wow, these rat bastards.

[Mister Pink]

It was Saturday night in the mountains, and a heavy blizzard was falling. Six inches in six hours.

It happened so fast that my bright red, hot-rod convertible was disappearing right in front of my eyes. The top was beginning to sag from the weight of the soggy snow. I knew it was futile to try to put it back in the barn. It would sink in the mush and be trapped in the blizzard all night. I must have been crazy to bring it out in the weather so soon.

But so what? I thought. The Shark has seen snow before. Let it Be. ... I cranked up the fire and ate a few crab legs. I brought out a wad of small bills.

We had just settled down to drink whiskey and bet when the the night was shattered and ripped by a sudden explosion just in front of the house -- a crashing of metal and fire and wild screams of animals. I ran out on the porch with a shotgun and a huge police spotlight, just in time to be knocked back by another explosion and a wall of flame on the road. Chickens squawked and peacocks screeched in the treetops. It was like a bomb that had been dropped on a jungle. Flaming chickens fell out of the sky and hissed as they died in the snow. ...

Then we saw a fiery human figure stagger into my driveway and fall in a heap on the ground. The Sheriff grabbed a fire extinguisher out of his car and quickly doused the burning man with a blast of steaming chemicals.

It was Cromwell, my neighbor from up the road. He'd been caught in the blizzard and was desperately trying to drive home on his motorcycle when he was hit in the face by a 20-pound owl that swooped out of the night and almost took his head off -- which caused him to lose control and run his bike off the road and through the wall of a nearby barn that was full of roosters and hay and plastic drums full of gasoline.

The explosion was triggered by the sparks of a red-hot cigar butt that he was smoking at the time, and the flimsy tin barn was now a fiery tomb full of shreiking animals. The blast sent 10 or 12 burning guinea hens up in the air like rockets. One was still clinging to Cromwell's back as he fell. Another one dropped with a thud on the hood of my red convertible, where it sizzled and steamed until dawn.

Cromwell staggered and babbled as we helped him into the house. He was still in deep shock and seemed to think he was somewhere in Egypt with some good-humored strangers or ski-bums, but he was cheerful about it, and he thanked us for giving him gin. We humored him carefully for a while, until he came back to life and seemed almost normal.

He relaxed with a bottle of Tanqueray and talked casually about the tragedy, as if it had happened a long time ago and was a matter of small importance. "I never liked that bike anyway," he said with a smile. "I've taken worse falls than that on Aspen Mountain. And I've hated that owl for 10 years."

It was right about then that we began having trouble with Cromwell. His mood had deteriorated and he was losing his sense of humor. The sheriff had just made an idle joke about his sworn duty to arrest Cromwell and jail him for killing the owl. "You murdered that beast," he laughed. "That's a felony crime in this state. You'll have to stand trial for it." But the joke didn't work.

"You bastards," Cromwell yelled. "Stop laughing at me! I can't stand it. It's driving me crazy. I'm getting the fear. ... I feel weak," he said hoarsely. "I feel like I'm dying."

He fell back on the couch, and his eyes rolled back in his head. "Oh, God!" He screamed. "I'm afraid. Something is rolling all over me! It's the Fear! I have the FEAR!" His body went tense, then suddenly jerked up in a spasm, twisting wildly back and forth, as if struggling desperately in the grip of some assassin that nobody else could see.

It was Terrifying. We watched helplessly as he grasped and clawed at the top of his head, which was beginning to blister and bleed. The room was heavy with a stench of burning hair. ... The situation was getting out of control.

Cromwell was a huge and dangerous man, even when he was happy -- but, in a frenzy of Fear and Rage, we knew it was out of the question to try to deal with him physically.

I saw Curtis trying to wrestle a giant Red fire Extinguisher off a hook on the wall. "No!" I yelled. "Not that!" I knew it was a high-powered A, B, C & D-type FX that would Fill the whole room with a cloud of white glue. So, I quickly reached over and gave Cromwell a sharp jolt between the sholderblades with my 200,000-volt Powermax cattle prod. And that was that.

He collapsed in a coma and said nothing for 20 minutes. It might have seemed cruel and unusual at the time, but we knew it had to be done, and he would thank us for it later. ..

[Mister Pink]

Last week was extremely busy. I spent most of it doing top-secret surveillance work on some of my neighbors who are obviously up to no good and need to be watched closely. I have always hated Evil-doers, and now that the President has given us a green light to crush them by any means necessary, I see my duty clearly. Dangerous creeps are everywhere, and our only hope is to neutralize them with extreme prejudice. These freaks have taken their shot(s), and now it is our turn.

The first thing I did was beef up my guest-list for the weekend football games. Running full-time surveillance on unsuspecting people is extremely taxing work for quasi-professional operatives with no funding, but I am blessed with deep background experience in the spook business, and I know a few top-secret shortcuts that simplify the process enormously.

One of them is to always act normal and calm in situations of extreme danger. If your job is to surveil and record every moment in the life of a Foul Ball who might be growing Anthrax spores in his basement, for instance, you will learn far more about his brain patterns by inviting him into your home for a nine-hour marathon of disturbing football games on TV than you will ever learn by surveiling him through a telescope from a frozen creek-bed in a pasture near his hideout. With luck, you might catch him in the act of fondling a foreign flag, or prancing around his parlor wearing nothing but a turban and a black jockstrap -- but that will not be enough, in the way of hard evidence, to justify terminating him with extreme prejudice. There is a big difference between croaking a harmless pervert and callously murdering a close relative of the Saudi Ambassador.


Any Evil-doer with the brains to plot lethal damage against our national infrastructure will also be degenerate enough to protect his Evil cover by faking great enthusiasm for watching and gambling on American football games.


He will not want to talk about his job, but ask him anyway. "How is it going at work, Omar? Are you cool with it? Are you meeting enough girls? Are you a gambling man? Do you have any extra hashish? Why are you looking at me that way? What's eating you?" It is better to load him up with booze and goofy chatter than to make him suspicious by staring at his hands and constantly taking notes.

Whoops! I think I see him jogging out there on the road, right in from of my gate. Why not go out and offer him some hot water? Yes, of course, do it now. Remember to watch your back. I'm out of here.

[Mister Pink]

- DEDICATED IN HONOR OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON, WHO TOOK HIS OWN LIFE THIS WEEKEND -

[Anonymous]

So there we were again ! Jeff gary and myself. i had horrible B.O. ! i hadn't showered in 4 days because i could not stop eating pickles and mayo ! it was so good ! but it made my poo smell like spoiled diarehha ! Jef liked it though gary kept picking it up an throwing it against the wall. Jeff and i would laugh ! but then jeff started to finger paint with it ! it was great ! he painted a picture of Phil anselmo, you know the guy from PANTERA ! he loves him so much ! Too much though ! he started making out with the picture he had just made. BUT ! he forgot it was my poop !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  ::rocker::  ::rocker::  ::rocker::  ::rocker::