So I says to my bunkmate

So I says to my bunkmate, “Fingers, you gots to see dis.”

And Fingers, rolls over in his bunk, which I can hear from below and I am guessing he stares at what I’m eyeballing and all he says is, “that ain’t good.”

So, I prods him a bit for conversation and I says, “Ain’t that your place, where you lived before we was busted last time? Think they are gonna rearrange all them paintings of poker dogs you got up on the walls?”

And I am guessing he was just nodding only I couldn’t see on account of him being in the upper bunk and me being in the lower one. But again he says, “That ain’t good.”

So, I keeps looking at the television and its one of them home turnover shows where they take one guys lousy taste in decorating his walls and picking furniture and trade it for someone else’s, but there’s always some dame screaming as it happens and everyone hugs afterward. Reminds me of a turf war, but I don’t really get it.

Anyways, on this particular eppy-sode they was taking a run down old house offa Mulberry and they was going to gut it, walls and all and turn it into some kind of yuppie-tarium or something.

“Hey, fingers,” I says at this point, “ain’t that your old joint, where you lived before we came to stay at this fine establishment? Waddn’t that the one you was going to fix up with the loot from our haul.”

Then, like a broken record Fingers comes back to me with, “That ain’t good.”

“I thought you stilled owned that place, oh, hey, ain’t that your sister, Fingers? Ain’t that Phyllis? She don’t look so good no more, ever since you broke her nose. That’s old Philly thought ain’t it?”

Fingers does his line again and I can’t get nothing more from him. Then the show changes - like. Not that it ain’t the same show anymore, but they change the speed and the lights and stuff like that and there is this far away kind of look at the house then, Wham! The whole thing goes up inna ball of flame.

Well, I am hooting and hollering and laughing so hard I nearly shits myself and then I get all quiet and I turns to Finger, even though I knows he can’t see me through the bunk. “Wasn’t that house where you stashed the dough from the last job? You said no one would find it, you promised me Phyllis wouldn’t get it ‘cause you booby trapped the hiding place with a big bomb which… ah, shit.

“That ain’t good.”

-Brihac

STAND UP EGG

Eggbert was a very normal egg. Sure, he was smooth and white and shined a little bit in the morning sun, but mostly he was incredibly normal.

Eggbert’s one true wish was to be something special. He watched all the other folks going about their days, happy and content and he told himself that he should be happier too. But he wasn’t.

One day, out of a desperate need to do something, he decided to place a large red dot on the top of his shell. This, he knew, would mark him as someone special, someone important.

All day long Eggbert waited for someone to notice his special red dot. But, no one did.

Finally, tired and frustrated he went to see his mother Eggdwina and when she saw him she opened her arms to give him a big hug, but before Eggbert could reach his mother’s comforting shell, she flicked the red dot from his head and said, “Oh, Eggbert. You’ve got some schmutz.”

Eggbert endured the hug and quickly left for home. On his long unhappy walk he saw a flyer on a telephone poll, it read, “Open Mike Night at Ye Olde Muffin bar and stand up club, tomorrow night.”

Eggbert felt his insides churn, this was it. He was going to be a stand up comedian and everyone would see how special he was. Running at full speed, he stopped at the book store, bought a joke book and ran home.

Eggbert stayed up all night reading the jokes and all day memorizing them for the show.

When the time came to go to the club, Eggbert was bleary eyed, but excited. This was going to be the big day!

After the first two acts finished, Eggbert took the stage. In a small and almost whiny voice he recited the first joke from his book. “Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?” he asked the audience.

He was met with utter quiet. No one in the audience responded. “Um, because he didn’t have the guts!” Eggbert said all at once. Again, no reaction from the audience.

Eggbert continued, unable to bare the silence, “You see, skeletons have no body, and so they literally have no guts and guts also means bravery, like being brave enough to cross the road…”

Someone in the back of the crowd let out a huge, “Boo!!! Get off the stage! You stink!”

Eggbert tried to continue, stammering, his hands shaking he began again, “What goes stomp, stomp, stomp, squish?” He looked out into the crowd for a friendly face.

“You do!” a woman shouted from the left side of the audience. Then the first spit wad sailed up on to the stage and splattered against Eggbert’s side.

His confidence failing, Eggbert slunk off stage to a nearby bar stool.

****

After his first drink he heard a warm and mellow voice at his side, “Hey there, Mate. Hang in there.”

“The name’s Toasters. I am the English Muffin who owns this comedy club.”

Eggbert looked over at the source of the voice, and sure enough, a distinguished looking English Muffin sat perched upon the bar stool to his left.

“Hello, Toasters,” Eggbert mentioned without any enthusiasm.

“Open microphone night not up to snuff for you, eh?” Toaster asked, his buttery shine glimmering with mischief.

“I was horrible,” Eggbert said, his tone indicating that his state of horribleness was what always was and what always will be.

“Chin up, Mate. All you did was get it wrong the first try, who doesn’t? You got to see it as one step in the overall process, not as failure.”

“You think I’m a failure?” Eggbert whined.

“Not unless you sit on the stool for the rest of your life whining about how you stink. See here. The trick with the comedy is to talk about stuff which is very much about you. Not just reading jokes out of a book. What works for me might now work for you.”

Dragging the words out of some deep place in his soul Eggbert asked, “What works for you?”

“What works for me, is being me! Think about it. What kind of jokes do you think I did when I was doing stand up?”

“Knock-knock jokes,” Eggbert asked cautiously.

“No, of course not! I’m an English muffin, so I come out on stage and tell them that it’s easy to be a comic, there’s muffin to it.”

Eggbert smiled a bit. “I get it, Muffin to it and you are a muffin.”

“That’s right.”

“And your name is Toasters!”

“Because I am a muffin and because I own a bar.”

Eggbert’s voice gained a note of excitement, “Two jokes!”

“Yes, but sadly being an English muffin does not provide as much material as I would have hoped.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be, I own the bar and am very happy, but you my friend, are an egg!”

Eggbert stared at Toasters without comprehension. “You mean I have to be a muffin to be funny?”

“No, you are an egg and when you find the humor in being an egg…”

“I’ll really be funny!”

“That’s right. Will you come back and try next week?”

“But I don’t know what I will say; I don’t know what the jokes will be.”

Toaster slid off the bar stool and began to walk away, “You’ll think of it. See you next week, kid.”

Eggbert felt the beginnings of excitement as he raced home to discover the jokes that came with being an egg.

****

And Eggbert thought about it until he thought he would explode. He thought about jokes which would be right for him in the morning when he showered. He thought about jokes during lunch. He thought about jokes when he drove around to get his shell polished and he thought about jokes all night long in his dreams.

Every time he thought he had the right kind of joke he would decide that it wasn’t exactly what he wanted.

****

Finally the day of the show arrived and Eggbert nervously got himself to the club, he wanted his jokes to be exactly the right kind. Even his mother Eggdwina was in the audience this time. He could not have possible been more nervous.

The act before him was a real ham and the audience looked angry. Carefully, with slow and deliberate movement Eggbert approached the microphone. The sharp whine of amplified feedback nearly caused him to run from the stage, but he held his ground.

Nervously he began, “Hello, folks. My name is Eggbert.”

The audience quieted with expectation and Eggbert was sure he remembered a few people from the week before. No one smiled.

“My name is Eggbert, and I am here to CRACK you up!” Eggbert yelled into the microphone. His last word echoed into the silence as the audience stared at him without expression.

Eggbert felt his heart drop to the floor and was about to continue when he heard someone in the audience yell out, “Oh, I get it. You are an egg and you are going to crack us up!”

Someone else in the audience laughed. “It’s a joke.”

Eggbert wasn’t sure if this was working, so he decided to charge on ahead.

“Anyway, I am so EGG-cited to be here tonight!”

Again, it was quiet for a moment and then a small group of folks in the audience laughed. “He’s an egg and he’s egg-cited!” one of them said through his chuckles.

“You guessed it,” Eggbert replied, “I guess the YOLK is on me!”

At this half of the audience began to laugh.

“Hmm,” Eggbert said, pretended to not know what to say, “What SHELL I say next?”

Now the other half of the audience began to laugh.

“Seriously,” Eggbert continued, getting exited, “I am SCRAMBLING for another joke!”

Now the audience was howling with laughter. They were falling out of their chairs and slapping each other on the back with delight.

Eggbert yelled to the audience’s delight. “Hey you guys are great, I wasn’t sure that I would like you, but you won me OVER EASY!”

The audience was in a frenzy now, chanting, “Eggbert! Eggbert! Eggbert!”

Toaster joined Eggbert on the stage and took the microphone, “Brilliant. How about a big hand for Eggbert everybody!” and the applause was deafening.

As Eggbert made his way off the stage, Toaster called to him, “You did it kid, you looked deep inside and you found your very own voice!”

Eggbert smiled and called over his shoulder, “EGG-zactly.”

Everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug, but try as they might they could not get him to stop giving honest answers when asked how he was doing. You see, Eddie always had one tragedy or another hanging over his head and he was always just moments away from turning it all around. When innocently asked how he was doing he would invariably come back with” Horrible. But…” and fill in some grand plan for turning his life around.

Now, Eddie’s four best friends from growing up would never dream of making him leave their little group. They had all been friends since the kindergarten, when Eddie had thrown up from eating too much paste and stuck the five of them together, quite literally, for the first time.

But Edie, Nora, Jeff, 'Cisco and Andrea were all in the mid forties now and at least 80% of the paste friends had long ago tired of Eddie’s neurotic compulsion to tell everyone exactly how bad things were and how great they were going to be. Eddies plans never turned out and the lamentation of their failure was utterly draining to endure.

When Eddie was 27 he was made manager of the video store where he worked. He was convinced that he had finally turned a corner. Then, of course, his store shut down because no one rented videos from a store any more and Eddie was laid off. Everyone got an ear full on that one for about a million years.

So, it was with some surprise that non long after the four friends were about to retire and slow down to a rather modest and fixes income that their fifth friend, good old Eddie Glug bough himself a winning lottery ticket; 24 million dollars after taxes.

It came to pass that for the next two years everyone was sick and tired o Eddie Glug because you could not get him to stop answering the question, “How you doing?” With the answer, Fantastic! But…” and then he would drone on endlessly about taxes and solicitors hitting him up for donations and how much stress he was under from having his new mansion renovated.

So the paste friends killed him.

They made it look like an accident. They convinced Eddie that he should leave all his money to them in equal parts because they were his only and best life long friends. And they killed him.

Which of course was a huge mistake, because within a month everyone was sick and tired of Eddie Glug’s ghost because they could not get him to stop haunting them every moment of every day and whining about how he was killed by his friends just as things were finally turning around for him. But… just as soon as he was done haunting them, he would get to go to heaven and then everything would finally be great.

-Brihac

DUCKED UP

If I were a duck, he thought to himself, then I probably would not spend my time imagining I was a person.

The logic of this assertion was reassuring given the utter reckless chaos that his life had become in the last week or three.

As long as I know that as a duck I would not wonder about being a person that I can handle the rest of it.

The problem with the rest of it was that he knew, deep in his gut that the rest of it was completely ducked up. But he had an enormous difficulty describing the exact nature of the problem to anyone else. Idly he wondered if perhaps the ducks would understand, and then abandoned that line of reasoning. Too much duck-think could get a guy lost just when he was about to hang on to something tangible. Like apples or Slinkies.

Everyone seemed so cool with it. The it which he could not describe but knew was wrong. Wrong in the way that kept him up at night, wrong in the way that none of his heroes of the screen or written word would have accepted for a second.

The heroes would have not only called out the wrongness, but been able to clearly and articulately explain the exact nature of wrongitude to the audience at large. Then, suffering for their beliefs, they would launch a campaign of right-setting which would cost them everything, but vindicate them in the end. It would be worth it they would gasp with their dramatically compelling but dying quack.

He wondered if waddling more would make him feel duckier and allow him some relief. The heroes always knew how to talk about the dragon – they never wallowed in abstract duck wondering or frustrated mumblings. He would need to take action. Action needed to be taken. He just needed to put his words to the world and come out with the thing which was the matter with the stuff.

Maybe tomorrow. After TV and games and internet and stuff.

The big it had something to do with goals or values or the confusing of the two, he was sure of that. But any time he mentioned it to someone, they would nod and smile and talk about their goals and values. Usually skewing the two together which was the whole problem. Could he make the M-noise with a duck bill? What if he was a duck and had to explain that the whole problem hinged on making money or milking monotonous moments? Might he, at that point, as a duck, wonder if he could be a person, if only to speak those bill-forbidden consonants?

M-m-must m-m-make m-m-money. Yeah. That might be something. Got to pay the bills, but you can’t say money with a bill… hmmm… getting closer.

He should share this with his friend. Tomorrow he would have to make one. Then he would share it. Then he could get rid of his friend because friends just expected things from people and that dragged down the whole glow of friendship thing. Bastards. Why couldn’t they leave a guy alone? Mallards probably never crowd each other. Expecting things. Of course they can’t even say what they are. “Hello, I be an ‘allard. Quack.”

Totally ducked up.

-Brihac

Write a page from a travelogue of a space adventurer.

Dear Diary.

Cletus and me were playing zap-the-cleaner today and I got banished from the rec room for three shifts. What’s a kid supposed to do for fun around here? I mean, we go to class during the sun shift and we sleep during the second space exposure and that leaves a whole shift with nothing to do.

I read the earthside stories from before the great travel. They go one and on about the majesty of space and the way it makes you understand your insignificance in the sweep and scope of infinity. I done that too, but it don’t take but about half an hour. That’s like only one sixteenth of a shift! That’s right, I know my numbers. Fat lot of good that does when you got nothing to do.

Maybe we shouldn’ta played zap the cleaner, but it is the only thing which means something when you play. See the cleaner drones were made earthside a whole long time ago and they have this self repair thing about which works mostly, but not all the way. Anyway they repair the parts of themselves what keep them cleaning, but there is this kind of energy leak on ‘em that if you touch one it shocks you so bad your hair stands up and you can’t breath for like three breaths. So me and Cletus, we play a kind of tag ball with the cleaners zipping around and if you don’t pay super attention to where you are, ZAP! Man, I laughed so hard when Cletus was flopping around on the ground, how was I to know he was going to be an idiot and whack his head on the bulwark?

He got himself a new synth-plate in his head and they say the hair will grow back eventually. Maybe we’ll get attacked by space pirates who fly flaming asteroid destroyer ships. They could take me prisoner and raise me as a pirate. I’d make a good pirate… boy-howdie, space travel is boring. I bet I could get Drucilla to play Zap the cleaner with me tomorrow…

-Brihack

Rat-Formers: the musical

Write a synopsis of the perfect summer blockbuster. (not an EXISTING movie, mind you, but a short story of mashing all the elements of what makes a blockbuster great, like Titanic meets LOTR or something.)

Everybody rush down to the theater for the biggest comedy blockbuster of the summer. The Rat-formers! Remy Potter grew up in the southern arm of the Andromeda galaxy, but he always wanted to cook - no opportunity on a world without any organic life forms, but a stray TV signal zipping through space changed everything.

Can Remy work his way into the elite kitchens of France without a human realizing that he is really an alien robot who can transform into any shape he chooses?

Will he be able to convince immigration that his gay love affair with Sioux Chef Adam Sandler is real? After all- he’s supposed to be gay, not a transformer-sexual!

Will Garcon Snape kick him out for his violation of the rules of defense the dark culinary arts? They say he cooks like magic, but can they prove it?

You laugh as Remy consoles his new earth friend who gets a sexy woman pregnant and lacks the emotional maturity to deal with it, you’ll cry when Remy gets locked in room 1408 and struggles to overcome supernatural forces and you’ll be on the edge of your seat as you watch Remy challenge social and sexual convention in a hilarious send up of Cecil De Mille’s Blazing Cans of Ham - his last project before his death which was never released.

This film has a running time of 400 minutes and is not yet rated.

SEMI PROFESSIONALS JOURNAL

Write a story set during your most recent vacation.

TRAVEL SECTION

This time of year a majority of the Semi-professionals are traveling to the GEIGE convention in the Midwest. GEIGE or Good Enough Is Good Enough is entering its tenth year (no one is really sure, but it’s definitely more than eighth) and it shows no signs of changing. Founded by a group of semi professionals who already lived in the area, GEIGE has become a unique blend of vacation destination and political hot bed.

This year, the Grand Marshall of the GEIGE parade is Hans Vaguersonton, whose tenure as the Grand Marshall has mirrored the time the parade has been held is, in his own words, "just about ready."

What makes this year different is that the OCD (Organization for Complete Dedication) is on hand to protest the ideology of the parade and tempers on the OCD side are running high. GEIGEs on the other hand tend toward vague resentment rather than outright anger and you can bet the resentment is stewing briskly about now.

What has existed over the last decade as mere ideological differences between two stylistically different factions has erupted into what this Freelance Journalist would call a full-scale-holy-war. Both sides not only abhor the beliefs of the other, but further contend that the other leaves a larger carbon footprint than the other while simultaneously embodying the root of all evil.

Spokesperson for OCD, Regina Grabnofski has these heated words about the parade.

“The GEIGE are lazy, self indulgent shits; they flaunt their apathetic ignorance as if it was a belief system to be admired by real professionals. Get real. And by the way this has nothing to do with Hans and I dating in the late 80s.”

Vaygerson, who was finally reached for comment replied, “The OCDs comments are not entirely true, y’know. She is looking at it a very specific way. Besides she is so uptight, I mean, really. Its no wonder we broke up.”

Supporters of both OCD and GEIGE will be flooding into Circlet Square come Monday to witness the debate between these two mighty philosophs.

Look for continued coverage on this event in the next issue of Semi Professional Journal - coming to news stands some time in summer. Probably.

Getting Tanked

Assignment: What is life like in a fish tank?

So, I belly up to the Sand Bar like I always do when the light begins to settle down through the Great Tommy’s blinds. I order my usual Herring Wallbanger with a twist of brine and try to make sense of my life.

I drink to forget my evil twin. The one who always lurks at the edge of the glass, pretending not to meet my gaze with his big bulbous eyes, man is he ugly! Curse him and his ghastly visage. Who does he think he is?

One more drink as I try to set my mind to the larger questions in life. Like, is there life after the great swirl? Why do some scalers go belly up and others float on? Oh, who am kidding? I’m just looking for some tail to chase.

Bubbles was looking good a little earlier today, but that massive turd that’s been trailing out her back side since noon is a little disturbing. Its not that I’m coy or anything, but... yick! Use the aerator for Tom’s sake.

Ah, here he comes; Angelo, my buddy. He’s kind of a froofie in the looks department, but the soul of a bottom feeder. Drinks for both of us!

Tonight we need a plan. I suspect that our plan will involve snagging the food as it floats – it’s what we usually do. Don’t get me wrong, when we were younger and we would grab grub on the surface, but I can’t do that anymore, the gas that causes at my age! You know the old saying, “he who burped and darted really just lied and farted.”

Any-hoo probably grab some grub on the drop and then suck some rocks. There is some new gravel over by the diver I’ve been meaning to sample. Maybe if I see my twin I will give him a nasty head butt – then maybe he’ll swim off, the lousy algae-eating clam-tard! I need another drink.

Whoo! What a great plan! I can’t remember what we did last night, but that sounds like a great plan. Where’d my drink go?

-Brihack

Steel Bass

Now, it ain’t like I ain’t woke up in some strange place afore. I mean one time me and Zeke got into some bad shine and we both woked up so far down the Mississippi that they ain’t never heard of Canada! Had to work the river boat all year to get back to my shack.

Well it’s a looking like that weren’t nothing. See me and Zeke was pitching woo with these two gals at the inn who spoke all this strange gibberish, but they was purty as all get out and next thing I know Zeke is saying we should follow them to this boat. Me, I like boats and I like the purty gals so I says to Zeke that that was a fine idear.

It was not.

So this was about the time I met Peter. He said his name all funny, but he’s a Peter. I knowd it right off. So, Peter was on the boat what the purty girls took us too and his job was to clobber us something awful so that we was asleep when the boat leaved for far away. Peter is a big guy and he clobbered me good, but he clobbered Zeke better and Zeke never woked up. I could tell Peter was all broke up about it, which did nothing to bring Zeke back, but you gotta give a fella a little break if he feels broke up about making a mistake like that. I hurt a fella or two in my time and felt a lot of hurt on the inside about it.

So we all had this boat trip for a long time which wasn’t too bad. There was other bodies aboard that there boat, but they mostly kept to themselves. Work on the boat was damn near a holiday compared to working on the river! And one of them pretty girls spent a night or two with me which made the whole thing a damn site better. Oh, she smelled purty.

When the boat gets close to land I started to scratch my head cause the beach don’t look right. The two purty girls and Peter have a long chin wag about something in their gibberish and the girls looks ascared of something.

I ain't one to drag a tale on too long, so lets just say that a lot of these gibberers pull up in another big boat - they all weared the same color coat like they was in the army, but the colors was all wrong. They grabbed us all and they was yelling and shouting and pushing and one them laid a hand on my purty girl which made me fly all into a rage of course.

Now I live in this cage that they call the steel bass or something like that. It don’t look like a fish, but its sure got plenty of iron in the bars. Now I been in the pokey before, the thing of it is they usually feed you pretty regular. This place ain’t run so good. Plus there’s all this gibberish yelling outside which keep me from sleeping regular.

All that being said, I think things are settling down for me now. I am behind bars and that don’t usually change too fast. The crazy folks outside are all yelling about turning things or revolutions or something, but I don’t much care. I’m just gonna settle in and relax for a while, maybe Peter will teach me some gibberish to pass the time.

Brihack

Pirated

Pirates stole my lunch
The absolute greatest lunch
The lunch I ne’er ate

It was truly queer
When a newbie Buccaneer
Stole it with a sneer

Deep personal loss…
Bandits bamboozled my stuff
May they burn in hell

No eye patch had they
No parrot shoulder sitting
Just malevolence

I like’ed my lunch
My lunch is my life time bliss
Bliss takers should choke


My lunch program was
My first application wrote
Software pirates suck

-Brihack Arrrrgh!

The face of change

Philip grabbed his chipped Caribou mug from his night stand and jabbed it under Mr. Coffee’s nasal drip without bothering to wash out yesterday’s black ring. The mindless drip grew into a weak stream that felt like a mocking indictment, as if it were his life’s blood leaking through the beans - being strained of any value. Phil was not a fan on Mondays.

He didn’t hold it against the Mondays, it wasn’t their fault that they were followed by four other mind numbing week days, just like it wasn’t his fault that he was always followed around by four mind numbing nitwits who called themselves CPAs, but probably couldn’t spell it. King Philip the 1st, emperor of a raindrop called the auditing department of Logicons R&D division.

Oooh-rah.

Mr. Coffee gave a last wet gasp and Phil pulled out his cup wondering if its stimulating effect might be heightened by skipping the part where he dumped it down his throat and simply poured it down his pants. Could he get disability for that and stay home? Phil knew he needed a change.

Attempting to button up his white collar with one hand, Phil wondered if change was possible; real change, not just changing from Dentine to Juicy Fruit, but genuine, paradigm shifting, earth shattering change. Hand slipping, Phil sloshed a wave of coffee onto his clean-ish white shirt.

At least I get to change my shirt; he thought bitterly and began the process of one hand unbuttoning. The coffee stayed in the hand, it was a rule.

Phil was about half way to work before he realized that his neighbor Ron had clearly possessed two heads. Not like, a mannequin head under one arm or some kind of two faced makeup, but genuinely had two heads, each just off center of the top of his torso, each with its own neck, each with its own goatee.

It was not until Phil raced into his office to share this startling observation with his newly two-headed coworkers that Phil felt deep down in his soul that change, real change, was possible. Holy crap.

-Brihack

Everyone knows Minotaurs can’t drive.

Everyone knows that Minotaur’s can’t drive. It’s more than just the hoofs and the horn-to-head-room issue; it’s a mental possessing thing. Minotaur’s are natural maze dwellers, so the linear progression involved in most driving trips messes with their heads. Straight lines and Minotaur’s do not mix. This all pales in light of their overwhelming instinct to lurk and then jump out and scare people – this hard wired reflect does not translate well when these bull headed beast get behind the wheel.

But it was late, and I’d had one too many and, to be honest when you have been friends as long as Stan and I, you stop seeing the horns, hairy legs and the washboard stomach- you just see your buddy. Personally I blame the designated driver campaigns you see on TV all the time. They never tell you the real deal, like buzzed driving is drunk driving, but it’s always better than letting your friend Stan the Minotaur drive. PSAs are never big with details or particulars.

Pity.

Now don’t get me wrong, the arresting Orc made a lot of sense when he pointed out that Stan had polished off a barrel or two all by himself. But we all know that wasn’t the real problem. I tried to make a case for racial profiling, but the judge wouldn’t go for it. Stinking elves, always so logical and calm and focused on facts. He can pretend to be impartial but he was just made because Stan ran over his son. I mean the kid was already 600 years old, what more did he want from life?

Anyway, that’s why I lost my license. And my freedom. And my skin. Oh, yeah the loss of skin hurts, but luckily the magic keeps me from dying of infections or passing out from the pain. So, it’s only another year or two and Stan says he’s really sorry. He’s going to traffic school next weekend. That Stan… what a guy.

-Brihack

The Big Wrinkle

Tim was small for his age. He was skinny with bumpy knees and sharp elbows. His eyes were like two big pools of milk with bright round plums in the middle. Tim liked to have fun. He loved to run around a lot and play games and pull on pigtails and trip smaller kids in the hall and splash water all over the place from the water fountain.

Tim had a smile on his face most of the day and half of the night. He would stay up late to read books about good guys and bad guys and dragons and pirates and hunters. Tim loved to imagine that he was a hero from one of the books he read late at night, deep under the bed covers.

If Tim had the idea to ask one of the other kids at school which character they though he was like they would have said the annoying side kick or the villain. This would have been true, but hurt Tim’s feelings - so it was best that he never asked. Tim was loud, Tim was fast and Tim made every day about Tim. Tim was the king of Mondays to Saturdays.

But Sunday was another story. On Sundays Tim spent time with “The Wrinkle!” Four whole hours every single Sunday was unfair, Tim knew this was true from the bottom of his toes to the top of his sandy blonde hair. He felt like he was being punished for something he never did. The Wrinkle was the worst! The wrinkle was all about the “creepy smell” and the “quiet”. If Tim could just watch cartoons or bring his video games or listen to the radio or throw a ball around the room or just not go at all things would be better. Being at school would have been better. But Sundays were Wrinkle days. Mom would drop him off at the Old People Home for the Aging to spend time with Uncle Oliver. Oliver the Wrinkle! Tim knew that Uncle Oliver not his real uncle, Uncle Oliver was some kind of great uncle or cousin or something.

If his mom had asked, Tim would have told her that he was sure that Uncle Oliver was part elephant. His ears were huge! They hung off the sides of his head like a pair of melted candles. And the hair that came out of them! The Wrinkle had no hair on his head, but there was enough hair spraying out of his elephant ears to cover a large rat!

Sunday was always about being bored and stinky and gross. Sunday felt like it lasted a whole week!

* * *

Tim watched the cartoon cat get pulled from a chair and out the window, screaming down the street. He was pretty sure real cats would not do that, but he would check next time he saw one.

Mom called him from the other room, “Timmy!”

Tim pretended not to hear her. He could probably watch another cartoon if he just ignored her for a few more minutes.

“Timmy, time to go. Uncle Oliver is waiting!”

No he isn’t, thought Timmy. Uncle Oliver doesn’t even know when I am there in the room with him. Uncle Oliver does not care if I come or not. The Big Wrinkle is just getting extra stinky so that he smells extra weird when I get there. Maybe his ears will block the door to his room so we can’t get in.

“Timmy!”

“I’m doing it!” Timmy called back, sliding off the sofa and clicking the TV off. He felt like all of his energy clicked off with the TV. Today was going to take forever.

…to be continued

-Brihack

Uncle Lou

A: Earliest? That’s a toughie. No… wait-a-minute I can tell you. Yeah- definitely. I was only like 2 or 3 decades old at the time when my uncle Lou came to visit and he told me something I will never forget. He says to me, and I quote here, “Being evil ain’t got nothin’ to do with doing bad stuff.” He actually bent down and looked me right between the horns at this point, one hand on my wing spike and he said, “Being evil ain’t about doin bad stuff. It’s all about bein’ unpredictable.”

Q: Then what did he do?

A: Well, you know Lou. Lead by example is his thing, so he kissed me gently on the forehead and then threw me down three rings on hell into some fiery acid.

Q: Quite an example.

A: You mocking me?

Q: Goodness, gracious, no. Wouldn’t think of it.

A: That’s what I thought. Anyway what a sense of humor that guy had, huh? I nearly regretted it when I disintegrated him a few centuries later.

Q: Surely... we all grieved his passing. So, this, your earliest memory, is to what you attribute all of your success?

A: You are mocking me you little white winged wuss. Look, we done here?

Q: By all means. Thank you for your time and is there anything else you would like the viewers at home to know?

A: Well, I got no more words for them, but lean over here I wanna give you a kiss on the forehead.

-Brihack

Lyle Koontz Jr.

Journal Entry #1, fifth try, day one of the weirdness

You know the guy. The exposed beer belly with a huge team colored letter blanketing its sweaty girth, drunk out of his mind and screaming incoherent accolades over the top of his sloshing plastic cup. The dude, who posts video of himself mixing a brew of Mentos and Diet Coke in his own mouth, then tries to sweet talk the ladies while foaming at the mouth. The guy who proves that the idiot with the loudest voice makes the poorest choice? You know that sociopath. Of course, I know him too. Lyle Koontz Jr.; he’s me.

Why am I writing this down instead of talking to my fellow Chino townies? Good question! Good question. Funny thing about that… So, last night after a six glasses of whatever was on tap and on special followed by a dare from one of my gang of fellow idiots at the Lush Pub I found myself on the bluff overlooking the sprawling town of Chino. To be honest I blacked out when I got to the top of the water tower, but I woke up with a hundred feet of bungee cord a gallon of white glue and a pink frilly dress stuffed in a paper grocery bag. Not a big deal, at least this time there were no animals. What I think woke me was the silence.

You never notice the little sounds of the city. The hundreds of car engines running, feet walking, doors closing, conversations, construction work – even the hum of the lights – it all makes noise and the absence of it – the totally unexpected and hortastically awful overwhelmingly absoluteness of it. I could hear myself breathe and the sound felt like trespassing. I have to go down there and find out what happened. I can’t just eat the glue; I tried, loses its appeal after kindergarten. So, here I go. Gonna head down and see just what the hell happened last night. Yup. Gonna go. Any minute now.

Soon.


-Brihack

Polyports Sucks!

To: Polyports Corporate office – Terran Industries division

From: One pissed off Mutha F****-er

Hey you big genital lesions, you suck! I would come down there and rearrange your face right now but I can’t, you know why? ‘cause my teleporter don’t work for shit and my face got rearranged. My nose is upside down you worthless sons of rats. It rained yesterday and I nearly drowned!

One of my eyes is in the back of my head and I wake up every morning with a black eye. I can’t see in 3D any more you spawn of the oozing pus from a diseased yak scrotum!

If I ever get my hands on you I am going to do to you what you did to my dog. The front half of him juts out of the front of my house and the back half of him sticks out into the living room. That’s the wrong end facing inside, let me tell you and he barks at the neighbors all day long. I have to tear down my house to get him out!

You sons of a motherless goat deserve to die. I tried to get to one of your stores on Io, but you need a teleporter to get there! How can you sell a product like this which does not work? Don’t send me a new one, come here and fix all of your mistakes! Then when you are done I am going to teleport a big steaming pile of massive Nerf poop into your intestines and watch you squirm!

You are the embodiment of evil.

You deserve to die.

Respectfully,

Turrets Mosley III

Nobody means maybe

When Lisa Hunt had politely told him maybe, he was sure that it meant no. It wasn’t just that he woke up thinking about her every day, day dreamed about her during all of his classes, thought of her before he went to sleep and then dreamed about her all night. It was that nobody said maybe unless they meant, “No, but don’t make a scene.” Why would she want to go with him any way? She was perfect and he was lame.

So he had agreed to DJ the dance. Looking at Senior Prom as a gig took some of the sting out of it. Instead of spending all of his money of corsages, overpriced dinners and a shared limo he would rake in a sizable bundle of cash which he could put toward that used Pontiac in the Autotrader. He might be able to snag the car just after he passed his drivers test. It wasn’t a complete disaster. He might even sneak in some Goth or Acid rock and freak out the yuppie clones.

The theme song from Trailer Park Boys wafted up from his hip and he looked down at his cell Text message? Who sent him text messages? Thumbing a few buttons he pulled it up. “Maybe = Yes!” he read with a bolt of adrenaline. She said yes! The girl of his dreams was going with him to Prom, this was the best day – his elation incinerated instantly – and I’m the DJ!

Shit!

-BriHack

Fly 007

Have you heard the latest buzz? He’s back! The Lord of the Flies, agent double-Oh-Wingus himself, Ormia Ochracea. As we catch up with our hero he clings precariously to a wall, listening in on the delicate negotiations between the Umboogoo tribe of lower Drekthia and the lung people from the planet sneeze. Apparently the Sneezians have great need of the special leaves grown only in the Drekthians coastal regions. The Drekthians are happy to trade their leaves; they just think that the Lungians are rude and hostile. To the Umboogoo wheezing is a sign of disrespect, similar to probing the inner lining of your nose in public or drinking from a stranger’s mocha-chino. Lungians sound like they are wheezing all the time, its just what happens when most of your body is composed on lung. Needless to say, negotiations are tense.

Man, I would kill for stucco, and I can, I have the license. Not on me, it’s too big, but at home I have a license to kill and I would totally use it right now… Good old irregular stucco, you don’t even have to cling to it, you just find a nice spot and settle in, but no… these negotiations always take place in rooms walled with smooth marble or a ba-zillion mirrors. Even some knotted pine would be OK. When I was a maggot we lived in some knotted pine, good stuff. It’s still decorative, yet easy to cling to. No one is impressed by marble and mirrors any more. Oh, crap, I’m slipping. What were they saying down there?

Tune in next week when we find out the thrilling conclusion to the adventures of our favorite fly guy. Will he learn the critical information? Will he be spotted? Will he find a rough surface which is easier to adhere to? Will we see the return of his arch nemesis Archibald C. Swatter? Stay tuned!

-BriHack

GOLLY

GOLLY

CHAPTER 1

Once upon a time – when we say once upon a time we are normally telling the reader that they are about to experience a fairy tale. That is misleading here because this is not a fairy tale, but the tale of a fairy. Um, it’s complicated by you’ll see. Where was I? Oh, yes. Once upon a time there was a little girl named Golly. Golly wasn’t exactly like other little girls her age. The difference between her and the others was always the source of her greatest happiness and her deepest disappointments.

In truth, her real name wasn’t Golly. Golly was just her nickname. In the place where she was born - and had lived up until yesterday - her full name was Galadreilea-bella-drucilla-bodilla-pickle-tumbler-bright-infinity- star, but both her mom and her dad had known that the kind of people she would meet in her new neighborhood would prefer calling her Golly.
Despite the vague fear all things new, Golly was excited to move into her new home. This was because of what she hoped to find in a new place and what she hoped to escape from the old. Despite being a happy and outgoing child, Golly had not fit in so well in her old neighborhood, but she had high hopes of fitting in better in her new one. That’s just how Golly was, always full of hope that things would turn out for the best. Golly managed to hope for the best, no matter what.

At least once a week Golly’s mother Goldie would say in her in a high melodious voice, “Galadreilea-bella-drucilla-bodilla-pickle-tumbler-bright-infinity- star you would honestly hope for a sun tan in a snow storm.” To which Golly would reply, “You never know!”

Golly’s father, Gordon who -at the best of times - only slightly distracted by his work would smile and pat Golly on the head saying, “That’s my girl.”

Golly made a big show of protesting when her father patted her on the head, “How rude!” She would mutter under her breath. But secretly Golly would imagine that she was a sleek black cat and enjoyed the pat on the head.

Wait a moment you might say at this point. Being the shrewd and thoughtful reader that you doubtlessly are, are Golly’s Mom and Dad really named Goldie and Gordon? Do they have longer real names too? Well done! Children are so smart these days. You are quite correct to be suspicious. In fact Goldie and Gordon are not their real names; however for the purpose of conserving paper and getting to sleep some time tonight, we will not spell them out here. Let’s just say that when Gordon proposed to Goldie using both their formal names it took three full days. Gordon squawked for over a week afterward his throat was so dry, but they were blissfully happy squawks for Goldie has agreed to marry him.

Soon after their marriage Gordon had thrown himself into his work, hoping to provide a good home for his new bride and before too long, his daughter. His job was a unique mix of sociologist, research scientist and explorer. His work often took him away from home and this pained Gordon in the extreme. He loved his family more than anything in the world, yet in order to provide for them he was constantly away. What was he to do?

It was Goldie who first suggested the wild idea. What if the family moved to where he worked? What if they came with him, then they would always be together. Gordon was stunned. It was audacious, preposterous, and ridiculous! It was dangerous, reckless and senseless. It was… perfect. They would move together.

That pretty much brings us up to now. The point where Golly, hopeful about her new neighborhood and anxious to begin her new life sits patiently on her family’s magic carpet as it speeds over the boundaries between worlds and circles lazily toward the track houses of South Urbaton. Oh, did I mention that Golly and her parents were pixies moving to a human community? Then I must not have told you that they were giant pixies! Goodness, how thoughtless of me. My sincere apologies. I shall fill in the gaps as we progress, but the carpet is coming in for a landing now and we need to move on to the next chapter.

-BRIHACK

This Week's Writing Assignment

By Brian - AKA - "BriHack"

The wrinkled vellum of the illuminated scroll, matched the skin texture of the ancient man's gnarled hands painstakingly unfolding it. Would the old relic live to read the prophecy it contained?

How much could a boy pretending to be the musty mage's apprentices take?

Wilted greens and roast-beast shot through with gristle matrixes every day broken up by the weekend when the shriveled monks served up some kind of sandpiper jerky.

I ask you, would you eat it? It's enough to make me want to string the palate-dead cooks up by their ankles and roast them for dinner. Well, there would be time enough for that when all this was over. For now it was time to read the prophecy.