Dirk Destroyer Part 27 Chapter 12

Elmer Destroyer and the lovely Ono are trapped in a cave with several people they don’t like much including the loquacious All Bore. A lot of other stuff has happened, but you’ll have to look at the preceding posts to find out what.

Chapter 12

Escape From a Boring Death

Ono saved some sausages for Mage-e-not and Lip Ton Tease, which was nice of her, because I could tell she was still hungry, and that she really liked sausage, which made me feel strangely happy.

I don’t know why she didn’t offer any to the others, but I was glad that dirty old All Bore didn’t get any. He probably wouldn’t stop talking to eat anyway. He was saying something about an erector college, whatever that was. It was something he didn’t like, which made me all for it.

“Gee,” said Mage-e-not, “I wish Jonma Carry didn’t have to stop digging.”

“I didn’t have to stop,” said Jonma Carry.

“Why no scrape, pluck, plop, Jon?” asked Ono.

“All Bore told me to stop.”

“Well,” said All Bore, “it’s almost evening now, and it will get dark in the cave quicker than it will outside. As we have all night, I’ll describe to you how that is just another piece of clear evidence of global swarming. That will keep us all entertained till morning.”

“What do you say, Lustavious?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“Do we need sunlight?”

“Oh,” said Lustavious, shaking himself out of a stupor. “My goodness,” he sang. “We do not need sunlight indeed!” He held up his finger and a light sprung forth. “This little light of mine…” he sang. He never sounded better. He even let Ono and me light cigars to spread the light further.

“Slash, rustle, whoosh, Jon,” said Ono.

“You sure?”

“Dig!” said everyone but All Bore.

And greatly did the dirt whoosh, and also plop – much of it on All Bore, which made the rest of us laugh heartily except for Jonma Claim who appeared to be himself and not Uriculous at the moment. He muttered something about the dignity of the office, but it didn’t sound interesting enough to follow.

All Bore droned something about the future of the planet when he wasn’t spitting out mouthfuls of the very same planet he was droning about.

But Swampy still protected Ono, and Mage-e-not finally wised up and hid behind her. Lip Ton Tease, though unshowered, was still able to dance through the storm smirch-free, which left all the mud for Lustavious, Jonma Claim, All Bore, and at one juncture, Akwar, who thankfully disappeared without saying anything. Dirt hit me, but I managed to stay clean by using one of the few tricks I knew from the school of amazing stuff.

You might think smoking cigars with Ono and seeing massive dirt clods hitting people I didn’t like would never get old, but as sports go, it wasn’t jousting. I found myself sneaking off to the nurse’s office in the school of amazing stuff, and shifting time into fast forward. After more than an hour of this – eleven hours in real time, a strange black sign covered my vision with a warning from something called the FBI informing me that the program was for home use only and that any reproduction or rebroadcast would leave me liable for a large amount of currency. I had no idea what that meant, though I suspected – as money was involved – that All Bore might have something to do with it.

I switched back to real time just as Jonma Carry broke through to the surface. Lip Ton Tease went out to scout the area. We all stood there looking at each other and I considered going back to the nurse’s office to fast-forward through this part, when Tease returned.

“There are sheep,” he said. “But they are acting normally.”

“That’s a relief,” said Lustavious.

“And,” said Tease as dramatically as his monkish composure could manage, “there are showers.”

I’d like to say that next week installment will be above ground and above board, but Walter Bego asked for next week’s post to talk about editing Dirk Destroyer.

I really don’t like that guy.

Sure, he died almost 20 years ago - but should a little thing like that disqualify a candidate?

Dirk Destroyer Part 20 Chapter 10 Part 2

The Fellowship of the Bring is in dire peril of mortal boredom, hemmed in a cave with a phalanx of un-sheep-like at the entrance, and All Bore in the cave’s bowels. Read on to find what crap proceeds.

I had no idea why Jonma Carry stopped digging. It was still early but it looked like people were settling in to spend the night in the cave with All Bore. It wasn’t because anyone wanted to be around the man, but because a phalanx of sheep formed and blocked the entrance.

“That’s very un-sheep-like,” said Lustavious.

“I don’t like caves,” said Mage-e-not.

“No showers,” said Lip Ton Tease.

“You may as well get used to it,” said All Bore. “We’ll all be living in caves soon.”

“Why?”

All Bore must have studied with the same teacher that taught Uriculous, because the look of disdain he gave me was first rate. “Global swarming,” he said.

“Global swarming?”

“That’s right,” said All Bore, “but don’t say it again without permission. I already have the copyright on it.”

As I thought about it, it made sense. “So you’re saying that the swarms of sheep covering the earth eating everything that grows except tobacco, is a threat to the livability of our planet?”

“Sacrilege,” sputtered Jonma Claim.

The dull face of All Bore stared at me with slack mouth. “I had never thought,” he drawled, “that I would ever hear something so stupid in my life.”

“Global swarming isn’t about the sheep?” I asked.

“Of course not – it’s about the honey bee.”

I scratched my head and tried to understand how the honey bee was a threat to the planet. It’s true that bees might sting you if you’re stupid enough to bother them, but I could think of nothing more innocuous than honey bees. They helped plants grow, and the planet Two was in desperate need of plants.

What could be wrong with honey bees? I thought.

So I asked, “What could be wrong with honey bees?”

“Nothing,” said All Bore, “if they were left in the natural balance. The problem is man-tended honey bees.”

“But,” said Mage-e-not, “there are maybe a hundred wild honey bee hives for every tended one.”

“But that’s enough,” said All Bore. “That extra one percent has thrown off the whole balance of nature, all because of mankind’s greed, and desire for honey.”

It occurred to me that a man who was patenting and copyrighting things he didn’t invent just to gain wealth might lack the moral standing to preach against greed. I kept that particular thought to myself.

“But what about the sheep?” I asked, and pointed at the hundred or so sheep soldiers keeping us shut in.

“Sheep are natural,” said All Bore, “don’t worry about them.”

“Wolves were natural too,” I said, “but humans wiped them out because they were eating sheep. We used to eat sheep as well.”

“Vicious rumor,” said Jonma Claim. “It never happened.”

“I was there!” I said. “So were you. That RunPol fellow is probably eating sheep right now.”

“I wonder,” said Mage-e-not, “if I turned invisible, I might be able to get by the sheep and have a chop… I mean get us help.”

All Bore shook his head in a paternalistic derisive way that strangely did not make me like him much. “It’s all about man-tended honey bees,” he said. “Consider the plight of the pola-beers.”

“Pola-beers,” squeaked Ono. “Uncle Sudsy was snatched and squished splat by a Pola-beer.”

Pola-beers were the most vicious, carnivorous, dangerous trees in the world. A single pola-beer sprout immediately destroys all vegetation growing within its reach, and establishes a hard cap of ground where nothing can grow. As it matures, the pola-beer produces sap that smells like the most enticing brew you can imagine. Anyone unaware, drunk, or too stupid to notice the hard cap of earth surrounding a pola-beer is seized by its branches and slowly consumed. The victim frequently lives for hours once it is trapped, which sometimes allows the pola-beer to grab fellow drunks and stupid people who come to attempt a rescue, or who come to see what all the noise was about.

There are those who claim that the pola-beer perform a public service. I might agree except pola-beers don’t eat sheep.

All Bore went on with his monotone lecture. My mind wandered as words like the pola caps, and hockey stick – whatever that was – vibrated in my ears.

“I like honey,” I heard Mage-e-not say at one point, but the drone went on. Jonma Claim was blinking like he was trying to stay awake. Lustavious was staring at Ono’s butt. Jonma Carry was leaning stiffly against the wall of dirt he’d excavated. With his stone-like features, it was hard to tell if he was awake or asleep. Lip Ton Tease looked like he was meditating – until I heard him snore.

All Bore didn’t seem to care if people were conscious. He just went on in a monotone drawl.

I looked in my fanny-pack and saw a single match. I considered asking Lustavious for a light, but I didn’t figure there was much hope there. There wasn’t any wood in the cave, so we didn’t have a fire going. I wandered out towards the sheep to light a cigar with my last match. The sheep held their formation as I approached, and didn’t say a bah. There was a nice rock ledge one rank in. It would be simple to brush past the corner ram and sit up there.

The corner ram glared at me in a fashion not much different that Uriculous Wisehind’s look of derision.

I sighed and sat on the loose soil.

The cigar almost didn’t catch. That would have been upsetting, but not unexpected considering how my life was proceeding. I took a deep draw on my cigar and wondered if they had tobacco in oblivion.

   Speaking of things that might drone you to death.