Another Evening In The Cosmic Pinball Machine

"I could murder a beer right about now," I say to myself as I pull out of the church parking lot. It's been a long day and I have not had a beer in weeks. I pull across the road and into a shopping center. I squint out the driver’s side window as I idle past the doors of the super market, trying in vain to read the store hours. It's 9:15 PM. People are coming and going from the store and I know that I can stop and buy a six-pack of Hoegaarden or Anchor Steam, but for some reason, I drive on past and head for home.

9:30 PM. The doggies are waiting for me. The ratta-tat-tat of claws on the wood floor as they follow me out back into the moonlight to do their business. There's an unseasonable chill in the air and I decide to build a fire in the fire place. It's late, but it will give Lori Beth something nice to come home to. Back inside, the doggies sniff through the kindling pail as I place the splintered flakes of wood piece-by-piece over the tender on the andirons. I wrestle a piece from big-dog before she can munch on it.

9:45 PM. I walk out front and rummage through my wood pile, looking for suitable pieces to burn. I stand up with an armload of oak, poplar, and cherry. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the shrieking agony of rubber on asphalt, punctuated by a sickening crunch. It's just the background noise of modern life. I barely notice it as I walk back into the house.

9:50 PM. The flames burn in Arabic. Leaping tongues spelling strange words along the tops of the logs. I poke at it, rearranging the logs. A flaming piece of bark tumbles out onto the hearth. With tongs in hand, I try and place it back in the fire and as I do so, my phone begins to ring. I fumble with the tongs and it takes a few tries to get the ember back into the fireplace. Setting the tongs aside, I jog into the kitchen for the phone. The caller ID says "Lori." I answer. She always calls when she's on her way. But her voice is not right. It sounds strange and distant at first and I can only tell that she is crying. Immediately, my mind begins to invent scenarios that explain the panic that I am hearing in her voice. It's one of those conversations where you will remember it forever despite the fact that you can not recall the words that were spoken. "Pinegrove," I hear her say. "I'm coming." And that's all I remember saying in reply. I'm strangely calm. I'm on autopilot here. I know I'm leaving the house. I'm watching myself grab keys and put on a pair of flip-flops. It's a serious situation. Of that much, I'm certain. Serious situations always make me think about guns and I move as if to grab my H&K from beneath the pillow on the bed. No. She's fine...sort of...God, I hope so. No one is trying to hurt her. I know emotions are going to be running high wherever I'm going and the last thing I need is a gun in my hand. I've got my fists and elbows, I can dispense justice on the spot if needs be..."What the hell am I saying?!" I half yell as I slam the front door behind me.

10:01 PM. I never speed in residential areas and tonight is no exception. I've had the phone pressed against my ear since I left the house. She's crying but I have to lay the phone in the passenger seat in order to shift gears. I'm as good as there anyways. She's only four blocks away. Only. But twenty-five miles per hour is agony when your love is waiting for you, bleeding and broken in a smoldering pile of mechanical chaos that reeks of antifreeze and brake fluid. "God, I know you are sovereign..." I start to pray as I wrestle with the speedometer needle. "Some things just happen by shear dumb chance, this is just an artifact of the cosmic pinball machine that is the world you created. Right?" This is not the time for this, but circumstances beg the obvious question. That is, how can God allow things like this to happen? Or, more succinctly, surely He doesn't have an immediate and direct hand in causality at this level. Or rather, some things happen by shear chance. I mean, He is sovereign in that he created the world, set everything in motion, and then let things happen without further intervention. This randomness, this chance, is here because He willed it to be this way at the beginning. In that sense, EVERYTHING that happens, by chance or otherwise, still happens according to His will. Thus chance exists in harmony with His sovereignty. I know in my heart that this cannot be so. But it sure makes me feel better, right now, knowing that He wouldn't just deliberately do something like this to my girl. But if He is everywhere and everywhen, then he knew about this before it happened. Because, after all, for God, there is no chance...or is there? Do the numbers that come from a random-number generator remain random if He knows what they will be before hand? What do I mean by randomness? SMACK!!! I slap myself mentally. My wife could be dying and I'm penning a mental treatise on causality. Mailboxes and trashcans file by in the crepuscular cone of my headlights. Ahead I see the flashing red and white lights...north of the intersection where I'm expecting her to be..."God, you are sovereign and you are in direct control of everything and I refuse to believe otherwise."

10:04 PM. I pull onto the grass and turn on my caution lights. Before I can even climb out of my car, my father in law is leaning in the open door with his arm resting on the roof. "Lori's been in an accident." He says. "I know, Dean..." I say as I step out of the car, "...Let's go find her." The crunch of broken glass underfoot as I cross the intersection on foot. I can smell the pine trees and I know that I could hear the wind in their branches were it not for the sound of idling diesel engines and radio chatter. I'm amazingly calm, to the point where I actually wonder if I have a soul at all. Faceless people are milling about. Blinding light seems to be coming from every direction, but their faces seem to be ensconced in shadow. A ring of vehicles with lights shining inward, painting the scene in an eerie spectrum of surreal hues. Crunch-crunch, glass and shards of plastic making tiny explosions under my flip-flops. We pass an old Honda Accord. It looks like it’s dark green in the light. Its guts are hemorrhaging through the crumpled body-panels. Brake-fluid, anti-freeze, oil, all mixing together and spreading out over the asphalt as the engine continues to scream incessantly at a high rev. And somehow, the sound of its racing engine will always remain impressed in my mind. I studied the dying vehicle as I passed. The car is empty, deflated airbags. I turn away. Dean is pointing but I already see her Toyota, silhouetted against the blazing headlights of an emergency response vehicle. My pace quickens along with my heart-rate. The front wheel on the driver's side is set at a severe camber, like the wheels on an overloaded cartoon car. I step up the curb and into the thick sod. Immediately, I'm ankle deep in sandy mud. The slimy grit oozes between my toes but I barely notice it. Her door is open and there is a stout black man standing in it. He's dressed in black and wearing a funny floppy black toboggan on his head. He turns toward me; all I can see are a pair of big eyes that exude compassion and sincerity. I like this guy. It's something in his eyes. "I'm a police officer," he says. I like him even more. "I'm her husband." I say. He takes me by the arm and pulls me past him so that I am face-to-face with her. I've never really seen her cry before. Her face is a mess, mascara slithering down her cheeks. There's no blood. But if there had been, I would not have noticed. It's her eyes that cause me to catch my breath. So full of fear and desperation. She's looking at me sideways. There's a man in the back, reaching over the top of her seat. He has her head in his hands. "Hey...Babe." My words come as a whisper. Say something. "You've got to hold still, ok? You've got to maintain c-spine." I say with a little more confidence. Why am I so calm? I glance at the guy in the back. He's all business and says nothing. Lori's left hand is held aloft as if she's reaching back for her seatbelt. She's just holding it that way, like she doesn't trust the guy in the back seat and she's thinking about pushing his hands away. I take her hand in mine and caress it gently. She sobs softly. Dean is leaning in the passenger side with her other hand in his.

10:08 PM. I'm brushed aside by paramedics. "Here." Dean hands me her purse and keys. The strobe effect of the red and white flashing lights makes everything feel like time-lapse photography. I stare at the purse and keys before turning to take them to my car. I've forgotten about the mud but I'm quickly reminded as my feet sink in. I stagger, fighting to keep my flip-flops. My jerky movements are illuminated by the ambulance whose lights are trained on the rescue scene behind me. Paramedics are rushing back and forth. Someone is calling for a backboard. I wonder if they are going to pull the ambulance through the grass and I feel like I should warn them about the mud. But that's stupid. They would never do that. Why am I even thinking about this? I put Lori's purse in my trunk and return. I'm so calm. There's a swarm of people pressed tightly around her door. I don't know what to do. For the first time, I notice the cold. I notice that I am shaking violently. I hug myself as I bend down to study the damage to her Toyota, trying to piece together what happened, hoping to somehow discover something, I don't know what, that will convince me that things are not as serious as they seem. My stomach twists as I look behind the driver's side wheel. The drive-shaft and all of the suspension linkages are sheared off and hanging in a sludge of lithium grease. It looks somehow like a grizzly football injury or something. I circle the car. A trail of anti-freeze marks the trajectory. She's nearly forty-feet from where the impact occurred. My mind starts doing tentative calculations. I don't like where they are headed. There are no skid marks, only the trail of anti-freeze. "He ran the stop sign,” I heard a voice say. Who? I'm going to kill him. I look up to find Lori staring at me through the wind shield. She's reading my mind, pleading with her eyes. I nod subtly, close my eyes, and swallow. "Take this," It's Dean's voice. He's handing me Lori's phone. "And this," he hands me her headset. I make my way back to my car, forgetting about the mud again. The grit between my toes is starting to chafe the skin. I look up to see a kid. He couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen. He’s black, and he’s wearing black slacks, a nicely pressed white dress shirt, and a black waiter's apron. He’s holding his left arm in a funny way. In his other hand, he has a cell phone pressed to his ear. "...bad wreck," I hear him say. This is the guy. I know but I don’t know either. Kind of like the time I saw the guy who made a cuckold out of me. We walked passed each other in a Wal-Mart one afternoon. I knew it was him...but I didn't know. Kind of like the way a mom knows her kid is doing drugs...but at the same time she doesn't know. This is the guy I almost vowed to kill only moments ago. Across the intersection, another boy in identical clothing stands helplessly. They could only be brothers. I feel badly for them. You can read the fear in their body language. Some kid and his brother, coming home late from work. It was a hard stop-sign to see, especially at night...but to send Lori's Toyota flying forty feet down the road; they had to be going faster than forty-five miles per hour. But I had done stupid things at their age too.

10:23 PM. I returned once more to the Toyota. My brother-in-law, Ralph, is standing next to Dean. I feel naked and exposed with these members of my new family gazing upon me and my tragedy. We are all concerned for Lori, but when Ralph and Dean look into my eyes, I can see this overwhelming sense of pity. Those glances that make you realize how fragile your composure is, the kind that make your throat throb with a stifled sob and your nasal cavity burn the way it does as you try to fight tears. I barely know these people. Lori and I have been married for less than four months. And before that, my ongoing divorce had forced the meet-the-family routine to happen a few weeks before the wedding. But we are covering a lot of ground here tonight. We watch as half a dozen shouting guys move Lori from her seat and onto a bright orange backboard that looks red under the street light. "They say that you can ride in the ambulance with her, but you have to ride up front," Dean says. I nod. As if reading my mind, Dean goes on, "If I were you, I would drive your car, though." I nod again. "That's what I'm going to do," I say. Ralph appears next to me. "Don't worry about the car. I'll take care of all that," he says. "Thanks, Ralph," and I mean it as I try and look him in the eyes.

10:30 PM. I’m almost to the intersection of Wal-Triana and Highway 72, fighting to keep my speed at forty-five miles per hour. I have to beat the ambulance to the hospital. My phone is lost in the passenger side floor boards. But I’ve put Lori’s headset on and I’m dialing Mom and Dad. Not really sure why. It just seems like something that I should do under the circumstances. Mom is concerned. I feel stupid and incompetent for not having more details. The phone beeps. It’s Dean. I have to let Mom go, promising to call her later. “Do you have Lori’s keys?” Dean asks. And I do. They are in the trunk with her purse. “They need them in order to move her car,” he says. I affect a sharp u-turn and head back. Frustration is setting in.

10:35 PM. It’s like revisiting a nightmare as I pull up on the accident scene again. Ralph is waiting for me. I roll my window down and hand him the key. “The state trooper needs to talk to you,” he says with a look on his face that resonates with my frustration. I park my car and walk to the squad car. The trooper wants her license. I retrieve it from her purse. “Does she live on Pinegrove?” He asks. I blink; I’m not really paying attention. “Uh, no….111 Coldsprings Drive-“He cuts me off, completing my sentence as he notices the address on her license. He hands me her license. “You can go,” he says without even looking up from his clip board. Ralph is waiting for me at the car. “She’s gonna be ok. Just take it easy and be safe,” he says. It’s comforting to hear him say this.

10:48 PM. I get on the on-ramp at I-565. It’s late, the interstate is empty, and I’m about to blow my lid from the tedium of adhering to the speed limit. I’ve had enough and the stress boils over. I down shift to forth and drop the hammer. My little red Evo screams as the tach-needle surges to redline. Bam. I knock it into fifth just before the rev-limiter engages. I’m pinned in my seat by the acceleration. One-hundred ten, one-hundred twenty, one-hundred thirty, one-hundred forty miles per hour, I catch my breath. At one hundred and forty-five miles per hour, every hair on my body is sticking straight up. My mouth is as dry as a cup of flower. She could easily go faster, but I dare not try it. What have always been long sweeping turns in the interstate, suddenly seem like diminishing radius hair-pins.

11:00 PM. The freak show that is the ER from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM. I sign in and they give me a tag to wear that has her room-number on it. A4. I brush the curtain aside to find the room bustling with activity. The cacophony of medical-speak between the nurses, the squeak of sneakers on the linoleum, the beep-beep of her heart monitor, the crackle of plastic wrappers being removed from sterilized instruments. Hoses, tubes, and chords coming out of the walls. My mother in law looks at me from across the room. She’s in the corner and she’s assaulting my composure with her eyes and quivering chin. I go to her and hug her before turning to Lori. “Can she feel her legs?” I ask. Linda nods, “She can feel them and move them.” This comes as a huge relief and manifests itself in the form of an audible sigh. Only one of us can stay. Linda picks up her coat and leans in over Lori to tell her that she will be right outside. I move next to her and put my fingers gently in Lori’s hair. The left side of her face is pink and swollen. The neck brace forces her to look at me out of the corner of her eye. I don’t even know what to say to her. As my fingers slide gently along her scalp, I see the fear and panic subside a little in her eyes. “How ya doin’, babe?” I ask. What a stupid thing to ask. “I’m ok,” she lies. I nod, watching the nurse fiddle with the monitor. Lori’s blood pressure is 117 over 50. I wonder if this is a safe number. I wish I was a doctor so badly. A nurse explains that she is going to have to cut Lori’s clothes off since they don’t want to risk moving her. Lori nods with her eyes. Bit by bit, her clothing is removed. Lori glances sideways at me and grins, “you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I smile, “It’s the highlight of my evening.”

11:10 PM. We are alone now but for a single nurse. LaGina. She has a kind face and a soothing voice. “Ok, baby?” this and “ok, baby?” that. She’s clearly younger than either of us but with her calm confident actions, I barely notice. “I’m going to have to start an IV and get some blood for the lab. Ok, baby?” she says. Lori’s eyes roll towards me and her face contorts as if to say: “Here we go again.” I smile, causing her to smile back at me. Her voice is weak but she says: “Good luck with that. I’m a hard stick.” “She really is,” I add, “Her veins are shot.” Lori smiles sardonically at the ceiling. Her cynicism is comforting to me. This is my Lori alright. LaGina comes around to my side of the bed and with a pile of glass tubes and an IV needle. Lori offers her her hand dutifully. “Wow,” LaGina remarks after looking the arm over for a moment or two. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m only gonna try once. Ok, baby? Don’t wanna make a pin-cushion out of you.” I force myself to laugh at her joke. Lori smiles. I say a silent prayer, asking God to make this easy for once. LaGina wraps a thick rubber strap around Lori’s bicep and starts flicking her arm all over. She finds vein in Lori’s hand. “Wow, that’s a good one,” I remark. “This is gonna stick. Ok, baby?” Lori’s eyes squint as the needle punches through the skin. Blood appears in the clear tubing behind the needle. “Score,” I say. I’m truly impressed. Thank you, Lord. I’ve seen nurses stick Lori more than a dozen times before calling for someone else to try. With Lori’s BP at 117 over 50, it takes a veritable eternity to fill four viles with blood.

11:20 PM. The curtains are swept aside as Phillip enters. He’s got a grin on his face. He stands over the bed and watches the blood trickle into the vile and remarks on the fact that LaGina was actually able to stick a vein. I nod. “Boy, nothing’s worse than those nurses in the Navy,” he says, “When they stick you, it’s like BAM!” He punches me in the shoulder. I grin. Lori smiles feebly. LaGina can’t fill the last vile and she moves to the other arm and uses a butterfly needle. When she finishes, she tells us that they will be in to do X-rays in a little while. This means in about an hour if we are lucky. But we are more than lucky. After fifteen minutes, a hippy looking X-ray tech wearing cargo pants and a scrub top enters the room. “You guys wait outside,” he says to Phillip and me as he goes through the contents of the cabinet above the sink. I run my fingers through Lori’s hair one last time before complying.

11:30 PM. It could be 11:30 PM. I don’t know. I haven’t looked at a clock since I parked my car outside the ER. Lori’s X-rays are done and we are told that we are now waiting for a CT-scan. It’s just the two of us in the room now. Her eyes are closing and I get nervous. What if she has a concussion? I try to make small talk to keep her awake as I caress her scalp. Her hair feels soft and cool as it falls between my fingers. Hours pass as we wait. Lori begins to cough when the orderly comes to take her for the CT-scan. She almost screams from the pain. “Oh! My back!” her voice cracks as fresh tears stream down her face. I see panic in her eyes. I begin to fear that her injuries may be severe.

2:58 AM. The CT-scan is done and a nurse comes in to tell us that everything looks good and that the doctor will be in to see us before they discharge Lori. I don’t think I’ve ever been this relieved in my life. I return to the waiting room to give Dean and Linda the news. The lights are low in the little private waiting room just off of the ER. Dean and Linda are slumped in their chairs as a news anchor rambles on and on from a flat-screen television on the wall. Dean’s eyes are red with fatigue. We savor the moment together as I tell them that everything is going to be fine.

3:00 AM. The doctor enters the room. Emotionless and impersonal. It’s a perfunctory measure for him. Lori is going to be fine. Take X tablets of Z, Y times daily. She has lumbar and cervical sprains, which is med-speak for whiplash. I jokingly comment that it must be acute because Lori has a lot of whip to lash.

3:33 AM. Finally home. Lori breathes softly in the bed next to me. I pray a prayer of thanksgiving again for the hundredth time as I watch her sleep. Everything is going to be fine. The street lamp outside paints lines on the comforter as it shines through the slits in the blinds.

The Banquet

So I grew tired of organizing the banquet every year. It's not as if I'd volunteered the first time. It was a thankless task and no one ever helped out. This year, however, I could not bring myself to do it. I'd wake up in the morning, bent on organizing the dreaded event but a perpetual lethargy would linger over me throughout the day. By late evening, I would find myself completely exhausted from a day of doing absolutely nothing. The whole ordeal reminded me of graduate school.

I HATED graduate school. It haunted me like a bad case of herpes. At least with herpes, there's the initial bliss of erotic pleasure but with grad school, it was one long drawn out prison rape.

Thus I began to loathe my existence as the date of the banquet loomed on the calendar. The phone rang daily. Charity people, anxious and curious about the status of the un-mailed invitations. Some were curious about who this year's guest speaker would be. I could hear them blabbing to my answering machine as I cowered, naked in the floor of my closet, illuminated by a thin slice of yellow light that accentuated my jaundice.

It is now day 39, I am nearly catatonic. I have exhausted my supply of vodka and cigarettes and I have no choice but to brave the cruel winter air in my quest to resupply. My bathrobe offers little in the way of protection. I think my balls may have frozen to the bench at the bus stop. I don't know. Vodka puts hair on your chest. I imagine it can grow you a new pair as well.

The seat is warm and the bus smells like sulfur. I can feel them staring at me from every corner, judging me. Surely they know about the banquet! The rage wells up within me. The shame of defeat. Humanity conspiring against me. So I'm broken. So I failed. "You win! You win! Are you happy?!" I scream as time stands still. Sometimes it's not about winning, it's about tearing away from security, cold-cocking the guy on the podium, and whippin' out your ding-dong for the whole world to see.

The Dogs

Joel was five, maybe four at the time. I was ten-ish. This was when we lived in the first house in Tai'tung. The gaudy duplex that looked like an owl from the front. The one that was just around the corner from the Zhang's home.

It was a hot steamy day, the kind that made your eyes feel glazed and your limbs feel heavy. A day that blended seamlessly into the perpetual Taiwanese summer. With air so humid and so thick that you felt the need to chew it up and swallow in your efforts to breathe. There was no breeze and the little yellow BMX that I pedaled along on was travelling too slowly to create its own. It felt as if my head were inside a fish bowl full of steam. The brake levers rattled with every bump and little droplets of sweat fell from my nose and chin and splattered on the foam pad that protected my posterity from the savagery of the steel that ran from the seat to the handle bars.

I was inching my way down the broad un-trafficked road that led to the hospital, the road that was flanked by the abandoned market to the west, and the typical tangle of chest-high grass and mounds of rubble to the east. My eyes were heavy with the strain of existence in the merciless sun, and so they watched the asphalt sliding by beneath my pedalling feet. So it was that the black blur came as something of a surprise. I snapped to attention, squeezing the brake levers and skidding sharply to the right in an effort to avoid colliding with the mass of black fur. Pebbles and dust scattered as my bike ground to a halt next to a pair of mutts whose butts were spot-welded together. They had foolishly chosen to breed in the middle of the road at noon on asphalt that was hot enough to sear the conscience of a saint. The female looked up at me with eyes that bespoke her woe. So typical in dogs. Such impulsive creatures with such short memories. They suffer the consequences of their actions in such a bewildered state. The male looked back at me over his shoulder and the mirage from the asphalt put tears in his eyes.

I had seen dogs locked in this configuration many times before. In fact, it was not an uncommon sight in that part of the world where dogs roamed the streets like vermin; dirty, diseased, and often starving. Not an uncommon sight and yet it was still so compelling. And for a kid as oblivious to propriety as I was, such occasions offered the opportunity to roll up the sleeves and get an intimate look at the business of procreation. I remember the first time that I stumbled across a pair of mating dogs. I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking at and to be sure, I had walked up and inspected the mechanics on my hands and knees as a crowd of snickering locals looked on.

My father had conveyed the facts of life to me one evening after I had asked some very difficult questions at the dinner table. Questions prompted by a very confusing discourse that I'd engaged in with some of the local children earlier that day. A discourse marked by a barrage of confusing hand gestures and a steady stream of very graphic depictions etched in the dirt with a stick. "The man has a penis and the woman has a vagina," my father had read to me that evening from the book that I had never seen before. And upon that first encounter with breeding dogs, I had discovered a very amusing corollary. That is, dogs have penises and vaginae too. And fueled by a euphoric sense of accomplishment, I had produced a stick and attempted to pry the dogs apart, whereupon I was forced to conclude that a two-headed dog made for a rather intimidating foe.

I was done with silly experiments. And on this day, it was enough to stand by and watch. So I stared until gripped by a sudden impulse. I turned my bike around, and set out at a mad pace for the house. The dogs watched with dreary indifference as I vanished in the undulating shimmer of the mirage.

I skidded to a halt in front of the house and jumped off of the bike without even bothering with the kickstand. "Joel!" I yelled as I burst through the front door. "Joel's outside. Don't yell in the house!" My mother scolded. I turned and dashed back out the door. Joel stood on top of a flint boulder the size of a washing machine that rested at the far end of the "yard." The "yard" was a rolling lumpy field of waist-high grass that was partitioned by foot-worn paths that zig-zagged among the mounds. Joel was the self-appointed supreme commander of the world. He stood atop the rock in his camouflage cowboy hat that tilted back high on his forehead. He wore a tattered Houston Oilers T-shirt underneath his camouflage vest. Both were tucked into his camouflage shorts that were held up by an elastic belt that had snagged a belt loop or two. He had completed the look with a pair of red rubber rain boots and a plastic UZI submachinegun that was almost as big as he was.

"Joel," I shouted again. He eyed me imperiously from his perch. Evidently, he was in one of his more serious moods. I quickly realized why this was. He had mounted the boulder in an effort to escape the neighbor's billygoat whom he had provoked by prodding it with the barrel of his gun. He had been on the rock for some time. The billygoat had lost interest long ago, but Joel wasn't taking any chances. "Come here," I shouted and motioned to him with my hands, "hurry!" He took one long look at the goat, jumped down and stumbled through the grass in his frantic four-year-old run. His dirt-smudged face was all that I could see. He scowled with his eyes as he ran. Joel was never scared. It made me smile. He was only four but he was already pretty much the man.

He arrived out of breath. "Get on." I said as I picked up the bike. He complied with a shrug, shoved his gun down the front of his pants, and clambered up onto the little luggage wrack behind the seat. I strained at the pedals and the bike teetered back and forth as I struggled to maintain balance while we got going. "Where we goin'?" he asked, a minute or two after we got under way. "I gotta show you something." I replied.

The dogs were there, just as I had left them. They looked up with glum disinterest as we pulled up in front of them and climbed off of the bike. Joel and I stood side-by-side, staring at the spectacle. I studied his face for a reaction. He was grim, but I could see the faintest indication of an inquisitive luster in his eyes. Joel never indulged anyone with a reaction. He was born with an indefatigable determination to refuse to be caught off-guard. He soaked up the scene for a minute or two before pulling his UZI out and making as if to prod the bizarre creature with the barrel. "Nuh uh," I planted a hand against his chest and shook my head. He glared up at me and shoved the gun back down his pants. Together, we stared for a minute or two before getting back on the bike and heading back home. Not a word was spoken but I could tell that he was deep in thought. I knew he was perplexed and I gleaned a fair amount of satisfaction from this.

Later that evening, as my family sat around the dinner table eating, the usual conversation dwindled. Suddenly, Joel's eyes went wide as if he'd just remembered something very important. I knew what was coming and I gulped hard. I opened my mouth to cut him off but it was too late.

"Today I saw a long dog with two heads and a bunch of legs." He said excitedly. My parents slowed their chewing as they processed the statement. It didn't take them long to figure out just what he had seen. Mom and Dad stopped chewing and stared at each other uncomfortably. Dad cleared his throat loudly and wiped his mouth with his napkin. Tea almost exploded from Em's nostrils as she cupped her hand over her mouth.

Poor Joel mistook all of this for incredulity and he looked at me angrily as if to say: "You saw it too! Tell them!" I shook my head. "No!" I said to him emphatically, using only my eyes. He looked around. His rage was building. "JOSH SHOWED IT TO ME!" He screamed. I slumped down in my chair until my eyes were level with the table top. Dad glared at me with the unmistakable sarcasm that said: "Thanks a lot, Josh!" He didn't like reading the book. And Joel was about to get the book.

My Day So Far

[joshua.hewlett@drsys138 rhel4]$ sudo rpm -Uihv --nodeps ptags-6.4.74-1.i386.rpm

Password:********

joshua.hewlett is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.

[joshua.hewlett@drsys138 rhel4]$ fuck you

bash: fuck: command not found

(Aaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!)

Lover Boy

A large cardboard box in the middle of my office floor. I eyed it suspiciously from the door, expecting Johnny Knoxville to come busting out of it at any second. I sidled to my desk, refusing to turn my back on it. At the same time, I scanned the office for hidden cameras. And for the first time in the five years that I had occupied that office, I truly noticed all of the little arcane details. "What a dump," I muttered. I nudged the box with my foot. It was heavy, but not heavy enough to contain a man. I set my coffee on the desk and produced my keys from my jacket pocket. I used my car key to punch through the tape. No packing labels or invoices taped to the box, I noted as I pried the flaps up. A layer of crumpled brown paper lay beneath the flaps. I plunged my hands into the paper. No use being delicate at this point. I went at the paper like a crazed terrier, shoving fist fulls of the paper back between my legs. I saw a patch of shiney vinyl and I smelled that new rubber smell that reminded me of new school supplies. I pulled the folded heap of vinyl from the box.

It was a hideous thing!! The enclosed invoice showed the last four digits of MY credit card number. A life-sized, anatomically complete, inflatable Elvis doll. This had to be Ginger's work. Clearly she had ordered it off of Amazon using my account and had not thought to change the shipping address. "Eeesh," I shuttered at the thought of a flushed Ginger lying in bed next to Vinyl Elvis, lit cigarettes hanging from their mouths. I wanted to kick this guy's ass but I suddenly felt foolish about laying into a lumpy pile of vinyl right there in the office.

Footsteps in the hallway. I struggled to shove the deflated hunka-hunka burning love back into the box. I folded the flaps back down frantically.

"Jeff." It was Mr. Bennett's voice.

"Goodmorning, sir." I stood and spun around to face him.

"Whatcha got there?" Mr. Bennett pointed with his chin as he took a sip of coffee from the chipped Boss-of-the-Century mug.

"That? That's nothing, sir. It's a uh birthday present for my nephew. He's turning six tomorrow..." I was a bad liar and I could feel my collar getting scratchy. I loosened my tie.

I could see Mr. Bennett's eyes squinch up the way they did when he grew skeptical. "Jeff, that looks like a um..." he gestured towards the box with his coffee mug. I turned. My heart nearly shattered my sternum. Shit! Six inches of flaccid penis protruded from beneath one of the flaps. I was going to kill Ginger. I was going to kill her!!!!!

Dream Come True

A pill cutter and a bottle of ginko. These were the items on a rather abbreviated shopping list, scrawled out on the back of an old dry-cleaning receipt that I pulled out of my blazer pocket. A list that short didn't warrant the trouble of searching for a pen and a scrap of paper. But somehow, by seeing the list set in drying ink, I was able to establish my resolve. Today, armed with this list, I will become the master of my fate.

It's only a zero-sum-game if you're breaking even. Fairness. Yet another multisyllabic word that's nothing more than a jumble of vowels and consonants to me now. A lot like justice. If you've ever been asked to define the concept of justice, you know what I'm talking about. It's an exercise in futility. We all cruise through life thinking that we know what's fair and what's just...what's normal. You're seven years old, in a classroom full of children, they are making you read stories about people with names like Jan and Ted and their little three-letter world. But your little mind can't focus because you're staring out the window at a multisyllabic world full of people and places and things that are so much more interesting than Jan and Ted who are telling their dog, Pug, to "Run, Pug, run." So you find yourself sitting in a doctor's office. Your parents standing across the room, conversing with the doctor in low voices. The doctor is talking to them but he's looking at you. And when he comes over to talk to you, he has a superfluous smile stitched to his face and he calls you names like sport and pal.

The pills make you like Jan and Ted. The pills make you normal. But the window still tugs at your heart as the years turn into decades. And it's not Jan and Ted anymore, it's differential equations and abstract algebra until one day you find yourself sitting at a desk in an office with your name on the door. A three-piece suit, a briefcase, an electric razor, and gourmet coffee. The blinds on the window are closed because you don't want to realize that this is not your dream-come-true. Because deep down, you know that it's their dream-come-true.

Turnabout is fair play. Dreams are fragile. I know. Because the pieces of all of mine still crunch underfoot whenever I move in life. The damage is done and it's irreparable. But I don't care about that anymore. It's not about my dreams anymore as much as it's about f##king theirs up and I'm going to start with a pill cutter.

"Cut the pills; reduce the dosage. Get yourself off of the stuff." I wish it had been my idea but it was Graham's. He'd told me this after we had sat down for a heart-to-heart in which I told him about what the CIA had done to me over the previous eight months. There was a sympathetic glimmer in his eyes and for the first time ever, I found myself actually liking the guy. I'd chosen to tell him because I knew that he had noticed the decrescendo in my work performance. You mention the CIA and eyebrows go up all around. Afterall, I needed this job and he deserved an explanation. And I deserved to get something out of the whole experience. F##k the CIA and their non-disclosure forms. I'd jumped through hoops for them for eight months only to have them can me despite the fact that I was multi-lingual and faster, stronger, and smarter than any of their other recruits. They wouldn't tell me why. They never tell you why. But I knew it was the Ritalin. You take it for twenty years and no matter how competent you are, people always treat you like you're a f##king half-wit when they find out.

The Swelling Pony-Sploder

The Bufo Inflarenis - also known as the "speckled puff toad," the "belching dozer biscuit," the "swelling pony-sploder," or simply the "sploder toad" - is a rare species of toad that is native to the Bufo Islands, a small island chain west of Guam. Mature female puff toads are known to reach weights in excess of 40 kilograms (88 lbs) but typically weigh anywhere from 20 to 30 kilograms (44 to 66 lbs) and grow to be about the size of a car tire. Mature males are considerably smaller; usually no larger than a tennis ball and they weigh between 300 and 800 grams (10 and 28 ounces.) Bufo Inflarenis is gray in color with a stripe of black warts down the center of the back. Males are identified by the yellow markings on the underside of their hind legs. Bufo Inflarenis' diet consists primarily of bauxite ore, a variety of plants and insects, and, on rare occasions, dead batteries.



Following the discovery of Bufo Inflarenis, a sharp and ongoing taxonomic debate arose within the herpetological community. The debate centers on two peculiarities that distinguish the speckled puff toad from other members of the amphibia class. Namely, the speckled puff toad's possession of teeth and the fact that two out of five female speckled puff toads give birth to live scoliotic snow turtles. It is the toad's teeth that allow it to masticate and ingest naturally-occurring bauxite ore that is abundant in and around the islands' numerous sulfur pits and hot springs.


However, it is Bufo Inflarenis' bizarre defense mechanism that makes it truly unique. As bauxite ore passes through the toad's gastrointestinal tract, it is broken down, producing small quantities of aluminum that are stored in a small fistulous pouch that is located near the toad's anus. When startled or threatened, the toad injects muriatic acid from its intestines into the pouch that contains the aluminum paste. The ensuing chemical reaction yields aluminum chloride and hydrogen gas. The excessive elasticity of the toad's pouch and abdominal skin help to facilitate rapid expansion of the hydrogen gas. Consequently, the toad inflates almost instantaneously, increasing its total volume by approximately 5000%. It is not uncommon for a fully inflated female to occupy a volume comparable to that enclosed by a studio apartment or a two-car garage. In contrast, the average male is approximately the size of a dumpster when fully inflated. In either case it is no surprise that such rapid expansion can prove catastrophic for wildlife in close proximity to the swelling toad. As expected, the pony-sploder has no natural predators. This, however, does not result in the prolificacy of the species as might be expected. Lengthy gestation periods and the occasional birth of a scoliotic snow turtle combine to mitigate the risk of over-population. Furthermore, the high volume of hydrogen gas contained within an inflated puff toad causes the puff toad to float upwards as buoyant forces act upon it. Though this uncontrolled flight carries the puff toad swiftly away from danger, there are some associated risks for the airborne amphibian. Namely, the potential for the toad to be carried out to sea where it will invariably fall prey to sharks and trigger-happy pirates. Or, in the off-chance that it fails to deflate in a timely manner, the toad can be carried high into the atmosphere where the trapped gas will continue to expand until the toad's abdomen ruptures.



Despite the current absence of predation, the swelling pony-sploder has been exposed to predation in the past when non-native animals were introduced to the islands. Early Spanish visitors were the first to introduce such animals, arriving in the early 18th century with a variety of domesticated animals and livestock. In 1743, ignoring the warnings of the natives on neighboring island chains, Spanish colonists landed on the beaches, delivering a heavy blow to the islands' ecosystem as they unleashed their herd of ponies on the lush plant life. The islands were not without their defenses as the formidable and aptly-named swelling pony-sploder would demonstrate shortly thereafter. Naturally curious, with little in the way of discriminating culinary tastes following months at sea, the famished ponies discovered what they hoped would be a scrumptious delicacy. The Spanish colonists' journals are rife with accounts of the subsequent carnage.



Having no natural predators, the puff toads are remarkably docile and languid. Thus they were not particularly alarmed when the pony vanguard came prancing through the surrounding vegetation in 1743. The ravenous herd paid little heed to the larger female puff toads, choosing, instead, to focus on the somewhat smaller and thus more palatable males. These they devoured instantly and with tragic consequences. It is believed that the entire herd of ponies - 108 ponies in total - was destroyed in less than 2 minutes. Some of the toads inflated in the ponies' mouths, dislocating the ponies' mandibles and tossing the ponies themselves several metres into the air. Those ponies that survived the short flight starved to death without their lower jaws. Some of the toads, however, reached the ponies' esophagi prior to inflation. These ponies suffered more violent deaths when their heads were separated from their bodies in instantaneous and violent explosions. Still other toads actually reached the ponies' stomachs before inflating and in these instances, the carnage was more than some witnesses could bear. Dumbfounded and horrified, the colonists watched as their ponies burst, showering the surroundings with blood, bone, meat, and vital organs. And in the space that the ponies had occupied mere milliseconds prior, immense grotesque spheres, gray in color, appeared and floated slowly up into the air before the sea-breeze carried them inland over the tree-tops.


Another cause of fatalities among pony-sploders - and hapless bystanders - is open flame. This, of course, is attributed to the volatile nature of the hydrogen gas that is trapped within the toads' inflated bodies. The islands to which the puff toad is confined were not inhabited by humans until the early 1900's when science won out over local superstition and lore. Theretofore, the natives who inhabited nearby island chains feared and avoided the puff toad's habitat, believing the strange creatures to be the physical manifestations of malevolent spirits. Thus, fire was uncommon on the islands except in rare instances when natural phenomena such as lightning strikes and meteorite impacts served as ignition sources. According to anthropologist, Dr. David Nelson of Cornell University, the first human-witnessed incident involving open-flames and the pony-sploder occurred as early as the 14th century when a fleet of Yapese fishermen landed on one of the islands to wait-out a passing storm. The account has survived in Yapese oral tradition for nearly 7 centuries. According to legend, after landing on the island, the fishermen, who were prudently reluctant to venture any further inland on the unfamiliar island, made camp high on one of the island's leeward beaches. Dusk had left them huddled around their roaring bonfire, anxiously waiting for the storm to pass. Towards midnight, a fully inflated female puff toad came rolling down from the tree-tops, eclipsing the night sky as it landed on the screaming party. The bonfire ignited the trapped hydrogen instantly, producing an explosion that wiped out the entire camp, leaving in its place a crater the size of an Olympic swimming pool (supposedly producing what is today the island's main harbor.) The only surviving witnesses of the disaster were a pair of young boys who had been scouring the beach in search of firewood. The boys, though badly burned, managed to salvage one of the canoes and carry their fateful tale back to Yap. Various forms of this tale propagated throughout what is today Micronesia, reinforcing the dread and superstition that perpetuated the unmolested and pristine state of the islands' unique ecosystem.



In 1897, two Guamanian brothers, together with their extended families and the families of several of their friends, fled to the Bufo Islands after murdering a Spanish priest. It was a truly desperate flight. "We knew of the peril that awaited us and yet we paddled madly into the sunset, trading one fate for another; believing that nothing could be as insufferable as the perfidy of those Spanish bastards." said the elder brother, Malaguana, in a 1953 interview with National Geographic. In answer to the question, "Were you frightened?", Malaguana chuckled derisively and mused: "It is amazing how silly centuries of superstition look when juxtaposed with the logical deductions of science. And we know that things are always clearer in hindsight. But yes, we were very frightened...then."



Malaguana and his relatives landed on the largest of the Bufo Islands that would later come to be called Isla Iranna (which, in the Chamoru language means: Toad Island.) Exhausted, yet wary and cognizant of the old legends regarding the fate of the Yapese Fishing Party, the families refused to burn fires for cooking or warmth. "We knew that the dark spirits were angered by fire," said Malaguana. Theretofore, the islands' "dark spirits" were ensconced in mystery. Human eyes had only ever witnessed the toad in its inflated form, a form devoid of the toad's identifiable features. The enormous, buoyant, gray sphere was a sight so alien and surreal to ancient Micronesians that it elicited supernatural explanations. Thus the reservations harbored by Malaguana and his family served to confine them to the beaches upon arrival. For no one in the party dared to venture inland. Instead, they erected lean-tos constructed with driftwood, palm fronds and materials that they scavenged from the shore and they subsisted on raw fish and what meager victuals they had managed to procure before fleeing Guam.



"It was hardest on the children." recalled Malaguana. "We all know that children are not vigilant when danger is latent. They could sense our [the adults'] apprehension, but they could not comprehend it. We were always shushing their laughter; hissing at them to sit down and keep quiet. Oh, they were incorrigible," Malaguana chuckled reminiscently. His eldest son, Hanomtano, - who was six years old at the time - recalls: "I remember their somber faces; my father always begging us to be still and quiet, begging us through clenched teeth as if he were angry, but in his eyes you saw only the fear. And at first, this frightened me. But day-after-day, the breezes and the sound of the surf spoke not of fear but of playful bliss. And so we began to squirm under their watchful eyes, eager to run and play and explore." It was on their sixth day of exile that Hanomtano wandered up into the lush tropical forest that lined the beach. "My mother, she was asleep; my father, he was cleaning fish. And I was irritable with the boredom and I was determined to do something. Anything. I took a few defiant steps towards the trees, looking back over my shoulder as I did so. And then I ran. I had not gone very far when I encountered the toad. It was a welcome sight, this toad. I remember thinking that he would be my pet." Hanomtano grinned sheepishly as he related the anecdote. He lunged, bringing his hands down swiftly to trap the toad.




"Sphhhhh! It was just like that! Sphhhhhhh," Hanomtano, wide-eyed, thrust his hands apart to indicate an explosion. The force of the toad's inflation flung young Hanomtano's little body nearly 200 metres after dislocating both of his shoulders. He landed face-down in the ocean where he was rescued forthwith. Malaguana reminisced: "I was cleaning goatfish on the beach when I heard this strange noise, like when skinny people fart, except much much louder. Like 'Phhhhhttt!' And I looked up and saw Hanomtano come soaring out of the trees and into the heavens. We all saw this happen, except for my wife, who lay sleeping in the lean-to. My brother was running to the canoes before Hanomtano even hit the water. But I was in shock; paralyzed and speechless. I was tracing the arch of his flight when I heard my brother's wife shrieking. I turned and saw a giant gray ball rising slowly out of the trees. 'The dark spirits!!!!' I thought. They [family] tried to restrain me, but it was no use. Quivering with rage, I grabbed a sharpened wooden pole and rushed up the beach. And with every fiber of my being, I hurled the spear at the hideous thing. 'Phhhooot,' the spear made a strange noise as it went in. 'Psssssssss,' always the farting noises with those things. It shrank back on itself like a balloon and together with the spear, it fell back down into the trees. And into the trees I went, with my machete drawn and ready. Aye! you would have laughed had you seen it then as I did. It was a wee toad that looked up at me. Wee (Malaguana uses his thumb and index finger to indicate the toad's diminutive stature.) His head was tilted funny because the pole was running straight through him and he looked up at me like he had a crick in his little neck. I shook my head and took the spear in hand."




Frantic family members gathered in the surf as Malaguana's brother paddled ashore with a soaked and disheveled Hanomtano slumped over in the bow. They pulled the boy from the canoe and carried him to a lean-to where they made him as comfortable as they could. "There were so many faces, all of my family trying to crowd into our lean-to. My little cousins and brothers and sisters were wedged between the thighs of aunts and uncles. Their eyes were so big that it made me laugh in spite of the pain. That calmed them a little. Then my father came charging through their midst. When he saw me, there were tears in his eyes and he made to embrace me but my mother restrained him for the sake of my arms - we thought they were badly broken. 'What happened?' He asked in a trembling voice. Everyone nodded and mumbled their approval of the question. I replied: 'It was a toad, father. I wanted to catch it but when I tried to, it went Phhhhhhht!' I tried to move my arms to show how the toad got big and the pain made me wince. Mumbles of disbelief followed. But Father smiled knowingly and turned and shushed them. 'It's true.' He said. 'Our ancestors are fools. There are no "dark spirits." There are only these strange toads.' My father lifted his spear in the air, from which dangled the impaled body of the wretched toad. It was a magical thing, watching eons of superstition and fear vanish in the passing of a moment."



The Guamanian exiles moved inland where they learned to peacefully coexist with the toads. This arrangement was a beneficial one from the outset. That is, the sploder toad's legendary guise served to stave off a much-feared Spanish reprisal. There were, however, a few inconvenient trade-offs. Namely, the prohibitive risks associated with the use of fire for cooking and heating purposes. Malaguana and company had nothing to rely on aside from the Yapese fishermen's legend. Nevertheless, they were quick to deduce from it that the toads were somehow violently opposed to open flame. Hence, a precautionary edict, forbidding the use of fire on the islands, was issued and unanimously accepted. This edict remains in effect today. While it is rigorously adhered to by the islands' residents, visitors to the islands have historically been somewhat less compliant.


In 1942, an Imperial Japanese Naval reconnaissance team landed on one of the islands to conduct surveys. Though the islands were not occupied by enemy combatants at the time, the team did suffer nine casualties when Junior Grade Lieutenant Hitaro Yuki absent mindedly stumbled over a female sploder toad whilst he was lighting a cigarette. The sploder toad ballooned instantly, uprooting surrounding trees; hurling Lt. Yuki head-long into a ficus plant where it is said that he likely suffered only minor wounds. An otherwise memorable encounter with exotic wildlife became terribly tragic when the forces of fate turned on Lt. Yuki. The toad had already begun to rise into the air when Hitaro's cigarette ignited a patch of parched underbrush. Ensign Itsuko Ikaru recalls the tragedy in his memoirs.

Journal Entry (May 10th 1942): "Captain Motsuki is a douche bag. Today we were on our first patrol and Hitaro said he needed a smoke. He said he would catch up to us. But I knew better because he had the dirty magazines and an urge for the excitement. I looked back and saw him go into the trees. Captain Motsuki was shaking his head because he knew about Hitaro's dirty magazines too. We continued inland but stopped when we heard a shrill hissing and the cracking of shattered timber. We turned, unslinging our rifles. 'Americans,' Captain Motsuki breathed as he signaled for us to fall back on his flanks. We heard Hitaro scream. A hideous death-scream. 'Get the magazines! Save the magazines!' cried Captain Motsuki. But we dared not advance for we could see a vast and ominous silhoutte looming in the trees and we fired upon it in panic without the Captain's bidding. We knew of these toads, but we had never seen one and, at the time, panic dictated our actions. Our bullets whistled through the air. 'Phoop phoop phoop' the strange noise the bullets made when they struck the disgusting thing. I remember thinking: 'Damn.' And then the hissing: 'pssssssssstttt.' And 'Boooooom!' a bright flash of light. When I awoke, I was in my bunk aboard ship and had bandages from head to toe. My body was on fire. 'Lt. Yuki has perished.' they said,'Killed by a toad.' By a toad no less. This is highly dishonorable."

Evidently, when the toad's skin was perforated by the volley of bullets, the escaping hydrogen was ignited by the cigarette-induced brush fire; precipitating the massive explosion that claimed Lt. Yuki's life and critically injured eight other members of the reconnaissance team. Had the team held their fire, the toad would doubtless have floated clear of the small brush-fire and Lt. Hitaro Yuki's life would have been spared. Historians surmise, though, that had he survived, Lt. Yuki would likely have died regardless when the rest of his team got attacked and eaten by feral wallabies three months later.

Sadly, the vast majority of human encounters with sploder toads end in tragedy. An inundation of tourists in the early 90's accompanied an alarming rise in sploder toad incidents. In an ongoing effort to combat the rising rate of toad-related fatalities, local fire and rescue squads have initiated an ad-campaign to warn tourists and residents of the dangers of molesting and handling the sploder toad. Signs with messages like "Don't touch the f&%kin' toads!" were posted in the airports to be read by arriving tourists. Billboards were erected throughout the island chain. One billboard depicts the aftermath of a pony-sploder incident in which a 747 sucked a sploder toad into its engine during takeoff. Nameless, faceless, charred bodies litter the runway with a seemingly unscathed baby-doll lying in the foreground; big, blank, blue eyes staring at the camera as if to say: "What the f&%k just happened?" And in a flaming font, the billboard's caption reads: "Toad-al Devastation!"

Gunther Boghart, a Canadian seismologist, is well acquainted with the toads' destructive capabilities. In 1995, Gunther, his wife, his eight-year-old son, and his twelve-year-old daughter chose Isla Iranna as their summer vacation destination after watching a promotional DVD that featured the island's ever-popular Yak rodeos and world-famous Man-Bullet Festival - a coming-of-age festival where adolescent boys are encouraged to don costumes representing various sexually transmitted diseases and parade around town before being loaded into a giant pneumatic cannon and blasted out into the harbor.

Late on the second day of their vacation, after enjoying a picnic lunch together in one of the island's numerous parks, Gunther and his wife reclined in the shade while the children threw lawn-darts at a homeless rodeo clown. Seth, Gunther's son, ran into a nearby bamboo grove to retrieve a stray dart. "At first, I thought it was a rock." he remarked glumly to reporters later that day as he described his encounter with the male sploder toad. After picking up the toad and placing it carefully in his shirt pocket, Seth continued to search for the lost dart. After half an hour, he abandoned the search and returned to find the family preparing to leave. They climbed into their tiny rented Cushman van and set out for the resort.

About five minutes into the ride (3:28 PM local time), Seth and his sister, Claire, began to quarrel over the lost lawn-dart. Mrs. Bogart turned in her seat to shoot a reprimanding scowl back at the fighting children. "I was telling them to stop when Claire struck Seth in the chest with her elbow." Said Mrs. Bogart. "Pow! Just like that. Pow! And I blacked out." Claire's elbow struck and startled the sploder toad in Seth's pocket. The toad exploded, pancaking the van's occupants against the walls and windows. Mr. and Mrs. Bogart's seats were ripped out of the floor of the van. Mrs. Bogart, who had turned in her seat prior to the explosion, was pinned with her back to the ceiling and her buttocks to the wind shield. Gunther was pinned to the dashboard with his face plastered against the wind shield like an over-eager fat-kid at a pastry counter.

"I could feel the steering wheel digging into my hip, but I could not budge it." Said Gunther who had starred helplessly out the wind shield as the van veered off of the road and into knee-deep grass. "It was VERY confusing. I couldn't see what was pressing me against the wind shield. I couldn't breathe or wiggle my fingers and toes. I thought maybe I was having a stroke or something." Police reports indicate that the van's tire-tracks left the road and veered into a grassy meadow and continued for thirty-six metres where they ended abruptly. The van was found lying on its side in a banana grove three kilometers from the meadow where its tire-tracks ended. It was Gunther's testimony along with supporting evidence from the radar facility at Iranna International Airport that rounded out the investigation and silenced the alien abduction theorists.

"After the van left the road, I was relieved to find that we were slowing down. As we coasted through the grass, I saw what looked like a rock that was about the size of a basket ball. I could tell that we were going to hit it. And then, BANG!!!" Said Gunther later that evening after being released from the hospital with a shattered clavicle and a sprained knee. "The jolt was incredible. I saw the sky and the clouds and then I saw the ground again only then it seemed very far away and I felt tickly in my stomach like I was falling." At 3:29 PM, radar operators at Iranna International Airport picked up two unidentified objects in the air over the southern tip of the island where the Bogarts had been picnicking. The first object traveled approximately three kilometers due north from point-of-origin, covering that distance in less than six seconds. Radar operators tracked the second object for three hours in which time it climbed to an altitude of thirty thousand feet before it vanished.

Randal Tate, the airport's senior radar technician stated that anomalous objects like the second one were commonplace. "Sploder toads. We see 'em all the time. They inflate and float up into the upper atmosphere where they bust open. F&ckers'll come outta no wheres 'n' f&ck sh!t up, you know?" He said. It was the first track that baffled Tate and his staff and eventually led investigators to the Bogarts' van. Miraculously, the Bogarts survived the ordeal, suffering only minor injuries.

It was a female sploder toad that catapulted the van and its passengers, sending them on a wild three kilometer long flight. Ironically, it was the male sploder toad inside the van that saved the lives of the passengers by absorbing the energy of the impact. When asked if he would be returning to the Bufo Islands, Gunther Bogart replied flatly: "I'd rather run through Mecca wearing nothing except a yarmulke."