding a titanic sword to the darkening sky in one armored hand. The clouds part just long enough to reveal a blood-red moon, impossibly large and pale. Wolves begin to lower at the foot of the mountain; snow-covered trees burst into flame, transforming the snow into a torrent of ash-black water cascading down the slopes. It's all so black fucking metal it would bring a tear to Count Grishnackh's eye, assuming he weren't holed up in prison for the next decade or so and thus unavailable to see this majestic scene. As a shattering roar of thunder belches forth and a bolt of lightning descends from the sky to envelop the Moon Unit's blade in a brilliant arc of blinding blue-white light, he opens his mouth and says:

OH YEAH -- Operation: Enduring Assfuck is IN THE HOUSE! Got that sharp cat DJ Ashcroft spinnin' platters and droppin' science to the Poop Chorus of the Left and the Poop Chorus of the Right with the smooth pipes of George "Get Your War On" W goin' straight down the middle! It da motherfuckin' BOMB, baby! Who cares what ol' DJ Ashcroft is doing layin' that pipe to the Constitution's stinky li'l tan track while we're all getting behind Operation: Enduring Daily Reports of How Many People We Blew Up In Afghanistan Today Delivered By Perky Newswhores We'd Like To Gut WIth Dull Spoons! Yessir! No goddamn hippies left in this country now except some addled dope-smokers out west where they're all jumbled-up anyway from having the ground wiggle under them so often -- all you see ... all... uh... (fumbles about in robe) goddamn, where's that script? (steps on robe and falls screaming down the hill)

Pym (throwing down her slateboard): GOD DAMN IT! Shit! Well, maybe we can edit that.... (sighs) Will one of you idjits go see if his legs are still intact?

M-a and M-w scurry off to the set, pausing only to turn off the snow blower. It turns out that the only part of the Moon Unit seriously damaged is his dignity. With their assistance, he struggles back up to the plateau and resumes his position with the sword aloft.

Pym: Okay, do you have your shit together now? Can we, like, fucking continue here?

TMU (coughing): Yes, you horrid slave-driver. So how did we end up with you in the director's chair, anyway?

Pym: I'm a take charge kind of gal. (raises the slateboard) Ready... set... don't even THINK of fucking up this take... ACTION!

TMU: FUCK! What is wrong with all these idjits? Is one act of terrorism -- well, two if you count the anthrax scare, which looks more and more like an American crank -- all it takes to get America's collective attention and turn the whole country into something like a bad outtake from Leni Riefenstahl's TRIUMPH OF WILL, only with botched subtitles on CNN? You blow up a couple of buildings -- something that's been going on in other countries for years, even decades, on a daily basis -- and all of a sudden the entire country is awash in gushing weepy patriotism (or creepy patriotism, just as bad), complete with sappy ads and bad songs -- all celebrating what looks suspiciously like a totalitarian theocracy in the making -- while we continue to turn a country to toast to "save" it by making it even more unlivable than it already was, and replace one set of dickheads with another set of equally clueless dickheads? I'm just as pissed as anyone else that the motherfuckers blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and lots of people, and i'm all for capturing Osama and feeding him feet-first through a glass-grinder, but that doesn't mean i want to live in fucking Nazi Germany circa 1942. What's next? We start rounding up everybody who looks vaguely like a terrorist, starting with the Middle-Eastern and Muslim citizens and working the inevitable way down to anyone who disagrees with the government? When we start running out of room for all those "possible terrorists," do we start building ovens?  I do not like the direction this train is rolling....

The War on Terrorism sure has been a godsend for the Bush administration, though -- man, right now The Man could go on TV and announce that our master plan to deal with Osama, seeing as how we sure the fuck can't find him, is to nuke every country except our own just to be absolutely sure he "pays" for his crime and didn't escape, and about 70% of the US public would buy it... hell, they'd cheer. And wave flags! So what if we blow up a few nations? We'll get the bad guy. Woo hoo! Meanwhile good ol' DJ Ashcroft is fully and openly gutting the dead carcass of the Constitution with a rusted tin saw and in poll after poll, over half the country appears to be fully okay with that as long as it's in the interests of national security. "Oooooohhhhhh, Perrrrrryyyy.... it's all so fucking scary...."

So, like, someone refresh me here -- when, exactly, did we turn into a totalitarian police state while i wasn't looking? Is this why we suddenly appear to have a Ministry of Propaganda? I like to get your war on just as much as the next guy, but isn't war supposed to boost the economy instead of the other way around? If we're gonna get the trains running to the camps, they ought to run on time, you know. And i'm not so hip on the Secret Police being able to watch when i take a leak and listen to the phone just because they "think" i might "possibly" have "said something somewhere, or maybe watched on a TV show, something vaguely related to national security that threatens us because we didn't eat enough bran this monring." When your government is run by paranoid right-wing fundamentalists with ties to the CIA, do you really want them deciding who gets to benefit from the Constitution and its rights? Maybe you do, but i'm not so sure i'm ready to hand my Thinking Cap over to a bunch of people who are so enthusiastic about ass-fucking the Constitution while waiting for the coming of the Rapture and Armageddon and who have such hideous taste in fashion and music. I'm all for national security, sure, but this is fucking ridiculous. When you have airline pilots diverting planes all over the map anytime someone gets the vapors -- or even worse, turning away Secret Service agents who have the bad luck to look like The Bad Guys -- and the entire process of flying is such a monumental pain in the ass, maybe it's time give up flying....

I also notice that some dilweeds seem to think it makes sense for us to improve our airline security by emulating Israel. Sure, their planes are safe -- as long as you don't mind being considered a potential suspect, guilty until they decide otherwise, while having to endure the time-wasting hell of having every single passenger interrogated before the plane can even take off. Fuck, why not just combine that with what i saw in China, where they divert incoming planes onto a runway in the middle of nowhere, make everybody disembark and carry all of their luggage into a warehouse, and make everyone undergo a screeing at gunpoint? (They do that so if you turn out to be a "bad seed" with a suitcase full of contraband, you won't have anywhere to run except a mile of concrete in either direction while a jeep full of "lawmen" with .45s goes toodling after you.) Hell, if we're willing to go that far, why not just suck down the whole... uh, enchilada... and just ground all the fucking planes? That solves everything for everybody -- no lines at the airport, no worries that the doofus who searched people entering your plane didn't know what the fuck he was doing, no invasive luggage searches for the fliers; no troubling "quality of service" issues; and for the airlines and the government, that's more people to lay off so we'll have plenty of people standing around with nothing better to do when Cheney re-emerges from hiding to help Bush sell the public on reinstating the draft. It makes me sad that i tragically cannot serve, however; i always wanted to go to foreign lands and kill people with powerful and sexy automatic weapons and get medals and money for it. An added bonus: the idling airports will make excellent holding pens for all those Middle-Eastern immigrants when Bush and his Disciples get around to rounding them all up and "quarantining them in the interests of national security and public safety."

I'll tell ya what, though, I can really get behind the full-on Orwell moves our Main Man is making. Hell, this is way better than reading 1984, because the cats in this movie are beyond what even Orwell's fertile mind could ever conceive. Look, over here -- they've even got a good slogan already: "If you're not with us, you're against us." Not quite as sharp as "Peace Through Strength," but it'll work.... And look, poof! Now you see Cheney the POTUS Jr., now you don't! Again and again -- whisked away from public view for all but a moment or two, a glimpse from a dark car, a muffled voice on the radio... can anybody really prove that Cheney is even alive? Much less in charge of something? And what's with all these rules and this business of arresting people and holding on to them in total secrecy without a lawyer and shit? When, exactly, did i wake up and find my stinky ass in China? Or Israel, for that matter, where the whole country is on permanent military alert and people put up with all sorts of insane bullshit just for "national security"? And speaking of Israel, how did we end up on the same side as the "Butcher of Beruit," anyway? Why is it that the entire country had a shit fit when Reno and the Feds spirited away poor li'l Elian at gunpoint, but when the Israelis do the exact same thing, only on a much bigger scale, that's perfectly okay? Am i the only person in America who finds it somewhat weird that we are supporting a country of religious fanatics who are technically in violation of various international codcils and United Nations resolutions (and probably their own treaty), who don't quite grasp even the most rudimentary concepts of human rights, whose own Head Hit Man, Ariel Sharon, is wanted to undergo investigation for war crimes in Beruit, and who apparently would be happy to exterminate the Palestinians? The Palestinian terrorist organizations are behaving badly and not helping, of that there can be no doubt, but the Israelis aren't exactly behaving like pacificists themselves, either. And now the whole Operation: Enduring Fucking Up All of the Mideast and Pacific Rim business has pushed+ India and Pakistan into playing a high-tech version of chicken that will undoubtedly end with a big bang. Hell, missiles may be flying right now and i wouldn't know, i haven't checked the news this afternoon... Maybe we should just annex the two countries and take their toys away if they can't stop pissing in the sandbox, eh? Fuck, maybe what we need for a "solution" in Israel and Palestine is to rebuild the Berlin Wall and move it right between the two of them.... (Moon Unit begins coughing)

And then there's... (cough) that goofy idjit with the beard like a nest o' spiders fucking and (cough) the psychotic million-yard stare... man, you know he's going to get one hell of a spanking when he gets home, if his family ever gets to see him again.... (falls down shaking, coughing, hacking like a snake swallowing a bulldozer)

Pym: Aw, not again. How the fuck are we going to get this goddamned issue done if he keeps trying to hack up a lung?

M-w: It is truly a question for the ages. How long, exactly, has he been sick now?

Pym: Way too long. He claims the "doctor" told him it's psychosomatic stress -- something to do with a life full of hassles and the continuing implosion of that puny thing he calls a "record label" -- but I happen to know that his "doctor" is just some big-assed bitch in a rubber nurse outfit who beats his hairy ass with a brush while they listen to Big Black loud enough to wake the dead in Norway, so I'm not buyin' it.

TMU (hacking with grotesque abandon): So what the (cough, hack) fuck (hack) do you (cough) think it (wheeze) is, you heartless (cough followed by repulsive sweat-soaked shaking, waves of burning fever, more hacking) pink-haired slut? (goes fetal, still hacking with alarming abandon)

Pym (standing over him and shaking her finger): You know damn well what the problem is! You and those damn cigarettes! You're always sick now, you should fucking quit....

TMU: Never! (more gruesome hacking)

Pym: Whatever, man -- it's your funeral....

M-a: I think, naturally, that this must call for a haiku:

TMU (sitting up, wincing): Yeah, yeah, i'm gonna quit. Right about when it kills me. So anyway, uh, i guess we should get this issue on... um... let's see... have any more countries started blowing up people yet? (looks out the window) No... not yet... good, we probably have some time, then....

Pym: So are you gonna tell us yet about the big hit albums of the year or what?

TMU: Oh, yeah. (digs out crumpled list) We normally don't do top ten lists, but one of the radio DJs asked, so here's the year's albums at the top of the constant playlist at Monotremata and DEAD ANGEL, presented in alphabetical order. And yes, we know there's more than ten albums here, be glad we didn't do twenty or thirty....

Arab on Radar -- YAWEH OR THE HIGHWAY [Skin Graft]
Jorge Castro -- THE JOYS AND REWARDS OF REPETITION [Public Eyesore]
Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Chris Forsyth -- WIRES AND WOODEN BOXES [Pax Recordings]
Donnas -- THE DONNAS TURN 21 [Lookout!]
Godflesh -- HYMNS [Koch International]
Gravitar -- EDIFIER [Manifold Records]
Impaled Nazarene -- ABSENCE OF WAR DOES NOT MEAN PEACE [Osmose Productions]
Lamb of God -- NEW AMERICAN GOSPEL [Metal Blade]
Null -- PEAK OF NOTHINGNESS [Hushush]
Miki Sawaguchi -- BIG BOOBS [Alchemy Records]
Sour Vein -- s/t [Game Two]
Walking Timebombs -- SAPSUCKER [Anomie Records]
Troum -- TJUKPURRA (THE HARMONIES) [Transgredient Records]
Ulver -- PERIDITION CITY [Jester Records]
Zeni Geva -- 10,000 LIGHT YEARS [Neurot Recordings]

M-w: That is a most... um, unusual list.

TMU: Yeah, we have eclectic and often lurid tastes around here -- what can i say, we're very easily bored.

He would say more, but just then TASCAM-Girl crashes in through a window. Everyone except the Moon Unit dives for cover as jagged spears of glass fly in all directions while she skids across the floor on her back, crashing into a table and turning it over. As she sits up, dazed, the Moon Unit walks over.

TMU: How nice of you to drop in. You know that's coming out of your paycheck, right?

TG (oblivious): Oh shit! We are all so fucked! I can't believe -- my own fucking government --

TMU: Oh, is this the government you mean?

TG (going fetal, guns and bullets scattered across the floor, sobbing): Oh fuck, it was horrible! FIrst the shitty weather and the constant jabber of crazy fucks and then the caves and the Cthulhu and Frank -- I mean Osama, sorry -- and the Headless Sno-Cone Girl and... ah... ah... (more hysterical wailing)

Pym: Why don't you calm down and tell us what the hell happened.

TG (sitting up, still shaking): Okay. It's probably against national security regulations, but fuck 'em, I'm an unperson now, let them come find my fat ass. Look, we found Osama.

TMU: You're shitting me.

TG: We found him. It was me, her, and Abner, leading a small core of Green Berets and mercenaries. We'd heard some information about Osama's whereabouts, and we put on the pressure and boxed him into a location he couldn't get out of. Then we went in and... and... (buries her head in her hands) Oh, it was just so fucking unspeakable....

M-a: Unspeakable? Does this somehow involve the fabled Ass of Onna?

TG (looking up): Actually, yes. Are you gonna let me tell the story or not?

M-w: Will it involve more girly weeping and histronics?

TG: Have you forgotten I have a gun?

Pym (motioning for her to continue): Ignore him, keep going, I want to hear this.

TG: Anyway. (glaring at the agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E.) We went into the cave and we found Osama... and he was... he was... Christ, there's no way to gild the lily here. He was acting out the scene in BLUE VELVET where Frank's all hopped-up on nitrous and seeing how many times he can say "fuck." He was even dressed like Frank and huffing from a real can of nitrous. He was doing this while all his Taliban buddies were sitting around laughing like fools, finding this entertainment most humorous. It was bizarre, all right, but not bizarre enough to keep us from going in and turning them all in wet wall paste. If we'd left it at that it would have been okay, but no, no... she had to go and fuck with Osama's head....

TMU: She what?

TG: She cut off his head with a nail file and was using it for a hacky sack. It was... man, I've seen some gross shit, but that takes the cake. So that would have been bad enough, but then somehow the very fabric of time and space was ripped like wet toilet paper and suddenly the cave was filled with minions of the Elder Gods and agents of hell and all sorts of scary shit.

Pym: That sounds like Fenris on a pizza binge. Are you sure it wasn't him? Hey, where the hell is he anyway? I haven't seen him since yesterday, where'd he go?

TMU: He's sleeping.

M-w: Sleeping? All day?

TMU: There was some incoherent confession about overturning a transport tanker filled with Jack Daniels and drinking it dry. I would imagine he's not feeling up to snuff right now.

TG: Anyway, so the dark legions swarmed into the cave with the stink of rotting goat flesh and the room was filled with this awful, awful darkness, like being swallowed whole and festering in the devil's stomach, and then there was lots of blood-freezing howling and grunting and screaming and sounds that I'm pretty sure weren't made by anything human -- man, I sure the fuck hope not. Then it was like a fog lifting, all the evil fading out but leaving behind this huge-ass stink, and when we could see again, nothing was left of Osama but his beard and she was just fucking gone. I think they ate her.

Pym (horrified): You're fucking telling me that Yog-Sothoth made a sandwich out of my sister?

TG: That's what it looks like. They may have eaten Abner too, but one of the Green Berets swears he heard Abner say "I am so out of here, I've had enough" and then didn't hear anything from him again, so he may have escaped during the fireworks and just be AWOL. That's what I think, myself -- unconfirmed intelligence reports indicate that someone matching his description was seen in a stolen Jeep with a portable nuke negotiating his way across the Pakistan border. We think he traded the exoskeleton for the nuke, although no one will admit to selling it or holding the suit. At some point this guy -- whoever it might have been -- sold the nuke for a ride to Bahawatpur and is now moving from gay bar to gay bar as a pianist.

Pym (amazed): He can play the piano?

TG: Hey, it's news to me too. Assuming it's really him. But I'll let you in on a secret -- before they turned me into an unperson I got to hear a tape of one of these performances made by someone in the audience, and when the guy introduces the songs, he sure as hell sounds like Abner. He plays a mean "Benny and the Jets." 

TMU: Wait, wait... hold up... what's this about being an unperson? How did you end up as an unperson? What the fuck are you talking about?

TG: Well, when I made my way back to the HQ and relayed the news back to the appropriate people, the next thing I know is a couple of MPs come to pick me up and drive me in a jeep out in the middle of Pakistan and try to kill me. Obviously they failed, but things got kind of messy, and when I dropped in on them at HQ to express my, um, lack of appreciation for that, one of them finally admitted -- after a few hours -- that the order had come down to wipe me out. Apparently they're going to keep pretending Osama's alive and use him as a scapegoat whenever they feel like blowing up a country, and they're eliminating all the witnesses. I'm already the last one left, and I officially don't exist anymore, which makes getting around a bit of a problem....

M-w: Aaaaaah, so what does this mean for us, then, as we now are of this knowledge too?

M-a: I believe it is meaning that we are deeply fucked. So where is the connection to the Ass of Onna?

TG: During the mayhem, I caught a glimpse of something -- something so round and firm and terrifying in its grandiose assness -- that I'm almost certain it had to be her. They have a file on her, you know. I took a look at it before I burned the HQ down. It doesn't say much, but enough to convince me that she's more than a myth.

M-a: I tremble at the thought! Look! It is so electrifying that my hair stands on end! (offers up an arm, where -- sure enough -- the hairs are standing straight up and wavering)

M-w (looking at his own arm): How unusual. It seems I have the same effect....

TG (looking at the hair rising on her arms): Shit! What the hell is -- look! (points to M-a, whose hair has begun to rise from his head; as the same thing happens with all of them, the room begins to vibrate)

Pym: What the fuck is going on? 

The vibration grows more intense, as a hum like the sound of a tuning fork begins to grow in volume until it renders conversation impossible, filling the room with an wavering, endless drone. In the center of the room, a small but brilliant blue diamond appears; as they watch in terror, waves of energy begin to pulse from the diamond, growing stronger and brighter, until the room is transformed into a psychedelic roar of flickering colors and pure blinding energy. As a face more beautiful than anything ever imagined appears simultaneously in all their minds, a woman's voice speaks to them at the same time.

The Voice: Greetings, my troubled little losers. It is I, the Headless Sno-Cone Girl. Now the issue of my missing head is irrelevant, for I am reborn in the form of pure antimatter. And now, for the first time, I can reveal the truth: I am nothing more or less than the physical, now antimatter, reincarnation of Antu, fuck puppet of the great god Anu -- HAIL ANU! MAY HIS EYE NEVER CLOSE! -- and as soon as Anu is awakened from his vast and endless slumber, we shall rule this dominion until the circle of the Ourobouros closes, an event that is almost upon us. As Ragnarok approaches, so does the moment in which the serpent will swallow his tail and our universe will end and a new one, minty fresh and full of promise, will begin... a new universe ruled by the original gods and the Elder Gods.

Pym: Um, I don't like the sound of this. This sounds like scary shit. Why can't I have normal sisters like other people? Fuck, what a headache....

TG: Look at the bright side, now that your sister's an actual goddess, maybe you can get better bass gigs. It's all about who you know.... (to Antu) So how is that you've always been down with Bishamon and now all of a sudden you're Antu? Isn't that sort of a contradiction in terms for a Sumerian goddess to be worshipping a Japanese war god?

Antu: Camouflage. You never can be too careful.

TG: Um, does this mean I can still keep sacrificing people to Bishamon, or do I have to pledge eternal allegiance to you, or what?

Antu: It doesn't matter. Just don't piss me off.

They are all so enthralled by Antu's sudden appearance that they fail to notice that the Moon Unit is undergoing some cataclysmic, soul-rending display of displaced emotion, jumping up and down and twitching like a man with a live eel stuffed up his ass. Finally, he can withstand the pressure in his tiny skull no longer and begins to rant:

TMU: AAAAAIEEEE! This is IT! I can take it no longer! I... ain't gonna be... your candyman... NO MORE! (thrusts a wad of papers into Pym's face as a piano begins to descend from the ceiling)

Pym (reading as TMU begins to play "Night Moves" on the piano): What the fuck? Have you completely lost your mind? 

TMU (continuing to play): "mmmm hmmm, way up firm 'n high...."

Pym (kicking the piano bench): PAY ATTENTION TO ME! What's all this gibberish (waves papers) about giant robots and Ragnarok and benevolent despots and... and... (squints) man, you've got to stop putting so much soy sauce on your sushi. Does this part say "total fucking death" or "Fidel funding Jettas"?

M-w (horrified): He... he knows about Fidel and the Jettas?!?

Pym starts to follow up on this disturbing train of thought but is interrupted by the sound of the piano exploding. They turn around to see the Moon Unit in a trench coat, grimly fondling some arcane but scary-looking device.

TMU: Listen up, my sweating little pigs. The time has come... to reveal... yes... the MASTERPLAN!

M-w: The MASTERPLAN!?!?

M-a: The... the fucking MASTERPLAN!

M-w (turning to everyone, waving his arms wildly): Look! LOOK! He's going to reveal the MASTERPLAN! The ass-fucking, complete and total, anal by anal MASTERPLAN!

M-a: Yes. The... the MASTERPLAN. (pauses) And what, exactly, is the fucking MASTERPLAN, anyway?

TMU (eyebrows coming together as he whispers): Death. Lots of total fucking death.

TG: I have a bad idea i'm not going to like this.

TMU (twisting knobs wildly): YES! At last it can be REVEALED! The horrible, horrible truth...

M-a: About Burma?

TMU: SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I'M GOING TO SET YOU ON FIRE! Look -- outside the windows! The first signs of the diabolical plan by which i shall assume complete dominion of this earth and use that godlike power to turn all you fucking paramecium into tater tots! Burnt tater tots! Oooo, you'll writhe in the sweaty grip of my iron hand of hate... everyone who disagrees with my infernal wisdom will be shot in the street... mad dogs everywhere... like a shack of hate blown up bad 'n nationwide! Fuck that, worldwide! We da motherfuckin' BOMB, baby, come on over and pull my trigger!

Pym: Does anybody have any idea what the hell he's talking about -- oh, fuck. (eyes go into saucer-mode)

Outside, as the Moon Unit feverishly fondles the arcane device festooned with more dials and buttons and pull-levers than he has brain cells, bad shit is beginning to happen. Glaciers explode in blinding shards of ice as giant atomic robots burst free, followed by a steady stream of hulking ubertanks equipped with nuclear missiles. The drone of warplanes grows louder and more intense, until the sky if black with airborne death. Black holes begin to pulse; stars are sucked into oblivion.

M-w (face pressed against the glass): Cooooooooool....

M-a: Such terror! How can we afford this? Surely we are going far, far over budget....

TMU (eyes crazed): FUCK the budget. (he pushes a button and the entire building begins to shake, throwing them all to the ground)

TG (waving her guns wildly, looking for something to shoot): What's going on? Why is the building shaking?

TMU: Hydroponic lifts. We're takin' it to the TOP now, baby! (crazed laughter)

Pym: You are really beginning to creep me out.... (looks out the window) AAAIEEE! Holy fucking Batdick!

M-w: I am afraid to ask.

Pym: We're in the air! Look!

They all crowd around the window, and sure enough, the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice is now the Hellfortress Way Above the Ice. Clouds swirl around them as they watch the tanks and boats, now the size of pushpins, as they encircle the continent.

TMU: THE TIME HAS COME! This is it! I can stand this world's wretched excesses NO MORE! This is TOTAL FUCKING WAR! I hereby fucking SECEDE! I declare this continent the sole province of the High Epopt of the Cult of Mineko, subject to nothing but my own sick fucking WILL! In the name of ANU -- Hail Anu! May his eye never close! -- I hereby declare this continent MINE! Those who fail to bow before my awesome might shall forever suffer my ETERNAL VENGEANCE!

TG (to Pym): See? See? I told you. You knew this was going to happen if we kept letting him listen to those black metal albums.

Pym: And how do you propose to get rid of them when he plays them constantly and the horrid screeching is so grotesque and unsettling that you can't even set foot in the Listening Room now without wanting to curl up on the floor and heave up chunks of your lungs?

TG: Well, you have a point there.

TMU (pacing now, gesticulating wildly): Aaaaaaah, yes yes yes, the sweet aroma of success... at last, a nation without law, without religion, without good sense... death and destruction for all... Ragnarok is coming and i am fucking prepared! All we need now are the fetish babes! And we'll have those as soon as my Japanese connection coughs them up....

Antu: Pardon me, but have you forgotten that i am technically in charge here now?

TMU: You can blow me, atomic ass bitch. I'm running this show.

Antu's electrical field pulses with black rage. Just as she prepares to immolate him, however, three mysterious figures emerge from the shadows to stand between him and Antu's anger. Two of them are towering Amazon women, scary dominatrixes carrying atomic pistols and swaddled in acres of latex and leather, with thigh-boots laden with tiny buckles; the other is a giant siamese twin, two beautiful and exotic Asian girls ten feet tall and connected at the ass. And what an ass it is, an ass that not only defines assdom but renders all other asses moot. At the mere sight of this amazing alien woman, M-a falls to her feet, scrabbling like a cockroach.

M-a: It is TRUE! At long last! Yes -- the fabled ASS OF ONNA! O, rapture! I am so full of fullness than I must now compose a haiku befitting such magical globes of the gods:

TG (moving away): You goddamned pervert....

TMU (gloating): See how little I fear your little bolts of energy? (she tries to immolate them all without success, as the death blows are reflected by the yards of latex and rubber) You cannot stop me! Soon I will rule this puny world and squash these mewling insects like the maggots they are! I control the missiles -- oh yes, I know all about the cult of the rocket -- and when these dumbshit countries start getting their war on, the minute those missiles leave the silos, they will be mine! Soon the entire planet will be ablaze! First comes Ragnarok, then... the Closing of the Circle!

They all look at him like he's nuts. So of couse this is when a tall, demonic host shows up in a tailor-made Armani suit and elegant Rolex. Apparently his classes in timing are beginning to pay off.

TMU (jumping up and down): You -- YOU! What the FUCK are you doing here! Goat-blowing nun-fucking cheat!

TA (straightening a cuff): I won that poker game fair and square. You're just a sore loser.

TMU: Goddamned fucking Father of Lies! Blow me, goat!

TA (scowling): You know, you just might piss me off here. Are you sure you want to piss me off?

TMU: Oooo, I'm fuckin' shaking... look, i pooped in my pants 'cause you just so fucking scary. If i had a haircut that bad i'd be scarin' people too.

Pym (mystified): Um, excuse me? Do you mind telling us just who the fuck your pal is? We're kind of in the dark here....

TMU: Oh, go ahead, tell them. I know you won't be happy unless they hear it from you.

TA (rolling his eyes): Excuse my friend's complete lack of manners. I am the Antichrist, come to personally supervise the preparations for the Apocalypse, or Ragnarok if you prefer, as he insists.

M-w (appalled): And, how exactly, Mister Antichrist sir, would it be necessary for you to, ah, supervise from here?

TA (shrugging): Hey, this is where they told me to go. I don't make the work orders, I just carry them out. Bureaucracy, what can you do about it?

TMU: So you admit you're just basically a glorified spear-carrier? Woo, that's not what you were tellin' everybody at the poker game. "Oh, I spread fear on earth and eat the mewling young of their sheep, the devil's concubine looks forward to blowing me, I'm the man in charge." All puffed-up like a toad --

TA: That's fucking enough. I'm warning you.

TMU (rolling up): Oh, i am so afraid. Why don't you come stick your tongue up my fudge tunnel?

Everyone watches in amazement as they begin to roll around on the floor, kicking and punching.

TA: Overreaching swine! You dare to attempt to steal what is rightfully mine? This world and its sick, primitive inhabitants have been promised to me, you psychotic runt!

TMU (hitting him on the head with the arcane device): Not if I manage to kill you first!

A deafening siren drowns out all possibility of conversation. The doors open and a horde of nuclear-powered robots fill up the room, dragging the Antichrist kicking and shouting with them. Outside, tanks begin to fire at the other outposts while the warplanes move out for the conquest of other nations. Inside the room everything is pure chaos: screaming, profane ranting, shouts, violence, overturned tables, more rending of space and time. Mistakes are made.

Antu (firing off bolts of energy): If I can't have my head on earth, then I'll rule in hell!

M-w: Pardon my ignorance, Mistress Sno-Cone, but that makes no fucking sense at all.

Antu (nearly incinerating him with a random bolt of pure energy): RARGH! GRAU! ACK! ACK!

M-a: Say what?

TMU (giggling with insane abandon): She may be antimatter, but she's still a woman. And you know women aren't supposed to make sense. (dodges a burst of electric fire)

TASCAM-Girl (frustrated): Man, there's a lot of fuckin' shit they forgot to tell me when i signed up for this shitty-ass gig!

FEAR OF A BLACK METAL HELLFORTRESS [# 51]: Fade into a dark gray light -- night in Antarctica, where the land and sky often look the same and darkness renders the land vast and directionless and utterly without meaning. A flash of lightning reveals a line of tanks stretching to the horizon, all flanked by missile launchers and artillery brigades. The blinking lights of helicopters wink like fireflies in the distance. The only thing preventing them from advancing upon the Hellfortress is the towering army of giant robots, a cyclopean wall of atom-smashing steel and artificial intelligence. High in the clouds, suspended far above the fray on hydroponic stilts, the Hellfortress Above the Ice broods over the eternal northern night. Another jagged wave of lightning reveals the Moon Unit, standing at the rail of his penthouse balcony, watching the standoff below. A big, big girl with all her ample assets squeezed into a latex corset about nine sizes too tight totters up to him on stilleto heels and offers him a grape; he scowls at it, then hurls it into the night. She shrugs and returns to the orgy happening in the heated pool while he continues to survey his empire with an appropriate expression of bleak and total evil. He looks incredibly cult and grim and necro and all that, and is so forbidding that he has decided not to speak while out on the balcony, too concerned about "breaking the mood of fucking evil." He is wearing some seriously evil fetish boots, that's for sure.

Footsteps coming closer turn out to be Pym and a visitor coming up the stairs. We catch a brief snippet of their conversation -- "... don't get funky with him, he's gone completely around..." -- and then they are standing next to him. He does not acknowledge their presence, but continues to scowl grimly at the rest of the planet beyond the balcony.

Pym: Uhhhh, Mr. Unit? Hello? I was already on my way up to check on things up here when Kevin stopped by. You remember Kevin, right? (gestures to poorly-dressed nerd in a SKATE FURY t-shirt and longish, unwashed hair) You know, the guy in charge of doing the, uh, Flash conversion....

TMU (morosely): What does it matter? Godflesh broke up and Linda Lovelace is dead.

Pym: Really? I hadn't noticed. Hey, uh, I figured you probably guessed by now that, um, the Flash makeover has sort of, weeeell, "crash and burn" is what they call it on Wall Street....

Kevin: Unforeseen technical problems.

Pym: Yeah, some problem with the whatchamacallits. Anyhow, we've tried everything we can do, but it can't be done. I know that's like, um, short notice seeing as how the issue is technically supposed to appear in ten days, but you know, that's life sometimes, right? You win some, you lose some. RIght? You know?

Kevin: I'll still need to be paid for my time, of course.

TMU: Ponders this for a moment, still looking grim and necro, then turns to Kevin and hurls him from the balcony with one hand. As the man's scream spirals down into the darkness, he resumes his position at the balcony railing, staring intently at some fixed spot apparently in the neighborhood of Mars.

Pym: Ooooookay.... (scribbles note on pad to consult web designer's next-of-kin) Moving, uh, moving right along then... I guess you want a status report or something? I mean, you haven't been down from the balcony in like twenty-seven fucking days... do you even know what's going on down there? I mean really? For all you know we called up U-Haul last week and had everything taken out of the Fortress and shipped back to my house. Even the Shrine to Mineko. Not that I'm saying we did or anything, but you know, if we had, it's not like you would have any way to know about it. Unless maybe you're psychic now... did becoming cult and necro make you psychic? I don't know much about these --

TMU (holding the point of his sword to her navel): SILENCE! You babble, bitch!

Pym: Oh, like you haven't been known to get incoherent....

TMU: Is there a reason you are wasting my time?

Pym: Well, I was going to let Kevin tell you why we're not on target for the Flash conversion, but I guess that's kind of a moot point now. (peering down into the darkness) Do you think the ice weasels will carry his body away? That always causes problems in Accounting with the relatives afterwards....

TMU (sneering): So give me your fucking status report.

Pym: Okay. (consults notes) Everybody is currently accounted for, although not onsite. Antu -- who is still a hovering, agitated ball of electrical energy, and has not reverted back to being the Headless Sno-Cone Girl -- is still doing the diva thing, but she is currently being held in check by those big-assed amazon girl bodyguards of yours. She says she's decided for the sake of harmony she's going to settle for being queen... stop laughing! You fucker! Fuck, I hate working for assholes like you.... Anyway, the Antichrist is still hanging around. He found your porn library and now he's a permanent fixture in the Viewing Arena. You should see the size of his popcorn bill, Amanda in Accounting just about burst a blood vessel. Of course, no one wants to call him on it since he is the Antichrist, and therefore a herald of Armageddon or Ragnarok or whatever it is you boys call this fireworks party --

TMU (sneering in most evil fashion, making scary hand shapes 'n stuff): Don't disrespect the Ragnarok, bitch! I'll have you gutted and your intestines used for feeding the wild dogs that serve the castles of Kadath!

Pym (rolling eyes): This black metal and corpsepaint business is getting very fucking old. No wonder The Headless Sno-Cone Girl wants to dominate your ass. Or Antu. Or whatever we're calling her this issue. Fuck, did you do anything productive at all while you were on that break?

TMU: I conquered four nations. Plus I read the new Stephen King book. It was okay.

Pym: Oh, okay. Just checking. Look, i'm going back down. Do you want to come with me? We got in a fresh shipment of sushi....

They descend into the Hellfortress, the Moon Unit's boots clanking on the stone steps as they go down the endless stairs. When they reach their destination -- the immense sitting room with a giant glass wall looking out on the endless frozen panorama -- they find M-w and M-a hanging out, reading bondage porn and discussing with great excitement their discovery of a vintage Rat distortion pedal among the Moon Unit's endless cornucopia of noise-making gadgets. TASCAM-Girl is nowhere to be seen; her whereabouts are a mystery, although she is presumed to still be within the Hellfortress, since her Hydroponic Eight-Wheeled Death Cruiser (rack-mounted missile launcher and CD player included) is still parked outside.

TMU: So what else has been going on in my absence?

Pym: The usual bullshit. Oh, the dope fiend singer for Alice in Chains croaked.

TMU (snorting): Now? I thought that happened years ago.... How about that wee flap over in the Middle East? Have they resolved their differences?

M-a (laughing): You are kidding! They will never resolve!

M-w: I greatly approve of the Israeli use of pornography, though.

Pym: I think it's really swell that we're such good pals with people who use civilians and journalists -- including our own -- as targets and human shields.

M-a: Even some of the Israeli soldiers are disturbed by their orders.

M-w: And of course, Sharon refuses to play ball with the US as expected. Your fearless leader tell him to back out of Jenin; he tells the Prez to politely fuck off. It is most suave, is it not?

Pym: Fuck, with friends like Sharon, who needs enemies?

TMU: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the sanest thing we could do at this point would be to either totally withdraw US support from Israel until they learn to respect treaties and the Geneva Convention, or... better yet... just fly down there and fucking annex the entire Middle East and be done with it. If they can't keep their shit together and we're dependent on these jackasses for oil, then perhaps the time has come for us to take control of the region.

Pym: I thought you were an isolationist.

TMU: I am. In fact, I actually favor complete withdrawal of support and finding somewhere else to get our oil.

Pym: Wouldn't that make gasoline expensive?

TMU: What the fuck do I care? I don't drive....

Pym: Oh, that's right, I forgot. So how about the Saudis, who are supposedly going to bail us out of this mess somehow?

TMU: Them? How will they ever find the time when they're so busy finding out new ways to reveal their appalling racism and sexism?

Pym (grossed out): How, exactly, did we end up with these slime-coated thugs and ass-kissers for pals?

M-a: Ahhhhh, perhaps because this describes the very nature of your own government?

Pym: Oh yeah.

TMU: So how are things developing with that whole business with the Catholic Church, home of the simpering child-fuckers?

Pym: Oh, they're up to their eyeballs in deep shit. Turns out the priest they've been reassigning all this time has a lot of bad habits that they sort of decided to "overlook."

M-w: They also seem to be having a problem with the concept of zero tolerance.

Pym: They just don't get it, do they? Hardly surprising for people caught up in a delusional belief system to begin with.

TMU (snorting): Sounds like someone needs to bust Varg Vikernes out of the slammer in Norway and turn him loose over here. Give him some matches and I'm sure he'll have this all sorted out in a few weeks....

M-a: But that still leaves the doddering old fool in the pointy hat mumbling his bad juju in Rome.

TMU: So we'll send him there next. Hey, we have planes, this is doable.

Pym (nervously changing the subject): So do you have any idea where Fenris is? Nobody has seen him in a while... plus we haven't had to keep restocking the fridge and bar every day....

TMU: He is overseeing the construction of a grand and magnificent vision.

Pym: And that would be?

TMU: Conquering a small nation and enslaving them, then using them all at once to cook and toss the world's largest pepperoni pizza. He figures that if he can get the entire country to whip up two or three of these pizzas a day, he might be filled enough to be more agreeable. Plus he does like having a vast army of servants.

Pym (looks at him strangely): I swear, you meet the weirdest fucking people.

The room is suddenly rocked by machine-like thundering. It's the sound of jackhammers pounding away at the building, slowing then building to a frenzy before slowing again, then pounding away with ridiculous speed. Pym throws herself to the floor and cowers, certain they are being attacked by artillery; TMU waits patiently, arms folded.

Pym (eventually getting up): Do you have any idea what that horrible racket is? It's been going on off and on for days now. Sometimes it sounds like that, sometimes it sounds like scary droning crap, sometimes it's fucked-up clattering, sometimes it's pure screeching noise. What the fuck is it? It's getting on my nerves....

TMU: That's Todd the Black Metal Drummer, making productive use of his down time between testing sessions of the unholydeathmachine.

Pym (looking suspicious): Really? Is he, uh, I mean, does he like have tattoos 'n stuff? Wear a nifty li'l hat sometimes? Wear a Darkthrone t-shirt? Listens to Khanate? One bad-ass motherfucker?

TMU: That would be him, yes.

Pym (looking pale): And his relationship to, um, like, you and the Hellfortress would, um, that would sort of exactly be what?

TMU: He's the drummer in my new band. Or I'm the guitarist in his. It doesn't matter; we are brothers in the fight for truth, bearing weapons of sonic destruction with which to bend the world to our will! By harnessing the power of the unholydeathmachine, he and i shall soon rule the planet with an iron fist. The masses, hypnotized by our massive tribal rhythms, their souls raped by the very fucking cult 'n grimlike sound, their minds ground to dust by our wall o' noise... they will have no choice but to do our unholy bidding! YES! Today your fucking love, tomorrow the world! And then out comes the gasoline for the great cosmic weenie roast on the eve of Ragnarok! The traitors will be shot! The governments will crumble like termite-ridden wood! The churches will burn! WE WILL ALL FUCKING DIE! All caused by the unholydeathmachine! All must bow before the unholydeathmachine!  The unholydeathmachine destroys all science through the ice machines and sonic cannons! To fuck with us now is to invite slow, painful agony at our hands while we fucking laugh! All hail the unholydeathmachine! Yes! Hail! HAIL! UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE UBER ALLES! UNHOLYFUCKINGDEATHMACHINE UBER ALLES!

Pym (taking a step back): Oooookay. Well, he's got a problem -- uh, um, never mind. I think I'll just, uh, be going now. Right. Mmmmm hmmm. (starts to creep away, only to be pulled back by TMU)

TMU: What's this about... trouble?

Pym: I'd really rather not get into it. You'll just... um... it's not a good idea....

M-w (leaning up against a wall, reading BONDAGE MONTHLY): Oh, ask her! Ask her! Oh please, we beg of you, the entertainment we greatly seek!

M-a (feet kicked up on the coffee table): It's not such a big problem. Just a... lawsuit.

TMU (eye beginning to twitch): Lawsuit?

M-w: Something about leaving a path of destruction and terror in his wake.

Pym (sighing): He was out jogging --

TMU: Out there? In the snow?

Pym: Yes. In shorts, no less. You hang with some hardcore people, that's for sure. Anyway, he was jogging and singing something by Low and a couple of soldiers thought it was a geeky choice and gave him a hard time, so he beat up the entire platoon.

M-a: The sergeant go owee all the way to the hospital.

M-w: The sound of breaking bones, so sharp... naturally we taped the carnage, we'll let you listen later if you like.

Pym (blinking): You sick fucking pervert.

TMU (beaming): A little bit of the old ultraviolence, eh? Excellent! Has he been getting any of the old in-out as well?

M-w: Judging from the look of the girls in the phone room, I'd say yes.

Pym: I heard about that. The janitor supposedly resigned rather than clean the room. That was two weeks ago and it's still sticky everywhere....

M-a: I hear some of them have been going back for seconds.

M-w: And thirds... fourths... tenths... hundredths...

Pym (glaring at TMU): What are we going to do when he knocks up the whole Administration division? Or all the phone operators? Or even that silly airhead bitch down in Munitions and Security with the amazing hooters? Are you even vaguely aware of what it will be like with all of them on maternity leave? Are you willing to take responsibility for this when it happens? And is it really true that you overrode the Headless Sno-Cone Girl to hire the chick with the big hooters because you were impressed by her vinyl high-heel platform fetish shoes?

TMU: SILENCE! Todd the Black Metal Drummer does my bidding in this matter -- he is building an army for me! Yes! A vast army of tiny slaves waiting to be molded to my Machiavellian will in the shadow of the unholydeathmachine, preparing for eternal fucking war right from the cradle! Soon the population of the new master race shall begin....

Pym: You are starting to fucking spook me, you... you grim necro whatever geek.

TODD THE BLACK METAL DRUMMER MAKES HIS ENTRANCE: Manes. Fuckin' Manes, man... they're better than you.

TMU: Are you enjoying the Ritual of Unholy Sonic Defecation?

TTBMD: I just want you all to know, dude -- the animals will rise. People must realize the power of the animals. They are the last things pure on this barren, ugly, pathetic planet.

(flashes scary tattoos, returns to making an infernal racket with the unholydeathmachine)

Pym (turning to TMU): What the fuck was that about?

TMU: It's a cult thing, bitch. You wouldn't understand.

Pym: I'm gonna understand your ass with a big fucking paddle if you call me bitch again, you... you toad.

Antu appears suddenly, materializing out of nowhere, a crackling fireball of atomic ass energy. The loud clattering sound of the big-assed Amazonian bodyguards rushing down the hall grows steadily louder as Antu, having tricked them, gloats in unseemly fashion.

Antu: You fucking PIG! I have escaped your pathetic excuse for bodyguards! Now I issue this ultimatum: Either start the fucking issue already or I will fry you like a tater tot! (menacing bursts of energy crackle from her hovering mass like flickering sunspots)

TMU: All right, all right... (waving one hand) You heard the atomic ass bitch, let's roll....

Pym: Hey, before we do that, I ought to warn you about TASCAM-Girl. She somehow got her hands on a stolen shipment of black-market Dexatrim and for about the past week she's been wandering the halls babbling and threatening people.

TMU: Does she have a gun?

Pym: Does the pope potty in the Vatican? Of course she has a gun. She has more guns than Clinton had whores. Fuck, she probably qualifies for her own defense budget. (shakes her head) Even worse, she found the script somewhere along the way and has been, uh, having segments rewritten at gunpoint....

Antu (amazed): We have a script? When did this happen?

TMU: It's classified information. Distributed only a need-to-know basis. (nods absently) All right, i'll take this under consideration. In the meantime, the issue beckons....

STILL GOTTA GET YOUR WAR ON: The man is still at it... check it out for the latest strips added since our last transmission. This is so fucking hilarious it makes Satanic Pee Dog's pee-pee hurt. Can you hear him barking?

ARM WRESTLING FOR THE AFFECTION OF PORN STARLETS [# 52]: Kristin Hersh is playing as we fade in on the grim sight of The Moon Unit and the Antichrist locked in fearsome combat, arm-wrestling and swearing at each other like wildmen. Pym, M--a, and M--w are all seated around the coffee table playing Trivial Pursuit; Todd the Black Metal Drummer is lost in a giant bean-bag chair, only his hat, tattoos, and Nigel Tufnel biography visible. TASCAM-Girl is nowhere to be seen, although she can periodically be heard in the distance, somewhere out in the endless hallways, shouting and firing at phantoms as her amphetamine psychosis kicks into high gear. Antu, the flickering white-hot ball of floating fire, is sulking in the kitchen with her Amazonian bodyguards, atomizing and ingesting Dove bars. Nobody knows where the hell Fenris is; probably still trying to build the world's largest pizza with slave labor, or else kicking back in the Ninth Circle of Hell watching repulsive slasher flicks.

TA (grunting and straining): AAAAAARGGGGH! You damned devil!

TMU (turning beet red): GAK! That cocksucking arm won't fucking MOVE! Go down! GO FUCKING DOWN you goat-licking minion of darkness! Go down like our swell pals in China!

TA: Like hell, you puffed-up little toad!

Pym (reading article): Does this mean they aren't our pals in the War on Terrorism anymore?

TMU (struggling): They were never our pals in anything. If we had any sense at all we'd vaporize the whole country before they get strong enough to vaporize us, because I promise you that's exactly what they're working toward. Then -- world domination! Soon we shall all speak Chinese! Chopsticks will be required utensils at every meal! The glowing face of the revered Chairman will adorn every wall of every home! We won't have to worry about the Taliban and that slippery goat-fucker Osama anymore because the Chinese will have eaten them smothered in soy sauce!

M--a (puzzled): Does this have anything to do with the President's latest war?

M--w: Truly, I am worried about our leader. He grows more unstable and jingoistic with every passing day. Are you sure it is being entirely safe to leave him with the keys to a nuclear missile?

M--a (eyes widening): He has a missile?

TTBMD: Yeah. He won it on Ebay. I'd be more worried about the Seven Deadly Vials, if I were you.

Pym (worried): Uh, Seven Deadly Vials? What's this about?

TTBMD: He was playing craps after one of those secret meetings at the Pentagon and he won these vials from a chemical warfare specialist. The dude says they have seven different strains of biowarfare germs in them or something. I say he got ripped off, but I gotta admit, watching him juggle those things was pretty scary....

Pym (growing pale): He was juggling with them? Um, assuming they really do have plague germs in them, how, uhhhh, deadly are we talking about?

TTBMD: The dude said any one of them would kill half the planet's population eventually. Except the cockroaches. Nothing can kill the cockroaches.

M--w: This does seem somewhat reckless....

M--a: Given, as it is, that the American economy is squashed as if the mighty Ass of Onna had been resting on it for days, to destroy us all might be doing us a favor.

TMU: Relax, I know what I'm doing. (grunting as the Antichrist tries to sneak in a reverse double-whammy) Hah, you didn't think I knew that was coming, did ya? Can't fool this mack daddy pimp! HEEWACK! I got it goin' ON! I be motherfuckin' stylin' South Central TEJAS style! I'll wear your collarbone for an necklace when the smoke clears, brutah!

TA: Presumptuous maggot-eating runt! URGH! If that pipecleaner you call an excuse for an arm doesn't hit the table soon, I swear by the dripping snatch of the Virgin Mary that I'll see you in the darkest, coldest hole in Hell being ass-cored by every single demon in the entire Ninth Circle! EVERY FUCKING DAY! Little shit!

TMU (laughing): Oh, blow me, you sick viper.

TA (sputtering): Blow -- BLOW you? You pathetic foot-fucking freak, you aren't even fit to blow ME! You think I want anything to do with your tiny little tool? You simpering worm -- let's see you tell Yog-Sothoth to blow you. I'll cast you into the lake of fire in the center ring of the great monolith of Kadath and let Nyarlathotep swim up and ram his five-foot Tool of Eternal Crippling Doom down your weeping gullet until it explodes out your asshole!

TMU: Promises, promises! (left eye begins to hemorrhage as he strains to move the Antichrist's arm)

TA (gloating): It's going to happen, boy. Believe it. And when your arm hits the table, all of Castle Monotremata will become mine, and with it, the world... nay, the universe. Soon I will have dominion over every living creature, even the Great Serpent, and... and... and we will fucking party like it's 1999, motherfucker. I'll have the entire human race set on fire with gasoline and sell them to the tourists in the Plains of Leng as jerky treats! Those who live will have the privilege of building the Great Throne of Skulls upon which I will sit until you all bore me -- which won't take long, I assure you -- and then I'll have a body burning party in the Vast Barbeque Pit of the Lower Shuggoth! And just for laughs, I'm going to let Shub-Niggurath and the Thousand Young take turns porking your skinny ass! Tell me, boy... are you terrified yet? Do you shake like a leaf? Do you writhe in an ecstasy of fear at the realization of the endless torments you will soon face for all fucking eternity?

TMU: Man, you sure talk one fuck of a lot. (kicks the table, hoping to win by distraction)

TA (outraged): Hey! HEY! No cheating, motherfucker! 

TMU: It's only cheating if you're losing, dung-boy. (leans in, to no avail)

TA (pushing back even harder): Truly I cannot believe your insolence. You are truly the most fearless man I have ever met. Or the most stupid. It's hard to tell.

Pym (looking up): Oh, I could tell you --

TMU: HUSH!

M--w: I must ask now, for it seems to be the most opportune moment to break the flow of narrative, so to speak, and find out what exactly shall be the outcome if the Moon Unit wins.

M--a: I believe his prize, should he win, shall be the final realization of his own personal vision of heaven.

M--w (consulting script): This here, what does "straight man" mean?

Pym: It means you ask an innocent question and he responds with the zinger that makes everybody laugh.

M--w (scowling): Wait. Wait. Hold. I -- I do not get to make people laugh? Why should not he be the straight man? Let him be the unfunny one.

Pym (rolling eyes): Do you know what "prima donna" means?

M--w: No....

TG (appearing out of nowhere and pointing obscenely large and phallic 30mm Volt-O-Matic at his head): It means if you keep deviating from the motherfucking script I'm going to scramble your atoms and serve you to the Head Maggot as toast. Your head will land in fucking Afghanistan, okay?

M--w (growing pale): You are scaring me with your increasingly random tendency toward psychotic violence, woman.

TG: Hey, if violence is good enough for members of the Senate, then it's good enough for me.

TMU (sweat pouring down his back in buckets): Can we, like, maybe, you know, get with the goddamned program here? Just possibly? Before I fucking croak?

Pym: Go on, go on...

TG: Can I mention first that we're all really happy to see that Martha "Superdomesticuberbitch" Stewart will soon be hanging drapes in prison?

TMU: GET BACK TO THE FUCKING SCRIPT!

M--a (clearing throat): I believe his prize, should he win, shall be the final realization of his own personal vision of heaven.

M--w: And that would be?

M--a: A week-long non-stop fuckfest with Christy Canyon, Stephanie Swift, and Roxanne Hall.

Pym (appalled): Wait a minute, let me get this straight -- this dumbshit is arm-wrestling for the fate of the universe just so he can get some pussy? (to TMU) What the fuck is wrong with you?

TMU (panting): Hey, I'm a man of simple but incredibly crass desires. And it's not for pussy, it's blow jobs. Roxanne and Stephanie can suck bulldozers through a straw, I want in on this, dammit. And Christy's mammoth hooters... I want to wrap them around my head....

TA (scowling with rage): I cannot believe that the scriptwriter had us hold these poses for two minutes while trotting out some lame fucking JOKE! Who's the scriptwriter? Who's the man? I want his ass down here RIGHT NOW. I want some answers. I want his head on a plate....

Pym: No one knows who the scriptwriter is. We just get the manuscripts by secret courier and do what they say.

TA: Well, you tell the courier to relay a message to the scriptwriter: If he --

M--w (helpfully): It could be a she. This is the modern age, you know.

M--a: It could even be a hermaphrodite. Or a transsexual. Or a transvestite. Which would it be then? He or she? What would be the proper form of addressing? (hunches over Big Book O' English, paperback edition)

M--w: I believe it would depend on --

TA: SHUT THE FUCK UP! My dear sweet Satan, how did I end up in this chicken outfit?

TMU (beginning to hallucinate from the strain): We are the agents of the random. We know; we see. The individual atoms of time and space revolve and rotate and reassemble themselves into patterns that look suspiciously like a faded inkblot of a reproduction of the tin-plated pattern on the back of an old, much-played Violent Femmes album. Or maybe a picture of Stan Lynch in profile, or an x-ray of Lemmy's tonsils; there is much debate in the town hall meetings over these things. It matters not. I am privy to a great many fountains of knowledge, I can tell you exactly when the end of the world will arrive if you care to hear it -- no? Do you tremble at the thought? As well you should -- I am the button waiting to be pushed! I am the Death Turd floating in the stinking Toilet of Life! I LISTEN TO NO MAN OR GOD! Death holds no sway over me; I have seen the Angel of Death and pissed on her fucking foot! HEEWACK! Seven angels with seven swords each march across seven plains as seven rivers run with the blood of the sheep while I sit back and laugh as you are all turned into tasty tater tots for my afternoon snack! Great battles are waged in the frozen wastes of the north just for the privilege of asking my opinion on the best outfit to wear to Ragnarok! The Hellrobot of Level 54 lies in wait for the Atomic Ass Bitch of Level 13, his Probe is getting all hot and nasty but it is of no concern, for my hand is at the wheel and the roadhouse is on the left and Jim fucking Morrison is behind the wheel! HEEWACK! Pimp daddy alert! The unholydeathmachine needs women! Maybe BIG women! With that all-important big bottom! Woo! Hoo! WOO FUCKING HOO! Yes, I can see it in the distance -- something that looks like a wheel of fire and smells like Jenna Bush's thong panties -- it's Lamashtu in her souped-up hot rod, what's she doing crashing the party? Doesn't matter -- the ice weasels have ascended to the Eternal Formation and the Seven-Bladed Windbreaker of the Cannanites has been assembled and we are all so fucked that you might as well give up the funk right now! I see before us a thousand centuries of dope-addled worship of big-boned dominatrixes swaddled in hot sweaty latex! HAIL ANU! May his Eye never close! (panting) Second wind coming -- yes, I know the answer to the question, the answer you seek: your presence here was commanded by the Great Serpent, yes, the Ouroboros, the world is merely a tiny pellet falling from the Serpent's Holy Anus and you, yes you, are the toilet paper waiting to cleanse and discard the Great Waste! I know this because I command the Great and Terrible Eye of Anu, and this, yes, I say unto you: All that comes into our orbit is eventually sucked in by the immense gravitational pull of the black hole that is my mind -- perhaps even my soul.

TTBMD (peeking out from behind his book): "How much more black could it be? None. None more black."

Pym (snatching script from M--w): Hey, that's not in the script!

TMU: The blazing hands of the devil don't need a fucking script. He's just here to hit things. Don't worry about him. Don't worry, be happy....

M--a: What the fuck is wrong with you?

Pym: The years of chemical abuse begin to finally take their toll....

TG: He's just delirious with joy over how this federal ruling has half the country and all of Congress jumping up and down like monkeys throwing their shit at people.

Pym: I think they should replace the offending phrase with "under Bill Gates and the IRS," which is a hell of a lot closer to the truth.

TG (consulting watch): Look, we're halfway through and nobody's even mentioned Israel and Palestine yet. Or the certain crippling doom that will soon befall India and Pakistan.

M--w: I did notice that it's apparently bad to not to want to kill people if you live in Israel.

TMU (to the Antichrist, grinning like a monkey): So how does it feel to know soon your ass will be mine? No more dominion of the animals --

TTBMD (eyebrows rising): Hey, has this motherfucker been poaching from me? I'm the one who realizes the power of the animals around here.

TMU (like he didn't even hear): .. no more enticing gullible rubes into the sins of the flesh... no more crushing of souls... no more porking fleshy li'l devil dolls down in the Pitchfork Pool on your lunch break. Does your wife know about that, by the way? Have you ever informed Lamashtu about your peculiar tastes in devil dolls? You like the roly-poly ones, don't you? The ones who like being peed on, right? You know, if I were married to a Sumerian demoness who went by the nickname "She Who Erases," I think I'd be a lot more discreet about my perverted dalliances....

TA: SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I WILL EAT YOUR HEART, BITCH!

TMU: Is this the way you tell me you love me? I... I'm hurt. Bad enough that you never send me flowers, but... now... (breaks down weeping)

TA (looking at him like he's grown a third head): What the fuck is wrong with you?

TMU: What can I say? I live in a world where pages like this are necessary.

M--w: That is a bit perturbing, yes.

M--a: Not that the business of raping souls is better anywhere else.

TA (smiling expansively): Yes, the tide is turning against my enemies -- isn't it great?

Pym: But at least it looks like some of the deluded might be coming to their senses....

TMU: It mattters NOT! They will all be crushed like the two-legged cockroaches that they are when I ascend to the Throne of Skulls and lay waste to all that displeases me! And if the motherfucking Liz Phair album doesn't come out soon, I may crush everyone in a black fit of rage as well!

TA (rolling eyes): Oh, dream on, sissy boy. As soon as that arm goes down.... Oh, by the way, these maggots will be the first people I flay alive when I assume my position of omnipotent power.

TMU (grunting, straining): False bravado... oomph! ... won't... argh! ... save you now, you godless thug from an another dimension. Look, a fly is peeing on your Armani suit! (points to lapel with free hand)

TA: What? WHAT! (starts brushing wildly at lapel)

TMU: Look! Look! YOU ARE ALL WITNESSES -- his elbow left the table! He broke the rules! I WIN! THE UNIVERSE IS MINE! (jumps up triumphant and gloating) Where are they? Bring them on... Bring on the porn girls, YES.... If you will all excuse me, I have to get ready.... (exits gloating, with a hop in his step)

M--a: Oh, truly we are all ass-fucked now.

Pym: Relax, I hid the keys to the missile. I hid them in a place he'll never find them, trust me.

M--a: And where would that be?

Pym: Under the official Operational Manual of the unholydeathmachine, which he's ignored consistently since the government sent it to him.

TTBMD: Ignored it? Hell, he hasn't even opened it. He x-rayed it to make sure it didn't contain money and threw it in a corner of the mail room. Last time I saw it spiders were using it for a nest.

M--w: I am not sure it matters.

Pym: Oh? And why not?

TTBMD: Because the contest was void before it even started. They didn't get anything notarized. Can't do business with the Great Serpent unless you have a ritual and a notarized statement.

TA: So I'm still in charge of destroying the universe and not him?

TTBMD: Go ape, brutah. Now if you don't mind, I'd like to finish this brilliant biography alone -- this sensitive passage on Nigel's heartbreaking affair with the Finnish albino midget brings tears to my eyes....

Pym (getting up, dusting off latex skirt): Well, is there anything else to cover before we let the Head Maggot run amok, waiting until he explodes with blind, senseless rage when he discovers his little fuckfest isn't going to happen?

M--w: Get Your War On has posted a couple of new pages.

M--a: Yes, and they are most humorous.

(Somewhere out in the corridor: "What? WHAT? Are you telling me my unholy ass-quest has had its plug pulled on a fucking TECHNICALITY? That's it, I'm getting out my missile....")

TA: Sounds like your amphetamine-addled soldier of fortune couldn't wait to tell him the good news.

Pym (starting to run): Time to get out while the getting's good....

(Everyone else follows her out the door, scattering to the many hiding places in the Hellfortress, leaving behind only Todd the Black Metal Drummer, too engrossed in his biography to care about matters as trivial as his personal safety.)

TO ALL WHO KNEW HIM, HIS GREATNESS WAS NEVER IN QUESTION [# 53]: Fade from black over an unintelligble commotion. As the scene develops, we see everyone gathered in the Doom Room, even Antu and her Amazon bodyguards. Everyone is dressed in ill-fitting suits and ties, even Pym and TASCAM-Girl, with fresh white shirts and gleaming black wingtip shoes. Even the Moon Unit has discarded his corpsepaint and black robe for an ill-fitting Armani suit on loan from the Antichrist. TTBMD has even covered his numerous tattoos. TTBMD is standing on the coffee table, addressing those lounging on the couch and in the chairs over by the stereo. Even the bodyguards are in suits, although they've given up on suiting Antu since the suits keep catching on fire. TTBMD raises the bullhorn and addresses his sullen captives as the snow beats at the wall-sized picture glass behind them....

TTBMD: Okay, all right, everybody step right up... pay attention... let's go through this one more time so we can get it right....

TG (sullen): I can't believe it's come to this. (fiddles with tie) How did I end up wearing a fucking goddamn tie?

TTBMD: Hey! HEY! We can't be having that when Mister Gavanti arrives! He's a very sensitive artist, he doesn't tolerate profanity or any other kind of lewd behavior. So watch your P's and Q's, missy!

Pym: He's definitely coming to the wrong place.

M--w: Does this mean you will be having to hide the Atomic Ass Whore, I believe her name is currently Antu?

M--a: Who?

M--w: The Headless Sno-Cone Girl. She is being a flaming wheel of fire now these days, remember?

M--a: How can I remember? Some dumb fuck keeps misplacing the script.

TTBMD (getting in his face and screaming wildly): NO PROFANITY! Please bear with me. I know it's going to be tough, but Mister Gavanti will only be here a couple of weeks. You know it's my absolute duty to wait on him hand and foot to insure that his artistic needs are fulfilled.

Pym: Where's the head maggot? (sees TMU attempting to sneak out of the room) Ah, there you are. Would you like to explain what, exactly, is going on here?

TMU (sighs heavily): Um... well... see, it's like this.

M--w: I smell a whopper in the conception.

Pym: If you fucking lie to me, you runt, you'll never eat sushi again in this town.

M--a: Since when does an outpost on stilts in the frozen waste of Antarctica count as a town?

Pym: HUSH! Come on, some answers!

TMU: Okay, if you must. See, there was this tiny, um, problem in Accounting, and, well, uh, there was this small billing fiasco -- something to do with Enron or WorldCom or maybe even that horrid cunt, what's her name, uh, Martha Stewart, hell, I don't know, I just work here -- and, uh, anyway, we're sort of technically kind of by accident just a little bit, just a tiny bit mind you, um, behind on the mortgage payment for the Hellfortress. So, uh, we're contracting out....

TTBMD (beaming): Mister Gavanti has decided to make use of our superior audio facilities to record his NEW ALBUM! Which I have been asked to play drums on! A lifelong dream! (eyes growing dark) And I don't want to fuck it up, and if any of YOU fuck it up, I... I... if you think I'm bad, wait 'til you see how Mister Gavanti gets when he is offended by the lewd and base nature of lesser mortals!

TMU: Is it really true that he shot his bass player once for losing the beat?

TTBMD: No, it was because he dared to play with a pick.

TMU (pulling a vast collection of lucky picks from his pocket): I guess this means I won't be guesting on the album....

TTBMD: If you're lucky Mister Gavanti will let you watch while they mix it down after he goes back to his cabal of whores in Switzerland.

M--w: What is all this about, aaaaah, John Gavanti?

M--a (appalled): You mean you do not KNOW?

Pym: Maybe he's never even heard John Gavanti. I'll bet you haven't, have you. Have you?

M--w: Um... why, of course I have heard... um... the fine, fine music of Mister... ah... how do you say again?

TTBMD (doesn't believe): Tell me the eighth and ninth lines of the first verse on side one, dude.

M--w (like a deer in the headlights): Ah... ummmm... hold on, coming to me now... "and I ask you one more time, why do fools fall in love?"

TTBMD: "OH I GAVANTI! I AM EVERYTHING!"

TG (looking at TMU): Tell me this is a bad, bad nightmare and I promise I won't do crack anymore. At least not at the Hellfortress.

TMU: Oh, it's all too fucking real. By the Seven Wrinkly Tits of Anu, the things I do for money....

TTBMD (exasperated): That does it. If you idiots can't get with the program, I can fix that.... (grabs M--w by the neck) Come on, point out the Subatomic Asterisk Generator and get it running, I know it's one of these damn gadgets....

M--w: Ack! Yes... ow, not so hard! Hitting things constantly makes you too manly! OW! Here... (turns on gadget)

Pym: What the f**k are you doing, you obnoxious hat-wearing dilh**e?

TTBMD: That's much better. I think we can live with that. (to Pym) Did his rider arrive? Did you get all the supplies he'll be needing?

Pym (rolling her eyes): That rider... was the biggest pain in the a*s.

TG: Is that what the twelve jumbo-sized bottles of Vaseline are for?

Pym (shuddering): Yes. And the twin albino midgets dressed as matadors. And the thirteen cases of port. And the entire collected works of the Metropolitan Opera's live series. And exactly 37 gold-plated coke spoons, size small. Plus lodging and food for his twenty-five personal assistants. Not to mention the specifically-requested mint-flavored condoms, Maximum Size, and room and board for the twenty-five concubines. And half of them are vegan. (glaring at TMU) We better be getting a good f**king deal on this s**t, poo-boy.

TTBMD: Did you get the gold-plated hookah and, uhhhh, "smoking supplies"?

Pym: Yes, and if you ever send me into that scum-ridden neighborhood again....

TG (a sudden spark of life in her hollow eyes): Did they have diet pills?

Pym: If it is bad for you, there was a human vending machine for it in that neighborhood. Carrying a gun. And wearing baggy pants big enough to host an Amway convention. Listening to horrible bands who can't spell their own names on stolen MP3 players....

TG: I'll go next time then, these diet pills just aren't cutting the mustard.

TTBMD: What kind of w**d did you get for him? Acalpulco Gold or Maui Waui? He specifically requested "something that will put me in outer space, baby."

TMU: Oh, if that's what he wants....

Pym (waving hands): No! I forbid it! We, uh, got him... Acal....

TTBMD: Wait, I want to hear about this other thing. What are you talking about?

TMU (grinning madly): I'm talkin' about the dark, fibrous weeds that grow and glow in the dark, festering Plains of Leng, o my brother. Weeds that when smoked will destroy your entire psyche and replace it with the dark h**l of a collapsing sun. You don't know what stoned is until you've smoked a blunt of the Elder Gods. They call it lengleaf, but it's really nothin' but the black smoke of paradise.

TTBMD: Oh, then that's what he needs.

TG (nervously): I dunno, I hear that's some seriously heavy shit....

TTBMD: Only the best for John Gavanti!

TMU: It made me what I am today -- a grinning paranoid psychotic ready to destroy the planet, if I can ever remember where I put the f**king planet-destroyer. (to Pym) Are you sure we looked under the couch cushions?

TTBMD (suddenly nervous): Well, maybe we should think about this....

M--w: Have you looked in the icebox? Always, I am surprised by what is to be found in the icebox.

TTBMD: I don't even want to know what the Moon Unit keeps in his icebox. Probably leftovers from a ritual sacrifice in 1987. Does he ever throw out leftovers?

M--w: Only when the mold grows sentient enough to ask for money.

TMU (gesturing wildly as Pym stares with stupefaction): Hey, i have an idea -- Pym, get the keys and follow me out to the big-deal top f**king secret shed that nobody's supposed to know about.

Pym: What the f**k are you jabbering about, you fool?

TMU: We're going to go look for, uh, um, the remote! Yes! We're going to look now for the remote that i might have possibly left out in the big-deal top secret shed where we keep the unholydeathmachine! The shed that nobody is supposed to know about, remember! (Mumbles to Pym: "Getyera*singearandgoi'llexplainoutside" and pulls her along out the door.)

TTBMD (perplexed): Does anybody have any idea what that was all about?

A machine panel behind them begins to beep and TASCAM-Girl goes over to take a look.

TG: Hey, guess who's arrived... my sugarpuff Neddal! (into intercom) Neddypoo --

M--a (horrified): Neddypoo?

TTBMD (rolling eyes): Why me? Why? 

TG (still babbling like a lovestruck geek): What brings you up here, big boy?

N/A (bellowing): Where the h**l is my paycheck, you f**king freak? I want the Moon Unit's f**king a*s down here with my check right now. I've been waiting five g*d**n months already! F**K!

TG: Oh dear, he's upset. This may be a problem. (into intercom) Dearheart, sweetiepoo... did you, uh, by any small, tiny chance... you know... while you were, like, coming down here... um... did you, maybe, just even by accident, sort of kinda pick up some... you know... and if you, uh, maybe did, maybe i could sort of "borrow" some --

N/A: What are you rambling about, b*t*h? Do you even know what you're trying to say? Are you on drugs or something?

TG: NO! I'M ASKING YOU IF YOU HAVE CRACK OR SPEED OR COKE OR HEROIN OR EVEN ASPIRIN TABLETS I CAN CRUSH UP AND SNORT, YOU F**KING DIPS**T!

N/A: Uh.... no. I'm not a f**king dope fiend, you... you stupid... d**n it, I don't even know whether to f**king call you a d**k or a b*t*h. Did we ever decide on that? And do you plan on letting me the f**k in anytime soon?

TG: Whatever. (presses button and steps back, sniffing and fiddling with her gun)

N/A steps in, towering over all but the Amazon women and Antu. He starts to say something, then the freakshow before his eyes finally registers.

N/A (to TG): What are you doing wearing a tie?

TTMBD (stepping forward, clipboard a-snappin'): She's showing proper respect for the great John Gavanti. In fact, we're right in the middle of getting ready to record his new album, and I'm kind of pressed for time right now, so maybe you should come back later or something....

N/A: I'm not going anywhere until I get my f**king check.

TTMBD (turning away, hands in the air): Whatever you say, dude. But for that you'll have to talk to the Moon Unit. I guess you can hang out here with everybody else while I go assist Mister Gavanti.... (walks away, barking at a technician)

N/A (to TG): You know, you people are way too intense around here. What's your caffiene consumption like? I'll bet you people drink way too much caffiene.

M--a: I believe the unofficial mantra of Castle Monotremata, supposedly it is "Nothing succeeds like excess."

N/A (utterly mystified): What the f**k is wrong with you people? And who's the guy with the glasses and the a*sh**e thugs?

TG (looking at the three men who have conveniently arrived at that moment): Oh, that's John Gavanti and two very large bodyguards.

N/A :This is the guy you're wearing the f**king tie for? (looking up) Hey, what's with all the g*d**n f**king asterisks?

BODYGUARD # 2: (smirking): The Subatomic Asterisk Generator was made for you, buddy.

N/A: Where the f**k is the Moon Unit? I haven't been paid in months, I want to know what kind of f**king shop you morons run anyway... oh wait, I forgot, this place is run by Americans. That explains everything.

TASCAM-Girl (pointing her Portable Gyroscopic Mobile Cannon with Rotating Hypnoattachment at him): That's right, and we have guns, you miserable socialist f**k, so watch your g*d**n manners, okay?

N/A: Yes ma'am. Or sir. Whatever the f**k it is. You mind pointing that somewhere else?

Pym (bursting dramatically into room): If you will all excuse me for a moment -- I have a shocking piece of news. (eyes growing wild) Did you hear me? Shocking! SHOCKING, I said!

TG (eyes growing even wilder): Whatever it is, I don't wanna hear it unless it involves a drop-shipment of heavy doses of pure uncut crystal methamphetamine. Right here. Right now.

M--a (shivering): Why did I just hear the voice of Van Hagar? How... how frightening....

M--w: You know, the Castle Monotremata health insurance plan does cover outpatient detox --

Pym: SILENCE! (pauses) The Moon Unit... is gone.

TG: Say what?

N/A: What the f**k do you mean he's m*therf**king gone?

Pym: We were standing outside -- I went with him to help bring back a couple of bushels of lengleaf from the storage facility or whatever excuse it is we cooked up -- then the lights -- oh GOD the LIGHTS -- (falls to the floor babbling; bodyguards step aside long enough for Gavanti to marvel at the sight)

BODYGUARD # 1: What da' h**l is wrong wi' her, mon?

M--w: Perhaps we should get her sister....

BODYGUARD # 2: Hey, which one of you wiseas**s just cranked up the heater?

M--a: Ah, she is already here. (points) 

Everyone looks up to see Antu hovering above them, a fiery ball of blue-white light spitting bright, white-hot sparks. Her Amazon bodyguards -- now fully nude, interestingly enough -- are eating sushi from marble plates while watching from the kitchen doorway. The bodyguards are paralyzed with fear by this unexpected sight, and tremble even further when Antu announces, in a godlike voice sufficiently loud enough to rattle the windows:

Antu: WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SISTER?

M--w: Oh wow, she didn't get bleeped.

M--a: She's an atomic a*s goddess now, I think she gets to write her own a*s-f**king rules.

N/A (starting to sweat): Uhhhhh -- (jumps to avoid a shower of sparks that burn through the floor where he was just standing) Um, ma'am, she just walked in and started babbling about aliens and stuff and we don't know any more than you do....

TTBMD (walking up, drawn by the commotion): What the f**k is going on over here? Chr*st! Do I have to put all of you idiots under sedation? Is that what you want?

Pym (sitting up): Oooooh... my head hurts. Where was I?

TTBMD (bending to inspect the locust dancing on her ear): You were going to tell us what happened to the Moon Unit.

Pym: Who?

TTBMD (nonplussed): Um... you know, the guy who runs this place. The guitarist for UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE. The lunatic. That guy. The guy you went out to the shed with, remember?

Pym: No. I don't remember him at all. I don't remember anything about going out to the top-secret shed that nobody knows about either, the one where they keep the unholydeathmachine and the plans for world domination. Wait, do you mean the guy the aliens took?

M--w (eyes wide): Aliens? What's this about aliens?

Pym: Whoever this doofus was, I was helping him carry these big bags up here when this gigantic spaceship landed in front of us and two monster women like something from a Giger painting came out, speared him with their lanced tongues, and dragged him back into the ship and took off again. That's all I remember. (looking around, puzzled) Where am I, anyway?

N/A (alarmed): Aliens took him? He's been f**king kidnapped by bug-eyed aliens? (wailing) Who's gonna sign my check if the f**king Head Dips**t has been abducted by f**king aliens from another f**king planet?

M--w: Well, this is an interesting development.

M--a: See what is happening when you are losing the script?

M--w: I think we lost control of this particular artistic vehicle long ago.

M--a: What about our dignity? Our pride? In the name of the Emperor and the Great Sacred A*s of Onna, what about these terribly important things? (looks sideways and blinks) What is this? We have an audience! Look! There are people watching us! Look! LOOK!

TG (twitching): Stop that s**t right now. Don't be f**king with the fourth wall and s**t while i'm standing guard, my grip on reality's sweaty enough as it is. Ohhhhh f**k f**k f**k why didn't I take that extra crate when I had the chance? Why? Why? WHY?

M--a (to audience): If the Moon Unit were still here, he would force you to wonder -- to make up your own idea, if I may -- of just exactly what was happening when she speaks of taking the extra crate. But since he is not here, I will take it upon myself to tell you that which she speaks of. Some time ago, when exactly is not the most clear thing, in the process of emptying her gun into some trespassers, she stumbled across a shipment of black-market Dexatrim and pure uncut crystal methamphetamine. Apparently, as I am understanding it, the plan of these trespassers was to pass off the real crystal as ordinary, legal Dexatrim for the purposes of evading the customs police. Of course, this is a plan of asinine most unbelievable, but of course this you must expect of regular users of methamphetamine, which makes you not so bright, correct? At any rate, they had both and for reasons that remain unclear, she took the crate of Dexatrim but not the crate of crystal. Soon after she realized the error of her path, she returned to discover that the ice weasels had snorted all of it. She is still working to kick herself.

TTBMD (slapping him silent): HEY! Don't be fooling around with the fourth wall while Mister Gavanti is here, dude! Man, why do you people have to do this to me right now?

N/A (to Pym): Did the aliens say when there were going to bring the Moon Unit back? Are these the same m*therf**king aliens that keep stealing and killing children like g*d**n rabid dingoes?

Pym: No. They did say something about "jerky treats," though.

N/A: This... does not sound good. F**king alien c**ks**kers.

Pym: Do I know you? You seem very familiar....

BODYGUARD # 1: Mista' Gavanti be wantin' t' know yah name, princess.

Pym: Jenna Bush.

TTBMD (rushing her out of the room): No, no, no, no... the last thing we need is a bunch of Secret Service agents questioning everybody while Mister Gavanti is trying to sing... (to Neddal) What is it with the Jenna Bush obsession? Do you know?

N/A: Vague unfocused horniness, probably.

TTBMD (relieved): It doesn't have anything to do with politics?

N/A: No, it's satire or something. Or him just being a d**k. Something like that.

TTBMD: Well, the Moon Unit needs to find a new obsession. Look, I'm going to go round up these fools to get the studio ready for Mister Gavanti.

BODYGUARD # 1 (looking worried): Uh, mon, can I be talkin' wit' ya for a min'? We, uh, seem to be havin' a problem....

TTBMD (eyes filled with rage): Go ahead. Tell me.

BG#1: Well, mon, we stepped aside to let the mon' take a leak, and we waiting, we waiting, and after a while we goes inside, and no Gavanti. The mon vanished, like bad hoodoo.

TTBMD: How can he disappear from the f**king bathroom, dude? What are you guys on? Oh, this is great. Here I am trying to make an album and you lose the artist. That's good. That's REAL GOOD. Look, I'm going to go get the studio set up. If you know what's good for you, you'll find Mr. Gavanti and bring him to the studio like yesterday.

BG#2: You a bossy li'l s**t, you know that?

Roundhouse brawling commences; everyone backs away as the furniture starts getting broken.

M--a: If the Moon Unit is missing, the administrative assistant is a flaming wheel of fire, the deputy assistant can't remember her own name, and this guy is too busy kicking a*s to run the place... um, who, exactly, is running things now?

M--w: I believe, my friend, that we are rudderless.

M--a: As I am fearing. We are f**ked, aren't we?

M--w: It appears so. (to Neddal) Do you have anything to add?

N/A: I do know that if the Moon Unit were still around, he'd want us to mention this: (points devil sign downward)

ARE YOU STILL GETTING YOUR WAR ON? The strip that deserves a Pulitzer and a big-a*s limousine full of ho's with crazy t*tt**s has some new installments.

THE DEVIL SPEAKS THROUGH MY GUITAR [# 54]: An ice storm rages outside the giant picture window of the lounge at Castle Monotremata. The scene is a quiet one: The Antichrist sits in the Listening Chair, investigating the new Low cd while M-w and M-a stand nearby, watching the lightning storm beyond the glass and discussing electrical burst frequency inducers. Pym and TASCAM-Girl are watching the news from the broadcast monitor in one corner of the room. Other residents are nowhere to be seen.

The Antichrist (thumbing through latest issue of GQ): So how are things going back at home now that the Republicans are firmly in charge?

TASCAM-Girl: Just swell. The procession to World War III is already underway. We're going to kick some foreign butt! Woo hoo! I can smell the napalm already!

Pym: Has it even remotely occurred to you that preparing to invade another country that hasn't even declared war on us is maybe, uhhhh, not such a good idea?

TG: Doesn't matter, it's turning into a done deal so you might as well get with the program, hussy. You wouldn't want to be seen as un-American, would you?

Pym: Excuse me? I'm from fucking Japan, you twitching gun whore. I certainly don't share your enthusiasm for embracing a police action for oil at the expense of everybody living in the region....

TG (shouting): All the more reason you should get behind the US program to save your fucking asses! You're either with us or against us, okay?

M-w (looking nervous): Ah, this is going to be ugly....

Conversation is rudely interrupted by the walls suddenly shaking. A high-pitched whine builds, growing to a full-blown roar emanating from somewhere several levels under the building. The whine abruptly stops. The entire building shakes once as something explodes.

M-w: Ah, what then might that exquisitely hideous noise be? Heavy construction? Are they building an overpass through the Hellfortress?

M-a: Perhaps it is being a McDonalds under construction.

M-w: We can but only hope, since the food they serve here is... ah... how to describe... words fail me....

M-a (helpfully): Hideous? Like the shoe of diseased leather? The rancid stinking offal of rotting goats?

M-w: I am thinking, now, more in terms of undercooked roadkill. But these, yes, these are good descriptions.

M-a: Truly I have never more missed the sushi than I am missing it now.

Pym: What happened to the sushi, anyway? We live right next to the fucking ocean, you'd think we would have plenty of it....

TA: We still do. The only problem is that John Gavanti --

M-a and M-w: O GAVANTI! I AM EVERYTHING!

TA (scowling): Do that again and I'll rip your arms off and beat you to death with the bloody stumps and serve your steaming innards to gloating demons from the Ninth Circle of Hell.

M-a and M-w (throwing sieg heil salute): Jawohl, Mein Fuhrer!

Pym: I guess this means you guys won't be showing up on the stonerrock list anytime soon....

TA (ignoring them): As I was saying, John Gavanti seduced the sushi cook and spirited her away to the States. Now we are faced with the cruel reality that the only person here who even remotely knows how to fix sushi is the Moon Unit.

Pym: Ah. The light dawns.

TA: Exactly. Would you want to eat something potentially poisonous prepared by a guy who courts salmonella by drinking from the same glass for weeks at a time?

Pym: Why does he do that, anyway?

TA: Because he's a lazy fucking bastard, of course.

The entire room shakes with the fury of what sounds like a jackhammer drilling through the walls. Giger pictures fall off the walls with a crash; the Antichrist's drink tumbles from the coffee table, narrowly missing his Florsheim boots.

Pym: What the hell is going on down there?

TG (glassy-eyed): The Moon Unit and the idjit with the hat and all the tattoos are fucking around with the unholydeathmachine again.

Pym: Here? I thought they had a rehearsal space or something....

TG: They did. They've run through several, actually. There seems to be this problem with the structural integrity of buildings after they play -- apparently on a couple of occasions nothing has been left standing afterward. So they moved over to the drummer's house and couldn't ever get more than three or four bars into anything before the SWAT team surrounded the house and fined them for noise violations and the operation of heavy machinery in a residential zone. So they set up here again and now they spend all their time shooting up drain cleaner and making unspeakable noises. And they won't even share their drain cleaner, the motherfuckers.

Pym: That's okay, some journalist from Canada's EXCLAIM! got all boo-hoo whiny because Constellation took their time about giving him a free copy of the new GYBE record.

M-w: So why did they drop the ! from their name, eh?

TG: If you ask Roman Sokal, it's probably part of their masterplan to take over the world or whatever witless bullshit he's concocting about them now.

The moon unit strolls in, shaking plaster dust from his jacket, whistling (badly, it is true) a bit from Alan Parsons Project's "Day After Day (The Show Must Go On)."

TG: Hey, are you going to go beg Constellation for a free copy of the new GYBE album?

TMU: Fuck no, if i want to hear it i'll go buy my own damn copy. Maybe that way i'll actually get the cover. What is it with labels and artists sending CDs with no cover? It is a puzzlement. I mean, sure, maybe it costs a few more extra cents in postage, but don't you think it would be nice for the reviewer to be able to figure something out about the cd? Oh wait, "it's all about the music" -- right, i forgot all about that. Never mind.

TA (lighting a fine import cigarette): So what is DEAD ANGEL's policy on soliciting submissions, since you are apparently determined now to waste our valuable time raving on the subject?

TMU: We don't solicit anything. Well, every once in a blue moon something obscure will come to our attention and we will inquire about getting a reviewable, but it doesn't happen often. Otherwise we just review what people send to us unbidden and buy our own copy of other stuff to review. (Of course, that leads to a lot of reviews of material we're already predisposed to like, but hey, it's a gig, eh?) We get a flood of nifty stuff without even asking, so there's no point in getting greedy, right? It's not like anybody here would have time to review the entire collected works of Sun Ra if it were given to us for free (although if you really want to do this, we certainly won't stop you).

TA: Ask him about his imminent overreaching flood of... of... what the hell is it you do again, exactly?

TMU: Dissonant trance epics. Psychedelic experimental black metal. Grotesque and mind-numbing sonic voodoo. Something like that. The devil speaks through my guitar! Grwarrgh!

Pym: And I'm to gather you someone conned some fool into putting out some of this dissonant whatsits?

TMU: Rumors are afoot that these things will soon happen, yes. Although i haven't begun looking seriously for a home for REAP THE BLACK HARVEST, the new Autodidact album, though.

M--w: Is it true that REAP THE BLACK HARVEST is the purest essence of the distillation of your, how do they say, sick festering rage at, um, help me out here....

M--a: Does its sound real pissed-off?

TMU: Yes. It's also quite loud.

Pym: Loudness really fucking matters with you, doesn't it?

TMU: It's the only thing that matters. It's more important than life itself.

M--w: More important than blowjobs?

TMU (has to think about it): Yes. Oh hell yeah.

M--a (awestruck): Even -- dare i even think such blasphemy! -- even... even more important than... the Ass of Onna?

TMU: Loudness is what makes the Ass of Onna quake. The more her cosmic ass quakes, the better off we all are. Get the picture?

Pym: You idiots are hopeless.

Everybody except Pym begins playing air guitar to Blue Oyster Cult's "Dominance and Submission."

TMU (gesturing wildly with one foot at M--w): Hey! HEY! You're rushing, dude! You come in AFTER the beat, eh?

M--w: Ah, so sorry.

M--a: Plus your snare is much too loud. Turn down, please.

M--w: But of course. (adjusts imaginary mike on imaginary snare)

Pym (boggled): You guys are such pathetic losers!

TA (raising one hand): Will you be needing my Tambourine of the Elder Gods?

TMU: It's in the mix already, no sweat.

TG (pressing ear to pounding speaker): Does this song even have tambourines?

M--w: It does now. An imaginary tambourine. Air tambourine. (begins shaking imaginary tambourine) "M-m-m-m-miiiiiistaaaah Bo-jaaaaangles...."

TG (pointing large 9mm Revolvomatic Cannon at his skull): Stop that right now.

Pym: I cannot believe i'm locked up in a castle in the middle of the frozen wasteland with such pathetic, worthless, backwards losers! You all suck! FUCK YOU! I'd gladly grow a big, fat swizzle stick just to PEE on all of you! (begins foaming at the mouth, falls to the floor thrashing wildly)

M--a (looking at TG): It appears she is having a most bad reaction to those tiny pills.

TA: What tiny pills?

M--w: The ones she slipped into Pym's drink.

TA: Oh, those tiny pills.

TMU (impressed): Wow, i think she just dislocated her shoulder, maybe. That was, you know, maybe not such a good idea.

Pym: Ahhhhh! AAAAAAHHHH! Fuck! What the fuck! The fucking room's fucking folding up on me! Shit! Piss! Fuck! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! MAKE IT FUCKING STOP!

TMU: Dammit, haven't I told you to stay out of my lengleaf stash, bitch? And what the hell are you doing feeding it to people without warning?

TG: She needs to lighten up. Enlightenment will do her some good.

TMU (watching Pym heave while twitching and jerking on the floor): It looks to me more like she's having seizures....

TG: Relax, pretty soon she'll be having an out-of-body experience. Look! There she goes! (points to shimmering, ghostlike form rising to the ceiling)

M-w (looking up): Hey, that is a most excellent trick.

OOB Pym (looking down): Jesus fucking Christ. What did you feed me, you drug-addled whore? And why does my right arm look so funny?

TA: Because it's dislocated.

OOB Pym (to TMU): I am going to fuck you up so bad when I get back in my body, you evil little shit....

TMU: Hey! It's her fault, not mine! 

Pym (croaking): Does my insurance cover this? Shit, I can't even feel my fingers anymore....

TG: That's because the room ate them when it folded up.

Pym: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

TMU: Relax, she's fibbing. Your fingers are all still there....

OOB Pym: ... and they'll be wrapped around your throat before the issue's over.

TMU: What did you say? Wrapped around my throbbing stick-shift?

TG: Oh, you wish. Mein Gott in der himmel, why do i have to be trapped in the same fucking universe as you dickheads when i'm out of amphetamines?

M-w: How, exactly, did our munitions officer come to be such a pill freak, by the way?

M-a: By working for U. S. Armed Forces, just like this bright guy.

Everybody stares at each other, waiting for the next line. No one blinks. The room is silent. The only sound is the faint roar of the arctic wind outside the walls. Somewhere in the distance, the padded WOMP that reverberates through the walls tells everyone that a component on the unholydeathmachine has misfired.

TTBMD (voice floating up airshaft): Weeeeeeeeell, shit. (followed by the ungodly clatter of steel wrenches being thrown against the wall)

M-w: So, then, it appears that no one knows, ah, the last page of script?

M-a: Yes, the last page. I, too, have waited for it.

Pym: It never got handed out because we ran out of copier paper. Go ahead, ask me how we ran out of paper. Please.

TA: How did we run out of copier paper, my errant child?

Pym (leaning in TG's face and shouting): Because SOME DRUG-ADDLED FUCKHEAD traded all our paper supply for a box of Dexatrim tablets! Isn't that RIGHT?

TG: You know, you can just, like, fuck the hell off, bitch, okay? What the fuck do we need paper for around here anyway? Shit, not having any of this written down due to a paper shortage is probably beneficial to our careers at this point -- I'm doing you a favor, okay? Hell, you ought to be paying me to sabotage this place so we can look good....

M-w: So fascinating, it is, to see the results of amphetamine psychosis at close hand!

TA (looking at watch): Well, since no one appears to have a clue, I suggest we move on... the rest of the issue awaits....

OPERATION ENDURING OUR FREEDOM TO BOMB EVERYONE IN SIGHT CONTINUES: Look here, o my sweating li'l maggots, for the latest poop. Be sure to buy a t-shirt and support the man, okay? DEAD ANGEL bought two....

THE CARNIVOROUS TUMESCENCE OF THE UNHOLY GRAPEFRUIT [# 55]: ... Fade from black into a now-familiar scene: the increasingly-isolated occupants of Castle Monotremata have gathered for breakfast in the dining room. The curtains have been opened to reveal the vast drifts of snow piling up outside the reinforced glass panes that run from floor to ceiling of the east wall. The glare would be blinding were the glass not so heavily polarized; as it is, the vast sheets of white provide muted illumination for their meal. The Antichrist sits at one end of the long table, beneath the elaborate chandelier made of glass cut in the shape of inverted crosses; he is flanked on either side by M-w and M-a, slack agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E., currently debating the merits of the grapefruit over the canteloupe. Next to M-w, Pym stares with disgust at her waffles, which have been toasted so severely as to resemble black clusters of obsidian rock; TASCAM-Girl sits across from her, crunching her way through a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and milk covered in a thick blanket of sugar. Todd the Black Metal Drummer's plate is already a ravaged wasteland of crumbs and salt, as he managed to eat half the rolls and a whole sausage in the time it took everybody else to sit down. (He can occasionally be heard from the other room, where he plays the estate's massive pipe organ.) Only one place is empty -- the place at the other end of the table, where the moon unit would be eating if he weren't too busy standing before one of the immense glass panes, watching the drift slowly rise, brooding.

Pym: In the name of Anu, this is truly -- I've never seen waffles burnt this badly before. Who's in charge of the kitchen now? 

TA: Crack addicts. Or possibly the cockroaches themselves. Every time I turn the light to get a snack at night, they run and hide, so it's a bit hard to tell.

Pym: Oh, that is so gross. I am beyond repulsed now.

M-w: Ah, then you will be spared the hell that are these dishes. So fortunate for you.

M-a (prodding suspiciously discolored grapefruit with a fork): I greatly fear for this grapefruit. It seems... it is being, that is to say... ah....

M-w: Surely this was grown in an irradiated field, yes? Look at those colors, so outside of nature....

M-a: I am very afraid of this grapefruit. (rises, eyes wild) Yes! Look at how my fear grow, like carnivorous tumescence! I am afraid! Very afraid! (seizes the entire bowl of grapefruit and holds it aloft) Yes -- oh yes, evil grapefruit, I see your fucking monster plan! And I say, NEVER! Never again, in the name of fucking Godzilla and the almighty shaking ass of ONNA!

As everyone watches in addled disbelief, he hurls the entire bowl across the room with a violent swing, sending the grotesque fruit bouncing off the glass a few feet from the moon unit's head.

TMU (not even turning to look): Do you fucking mind? I'm brooding over here, dammit.

In the other room, TTBMD plays jagged minor chords of uneasy intent as TMU continues to brood.

TG (pouring more sugar on her cereal): So what the fuck is his problem now?

Pym: He's just brooding because he doesn't have a name half as cool as Kingo Sleemer. So seriously, what's the deal with my goddamn Waffles of Death here? What do I have to do to get real, edible food around here?

TA: Take up cooking.

Pym: Fuck that. Can't we hire somebody who actually knows what the hell they're doing in the kitchen?

M-w (munching on raw carrot sticks): Only if you are being smart enough to pull money out of your ass, for the Castle is under much financial duress. I hear big rumor that someone, not that I would be making rude gesture against our fearless leader, oh no, but someone tried to sell off the Dissonance Engine's rotoscopic gyro and the bowling alley on Level 17 on eBay and was less than successful. And then that special someone caught by power upstairs, Accounting Department send dominatrix to beat his ass, now he only allowed to spend enough money without authorization to maybe buy Big Mac and fries. But this only rumor, mind you.

TMU: Lies! Fucking lies, i tell you!

Pym (rolling eyes): Okay, so hiring is out... don't any of you shitheads know how to cook?

M-a: I am Ph.D. in Esoteric Pop Tart. Many fine pastry begin with toaster....

TG: I think we ought to petition HQ for permission to take over the outpost next door so we can get their Dunkin' Donuts franchise. Maybe if we make them pay for it at gunpoint we can get donuts and coffee and live off that until the next annual budget.

Pym: Only a dangerous, delusional sociopath would even think of such a thing....

TMU: Dangerous, delusional sociopaths? Oh, perhaps you're talking about these dilholes again.

TG (blinking): Wow, that's so repulsive it makes me want to reach for my revolver....

TMU: Have you been listening to my Mission of Burma album again? Dammit, how many times have i told you, that's fucking classified information, bitch!

Pym (ignoring them): He's just a prisoner of love, huh? Woo, why is it, exactly, that the religious fanatics in your country are always such horny, perverted freaks?

M-w: Many a time I have been suggesting, ah, that we round them all up with a false premise --

M-a: Say, for instance, we are sending them a message, a private message, saying "Meet us here to meet such lovely little boys and girls!" --

M-w: And then when they arrive, yes, then we slam door shut and lock and bring out the lighter fluid for a little barbeque.

M-a: Everyone know Shiva love a good toasted marshmallow. 

TG: That's okay, now we've gone from hanging out with war criminals to putting one in charge of the 9/11 whitewas, excuse me, investigation committee. Smooth. Chairman Mao would approve of such diabolical maneuvering. And has anybody noticed how much "Homeland" and "Fatherland" sound alike? Oh, I smell the sweet, sweet smell of justice in the air... yeah... soon I'm gonna be able to bring my swastika armband out of the mothballs....

Pym: Wait, hold on, look -- he stepped down.... (points to TV)

TG (gritting teeth): GOD FUCKING DAMN IT! I'm sick of this shit! The news is happening too fast now... by the time a new issue comes out the fucking snotty remarks are already outdated. Hell, for all i know this issue is out now and everything in it is a foaming pack of misinformed lies....

TA (adjusting cufflinks): I'm fairly certain everything you say is a drug-addled lie to begin with.

TG: It's just beginning to get on my nerves, that's all.

TMU: Tell me about it. The whole Trent Lott debacle went by so fast i didn't even have a chance to get started on that one.

TA (to TG): What you need is a dose of perspective, my dear. At least you don't have to watch where you step everywhere you go.

TG: This is true. All eyes open for UXO!

Pym (checking watch): Yo, we got to step it up here, we're on deadline....

TMU: With every passing day i regret more and more having ever bought you that damn watch. I think i liked you better when you were clueless about the passage of time.

Pym: And yet, somehow, the world continues to spin....

TMU: Fuck off, bitch!

TA (raising an eyebrow): So uncultured... so unrefined....

TMU: I got all the motherfucking refinement i'll ever need, and in a minute i'm gonna stick it all up your ass, you overdressed goat-fucker. You got that?

Pym: So when are you gonna tell us about the most swank albums of 2002 and all that?

TMU: I guess now, if you insist. Where's my PDA?

TA: You don't own one. And no, you can't borrow mine.

TMU: Oh yeah. Well, fuck. First everybody gets cable-modem before me, now i'm the last motherfucker on earth to get a PDA. And i still haven't figured out how to hook up my DVD player. My life is a living fucking hell. Um.... anyway.... (digs around in pocket) Okay, here we go... i knew i had the fucking list somewhere....

DEAD ANGEL'S HEAVY ROTATION LIST, 2002 (new product division):

25 Suaves -- 1938 [Bulb]
Angel'in Heavy Syrup -- THE BEST OF... [Alchemy]
Blood Duster -- CUNT [Relapse]
Brekekekexkoaxkoax -- s/t cd-r [self-released]
Rhys Chatham -- A RHYS CHATHAM COMPENDIUM sampler disc [Table of the Elements]
Cold Electric Fire -- IN NIGHTS DREAM WE ARE GHOSTS [Crionic Mind]
Earth -- SUNN AMPS AND SMASHED GUITARS LIVE (reissue)
Kare Joao -- SIDEMAN [Jester]
Low -- TRUST [Kranky]
Megiddo -- THE DEVIL AND THE WHORE [Barbarian Wrath]
Never Presence Forever -- DISTURBED VISCERAL NOCICEPTION [Crionic Mind]
Null -- DATACIDE IN YEAR ZERO [Crucial Blast!]
Pharoah Overlord -- # 1 [Ektro / tUMULt]
Robert Poss -- DISTORTION IS TRUTH [Trace Elements]
Sour Vein -- 2002 demo
Southern Gun Culture -- ROOM 65 [Monotremata Records]
Ultra Fuckers -- BEYOND THE FUCKLESS [Public Eyesore]
Unitus -- CROSS CONTAMINATION
Weakling -- DEAD AS DREAMS [tUMULt]

M-w: I see Null-san made the list again this year.

TMU: Well, given his habit of releasing more CDs in a year than most people do in a lifetime, statistically speaking he's always got a good shot at the target, you know?

Pym: I notice you utterly failed to mention your growing obsession with playing AC/DC's entire back catalog....

TMU: None of those albums are new, dammit.

TG: You sure are a hostile li'l fuck lately. What's your problem, dilhole?

M-w: So, ah yes, then what is being the cause of your current manifestation of the moody statue?

TMU: Well, see, i'm having this problem, this deep fucking philosophical problem that, i'm, like, you know, wrestling with and shit like that. It's deep, man, fucking deep, and i can't even talk about it because nobody understands. It's ripping out my insides like the lyrics from an old Autopsy song! Makin' me cringe like intelligent life at the sight of J. Lo and Christina! GOD DAMN IT, IT MAKES MY FUCKING NIPPLES ACHE AT NIGHT!

TA (rolling eyes): Not this again....

TMU: So you can guess, see, that i'm a little bit off my game here. The distraction, you know. The horror... the fucking horror... I could have had a V-8....

M-a: If I may beg the pardon, you are not making much of the sense.

TG (agitated): Yeah, so what the fuck is your problem, anyway? Huh? Come on, spill the beans, you twitching little fuck....

TMU: Okay, here's the deal. I got this copy of the GET YOUR WAR ON paperback at Christmas --

M-a: Someone gave you an actual present?

M-w: You have friends? When did this happen? I think surely this is most recent development....

TMU: ... I GOT THIS BOOK FOR CHRISTMAS and it's all the original GYWO strips, plus maybe some extras too, and it's really nifty and everything -- portable is good -- but somehow it just doesn't look as good in print as on the PC. The site is better. I still haven't figured out why this should even make any difference, and it's keeping me up nights....

Pym (dubious): That's it? That's your big obsession? Christ, you need to get laid more or something so you don't have time to worry about stupid shit like this.

TG: We signed him up for the Christian Singles Dating Service but he flunked their test. I can't imagine why.

M-a: Ah, i hear of this. This is place where he fill out questionnaire, come to question "What are you looking for in a potential partner in holy matrimony?" and answer, "A hot bitch in thigh boots and fetish gear to swallow my devil seed," am I not righteous?

M-w: Yes, this is the place. I hear stories of big Christian soldiers launching him ass-first into street like shriveled little monkey man. Much laughing occurs when this story is told.

Pym (eyes on her watch): Five... four... three... two... one... all right, that's it... ONWARD....

WHY HAVEN'T WE GOTTEN OUR WAR ON YET? The righteous (and righteously profane) voice of reason in an increasingly ridiculous wilderness has some new strips up. Check them out. Throw $$$ at him while you're at it. Be sure the get your GYWO shirt while there's one to get.

SADDAM KILLED MISTER ROGERS WITH HIS BIG FUCKING DICK [# 56]: Camera fades in on sight of TASCAM-Girl frozen like a deer in the headlights, twitching and hiding one hand behind her back. "That time already? Ack! Hold on... fuck! Stay right there...." She disappears into the bowels of the Hellfortress. Time passes. Soon they are all assembled: The Moon Unit, TASCAM-Girl, Pym, Antu, The Antichrist, and of course the two esteemed agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E., M-w and M-a. At last, the festivities begin....

TG: Shit, I completely forgot about the shoot for the issue... can't we put this off? Oh, it's already late? Fuck. Does anybody know where... no, we don't, do we? Does anybody have any idea what we're doing? Anybody? Seriously? Hoo boy....

TMU: What does it matter? Mister Rogers is dead.

Pym: What the fuck? You're lying. How?

TMU: He was one of the many tragically killed while attending the latest Great White's latest stop on the Dumb Aging Rock Dogs With Firecrackers Tour.

TG (flipping through the latest issue of the UPPER GLACIAL PLAIN DAILY): I'm not buyin' it. The paper says he died of prostate cancer, you stupid fuck.

TMU: Do you really think they're going to admit that Mister Rogers had the bad taste to like Great White? Where would the dignity be in that? No... no, that's just a subterfuge to shield the innocent from the sordid truth.

M-a (sniffing): Perhaps, if you will, this is the stinky smell of lengleaf? This explain your gaping bullshit?

M-w (puzzled): What happened to the joke about dignity shields? I distinctly in rehearsals am remembering, this is most clear in my mind, big fucking joke about dignity shields....

TA: The game plan changed and the script had to be edited. Again. We discussed this in the script meeting, you know. Perhaps if some people hadn't been detonating firecrackers in the hallways on Sublevel 7 while some people of much saner persuasion were having a meeting to do their jobs, this would all be clear to you.

M-w: Oh, so we are off-script again?

TG: Hell yes, we don't even know where the script is. He's blowin' smoke up yer ass, sonny-boy... we are full-time hard-on wingin' it!

TA (sneering): Whose reason do you believe, the wisdom of a chattering speed freak or mine?

M-a: She is having loaded guns pointed at our ass, including even Ass of Onna. Speed chick win, so sorry for you, goat-licker.

Pym: Can we get back on it before I forget my line?

TA (gesturing): See? SEE?

TMU (waving wearily): Go on, bitch... rolling....

Pym: Wait, I thought Sadaam killed Mister Rogers. Isn't that why we're getting ready to blow them up? (everybody looks at her as if she's grown a third head)

TMU: You're telling me that was in the script?

Pym: You should know, you wrote the fucking thing! Do you think I like this dialogue? FUCK NO! I think you're a dick, you know that?

TMU: I can't believe that was in the script. I wonder if I was on nitrous that night. Huh.

Pym: So are we gonna continue with this or not? Christ, I hate it when this happens... fuck!

M-a: Big-time lack of pussy make you fucked in head, girl!

M-w: Oh, is this the excuse we will have been using for, uh, Mister Unit?

TMU: Well, considering the lack of options around here... it's not like I'd want to pole one of you dipshits. Besides, I'm not that desperate. This guy is desperate, but I'm not that bad yet.

Antu (floating in, crackling and throwing off sparks): All that work just to set up one lousy joke? If you people are truly in charge of protecting the world against the Elder Gods, then we're all in deep trouble.

TMU: Shhhh! That's supposed to be a secret. And we're definitely not supposed to be telling them about Operation Poopshaker (TM).

Antu: If I had eyes still, I'd roll them... that is the lamest segue I have ever seen. You know full well we're about to move into the next big scene where you're going to spout pure fucking bullshit for a while, and that's the best you can come up with for a segue? Oh, I'm really looking forward to the bullspew now, oh yeah. Suuuure. Fuck, you're such a dumbass. (pauses as he gives her the finger) Well go on, let's see it... let's see this great illuminating rant, poo-boy....

Everyone looks expectantly at M-w, who's kicked back on the couch reading the latest copy of METAL EDGE. Eventually Pym kicks him in the shin; when he looks up she mouths: It's your line you stupid fuck, pay attention goddamit!

M-w: Oh, fuck... I was... that is... um... (clears throat) Operation -- Operation Poopshaker (TM)! This is big secret, yes? Why not you are... are... hell in a small can, I forget rest of line. I am sorry. I am beyond forgiveness.

M-w stands, kicking coffee table over and kneeling. His knife is out, eight inches and razor sharp. With pained grunts of agony, he commits seppuku in two violent jerks of the blade, spilling his insides over the Moon Unit's shoes in great sheets of blood so dark it borders on eternal blackness. No one speaks for several moments. Then:

TMU: Okay, that was kind of interesting....

Pym: I think this whole scriptless bit is getting out of hand.

M-a (gaping at his dead comrade, then turning to TMU, eyes filled with rage): YOU! Stinky little goat-shit with big attitude! I blame this on YOU! (unsheaths samurai sword) EAT MY STEEL, GOAT CHILD, IN THE NAME OF G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E. AND THE ALMIGHTY ASS OF ONNA!

M-a rushes the Moon Unit, only to be turned into chunks of bloody human confetti when TASCAM-Girl opens fire on him with the Atomic Ass-Powered Devolve-O-Tron.

TMU: Oh, icky-poo. (stares at blood 'n brains splattered across his Zeni Geva shirt)

Pym's rage can be contained no longer; she lunges at TASCAM-Girl, jumping on her back and gouging at her eyes. The two of them roll wildly around the floor with everybody screaming and ducking for cover as she fires wildly behind her at Pym, causing immense damage to the room. TASCAM-Girl finally throws her off and, when Pym leaps again, blows a big fucking hole through her (POW!) and splatters her lungs all over the ceiling. It's about this time that the Antichrist stands up, checking his watch, and disappears, muttering something about having "had enough of this bullshit."

TG (gun still smoking): Well, that was fucking entertaining. So are you gonna rant now or what?

TMU: HEAR YE NOW, UNBELIEVERS -- oh yeah, i'm talking to you! I see you back there, suckin' on that joint, feet propped up on the coffee table, "kickin' back" with your "homies" and "givin' props" to the devil! You think you're clever, all right... but you won't be smirking when you WAKE UP IN HELL! Yeah! That's right, brothers and sisters! You'll wake up one day in THE ETERNAL FIRES OF HELL and it won't be all that funny then, will it? Huh? Will it, smart college boy? You tell me. Yeeeeeeah, i'm just a dumb-hick country boy from the sticks and you got all the fancy-pants degrees, but one of us is going to fry with the festering hordes of SATAN! for all eternity and it's not me. Got it? Oh, you're hearin' me now, aren't you? Oh yeah... oh yeah....

I'm here today to warn you about the greatest menace to Man and Earth in all of history -- yes... the menace of... of... (real dramatic pause) of.... (more pausing, milking it) OF....

TG: GET THE FUCK ON WITH IT, YOU FAT SHIT!

Antu: What, he's Axl in disguise? (rim shot)

TMU: ... the menace of THE EVIL PENGUIN! And his satanic but adorably cuddly stuffed and licensed sidekick the Poopshaker (TM)!

It is written in the BOOK OF THE LAW OF ANU that when the stars are aligned in the most sinister of possible configurations, then the Evil Penguin will appear to wreak havoc upon a helpless and unsuspecting earth. The Book further states that the Evil Penguin, The Goat That Waddles, will be assisted in his unholy desecration of the earth by a vile and grotesque entity known only as the Poopshaker (TM), currently available in a wide variety of licensed plush figurines at prices starting at only $12.95. Offer void where prohibited by law. Fibers made by slave labor in the Plains of Leng; may be habit-forming and lead to violent death by involuntary seizures. TAKE ONLY IN RECOMMENDED DOSES. 750 milligrams should be sufficient for the average adult. Castle Monotremata declares itself indemnified and in no way responsible for accidents of life and limb that may occur from foolishly attempting to recreate any of our bullshit. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, FUCK POLE! Know ye now that THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF ANU does not look kindly upon smartasses, dig, daddy-o?

(whips out a crumpled napkin, growing visibly more agitated by the moment) Mmmm, hmmmm, hmmm... oh yeah... wheel in the sky keep on turnin'.... hmmmm hmmmm.... don't stooooppp... belieevin'.... hmmmm....

TMU: ALL RIGHT, MAGGOTS! Listen up! Here's what the Book has to say about the Evil Penguin: "And let it be known that the Evil Penguin lives to forment unrest, and stands in the way of obtaining truly high-quality footwear, and is a bad sport, plus a shitty-tasting bird to eat, unlike chicken, which tastes pretty good with barbeque sauce. When the last rays of the eastern sun strike the star of the unbeliever on the last minute of Samhain, as the covert agents watch intently in the Black Lodge, it is then that the unholydeathmachine will be activated... ready to do battle against the Evil Penguin and his fucking devil-puppet, the Poopshaker (TM)." WE KNOW THIS TO BE THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH, because it says so in THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF ANU, and we know every word in it is the absolute truth because it's really old and a bunch of dead people we don't know said so. That's good enough for us!

It goes on to say that the Evil Penguin "breathes smoke and fire from his great feathered Ass, and his mouth is a foaming orifice of lust and prevarications, the shit-hole of the gate that leads to the Kingdom of the Weasel." Little is said in the Book about the Poopshaker (TM) for tedious copyright reasons, but your faithful oracle is in the way of knowing that the Poopshaker (TM) was born spontaneously from the daydream of a bored housewife in Tacoma in 1952, and was perverted by radioactive poop rays as part of a big-deal top-secret government project. Now the Poopshaker (TM) threatens the earth with its hideous Vile-O-Tron, a weapon of such disgusting efficiency that it is matched only by the Repulsotronic Grav-Sink in its stark grimness. It is written than no man may look upon the terrible image of the Poopshaker (TM) in the flesh and resist the urge to buy may stuffed copies of that terrible image, preferably in cash.

TG: Do you know where you're going with this? You don't, do you? Three to one says you can't find your way out of this without going into vaporlock.

TMU (totally ignoring her): Which way out? I'll tell you which way out, o my brothers and sisters -- the way out is through the black fucking hole that leads straight into the mouth of hell! And then I looked to the sky, and behold, a pale horse, and the name of his rider was Death! So it says in the Book, surely the Million Pound Shithammer has begun its final descent -- will you be caught in its fearsome shadow?! There's no one I'd rather destroy time with than you, my sweet, but can you not see -- the time is going, going, almost gone! We are destined to die in this godforsaken hole, this place so much like the unwashed armpit of the universe... this hole in which we bury our offal, stinking, shivering in the cold, as the jackals bay at our heels, waiting to sink their teeth into our pale white throats and roar with delight as they shake us apart! O my brothers! Rejoice! O my sisters! Rejoice! The hour of the Poopshaker (TM) is upon us! Soon we will all die! Let your joy be known throughout the valley of the shadow of death! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Everybody blinks, momentarily stunned into silence.

TG: This... this is what smoking all that lengleaf has done to you, hasn't it? The Elder Gods have you hooked on that shit now, don't they? Christ, this explains everything. It's almost a relief to know it's not your fault that you've descended into complete madness. On the other hand....

M-w: If he is in charge, and he much think like this, then perhaps we are all greatly fucked.

TMU: (satanic laughter) Hey wait, a minute... didn't you just commit seppuku? 

M-w: Hell no, I am not in any way being to commit seppuku for your sorry ass. You having big-time flashback, Mister Unit. What happen when you are eternally mixing wormwood, paint thinner, and lengleaf.

TMU: Leave my hobbies out of this, all right? (sweating) Okay, so you're saying that whole business back there with the blood and death was just, you know, a hallucination?

Pym: Oh yeah. You put on a good freakshow, bitch. The Antichrist actually bought it, he really did blow us off. But that's okay, I was getting tired of his ass anyway. So do you wanna continue with this or what? Jesus, this is the sloppiest....

TMU (motioning for all to continue): Okay, okay....

M-a: I am not taking that as a good sign. (fiddles with cell phone) Perhaps now i find number for home office of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E. and see if we can be getting the hell out of here, and yesterday.

Pym (as Antu whispers in her ear): Uh, does this sudden... um... business about the Evil Toad --

TMU: EVIL PENGUIN, damn you!

Pym: Well, whatever the fuck he is, does this have anything to do with your really ridiculous order for cattle prods? You're not serious about that order, are you?

TMU: I need them for the MASTERPLAN.

Pym: Uh... okay. Sure. So what's the fuckin' masterplan, then?

TMU: I can't tell you. It's a secret. Sort of like America's foreign policy, only with fewer weasels involved.

Pym: You really expect me to put in an order for a thousand cattle prods on that? Satan's panties! Do you have any idea what the battery expenses alone will run us?

TG: We've got that part dicked already. I sort of, uhhhh, came across a crate of AC-adapters that just happen to be the same voltage as that model of cattle prod. A thousand of them, amazingly enough. So now we just need the juice sticks, see? Then... then... by the smelly Pubic Beard of Bishamon, we will have some fucking order around this goddamn place, won't we?!?!

M-w: I know not which is scarier, you or the midget leaf-eater.

M-a: I vote for the midget. She has guns and it must be, i think, an endless supply of the military-issue go-pills, but he has the unholydeathmachine. Guns run out of bullets; unholydeathmachine endless and neverless, like black hole of eternal evil. Not even Ass of Onna deflect rampant hate of the unholydeathmachine. So i vote for shriveled little monkey man --

TMU: GODDAMN IT! I've told you not to fuckin' call me that, you shit! (rushes the table and drags M-a from his chair, spilling him onto the floor)

M-a: Ah, so sorry -- ARGH! HIE! (urk!) I forget -- ACK! Please be not kicking the fuck out of my ass now!

TMU: You fuck! You fucking little fucking fuck! (kicking M-a vigorously) First you hide my nitrous, now this! Goddamn! Fuck! Shit! Fucking pisshole! (putting his weight into his wild swings to M-a's solar plexus and kidneys) I'm gonna fucking beat your goddamn motherfucking ass, cocksucker! (everybody dives for cover as glass flies from the coffee table when his foot misses the screaming agent's head) Freaking fuck! Fucker! You fucking motherfucker! (kicks wildly at M-a's head)

Pym: Yo, do you want me to wash your mouth out with soap? Have you no manners?

Antu crackles in threatening fashion, sending showers of hot embers cascading across the Moon Unit's foot.

Pym: One more outburst and she'll set your hair on fire, okay?

M-w: Oh, I beg of you, not that -- so much puffy hair, I fear the blaze cannot be contained HURK! (runs out of air as TMU belts him)

TG: At any rate, the power's accounted for with the cattle prods. That's all I was saying before Bat-Child here started thinking he lives in a Jack Kirby comic.

TMU: Don't make me come over there and stick my foot up your ass, okay?

Pym: One of these days we could start the issue, okay?

TMU: Fuck you, okay?

Pym: Okay.

M-w: Okay.

M-a: Me too.

TG (hides behind the latest issue of GUNS & AMMO): Fuck, I do not know you people. Does anybody know where I hid my crosstops? No? Well fuck you all then. I guess we might as well get on with the issue.... Okay?

HAVE WE GOTTEN OUR WAR ON YET? As of right now, the answer is still "no," but we'll see if he has to change the name of his strip after March 17. In the meantime, you can grok the latest installments and you should really think about buying the book, too, especially since it includes some strips not on the site.

WHERE YOUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS ARE GOING: Just though you'd like to know. We were gonna go hog-wild here but we ran out of time. Maybe that's just as well.

1) To build stuff like this.
2) To send somebody else's kids on vacation for some fun 'n sun in Iraq.
3) To explore complicated 'n ominous shit.
4) Providing financial support to countries that think up surreal vileness like this.

THE SATANIC BEETLE WANTS YOU TO SHOW US YOUR TITS [# 57]: We fade in on a handful of our humble occupants of the Hellfortress, kicking back in the Video Room and watching THE WICKER MAN. M-w and M-a, cryptic agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E., are sharing a jumbo bowl of popcorn on the couch; TASCAM-Girl is sprawled out on the floor, watching while cleaning one of her many guns. Pym is nestled so deeply in a beanbag chair as to be nearly invisible. Antu and her bodyguards are nowhere to be seen. All is quiet until the Moon Unit bursts in, raging....

TMU: All right, which one of you sorry motherfuckers ran off with my Jumbo's Killcrane cd? I want it back and I want it RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

Pym: I'm surprised you still even listen to them after that brutal beating they gave you after the interview for asking such stupid-ass questions... were you drunk when you thought that shit up?

TMU: Hell no, I'm no goddamn drunk. It's the lengleaf, I'm tellin' you. It makes everything... it makes....

TG: Careful, don't strain yourself.

TMU: Besides, I haven't done the interview yet. That's later. Later.

Pym (peeking around the corner): The hell you haven't, I can see it right there in the next section....

TMU: Don't start fucking with the fourth wall now, okay? My head's swimming as it is... oooo, Robitussin and lengleaf don't go together real fucking well... who moved the goddamn floor?

TG: Hey, I have a deal for you. Let me in on some of that lengleaf until my next shipment of Dexatrim comes in and I won't tell everybody about your secret identity.

TMU: Secret identity? What the hell are you talking about, woman? Do I look Australian?

Pym: You do have an unseemly fondness for shrimp and Olivia Newton-John.

TMU: Leave her out of this, dammit. Where'd you find that document, anyway? I thought he was dead.

TG: No. Look, he has a website too. I found out about it from Kingo Sleemer.

TMU: Oh, you did, huh? (scribbles cryptic symbols in tiny notebook)

M-a: And what is it you are attempting to subscribe there?

TMU: Just a few notes about Agent Sleemer. Nothing... important. (looking wild-eyed) You haven't seen him around here, have you?

M-w: How are we to be knowing? We are not even remotely aware of the likeness of this goddamn fiction of yours, toad-boy.

TMU: Agent Sleemer ain't no goddamn fiction! He's real, I tell you! Real! REAL!

Pym: Suuuure....

TG: Last week you were insisting that a giant fire-breathing Goliath beetle was living in the bathroom, too.

TMU: He is, dammit. He just hides when you come in.

Pym: I think all those scorch marks in the bathroom have less to do with a hallucinatory beetle than with your constant thing with the lengleaf.

TMU: You're just in league with the satanic beetle. He has a name, by the way. I know you want it to be a secret, but I know what it is. I tell you, I FUCKING KNOW!

M-a (sighing): All right, we will be biting. What is the imaginary beetle's name?

TMU: Osmodaleus.

Pym: Oso what?

TMU: Osmodaleus. You can call him Ozma for short. Apparently he listens to a lot of Melvins.

TG: I'm not hearing any of this. What the fuck does any of this have to do with anything? Why are you wasting our time with this bullshit, you boot-sniffing runt? You could be out doing something about getting that Dexatrim shipment here a little faster, but no, you're babbling about... about....

M-a: Imaginary beetles.

TMU: THE BEETLE IS NOT FUCKING IMAGINARY! I'm telling you, I was sitting in the tub minding my own business when this big-ass beetle the size of your head hopped up on the toilet and pointed its fat ass at me! The explosion came this close to my wang!

Pym: If you hadn't been holding it in the air like a magic wand perhaps it wouldn't have had such an easy target, have you thought of that? What the hell were you doing, anyway? Like I really want to know....

TMU: A conjuration ritual. I can't say more.

TG: Oh, I may heave. Let's stop talking about the Moon Unit's wang, okay? I'm getting ill here....

TMU: You can fuck off, boi!

TG (pointing Systolic Telefunken U47 Sureshot with deluxe inlaid pistol grip at TMU): Don't be calling me any names, punk. I'll ventilate your ass.

(The argument shambles to a halt as the mailbot arrives, dispensing various packages and items to the occupants of the Hellfortress.)

M-a: Aaaaaah, finally the home office is sending the necessary parts to repair the Fragmentron.

M-w: This is good news, my noise-loving friend. Soon we will be shaking the bowels of this filthy hole with our sick noise.

M-a: We will rock, it is true. Like the Ass of Onna, we will fucking rock with our cocks out.

Pym: Hey, hey, let's not be drifting onto that subject again... I think we've heard entirely enough about body parts for one day --

M-a: Will you show us your tits?

Pym (thunderstruck): Excuse me? Did I fucking hear you ask to see my fucking tits? (looks at TMU) Who do I go to around here to complain about harassment, dammit?

TMU: Me. Except now I'm kind of curious about your tits, too.

Pym (gives him the finger and starts opening mail): Look, you have a telegram from your hat-wearing drummer. Where the hell is he anyway? Is he hiding from the boyfriend of some chick he porked? Is that it?

TMU: He is studying the latest spectronomic photography advances at the Erich Zann Center for Industrial Sciences at a location I am not at liberty to divulge at this moment. With any luck he'll be back here after Christmas, assuming the fools in the Middle East haven't blown us all up by then. So what's this telegram say?

Pym (reads): [CENSORED IN THE INTERESTS OF NATIONAL SECURITY]

TG: I guess he doesn't like them, huh?

Pym (puzzled): Who are [CENSORED IN THE INTERESTS OF NATIONAL SECURITY]?

TMU: The jolly dudes [CENSORED IN THE INTERESTS OF NATIONAL SECURITY], remember?

M-w: So what interference is your drummer with the hat having with, ah, [CENSORED IN THE INTERESTS OF NATIONAL SECURITY]? And what, exactly, is a [CENSORED IN THE INTERESTS OF NATIONAL SECURITY] anyway?

TMU: Damned if I know on both questions. All I know is that [CENSORED IN THE INTERESTS OF NATIONAL SECURITY]. As for my drummer, well, he's a cranky guy to begin with and even I would be somewhat intemperate after several months holed up at Erich Zann watching bad student films day after day. I'm surprised he hasn't killed anyone yet.

M-a: Do you not sometimes fear working in such close proximity with one so clearly insane?

TMU: Fuck no, I'm crazier than he is.

TG: So is this the shit-talking issue? Is that it? Is that where things stand now? Does this mean I can finally tell you that you're a maggot and I'd like to hold you down and shit all over you? Huh? Huh? HUH?

TMU: You can fuck off already unless you'd like to end up on kitchen detail. And what's with all the questions?

Pym: She's jonesing for methamphetamines, you dolt. Christ, you don't know fucking anything, do you?

TMU: I know that rats will eat your soft and jellylike eyes when Ragnarok comes to pass....

Pym: Blow me. That's all I have to say.

TMU: Only after you show me your tits.

(The shoving match that ensues is not pretty. While TMU, Pym, and eventually TASCAM-Girl slug it out, the two agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E. quietly creep out the room, but not before removing all the smut magazines from the incoming mail. "This will make excellent packaging for the seventeen limited-edition cassettes with handmade covers that we will record later this afternoon," M-w says enthusiastically as they drift out the door, leaving behind an orgy of violence that continues in their absence.)

IT'S EASY TO BE CRYPTIC WHEN YOU TALK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL [# 58]: We fade in clumsily and abruptly -- we're behind schedule and everybody's working on union overtime, so we're in one hell of a hurry -- on the usual gang kicking back in the meal room. TASCAM-Girl and Pym cannot hide their astonishment at the titanic repast the Moon Unit has laid before him: half a rack of steaming ribs, a tower of sushi rolls, a bowl of french fries as big as Pym's head, a plate of mouth-watering fried catfish, and half a dozen pastrami sandwiches with enough mustard to paint a midget yellow. It's ridiculous and M-w and M-a are openly laughing, but TMU pays them no mind. He's busy... eating. It's a gruesome sight, to be sure....

TG: So what's with this business of you fucking eating all the time now? Every time I see you now you're stuffing something in your face. It's the lengleaf, isn't it?

TMU (shouting through sandwich bits): Muph! Muppen switz weying mu geb edoo BWAPE!

TG: Say what?

TMU (eyes bulging, making indecipherable gestures): MU! Am onna wigum! (points to puffy stomach) Moon bu phee WANGES!

Pym (in hysteria): It's an ALIEN! He has a big-eyed bug growing in his stomach, waiting to HATCH! Soon he'll explode! Do you hear me? He's gonna EXPLODE!

M-w: If an alien is truly being like seed in Moon Unit's stomach....

M-a: Then alien is already too stoned of lengleaf to even move, much less be hatching.

Pym: Well, you may have a point there....

TG: Finish eating your goddamn sandwich and tell me what this is all about, tofu-boy.

TMU: I'm getting into SHAPE! I'm pouring massive amounts of protein and carbohydrates into my body and hitting the weight pile every day to get in shape for the mission Ra has promised to send me on! I'm sure it will be a fun one, whatever it is....

Pym: Excuse me? I don't recall seeing anything about a mission on the calendar.

TMU: That's because it's a secret. So shhhh, don't tell anybody.

TG: Uhhhhh... sure. So I'll bite. What's the mission about, anyhow?

TMU (gravely): In the name of Ra -- the great and mighty RA, bearer of the cosmic hammer of funk, wearer of the supersonic helljazz crown studded with the blind and sightless eyes of his enemies, master of the astro-groove, whose cosmic tones are guaranteed to soothe the mind or twice your money back -- I have been commanded to travel in the wake of the vapor trails of the Mothership, past the moons of Mars, past the moons of Jupiter, even past the rings of Saturn, at which point I must hang a left and travel to worlds far beyond these, frozen in deep sleep for eternity and listening to nothing but MAYAN TEMPLES and SPIDERLAND over and over in the vast and frigid wastes of space. Then, when I awaken some distant eons in the future, when this planet has long ceased to be anything more than a cracked chunk of ice floating around a dead sun, I will rise from my space canister and, in the name of RA -- o great and mighty RA, holy RA, holiest of the holy RA, holy holy and roly poly for my soul-y RA -- it is then that I, carrying only the Atomic Groove Pusher, will do battle against the Big Blue Space Robots under the nefarious dominion of the Evil Penguin. Yes, in the name of RA -- great and eternal RA, keeper of the space-o-tron, dreamer of rootless beats, navigator to the cosmos, the name that will be uttered by all who pass through the narrow way toward the gates of time -- I will vanquish the mighty robots of the Evil Penguin, then whip his sorry arctic ass and cook him for dinner.

(a pause while everyone digests this illuminating answer)

Pym: And, uh... then?

TMU: I'm fuzzy on the parts after that. I'm hoping it involves setting free a harem of big-breasted women, but I'm not counting on it.

M-w: You are knowing, of course, that this is all sounding like shit, what do you say, shit from goose....

M-a: No, I think in this case it is being shit from bull. Big, stinky piles, much like what falls out of idiot's mouth. Not that we would be suggesting perhaps someone in this room might at some time be an idiot. (M-w joins him in laughing at great length)

TMU: What does it matter? Barry White is dead.

M-w: Yes, it... uh... it... it.... (consults script, squinting) I am being most sorry, handwritten corrections much like hen scratching, words are goddamn hidden.

M-a: Yes, we've been meaning to make conversation about that. Whoever is in charge of scripts, that person is being indecipherable. Plus the script, it is sucking very badly, especially this issue.

Pym: What do you expect? (points to TMU) He's in charge of the script and he's whacked-out on lengleaf all day. Be grateful he remembered where he left them when he was out, uhhhh... what was it again?

TMU: Taking an afternoon stroll to view the lovely arctic vista while completely baked on lengleaf. I thought it might be inspirational. And it was, but tragically a polar bear ate all my notes. And then I misplaced the script.

TG: Where'd you find it?

Pym: In the glove compartment of the Sno-Cat. Along with a forgotten stash of Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs left over from Easter, which he promptly ate.

M-w: So you are to say that he has been eating like pig all day?

Pym: Oh yes.

M-a (growing nervous): And, dare I ask -- many kinds of food, some to interact in violent fashion with his famous grumpy stomach?

TG: You got it.

M-w (scooting away): Aaaaah, perhaps then we will be sitting over here when he uploads.

M-a: As he surely soon will. I yi yi! The things I endure in service of the Ass of Onna!

Pym (rolling eyes): I'm surrounded by psychotics and drug-addled freaks. I'm beginning to think this was not such a good career move.

TG: So. Well. (tapping her foot) I guess, like, maybe we should start the issue now since nobody seems to have a clue. Are we going anywhere with this?

Pym: Hell no.

TG: Then what are we waiting for?

TMU (eating): Phaw moo gub fibbib engwhol, nu whibbik mupboden MHWOI!

TG (drawing her gun): I told you not to call me that again, goat-fucker. HURRY UP!

TMU: Whapob! Fuh bub swa! Yoo dab wah um fuben sebah fuh be bum wibed vah damidge?

Pym: If you don't stop talking with your mouth full, young man, I may kill you before she does.

TMU (spewing sandwich bits everywhere): FUCK! What do I have to do to be able to eat in PEACE around here? Mein gott in der himmel! You bastards! You spineless hog-polishing BASTARDS! Dammit, don't make me fling my shit like an agitated monkey!

TG: Uhhhh... right.

M-w (consulting phrasebook): "hog-polishing"... hmmm, I do not find here....

Pym: On that note, maybe it's time to move on....

THE PERILS OF DRINKING TOO MUCH PAINT THINNER [# 59]: We fade in on the lone occupants of the Hellfortress High Above the Ice -- the Moon Unit, TASCAM-Girl, Pym, and the two agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E., M-a and M-w -- seated on stools on a dusty stage in dim lighting. The stage is dark, the seated figures barely visible. Slowly, a light fades up to reveal their silhouettes, then a series of lights switch on, casting them all in spotlights.

TMU: HEY! Turn the light down a bit, will ya? Okay... good... that's better....

TG (sweating profusely): Goddamn. I'm sweating like a pig. Someone wanna tell me what the fuck we're doing here? I got things to do, you know. I got shit to take care of. Well? How about it? Huh? Huh? Gonna tell me?

M-w (looking at her nervously): I am thinking, my brother, that perhaps... if you will be knowing....

M-a (nodding): Yes, it is true. Her fuses are blown.

M-w: Completely?

M-a: Totally.

TG (eyes bloodshot, nearly falling off her stool to take a swing at M-a): HEY! Are you talking about me, you little hat shitter? You better -- FUCK! Now look what you made me do! Shit for brains! (She gets up and pushes him off the stool; he lands on the floor with the stool clattering beside him.)

TMU: What the HELL is the matter with you? Do you think that's in the script? Pick him up right now!

TG: You guys are, you know, seriously wasting --

TMU: Pick him UP! Do it NOW!

TG (drawing her Frap Gun): Fuck you. That's it. I've had enough of your bullshit.

TMU: Stand down! STAND DOWN! That's a direct fucking order! What the hell is your problem, dammit?

TG (eyes wild, teeth chattering as she points the Frap Gun at him): My problem... you piss-drinking runt... is that I am out of methamphetamines. And I work for morons. And you... you... are going to fucking die now.

TMU (stepping up close): Promises, promises, bitch.

M-a: If I may be saying, this is possibly not such a thrilling idea. Put the gun down before someone gets hurt.

TG (turning to punch him in the face): STAY OUT OF -- (turning back) FUCK!  Where'd he go? Shit!

M-w: Never do I see such movement, such speed.

M-a: Yes, I am in much awe myself. It was... it was like he had been... (eyeing TG nervously) been touched by....

TG (cocking gun and placing the barrel in his ear): Don't even fucking think about saying it. Don't. Even. I've had enough of your shitty-ass bullshit about the Ass of Onna, dig? That shit is over.

M-a: I am surely fearing that you are, how do they say, crazy as ratshit --

TMU (from behind the couch): Just shut the hell up and get away from her! You fool! She's not on script! Anything can happen now! ANYTHING!

M-w (beaming): Including super wish for girls with big, big hooters?

TMU: NO! 

M-a: Look, this is ridiculous. I was hired to say the script, so I'm gonna say the script, okay? That's what I'm here for, right? Am I right? Of course I'm right. That's why you hired me, dig? So now if you don't mind, I'm gonna go ahead and pick up right where I left off. I can do that you know, I'm a professional. Watch....

TG (eyes glazing over, finger twitching on the trigger): You have a death wish, huh? Fine. I can hang.

M-a (coughing): Yes, I am in much awe myself. It was like he had been touched by the spirit of Onna --

The Frap Gun makes a really big bang and M-a's head vaporizes in a violent spray of blood and bright pink chunks of gore. M-w takes two steps back, already going for his Pulvosonic, when he realizes he's covered in most of M-a's head and heaves. It's only through sheer luck and ingrained reflexes that he's able to dodge a ray from the Frap Gun and lurch forward, his Pulvosonic out now and powering up. They aim and fire at the same time; as M-w's innards blow out of his back through a chunky hole big enough to drive a truck through, the Pulvosonic ray immediately pounds TASCAM-Girl's body instantly into shapeless jello, turning the contents of her skull into soup. She falls down dead, crashing to the floor at M-w's feet.

TMU (looking down in horror): Like... um... dudes, that was kind of, um, extreme, don't you think?

M-w, shaking violently as he begins to die, ignores this craven stupidity. Crawling on his hands and knees, blood gushing out of him like dark and polluted rainwater, he goes to his desk and pulls out a tray and a traditional tanto blade. Crawling back, he kneels over TASCAM-Girl's face, inserts the blade in his side and draws it across, making hideous faces in his agony but saying nothing. Carefully placing the bloody blade in the tray, he leans forward and dumps what's left of his steaming intestines in the dead speed freak's face. Still not satisfied, his final act is to heave all over her.

Then he dies.

The room is silent, utterly still.

Then:

TMU: Oh, that was... urp... I may heave. (searches around frantically for the script) Where is it, dammit? I don't remember reading that in the script approval meeting....

Pym: This is what you get for working with drug addicts, you know.

TMU (with dawning horror): You mean this, this hideous abortion, isn't in the script? Are they really... uh... like, you know.... (inspects M-a's shattered skull closely) Oh shit. This is a mess, all right.

Pym: Yes, and you're cleaning it up.

TMU (prodding M-w's body with one foot): Well, fuck. He looks... um... well... (pokes again) Oh my. We may have a problem here. Um. Do you think we can come up with a satisfactory explanation for Juntaro at G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E. for the fact that two of his best agents are kind of, well, technically speaking, sort of dead?

Pym: Did Helen Keller beat off to downloaded JPGs?

TMU: Ah... right. Okay. Hoo boy. (turns around in circles, looking at bodies, scratching his head) You know, it occurs to me that TASCAM-Girl was the only one who had the code to the freezer. Uh, do you know where she might have left that code written down or something?

Pym: Do the Amish own Gameboys?

TMU (looking increasingly nervous): And, uh, you know, the oven was busted and M-w was gonna fix it, right? Well, uhhhhh... did he ever get around to fixing it?

Pym: Do the Bush girls drink responsibly?

TMU: You're not reassuring me here, woman.... (goes through the dead M-a's pockets) Oh, looky here -- he got a telegram informing him that we are shortly to be the target of a vicious terrorist attack by the most evil and depraved soul in the entire universe and he forgot to tell me. Oopsie. I don't suppose you'd have any idea who the most evil and depraved soul in the universe might be, huh?

Pym: Does a real guitar need more than six strings?

TMU: That's about what I figured. Swell. That's just mighty fucking swell. And here we are with three people dead, one of them the only person who knows how to operate the Subatomic Hell Cannon. Well, there's Antu... um, speaking of which, have you seen her lately?

Pym: Does anybody in the White House have any idea what they're doing?

TMU: Goddamn, she picked a fine time to leave me... Lucille... (begins weeping) Oh Ra, I can't help but break down when I'm reminded of Lucille.... (wipes at tears with a li'l tissue) So, ummmm, do you know of anywhere else in the Hellfortress where we might find some food we can actually get to or cook? We used to have the deli in the bowling alley until TASCAM-Girl blew it up... do we have something somewhere else to eat?

Pym: Will Trojan ever put out a line of condoms for the smaller-dicked man?

TMU: That's very bad news. (eyes the bodies, now starting to get a tad smelly) Well, I suppose we could eat them... but we don't have any way to refrigerate them, do we?

Pym: Think the new Limp Bizkit album will be listenable?

TMU: I think we're in deep shit, that's what I think. I guess this means I'm not gonna get that promotion, huh?

Pym: Anticipate Christy Canyon going down on you anytime soon?

TMU: Arrrgh, don't remind me how bad my love life sucks. (coughs) On that note, maybe we should start the issue while I figure out what the fuck we're going to do to keep from starving to death....

RUNNING WITH THE EVIL PENGUIN [# 60]: We fade in on the pathetic sight of The Moon Unit and Pym, both stained with soot and grime, pooting around in the basement of the Hellfortress (currently up on stilts and scriptless). They are searching, without success, for food caches, codes to the freezer, instructions on running the place, that sort of thing. The Moon Unit is wheeling around a large, clanking toolbox on wheels that rivals him in size and probably outweighs him; Pym is peering at cryptic blueprints and doing her best to stay in the middle of the cramped and filthy hallways, away from the rotting scum clinging to the walls like dried roadkill. Both appear highly agitated.

TMU: By the holy beard of Ra, this place is a pit. I thought we had a sanitation crew. Don't we have a sanitation crew? AAAAAIEEE, I think that one moved.... Fuck, I'm trapped in the basement with the slime-dripping monster from the ALIEN movies and we all smell like peopleburgers!

Pym: I thought we all smelled like robots.

TMU: No no no, that's former review maggot Brain, now running INDUSTRIAL NATION.. He's the one who thinks we all smell like robots. Me, I think we all smell like peopleburgers. No wonder the UFOs keep coming, we're the most popular take-out snack shack in the universe... I hear they come all the way from the Crab Nebula for the down-home Southern Fried Redneck peopleburgers, smothered in gin and barbeque sauce....

Pym: You fucking freak! Stop talking about peopleburgers and aliens and pay attention! We are going to starve soon if we don't find food, or at least the codes to the freezer!

TMU (peeing nervously around a corner): So what makes you think there's any food or codes to find, anyway? Or a script, for that matter?

Pym: Because my sister told me so.

TMU: Oh, really? And just where is your sister? I haven't seen her in quite a few issues... to be frank, I figured she'd flown the coop along with Fenris and the Antichrist.

Pym: Oh no, she's just been... well... um... (looks vaguely embarrassed) Look, it's a long story....

TMU: Oh, I can tell this is going to be a good one.

Pym: Okay, look, see... it's like this. (Relates a long and tedious story, complete with extended digressions and equally ridiculous subplots, about Antu seeing the Mothership at a recent Parliament / Funkadelic show and now she's by possessed by funk and too busy sweatin' in the Listening Pod to do anything else; we take pity on you, the reader, and spare you the sordid details.)

TMU: That is easily the most ridiculous thing I've heard yet.

Pym: I'm sure it'll get worse. We're scriptless, remember?

Without warning, the lights go out.

TMU: Enshrouded in fucking darkness is what we are. Who's jackin' with the light switch, yo? Not that I wanna be implying anything or nothin', but I have a really big gun in my hand and I'm about to start firing indiscriminately in your direction if I don't hear some soothing patter right about now, motherfucker....

Bone-chilling laughter rises in the stinking hell-pit darkness. They both freeze, knowing that only one creature in the universe can emit such horrid vocal tones: the notorious fowl of eternal fucking darkness known only as the Evil Penguin. Feared on all worlds, he wanders across the face of time, leaving a foul stench in his wake (courtesy of the Eternal Cigar, the burning helltorch that never dies) and vast mountains of bodies behind him. The first god of war, the original sower of chaos and destruction, and credited with the invention of telemarketing, Amway, and Christina Aguilera, his mission is nothing more than the cruel enslavement and blind devotion of all that is living, followed by the destruction of those who oppose him. As his laughter rises, mocking them, the lights come back on to reveal him standing across the hall, accompanied by a giant Goliath beetle hunched over with its ass in the air.

EP: Yes, my trembling little maggot-child... it is I... the Evil Penguin. And my satanic sidekick the Poopshaker (TM), although I prefer to address him by his chosen name Osmodaleus. (begins to dance in absurd yet terrifying fashion) And now... I put the sham-ba-bam-ba-bop-a-lop-a-ling-a-ding on YOU!

TMU (eyes growing wild): I... I feel weird....

Pym: That's the lengleaf talking, you dick.

TMU: No no no, it's a different kind of weird... a weird like... like... (groping for words, twitching) eating the bokor paste and becoming the zombie... like the sick pall in the birdhouse of dead pigeons in your skull... like the first time you witnessed an autopsy and felt the urge to stick your hands in and just root around with abandon... like the first time you saw a picture of Turbonegro... it's like... like licking the fungus off a dead man's foot... um... like... like small white kitties with psychedelic carrots for eyes making goo-goo eyes in the store window, only to die horribly with their brains squirting out their ears when you beat off... uhhhh... ngh... shub-niggurath, el'reyeh, grau grau n'yahr teeten ra olly olly oxen free... they're all aliens, stay away! STAY AWAY! (shaking wildly) Oh Ra... Oh Ra... woo I'm feeling very strange right now.... (begins to bark like a seal)

EP (looking bored): Get on with it already, son. We haven't got all day, you know. Some of us are busy people and have actual lives.

TMU (shouting, his voice transformed into the Sonic Hammer): In the name of Ra -- the great and mighty RA, bearer of the Cosmic Gear of Funk, Grand and Exalted Potentate of Tone, Keeper of the Cryptic Beat, he who wears the heavy crown of all nations under a good groove, dreamer of rootless beats, he who knows that nothing is, the effortless pompitus of the astro-infinity freejazz krush groove, whose mental tones for cosmic therapy are guaranteed to give you multiple orgasms in thirty days or less -- I command all of ye to know: I am one with the Will of Anu, and I possess the MASTERPLAN. And let it further be known that the MASTERPLAN, as conceived by the mind of RA -- o great and mighty RA, holy RA, holiest of the holy RA, holy holy and roly poly for my soul-y RA -- that the spirit and the shell of the Evil Penguin shall be broken, then the brittle bones scattered freely across the Plains of Leng; and the shell of his smelly insect companion the Poopshaker (TM), otherwise known as Osmodaleus, shall be hollowed of its pink meat, to be served to the faithful well-done and garnished in green onions, whereupon said shell shall be fitted with the bones that remain and hung from the hook of the Hellfortress as a wind chime.

EP: Promises, promises. Kid, you know how many times I hear this shit? Just yesterday, Vinnie the Hammer says to me, "Look motherfucker, you put your goddamn fucking shoes on my desk one more time and I'm gonna have a bunch of Irish boys come fuck you up so bad your mama will cry at the funeral," and I have to teach him about respect. Am I gonna have to teach you about respect? You think you some kinda punk, all this bullshit about Sun Ra and the masterplan and shit, you think you're impressing me?

TMU (sneering): I fear you not, repulsive and squatlike one. It is written in the BOOK OF THE LAW OF ANU that when the Virus Star crosses the gravitational path of the smallest meteor in the seventh quadrant of the Crab Nebula, but only on the third Tuesday of the ninth month in the seventy-third year of the rotation of the nameless planet where the Plains of Leng blow to an dead audience for all eternity, then the Evil Penguin -- the Goat That Waddles -- and his vile and repugnant companion the Poopshaker (TM), bearer of the atomic fart, will appear to begin a reign of unholy terror lasting for centuries, beginning with the marketing of a line of licensed plush toys in the shape of said miscreants, only considerably cuter and theoretically safer, a satanic plan of unholy fucking vengeance and pure goat-licking DOOM that can only be averted by the Agents of Ra -- o great and invincible Ra, dispenser of fine tones, better than any pill and available in controlled doses for $13.95 or less, offer invalid in dimensions not equipped for astro-infinity sound, TAKE ONLY AS RECOMMENDED, we bear no responsibility for irresponsible use of these materials and your ingestion implicitly indemnifies the negotiator of said instrument from any liability, financial or otherwise, that may result now or in the future from your willful disregard for our superior logic. Most vendors recommend you turn your mattress over at least once every two months for maximum benefit. THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF ANU has written that it is so; and so it is.

The Evil Penguin rolls his eyes and huffs on his stinky cigar. Osmodaleus, clearly agitated, wants to whirl around and incinerate the blasphemer, but is restrained by EP's vast and eternally black wing.

TMU (jerking about wildly, eyes rolled back up in his head): THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF ANU CLEARLY STATES THAT YOU ARE ALL TASTY LI'L MAGGOTS! Woo hoo! HEEWACK! Now listen up doom childe, this is what the Book says of the Evil Penguin: "As the Poopshaker (TM) destroys his enemies through the power of his vile asswind, the Evil Penguin will gaze upon his devil-puppet with glee, and draw forth the Three-Bladed Potato Peeler of Doom to betray him! And yes, as vile clots of Death flow from his beak like shit-covered maggots, he will betray all for which he stands, because it is in his nature, for he is the Evil Penguin, satanic and molting agent of entropy, and it will be RIGHTEOUS when the heathens dance with joy around the fire, tossing his shattered and bleached white skull from one hand to the next." And I am in the way of knowing that the Evil Penguin shall be VANQUISHED, his body crushed and diced like blood-soaked tofu and turned into tater tots, and....

Pym (impatiently): All right, we get the idea.

TMU (returning from his trance): Uh? What happened? Where am I? And who's the li'l fat dude with the... the... FUCK! 

Pym (alarmed): What? What? What is it?

TMU (gesturing wildly): Look, look! LOOK! It's him! It's Ozma!

Pym: What the fuck are you talking about?

TMU: Remember when I told you about the fire-breathing giant beetle I saw in the bathroom? The one that nearly roasted my weenie?

Pym: Oh shit, not that bullshit again....

TMU (ducking behind the toolbox as the beetle turns around): AAAAIEEE! Ra protect my pale white ass!

Blue-white fire erupts from the beetle's ass like a hot shower of sparks, billowing out past the toolbox and igniting the hideous mold hanging from the walls. As TMU and Pym shriek like li'l tykes pissing in their diddies, the beetle pivots and launches another fiery blast at the opposite wall. Soon both walls and the ceiling are in flames.

TMU: AH! Oh fuck! SHIT! (dances away from flames) Do you believe me NOW?

EP (gloating): Yes, Osmodaleus is quite a charmer, isn't he?

Pym: We're going to fucking die and I never even got to meet Alicia Witt! I HATE YOU! (starts kicking him in the shin)

TMU: Ow! OW! Stop that! Turn around run, you psycho bitch! Go! Go! WILL YOU FUCKING MOVE YOUR ASS?!?!

They take off running, with the hallway burning down behind them. As they flee, the Evil Penguin's satanic laughter follows behind them.

Pym: You know, this is probably a really bad time to mention this, but if I'm going to have to put up with this kind of shit every issue, I want a raise.

TMU: NEVER MIND THAT RIGHT NOW! Run, you fool! Run... run... woo... run... (gasping) maybe not quite so fast... (wheezing) shoo, smokin' all that lengleaf sure makes you winded pretty easy....

Pym: You pathetic worm, we haven't even gotten to the elevator yet and you're already on the verge of croaking. You are so out of shape.

As they reach the elevator, TMU leans against the door, gasping like a fish out of water as she presses the UP button. When the doors open, he falls back and into the elevator with a loud crash. Sighing, Pym steps in and closes the door.

Pym: You really are a worthless piece of shit, you know that, don't you?

TMU (wheezing): Bu... wuh... wee... wee....

By the time they reach the command level, TMU is at least able to stagger out after her. They immediately trip over the bodies of M-w, M-a, and TASCAM-Girl.

Pym: AAAAAAHH! I thought you told me you'd cleaned this up!

TMU (pulling himself up): Uh, I did. What the fuck is going on here?

EP (stepping out from behind a curtain): I am what's going on here, runtboy. (gestures to a little red wagon behind him containing sinister-looking gadgets and bubbling potions) I'm going to combine their DNA and reanimate them. Then I'm going suck up what's left of TASCAM-Girl's brains with a straw and absorb all of her knowledge, thus giving me the power to control the Hellfortress and use it as my headquarters in my War of Ragnarok. Then I will render this world and all those beyond it into vast planes of lifeless ice and turn you all into tater tots. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! HA HA! HA! HA! HAHAHAHAHA! HA!

TMU: Like hell, motherfucker.

EP: Oh yeah? Just watch! (flicks on a gadget, leading to much noise and fury and a smoke-laden explosion)

Pym (gagging): Oh Christ, that really reeks. Nobody told me when I took this gig that it would reek.

EP (gloating, enshrouded in smoke): Oh, that was just the first switch. The next one... will be even worse. Ha! HA! Hahahahahahaha ha ha hahahaha ha! HA HAHA HA! Oh, I am so flushed with evil right this moment.... (Ozma fires off a twenty-one fart salute, creating even more smoke and setting the room on fire)

TTBMD (crashing through the door in an explosion of wood and steel): Then take five, dude!

As TMU and Pym watch with stupefied disbelief, TTBMD plants one shoe -- black, of couse -- on the Evil Penguin's fat ass and shoves. He bounces off the wall and falls on the floor on his back, thrashing wildly. As he attempts to right himself, TTBMD begins to seriously beat his ass.

EP: Hey! HEY! (throws cigar at TTBMD's head, narrowly missing) You hat-wearing ass! STOP! You cannot do this, dammit! I am THE EVIL PENGUIN!

TTBMD (kicking him in the face): No you aren't, you're just a fat fuckin' bird who can't fly. With bad taste in cigars too. Dude, where are you buying those stinkers?

Pym (looking at TMU): I thought he was at the Erich Vann Institute.

TMU: If he was, he sure isn't now. Hey, isn't it convenient that he's showed up just in time to save our asses?

Ozma: ARRRRRR! (turns and hauls its ass up in the air)

TTBMD: You know, if some fucking people would get their asses moving and escape while I'm beating on these morons, I might be able to split myself before I get fried. (ducks a bolt from Ozma) Right now would be a good time....

Pym: He's right. Time to blow this taco stand. (grabs TMU by the arm and jerks him toward the door)

TMU: AIIIEEE! LOOK! (Pym follows his pointing finger to see the room engulfed in flames.)

Pym (backing out of the room with TMU): You know, if we don't muzzle that goofy-ass beetle, pretty soon the whole place will be on fire....

TTBMD: Hey! Come back here, you little shit! (much violence and shouting follows, accompanied by the sounds of furniture turning over and being broken) DON'T TOUCH THAT! I swear, I'll fuck you up if you do it, bitch!

EP (gloating): HA! Watch as I throw the switch, hat-boy!

A loud CLANK follows, along with an explosion that rattles the walls. A greenish cloud of smoke billows out of the room, followed shortly thereafter by TTBMD, who lurches out the door and heaves on Pym's shoes.

TTBMD: Dudes, that is seriously even stinkier than his shitty cigar. What's he been cooking in there, farts?

Pym (looking at her feet in horror): My. Shoes. (blinks) Are covered. In. A. Drummer's. Vomit.

TTBMD (wiping his mouth): Sorry about that. Should have waited for the tuna surprise.

TMU: No time to worry about that now, we have bigger problems -- LOOK!

She looks where he's pointing and is filled with horror at the sight of the shambling, misshapen zombie lurching out of the smoke. The bodies of M-w and M-a have been merged into one grotesque and vaguely human shape with one blown-out skull and four arms, one jutting from the open stomach cavity; next to the skull sits the boneless head of TASCAM-Girl, her skull peeled back and emptied, her cranial soup now resting in the Evil Penguin's tummy. The zombie shambles forward, blind, mindless, running only on the misfiring neurons in what remains of M-a's shattered skull. Each hand grips an esoteric and highly deadly weapon of some kind -- a Neural Boneshaker, a Reverse-Engineered Turbosonic Vent-Cooled .428 Waltenkok Revolving Autopellet Ejector (with optional fireguard and EZ-Load Extended Ammunition Cache), the Frap Gun, and something so unspeakable and technically baroque as to defy all description. As the zombie moves, shedding bits of flesh and bone as it jerks about, the room is filled with the roar of gunfire.

Too slow, however: Pym and TMU are already gone, halfway down the hall and moving at warp-speed. The Evil Penguin follows, moving leisurely, savoring a smoke after his fine liquid brain shake.

THINGS ARE STARTING TO GET SERIOUSLY OUT OF HAND [# 61]: THE RIDICULOUS STORY SO FAR: After a violent and bloody episode of amphetamine psychosis on TASCAM-Girl's part, the moon unit and Pym are forced to do battle with the Evil Penguin as Antu, the flaming wheel of fire formerly known as the Headless Sno-Cone Girl, hides somewhere in the Hellfortress, too busy listening to the first three Funkadelic albums over and over to bother with doing something about kicking the Evil Penguin's ass. Our scriptless innocents are horrified to discover that the Evil Penguin's sidekick, a stinky goliath beetle named Osmodaleus with a penchant for blowing things up with his ass-driven atomic farts, is the dreaded PoopshakerTM, mentioned frequently as a herald of the apocalypse in THE BOOK OF THE LAW OF ANU. To make matters worse, not even the unexpected intervention of the two-fisted Todd the Black Metal Drummer can prevent the Evil Penguin from horribly reanimating the dead bodies of TASCAM-Girl and the perforated agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E.

We pick up, then, where we left off:

[Pym] looks where he's pointing and is filled with horror at the sight of the shambling, misshapen zombie lurching out of the smoke. The bodies of M-w and M-a have been merged into one grotesque and vaguely human shape with one blown-out skull and four arms, one jutting from the open stomach cavity; next to the skull sits the boneless head of TASCAM-Girl, her skull peeled back and emptied, her cranial soup now resting in the Evil Penguin's tummy. The zombie shambles forward, blind, mindless, running only on the misfiring neurons in what remains of M-a's shattered skull. Each hand grips an esoteric and highly deadly weapon of some kind -- a Neural Boneshaker, a Reverse-Engineered Turbosonic Vent-Cooled .428 Waltenkok Revolving Autopellet Ejector (with optional fireguard and EZ-Load Extended Ammunition Cache), the Frap Gun, and something so unspeakable and technically baroque as to defy all description. As the zombie moves, shedding bits of flesh and bone as it jerks about, the room is filled with the roar of gunfire.

Too slow, however: Pym and TMU are already gone, halfway down the hall and moving at warp-speed. The Evil Penguin follows, moving leisurely, savoring a smoke after his fine liquid brain shake.

Pym: AAAIEEEE! Where are we going? Do we have any idea where we're running? Are they behind us? (deafening explosion, followed by rain of plaster) Okay, yes... TURN HERE! (manic shouting, gunfire) Go! Go! GO! ARRRRGH! (mad scuffling, more gunfire, explosions) Down the hole....

TMU: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! (disappearing down a shaft as the Evil Penguin laughs)

Pym (stepping into shaft, turning around): You guys can give your fat, waddling leader a message, okay? (gunfire halts momentarily) Tell him he can hose off or we're going to wax his fat ass and serve him raw like sushi. Dig? We don't need this shit, we got problems of our own.... (gunfire resumes, grenades land around her)

EP: Ha haha ha ha haaaaah ahahahaahahaahahahahahaaaahhhaaa ahha hhhaha ha haha HA! HAAAHA! HA! HA HA HA! HA! HA! HA! (waits) HA!

Pym (picking up grenade): You creep, here's what I think of your shitty evil laugh of doom. (tosses grenade and disappears down the shaft as it explodes down the hall, causing pandemonium)

TMU (grunting): OOF! Hey, you're fuckin' heavy, you know that? WATCH WITH THE BOOTS, dammit....

Pym: Sorry.

TMU: Came close to taking out my eye there....

Pym: I said I was sorry. (grabs him by the hand and pulls him along, running down the hallway)

TMU: Do you have any idea where you're going?

Pym: Someplace where there's not gunfire.

TMU: Good, good... that's a start.... (shouts as a grenade goes off behind them)

Pym: Where to go, where to go.... (turns down a darkened hallway) ARGH!

TMU: Hey, there's a freezer parked out in the middle of the hallway. What the fuck is a freezer doing in the hallway? (looks down) This is not a good time to be napping....

Pym (staggering to her feet): I swear, noise-boy. The minute I think it's safe, I'm throwing you to the ice weasels.

TMU: Hold it, hold it. (motions for silence; they listen)

Pym: What is it?

TMU: Listen.

Pym: That scratching noise in the ceiling? Is that it? What do you --

The ceiling caves in abruptly as the Evil Penguin, The Poopshaker [TM], and their hideous reanimated pal with all the guns come crashing in from above. They all land in a messy, sprawling heap as clouds of plaster dust rain from the jagged hole in the ceiling.

TPTM: mmmmmmmFRAP!

EP: OW! Not in the pile, dammit! NOT IN THE PILE! (struggling vainly to right himself) Get off me, you undead idiots! (gunfire begins as the zombie misinterprets its orders) STOP STOP STOP --

Pym: Come on, let's get out of here. (hustles TMU out the door as gunfire and shouting fill the room)

TMU: Do we have any idea where we're going with this?

Pym: Hell no. Run faster, dammit!

TMU: I am running faster! So we don't have a MASTERPLAN?

Pym: Hell no. I thought you were in charge of the MASTERPLAN.

TMU: You should know better than to believe anything I say.

Pym: We're going to die, aren't we?

TMU: Eventually we all do, my sweet.

Pym: In that case, perhaps we should get on with this issue.

TMU: Indeed... indeed....

APOCALYPTIC VIOLENCE ON A CHEESY-WEESY BUDGET [# 62]: THE INCREASINGLY RIDICULOUS STORY SO FAR: The Moon Unit and Pym are still on the run, somewhere in the bowels of the Hellfortress. The Evil Penguin and Ozma, his dim-witted sidekick and king of the atomic farts, remain in hot pursuit.

We fade in on the terrifying sight of the Evil Penguin and Ozma, the Poopshaker[TM], slowly advancing on The Moon Unit and Pym, who are cowering with their backs to a wall of elaborate-looking gizmos, dynamite, wires, handles, ladders, chutes, hydraulic pistons, large signs screaming WARNING FNORD TENSHI HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS DON'T EVEN BREATHE ON THIS SHIT DAMMIT, cryptic-looking widgets, china angels, purloined refrigerator notes, rolls of ammunition, numerous sharp and pointy knives, a tiny hand-carved figurine of a dancing chihuahua snorting coke off a goat's ass, fire alarms, a keychain-sized Shoot-Me-Up Elmo doll, a rack of poison vials, and a blurry photograph of Paris Hilton attempting to look like something other than an overpriced hooker on smack. Pym is heroically firing a .45 automatic at the them, with no effect, as TMU hides behind her. They advance... and advance... then TMU shouts, "Look! Look! We're saved! Hahahahaha! It's --"

[INCREDIBLY BAD JUMP CUT, the product of morons with editing tools]

Pym (disoriented): What the fuck was that all about?

TMU: Obviously the incredibly violent scene where alien cockroaches battling ninja warriors armed with M-16s while Keko Mask blinds the Evil Penguin with the most beautiful vagina in Japan and kills him while distracted didn't pass the MPAA screening. I am sad now. Already I miss the vivid colors of her painting the walls with the blood from his headless neck....

The camera pulls back, slowly, very slowly, so slowly in fact that it barely moves at all; it is the Khanate of dolly shots. Eventually we see that TMU and Pym are being held prisoner in great, shining metal tubes festooned with a wild assortment of cables, multicolored wires, and mysterious gadgets. From behind the tubes, a long cable runs to a sinister-looking box standing in front of the Evil Penguin. His fidgeting sidekick Ozma chitters and wiggles just behind him, offering a burst of flame when it becomes necessary to light the satanic fowl's cigar.

Pym: So how'd we end up in these tubes? I don't remember shooting that part....

TMU: I think you weren't supposed to mention that. You're blowing the segue, dammit.

Pym: So I guess I'm not supposed to mention that the tubes are really badly-painted cardboard refrigerator boxes with holes cut out of them?

TMU: Um, as a matter of fact, no.

Pym: Or that the Evil Penguin's super-atomic doomsday device or whatever it is, that it's actually an old Sears battery with some random wires running from it to a place behind the boxes? (peeks over the box edge) Christ, they're not even connected, I can't believe I work on sets this sloppy... are you all on fucking crack?

TMU (to EP): Can you get moving with your lines before she fucks this up even more?

EP (puffing on cigar): Hell yeah. Let me get my evil on, son... gotta buckle up tight here... UGH! (wiggles violently) ARGH! (disappears into a cloud of smoke as he tightens up his evil)

TMU: I'm starting to lose my patience here....

Pym: If somebody could make some progress on finding the script or the MASTERPLAN, that would be a big step in the right direction.

TMU: Don't distract him, dammit! He's gonna do exposition, dig?

EP: Ha! Ha ha hahaha! BWAAAAAH ha HA ha HA ha HA HA HA! Heh... huh-huh... ha... HAHHAHAHA! HA HA HAHA HA HA HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA! (pauses) HA!

TMU: The bone-chilling laugh of evil is getting really old, dude.

EP: Ha! Do you think I care? Fuck no! I'm the notorious fowl of eternal fucking darkness! Ha ha! Ha hahaha! HA HA HA....

Pym: Are you ever gonna get around to explaining why we're cooped up and sweating in these shitty boxes, excuse me, power tubes?

EP: Oh yes... it is so horrible, so horribly satanic in its diabolical vileness! (begins hopping up and down in a jelly-like state of ecstasy) I am going to use the magic power of electricity to clone your runtlike leader, so that I may remove one of his brains and decode its neurons with my secret Captain Midnight Decoder Ring --

TMU (excited): You have a Captain Midnight Decoder Ring? The hell you do! I don't believe it....

EP (thrusting one wing toward the tubes): I DO TOO! Look! See? See?

TMU: I can't see fucking squat, you put the face-hole in this tube too high.

EP: Well, you just trust me, IT'S THERE! Now where was I?

Pym: You were going to clone him and remove his brain. Why not just remove his brain and skip the cloning part?

EP: I want a spare on hand in case something goes wrong. If all goes well, I'll scoop the other brain out too and make a milkshake with it. I'm certain I can scare up a blender around here somewhere....

TMU (sneering): Dream on, waddle-boy.

Pym: And, uh, what are you planning on doing with me?

EP: You will be my bride at the throne of darkness at the end of all worlds.

Pym: The hell I will. I'm not marrying a goddamn bird. What kind of pervert are you?

EP: I am THE EVIL PENGUIN! Have you not been paying attention, little girl?

Pym: Call me a little girl again and you'll be the Castrated Penguin.

EP: Of course, you'll need some improvement first... your breasts, for instance, could be substantially bigger. I have some issues with the measurements of your feet, also....

Pym (pounding on the inside of the refrigerator box): That's it, fuck this, I am out of here. I'm not having my breasts modified --

EP: HA! Ha ha haha hahahahahahaha HA! You are TOO LATE! Pardon me while I gloat!

The Evil Penguin throws a switch. Nothing happens. Irritated, he kicks the box, which promptly explodes in a stinking shower of metal, glass, and foul-smelling lubricants. As he lurches around the room, half-blinded by the explosion, the machinery roars to life, blinking and flashing.

EP: Aaaaaah! I can't see! When I find out who's responsible for this I'll have him disemboweled and feed his entrails to the star maggots of Yib-Satotoh! Ozma! OZMA! Where are you? (The PoopshakerTM responds by letting loose an atomic ass-blast that nearly burns off the Evil Penguin's foot.)

EP: AAAAAAAAAH! Face the other way, you moron!

TMU: Man, it's getting crowded in here... hey cigar-boy, I think your duplicating gizmo is stuck....

Pym: AAAAAH! My tits are getting huge! Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!

The machinery continues to grind on, until finally the box containing the Moon Unit and his clones is bulging outward like a whale about to give birth. At that point the machinery ceases altogether in a brilliant shower of blue-white sparks.

EP: Are you still there?

TMU (all of them at once): YES.

EP: Um... how many of you are there now?

TMU: A LOT, BEAK-BOY.

EP (turning to sneak out the door): Aaaaah, perhaps my attention would be better served elswhere....

TTBMD (bursts into the room, hitting EP in the face with the door): YO! Where the hell is the food in this place? You people are seriously falling down on the job here. (looks down at Evil Penguin) What are you doing down there? Licking the floor clean?

EP (struggling to right himself): NO! I am the EVIL FUCKING PENGUIN, dammit -- I don't lick floors! I -- ugh! I'm the notorious -- umph! GRUNT! The notorious -- RRRRR!

TTBMD (flipping him over on his back with one foot): How's that?

The EP struggles and curses as TTBMD laughs, taunting him by trying to set him on fire while he rolls wildly to escape the lighter's flame. As he heaves and twitches in a vain attempt to get back on his feet, TTBMD leaps on Ozma's back and sticks his fingers in the bombardier beetle's ears, lifting his head.

TTBMD: Giddyap! Go bug GO!

They begin to lurch and hop around the room wildly, TTBMD whooping and slapping Ozma while the outraged beetle launches hot, steaming fire from its ass. Soon the room is on fire in half a dozen places. If either of them appear to notice or care, they show no sign of it. Meanwhile, the EP continues his agonizing quest to stand upright again.

Pym (to TMU): So how many of there are you in there now? Really?

TMU: Way too many. HEY! Keep your hands to yourself, don't be grossing me out here.... DAMMIT, I told you! (The sound of gunfire is accompanied by holes magically appearing in the box, followed by copious amounts of blood draining from the holes.)

TMU: Okay, now we're back to one of me....

Pym: If you have some big-deal secret weapon in your pocket you haven't told me about, this would be a good time to pull it out.

TMU: As it happens, I do. (pause) Are you really sure you want me to... ah... pull it out?

Pym: Goddamnit motherfucker, I am in NO MOOD for dick jokes. If you're gonna do something, do it or shut the fuck up.

TMU: You sure are grouchy today. Are you in need of, uh, whatever they call those things, you know, "feminine protection" and all that....

Pym: I am so going to beat your fucking ass when we get out of here.

TMU: Oh? You mean you have a plan to get us out of here?

Pym: IF I HAD A PLAN I WOULD ALREADY BE OUT, FUCKWIT!

TMU: Then you're suggesting I have a plan, and that my reward for springing you will be to... uh... (goes back and looks) beat my fucking ass? I think that was it?

Pym: All right, fine, whatever, I'll leave your ass alone -- will you do something, that hideous beetle is gonna have him on his feet any minute now!

TMU: Patience, patience. It's all about the timing... you gotta find the beat... then... (getting all misty-eyed) once you find the beat, that's when you can stop paying attention to it and go into... outer space.... (going into trance mode) yes, into outer space... space is the place....

Pym (shaking her head): Oh no. No no no no. I'm not having anything to do with this.

TMU (eyes open wide, blazing with the power of the cosmos): YES! Space IS the place! 

Pym (hands over ears): I'm not listening, BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH....

TMU (shouting, his voice transformed into the Sonic Hammer): In the name of Ra -- the great and mighty RA, bearer of the Winning Blackjack Hand of Funk, Three-Time Winner of the Nobel Prize for Tone Science, Keeper of the original and autographed copy of GOD WILLS THE NEGRO, he who shrinks the cosmos when he sleeps and expands it when he wakes, the ass-shaking pimp in a black Eldorado of free jazz, whose mental tones for cosmic therapy are guaranteed to give you multiple orgasms in thirty days or less -- I command all of ye to know: I am one with the Will of Anu, and I possess the MASTERPLAN. And let it further be known that the MASTERPLAN, as conceived by the mind of RA -- o great and mighty RA, holy RA, holiest of the holy RA, holy holy and roly poly for my soul-y RA -- now calls for Sun Ra to appear himself, and bring to the Evil Penguin the terrifying and equally unholy agent of his destruction. Look! To the skies!

Outside the window a giant, cheap-looking spaceship lands on the ice outside the Hellfortress. The ramp descends and a dozen hardcases with afros the size of Saturn stroll out. Their outfits could be best described as quite colorful. Behind them, wearing a white robe and Egyptian crown, Sun Ra walks down the ramp with a cat in his arms and an enigmatic smile on his face.

[ANOTHER HIDEOUSLY BOTCHED JUMP CUT; the next scene jitters for several frames before steadying]

Pym (reeling): Shit! Are the camera guys smoking crack too? Somebody in charge of the jump cuts sure doesn't know what the fuck he's doing....

TMU (gasping): Look! It... it... it's Sun Ra!

Pym (looking at the men beginning to fill up the room): You know, you're right. For once.

TMU: Sun Ra! O mighty Ra! Have you come... to save the universe from itself?

Sun Ra: (smiles enigmatically)

EP (irritated): Save the universe my ass. You think I'm afraid of some fruity old dead jazzer in a bedsheet?

TMU (wild-eyed, long knives magically appearing in his hands): SILENCE!  You speak words of BLASPHEMY!

EP: What do you expect? I'm the notorious fowl of eternal --

TMU: INFIDEL! You dare defame the Atomic Black Jesus? The new messiah? Tone scientist and tuner of the Cosmic Hum? The one true light? I would gladly spill your blood for him! RECANT or I'll turn you into penguin cutlets and serve you to Todd the Black Metal Drummer!

TTBMD (popping his head in the door): Make sure you pluck the feathers off first this time, okay?

Pym (disbelieving): I'm sure I don't want to know....

As they bicker, Sun Ra's entourage grows impatient, until the biggest of them, wearing the flashiest clothes and sporting an Afro large enough to blot out the sun, steps up and seizes the mike.

AFROMAN: YO! They call me Afroman! I'm an African! Goddamn straight and PROUD, damn! Now I'm droppin' science, gonna play it straight, got a motherfuckin' revelation you oughta appreciate. Sun Ra! He's the MAN! But he ain't the one gonna queer your plan! You think got style? Fuck no -- next to Sun Ra, the whole world's a bunch o' goddamn hos! He got style! Look at his threads! Egyptian robes of silk and a planet on his head! Teacher! Preacher! Out there a minute in space and gettin' deeper! Listen up, suckahs -- O.G. O MOTHER FUCKIN' G! Ladies and gentlemen -- I give you Sun Ra, leader of the Astro-Infinity Arkestra, savior of the coming race of tone scientists, and curator of the greatest collection of Egyptian art in the cosmos, located at his city-sized palace under the rings of Saturn! Yeah, Sun Ra... and his companion, the Devil Kitty.

The EP gapes with dazed astonishment as everyone claps. Sun Ra's entourage is a seething orgy of flashing color and high fives. Sun Ra says nothing, merely smiling. Then, looking straight into the cold and merciless eyes of the most evil being ever to waddle across the universe, he releases the Devil Kitty. It lands gracefully on the floor and strolls up to them, bored, its tail twitching. Suddenly the kitty's head is thrown back, his jaws stretched wide, his mouth full of row after row of gigantic needle teeth. As the frightening yawn subsides, the Devil Kitty begins rubbing up again the mad fowl's legs.

EP: Aaaah! AAAAAH! Get it away from me! It's shedding all over me!

AFROMAN: Bad move, suckah. The Devil Kitty got his name for havin' a bad fuckin' attitude -- tell him what to do and he does the opposite just to piss you off, unless you really didn't want him to do it, in which case he does it, just to piss you off. Plus he's got moves -- your fat ass be gettin' some ice cubes for your martini and you gonna find the Devil Kitty under your feet, big time. He got the cash that make the young girls flash, dig?

TMU: He also turns into a giant stone gorgon and heaves hot, steaming stomach-lava laced with an acid ten times more powerful than hydrochloric acid. He also farts a lot, so he and your stinky buddy should get along real well....

Pym: Can you get him to go ahead and heave on the Evil Penguin so we can get this lame tangent over with?

AFROMAN (laughing diabolically): You think the Devil Kitty gonna answer to you? He don't answer to the man! He don't answer to the cops! He don't answer to the pimps! He don't answer to the government! He don't answer to the law, mother nature, the Pope, God -- hell, he don't even mind his own master, Sun Ra! He is the first and last and always of bad-assed motherfuckers! Sure, he's gonna fuck the Evil Penguin up, but he's gonna do it on his own sweeeeeeeet time, 'cause there's just too much pussy out there for him to chase, dig?

Pym (nervously): Our phantom scriptwriter must have spent too many hours smoking lengleaf and watching SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAADAAAAAAASSS SONG. The management extends its apologies... well, we would if we still had management, anyway....

TMU (pointing frantically): Look! LOOK! He's doing it! He's going macro! Watch him turn to stone... see him shake? He's gonna do it -- he's gonna heave! Right on the penguin's head! Ha ha! HA! Hahahaha --

[BRUTAL JUMP CUT leaves multiple frames visible, jerking spastically]

Pym: What? Where? What happened?

TMU: You missed it. The Devil Kitty turned into a twenty-foot tall stone gorgon and began heaving up thick chunks of stomach-lava at the Evil Penguin. Looked kind of like maggots and salsa floating in a sea of concrete and burnt chili. His sidekick Ozma got so scared he let out a sonic boom and blew him and the Evil Penguin through a wall and out of the room before the lava could hit them. See that big-ass hole that already eating through every level on down to the basement? Man, you should have been paying attention....

DK: Meow yow! RARHEEG! (translated: "Dead sun! RISING!")

Pym (following TMU as he and the Devil Kitty run out the door): So what do we do now?

TMU: Um, finding the Evil Penguin and his trademarked sidekick would be good... killing them and impaling their heads on sticks would be better... and if you can find the keys to the sleep chamber where we keep all the Alicia Witt clones, that would be absolutely fucking swell.

Pym (aghast): You have clones of Alicia Witt?

TMU: Sure. Why not?

Pym: Whatever for?

TMU: Uhhhh... because the accounting department wouldn't spring for a Real Doll on the grounds of needing it for "sketching purposes"?

DK: Uw! Guw! GgggACK! (begins heaving lunch on carpet)

TMU (disgusted and agitated): Aw no! Not now, dammit! FUCK! Look, this is not a good time to be heaving, okay?

Pym: Hey, here's the camera editing room -- stop in here, I want to see what morons work in this place.

TMU: We're looking for --

Pym: Hey, they could be in here. (looks into the room) No, scratch that. The only thing we have here are dead camera jockeys. And a smelly drunk.

They follow her into the room, where half of dozen men in red jumpsuits are sprawled out on the floor in a wide variety of positions, many of them quite comical. All are equally dead, the result of massive alcohol consumption. Camera equipment in various stages of disassembly lie scattered across the room; in one corner of the room, a pair of Neumann microphones rest in a fetid pool of vomit. Playing cards, dice, empty bottles of beer and Jim Beam, pornographic magazines, a stripper's panties, and other party favors litter the room. A hamster, its fur stained with Crisco and poo, nibbles at one man's ear hair. At the main desk, hovering unsteadily over the jump cut button, Juan the Gardener sways like a man in the grip of religious mania. Or else he needs to take a dump and is afraid to move; either way, it involves a lot of sweating. He reeks of beer and vomit and wood shavings. He is also missing his pants. And his watch. And two gold teeth, which will never be found. His drunkenness is so complete that he will be lampooned in folk songs for centuries to come, until his name passes on into legend along with that of his spiritual mentor, John Gavanti.

Juan (eyes rolling wildly):  AH SEEN THA MOON ALL WHITE AN' PRETTAH, LIKE DA HIND O' CONWAY TWITTAH!

DK: Meow! (Juan's bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 tumbles to the floor, sending hooch everywhere; the Devil Kitty pounces, licking it up.)

Pym: One of these days you're going to have to tell me how he gets that smelly stuff delivered here.

TMU: I think he has a deal going with the same people who used to move black-market crank for TASCAM-Girl. One of her military connections.

Pym: So how long have we had a camera crew filming everything, anyway?

TMU: Who knows? The accountant ran off with one of John Gavanti's bodyguards way back when. The scheduling coordinator got eaten by wolves when she went out for a smoke last July. And of course, for some time now, your sister -- the administrative assistant, if you'll recall, making more than I do -- has been too busy listening to Funkadelic to technically, you know, do her fucking job. So I don't know. They just showed up one day, whining about how hard it is to get donuts delivered here.

Pym: So what do --

[JUMP CUT OF GRANDIOSE INEPTNESS, resulting in five seconds of lost video]

Pym (ramming Juan's face repeatedly against the wall): -- stay away from it! Do you understand? One more and I'm going to take the editing bay apart and feed it to you one piece at a time!

Juan (eyes rolled back in his head): Uhhhh... mu? Are you the Virgin Mary?

Pym drops Juan, who lands sprawling on the floor in a boneless heap. She turns to TMU, who is on his hands and knees, going through the pockets and wallets of the dead camera operators. 

Pym: So do any of them have food?

TMU: Yeah, if you count Twinkies, but none of them have the script. Oooo look, this one has a Badtz Maru keychain... mine now!

Pym (glancing down): The devil kitty is heaving again.

TMU (sighs): He knows what's going to happen every time he hits that lengleaf. He just can't handle it. But does that stop him? Of course not. And what can we do? He's the devil kitty. If he wants to go heave on the Pope, who dares to stop him? (looking down, wincing) Oh jeez. That looks... ummm... (bolts, turning green)

Pym: On that refreshing note, I guess we could go ahead and start the issue....

THE ETERNAL MYSTIFICATION OF SUN RA AND THE DEVIL KITTY [# 63]: THE INCREASINGLY INCOHERENT STORY IN PROGRESS: We fade in on TMU and Pym crouching in a dark corner of some nameless storage room far below the main level of the Hellfortress, where they are eating cold beans from cans, taking turns using a coke spoon they found in TASCAM-Girl's living quarters, along with an enormous stockpile of guns, ammo, and amphetamines. The weapons and ammo they are carrying now makes it difficult to squat, but to remain hidden behind a crate, they must contort themselves into most undignified poses. The fact that the cans they are eating from are, technically speaking, cold dog food intended for the sled team that was eaten by wolves some time ago, does nothing to improve their mood.

TMU (surly): Fuck, how the mighty have fallen.... (eyes can with barely-concealed loathing) When they promised me the sun and the fucking moon to sign on to run this place, they sure never bothered to mention the possibility I'd end up hiding in the dark like a Neanderthal taking a shit and spooning dog food from a can. You know what I think? I think I got badly fucked here.

Pym: Shut up and eat, we've got to get out of here before they find us. Do you have any idea what we're doing?

TMU: Hell no. In my mind, I'm back in the penthouse suite of the tallest building in Austin, lounging in a huge fucking hot tub on the roof with the Devil Kitty's master and a dozen naked perverts and we're all listening to Khanate. Plus we have bales of lengleaf stacked around the hot tub, along with a refrigerator, a mini-bar, a pimp and his Cadillac, and enough "paid security consultants" standing around with M-16s to evaporate half of France. Plus Alicia Witt is giving backrubs. I do not recognize this reality, okay? It offends me.

Pym (rolling eyes): Ooookay, whatever you say....

TMU (brooding): Listen, Pym. In all seriousness now, I have to tell you something important. I'm deadly fucking serious about this, okay? And it has nothing to do with Zeni Geva. Or Cub.

Pym: Um... who? What? You're making me nervous....

TMU: I have something extremely shocking to tell you.

Pym: Oh shit, not a revelation... everything always goes to shit when you have a revelation....

TMU (eyes blazing with righteous fury, or maybe just bloodshot): I have to confess now! I have been hiding it all this time! Ha ha! Ha! Ha hahahahaaaaaa ha ha ha! HA! You know the MASTERPLAN? I know where --

[jarring edit, accompanied by jittering]

SUN RA (staring directly into the camera): Take the word for live -- turn it around and it's evil, isn't it? So what does that mean? Is life evil? Or is evil anti-life? Does it mean something? Or does it mean nothing? What is nothing, anyway? Some people say that nothing is... well... nothing. And some people say that nothing... is. In the days of the Mayan temples, when cats ruled the earth, when Ra ruled supreme, before the pale ones came and destroyed the temples -- in those days, it wasn't unusual to look up in the sky and see angels and devils at play. Back in the days when you could sail the sea for seven days and gaze upon the towering jade monuments that were the walls of Atlantis, the shining city of the sea. There is a beauty to the concepts that have passed into the dim memory of knowledge, don't you think? The unbelievers and the sullen masses who can't be bothered to look up and see the stars because they're too busy watching the street for the occasional dropped penny... let me ask you this: Do you fear them, or pity them?

DEVIL KITTY: Mrrrr mmrrg RAWRR! HISS! ["Usually I just eat them."]

SR (nodding thoughtfully): I understand completely. Nevertheless. You see, the ordinary folks just can't grasp that it's all about space -- don't you know it? Space is the place, that's the truth. I've been there, you see. I know all about it. I've seen it with my own two eyes. I've seen sunrise in different dimensions, monorails and satellites, and once -- on the night of the purple moon, on a planet far from here and on the other side of the sun -- there I saw the invisible shield that separates the world of reality from the world of myth. It's a place beyond the purple star zone, where you can always find fate in a pleasant mood. A quiet place in the universe, you see. I was there one day to perform a black mass for men dedicated to reviving a black myth for the bad and beautiful. I was out there a minute, do you understand? Got there on rocket number nine.

DK: Rrrrrrmmmm mmrrrow? ["Any lengleaf there?"]

SR: No, no lengleaf. Just cosmic tones for mental therapy and celestial love. When angels speak of love, this is the place of which they speak -- a planet far from this one, steeped in the soul vibrations of man, a planet informed by the solar-myth approach, a world of blue delight. It's an astro black world, do you understand? A place where time is measured in days of happiness.

DK: Grrrrr. MROW! Meow rrr HACK! ["Oh please. Spare me."]

SR: It is the truth. Do you know how I know these things? Because I'm God's private eye, working from a desk at Outer Spaceways Inc. We're the voice of the eternal tomorrow, calling planet earth in the name of sound sun pleasure. There's going to be a celebration, you see. Hours after we reach the end of our journey -- to destination unknown -- that's when we'll join together and embrace the cosmo sun connection at the holiday for soul dance. Do you understand? Do you see now?

DK (hacking up a hairball): ACK! ["No."]

SR: Let me put it to you this way: It's the day after the end of the world! Don't you know that yet?

DK: GRRRRR UG UG UUUUUUUHHHH * HACK! ["GRRRRR UG UG UUUUUUUHHHH * HACK!"]

SR: I see. Perhaps if we look at it from --

[abrupt cut; close-up color film of civilians being crushed by tanks runs at double-speed for 12 seconds before freezing on a skull exploding]

JUAN THE GARDENER (dancing around the editing bay, lampshade on head): Oompah! Oompah! I gonna do the stompah in the supah! Potato potato! I'm the hot tamale of this fortress, baby come let me eat your TACO!

CAMERA MAGGOT # 1: Look, Juan's fucking wasted again.

CAMERA MAGGOT # 2: Never mind Juan, did you see where the hamster went?

CM1: Try looking under the editing bay. You know, that big thing that Juan just spilled his beer down the front of? Man, I sure hope they don't find out about this until I'm off duty.

JTG: Hooka hooka! I'm the stuka of love!

CM2 (banging his head while crawling around on the floor): FUCK! Can somebody shut him up?

CM1: I would if I could see him. This is some powerful fucking hooch. Where'd we get it?

JTG: That comes from mah back-woods down-home back-country loopa doopa doopa back-stash! Yeah! Black market baby with the biggest pile of bling-bling, that's me!

CM1: What the fuck is he talking about?

CM2: It's moonshine, you idiot. He cooked it up with drain cleaner and rubbing alcohol down in one of the chemical rooms.

CM1: Well, no wonder I'm blind then.

CM2: I guess you're not going to be much help looking -- THERE he is! HAH! (violent scuffling that results in two incredibly expensive Neumann mikes being knocked to the floor, right into a puddle of beer and vomit) Got him! Now... what did we do with the Crisco?

JTG: I got to do the hokey pokey 'cause the hokey pokey is what it's ALL ABOUT! Your nostrils really move me, girl! Get it on, get it on, get it on! Hooba hooba me and Michael gonna rubba rubba!

CM1: Look behind the -- hey, WATCH OUT --

[incredible crashing noise as JTG knocks the editing bay over; a sign remains onscreen for some time: PARDON OUR INCOMPETENCE, WE'LL BE BACK UP AS SOON AS SOMEONE FIGURES OUT WHAT THE FUCK TO DO NEXT]

Pym: I don't want to know what they spilled. I don't know how I got roped into this shit....

TMU: TRY AGAIN!

Pym: Gee, you must be smoking crack. You sound just like the current leader of the free world. (frowning) Hey, you said it involved your weiner. Did I miss that part?

TMU: No, I lied. I just like talking about my weiner. (freezes, eyes suddenly wide at the sight of the script) HOLY BAT FUCK! You have the script! You have the motherfucking script! Goddamn! I think I'm gonna shit in my -- wait, too late! FUCK! Where'd you find that?

Pym: You are so gross. I'm not telling you.

TMU (aiming obscenely large Glock at Pym's head): Yes you are.

Pym (sulking): Fine. Have it your way. Agent Smolken sent a package --

TMU: Did it have lengleaf in it?

Pym: NO IT DID NOT HAVE LENGLEAF IN IT! Anyway, he sent --

TMU: Did it have the Godflesh disc I'm waiting on?

Pym (hits him in the eye): STOP! STOP! I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS ANYMORE! (hits him some more) I want out! I want out! I WANT OUT OF MY CONTRACT RIGHT NOW!

TMU: No can do. You can't afford to pay me and I need your --

[screen goes black, followed by exactly thirty-seven seconds of a pornographic film starrng Roxanne Hall]

EVIL PENGUIN (to Ozma): -- intensely stinky butt?

OZMA: (insane chattering)

EP: There is no need to be rude. Punk. (kicks the oversized beetle, who responds by letting out an atomic fart that incinerates a nearby desk)

O: (more irritating noises)

EP: I don't think so. (lights cigar) No, I think what they need is seventeen pounds of dynamite shoved up their cornholes. Fuck this astro-infinity powers of the sleeping dead gods shit, dynamite works just fine for me.

O: (powerfully rancid burst of farts like the sound of a firecracker, accompanied by much flame)

EP: The room is on fire now. Thank you. Thank you very --

[violent jump cut resolves into two seconds of a woman in a black vinyl catsuit and carrying an Uzi as she kicks down a door, which abruptly segues into two minutes of silent footage of Arlington Cemetery after midnight]

CM1: -- take it off! Take it off!

CM2 (mesmerized): How'd we manage to get a stripper all the way up here? And how'd that girl's hooters get so big? Woo! Shake 'em baby, SHAKE 'EM!

JTG (dancing drunkenly): I'm a schlong hog for your butter, babyface! Let me plow your hole with the seed of my tabasco sauce! I bought it on Ebay! Cheap cheap cheap! (wiggles obscenely) Did you know that the flea has the largest erection of any mammal on earth, proportionately speaking?

CM2 (throwing can of beer at him): SHUT UP! Can't you see this woman's wiggling her tits in my face? Don't distract her, you shithead!

JTG (stopping, wide-eyed): I just realized something! Yes I did! I... I am a beanie baby! A purple one!

CM1: A goddamn drunk loudmouth is what you are. Tell us something useful, shithead.

JTG: I know the secret! I know where the MASTERPLAN is! It's said that the man who finds it will rubba rubba with the dark gods that sleep in eternal damnation beneath the ocean waves! Nyarlathotep gave a toaster to the man who threw away the bones of the man who was killed after writing the MASTERPLAN, and the story of how it came into our fearless leader's possession is a strange one. See, it all has to do with this one-eyed albino tree sloth who flew up from Peru to do a coke deal and decided to stay behind because the natives were so interesting. Do you know what I mean? Rubba rubba! Hubba hubba! (starts making Elvis-style karate moves) So there I was in the back of this parking lot, see, surrounded by rough boys with brass knuckles and lead pipes and cattle prods and machine guns and grenades and flamethrowers and sonic cannons and hamsters wrapped in duct tape and the dead body of Yogi Berra, and they were all chanting Mormon hymns while wearing dresses, and -- and -- I don't remember what happened next! Did you know there are seven poodles in one of the rooms down on the lowest level? It's true! They're part of a nefarious experiment involving the Satan Gene! I sat down and ate a bowl full of remote controls with them one day and they told me everything about the MASTERPLAN! Seventeen teenaged dominatrixes in pink vinyl hotpants sat down with me one day and explained everything in the MASTERPLAN, paragraph by paragraph, and it's all up here in my head! The Moon Unit knows that, but he's forgotten because he smokes so much lengleaf! And see, I don't know what it means, even after those girls told me everything and fucked my brains out with their diabolical rubba rubba, because I'm a drunk and I can't figure out anything simpler than opening a beer bottle, right? I just got this job because there's no one else around to do it, you know? (leaps on top of a filing cabinet and begins kicking holes in the wall) The really beautiful part is that once he does remember that I have the MASTERPLAN locked up in my head, he can hook me up to the Brain Pump and retrieve it! Then we'll all be rich! Rich! RICH! Like Ricky and Lucy! Heeeeeeyyyyyy LUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCY! Listen, when you were a kid, did you ever want to do the rubba rubba with Lucy? Or Ricky? I wanted to do it with his congas, woo they were so sexy.... But now I'm a MAN and I have to do my rubba rubba with the rubber dolls down in the sex pit, because the only women up here are crazy and dangerous and carry guns! OH THE HORROR! I'd pole you ugly bastards, but you're too ugly! That just leaves the hamster, doesn't it? You found it, right? Good, good....

CM2: You are so full of shit.

JTG: Who's full of shit? I'm full of rubba rubba! Like Judy Garland in the tub tub tubba!

CM1: Moron.

CM2: Loser.

CM1: You couldn't find your own ass with a room full of horny drag queens.

CM2: Your mama's so ugly she has to let someone else look in the mirror for her!

JTG: One, one, one is the magic number! Two, two, two is the magic number! Three, three, three is the magic number! Four, four, four is the magic number! Five, five, five is the magic number! Six, six, six is the magic number! Seven, seven, seven is the magic number! Eight, eight, eight is the magic number! Nine, nine, nine is the magic number! Ten, ten, ten --

CM2: That's enough, we get the idea.

CM1: I say we waste him and smoke him. Or serve him for lunch tomorrow. Or something.

JTG: You know it's time for a cup of death when --

[film runs out, displaying a speckled white screen for a moment, then a brief glimpse of Motorhead on stage]

TMU: -- the MASTERPLAN is! By the holy celibate beard of Sun Fucking Ra, sister! Believe it!

Pym (dubious): Uh... sure you do. And you've been holding on to this valuable information all this time for exactly what reason?

TMU: Um... well... see, there's a long story about that. It involves my weiner. Are you sure you want to know?

Pym (sighing): Okay, I'll be the straight woman. Sure, go ahead.

TMU (gesticulating wildly): Okay, look, see now -- it wasn't my fault, okay? I can't be blamed! I was operating on faulty information, I trusted valuable operatives with carefully-trimmed supermarket coupons to protect me from the blastosphere, see? They had a job to do, and I had a job to do, and in the name of Ra, I did that job. It's not my fault that the interests of national security won't let me tell you what that job was, or how well I did it, or whether it was necessary to be done in the first place, or even what the lyrics to any random Burzum album are, but I assure you, it's of utmost importance for you to understand this! You must understand it! You WILL understand it! Even though I am bound by national law not to tell you even my title under the mechanics of, of, uh, the MASTERPLAN, I can assure you that my authority in these matters supersedes all other authority, even that of international law! Hah! You think your puny laws can hold me back, motherfucker? HAH! I have the will of Almighty Fucking God on my side, plus an army of angels with swords stained with the rich and saucy blood of a million infidels! Are you understanding me now, bitch? YOU WILL ALL DIE! I swear it's true! I... I... I can't free my mind! My ass can't follow! So when prisoners get beat by U.S. forces, it's not my fault! When countries get invaded over missing shit that turns up somewhere else, it's not my fault! When all the homies I hang out with start gettin' busted over shit, goddamn, it sure the fuck ain't my fault! I'm a righteous man, I know I'm doing the right thing, see, because I got the motherfucking will o' God on my side, see? Plus I'm carryin' a Glock and it's locked, so step back punk, don't be rollin' up with no sudden moves unless you got stock in the casket business, you know what I'm sayin'? So what I'm gettin' at, if you be scannin' my rhyme in the right time, yeah, is that I got some bad intelligence and if the people I worked for or with had more brainpower than a monkey humping a porcupine, they would have told me straight up righteous shit and my ass wouldn't be in such a motherfucking crack right now. And see, what I'm getting at, see, listen up close now, I'm on the mike so don't be bogartin' my space or you might get to see my Glock, okay? You think I'm frontin', you think I'm playin', you gonna find out I'm a world-class playa hata and you are going down, sister, and I'm gonna bathe in your fucking blood and rip out your kidneys and sell them on the black market. So hang on every word: I've known all along where the MASTERPLAN is, but I can't tell you because I forgot. And it's not my fault. Word up, see?

Pym (wearily consulting script): Gee, you... must... be... smoking... crack. You sound... just... like... fuck, somebody spilled... spilled...

TMU: Spilled what? What?

Pym: This is too gross. It looks like somebody whacked --

[abrupt cut to the middle of a television ad involving cars being dropped off buildings, explosions, and random gunfire as naked women wearing pillbox hats chant "Chanel... Chanel... Chanel..."]

Pym: I think we have a problem. Look. (points)

TMU: Is that who I think it is?

Pym: It sure ain't Donald --

[The lurid tones of Afroman's garish outer-space pimp outfit fills the screen as he begins to shake his booty and drop science in a voice loud enough to shatter bricks, like so:]

AM: I be the baddest fuckin' brother with the biggest fuckin' afro and the deepest hole o' soul from the motherfuckin' future! It ain't no fuckin' lie! I come today to drop science on your ass 'cause you know you're all gonna die! There's a plan! To the rhythm! It's gonna rock your body down! To your booty, to your booty, to your booty! Rooty tooty! Can you say hell yeah? It's gonna rock your body down to your motherfuckin' soul! Believe it, baby! And I tell you straight up right now, the cat you got running this fortress is too uptight, not so right, and way too WHITE! We need to get down with his ass! He needs the healing power of FUNK! So now, I'm telling you that in the name of Sun Ra, I'm about to hand him the hammer of funk!  Nut just any funk, but uncut funk! The whitest lines of the purest funk there ever was! The fucking fuel of the goddamn MOTHERSHIP! Then he's gonna free your ass so your MIND can follow! Dig it! DIG IT, soul brethren! This is the sound of history in the making! The revolution is NOW! The black man is going to RISE UP and take back what was stolen from him! No more shufflin' for the MAN!

Pym: What the fuck is this all about?

TMU: Black nationalism, I think.

AM (holding forth the hammer of funk): Go on, brother! Take it! You know you want it!

TMU (taking another hit of lengleaf): Sure, what the fuck. Anything for a laugh. (reaches for the hammer)

As he takes possession of the hammer, the room is filled with blue-white fire and the terrifying reek of ions imploding. With no will of his own, he swings the hammer.

AM: Everybody best be steppin' back! Make room for funk like you ain't never --

[abrupt cut to film threaded backwards, dark grainy stuff that could be intrepreted creatively as looking suspiciously like the magical disappearing V-POTUS while he's playing hide-the-salami with an IHOP waitress, playing for exactly 57 seconds]

Pym: Where's the rotator cuff? We need the rotator cuff, dammit. The death robot won't work without the fucking rotator cuff.

TMU: What rotator cuff?

Pym: You know, the rotator cuff. The big funny-looking thing that goes around the... um... the rotator.

TMU: Do you even know where the death robot is?

Pym: Um....

TMU: You don't, do you? And here you are worrying about fucking rotator cuffs. How about worrying about how we're gonna waste the Evil Penguin and his waddling, farting sidekick with the fucking trademarked name that I'm tired of writing? (beginning to rant) Do you know that the licensing department called up and said the fat little nightmare of a gene pool wanted to double the licensing fee for each and every single mention of Ozma's trademarked name? Fuck! Talk about cutthroat....

Pym: That reminds me, you got a letter last month from MISANTHROPIC ASSHOLE QUARTERLY. The mail clerk sent it to my room by mistake. I think that hideous accident with the exploding battery may have affected his eyesight....

TMU: Really? What did it say? Does it explain why I haven't gotten an issue in, like, six months?

Pym: Yeah. Apparently they counted up all the subscription money from all their subscribers and realized that you and the rest of their readers probably couldn't do jack-shit about it if they just skipped the country for someplace like Bolivia. So they did. They laughed at you and called you a sucker. They did thank you for the money, though.

TMU: You know, somehow that's not exactly surprising....

Pym: So you're dropping the trademarked name?

TMU: Oh, I'm gonna do a lot more than --

[jumping frames, out-of-sync sound, and deteriorating film stock is suddenly replaced by 22 seconds of an extremely blasphemous video of a nun being disemboweled in the middle of a blood ritual orgy involving muscular black men with enormous penises]

Pym (screaming): -- in my hair! GET THEM OUT OF MY HAIR!

A plague of locusts fills the room, squirming down into the shirts of everyone present. Screaming, chaos, and random gunfire reverberate through the small room The frenzied beating of wings grows heavier and more demonic as everyone but TMU huddles under a desk in pure, abject terror. Laughing, he swings the hammer again and they are standing at the edge of time, a flat and endless plain of shattered obsidian beneath their feet stretching to the horizon in all directions and nothing else but a cold, bloated sun hanging in the twilight sky. Catching the beat for real, they shuffle through epochs and disasters, blood and death and fire and vengeance flickering like fast-forwarded scenes in a grotesque parody of history and psychodrama. Burned bodies and titanic mountains of skulls tumble around them as the hammer of funk beats out the dance groove of the war machine....

TMU (dropping the hammer hastily): Yee, fuck this shit. That's too heavy for me.

AM (screaming through a haze of fire): Pick it up! Pick it up! MAKE THE FIRE STOP!

TMU: Sorry, no can do. National security interests, you know --

EP (motioning from the door): Ahem. Have you forgotten about us? (Ozma, his satanic sidekick with the atomic ass, scuttles up next to him.)

TMU: Hell no. In fact, I got plans for you. (whistles loudly)

Without warning, the Devil Kitty appears, turning to stone and blowing up macro-style. Before Ozma can react, the Devil Kitty leans forward and incinerates him with deadly beams of blue-white fire from his eyes.

Pym: Fuck. Color me impressed.

EP (staring at the pile of ash beside him): You... you... (growing enraged) YOU KILLED HIM!

TMU (sneering): Hell yeah. We're cold, brutah. Best not fuck with us, see? And I'm not even through yet. (yells) Yo, TODD! Lunchtime!

TTBMD bursts into the room with a hacksaw, landing on the EP's back. As the terrified fowl of eternal fucking darkness waddles madly around the room, TTBMD saws vigorously at the bird's right wing until he manages to rip it off in a giant spray of blood.

TTBMD: Hah! This will fit just perfect on the grill! (to TMU) Dude, you know where the salt is?

TMU: No. I don't even know where the MASTERPLAN is; what makes you think I know about the fucking salt?

TTBMD: Just asking, dude. (disappears with the EP's wing as the evil fowl howls with rage)

EP (turning to rage at TMU, spraying blood all over Pym): THAT'S IT! The gloves are fucking off now, you little shit! I'm going to turn the power of the Cosmic Utensil on you and turn you into radioactive dust!

TMU (reaching forward to slap him silly): Oh, get real. Check it out, Todd's back. Look what he brought.

TTBMD lurches into the room with the world's biggest bowl and a lighter. Slamming the bowl down on the floor, he bends down and scoops up Ozma's ashes, dumping them into the bowl. As the EP watches in outraged horror, they smoke the dead beetle's ashes until they're so high they should be broadcasting satellite transmissions.

EP: This is obscene! This is a travesty! I'm appalled! And you know you're sick when even the fowl of eternal fucking darkness is offended!

TMU (lurching around the room wildly as Todd slips out the door): Oh... oh... oooo, the colors... such pretty colors... I am one with the cockroaches! I am one with the ramen noodles I spilled on the kitchen floor last week! I'm one with the tile pattern in Alicia Witt's bathroom! I'm with you in Chicago! I'm with you in Boise! I'm with you in the land of locust poo! My brains have gone on vacation, it is true, I can tell you know because I love you all! I love you so much that I may have to cut off your heads and bathe in your blood! (begins firing his gun with indiscriminate zeal) Yes! YES! I want to see you DANCE for Ra! I declare before you all now that I am the very soul of Ra, the second coming of the atomic black Jesus, and my word is LAW! Give me ice cream sandwiches or I'll bomb your country into the stone age! Yip yip, I'm feelin' frisky now.... Hoo hah, some science is comin' up like a good belch... Save your pennies! Floss after every meal! Ramen is the tool of the devil! If you have ever eaten ramen, you are going to HELL and nothing will save you! Even Jesus doesn't like ramen! It's a tool of the devil, I'm telling you! Look at the strands and you'll see SATAN written on them! It's true! I saw it in the Book of the Revelation! Well, I'm pretty sure it was there... maybe it was the TV GUIDE I'm thinking of.... Ra! Ra! Oh my bleeding sasquatch in the frozen tundra of heavy metal love, where there were once three lovely maggots fellating each other as the bombs fell -- I ask you, I beseech of you, in the name of Ra I ask you, come on Ron, come on, let's tell them Ron, get that guitar ready Ron, I mean you got to tell them, got to tell them, I'm going to tell them, come on Ron, come on, I'm gonna tell them, get ready 'cause I'm gonna tell 'em, you tell 'em Ron, come on Ron, come on come on come on come on set my invisible pussy on fire in the name of cheese sticks! BARK! WOOF! There are seven varieties of seven curses in seven languages written on seven tiles in seven bathrooms in seven nations, and they are all part of a numeric code that, when added together, will provide the access code to the Doomsday Device. The end is near! It's the day after the end of the world! Didn't you know that? So come on, come on, come on Ron, let's get it on, nuke sleaze city here I come in my gold-rimmed Eldorado, no scratch that, here I come in my motherfucking pants, let's see you do something about that, hell wants to give me a medal for the fuck job I'm going to give to you poozle-abusers! IT IS TRUE! Do not doubt! No! Do not be deceived! I am the one true voice in the wilderness! I am powered by lengleaf! The dead speak through me! I won your god in a poker game and traded him back for something more useful, namely more lengleaf! You better fucking fear me, I've got the MASTERPLAN lying around here somewhere and it's all mine! Woo! Gotta tell ya! Smoking dead beetles sure gets you fucked up in a major way! I'm digging this action! Know where I can get more of this good shit?

The EP launches himself at TMU with blind, incoherent rage.

EP: That's it! I'm going to tear you a new --

[white glare of empty film is replaced by blurry close-up images of grotesquely wounded soldiers dying slowly in a VA ward; the film moves slowly for what seems like an eternity]

JG: Ah seen da MOON all white an' PRETTY --

TMU (slapping him upside the head): Hush up with that shit, hear? We got a new mandate, okay? We don't beat riffs into the ground now, see? Never mind that Zeni Geva rocks your fucking dick off with their minimalist riff-pummel and the sheer brass balls it takes to play a riff over and over for a couple of days, we're not down with that style right now. That is so fucking last week, dig? No, now we're down with shock and awe. That's our mandate now, motherfucker: Shock and fucking awe.

Pym: Like the shock and awe we've been showing to Iraqi prisoners at that prison where Sadaam used to torture them too?

TMU: Just a few bad apples! Not reflective of the orchard! No sir!

Pym: Is admitting we're in deep shit part of the orchard over there?

TMU: Hell no. We're gonna keep on doing what we do best: Killing everything that moves until they either do what we want or there aren't any more of them left. It's a foolproof plan, dig? What can possibly happen?

Pym: Um... we might lose?

TMU: NEVER HAPPEN!

EVERYBODY: Are you smoking crack or what?

TMU (irritated): NO! Now stop asking! (waves gun around wildly) Anybody got a problem with that? Huh? Huh?

(silence)

TMU: All right, then. (turning to Juan, who suddenly looks most nervous) So, Juan. What's the story here? What's the deal? Is there some reason you can't get your turds together and, you know, splice the narrative into some semblance of coherent order so maybe people can tell what the fuck is going on?

JG (weeping): I am so sorry, sir!  It is my drinking, I know it is out of control -- I beg you to forgive me! 

TMU (considers): Okay. I'm feeling generous today. I'll forgive you. (draws his gun and shoots Juan between the eyes) That's how we forgive stupid people where I come from.

Pym (wide-eyed): Fuck! You killed him? What the fuck for?

TMU (scratching head): You know, I'm not sure. It seemed like the thing to do at the time....

Pym: You know, sometimes I worry about your --

[the screen is filled with a series of still pictures of prisoners being tortured by guards using clubs and chains]

TMU -- underwear. The frilly kind, the pink pair, you know, the one with the heart on the front and the target on each cheek.

Pym (staring at him): Um, how... exactly... do you know about my underwear?

TMU: If I told you, you would have to kill me. And I'm pretty sure that's not in the script. (worried) Is it?

Pym (looking): No. (unholsters gun) It tells me to club you repeatedly with my gun strictly for my own amusement.

TMU: It does not! Let me see that! 

Pym (laughing): Make me, runtboy. Come and get the script if you're so tough. (holds the script up high out of reach, laughing in diabolical fashion)

TMU (shrugging): Okay. (He aims high and puts a bullet through her hand, sending the script fluttering to the ground. He reaches out and catches it, flipping through the pages as Pym shrieks, painting the walls with a steady stream of blood from her amputated wrist.)

Pym: OH GOD! Jesus! Fuck! Oh fuck! WHAT DID YOU DO -- (screams as she stumbles into a glass door, sending long and jagged spears of glass into her right leg)

TMU (still reading): See, there's nothing in here about shooting me....

Pym (falling to the floor, screaming): Oh God, I can't stand up... don't just stand there, do something! Can't you see I'm dying?

TMU (oblivious): Anyway, I can't tell you why I know about the panties or how I found out about them; to do so would compromise the interests of national security. You'll just have to trust me, I need your panties. It's your patriotic duty to do as I tell you, no matter how moronic it sounds.

Pym (gurgling, lying motionless in a spreading pool of blood): Buh... I can't... buh... oh God... I can't see... buh... buh... (more gurgling)

TMU: Would you stop interrupting me, dammit? Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Everything I'm doing with your underwear is going to make us safer, see?

The door bursts open and a squadron of heavily-armed mercenaries storm into the room, immediately surrounding Pym with their machine guns pointed down at her. She stares, burbling unintelligibly, as the room fills up with the sound of gunfire. The roar goes on for a long time. When they leave, the walls are stained with blood; so is TMU, still ranting, apparently unaware that his audience is dead.

TMU: ... and the entire point is safety of the nation! We have to succeed! We have to press forward, even if it costs lives -- we can't pull out of the mission now! I know any minute now I'm going to remember where the MASTERPLAN is, then everything will be just fucking jake! Yeah, all I -- (glances down, finally realizes why Pym has been silent) I... uh-oh. Oh my. Why is it that everyone around me keeps turninng up dead?

(beat)

TMU: I sure hope I can find my way back to the food by the next issue....

COMPELLING EXPLANATIONS FOR INCREASINGLY DISTURBED BEHAVIOR [# 64]: We fade in on an elegant board room, vast and spacious, with tall ceilings, plush velvet chairs, dark crimson shag carpeting, and plenty of tasteful corporate artwork lining the walls. The east wall is one solid pane of glass overlooking New York City from a great height. In the center of the room is a long mahogany table; a white-haired man in an expensive-looking suit with gold cufflinks sits at the head, flanked by a man and woman dressed with equally impressive taste. All of them look exceptionally conservative. On the table before them is a titanic stack of reports. At the other end of the table, far away but still close enough to smell the potent reek of lengleaf, the Moon Unit slouches in his chair, sullen and openly hostile. Ordered to appear before The Board dressed appropriately and on his best behavior, he has nevertheless shown up wearing his usual attire of deteriorating steel-toed work shoes, unwashed jeans, and an offensive Zeni Geva t-shirt. His hair is short; his beard is long and wild. His black leather jacket is festooned with a staggering array of patches boasting his worship of bands like Burzum, Abruptum, Slayer, Corrupted, Khanate, and Cub. In the center of his jacket is the enigmatic face of Sun Ra, and beneath it the words: "It's the day after the end of the world! Don't you know that yet?" He appears to be somewhere between thoroughly comatose, possibly from excessive lengleaf consumption, and completely psychotic. He waits for The Board to make the first move, his exsquisitely ruined shoes propped up on the table in an insolent manner.

CHAIRMAN: All right, all right.... (eyes the clock, a hand-built Swiss grandfather clock built in the 1800s) Did you lose your suit, by chance?

TMU: No.

CHAIRMAN: Ah... then where is it? I seem to specifically remember insisting in my memo that you show up dressed like a proper employee, and not...not... not a walking advertisement for Satan.

TMU: I sold it. For lengleaf.

CM: You sold it! For lengleaf!

TMU: Are we playing the repeat-what-I-say game today?

FEMALE ASSISTANT: You're determined to make this difficult, aren't you? Very well. Do you know why we've called you here this morning?

TMU: Uhhhhh... you wanted to remind me how stinky L.A. is? Seriously, you have way too many people in this city, and from the smell of it, I'd say a lot of them need to invest in Right Guard.

MALE ASSISTANT (enraged): You... you insolent little worm!

TMU: Are we gonna get on with this? I got a hot game of VICE CITY waiting for me back at the Hellfortress....

MA: If we let you return, that is!

TMU: Like anybody else is going to take the job. (studies them carefully, then laughs) It's true, isn't it? You offered the job to somebody behind my back and they wouldn't take it, right?

FA: We're not at liberty to discuss personnel issues --

CM (cutting her off): This is beside the point! We have some serious issues to discuss with you. For instance, the question of why so many of our employees keep turning up dead after being stationed at the Hellfortress.

TMU (shrugging): Shit happens. Mistakes were made.

FA: Shit happens? That's all you can say? After killing TASCAM-Girl, the agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E., Pym, the Evil Penguin and his trademarked sidekick, and even Juan the Gardener?

TMU: They were gettin' jiggy with their attitudes, now they're not, okay?

MA: Sir, remember when I warned you about hiring brilliant but erratic loose cannons? I hate to say I told you so, but --

CM: SILENCE! (glaring at TMU) So do you know where the MASTERPLAN is?

TMU: Um....

CM: You know, the MASTERPLAN that was stored safely away in Juan the Gardener's alcoholic skull, waiting for retrieval, right up until you blew his brains out all over the wall of the editing bay?

TMU: At least his replacement is doing a much better job of keeping the story linear....

MA: I don't suppose you had the foresight to make a copy of the MASTERPLAN and store it somewhere safe, did you?

TMU: Of course I did. It's hidden away somewhere so safe it might as well be locked down at Fort Knox.

FA: Ah! And where is it, then?

TMU: Um... I forget. Excuse me for a second, will you? (pulls out a lighter and pipe and inhales a bowl of lengleaf, expelling it all in one giant cloud)

FA: I'm not seeing this. I... am...not... seeing this.

TMU: Of course you're not seeing it. There's too much smoke. (begins coughing violently)

CM: I find this cavalier attitude toward your continued employment very disturbing, sir.

TMU: Well, you know, life is hard and all that.

CM: Give me one good reason I shouldn't fire you right now!

TMU: Because I'm the only person on earth who has a snowball's chance in hell of recovering the MASTERPLAN. Plus nobody else will take this shitty job.

MA (sighing): He does have a point.

FA: But how can we let him get away with such grossly unprofessional behavior? Look at all these reports of... of... fucking up! All the time! Everywhere!

TMU (looking interested): You got reports? Really? Like what?

FA: Like this. (picks up report) "Report from unspecified eyewitness: Last night, after TMU met Agent Smolken at the edge of the Great Forest to discuss wolf feeding tips, he went off into the forest and smoked lengleaf for several hours. Then he took off all his clothes, ran with the wolves until they found a flock of sheep, and he joined them in savagely slaughtering and eating them. And he hogged the portions, too." (throws sheet down in anger) We can't have our employees running naked with wolves and eating livestock, dammit! Do you know how much it cost us to buy off that farmer?

TMU: Do I look like I care? He should have done a better job of guarding the sheep. (pauses) And his daughter. (pauses again) And her pill stash. Did you know that if you take ringworm pills and Xanax and cough medicine that demons will pour from your pores like great clouds of black smoke?

FA: Oooookay....

CM: And then there's this detailed report concerning the constant level of deafening noise and vibration emanating from the Hellfortress nearly 24 hours a day.

TMU: The UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE has to rehearse, okay? We can't be going out doing live shows and stepping on our dicks, all right? It's all about the discipline.

CM: You are aware, of course, that your horrible noise has reportedly caused the extinction of four local species of wildlife? And that the citizens of the nearest town, five miles away, have started a petition to have the Hellfortress demolished, preferably by a nuclear air strike?

TMU: Any animal that doesn't respect our sound doesn't deserve to live, dammit. As for the hicks, they're just bluffing, they don't have the stones for it. Trust me.

MA: And what about this report concerning you and Agent Sleemer and one, ah, "Hellfarmer," whoever that is, stealing an Otari tape deck from the School For Young and Pregnant Wayward Christian Girls and raiding a pharmacy at gunpoint, then spending several hours at a secret location in a perverse and illegal recording session featuring multiple copyright violations, nude cheerleaders, and... and... (squints at document) ...and "illegal consumption of several cans of inhalants"?

TMU: I'm just a fool for those Whip-Its, what can I say?

FA (frostily): By the way, you should know that your craven attempt to have several crates of nitrous oxide shipped here failed. And don't think we missed that Real Doll shipment, either. Or the enormous order of fetishwear for her.

CM: What about the illegally-diverted shipment of M-16s and enough ammunition to take on all of China?

MA: We've never been able to establish for certain whether that was ordered by him or TASCAM-Girl.

FA: And what's with this staggering postal bill? You aren't selling off the Hellfortress one piece at a time on Ebay, are you?

TMU (looking innocent): Hell no. Would I do a thing like that?

CM: Make a note to check Ebay from now on. All right, let me get to the point: Your performance so far has been deplorable. You have a bad attitude, poor taste in clothes, ineffective leadership potential, and you appear to be so addicted to lengleaf that you would certainly sell all of our secrets for another hit on the pipe. Do you disagree so far?

TMU: Actually, I already sold....

CM: I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT! (muttering profanities) Why must you be so difficult?

TMU: It's my nature. "Born to lose, live to win." That kind of thing, you know. Plus you all bore the fuck out of me and I'd rather smoke lengleaf than do whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing, which is hard to tell, since the script is missing again.

FA (puzzled): But... didn't you get it from Pym when you shot her?

TMU: Yes, but... um... mistakes were made.

CM (sighing heavily): All right, you force us to call your drummer. Sir, can you tell us...?

TTBMD (over static-laden line): Yeah, dude, here's what happened. We were sitting around afterwards, trying to clean the blood off the pages and get them back in order, and he dropped a lit cigarette on them and started a fire that ended up torching one whole wing of the fifth sublevel. You should do something about that, too, because it really reeks down there now.

CM (holding his head in his hands, beginning to weep): Please tell me you at least read it before... before....

TTBMD: Oh, we were way too wasted to read. We had a hard enough time remembering the right order for the page numbers. Page numbers crawl off the page and hide from you when you've done too many pills, dude.

CM: Oh, I can't hear any more of this. (cuts the connection)

FA: So does anybody know where the Headless Sno-Cone Girl is? Isn't she supposed to preventing this from happening in the first place?

MA: She goes by Antu now. She's been locked up in her private suite for nearly a year now, listening to Funkadelic. All attempts to access the room have failed, and she has refused to answer all attempts at communication. Frankly, the only way we know she's alive at all is through the use of highly sensitive heat sensors and sophisticated microwave tracing equipment....

TMU: You know, you could just stand in the hall and listen -- she plays those records loud enough to be heard outdoors, and if she can change records, she's obviously not fucking dead, is she? Hold on, bowl movement. (lights another bowl, generating huge clouds of pungent smoke)

MA: I can't believe I'm watching you commit a felony. In public. With total disregard for the law.

TMU (shaking head, then expelling smoke): No felony. (coughs violently) Lengleaf... is from another planet, fool. It's not covered by the Federal Narcotics Act or any state law or city ordinance. (stops for another coughing fit) I can smoke my fucking weight in this stuff and... and... (stops to think) You know, I think I already do smoke my weight in this stuff....

FA: Shocking! Does your woman know about this?!?!

TMU: Uhhhh, I think she's been briefed. Whoa. (stares at her intently)

FA: I... I mean, you... there's the matter of... WILL YOU STOP THAT?

TMU: Stop what?

FA: Staring at me like that!

TMU: Oh. I was, uh, just looking at the... well, I mean that radioactive glow... um... maybe we shouldn't talk about that. Never mind. Forget I said anything.

CM (motioning impatiently): Can we get on with this? I have a shipping division to fire.

FA: Yes, yes, decisions to make and all that... plus our valued employee here gives me a serious case of the creeps. Let's get on with it. (shuffles papers) Now there's the matter of this... peculiar shipment that just came in. The one with the, aaaah, the dead beetles. Five thousand of them, according to the packing invoice.

TMU (sitting up): Beetles? The beetles are here? There's how many?

FA: Five thousand. I assume you know about this, then?

TMU: Five thousand? But I only... (stops, nodding) Okay, five thousand. Yeah. Five... fucking... thousand. Oh, this is going to be soul-shattering....

MA (looking unsettled): I'm not sure I like the sound of this.

FA: Before I authorize payment for these, um, beetles, do you mind telling us what they're for?

TMU: What they're for? Uh, they're for... uhhhh... it's, um... um... it's a ritual thing. You wouldn't understand.

MA (frowning): Ritual? As in a religious ceremony?

TMU (beaming): Exactly! You've got it right there! It's a religious thing, so you have to accommodate me, dig? Federal laws against discrimination and all that, so sorry....

FA: All right, all right, you get your beetles. I'm sure I don't even want to know what you're going to do with them, do I?

TMU: Probably not. Besides, part of our religion is that we can't tell you about our religion. "First rule of Fight Club: Don't talk about Fight Club." Get it? Are you down with the crown?

CM: More and more I wish we had hired someone who spoke English.

FA: And wasn't completely psychotic.

TMU: Yeah, well, people in hell want ice water too, you know. (gets up, starts to leave)

CM: Oh. And there's one more thing.

TMU (stops at the door): Yeah?

CM: What's with this damn-fool business of soliciting donations for the Roll Call of the Devil Kitty?

TMU (turning around to face them): Oh, you found out about that, huh? Well, listen. See, it's like this, motherfucker. I ain't gonna be... your candyman... no more. (piano begins to descend from the ceiling) I'm tired of this pissy-payin' gig, I got bills to pay, lengleaf connections to make, gear to buy... I can only steal so much shit, dammit, and the electric company won't take my blood-stained, soiled twenties, dig? (begins playing "Night Moves," badly) So I'm trollin' for souls now, doing the work of the Devil Kitty. You'll have to check it out, dude. It's a sale, sure, but it's a righteous sale. You get so much more value for your bling-bling with the Devil Kitty than you do with the other... you know... false gods. Yeah. (humming)

CM (stiffly): I'm sure I don't even want to understand what you're babbling about, you hoodlum.

TMU: Don't be gettin' your Armani panties all in a wad, it's got nothing to do with you. Although since you've mentioned it, I should point out here that the first name has been added to the Roll Call of the Devil Kitty. (turns his enraptured face to the ceiling) And now, here to tell us all just what Daniel Bentley is getting for the twenty grand he selflessly donated via Paypal, ladies and gentlemen... wait for it... Don Pardo, tell Mister Bentley just what he's won!

DP (booming): Absolutely! Here's what you can expect to find waiting for you in the afterlife, Daniel Bentley! A spacious, 20,000-square foot apartment in the Temple of the Devil Kitty on Saturn, complete with solid-gold fixtures, an Olympic-sized hot tub, a backyard pool the size of a small subdivision, and a barbeque grill big enough to cook dinosaurs! An upper balcony with a full orchestra, bar, and a spectacular view of Saturn's rings! A nude, horny supermodel or porn starlet in every bedroom! A sitting room decorated in rich Corinthian leather, perfect for having dinner with the Devil Kitty! And -- can you handle it? -- a full, matching set of Smithsonian luggage! Perfect for those cruise trips on the seas of Saturn! And best of all, ringside seats to the carnage when Ragnarok arrives, and the Devil Kitty eats the human race like they were crunchy little tater tots!

MA (envious): Wow. I'm impressed. I'm gonna go make a donation as soon as this is over.

CM (glaring): No you're not. Don't encourage this thug, dammit!

TMU: Did you know that Saturn has 30% less density than water? It's the solar system's biggest ice cube -- you could float it on water, if you found a really big ocean. Of course, in a metaphorical sense, Saturn is just the ice cube in Sun Ra's martini....

CM (visibly irritated): What the fuck does that have to do with anything, dammit?

TMU: Nothing. It just needed to be said. By the way, who picks out your terrible ties? You got that for a birthday present from your kids, didn't you? I sure hope so....

FA: You're very, very weird.

TMU: Funny, that's what my girlfriend said....

EVERYTHING FALLS APART [# 65]: It's 4:30 in the morning. The room is dark, the only light coming from a slice of window visible beneath the blinds. A cat sits on the windowsill, blinking; below him, two lumpy shapes are covered with a giant quilt. One side of the room is taken up entirely by the Cabinet of Doom and the Sunn; on the other side, the giant painting of Sun Ra that covers the entire wall makes it nearly impossible to see that there is, in fact, a door beside the eternally enigmatic face of the Atomic Black Jesus. As a train rumbles by outside, the shapes stir.

"Uhhh... quit hogging the covers."

The only reply is a strange mumbling that sounds like "I'd put them all to sleep" over the twanging sound of a poorly-tuned ukelele.

"Dear, how many times do I have to tell you to leave the... hey! What happened to your... your BEARD? It's even bigger... in fact, it's HUGE...."

The shape wiggles, but the only response is: "Somewhere there's a king...."

"Hey!" The woman shouts as she throws back the sheet and sits up. "That's not my boyfriend's beard! What have you done with my boyfriend's beard!?!?"

The room is filled with diabolical laughter as the shape beneath the sheet tosses it away and stands. The Moon Unit's significant other stares up in mute horror at the shape before her, a man so tall, so huge, that he has to crouch to fit into the room. He is encased in body armor, the leather straps soaked with blood; the thigh-high demon boots on his feet snap and hiss as he shuffles on the bed. The tiny ukelele in his hands looks like a cheap toy purchased in a Mexican tourist shop for about five bucks. As he glows, radioactive with sinister intent, she cannot decide which is more terrifying: The sneering, painted face, elaborately fashioned to resemble the bassist of KISS back when they were still good, or the terrifying haystack of graying hair that fills the rest of the room, swaying with a malevolent life of its own. She recognizes him immediately as the unpredictable and easily-provoked God of Chaos, armed with brain-freezing riffs and carnivorous hair -- the mighty and fearsome King Buzzo, leader of the Melvins.

KB: Bwwwwwaaahahahahahahaha! Funny you should ask that. Where is that little maggot, anyway? I have a bone to pick with him. Maybe even two or three. (sniffs haughtily) If you're lucky, I'll let you keep the bones that are left after I crush his tiny soul.

TMUSO: Oh, don't make me laugh. Look, this is between you guys, okay? Now get the hell out of here so I can get some sleep.

KB (irritated): I don't think you understand, foolish mortal! Because I am omniscient, I am also in the way of knowing that your boyfriend with the beard is getting so desperate about finding some good riffs that he's thinking of stealing mine. And I'm here to tell him to think again. Unless he'd like one of these demon boots up his ass. (shakes a boot saucily; the boot's teeth open wide as the boot hisses)

TMUSO (not impressed): Whatever! It's between you nebbishes! Now scram! (begins beating on him vigorously with a broom)

KB: Hey! HEY! Don't be getting dirt on the costume, I just had this cleaned!

Suddenly the broom is sucked whole into the terrifying thicket of hair atop King Buzzo's head. She watches with horror as gruesome crunching sounds come from deep within the mass of hair as it weaves and thrashes violently. The hair pooches in, then OUT -- and ejects a cloud of broom hairs. King Buzzo's satanic laugh reverberates through the apartment as she stares with rage at the broom hairs settling on the bed and floor.

TMUSO: You -- you -- ARRRRGH! I just vacuumed in here! That's it! ALVIN!

Without warning, the tiny cat on the windowsill leaps at King Buzzo, looking bizarrely like a flying squirrel, its mouth open wide to reveal row after row of four-inch fangs and even longer claws. Its eyes are filled with a awe-inspiring, psychopathic rage. It disappears into the thicket of hair, yowling and writhing.

KB: AAAAAIEEE! Get it off me! AAAAAH! (begins staggering around wildly)

TMUSO: MOZI!

The bed is lifted off the ground and overturned as The Devil Kitty emerges from his hiding place, rapidly growing into a titanic stone gorgon. The emotion in its eyes is a disturbing mix of irritation, boredom, and amusement as it eyes King Buzzo, still trying to extricate the Devil Kitty's assistant from his hair. Suddenly he begins to vomit, a revolting and smelly stream of hot, steaming lava boiling from his mouth and immediately turning to stone over all it touches.

KB: Holy shit! I've had enough of this. Demon feet, carry me AWAY! (bolts from the room, his hair still writhing)

TMUSO: After him! EAT HIM! But find out what he did with the beard first!

KB (racing down the hall into the Office of Doom): Man, these people are seriously fucked up. Where the hell is that little midget -- AHA! Hiding in the closet, huh? Well, I gotcha NOW --

His exclamation of triumph turns to a wail of surprise that echoes endlessly as he falls through space and time, landing on his side in a featureless hallway somewhere in the Hellfortress. As he hits the floor, the vast bush of hair on his head is flattened for a moment, revealing the Devil Kitty's assistant. As usual, he looks puzzled. Then he bolts down the hallway, a howling blur of fur and claws, his blood pumping with a high-octane mix of nitroglycerine and pure methamphetamine. Before the mighty King Buzzo can even see where he's going, he's already gone, his agitated meowing fading rapidly.

KB (getting to his feet): Okay, this is getting ridiculous. (looks around) I can't decide if I'm an unwilling participant in bad meta-fiction, or if somebody put something in the brownies backstage. I'm guessing the latter. (stops to listen to the distant sound of steady pounding) Well, well, the God of Thunder is here too. Maybe he knows what the hell is going on.

Wishing he had something to read, King Buzzo descends deeper and deeper into the subterranean levels of the Hellfortress, letting his ears be his guide as the God of Thunder hammers out heart-stopping beats somewhere far below. The sound grows louder as he burrows deeper into the earth, much louder, and when he strolls out of the stairwell on a level some fifty floors beneath the ground to find dead bodies scattered arcross the hall, their skulls exploded like ripe melons, he knows he's getting close. Down here, the sound is so immense that the walls shake and plaster dust fills the hallway. King Buzzo returns to the stairway and continues to descend, humming along as the iron stair case rattles and shakes in time with the titanic beat.

At last, he finds himself at the bottom of the stairwell. He thinks it may well be possible that he is at the very bottom of the Hellfortress, on a level so remote and so secure that its workers are rumored to live there, spending their lives as well-protected moles in exchange for their services in various hush-hush covert operations spearheaded by the military. Normally he would have already had to bathe in the blood of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of highly-trained soldiers armed with M-16s and Uzis, but as he has already deduced, the soldiers are all dead. Whistling, he steps into the dim hallway, illuminated only by the light coming from one open door at the end. The sound emerging from this door is so enormous, so total, that the walls and celing of the hallway have crumbled and buckled, leaving a thick layer of rubble and plaster on the floor. The plaster dust swirls through the hallway, white and ghostly. As the hallway shakes, the vibrations are so intense that King Buzzo doesn't even have to walk to be carried toward the light. Rushing through the smoke-filled hallway toward the blinding light, his hair streaming back and belching fire, King Buzzo roars with triumph as he bursts through the curtain of white and lands, rolling, in the easiest room in hell.

KB (sitting, shaking his head): If this is what drugs do for you, no wonder our wannabe-roadie blew his brains out.

He looks around the room, a dull gray pillbox of unpainted concrete that stretches unbroken in all directions as far as the eye can see. Twenty feet above him, the concrete ceiling is every bit as featureless and bland as the concrete on which he sits. Somewhere ahead of him, far on the horizon, he can dimly see a shape moving. Getting up and dusting off his demon boots, he sets out across the concrete wasteland.

He walks. And walks. And walks. For a really long time. Long enough to start thinking he can actually see cactus and sagebrush in the distance, and a pale but punishing sun wavering behind a shimmering heat mirage. Then he realizes it's just the heat and the constant, dizzying vibration coming at him from all directions as the dark, ritualistic pounding reverberates off the ceiling, the floor, and the distant walls. As he walks, he mutters: "I'm definitely bringing that idiot's skull back in my pocket for this. Christ, I'm gonna be late for rehearsal, that goddamn motherfucker...." Shaking his head, he presses onward. Eventually the shape grows larger, then slowly a picture emerges as he closes the distance between himself and the God of Thunder: A giant perched on a tiny stool in his nothing but his undies, pounding out grotesque rhythms on a bewildering array of thick stainless steel drums. He is almost entirely hidden under a sloping mountain of shattered wooden sticks. He does not see them; even if he did, they would mean nothing to him. He is lost in The Beat, his inner pig bounding free in the vast and limitless space between each ear-rupturing clap of thunder. So intent is he on capturing that magic moment again and again, bending time and thunder to his will just because he can, that he utterly fails to notice King Buzzo's arrival until the Demon grows impatient and raps on one of the drums.

DC (looking up): Dude! Do you have any idea where we are? And why are we dressed up like KISS? Is this some kind of bad flashback?

KB: No... no, my friend. I fear... it is something much worse. (stroking his chin thoughtfully as the majestic forest of hair above him sways)

DC: Are you sure it can be worse? That sounds pretty bad, actually.

KB: No, I believe we have stepped into another dimension, Dale. A place where things are not as they appear. Where time and space have no boundaries. Where the motto is... how low can you go? Yes... I believe we're trapped in the bowels of... the Moon Unit Zone.

DC: Dude, that is so unspeakably bad. I can't believe you said something that stupid.

KB (shrugging): What can I do? We've been hijacked, Dale -- don't you see? This moron, this fool, this tiny insect, this babbling idiot... this repugnant slug was sitting around thinking of stealing my riffs, so I had to come protect my reputation. God, I just know he's going to play them wrong....

DC: But everybody plays your riffs wrong. Even our dead wannabe-roadie played them wrong, and he got paid lots of money for it, too.

KB: Yes, but he is no ordinary insect. He is one of the operators of the UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE, and an extremely unstable operator at that right now. Even worse, he has the unholydeathguitar.

DC (eyes wide): Not... not THAT!

KB: Yes! So we have to be careful, see? If we allow him to play one of my riffs -- say, the one on "Hooch" that gets him all hot and bothered -- and he plays it wrong on the unholydeathguitar, it could open a fissure in all time and space. In fact, if he plays it wrong deliberately, and does it just the right way, it could tilt the earth right off its axis and plunge our planet into the sun. Hell, he almost does that anyway just tuning up through the Cabinet of Doom -- imagine what would happen if he put some effort into something approaching a real riff.

DC (horrified): Buzz, I'm confused. That didn't make a fucking bit of sense.

KB: Don't you see? That's the POINT! This jackass somehow found out I was coming to kick his ass, and he beat us to the punch by going beyond the Wall of Sleep to attack us on the Dream Plane! We're dreaming! It's all a horrible nightmare! We're puppets in a grim and savage nightmare in the mind of a psychotic, do you understand? Well, it's going to take more than that to stop... the Melvins!

They pause while the audience applauds, with a snippet of "Love Theme of The Melvins" playing in the background.

DC: I'm real confused here, Buzz. Can I go back to playing drums now?

KB (clapping a hand on his shoulder): Sure, Dale. Just leave everything to me. Oh, by the way -- do you have the "asshole-be-good" stick handy?

DC: Sure thing. (hands over a stout oak walking stick)

KB: Excellent! Well, I'm off to beat the living shit out of the jackass in charge around here. Play on, all right?

The room, and the earth beneath it, begins to move as the God of Thunder goes back to work. King Buzzo stands a prudent distance away, reading intently from a battered field-guide manual. He reads a passage carefully, then returns the book to one of his boots.

KB: "Search for its most obvious trail," huh? That should be easy enough. (begins to sniff the air, nodding as he catches the faint aroma of lengleaf) Here we go... here we go....

He moves deeper into the room, following the sick and tainted smell of lengleaf, the visionary tobacco of the Elder Gods, imported from the darkest and most remote of trading posts in the known universe, a specialty shop somewhere on the Plains of Leng. He is well aware, of course, that the Moon Unit bears an overweening fondness for the tobacco that was originally meant to be smoked only by the likes of Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, and Shub-Niggurath, the Goat of a Thousand Young. How the Moon Unit first came across the intoxicating leaf is a mystery enshrouded in darkness, although there are persistent rumors that the Headless Sno-Cone Girl used her military connections to have him permanently hooked on it for fear of what he might do in one of his terrifying rages while locked in the impregnable safety of the Hellfortress. Given the fact that whole floors of the Hellfortress are devoted to rooms filled with loaded M-16s, sonic death cannons, and other top-secret military ordnance, this would indeed seem like a sensible precaution. King Buzzo has heard this rumor, but he knows it isn't true. He doesn't know the truth -- but he knows it's not that fable.

He's heard them all -- wild, lurid tales of the Moon Unit showing up in bank vaults armed with only the unholydeathguitar and somehow walking away with millions. "He played this horrible, horrible chord, over and over, grinning like a mad dog, and... and... and it was like I couldn't move!" Or the time he supposedly showed up at a casino absolutely reeking of lengleaf, held upright by two stone-faced gargoyles, and walked away owning the casino, the land it was on, and the casino owner's nifty little boots. Or the rumor that he once flattened a nuclear test site by playing the unholydeathguitar through a hundred cabinets stacked up in the desert like an amplified Stonehenge. Others spoke fearfully of his frequent spells of demonic possession, or the wild and terrifying beard, from which horrible shrieking bats were often seen to emerge in wave after shrieking wave. He had even once listened as a wild-eyed woman told him, while constantly forking the sign of the evil eye, about a night in which she'd seen the Moon Unit smoking the world's largest bowl with the Horned One himself, as they munched on barbequed human femurs. He had heard all the stories of the Moon Unit's excesses, and even knew which ones were true. He also knew that the man's near-constant consumption of lengleaf was rumored to have left him nothing more than the shell of a man. While he knew how the Moon Unit's obsession with the interstellar leaf had begun, he was more interested in the runt's present location. After all, he had an asshole-be-good stick handy, waiting to be used.

King Buzzo comes to a halt. "Wait a minute," he says. "I thought we were in the present. What's this past-tense bullshit? What's going on here? Hello? Does anybody around here know what they fuck they're doing? And what's with that weird wailing noise in the distance? Think I can get an answer anytime soon?"

He is startled by a humming sound a few feet away, and stares, blinking, as a white flash of light fades to reveal a floating egg with pipecleaner arms, stubs for legs, and a bowler hat perched on top. In one gloved hand the egg carries a tiny briefcase.

KB: What the fuck?

EOD: Good evening, King Buzzo. I'm the Egg of Destiny, provider of services of all descriptions, licensed in all fifty states, seven continents, and five alternate timestreams. Sorry for the late arrival, but I'm moonlighting from my day gig. The traffic was simply frightful -- somebody blew up the monorail line again. They just got it repaired, and now they'll have to do it over. I should have seen it coming -- it's becoming quite predictable, I'm afraid.

KB: Uh... where's your day job?

EOD: In hell, of course. There I'm paid by the management to be a tour guide of sorts for the impressionable new arrivals and problem children, so to speak. Of course, like any good government employee, I'm only on the clock eight hours a day. The rest of the day, my rates are expensive... very expensive. But I'm worth it. Not just to the miserable damned, although they do provide me with a remarkable income -- no, the Devil himself finds me so useful that he turns a blind eye to the fact that I'm breaking every ethics rule in the book with my obscene cash discounts. Plus he knows what I really ought to be paying on my taxes. But that's okay; we cut a deal, so now I get to be a damned IRS agent's punishment. He alone will have the joy of sorting through my four million boxes of poorly-written receipts, all kept folded in tiny squares in origami envelopes, and dutifully recording the full contents of every single scrap of paper on stone with a chisel. For... all... eternity.

KB: Wow. Lucky him.

EOD: Yes, well, then he shouldn't have bought that subscription to BAREFOOT TEENAGE ANAL RUNAWAYS when he was on the right sound of the ground, am I right or am I right?

KB: Uhhhhh....

EOD (floating up close for an eyeless inspection): You aren't a subscriber to BAREFOOT TEENAGE ANAL RUNAWAYS, are you?

KB: Sorry, I read books like a real person. Hey, you mind telling me what the fuck is going on and why you're here? Is this a bad flashback or what? Did I eat some funny brownies in the dressing room? Damn, these are things I need to know, okay?

EOD: And that is exactly why I am here. (tips his hat) The Moon Unit acquired my services -- at great expense, I might add, although I'm fairly certain the money was financed by a highly illegal transaction involving a midnight shipment of dead beetles and M-16s. Well, I couldn't prove it, but I sense it, if you see what I mean. I know the man well enough, oh yes.

KB: You know this jackass?

EOD: For many years. I'm one of the primary delusions in his increasingly fevered mind, so of course I'm the first one he calls when the shit gets thick, if you'll be so kind as to pardon my wee vulgarity. Right now we are both a fanciful notion in his addled mind. To make matters worse, I'm not sure he knows that anymore. It's quite unsettling, I must say. I sure wish he would hurry up and find the MASTERPLAN before he cracks completely.

KB: And that puts you here exactly how?

EOD: Oh, I'm to be your guide to his desk down here in the easiest room in hell. As for that wailing noise you mentioned earlier, I'm afraid you'll have to get used to it -- it comes from the abyss, which looms down into eternal and unending darkness just a few feet behind his desk. (looks at his watch) Uh oh, we had best start moving. It appears we're running out of time....

KB: Running out of time? Until what? Until the jackass blows us all up?

EOD: Something like that, yes. (begins to float to the west while humming "Stairway to Heaven") Well? Are you going to follow me?

KB (sighing): Sure. Why not? I got up this morning just so I could follow a goddamn talking egg to the edge of the abyss. Wonderful. Just... fucking... wonderful.

EOD: Oh, hush. I don't know who's crankier, you or the Moon Unit.

KB: Oh, he's cranky besides being a loudmouth, huh?

EOD: He's extremely unwell, yes. Frankly, he's starting to make me a tad nervous. I think his grip on reality is getting a bit sweaty.

KB (laughs): That's a good one. (squints into the distance) So how big is this room, anyway?

EOD: Bigger than anyone has the time or inclination to measure. Smaller than it should be, according to the laws of physics. There's a guy in the room somewhere who claims the room is a different size every day. If we see him you can try to get him to explain it. I haven't seen him in a couple of years, though. It's possible he leaped into the abyss.

KB (looking around nervously): That's some kind of room. Don't you think this place is a little creepy?

EOD: Sure, but what choice do I have? I'm a prisoner in the Moon Unit's skull. You at least might get to leave when this jolly little skit is over, but I'm here for life. And the terrain is very... ah... unpleasant, shall we say. The bright lights and oasis nightspots are few in number here, if you know what I mean. Most of the time the lights are out around here -- the management turned them back on for your benefit, and they had to pull some serious strings to do it, too. The Moon Unit's gotten lax, yes, very lax indeed, about keeping up with the bills on the Hellfortress. And now that the management's caught him not only trolling for cash on company time via the Roll Call of the Devil Kitty, but actively selling off parts of the Hellfortress on Ebay, well... he's hiding down here for good reason, let me tell you. Supposedly the Chairman is so angry he's coming down here to personally throw the Moon Unit face-first into the abyss. I know for certain they're offering cash for his head on a stick; I saw the memo myself.

KB: How can you see? You don't have eyes, for God's sake. (blinks) Man, I still can't believe I'm talking to a floating egg.

EOD: Not just any egg, dammit! The Egg of Destiny! Get my name right, or... or... I'll sue you!

KB (sneering): So what? Go ahead. I'm invincible; after all, I'm in... the Melvins.

Both take five while the audience gives them a standing ovation while trumpets blares out the majestic strains of "It's Shoved" to enthusiastic cheers.

EOD: You know, something about that sounds familiar... Your dead pal the wannabe-roadie covered that or something, didn't he?

KB: Mmmmm, maybe "covered" isn't the right word... "ripped off" might be closer, I think.

EOD: Oh dear, yes, he did have a bad habit of doing that, didn't he?

KB: That's what junkies do, don't they?

EOD: You know, you have a point.

KB: Of course I do! I'm King Buzzo, leader of... the Melvins!

The audience roars with approval and begins tearing up the seats and hurling them from the balcony on the unsuspecting sheep foolish enough to pay double for floor seats.

EOD (envious): How do you do that? You must tell me. I want an audience too....

KB: Then work for it, you moron! Now take me to the Moon Unit; I'm tired and I've missed my rehearsal and I am a very pissed-off Melvin right now. I'd strangle you if you had a neck, okay? So take me to the jackass so I can beat him senseless!

EOD: You know, that puts me in a very bad position. He's sort of my meal ticket. Hell, he's the cornerstone of my very existence, if you think about it -- if I'm nothing but a hallucination in his demented mind, how will I exist if you beat him into unconsciousness?

KB: Plus throwing him into the abyss.

EOD: Yes, and there's that. (sighs) I'm afraid we have a problem, King Buzzo. I cannot take you to him unless you first relinquish your asshole-be-good stick.

KB: NEVER!

EOD: Then we must go back. Yes, we must hang our heads in shame, like failed Jedi, like the guys who didn't make the free-throw necessary to send the game into overtime, like the last guy to cross the line at the Olympics, like all the critics who spent the nineties gushing about Stone Temple Pilots and the Smashing Pumpkins like they were real bands, like the ones right now who persist in believe that Velvet Revolver and Guns and Roses have any relevance to today's world....

KB: All right, all right, I get the idea. Fine. Whatever. (tosses the stick to the ground) I don't need it anyway. Come on, you meddling idiot. Let's go talk to the jackass, shall we?

EOD: A capital idea, sir! Right this way....

As they continue to the far corner of the room, the temperature begins to drop steadily as the wailing in the distance grows louder. King Buzzo shudders as he realizes what the sound is -- the pained and grief-striken cries of the damned, reverberating up from the bottom of the abyss. Far in the distance, he sees a man at a desk surrounded by what appear to be mounds of dirt. He works intently, picking at something, then flicking something over his shoulder and into the abyss.

KB: What the hell is he doing?

EOD: I'm sure I don't know. We'll find out soon enough. (whistling)

Sure enough, when the finally reach the Moon Unit's desk, it becomes horribly clear what he is doing. He sits in a chair next to a giant barrel full of dead beetles; they watch in morbid fascination as he pulls out a beetle, strips away its shell with one hand, and uses a pair of tweezers to pluck out the beetle's eyes and toss them over his shoulder. Only then does he toss the eyeless beetle into what must be the world's largest bowl.

KB: Hey runt! What the hell are you doing?

TMU: Oh, just getting rid of the eyes. When you smoke dead beetles, see, the shells and the eyes... well, some people are foolish enough to smoke them and report getting violent headaches. Of course, it's hard to know more because the headaches are usually followed by seizures, projectile vomiting, internal and external hemhorraging, and in extreme cases, spontaneous combustion. (plucks out another set of eyes and tosses them into the abyss) If you're gonna smoke the forbidden pleasures of the Elder Gods, you have to be careful about it, dig?

KB (eyeing the gigantic bowl): You're putting me on. That's bigger than a goddamn satellite dish.

TMU: And it will soon be filled with the meaty remains of dead beetles, five thousand of them, all plucked from the tall grass in the wild fields on the Planet of Leng, the fields that overlook the Wall of Sleep! Do you know of these beetles, King Buzzo? Does the carnivorous hair atop your head know of the beetles? No? Well, then let me fill you in. See, even though I smoke more than my own physical weight in lengleaf pretty much daily now, even though the ridges in my cerebellum have probably all smoothed out from the near-constant brain-soak induced by smoking the plant of the Elder Gods... even then, it's not enough. No sir. I need a bigger kick now. And the only bigger kick than smoking lengleaf, daddy-o, is smoking Leng beetles. Oh yeah. (pauses to consider) Well, I've heard stories that smoking the catnip grown on Ulthar is a pretty dynamite experience, but I'm not about to go fuck with all those cats. The Devil Kitty says I wouldn't last very long back on his stomping grounds, that's for sure. Most anything that's not feline finds itself getting eaten back in his neighborhood.

KB: You're insane, aren't you?

EOD: Yes, as a matter of fact, he is. And therein lies the problem. We cannot let him smoke that bowl, for fear of what might happen next; and yet we are powerless to prevent him, for -- as I must remind you -- we are, as we speak, merely prisoners in his agitated mind. Or what passes for a mind these days, anyway. After all, he does smoke a lot of lengleaf.

KB (stepping forward): That's it. I've had enough of this bullshit. I'm going to slap this runt silly like the little girl he is. This is what you get for wasting my time, you --

His hand falters in midair as he sees that the scene has changed. The Moon Unit is nowhere to be seen; instead, he and the Egg of Destiny find themselves on a cliff in the clouds overlooking a barren and alien landscape. Nothing moves except for the slow drift of the clouds just above their heads. The landscape below is nothing but a blasted, frozen desert riddled with pockmarks and craters.

EOD: Nice going. (points to a faint star in the distance) See that star? That's your sun. We're on the other side of it. Nice, huh?

KB: Okay, this is really starting to freak me out.

EOD: Relax -- he just sent us here to chill out while he finishes loading up his bowl. Think of this as a very remote waiting room.

KB: I'm not sure I like this.

EOD: He doesn't seem to be very considerate, does he? (opens his briefcase and fishes out a tiny, tiny copy of THE DARK TOWER) Well, I needed to catch up on my reading....

KB: This is ridiculous. (sighs, then sits down as a copy of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW emerges from his hair for him to read as they wait)

Time passes. Eventually the familiar sound of wailing intrudes on their reading, and they look up to see that they are back in the easiest room in hell. The vast bowl is now filled with dead beetles; the Moon Unit hunches over the pipe, gloating. He looks absolutely diabolical, so enraptured that his whole body shakes. He can hardly even hang on to the lighter as he turns to them.

TMU: Ha ha! Ha! HAHAHHAAAAAA! AHAHAHA! HA! HA! HEEWACK! (gloating) Oh, I can't believe my good fortune... those typists in the temp pool sure fucked up big time when they put down 5,000 instead of 50.00... oh Ra, look at all those dead beetles and now I'm gonna smoke them...!

KB (holding up one hand): Hold it! First things first. What the hell is going on here, anyway?

TMU: Well, see, it's like this. I was brooding about the hideous state of music and all, and trying to decide whether or not to throw myself into the abyss and just get it over with, and stuff like that, and I got to thinking, "You know, there sure aren't many well-known musicians left in the business I even have much respect for these days, much less want to listen to." And then I was listening to some band whose music consisted largely of poorly-played riffs ripped off from bad bands, and I got to thinking, "Why would anybody steal from those bands? Those bands are shitty. If they had no talent but at least some sense, they'd steal from a good band, like the Melvins." That must have been the point where I feel asleep while smoking lengleaf, and you must have... uh... materialized somehow. Which means, you know, technically we're all asleep at the switch and dreaming here. I sure hope nobody left the oven on. Of course, the sun's going to explode in a few billion years and the world will be nothing but a cold and lifeless chunk of floating through space, so why bother?

KB: Babbling fool! So you weren't cribbing my riffs?

TMU (looking horrified): Why no, King Buzzo. That... that would be blasphemy.

KB (mollified): Well, okay. Then I guess I don't have to kick your ass. (looks around) And can you do something about that wailing? It's really getting on my nerves.

TMU: Ironically, that won't be a problem much longer, I assure you. Excuse me for a moment, please? (motions to the ground) I need to be standing right where you are.

KB (looking down): What's up with the pentegram and candles?

TMU: I'm about to light my bowl. (motioning with one hand impatiently) Do you mind?

King Buzzo steps back and lets the Moon Unit step into the satanic circle drawn on the concrete just a few feet from the abyss. Curious, King Buzzo creeps over and looks down... to find the chasm below endless, nothing more than a plain concrete wall fading down into darkness somewhere too far away to see. Hideous screams of torment reverberate across the surface of the walls, bouncing back and forth in the boundless pit. He steps back, horrified.

KB: You work next to that?

TMU: No choice, hoss -- no choice! That's what the MASTERPLAN calls for. Why else do you think I'd be putting up with all the shit I put up with around here?

EOD: But... but I thought the plot revolved around the MASTERPLAN being lost.

TMU (cackling madly): Sure... but I lied, dig? (lights the last candle and throws the lighter into the abyss) Better step back, this could get tricky... I memorized that spell before I got my new glasses, so bear in mind that we may be about to implode the sun or something here....

KB: Can I go back before you do that?

TMU: N'ya gru uk uk!

KB: Does that mean no?

The wailing in the abyss grows louder and more frenzied as the Moon Unit's body, suddenly possessed, jerks around like a boneless puppet, overturning his desk. "Ryleh ng'ga tit tit! Vru! Kiki! Mu'ngyat nyrg! Bukka bukka olly olly oxen free!"

EOD (spinning in agitated circles): Oh no! No! No no no! Oh Mother Egg, help us all! Oh, we're all so fucked!

KB: Uh, what's going on? Should we be running or something?

The room is suddenly filled with thunder and lightning. King Buzzo gapes at the shapes rising from the abyss, thousands of them, maybe even millions -- humans, animals, insects, an enormous congregation of dead souls from the dawn of time. They hover eagerly at the mouth of the abyss now, in anticipation of the ritual that will allow them to be reborn as new souls on the endless wheel of karma.

EOD: Oh no... no, this will not do....

KB: What's the problem? I don't know --

EOD: Look, everything up until now has proceeded according to the MASTERPLAN, okay? He's supposed to be doing this, this whole spectacle with the raising of the dead -- oh, vile, vile stuff -- and that's one thing. But the beetles... they aren't part of the MASTERPLAN. I just know he's planning to do something horrible....

KB: So should we be running or not?

TMU: SILENCE! The Ritual of Oblivion has BEGUN! WITNESS! (casts one hand to the ceiling) O GREAT AND TERRIBLE DWELLER IN THE ABYSS, LIGHT MY VAST AND SMELLY BOWL!

The room is filled with a hideous roar and a blinding flash of light, accompanied by a shockwave so powerful it knocks them all to the floor. Dazed, King Buzzo and the Egg of Destiny rise to see the Moon Unit huffing from the bowl of burning beetles. He totters around the room, turning blue, then turns to stand on the edge of the abyss.

EOD: No! NO! For the love of Egg, NO!

The Moon Unit exhales, bathing the dead souls hovering above the abyss in the foul waste of smoke that comes from his mouth. Like a poison gas, it kills everything it touches. As the souls -- and their wailing -- begin to fade out, he steps back and coughs.

TMU: You, uh, may want to stand upwind of that.... (returns for another hit off the bowl)

EOD: Not again!

TMU (expelling more smoke into the abyss): Why not?

EOD: But -- but the MASTERPLAN --

TMU: Fuck the MASTERPLAN! What's the MASTERPLAN ever done for my ass? I'm rewriting the rules of the game here, see. And the first rule is, I am so out of here, dig? The Hellfortress is history. The lease is up, the power's going out one floor at a time, the wolves are at the door. Time to retreat and burn all the evidence behind you, dig?

KB: Oh, I don't like the sound of this.

EOD: I definitely don't like the sound of this.

TMU: I'm moving to new digs. What happens here after I'm gone, well, I wash my hands of it, see? That's all I gotta say. Now if you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to here....

He approaches the bowl one last time and smokes up the rest of the dead beetles, nearly passing out from the effort. Turning blue and moving on rubbery legs, he turns around to face the door in the wall beside this desk, just inches from the abyss. The door is a forbidding panel of rusting steel bolted shut with a large padlock. With a hiss like steam escaping, he expels smoke across the door.

KB: What the fuck?

The door swings open with a bang. A cloud of black smoke wafts from the dark chamber, then a small, round midget in a clown suit emerges carrying a square of paper.

MIDGET: Why, good afternoon! Please permit me to inform you of the latest entry into the Roll Call of the Devil Kitty. Yes! Our latest warrior to enter into the feline Valhalla is none other than Steve Huang, who will soon find himself surrounded by big-breasted concubines driving black Cadillacs in the hereafter! It's a wise decision he has made... shouldn't you make it too?

KB: This is getting really weird.

The midget disappears into the doorway again; this time the Moon Unit follows him. King Buzzo peeks inside, and is puzzled to see nothing but a decaying circular staircase with no rails descending into a pit of darkness. As he stands there, deciding whether or not to follow, a ghastly horde of hideous mutant roaches swarm up the steps, coming up the sides as well. They look prehistoric and kind of dangerous. Mixed in with the advancing swarm, floating on a sea of crustacean bodies, he sees clear vials marked with biohazard stickers. As it dawns on him what they are, he sees a column of fire starting to creep up behind the roaches. He turns and runs, gathering Dale and taking off as the Hellfortress begins to burn from the bottom up, the air rapidly filling with poison gas and killer germs as the bottles break one by one in the heat of the fire.