So, it's after the TrekBBS exodus (see part 1 & part 2) , and a new age had dawned.
And within that, began my adventure in Libertarianism.
Libertarianism.
What to say about Libertarianism...
Sounded good at first.
What the fuck did I know, I was young.
I still like the basic principle of "leave me the fuck alone!", very appealing to a misanthrope.
I think I'll always carry that with me in my core.
And I like that they're socially liberal as far as leaving people the fuck alone to get their freak on, or smoke/ingest whatever the fuck they want.
So, for awhile, I thought I had the best of both worlds going on there.
Buuut, it kinda falls apart for me when it gets into what essentially amounts to corporation worship.
I don't see how trading your government master for a corporate master is so fucking liberating.
I've never gotten an answer to this that didn't contain more fallacies and bullshit.
Anyway, I admit, I tilted slightly conservative and war-hawk after 9/11.
I calmed down a couple years after 9/11, but the other assholes kept the hate going, still are.
I thought it was blowing off steam, but they're like Jason Voorhees, you can't shut 'em the fuck down.
Well, fuck 'em. I've had enough.
Another ingredient was, I found obvious logic flaws in Randism, and that facet of it pretty much of fell apart for me.
Which was a relief, because it was making me fucking depressed.
Fast foreward to the present, and The God Delusion and other Dawkins articles helped kill Social Darwinism for me.
Scientific evidence to kick that shit in the dick was very handy to my philisophical quest.
So, thanks for that Dawk.
That's what was depressing me about Randism, too much social darwinism.
It's a deep thread in all modern conservatism.
Can't stand it.
It's diluted in other strains, but it's there.
It's unavoidable.
That whole carrot dangling of "the American dream", kinda requires it, I guess, I dunno.
Maybe that's another illusion to tear down in another rant.
And that's the thing right there, "libertarianism", has "liberty", in it, but in the big endgame, their little vision for the world has less fucking liberty in it.
The big guys get bigger, the little guy has a harder and harder time climbing the ladder, you end up stuck in the economic class you were born into, more people work for someone else instead of for themselves, and eventually, everyone has a fucking master, and where's the liberty in that shit??
I don't see it.
I see and hear their fairy tale version of it, but it just doesn't meet up with reality.
And when you can hit 'em bullseye between the eyes with an inescapable flaw like that, they just blame the Commies.
If the fuckin' Leebruls/Commies would just get out of the way, or die, it'd be Libertopia.
Bullshit.
I still dig on the core "leave me the fuck alone!", principle of Libertarianism, but I don't see it out there in practice in the real capitalist world.
So, I've sort of taken Libertarianism to its next step "leave me the fuck alone,...even with your damned Libertarianism".
All the big -isms piss me off to some degree now.
They all chewed me up and spit me out.
They all stood in line, and took turns like a gangbang.
I rail more on Conservatism, because they're the ones in charge enough to fuck things up as bad as they are. Or at least they were then.
And we'll be living with the damage for awhile, maybe forever.
And...Repugs don't leave you the fuck alone.
Because christianity doesn't, and they're in bed with that emotionally constipated puritanical social conservative Bible shit.
I look at politics as a sort of natural disaster now.
Well, not "now", it's been building for some time.
Well, Obama is president now, we'll see how his administration does....
And I can't let myself get so cynical that I'm like "ehh, it's all fucked up, they're all the same, we're fucked no matter what...ehh..", cuz...what the fuck do you get out of bed in the morning for if that's your fuckin' outlook?
Put a gun in your mouth.
But...I'm not on a "rainbows and puppy dogs", kick of the blind Obama lovers either.
So...I dunno..cautious optimism, because optimism has to be in there for me to fucking live.
Anyway, got sidetracked, that whole chewed up and spit out trip was Wordforge.
I could go more into the history of that place, and maybe I will someday.
Unavoidable, those years helped shape me.
All the stuff I learned, good and bad, for better or worse.
Got burnt out on the Libertarian stuff, got burnt out on the nastier personalities, and the fucking hair-raising election cycle built it to its fucking peak, and it just pulled it into sharp focus "why stick around for this shit? Especially when I have greener pastures to graze in?".
I still peek in.
As you out there no doubt know, forums are fucking addictive.
And there are still people I like, and want to see how they're doing.
I lured some of 'em over here.
Or tried to, don't know how many WF readers still lurk.
But, I'm probably pissing 'em off with all this.
I dunno.
I hope that they got to know me enough that none of this is really revelation or new.
Well, I'd rather be hated for what I am, than loved for what I'm not.
And I need to vent so...
So yeah, that's my combination Libertarian rant, and WF chunk of my backstory.
All right, part two of the Libertarian rant, Ayn Rand was part 1.
I have no real ending for this, so I guess I'll just wind it down...
Peace out or some shit...
Read More......
Monday, January 26, 2009
History of the internet part 3- Adventures in Libertarianism.
So, it's after the TrekBBS exodus (see part 1 & part 2) , and a new age had dawned.
And within that, began my adventure in Libertarianism.
Libertarianism.
What to say about Libertarianism...
Read More......
And within that, began my adventure in Libertarianism.
Libertarianism.
What to say about Libertarianism...
Read More......
Saturday, January 24, 2009
A quickie rant on Republican homophobia.
Ranted this on the RD.net forums awhile ago, like, before the elections, roundabout the time Hillary was still battling Obama, and just a little bit after Palin showed up.
I was going to throw it up here back then, but I lost track of shit for awhile.
I was going to doctor it up a bit, but I think it holds up on its own.
Oh, and "DP", isn't double penetration, it's a poster called DarwinsPitbill.
Although, after awhile, I took to calling him Double Penetration for a larf.
Anyway, homophobia is fuckin' dumb.
Homophobia is a common feature of masculinity worship.
And masculinity worship is a common feature of conservatism.
Now, first, I don't see how homophobia necessarily follows masculinity worship, or why masculinity worship necessarily follows conservatism.
I mean, I see how they CAN and DO, boy, DO they, but I don't see why it's NECESSARY.
Now, not all conservatives are like this.
But all the stupid ones are.
And not all the ones like this are necessarily stupid in the dunce cap and drooling sense.
But they've sure got some cognitive dissonance going on.
I mean, conservatism is just supposed to mean smaller government, right?
And that one of the few if only functions of a government, should be defense.
Well, if government is a necessary evil, then its functions, including the military, it logically follows, should be a necessary evil.
So whence does the military worship come from?
And when we get into the whole military thing,..wasn't there a regiment in the Roman times that was all gay lovers that was feared and respected?
So whence does the homophobia come from?
And how did it become a key ingredient of masculinity worship?
And how did all this bullshit get entwined with conservatism?
Someone somewhere injected stupid into the right wing.
I bet if you trace it back, it comes from some asshole.
And I betcha dollars to donuts that asshole wasn't much brighter than DP.
And I bet their agenda had nothing to do with homophobia, or masculinity, or even a shred of respect for the military.
Probably had to do with controlling people just a little bit more.
Business as usual.
Read More......
I was going to throw it up here back then, but I lost track of shit for awhile.
I was going to doctor it up a bit, but I think it holds up on its own.
Oh, and "DP", isn't double penetration, it's a poster called DarwinsPitbill.
Although, after awhile, I took to calling him Double Penetration for a larf.
Anyway, homophobia is fuckin' dumb.
Homophobia is a common feature of masculinity worship.
And masculinity worship is a common feature of conservatism.
Now, first, I don't see how homophobia necessarily follows masculinity worship, or why masculinity worship necessarily follows conservatism.
I mean, I see how they CAN and DO, boy, DO they, but I don't see why it's NECESSARY.
Now, not all conservatives are like this.
But all the stupid ones are.
And not all the ones like this are necessarily stupid in the dunce cap and drooling sense.
But they've sure got some cognitive dissonance going on.
I mean, conservatism is just supposed to mean smaller government, right?
And that one of the few if only functions of a government, should be defense.
Well, if government is a necessary evil, then its functions, including the military, it logically follows, should be a necessary evil.
So whence does the military worship come from?
And when we get into the whole military thing,..wasn't there a regiment in the Roman times that was all gay lovers that was feared and respected?
So whence does the homophobia come from?
And how did it become a key ingredient of masculinity worship?
And how did all this bullshit get entwined with conservatism?
Someone somewhere injected stupid into the right wing.
I bet if you trace it back, it comes from some asshole.
And I betcha dollars to donuts that asshole wasn't much brighter than DP.
And I bet their agenda had nothing to do with homophobia, or masculinity, or even a shred of respect for the military.
Probably had to do with controlling people just a little bit more.
Business as usual.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Francisco's money speech, by Ayn Rand- Nitpicked.
Ho, boy, is this gonna get me in trouble with some folks I know.
Well, sorry, but I've had Ayn Rand twisting around in the gears of my mind for awhile now, and as part of my personal quest to evolve intellectually, and to keep my sanity, I just finally had to reject some of these ideas, so, this is something I have to do to exorcise the bad ju-ju from my noggin.
I think these ideas have gnawed at me like an animal worse than religion.
Definitely more hours out of more days.
I'm still not sure exactly what my politics are, definitely left-leaning, but there's stuff about naked socialism I distrust.
One thing I figured out by letting Randism chew me up and spit me out, is rigid ideologies don't work.
Right or left.
They give you a nice little boxed in computer program for a nice boxed in little life, but...I'm not that kind of animal.
I tried for a long time.
Not gonna happen.
There's not going to be a "normal", life for me, I'm an odd-fucking-ball.
Rand was an odd-fucking-ball too, but yikes, did she ever try to beat the world to fit into her little digital cubes.
It was a nice try, Aynie, but...tch...
Anyway, here we go....
The Money Speech!
Un-edited version here.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia.
Well, no, not really, but that's never been my problem with capitalism or conservatism, but as we'll see, Aynie lives in a world of consistent black and white.
"Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange,
Kay, with ya so far...
..which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.
Uh-huh.
Money is the material shape of the principle...
Okay, then right away she veers off into language that makes me grind my teeth.
Right off we get a vibe of a religious object.
And my worries are well founded as the thing unfolds...
...that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.
Okay, this sounds nice and logical, but this is the thing with Rand, she starts with seeds of good ideas, then they start to slowly veer off into batshitville, and you don't know why at first, because she walked you up to it so seductively.
Let's dig our fingers into this "value for value", notion, because she just skims past it as an ad-hoc assumption, and it's really not as simple as that, and the component I've personally struggled with for some time.
My overall queasiness with Randism is how things like this are just carelessly bludgeoned past to get to her pre-ordained conclusions.
I'll get back to this, but let's just mentally bookmark it for now.
Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
All right, so she's setting up a nice little logical dichotomy here, if we don't exchange money, then what we're left with is robbery, or mooching.
Fine, okay.
...course it leaves out barter, but eh...
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others.
Uh huh, okay....
It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow.
A little batshitty in the rhetoric, but okay...
Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold,
Okay, whining about the loss of the gold standard, let's mentally bookmark this too.
are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce.
Okay, another veering off into an appeal to pseudo-religious idolatry that makes me grind my teeth...
No, money is a technology, and she just already admitted it's a tool, anything you project onto it above that is ideological or superstitious.
She proceeds to veer in and out of this, first it's a tool, then it's magic, then it's a tool, then it's magic..
Your wallet is your statement of hope
*Teeth grind*
that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
Okay, so, you have money, you're going to spend it, the guy you give it to is going to spend it, and so on.
And all of us swapping our dollars around by definition aren't robbing each other.
Fine.
There's nothing magical about that, that's just civilization ticking along.
Which is a good thing, excellent even.
Got no problem with it.
In principle, anyway....
But she glues this extra rhetorical pseudo-holy flourish to it, which she then incorporates into her logic pattern down the road, and it's an old trick to wind up a punch you don't see coming.
And that ain't logic, that's brainwashing.
Or at the least, manipulation.
So, I'm zapping that like a Space Invader ahead of time by keeping your mind awake with this bit of nit-pickery. ;)
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
Uh-huh, okay, lovely...
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak?
And here we go...
What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles.
Okay, here we go into black/white, yes/no, up/down town...
....get your galoshes...
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it?
Nope, but so what?
That's not the dichotomy that interest me, and none of this is the basis to my objections to the inequality of the system.
But, you're supposed to answer "no", to all of these and go "wow! Capitalism is magic! I love you money! I love you, evil hateful boss! I want to be an Übermensch like you!".
Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools?
Well, YEAH!
Look at the music industry!
Look at fucking TV!
The idiots are catered to!
By the able at the expense of the incompetent?
..not really.
There's a lot of incompetent motherfuckers running around grabbing levers of powers they shouldn't be anywhere near.
By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy?
Not consistently, no.
And this is a common thread in conservatism that's been annoying me.
"Ambition", as a magic buzzword.
As if it were good in itself.
Serial killers are pretty ambitious.
As are child molesters.
As are stock swindlers.
Et cetera et cetera.
I'd prefer if some of those fuckers discovered some laziness.
Maybe some of the lazy fucks out there are unrealized psychos.
Good on 'em, keep being lazy.
But yeah, again, Rand with her black & white.
Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.
Okey-dokey.
...course, we can never know the content of the person's character beyond that they punch a clock, and make their little bucks.
Maybe they go home, and smack the wife around, and kick the dog.
Is that okay in Rand-land?
We don't know, it's all about money in this rant.
You get the vibe that if you had two wife beaters, and one sat on the couch watching soaps all day, and the other pumped gas, the gas pumper would be "better".
Well...he'd have 8 less hours to smack his bitch up I guess, but still...
...it's a facet I find troubling...
And it's a thought pattern I see woven into conservatism at large.
"The working man's an honest man!",..and it doesn't matter how much of an asshole he is otherwise.
Sorry, I beg to differ.
But that's me, I'm an odd-fucking-ball.
An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'
Okey-dokey.
Course, in real life, Ayn Rand gave an exemption for her starving artist husband, but..whatever...
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.
Really?
Even the black market gun guy?
Even the kiddie porn guy?
Even the crack dealer?
I dunno...
Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return.
All right, here's where I start to call back the whole "value for value", thing.
Basically, she's saying if someone's willing to pay you for something, that's value enough, and shut up and take the money.
The working man is an honest man, so if he values your crap enough to buy it, that's honest enough.
....but do we really live in that world?
Clearly by my previous rants, I don't happen to think so.
People are out there consuming garbage culture, garbage media, garbage ideas, garbage foods, and it's all a big fat hateful swindle upon the honest working man.
And the magic of money has not rendered a smidgen of quality upon the garbage.
I digress...I'll get back to this later....
Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders.
Lovely...
Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--
Again, if only that were so.
We've got a whole swindler class that's exalted by our culture.
Course, maybe the current economic crisis has woken people up....
the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason;
*Eyebrow raise*
Again, what world is this happening in?
I look around, ands see vast sectors of our economy being fueled on mindlessly consuming worthless, meaningless, stupid fucking shit.
And again, money is just a tool, now suddenly it's some contract of honor that the reverse will somehow happen.
It's not, and it doesn't.
Clearly.
Honor comes from within, and it'd be nice if everyone had it, but...
Sure as fuck money is no guarantee of it.
It's not good OR evil, it's just a technology.
it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find.
*Laughs*
And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward.
Ah, if only...
This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
Nope.
Gawrsh, guess I'll pack in my whole deal, and go buy me some collector's plates, and thank Baby Jesus that I live under the big green dollar sign.
*Weeps, salutes*
"But money is only a tool.
Okay, after it being magic, and a symbol of honor, now it's just a tool again...
It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.
Yup...
Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
*Teeth grind, eye roll*
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek.
Okay, cool, kind of what I've been saying, but the patch-over she comes up with for this is mind-numbing...
Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.
Well, that's the ideal, but yet again, I have to point out that cowardly incompetent fools, especially those with big piles of money, especially piles of old money, are well respected.
At least, within their own little bubbles of influence, and it takes armies of guys like me hurling our little spears to hopefully pop that fucking bubble.
I mean, look, we had 8 years of Bush despite John Stewart's constant labors.
It doesn't just fall from the sky that these fuckers meet their end through Karma, but Rand pretty much goes on to say it does...
The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
See?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.
Bullshit.
Paris Hilton will live to a ripe old age, I'm sure.
But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
Yeah, I'm sure Paris Hilton cries horse turd sized tears into her pillow every night over her decayed virtue.
Basically, she's being a big fat hypocrite here.
She's saying money is made by the honorable,...unless it's given to an unworthy heir, but don't worry, the magic of the market and karma will dole justice upon them...unless it doesn't, in which case...eh, don't worry about it...
WTF???
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence.
With what?
A curse?
Bad mojo?
A sad head shake from Yahweh?
You're an atheist, Aynie!!
What gives??
Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity?
Nope, not that I know of.
By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves?
Nope.
And I refuse to publish my junk until I'm absolutely philosophically sure this will never be the case.
Some would say this has set me back.
I don't know...
Still working on that...
By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn?
Well, yeah, I worked at Wal-Mart...
If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy.
Well, don't worry, it hasn't. :)
Oh, shit, I enjoyed the computer I bought with my Wal-Mart money, and the internet activity I experienced over the years, and the laptop I won via it, and all the internet activity on it...
Shit, I'm a sinner...what do I do?
Stab myself in the leg with a fork?
Say 100 "Hail Moneys"?
Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
Nope.
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices.
So what good is it?
At least in the sense of being a symbol of virtue?
Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit.
Bullshit.
The unearned flows like water in America, and the soulless and empty gleefully scarf it up, while only wretches like me agonize over our conscience.
This is NOT a system that rewards the virtuous for virtue alone.
Is this the root of your hatred of money?
Duhr, nope!
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil?
*Facepalm* here we go...
To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.
...again, what world is she living in?
What color is the sky in her world?
I mean, okay, this ideal world of honor can exist inside your head, but it's going to take quite a licking whenever you so much as fill up your gas tank, and buy a fucking candy bar.
It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
What? By fiat?
What if you think you're an awesome employee, but aren't?
What if you think you're an awesome artist, but aren't?
By Aynie's standards, as long as the paycheck comes, fuck the rest.
With that attitude in everyone's mind, no wonder the standards are fucking decaying.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
Really?
What if you're a sociopath who just doesn't give a shit?
The crack dealer doesn't damn money.
The child pornographer doesn't damn money.
The pimp doesn't damn money.
The hack singer doesn't damn money.
Did they earn it?
Are they honorable?
Is it only the one who damns money dishonorable?
It's a twisted code if those are the only choices.
But again...black & white...
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
What, no barter?
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.
Black & white.
Your only choices are to guard your hoard, or be a victim.
And so much for philanthropy.
Fuck the poor, they're evil, they didn't work hard enough.
And this "low self esteem", shit bugs me.
Again, what if you are a fucking hack, and you think you're fucking great, and you don't fucking care?
Ayn Rand offers no antidote to this.
Indeed, such a person doesn't exist in Ayn Rand's world.
If you made money, that's good enough.
If someone paid you, you must be good.
If you're rich, you must be really good.
By that criteria, Britney Spears is the greatest singer who ever lived.
But anyone with taste and a fucking brain fucking knows better.
There's no answer on offer for this in Ayn Rand land.
None.
Her black & white choices are be a dick waving egoist, or accept your doom.
And if you're one who frets about if they're a hack, AND doesn't get rich on top of it, then you must suck.
And that's it, that's all you were worth, throw yourself in the garbage.
The only cure is blind ego, by fiat, from nothing, and if you were paid, then it confirms that ego.
And that's it.
That's all there is in Rand land.
Go around the loop as many times you like, that's the only answer you'll ever get.
For a guy like me loaded up with angst, it wasn't a fun trip.
All I got for my troubles was dizzy.
And depressed.
And still with unanswered questions.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them.
Yeah....uh huh....
But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger.
Ho boy, again with the pseudo-religious faith in some kind of money-karma...
Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
Right...
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
Okay, and here's where she finally throws the punch she winded up at the beginning by insisting money had some magical virtue dust sprinkled apon it, now it's the vile nasty socialist state that destroys virtue and the reason money does evil is because of the damned commies!
And only the commies!
Capitalists are never bad, and when they are bad, they're not capitalists!
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper.
Oh, now we're back to the gold standard shit...
This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced.
Oh, here we fucking go.
Now we get to the fucking heart of it.
Objective standards.
It's like the religious appeal to objective morality, isn't it?
What is the "objective", value of gold?
I've never figured this one out.
It's yellow and pretty?
I don't give a fuck.
I'm not a chick, I'm not into bling-bling.
It has no value to me personally.
It's a good electrical conductor, but they didn't know about that in the olden days when it was decided the gold was a big fucking deal.
So all you had to go on was yellow and shiny.
And rare, I guess.
But again, so fucking what?
Blue boogers are rare.
Ever hear of a blue booger?
But one must have existed somewhere some time in the history of boogers.
Several I bet.
Why not mine blue boogers?
They're rarer than gold!
Why not?
They're icky?
Oil is icky.
It's rotten dinosaurs.
But it burns good, so we like it.
But gold doesn't burn good in a car, so what good is it to us?
And again, as a conductor, it only gets used in expensive equipment like NASA satellites.
Because it's expensive, because it's yellow and shiny and rare.
It's all arbitrary.
Objective my rosey red ass.
Gold, paper money, its value all comes from our belief in it.
Which is fine, as far as it goes, but just don't tell me any of this shit is fucking objective.
Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
Well, I agree we have a fucking money problem, and as a technology, the hood needs to be opened for an engine overhaul, but we'd be having that trouble if clam shells were our fucking money.
It's greed. And incompetence. And lack of oversight.
Which was due to greed, and incompetence.
The greedy and influential will always game the system in their favor.
There's your fucking objective truth.
And it's inherent to capitalism.
Rousing fist shaking speeches about "the product of your mind and honor", have done, and will do nothing to stem this in any fucking way.
Indeed, Randroids have been some of the biggest gamers of the system.
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
And here we go with this shit, if the world doesn't work Ayn Rand's way, fuck it, fuck everyone, and that's the core of the plot of Atlas Shrugged.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities.
No comment, just a facepalm, and a need for a breath....
Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.
She's winding up for another punch, brace yourself....
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
Yeah...the robber baron...so pure..
Some are okay, many are bloodless scumbags.
In Ayn Rand's world, all industrialists are Tony Stark.
And what about the industrialist who fucks his workers over?
Who uses his money as a chain?
Who's company owns a town, and there's nowhere else to go?
Oh, right, the working man is an honest man, and the industrialist is the highest worker, so only his money matters.
He's rich because he's great and he's great because he's rich.
That little logic loop had my ears bleeding for a good while, lemme tell ya.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
Um...money doesn't fall from the sky, new money is willed into existence by...paper fiat money...that Rand hates..so where is this "to make money", shit coming from??
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
Oh, well, so here's where the hate of the working class leaks in...and misses the point of why industrialist pigs were hated. She denounces the slave driver, but the industrialist who cracks the whip on his workforce, he's a hero somehow, and you should be grateful to toil for him.
Fun stuff, ain't it?
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good,
Oh, blow me.
It's not good or evil, it's a tool, you admitted as much.
you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
Uh huh...
Yeah...
*Sigh* and allegedly this is second only to The Bible as the world's biggest bestseller.
Allegedly, I can't confirm this.
This has nothing to offer me as a philosophy, and I tried for awhile.
I did.
I tried a bunch of fucking philosophies.
I think I'm giving up on philosophies, that's my philosophy.
(Click here for addendum)
(Click here for addendum to the addendum)
(Click here to see Mark Twain take her down)
(Click here for some disturbing new info that came across my desk)
Read More......
Well, sorry, but I've had Ayn Rand twisting around in the gears of my mind for awhile now, and as part of my personal quest to evolve intellectually, and to keep my sanity, I just finally had to reject some of these ideas, so, this is something I have to do to exorcise the bad ju-ju from my noggin.
I think these ideas have gnawed at me like an animal worse than religion.
Definitely more hours out of more days.
I'm still not sure exactly what my politics are, definitely left-leaning, but there's stuff about naked socialism I distrust.
One thing I figured out by letting Randism chew me up and spit me out, is rigid ideologies don't work.
Right or left.
They give you a nice little boxed in computer program for a nice boxed in little life, but...I'm not that kind of animal.
I tried for a long time.
Not gonna happen.
There's not going to be a "normal", life for me, I'm an odd-fucking-ball.
Rand was an odd-fucking-ball too, but yikes, did she ever try to beat the world to fit into her little digital cubes.
It was a nice try, Aynie, but...tch...
Anyway, here we go....
The Money Speech!
Un-edited version here.
"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia.
Well, no, not really, but that's never been my problem with capitalism or conservatism, but as we'll see, Aynie lives in a world of consistent black and white.
"Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange,
Kay, with ya so far...
..which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.
Uh-huh.
Money is the material shape of the principle...
Okay, then right away she veers off into language that makes me grind my teeth.
Right off we get a vibe of a religious object.
And my worries are well founded as the thing unfolds...
...that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value.
Okay, this sounds nice and logical, but this is the thing with Rand, she starts with seeds of good ideas, then they start to slowly veer off into batshitville, and you don't know why at first, because she walked you up to it so seductively.
Let's dig our fingers into this "value for value", notion, because she just skims past it as an ad-hoc assumption, and it's really not as simple as that, and the component I've personally struggled with for some time.
My overall queasiness with Randism is how things like this are just carelessly bludgeoned past to get to her pre-ordained conclusions.
I'll get back to this, but let's just mentally bookmark it for now.
Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
All right, so she's setting up a nice little logical dichotomy here, if we don't exchange money, then what we're left with is robbery, or mooching.
Fine, okay.
...course it leaves out barter, but eh...
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others.
Uh huh, okay....
It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow.
A little batshitty in the rhetoric, but okay...
Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold,
Okay, whining about the loss of the gold standard, let's mentally bookmark this too.
are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce.
Okay, another veering off into an appeal to pseudo-religious idolatry that makes me grind my teeth...
No, money is a technology, and she just already admitted it's a tool, anything you project onto it above that is ideological or superstitious.
She proceeds to veer in and out of this, first it's a tool, then it's magic, then it's a tool, then it's magic..
Your wallet is your statement of hope
*Teeth grind*
that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?
Okay, so, you have money, you're going to spend it, the guy you give it to is going to spend it, and so on.
And all of us swapping our dollars around by definition aren't robbing each other.
Fine.
There's nothing magical about that, that's just civilization ticking along.
Which is a good thing, excellent even.
Got no problem with it.
In principle, anyway....
But she glues this extra rhetorical pseudo-holy flourish to it, which she then incorporates into her logic pattern down the road, and it's an old trick to wind up a punch you don't see coming.
And that ain't logic, that's brainwashing.
Or at the least, manipulation.
So, I'm zapping that like a Space Invader ahead of time by keeping your mind awake with this bit of nit-pickery. ;)
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
Uh-huh, okay, lovely...
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak?
And here we go...
What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles.
Okay, here we go into black/white, yes/no, up/down town...
....get your galoshes...
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it?
Nope, but so what?
That's not the dichotomy that interest me, and none of this is the basis to my objections to the inequality of the system.
But, you're supposed to answer "no", to all of these and go "wow! Capitalism is magic! I love you money! I love you, evil hateful boss! I want to be an Übermensch like you!".
Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools?
Well, YEAH!
Look at the music industry!
Look at fucking TV!
The idiots are catered to!
By the able at the expense of the incompetent?
..not really.
There's a lot of incompetent motherfuckers running around grabbing levers of powers they shouldn't be anywhere near.
By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy?
Not consistently, no.
And this is a common thread in conservatism that's been annoying me.
"Ambition", as a magic buzzword.
As if it were good in itself.
Serial killers are pretty ambitious.
As are child molesters.
As are stock swindlers.
Et cetera et cetera.
I'd prefer if some of those fuckers discovered some laziness.
Maybe some of the lazy fucks out there are unrealized psychos.
Good on 'em, keep being lazy.
But yeah, again, Rand with her black & white.
Money is made--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.
Okey-dokey.
...course, we can never know the content of the person's character beyond that they punch a clock, and make their little bucks.
Maybe they go home, and smack the wife around, and kick the dog.
Is that okay in Rand-land?
We don't know, it's all about money in this rant.
You get the vibe that if you had two wife beaters, and one sat on the couch watching soaps all day, and the other pumped gas, the gas pumper would be "better".
Well...he'd have 8 less hours to smack his bitch up I guess, but still...
...it's a facet I find troubling...
And it's a thought pattern I see woven into conservatism at large.
"The working man's an honest man!",..and it doesn't matter how much of an asshole he is otherwise.
Sorry, I beg to differ.
But that's me, I'm an odd-fucking-ball.
An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.'
Okey-dokey.
Course, in real life, Ayn Rand gave an exemption for her starving artist husband, but..whatever...
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.
Really?
Even the black market gun guy?
Even the kiddie porn guy?
Even the crack dealer?
I dunno...
Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return.
All right, here's where I start to call back the whole "value for value", thing.
Basically, she's saying if someone's willing to pay you for something, that's value enough, and shut up and take the money.
The working man is an honest man, so if he values your crap enough to buy it, that's honest enough.
....but do we really live in that world?
Clearly by my previous rants, I don't happen to think so.
People are out there consuming garbage culture, garbage media, garbage ideas, garbage foods, and it's all a big fat hateful swindle upon the honest working man.
And the magic of money has not rendered a smidgen of quality upon the garbage.
I digress...I'll get back to this later....
Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders.
Lovely...
Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--
Again, if only that were so.
We've got a whole swindler class that's exalted by our culture.
Course, maybe the current economic crisis has woken people up....
the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason;
*Eyebrow raise*
Again, what world is this happening in?
I look around, ands see vast sectors of our economy being fueled on mindlessly consuming worthless, meaningless, stupid fucking shit.
And again, money is just a tool, now suddenly it's some contract of honor that the reverse will somehow happen.
It's not, and it doesn't.
Clearly.
Honor comes from within, and it'd be nice if everyone had it, but...
Sure as fuck money is no guarantee of it.
It's not good OR evil, it's just a technology.
it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find.
*Laughs*
And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward.
Ah, if only...
This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
Nope.
Gawrsh, guess I'll pack in my whole deal, and go buy me some collector's plates, and thank Baby Jesus that I live under the big green dollar sign.
*Weeps, salutes*
"But money is only a tool.
Okay, after it being magic, and a symbol of honor, now it's just a tool again...
It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires.
Yup...
Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
*Teeth grind, eye roll*
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek.
Okay, cool, kind of what I've been saying, but the patch-over she comes up with for this is mind-numbing...
Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent.
Well, that's the ideal, but yet again, I have to point out that cowardly incompetent fools, especially those with big piles of money, especially piles of old money, are well respected.
At least, within their own little bubbles of influence, and it takes armies of guys like me hurling our little spears to hopefully pop that fucking bubble.
I mean, look, we had 8 years of Bush despite John Stewart's constant labors.
It doesn't just fall from the sky that these fuckers meet their end through Karma, but Rand pretty much goes on to say it does...
The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
See?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.
Bullshit.
Paris Hilton will live to a ripe old age, I'm sure.
But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
Yeah, I'm sure Paris Hilton cries horse turd sized tears into her pillow every night over her decayed virtue.
Basically, she's being a big fat hypocrite here.
She's saying money is made by the honorable,...unless it's given to an unworthy heir, but don't worry, the magic of the market and karma will dole justice upon them...unless it doesn't, in which case...eh, don't worry about it...
WTF???
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence.
With what?
A curse?
Bad mojo?
A sad head shake from Yahweh?
You're an atheist, Aynie!!
What gives??
Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity?
Nope, not that I know of.
By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves?
Nope.
And I refuse to publish my junk until I'm absolutely philosophically sure this will never be the case.
Some would say this has set me back.
I don't know...
Still working on that...
By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn?
Well, yeah, I worked at Wal-Mart...
If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy.
Well, don't worry, it hasn't. :)
Oh, shit, I enjoyed the computer I bought with my Wal-Mart money, and the internet activity I experienced over the years, and the laptop I won via it, and all the internet activity on it...
Shit, I'm a sinner...what do I do?
Stab myself in the leg with a fork?
Say 100 "Hail Moneys"?
Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
Nope.
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices.
So what good is it?
At least in the sense of being a symbol of virtue?
Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit.
Bullshit.
The unearned flows like water in America, and the soulless and empty gleefully scarf it up, while only wretches like me agonize over our conscience.
This is NOT a system that rewards the virtuous for virtue alone.
Is this the root of your hatred of money?
Duhr, nope!
"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil?
*Facepalm* here we go...
To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.
...again, what world is she living in?
What color is the sky in her world?
I mean, okay, this ideal world of honor can exist inside your head, but it's going to take quite a licking whenever you so much as fill up your gas tank, and buy a fucking candy bar.
It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
What? By fiat?
What if you think you're an awesome employee, but aren't?
What if you think you're an awesome artist, but aren't?
By Aynie's standards, as long as the paycheck comes, fuck the rest.
With that attitude in everyone's mind, no wonder the standards are fucking decaying.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
Really?
What if you're a sociopath who just doesn't give a shit?
The crack dealer doesn't damn money.
The child pornographer doesn't damn money.
The pimp doesn't damn money.
The hack singer doesn't damn money.
Did they earn it?
Are they honorable?
Is it only the one who damns money dishonorable?
It's a twisted code if those are the only choices.
But again...black & white...
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
What, no barter?
"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich--will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt--and of his life, as he deserves.
Black & white.
Your only choices are to guard your hoard, or be a victim.
And so much for philanthropy.
Fuck the poor, they're evil, they didn't work hard enough.
And this "low self esteem", shit bugs me.
Again, what if you are a fucking hack, and you think you're fucking great, and you don't fucking care?
Ayn Rand offers no antidote to this.
Indeed, such a person doesn't exist in Ayn Rand's world.
If you made money, that's good enough.
If someone paid you, you must be good.
If you're rich, you must be really good.
By that criteria, Britney Spears is the greatest singer who ever lived.
But anyone with taste and a fucking brain fucking knows better.
There's no answer on offer for this in Ayn Rand land.
None.
Her black & white choices are be a dick waving egoist, or accept your doom.
And if you're one who frets about if they're a hack, AND doesn't get rich on top of it, then you must suck.
And that's it, that's all you were worth, throw yourself in the garbage.
The only cure is blind ego, by fiat, from nothing, and if you were paid, then it confirms that ego.
And that's it.
That's all there is in Rand land.
Go around the loop as many times you like, that's the only answer you'll ever get.
For a guy like me loaded up with angst, it wasn't a fun trip.
All I got for my troubles was dizzy.
And depressed.
And still with unanswered questions.
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard--the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money--the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them.
Yeah....uh huh....
But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law--men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims--then money becomes its creators' avenger.
Ho boy, again with the pseudo-religious faith in some kind of money-karma...
Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
Right...
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.
Okay, and here's where she finally throws the punch she winded up at the beginning by insisting money had some magical virtue dust sprinkled apon it, now it's the vile nasty socialist state that destroys virtue and the reason money does evil is because of the damned commies!
And only the commies!
Capitalists are never bad, and when they are bad, they're not capitalists!
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper.
Oh, now we're back to the gold standard shit...
This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced.
Oh, here we fucking go.
Now we get to the fucking heart of it.
Objective standards.
It's like the religious appeal to objective morality, isn't it?
What is the "objective", value of gold?
I've never figured this one out.
It's yellow and pretty?
I don't give a fuck.
I'm not a chick, I'm not into bling-bling.
It has no value to me personally.
It's a good electrical conductor, but they didn't know about that in the olden days when it was decided the gold was a big fucking deal.
So all you had to go on was yellow and shiny.
And rare, I guess.
But again, so fucking what?
Blue boogers are rare.
Ever hear of a blue booger?
But one must have existed somewhere some time in the history of boogers.
Several I bet.
Why not mine blue boogers?
They're rarer than gold!
Why not?
They're icky?
Oil is icky.
It's rotten dinosaurs.
But it burns good, so we like it.
But gold doesn't burn good in a car, so what good is it to us?
And again, as a conductor, it only gets used in expensive equipment like NASA satellites.
Because it's expensive, because it's yellow and shiny and rare.
It's all arbitrary.
Objective my rosey red ass.
Gold, paper money, its value all comes from our belief in it.
Which is fine, as far as it goes, but just don't tell me any of this shit is fucking objective.
Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'
Well, I agree we have a fucking money problem, and as a technology, the hood needs to be opened for an engine overhaul, but we'd be having that trouble if clam shells were our fucking money.
It's greed. And incompetence. And lack of oversight.
Which was due to greed, and incompetence.
The greedy and influential will always game the system in their favor.
There's your fucking objective truth.
And it's inherent to capitalism.
Rousing fist shaking speeches about "the product of your mind and honor", have done, and will do nothing to stem this in any fucking way.
Indeed, Randroids have been some of the biggest gamers of the system.
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world? You are.
And here we go with this shit, if the world doesn't work Ayn Rand's way, fuck it, fuck everyone, and that's the core of the plot of Atlas Shrugged.
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities.
No comment, just a facepalm, and a need for a breath....
Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists.
She's winding up for another punch, brace yourself....
"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
Yeah...the robber baron...so pure..
Some are okay, many are bloodless scumbags.
In Ayn Rand's world, all industrialists are Tony Stark.
And what about the industrialist who fucks his workers over?
Who uses his money as a chain?
Who's company owns a town, and there's nowhere else to go?
Oh, right, the working man is an honest man, and the industrialist is the highest worker, so only his money matters.
He's rich because he's great and he's great because he's rich.
That little logic loop had my ears bleeding for a good while, lemme tell ya.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
Um...money doesn't fall from the sky, new money is willed into existence by...paper fiat money...that Rand hates..so where is this "to make money", shit coming from??
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
Oh, well, so here's where the hate of the working class leaks in...and misses the point of why industrialist pigs were hated. She denounces the slave driver, but the industrialist who cracks the whip on his workforce, he's a hero somehow, and you should be grateful to toil for him.
Fun stuff, ain't it?
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good,
Oh, blow me.
It's not good or evil, it's a tool, you admitted as much.
you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
Uh huh...
Yeah...
*Sigh* and allegedly this is second only to The Bible as the world's biggest bestseller.
Allegedly, I can't confirm this.
This has nothing to offer me as a philosophy, and I tried for awhile.
I did.
I tried a bunch of fucking philosophies.
I think I'm giving up on philosophies, that's my philosophy.
(Click here for addendum)
(Click here for addendum to the addendum)
(Click here to see Mark Twain take her down)
(Click here for some disturbing new info that came across my desk)
Read More......
Labels:
celebs who suck,
literature,
pop-culture,
society
Monday, January 19, 2009
Kudos, to Sully.
Watching coverage of the plane crash in the Hudson, and it's all "miracle", this and "God", that, and this is right what I'm talking about.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, God shmod, why'd he let the plane crash in the first place?
Why not steer those geese out of the way?
How about thanking the pilot?
How about that?
His name is Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, III.
Here's his pic.
Awesome piloting, man.
Course, he don't need my dumb little blog, he's going to the inauguration, I'm just reminding everyone in eyeshot. Read More......
Yeah, yeah, yeah, God shmod, why'd he let the plane crash in the first place?
Why not steer those geese out of the way?
How about thanking the pilot?
How about that?
His name is Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, III.
Here's his pic.
Awesome piloting, man.
Course, he don't need my dumb little blog, he's going to the inauguration, I'm just reminding everyone in eyeshot. Read More......
Labels:
society,
world-events
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The War On Bullshit.
Christopher Hitchens once said that the war on terror is in fact part of a larger war on religion.
Well, I dunno about that exactly, as I've disagreed with a lot of how the war on terror has been fought, but the overall point is taken, and I'll go him one better.
I think the war on religion is part of a larger war on bullshit.
IMO, we won't properly have a 21st century until we mop up all the fucking bullshit.
It's all gotta go, folks, or we won't have a fucking world to live in.
And, I think I go after religion hardest, because it gets itself everywhere.
It plugs into all the other forms of bullshit, so going after religion puts you everywhere it goes.
Which is well, everywhere.
But really, all the other stuff I've ranted about so far are facets of the war on bullshit.
And sadly, I think the first half of the 21st century is going to be a mop-up operation on the 20th.
Cuz man, that was a BIG one for bullshit.
The most infuriating part of it for me, and what this particular rant will focus on, is it's bad enough that there's SO fucking much bullshit to mop up, but it's made all the harder that there are forces actively working to keep their bullshit around.
And not just all the big forces with "big", in front of their name (y'know, big oil, big religion, big farming, big banking, big anything) but all the average little shmucks out there walking around with the bullshit drilled into their heads protecting their corporate and religious masters with their jabbering jaws like little rabid poodles.
And all the justification for the bullshit they've had drilled into them boils down to this one solitary idea.
This is the idea that fucked up the 20th century (and a shitload of centuries before it btw) and threatens to fuck up this one royally.
The idea is this.
"We NEED bullshit!".
Bullshit!!
When the system runs well (or seems to), you can almost buy that idea.
I think I fell for it awhile in my 20's.
There was this little window of like 3 years after 9/11.
But, look at the wars, look at the financial crisis, look at a our stupid media culture.
It's broken.
It's all broken.
And rotting.
The lie is exposed, the world of bullshit FAILED, the philosophy of bullshit FAILED.
Yet I still have to fucking hear from these fucking people as they circle the drain, screaming all the way down, that "we NEED bullshit".
Fuck you.
Get down that drain already.
You can't gurgle your last gasp of bullshit fast enough.
Motherfuckers.
Well, let's get to the nuts and bolts of the bullshit of bullshit, shall we?
In my investigations, I have found a name for my pain, and it is Leo Strauss.
Link.
A very nasty customer who I oppose on pretty much every level philosophically.
He pretty much advocated "noble lie", theory, and if you're wondering what a "noble lie", is, well, it's bullshit.
It's openly and nakedly bullshit with perhaps a couple wafts of perfume sprayed on.
Noble lies, deadly truths.
And, his defense of noble lies is in the following link, and is an argument style I've butted up against with certain conservatives on message boards.
Link.
It basically boils down to the stubborn un-evidenced assertion that if you tell the truth too much, and give people too much freedom, then it leads to anarchy or Nazism.
Which is more or less the same shit I hear from Christians like David Robertson over at the Rd.net forum.
And I've even heard it from atheists who have "faith in faith", which to me, is an even nastier piece of business.
Because then, you know religion is bullshit, but you think people need to be herded like sheep.
Pretty vile stance.
And it's was pretty much Strauss's stance.
Oh, and here's this lovely bit on Leo openly being a rotten little authoritarian fascist scumbag.
Link.
Strauss wrote that "just because Germany has turned to the right and has expelled us (Jews), it simply does not follow that the principles of the right are therefore to be rejected. To the contrary, only on the basis of principles of the right – fascist, authoritarian, imperial – is it possible in a dignified manner, without the ridiculous and pitiful appeal to ‘the inalienable rights of man’ to protest against the mean nonentity (Nazism)."[21] [Emphasis in original, parentheticals added for context and meaning]
Nice, huh?
So, there you have it, it's not accidentally stumbled apon, this is the philosophical strain out there in our fucking politics that's working against people like me who despise bullshit.
We've got a long row to hoe.
It's formidable, but I'm not overwhelmed or intimidated.
I'm going to destroy as many "noble lies", as I can get my typing/clicking fingers on.
I no longer make any bones about that I think the enlightenment was a good thing, it led to the American revolution, and the founding of this country, anti-enlightement thinkers therefore spit on the U.S. constitution, and everything we aspire to, and yes, I think the truth is for everybody.
The whole damned truth.
All of it.
The truth is only dangerous to tyrants.
Fuck 'em.
Fuck self elected "philosopher kings", fuck the whole neo-con deal, fuck Leo Strauss, and fuck noble lies.
It's all bullshit.
A big steaming pile of bullshit.
And I've declared war on it in these pages.
Enough already.
Let's bury these awful obsolete ideas, and have a fucking future for humanity, what say?
Alrighty then.
Read More......
Well, I dunno about that exactly, as I've disagreed with a lot of how the war on terror has been fought, but the overall point is taken, and I'll go him one better.
I think the war on religion is part of a larger war on bullshit.
IMO, we won't properly have a 21st century until we mop up all the fucking bullshit.
It's all gotta go, folks, or we won't have a fucking world to live in.
And, I think I go after religion hardest, because it gets itself everywhere.
It plugs into all the other forms of bullshit, so going after religion puts you everywhere it goes.
Which is well, everywhere.
But really, all the other stuff I've ranted about so far are facets of the war on bullshit.
And sadly, I think the first half of the 21st century is going to be a mop-up operation on the 20th.
Cuz man, that was a BIG one for bullshit.
The most infuriating part of it for me, and what this particular rant will focus on, is it's bad enough that there's SO fucking much bullshit to mop up, but it's made all the harder that there are forces actively working to keep their bullshit around.
And not just all the big forces with "big", in front of their name (y'know, big oil, big religion, big farming, big banking, big anything) but all the average little shmucks out there walking around with the bullshit drilled into their heads protecting their corporate and religious masters with their jabbering jaws like little rabid poodles.
And all the justification for the bullshit they've had drilled into them boils down to this one solitary idea.
This is the idea that fucked up the 20th century (and a shitload of centuries before it btw) and threatens to fuck up this one royally.
The idea is this.
"We NEED bullshit!".
Bullshit!!
When the system runs well (or seems to), you can almost buy that idea.
I think I fell for it awhile in my 20's.
There was this little window of like 3 years after 9/11.
But, look at the wars, look at the financial crisis, look at a our stupid media culture.
It's broken.
It's all broken.
And rotting.
The lie is exposed, the world of bullshit FAILED, the philosophy of bullshit FAILED.
Yet I still have to fucking hear from these fucking people as they circle the drain, screaming all the way down, that "we NEED bullshit".
Fuck you.
Get down that drain already.
You can't gurgle your last gasp of bullshit fast enough.
Motherfuckers.
Well, let's get to the nuts and bolts of the bullshit of bullshit, shall we?
In my investigations, I have found a name for my pain, and it is Leo Strauss.
Link.
A very nasty customer who I oppose on pretty much every level philosophically.
He pretty much advocated "noble lie", theory, and if you're wondering what a "noble lie", is, well, it's bullshit.
It's openly and nakedly bullshit with perhaps a couple wafts of perfume sprayed on.
Noble lies, deadly truths.
And, his defense of noble lies is in the following link, and is an argument style I've butted up against with certain conservatives on message boards.
Link.
It basically boils down to the stubborn un-evidenced assertion that if you tell the truth too much, and give people too much freedom, then it leads to anarchy or Nazism.
Which is more or less the same shit I hear from Christians like David Robertson over at the Rd.net forum.
And I've even heard it from atheists who have "faith in faith", which to me, is an even nastier piece of business.
Because then, you know religion is bullshit, but you think people need to be herded like sheep.
Pretty vile stance.
And it's was pretty much Strauss's stance.
Oh, and here's this lovely bit on Leo openly being a rotten little authoritarian fascist scumbag.
Link.
Strauss wrote that "just because Germany has turned to the right and has expelled us (Jews), it simply does not follow that the principles of the right are therefore to be rejected. To the contrary, only on the basis of principles of the right – fascist, authoritarian, imperial – is it possible in a dignified manner, without the ridiculous and pitiful appeal to ‘the inalienable rights of man’ to protest against the mean nonentity (Nazism)."[21] [Emphasis in original, parentheticals added for context and meaning]
Nice, huh?
So, there you have it, it's not accidentally stumbled apon, this is the philosophical strain out there in our fucking politics that's working against people like me who despise bullshit.
We've got a long row to hoe.
It's formidable, but I'm not overwhelmed or intimidated.
I'm going to destroy as many "noble lies", as I can get my typing/clicking fingers on.
I no longer make any bones about that I think the enlightenment was a good thing, it led to the American revolution, and the founding of this country, anti-enlightement thinkers therefore spit on the U.S. constitution, and everything we aspire to, and yes, I think the truth is for everybody.
The whole damned truth.
All of it.
The truth is only dangerous to tyrants.
Fuck 'em.
Fuck self elected "philosopher kings", fuck the whole neo-con deal, fuck Leo Strauss, and fuck noble lies.
It's all bullshit.
A big steaming pile of bullshit.
And I've declared war on it in these pages.
Enough already.
Let's bury these awful obsolete ideas, and have a fucking future for humanity, what say?
Alrighty then.
Read More......
Labels:
society
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Torrent Too!
Historians note:
You totally have to have read Torrent 1, and the stories that comprise Torrent 1.5 to be up to speed with this story.
It also wouldn't hurt to read The Krazyfool Show, Harry Hembock and the Zone Dweebies, and Nobody Loves Harry Hembock for extra background.
Steve tapped out a button combination on his multi-purpose arcade cabinet, and a Little Debbie oatmeal cream sandwich cookie popped out of a slot at the bottom.
He tapped out another combination, and anticipated a bottle of Sam Adam's Spring Ale, but nothing came out.
He tapped out the right button sequence again.
Still nothing.
Steve froze.
His eyes bulged.
"Oh shit!".
Then he calmed down a bit and mumbled "ah, I'll just order some more".
He punched up the internet connection and scrolled up Sam Adam's webpage.
That's when he new he was really in trouble.
His jaw dropped open in horror.
"They didn't fuckin' make it this year!!??! Wha...wha...how can they DO that?!?", he sputtered.
"Well, maybe I can find it's clone...yeah there we go! It will be a quest! A quest for a new Spring Ale!".
He then proceeded to punch up the steering controls of the Green Mamba, and blasted off.
Jake Prong stared back at Steve from the other side of the table.
"So you've spent the last week scouring the planet for a replacement for your favorite beer?", Jake asked.
"Yep", Steve confirmed.
"Ah", Jake answered.
Jake ate a couple ice cubes and then asked "so you brought me here just to tell me that?".
Steve grinned nervously "well no, I was wondering if it wasn't too much trouble, if you could use your 4-D karate to snatch me a couple cases out of time and space".
Jake buttered the last dinner roll and answered "yes it is too much trouble, and no I won't".
"Oh", Steve said with a downcast defeated look.
Then Jake got a look of inspiration "wait, why not just wait until the summer ale comes out? it's exactly the same, but with a hint of lemon".
Steve glared anger at Jake and barked out a quick "no!".
Jake hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
Jake looked out the window and said in a bland disaffected tone "ope, gang members have stripped the Mamba. Gotta be careful in this neighborhood. Want me to use my cel to call the cops?".
Steve sighed "no, no,....they're um...they're not good...I'll walk home".
"You wanna doggie bag your tripe?", Jake asked.
Steve sighed again and said "no, I just got it to impress you. Throw it to the seaguls in the parking lot".
"Alright then, bubye", Jake said lazily going through the social motions.
He didn't mean it though.
Once Steve was gone, he grabbed a bottle of spring ale out of the past, and chugged it out of spite.
Steve stepped out of Chez Labelles, and looked up at the clouds.
They weren't Kool-Aid clouds yet, it was too early.
Nor were they tightly packed like gorilla turds.
Steve appreciated it when the clouds were tightly packed like gorilla turds.
He did not appreciate when they weren't gorilla turdlike and irregular as they were now.
Neither did he appreciate the spontaneous rupture in spacetime that opened up just then, and proceeded to hurl him across the universe.
Oh sure, the waterslide feeling was cool and refreshing as well as exhilarating, and all the pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzing by like Star Trek were fun to watch, but Steve had important things to do.
TV to watch, porn to read, Televangelists to crank call, today was going to be a busy day.
Now it was all ruined.
Plus after the 15th big brown nebula with rainbow-ey edges, it started to get old.
Soon, he saw a big blue and purple striped planet veer up in front of him, get bigger, and then surround him as the vortex finally let go and spat him out onto dry land.
The landing was surprisingly light, Steve landed right on his feet, and barely bent his knees from the impact.
It felt like he had only fell from a one foot high window ledge.
Steve observed his surroundings.
Aliens of every size, description, and texture milling about like any typical science fiction city or spaceport.
Flying cars and frieghters choked the purple afternoon sky.
And the torquoise clouds were tightly packed like gorilla turds.
Steve sighed with relief.
Life finally made sense.
He spun around, and saw that directly behind him was what could only be a bar.
It just kept getting better.
Steve went inside.
Steve was greeted by sights, sounds, and smells that were at once alien, but at the same time familiar as an old shoe.
Especially the smoke and vomit.
He looked around and took it all in.
It was your basic sci-fi alien bar, the kind you see in every B-grade SF film trying to evoke Star Wars.
Tootling snyth band that sounds like DEVO, holographic rastar video games in all the tables, alien and android hooker standing in the back, bartop made of green translucent stone with opaque marble patterns swirling through it, neon trim everywhere that was really bent laser beams, and a swirling cacophony of put downs, come-ons, and cruel laughter buzzing all around.
Y'know, alien bar.
Steve could tell this was a place where everybody knows your name.
What with the telepath with the big bulbous brain shouting out "hey! Steve Torrent! I'm a fan from way back! Come sit a spell!".
Steve gave him the finger and sat at the opposite end of the bar.
Steve knew that telepaths always sponge drinks. It's what they do.
Steve pulled his pack of gum out of his shirt pocket, slipped out a stick, slipped off the paper but kept on the foil, and slipped it behind his ear.
He'd learned that a silver gum wrapper was all you really needed to keep out the telepaths, not a whole foil hat.
A whole foil hat was just crazy.
"So, whaddya got for beers?", Steve asked the bouncing jelly thing behind the bar.
Before the jelly could answer, he heard a strangely familiar voice holler out "hey! Steve Torrent! Long time no see!".
"Aw no, not another telepath, I've got my gum wrapper on, how did he get a lock on me?", Steve thought to himself glumly.
A two foot tall blue reptilian creature walked up to him.
Actually, it was more reptilian-ish.
It had scales, and a small vestigial tail, but it's face was more gargoyle-like, with a long pointy nose almost like a bird's beak, and two flexible pointy things on top of it's head that were either ears, antennae, or horns.
The scales all over it's face and most of it's body were of course blue, and fine like a chamelian's skin, and it's belly had soft ridged scales like on an alligator's belly, wich were orange.
Finally, it had a row of plates on it's back like a stegosaurus which were green, and outwardly tapered arms and legs like Popeye which ended in 3 fingered hands, and 2 toed feet.
Steve had seen him before.
Before he could open his mouth to say where, the creature spoke.
"Yeah, you're not going nuts, it's me, Wuboe, you dreamt about me as a kid! I'm your dream boogins!".
Steve struggled for how to phrase his next question "but how..".
"Yeah, y'see, there's a planet where all the dreams in the galaxy are made. Like TV shows, y'see, and I had the gig of starring in your nightmares for a couple weeks".
Steve blinked in confusion for a second, and then smiled "nightmares?? Those were awesome!".
Wuboe grinned back showing a ridge of yellow fangs "damned straight!".
Steve rambled on. "Remember the one where I'm on the raft, and those annoying elf things were singing that repetitive annoying song, and you flew down from the sky as a bird, and then chopped all their heads off with a butcher knife, and chucked 'em in the water for the sharks? That was my favorite! And the one where we smeared peanut butter all over the kitchen? And the one where we stuffed Charles Manson down the toilet? Aw man, those were great dreams!"
"Great dreams? Those were great TIMES, man!", Wuboe chimed in.
"So what are you doing here?", Steve asked.
"Well, the whole acting thing dried up, what with the strikes and everything, so I've taken up bounty hunting here and there, but mostly I'm on a sort of vacation", Wuboe answered while pulling up a stool next to Steve.
So, Wuboe ordered up some glowing orange drinks that tasted like Red Bull, and for the next hour or so, they reminisced, and caught each other up on their lives, and told dirty jokes.
Until a giant 7 foot tall cockroach wearing a sombrero stood up and hissed threateningly at them.
Wuboe clucked his tongue and said "what the fuck do YOU want?".
The cockroach held up a metallic rod to it's mandibles wich translated it's hisses into "I...am La Cukaracha! You keelled my father, prepare to die!".
"Ah Christ, not another one of THESE", Steve grumbled while rolling his eyes.
The cockroach then proceeded to reach behind it's back with one of it's arms, and produced an axe seemingly from nowhere.
"Oh...bring...it..ON!", Wuboe snarled.
But just then in between blinks, a red laser beam lanced out, and burnt La Cukaracha away like a dried leaf.
Steve and Wuboe stared agog for a couple moments and then turned and looked in the direction of the laser beam and saw...
Steve Torrent!
"Ah, more with the time travel again", our Steve remarked with a by now trademark smirk.
"Indeed", the other Steve remarked with an identical smirk after blowing the smoke off his laser watch.
"Let's call you..", our Steve started.
"I know, Torrent", interrupted the other Steve.
"You know, that's kind of like cheating", Wuboe huffed with a sneer while nodding towards his laser watch.
"Kind of like? It IS cheating!", beamed Torrent smugly.
"So, how did you get here? I thought the Mamba was dismantled?", Steve asked.
"A paradox", Torrent replied matter of factly.
"What caused it?", Steve asked casually.
"No, no, not that kind, it's the name of a drink they serve here", Torrent answered.
"A DRINK!?", Steve said slightly taken off balance.
Torrent smirked slightly "Yeah, good shit, it really effs you up".
Steve raised an eyebrow "delicious as spring ale?".
Torrent pulled a half empty pitcher from behind his back, and bobbed his eyebrows "just like it, but with a hint of lemon".
Steve glared anger at Torrent and barked out a quick "no!".
Torrent hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
Torrent changed the subject "so, how do you like the watch? It's a Rolex from 2901".
Steve perked up "say, can I try it on?".
"Sure", Torrent said while taking it off, and then handed it to him.
"How's it work?", Steve asked while putting it on.
"Well, the clock resets itself from anywhere and anywhen off the subatomic clock at the center of the galaxy. Then it's got a telefractal scanner with various modes, a cable band TV tuner, two way communication with just about any open communication device, then there's the laser, and the micro tractor beam that can be used as a grapnel. And all the features are cued to personalized brainwave control", Torrent said.
Steve showed that he was noticeably impressed by nodding with his bottom lip puffed out "I see, so you just wish for it to happen, and it sorts out the rest?".
"Yep", said Torrent.
"And does the laser have a stun?", asked Steve.
"Oh yeah, you just wish for stun, and aim and...".
Steve aimed and fired a stun pulse into Torrent cutting him off mid sentence.
Torrent crumpled to the floor spilling half his pitcher of paradox.
"Yeah, that's got it", said Steve with a smirk.
Steve then reached down, picked up the pitcher, and emptied the rest into Torrent's mouth.
Seconds later, he rippled like water and faded out.
"Well, I'll be jiggered, the stuff woiks", Steve said with another smirk.
"I'll say!", said Wuboe, who had sidled up to the bar having grown bored with Steve and Torrent's discussion, and had finally walked back in once he saw the old zap and disappear transpire.
Wuboe pulled out another pitcher "good thing I ordered some. Take a swig. It may not be spring ale, but it'll get you home".
"I wonder how this shit works", Steve asked to himself, not fully realizing he'd said it out loud.
Wuboe chimed right in with "well, the bartender told me it collapses your time awareness into a singular point from wich you can go anywhen in your past by sheer act of will. You just chug and flashback".
"Alrighty then", said Steve, and with that, he took a glug out of the pitcher.
Meanwhile, seconds in the past, Steve reached down, picked up Torrent's pitcher, and emptied the rest into Torrent's mouth.
Seconds later, he rippled like water and faded out.
A cool refreshing and exhilarating waterslide feeling washed over Torrent and roused him into consciousness in time for him to see all the pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzing by like Star Trek wich were fun to watch.
Torrent struggled to remember where he might have wished to go while he was knocked out, but just then he realized he was about to find out as he saw a familiar blue and green planet veer up in front of him, get bigger, and then surround him as the vortex finally let go and spat him out onto dry land.
But, he landed right on the same spot he was standing on when he walked out of Chez Labelles, and thus knocked his past self out of position, hurling him across space and time into a random location.
His past self didn't appreciate it.
Meanwhile, seconds in the past, seconds after Torrent dematerialized, Steve took a glug out of his pitcher.
A cool refreshing and exhilarating waterslide feeling washed over Steve and soon he began to see all the pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzing by like Star Trek which were fun to watch.
Soon, he saw a familiar blue and green planet veer up in front of him, get bigger, and then surround him as the vortex finally let go and spat him out onto dry land.
But, he landed right on the same spot he was standing on when he walked out of Chez Labelles, and thus bounced off of Torrent who was materializing at the same time, and added some of his momentum to his past self, allowing him to go across the galaxy to the alien bar, while Steve himself was hurled across space and time into a third random location.
"It's the hallelujah, holy shit, biff bam boom, anything goes KRAAAAAZYFOOOOL SHOOOOOWW!!!!", screamed the announcer.
The song "Black Sabbath", by Black Sabbath began to play in the background.
When the song got to the part where Ozzy screams "OHH GODD PLEASE GOD HELP ME!!", a strange looking man who Steve took to be the host of the show emerged on stage from a chute that ended with a giant fiberglass head in his likeness with dry ice smoke coming from the mouth. An effect of a synthesizer deepened voice going "MUUAAHAHAAA!! MUUAAHAHA!!", was dubbed over for the duration of Krazyfool's exit from the giant mouth.
Confirming Steve's suspicion, the announcer then screamed "Now here's your host FUUUCKINGGG KRAAAAAZYFOOOOLLL!!!!!!!!!".
Steve looked back and forth to take stock of his surroundings, and noticed that Wuboe was sitting right next to him on the bleachers that the slim audience for this farcical show was given to sit on.
"What the hell are you doing here?", Steve asked.
Wuboe thought for a moment and then answered "well, the paradox makes you travel into your memories, and as your dream boogins I was attuned to your brainwaves, so our residual psychic connection appears to have towed me along with you".
Steve looked out at the host "funny, I don't seem to remember ever going to see a crappy talk show".
Wuboe thought some more and then said "well, perhaps the link has also made it possible to go into my memories as well as yours".
Steve asked the obvious question "so when did you ever go to see a talk show, Mr. alien actor?".
Wuboe squinted at the host, who was now finishing his monologue, and jogging towards his desk that was for some strange reason several yards from the main performance stage in the half built warehouse sized building the show was taping in.
"Um, no, I never did", he finally said when the host made it to his desk, and took a drag off an asthma inhaler.
Wuboe then perked up with inspiration "well, if we're still residually linked, I must also still be residually linked to all the other kids I gave dreams to. So, this must be a memory one of my other dream hosts".
"Any of those other kids grow up into an obnoxious talk show host?", Steve asked.
Wuboe squinted at the host again "I dunno, there were so many, and I didn't exactly keep tabs on 'em all".
Suddenly, a voice interrupted them "excuse me, don't let me disrupt your precious conversation".
It was Krazyfool. He had called attention to them.
"Well, now's your chance to come right out and ask him", said Steve to Wuboe with a smirk.
Krazyfool squinted at Wuboe, and then his eyes bugged in recognition.
"Hey! I know you! You're the monster dude from the raft dream!".
"Yeah, y'see, there's a planet where..", Wuboe began to explain.
"Yeah, yeah, I don't care", Krazyfool said with a dismissive gesture.
"Save that life story crap for the interview, I'm short on guests, and was going to have to do two musical numbers. This saves me the embarrassment".
Krazyfool waved to Steve and Wuboe to come down to the stage, and to come to the desk.
So, for the next 15 minutes or so, Krazyfool (who's real name it turned out was Phineas P. Phallow) and Wuboe reminisced, and caught each other up on their lives, and told dirty jokes.
Steve quickly became bored with this, and absent mindedly took a swig of paradox.
"Ooops", he said as he rippled away.
It was the year 2740.
The prostitute, clad in a neon glo-plastic g-string, unfolded the crinkled piece of paper handed to her by the 6 foot tall pine tree (or was it a man in a tree suit?).
An ecstatic giggle came from the tree as she read it aloud "you naughty little tree, you've been a bad Christmas tree. All you're getting for Christmas is a spanking you naughty little shrub".
"Read it louder this time", ordered the tree calmly.
She read it again, loudly as the tree had asked her to.
"More feeling whore!! you're getting paid I want quality!!" shouted the tree, obviously becoming irritated.
She read it again, this time louder and simulating a scolding tone of voice.
"No I'm sorry, you're just not working out. Tell that other one to come in", sighed the tree disappointedly.
A thick hipped, bucked toothed, four eyed, flat chested, girl dressed like someone who obviously was doing this to pay the bills walked in.
"I'm doing this to pay the bills", said the girl matter of factly.
"This little college girl is gonna lose her innocence in a big way", thought the tree wickedly to his/itself.
The tree showed her to an armchair in the corner of the room
"Hello doll, names Spruce, read this note, and make me feel it".
She read the note at just the right tone and volume. Spruce rustled and shook rapidly, and sickening slapping sounds came from him.
"Yeah, yeah, that's it baby make me pay!! Say the words baby!", said Spruce shakily.
Spruce gave one last hard twitch "aaauuuagghh eh eh ahhh there, perfect, not much to look at but boy what an actress ".
A zipping sound came from Spruce, then a hand came from within his branches and gave the hooker a $50 bill.
"See ya round, baby, that was just what the tree surgeon ordered ".
As Spruce walked away the girl noticed a small puddle of what appeared to be pine sap but she wasn't about to examine it.
Spruce was now tooling along asphault space at 10 LYPS (light years per second) when suddenly a Pholdhouse jumped out of nowhere and brought his nice little ride to a screeching hault. "well what a stupid place to put a world, that wasn't here last time I came this way. Frigging construction crews got nothing better to do I guess", cursed Spruce repulsed.
Harry Hembock, a skinny, bug eyed, 5 foot 4 inch tall goon of a man with a ridiculously black greasy pompadour and an almost comical overbite and dressed in white sweatpants and sweatshirt with a big black "H" on the chest with a third line in the middle drawn on with black magic marker, and red rubber boots with the fronts cut to come to points like superman boots, was fast asleep in his electro chemical heated slush bed.
Soon, Harry woke up from the annoying back story dream he had just had, and vowed never to dream it again.
But, just as he was going to go back to sleep, a fat bald guy holding a pitcher of beer, and a short blue lizardy guy materialized with a teleport effect he'd never seen before.
Harry's eyes bugged with recognition "Hey! I know you! You're the monster dude from the raft dream!". He then bugged his eyes at Steve torrent "and you're Steve Torrent!".
Steve raised an eyebrow "you'll have to excuse me, I don't remember ever meeting you. And trust me, I'd have remembered seeing someone like you".
Harry thought for a second, and then said "oh, right, time travel, you haven't met me yet. But you will, at El Flatulatos in 2004. You tell me all about the whole deal with Fulcrum, and Waverly, and Torbrigriago the dragon, and Jake Prong, and Lenny who shits his pants and...".
"Okay, okay, I believe you", Steve cut in.
He then looked at Wuboe and asked "okay, Wuboe, so how did you jump us into a guy from the future?".
"Well, the alien bar was in the 30th century, and clearly by the make of the pholdhouse we're standing in it's the 28th, so there was plenty of time for me to give dreams to someone in his time range".
Harry jumped in "well yeah, I had the raft dream in this time, but actually I'm native to the 21st century. This is just a little stopover adventure I had once".
Harry paused "pardon my tenses, more time travel, it gets complicated. How about you promise not to ask me to get into it, if I promise not to ask why your little blue buddy there is traveling under the name Wuboe, when I knew him in 2003 as Pobb, who supposedly died".
Steve's eyes bugged at Pobb/Wuboe, and Pobb/Wuboe answered back with a simple "done".
"This conversation is more stultifying and dull than that crappy talk show we just left", Steve grumbled while rubbing his eyes.
"Agreed", Harry answered "well, good night then", and with that, he lay back down in his slush bed.
He was about to dream about how bathroom sink water tastes better than kitchen sink water for some reason, when suddenly the Pholdhouse was torn in half by a green jagged edged space ship the size of an oil truck and resembling a Christmas tree. Harry and his cohorts were flung 300 feet from the crash and all landed in the lake outdoors.
Harry crawled out of the lake. He shook the water off of his watertight pompadore, and switched on the heat dryer switch on his belt buckle.
The hatch on the pine tree ship opened up and a very familiar pine bough clad gentleman hopped out.
"Spruce, it figures, just when I'm enjoying a good rest he has to come along", Harry thought to himself.
"Harry!! Its you, I knew you'd survive, you always do", Spruce remarked joyously.
"How did you survive?", Harry asked amazed and annoyed to see his off and on sidekick again.
Spruce pulled out a crude map drawn in magic marker "remember, you sold me this map of spots to stand on when the world blows up, for 20 bucks".
Harry nodded "that's right, I remember now, I needed the money for a pornographic video game".
Steve crawled out of the lake angrily waving an empty pitcher above his head.
"Thanks a fuckin bunch! Now I'm stuck here, you goofball sons of bitches!", he growled.
But just then, another Steve and Wuboe rippled into existence.
"Aw christ, no! I can't take much more of this!", Steve whimpered with exasperation.
"We're you from a few minutes in the future, after we get some more paradox, we come back in time to give you some more paradox, which is where we got the paradox in the first place", said the future Torrent.
"Isn't that a paradox?", asked Wuboe.
"Hence the name", future Steve said with a grin, while pouring half his pitcher of paradox into present Steve's empty pitcher.
"But wait, if you give us just half a pitcher where do we get the other half a pitcher that you just gave us?", Wuboe asked, flabbergasted.
"We go back to the bar for some more", answered future Wuboe.
"When?", asked past Wuboe.
"Anytime you feel like, there's plenty of time", future Steve answered smugly.
"ARRGH!! Let's get the fuck out of here!!", screamed Wuboe.
"Agreed", replied present Steve, and with that, he took a chug.
A quick watersliding through hyperspace later, Steve landed back on the couch of Krazyfool's talk show set.
A quick scan of his surroundings revealed that Wuboe, Harry, and Spruce had come along with him.
Steve looked into the pitcher and shook his head in grudging respect "christ, this shit effs you up alright, godDAMN".
Krazyfool meanwhile, stared dispassionately out into the audience, and witnessed Harry and Spruce running out into the bleachers wreaking mayhem and disorder.
Harry began dry humping a woman's hand while Spruce made obscene gestures behind a senior citizen.
Wuboe tilted his head with inspiration and looked at Steve "hey, I know, if you're the positive terminal of this time travel circuit, then I must be the negative! Which means if I drank the paradox, it would send these jokers back to their story where they belong!".
"Worth a shot", Steve belched as he handed Wuboe the pitcher.
Wuboe proceeded to take a glug, and sat the pitcher down on the coffee table.
Just then, the earth shook slightly, and Harry, Spruce, and sadly, Wuboe rippled out of existence.
"Ah shit!", Steve exclaimed.
"Just as well", injected Krazyfool "there was too many guys for me to keep track of".
"Yeah, but even bumping into Spruce and that Harry Hembock guy all seems really pointless now", Steve observed.
"Well, not entirely pointless. Think of them as the Jay and Silent Bob of this universe. They gotta make their appearance sooner or later. It's obligatory", Krazyfool consoled.
"I suppose that's one way to look at it", Steve mumbled.
"Yes, yes it is", said Krazyfool eying the pitcher of paradox and licking his lips.
"Oh look, a couple in the audience are fucking!", shouted Krazyfool as he pointed out to the bleachers.
"Alright!", shouted Steve who then proceeded to scan the audience with his tongue hanging out.
While he was distracted, Krazyfool leaped over the desk, grabbed the pitcher, took a glug, and rippled away.
Steve recoiled and then sneered "Aw fuck! I always fall for that!".
In the past, Steve tapped out a button combination on his multi-purpose arcade cabinet, and a Little Debbie oatmeal cream sandwich cookie popped out of a slot at the bottom.
He tapped out another combination, and anticipated a bottle of Sam Adam's Spring Ale, but nothing came out.
He tapped out the right button sequence again.
Still nothing.
Steve froze.
His eyes bulged.
"Oh shit!".
Then he calmed down a bit and mumbled "ah, I'll just order some more".
He punched up the internet connection and scrolled up Sam Adam's webpage.
That's when he new he was really in trouble.
His jaw dropped open in horror.
"They didn't fuckin' make it this year!!??! Wha...wha...how can they DO that?!?", he sputtered.
"Well, maybe I can find it's clone...yeah there we go! It will be a quest! A quest for a new Spring Ale!".
He then proceeded to punch up the steering controls of the Green Mamba, and blasted off.
Krazyfool rippled into existence just in time to see the Green Mamba rise up into the clouds.
"Hey, cool, a big green frog ship, you don't see that every day!", Krazy said with a goofy grin. He then looked own at the pitcher and said "thank you, beer!".
Krazy then took another sip, and vanished again.
Instants later, after watersliding around in hyperspace, Krazy landed cozily into a chair at a table at Chez Lebelle.
He turned and looked, and saw Steve Torrent sitting across from a tall, icy eyed, bony faced creepy guy with slicked back hair at the table across from him.
Jake Prong stared back at Steve from the other side of the table.
"So you've spent the last week scouring the planet for a replacement for your favorite beer?", Jake asked.
"Yep", Steve confirmed.
"Ah", Jake answered.
Jake ate a couple ice cubes and then asked "so you brought me here just to tell me that?".
"Exciting discussion", thought Krazyfool grimly.
Steve grinned nervously "well no, I was wondering if it wasn't too much trouble, if you could use your 4-D karate to snatch me a couple cases out of time and space".
Jake buttered the last dinner roll and answered "yes it is too much trouble, and no I won't".
"Gee, that was kind of prickish", thought Krazyfool to himself.
"Oh", Steve said with a downcast defeated look.
Then Jake got a look of inspiration "wait, why not just wait until the summer ale comes out? it's exactly the same, but with a hint of lemon".
"Good point", Krazyfool thought.
Steve glared anger at Jake and barked out a quick "no!".
"Aw christ", thought Krazy while rolling his eyes.
Jake hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
"Hmm, I wonder if any of this would happen if I could just persuade the dumbass to try the summer ale", Krazyfool thought.
He then looked at the pitcher "no, no, then I wouldn't have the cosmic fun juice here", he mumbled.
Jake looked out the window and said in a bland disaffected tone "ope, gang members have stripped the Mamba. Gotta be careful in this neighborhood. Want me to use my cel to call the cops?".
Steve sighed "no, no,....they're um...they're not good...I'll walk home".
"You wanna doggie bag your tripe?", Jake asked.
"Mmmm tripe!", thought Krazy as his mouth began to water.
Steve sighed again and said "no, I just got it to impress you. Throw it to the seagulls in the parking lot".
"Shit!", shouted Krazyfool's stomach.
"Alright then, bubye", Jake said lazily going through the social motions.
He didn't mean it though.
Once Steve was gone, he grabbed a bottle of spring ale out of the past, and chugged it out of spite.
Krazy's eyes bugged as he watched Jake's hand slip into a small wormhole, and pop back out holding a spring ale "Well I'll be jiggered, he DOES have 4-D karate!", his brain exclaimed.
Steve stepped out of Chez Labelles, and looked up at the clouds.
He then rippled in and out, shook his head, and walked back in.
Gimme that! He said to Jake as he walked in and grabbed the spring ale from him on the third big striding footstep from the door.
He then turned and saw Krazyfool "and YOU gimme THAT!", he said indicating the pitcher.
"NOPE!", Krazy said quickly, and half a second later had the pitcher to his lips, and rippled out.
Krazyfool was greeted by sights, sounds, and smells that were at once alien, but at the same time familiar as an old shoe.
Especially the smoke and vomit.
He looked around and took it all in.
It was your basic sci-fi alien bar. Yadda, yadda, y'know, alien bar.
Krazyfool turned and looked, and once again saw Steve Torrent.
He scurried into the corner where he could have a good vantage point, but remain relatively unobserved.
Just then, a guy at the other end of the bar with a big bulbous brain shouted out "hey! Steve Torrent! I'm a fan from way back! Come sit a spell!".
Steve gave him the finger and sat at the opposite end of the bar.
Steve pulled his pack of gum out of his shirt pocket, slipped out a stick, slipped off the paper but kept on the foil, and slipped it behind his ear.
"So, whaddya got for beers?", Steve asked the bouncing jelly thing behind the bar.
Before the jelly could answer, Krazy heard a familiar voice holler out "hey! Steve Torrent! Long time no see!".
It was Wuboe.
Krazyfool noticed the note of recognition in Steve's face.
Wuboe spoke then. "Yeah, you're not going nuts, it's me, Wuboe, you dreamt about me as a kid! I'm your dream boogins!".
"But how..", Steve asked.
Krazyfool quickly deduced this must have been their first meeting.
Wuboe proceeded to empty himself of the whole tedious explanation he had told Krazyfool on his show, so Krazy tuned it out and ogled one of the android whores.
After a time, Krazy realized they were going to prattle on for some time, so he went up to the bar and had the bartender blob top off his pitcher.
Indeed, they prattled on. Krazy passed the time by picking some songs on the jukebox, trying the love tester, and sampling shots of anything that glowed.
This went on until finally, a giant 7 foot tall cockroach wearing a sombrero stood up and hissed threateningly at Steve and Wuboe.
"Ah, finally some friggin action", Krazy said with a grin.
Wuboe clucked his tongue and said "what the fuck do YOU want?".
The cockroach held up a metallic rod to it's mandibles wich translated it's hisses into "I...am La Cukaracha! You keelled my father, prepare to die!".
"Ah Christ, not another one of THESE", Steve grumbled while rolling his eyes.
"Come on, stop fuckin around and fight the goddamned thing", Krazy whisper hissed.
The cockroach then proceeded to reach behind it's back with one of it's arms, and produced an axe seemingly from nowhere.
"Ah, there we go, now it's gettin good", Krazy said with an even more sinister grin and sipped his glowing stuff.
"Oh...bring...it..ON!", Wuboe snarled.
But just then in between blinks, a red laser beam lanced out, and burnt La Cukaracha away like a dried leaf.
Krazy hissed in irritation and turned and saw seconds before Steve and Wuboe did...Steve Torrent!?
One mind meltingly boring discussion on time travel later, and Steve Torrent finally disposed of his temporal doppelganger, and time traveled himself and Wuboe out of there with their pitcher of paradox.
"So that's how it all started", said Krazy with a nod as he sipped from his pitcher.
"It's the hallelujah, holy shit, biff bam boom, anything goes KRAAAAAZYFOOOOL SHOOOOOWW!!!!", screamed the announcer.
The song "Black Sabbath", by Black Sabbath began to play in the background.
Krazyfool looked around and noticed he'd landed in the bleachers of his own talkshow just two rows behind Steve and Wuboe.
He looked up at the stage and saw himself coming out of his own head wich was laughing in a creepy voice.
"Man, just look at me up there, I'm really great", Krazy thought to himself with a shit eating grin on his face.
Krazy half listened to Steve and Wuboe's dull discussion on temporal mechanics, until finally, a voice interrupted them "excuse me, don't let me disrupt your precious conversation".
It was himself interrupting them.
"Well, now's your chance to come right out and ask him", said Steve to Wuboe with a smirk.
Past-Krazyfool squinted at Wuboe, and then his eyes bugged in recognition.
"Hey! I know you! You're the monster dude from the raft dream!".
"Yeah, y'see, there's a planet where..", Wuboe began to explain.
"Yeah, yeah, I don't care", past-Krazyfool said with a dismissive gesture.
"Save that life story crap for the interview, I'm short on guests, and was going to have to do two musical numbers. This saves me the embarrassment".
Past-Krazyfool waved to Steve and Wuboe to come down to the stage, and to come to the desk.
So, for the next 15 minutes or so, Past-Krazyfool and Wuboe reminisced, and caught each other up on their lives, and told dirty jokes.
Steve quickly became bored with this, and absent mindedly took a swig of paradox.
"Ooops", he said as he rippled away.
An instant later, Steve rippled back, and had brought Harry and Spruce along with him.
Steve looked into the pitcher and shook his head in grudging respect "christ, this shit effs you up alright, godDAMN".
Past-Krazyfool meanwhile, stared dispassionately out into the audience, and witnessed Harry and Spruce running out into the bleachers wreaking mayhem and disorder.
Present-Krazyfool sat back in bemusement as Harry began dry humping a woman's hand while Spruce made obscene gestures behind a senior citizen not 2 rows awy from him.
Wuboe tilted his head with inspiration and looked at Steve "hey, I know, if you're the positive terminal of this time travel circuit, then I must be the negative! Which means if I drank the paradox, it would send these jokers back to their story where they belong!".
"Worth a shot", Steve belched as he handed Wuboe the pitcher.
Wuboe proceeded to take a glug, and sat the pitcher down on the coffee table.
Just then, the earth shook slightly, and Harry, Spruce, and sadly, Wuboe rippled out of existence.
"Ah shit!", Steve exclaimed.
"Good riddance", muttered present-Krazyfool.
"Just as well", injected past-Krazyfool "there was too many guys for me to keep track of".
"Yeah, but even bumping into Spruce and that Harry Hembock guy all seems really pointless now", Steve observed.
"Well, not entirely pointless. Think of them as the Jay and Silent Bob of this universe. They gotta make their appearance sooner or later. It's obligitory", past-Krazyfool consoled.
"No, it was pointless", whispered present-Krazyfool.
Present-Krazyfool then remembered that he still had his mic pack on, and it gave him an idea. He fiddled with some buttons and nobs, and switched it to transmit on his own frequency, he then used the earpiece as a microphone and spoke to his past self "beeeer, driiiink the beeeer. Dreeeenk tha beeeer", he whispered in an imitation of the voices in his head.
"I suppose that's one way to look at it", Steve mumbled.
"Yes, yes it is", said past-Krazyfool eying the pitcher of paradox and licking his lips.
"Deestraahct heeem!", present-Krazyfool commanded.
"Oh look, a couple in the audience are fucking!", shouted past-Krazyfool as he pointed out to the bleachers.
"Alright!", shouted Steve who then proceeded to scan the audience with his tongue hanging out.
While he was distracted, past-Krazyfool leaped over the desk, grabbed the pitcher, took a glug, and rippled away.
Steve recoiled and then sneered "Aw fuck! I always fall for that!".
Present-Krazyfool finally chose that moment as the oppurtunity to jog down to the stage and sit back down behind his desk.
"And now for our next guest! But first, these commercial messages!", said present-Krazyfool with a goony grin.
Meanwhile, in sideways time, Harry, Wuboe, and Spruce were hurtling across hyperspace.
Eventually, they hit a fork in the tunnel, and the trio lost Wuboe, as Harry and Spruce continued onward to their original destination.
Harry and Spruce rippled back into normal space, and were greeted by sights, sounds, and smells that were at once alien, but at the same time familiar as an old shoe.
Especially the smoke and vomit.
They looked around and took it all in.
It was your basic sci-fi alien bar. Yadda, yadda, y'know, alien bar.
They turned and looked, and saw Steve Torrent.
They turned in the other direction, and saw Krazyfool.
Krazy scurried into the corner, apparently to hide from Torrent to preserve the timeline.
Harry was stricken by the same impulse, which reminded him of something he had in his pocket.
He pulled it out. It was a pack of gum.
He pulled out a stick and gave it to Spruce "here, chew this", he said "I got it out of a vending machine while we were in the 28th century. It's disguise gum. It colors your aura into a hologram. Every stick is a different look".
Spruce looked at the picture on his stick "mine's a big brained guy. It don't wanna be a big brained guy, what you got?".
Harry looked "a bouncy jelly blob thing. Wanna trade?".
"Sure".
They traded, and slipped the gum into their mouths and began to chew.
Instants later, Harry and Spruce morphed into a guy with a big bulbous brain, and a jelly blob respectively.
Harry pulled up a seat at the bar, and Spruce took a wrong turn somehow, and ended up behind the bar.
Harry saw Steve and was stricken by the impulse to reveal himself to test the disguise "hey! Steve Torrent! I'm a fan from way back! Come sit a spell!", he hollered
Steve gave him the finger and sat at the opposite end of the bar.
"So, whaddya got for beers?", Steve asked Spruce, obviously assuming he was the real bartender.
Before he could answer, he heard a strangely familiar voice holler out "hey! Steve Torrent! Long time no see!".
It was Wuboe.
A long boring conversation bogged down with much exposition resulted.
After a time, Krazyfool came up to the bar, and had Spruce top off his pitcher of Paradox.
Spruce leaned toward Krazyfool "Psst, it's me, Spruce, we met on your show", he whispered.
Krazyfool tilted his head like a confused dog.
Spruce looked down at himself and then back up "oh this? this is just the effect of disguise gum. I'm really a guy in a pine tree costume. ....it's my kink".
Krazyfool snapped back in recognition "ooooh, riight! Pine tree guy! Blue lizard guy teleported you by drinking the magic beer! Yeah, I know you".
The guy with the big bulbous brain leaned over "and I'm his creepy pal!", he said with a toothy confident smile.
Steve and Wuboe continued to prattle on.
Krazy passed the time by picking some songs on the jukebox shouted out by Harry and Spruce, trying the love tester, and sampling shots of anything that glowed.
This went on until finally, a giant 7 foot tall cockroach wearing a sombrero stood up and hissed threateningly at Steve and Wuboe.
Krazyfool stuck around to witness the drama a while longer, but Spruce told him he and Harry had had enough, and proceeded to pour their own mugs of paradox, and took off.
Instants later, after watersliding around in hyperspace, Harry and Spruce landed cozily into a set of chairs at a table at Chez Lebelle.
They turned and looked, and saw Steve Torrent sitting across from a tall, icy eyed, bony faced creepy guy with slicked back hair at the table across from him.
They turned the other way, and saw Krazyfool totally engrossed in what was going on at Steve's table.
They looked down at themselves, and then at each other, and noticed that the time travel had distorted their disguise auras to look like two generic businessmen.
Jake Prong stared back at Steve from the other side of the table.
"So you've spent the last week scouring the planet for a replacement for your favorite beer?", Jake asked.
"Yep", Steve confirmed.
"Ah", Jake answered.
Jake ate a couple ice cubes and then asked "so you brought me here just to tell me that?".
"Exciting discussion", thought Harry grimly.
"Who's this douchebag?", thought Spruce.
Steve grinned nervously "well no, I was wondering if it wasn't too much trouble, if you could use your 4-D karate to snatch me a couple cases out of time and space".
Jake buttered the last dinner roll and answered "yes it is too much trouble, and no I won't".
"Gee, that was kind of prickish", thought Harry to himself.
"Ha! Take that, Boozy McWhindbag!", thought Spruce.
"Oh", Steve said with a downcast defeated look.
Then Jake got a look of inspiration "wait, why not just wait until the summer ale comes out? it's exactly the same, but with a hint of lemon".
"Good point", Harry thought.
"Why is this conversation being allowed to happen? Why doesn't the ugly guy just smack Torrent and tell him to go swivel on it?", thought Spruce.
Steve glared anger at Jake and barked out a quick "no!".
"Aw christ", thought Harry while rolling his eyes.
Jake hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
"Maybe I aughtta just go over and smack him", Spruce thought.
Jake looked out the window and said in a bland disaffected tone "ope, gang members have stripped the Mamba. Gotta be careful in this neighborhood. Want me to use my cel to call the cops?".
Steve sighed "no, no,....they're um...they're not good...I'll walk home".
"You wanna doggie bag your tripe?", Jake asked.
"Yeah, just go right over and smack him right across his fat stubbly face, and watch the jowls wobble", thought Spruce.
Steve sighed again and said "no, I just got it to impress you. Throw it to the seagulls in the parking lot".
"Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Getting up....now! No, no, no,...NOW!..no...", thought Spruce.
"Alright then, bubye", Jake said lazily going through the social motions.
He didn't mean it though.
Once Steve was gone, he grabbed a bottle of spring ale out of the past, and chugged it out of spite.
"Well I'll be jiggered, he DOES have 4-D karate!", Harry thought.
"Ah, so THAT'S 4-D karate. Fancy name for magic as far as I can tell", thought Spruce.
Steve stepped out of Chez Labelles, and looked up at the clouds.
He then rippled in and out, shook his head, and walked back in.
Gimme that! He said to Jake as he walked in and grabbed the spring ale from him on the third big striding footstep from the door.
He then turned and saw Krazyfool "and YOU gimme THAT!", he said indicating the pitcher.
"NOPE!", Krazy said quickly, and half a second later had the pitcher to his lips, and rippled out.
"That does it!", shouted Spruce who then proceeded to do a series of acrobatic flips, land in front of Steve, and beat the everloving shit out of him, sending his bottle flying.
Harry just stared agape.
"JUST LIKE MY FATHER!! JUST LIKE MY AWFUL FUCKING FATHER!! FAT!! FAT!! FAAAT!! FAILUUURE!!!", screamed Spruce as he wailed on Steve.
Jake just sat there with a creepy grin on his face.
Finally, Harry jumped in, grabbed Spruce, took a swig from his mug of paradox, and with that, they both vanished.
Steve was helped to his feet by two waiters. He was groaning, bloody, and nursing two shiners.
"Sunsabidges! Sunsabidges!", he slurred pitifully.
The then hobbled over, and absent mindedly reached over and helped himself to Spruce's left behind mug of paradox, and vanished with a look of surprise on his face.
"Christ. Glad that's finally over", grumbled Jake.
Meanwhile, in sideways time, Harry and Spruce materialized back at the Krazyfool show as an old man, and a woman.
Minutes later, after being accosted by themselves, they looked at each other awkwardly, and said in unison "well, that's taught us a lesson".
Meanwhile, in sideways time, Harry, Spruce, and Wuboe hit a fork in the time tunnel, and the trio lost Wuboe, as Harry and Spruce continued onward to their original destination.
Wuboe landed at the same destination an hour and some minutes behind them.
To be more precise, he landed in the same spot Spruce had been standing in as he took off to Chez Labelle, and landed inside his disguise aura, and became the jelly blob bartender.
He looked around and saw himself and Steve facing La Cukaracha again, and he also saw Krazyfool watching from the sidelines, and idly wondered if he just arrived in this timeline, or if he had always been there.
Just then, a red laser beam lanced out and burnt La Cukaracha away like a dried leaf.
A boring discussion about time travel and future Steve's watch ensued, and his past self became bored and came up to the bar.
"What have you got that I ain't tried yet?", past-Wuboe asked.
"Well, there's the paradox", present-Wuboe said, smirking behind his faceless disguise aura.
"It's not one of those pussy college girl drinks, like 'oops I made a poopie' is it?", his past self asked.
Present-Wuboe chimed right in with "well, it collapses your time awareness into a singular point from which you can go anywhen in your past by sheer act of will. You tell me, is that fucked up enough for you?".
"No shit?", his past self asked, eyes bugging.
"No shit. You just chug and flashback", present-Wuboe answered matter of factly while pouring him a pitcher.
"A whole pitcher?", his past self asked.
"Might come in handy to have plenty in reserve", present-Wuboe answered.
The two Steves were finishing their discussion as Steve had just tazed his future self, and forced paradox down his gullet, so past-Wuboe walked away from the bar to get invlved.
Present-Wuboe poured himself a mug of paradox, swigged, and vanished.
Meanwhile, in the past, At Chez Labelle, Jake ate some bread.
Lenny shit himself.
Steve laughed.
Jake kept eating his bread.
And Celine just kept staring.
Just then, Wuboe materialized a couple tables away.
He looked down at himself, and noticed that he'd brought Spruce's disguise aura with him, but the time warp had morphed it to look like a generic businessman.
He shrugged with resignation, and started fiddling with his placemat.
Celine noticed him materializing in her peripheral vision, and multi-tasked her concentration between the inane discussion amongst Steve, Jake, and Lenny, and what this mysterious teleporting gentleman was up to.
She ran an EM scan on him, and noticed strange things about his aura, so she ran a filter, and saw that he was really a blue lizardy guy surrounded by an electromagnetic hologram. Intrigued, she then ran a resonance scan, and noticed strange things about his body chemistry. She then noticed that this same strangeness centered on his beverage.
She zoomed in with an electron microscope scan of the drink's molecular structure, and noticed that segments of it's molecule were phasing in and out of the continuum.
She then ran a V-ray scan on the alien's brain, and then zoomed in on a single neuron with electron scan.
She then ran a test by plugging a computer model of the temporal molecule into a computer model of the neuron, and then patched the output into her sensory boards.
Just then, a cool and refreshing waterslide feeling washed over her circuits, and pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzed by like on Star Trek.
Wuboe saw Celine ripple away, and did a triple take that looked like a nervous tick, shrugged, and then swigged his drink and vanished again.
Steve, Lenny, and Jake stared in shock at where Celine had been for about 15 seconds, and then proceeded to prattle on about ninjas and such.
Lenny let out a wet fart and refreshed his stink.
Steve and Jake laughed.
Meanwhile, Wuboe's wormhole spat him out into the middle of an ocean.
After sputtering and choking, and struggling to tread water for a few moments, he then realized that his paradox was gone, and fell into a funk.
But, just as he was about to let himself sink, he noticed a raft off in the distance.
His eyes bugged "nah, it couldn't be", he grumbled as he swam towards it.
Meanwhile, Cache Ballard, a neglected 8 year old boy sat on the raft being entertained/annoyed by these odd critters that looked like Treasure Trolls, but with colored cardboard party hats instead of hair.
They were doing this annoying repetitive insect speed dance to the tune of the piano music to the keystone cops coming from nowhere.
Just when Cache thought he was going to snap, Wuboe hurled himself out of the water up onto the raft, his disguise aura washed off revealing his true self.
"Wow! What are YOU?", Cache asked.
Wuboe then had a quick flashback of what Harry Hembock had said.
"How about you promise not to ask me to get into it, if I promise not to ask why your little blue buddy there is traveling under the name Wuboe, when I knew him in 2003 as Pobb".
Wuboe instinctivly assessed the situation and said "oh, me? Pobb. Just call me Pobb".
Wuboe/Pobb heard the music, and saw the trolls, and then it all came back to him.
"Meh, trolls eh? Yeah, I got a solution for this that usually works", he said as he pulled a butcher knife out from behind him like a cartoon.
He then ran over and began to hack the trolls into bloody pieces like so much fish, and then kicked their grizzled remains into the water.
The awful music stopped when he killed the last one.
Wuboe/Pobb stood back in satisfaction and said "there, that's got it".
He then lay down on the raft and said to Cache "wake me when we get to shore".
He sunk into sleep for what felt like a minute, and then opened his eyes and saw that he was standing in the child's bedroom at the head of his bed while the kid looked at him in awe.
It took him a couple seconds and then he realized "the kid brought me out of the dream! Fuck, this is gonna make things weird".
Wuboe/Pobb then burped up some paradox, and now it was 35 years later.
Memories of this alternate life flooded in, and he understood what he was seeing now.
Cache, now a crimefighter (allied with Harry Hembock of the past) was shot by a heat seeking bullet fired by the nefarious Nick Blickley.
"Oh shit!", shouted Wuboe/Pobb as he poofed out of existence.
On the next blink, he saw that he was back at the dream studio.
"Hey! Get off my set! Security!", shouted a megaphone warbled voice.
Four iron gripped gorilla sized hands grabbed him, and threw him out the back door and into a dumpster.
"What an odd day this has been", grumbled Wuboe.
Just then, an empty soda cup bounced off his head.
He looked to see who threw it, and saw Anubis strolling past.
"Oh, that's right, this is also the afterlife planet. I always forget, because I was never allowed to mix with them. ...snobby cunts", Wuboe thought to himself.
Wuboe heard a faint skittering sound, and saw a scarab beetle crawl out of Anubis's belt pouch.
Anubis didn't seem to either notice or care.
The scarab however headed right for the garbage.
"Why, hello, little fella", Wuboe said to the scarab in an instinctive baby talk voice.
The scarab munched on a piece of wilted lettuce.
"Aren't you a big boy? Yes you are! Yes you are!".
Just then, an inexplicably bloodied and black eyed Steve Torrent materialized.
Meanwhile, in 2004, 2 days after Steve Torrent was on the Krazyfool show, Phineas P. Phallow (A.K.A Krazyfool) walked out of El Flataulatos, a Mexican themed bar and grill with strippers and comedians.
"Happy trails. Sayonara", he said as he waved goodbye to the other patrons.
In the next instant, Wuboe materialized several yards overhead, and landed on Krazyfool, snapping both their necks, and killing them instantly.
Anubis's scarab scurried out from under Wuboe's lifeless head, and into El Flatulatos just before the door glided all the way shut.
El Flatulato, the restaurant's mascot, and headline standup act noticed the scarab, and picked it up, balancing it along his index finger.
Karamba! La Kukaracha! He proclaimed proudly of his new pet.
Meanwhile, in 2740, a day after Harry Hembock arrived in that era, the aforementioned bloodied and black eyed Steve Torrent landed at the future incarnation of El Flatulatos (now a galactic chain).
Unlike Wuboe, Steve's fall was properly cushioned, and he survived.
Like Wuboe, that fall was cushioned by another being.
Unlike Krazyfool, this being had a bit more give.
Unfortunately, this give meant a big mess.
A big mess of luminescent green giant bug guts.
To Steve's casual observational bemusement as he inspected himself, luminescent green bug guts that apparently had healing properties.
A smaller bug which Steve took to be it's offspring hissed and clicked at him.
If he could have translated those clicks, he would have heard it say "You keelled my father, prepare to die!".
Steve just kicked it aside.
Steve looked for his beer mug, and saw it shattered on the floor.
"Fuck", he cursed, as he absent mindedly rubbed a remaining split in his lip.
The wound vanished, and then his eyes bugged as remembered the guts.
Just before he could respond with a decent retch, he rippled away like water.
The bartender walked up to La Kukaracha's splattered corpse.
He pulled out a palm scanner, and waved it over the remains, and looked at the readout of the chemical elements.
Then he grinned devilishly at the possibilities.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, Steve Torrent got his mug back from Krazyfool, and took a swig of paradox and vanished.
He immediately reappeared smothered in bug guts.
"Ah, so THAT completes the loop", he observed.
Meanwhile, the other Steve completed that loop by going to the 2901 incarnation of El Flatulatos, and "giving", his past self his Rolex watch.
Meanwhile, on the dream/afterlife planet, Anubis's ear twitched.
"Why, hello, little fella", he heard a baby talk voice say from the dumpster he had just thrown his soda cup into.
He saw a blue lizardy guy standing in the dumpster talking to one of his scarabs wich was munching on a piece of wilted lettuce.
"Aren't you a big boy? Yes you are! Yes you are!", continued the lizardy guy in baby talk mode.
Just then, an inexplicably bloodied and black eyed fat guy with a mug of beer materialized.
"Steve! Thank god, get me out of this place!", said the lizardy guy.
The fat guy swigged his beer, and touched the lizardy guy's shoulder, and they both began to ripple away.
Anubis thought fast, pulled out his ankh staff, and fired a volley of energy blasts into the ripple.
Inside the hyperspace wormhole, Steve and Wuboe were violently flung away from each other in opposite directions in a fork in the road one of the blasts had created.
Steve was hurled violently to El Flatulatos in 2740, while Wuboe landed fatally in front of El Flatulatos in 2004.
Anubis sniffed the air for the sweet traces left by the wormhole, and determined where they had went.
He then pulled a scarab from his belt pouch, and chewed it up, releasing it's precious juices.
An instant later, Anubis rippled away like water.
Meanwhile, in 2004, Anubis's scarab scurried out from under Wuboe's lifeless head, and into El Flatulatos just before the door glided all the way shut.
In the next second, Anubis rippled into existence, and saw Wuboe's and Krazyfool's corpses.
He prodded them with his ankh staff, and grumbled "well, that saves me some work".
He then walked inside the bar, saw the fat bald guy talking to a skinny, bug eyed, 5 foot 4 inch tall goon of a man with a ridiculously black greasy pompadour and an almost comical overbite.
He quickly and wordlessly fired an ankh blast that burned a neatly cropped hole through the fat guy's torso, ending his life instantly, and making him slump to the ground like a dropped sack of laundry.
He then sniffed the air, and noticed a sweet chrono-phage trace around the pompadour guy who was staring agape at the dead fat guy.
Anubis crunched another scarab, and vanished.
In the late 21st century, at the state mental hospital, inside a padded cell, Anubis materialized before a decades older version of the pompadour guy.
Harry looked up at Anubis, and with watery eyes pleaded "please...".
Anubis fired.
Harry slumped, and with his last puff of breath, whispered "thaaaank yoouu".
Anubis shrugged, crunched another scarab, and vanished again.
Meanwhile, the Harry Hembock in 2004, 2 days before Anubis would appear, sat in the audience of the Krazyfool show in his disguise aura of an old man.
As he looked up at the Steve Torrent onstage, he flashed back to their first meeting at El Flatulatos, which for him was in the past, but would occur for himself in this time in 2 days.
Harry had just told the bartender the whole winding complicated tale of the death of his childhood friend, Cache Ballard, and how he had avenged his death.
Steve Torrent then walked up to him to compare tales, and had told him this whole story.
Tim Waverly, project Shazam, the Green Mamba, Jake Prong, Lenny "shitpants" Sours, Krazyfool, Wuboe/Pobb, Anubis, everything.
A shame he couldn't hardly remember most of it, the future foreknowledge would come in handy about now.
Anyhoo, after that, Krazyfool from that time showed up and told them what had happened on his show the night before (which would make it the episode after the one that was taping now, Harry calculated) and ranted a bunch of funny rants, then had stepped outside, and had gotten squished by a falling Wuboe.
To top that unusual day off, Anubis, jackal headed ancient Egyptian lord of the underworld made a guest appearance in reality, and cut Steve down with a laser blast.
But the most curious aspect, was that Steve looked like he had expected it, and was okay with the whole thing.
But, Harry realized, that was ultimately Steve's problem, and Steve's story, not his, he realized he had his own story to get back to.
So, he swigged his paradox, poked Spruce in the arm with his index finger, and rippled away, taking Spruce with him.
Back in 2740, Harry and Spruce rippled into existence.
"Aw christ, no! I can't take much more of this!", Steve Torrent whimpered with exasperation.
Harry and Spruce looked at themselves, and each other, and saw that their disguise auras had morphed into duplicates of Steve and Wuboe respectively.
Harry remembered that he had sat in on this conversation, and although he could only remember the gist, he decided to wing it.
"We're you from a few minutes in the future, after we get some more paradox, we come back in time to give you some more paradox, wich is where we got the paradox in the first place", said Harry/Torrent.
"Isn't that a paradox?", asked Wuboe.
"Hence the name", Harry/Steve said with a grin, while pouring half his pitcher of paradox into present Steve's empty pitcher.
Well, what looked like a pitcher in the disguise aura, it was really that last dregs of his mug of paradox, but why split hairs?
"But wait, if you give us just half a pitcher, where do we get the other half a pitcher that you just gave us?", Wuboe asked, flabbergasted.
"We go back to the bar for some more", answered Spruce/Wuboe.
"When?", asked past Wuboe.
"Anytime you feel like, there's plenty of time", Harry/Steve answered smugly.
"ARRGH!! Let's get the fuck out of here!!", screamed Wuboe.
"Agreed", replied past Steve, and with that, he took a chug.
The past incarnations of Steve, Wuboe, Harry, and Spruce, rippled out, while the disguise auras of present Harry and Spruce faded out, leaving them to pick up their adventure in 2740 right where they had left it.
Of course, some decades later, Anubis would hunt down and exterminate Harry and his friends, but that was neither here nor there to them.
Meanwhile, back at the Krazyfool show, Krazyfool looked into the camera and said with a goony grin on his face "and now for our next guest! But first, these commercial messages!".
Steve Torrent got his mug back from Krazyfool, and took a swig of paradox and vanished.
He immediately reappeared smothered in bug guts.
"Ah, so THAT completes the loop", he observed.
Meanwhile, the old man in the audience took a swig from his mug of beer, poked the woman sitting next to him in the arm with his index finger, and rippled away, taking the woman with him.
No one noticed, or caught it on camera.
"Say, you're covered in some kind of vomit or entrails", remarked Krazyfool casually to Steve.
"That I am", Steve said, sighing and looking down at himself.
Krazyfool received a signal from the producer.
"...and we're back! Our next guest is the mascot and namesake of the popular bar down the street from this studio, ladies and gentlemen, EL FLATULATOOO!", said Krazy into the camera.
The curtain parted, and in ran a hideous Mexican stereotype wearing a giant cartoonish sombrero, and an ornate bedazzled poncho.
Immediately, the Mexican, or more likely, a white actor in Mexican-stereotype drag began screaming in a blaring high pitched voice "Flatulaaaaatooooo!!!!!!", and then cutting what seemed to be real juicy farts into a microphone taped to his ass.
The audience went wild.
Steve just smirked and nodded in approval.
"Flatulaaatooooo!!! *BROOOMPT!!!* Flatulaaatooo!!! *BROOOMPT!!!* This es TV? I am movie star? TELEMUUUNDOOOOO!!!!!! *BROOOOMPT!!*".
On and on it went.
Steve decided he could watch this for hours.
But sadly, it only lasted 15 minutes, and then they cut to commercial.
Krazyfool walked up to El Flatulato, and shook his hand furiously and said "I'm a MAJOR fan of your work! You have NO idea how you've inspired me! When...when times were really tough for me as a kid, I'd put in one of your albums, or play my homemade tapes of your TV commercials for the bar, and things wouldn't seem so bad".
With that, Krazyfool's eyes watered and he looked away in embarrassment.
El Flatulato hugged him.
Then he let out a massive fart that Steve guessed had to have messed his drawers.
Steve shook his gore covered head at this whole scene, water in his own eyes, and said "it's a beautiful world, and I'm a lucky son of a bitch".
Celine had been floating around in hyperspace for several hours by her relative timescale.
During that time, she learned she could control the directional flow of her passage through the void by manipulating her field of electro-magnetic flux.
Doing so had allowed her to perpetually suspend herself within the time corrider, and "zoom in", and "zoom out", across history, and witness things as a passive observer.
Through this process, she had followed the tangled web of intersecting predestination paradoxes Steve Torrent, Phineas Phallow, and Harry Hembock had caused, and formulated a plan to untangle them.
But, she would need a powerful ally. She had someone in mind, but he'd be very difficult to persuade.
Unfortunately, persuasion was one of the many interpersonal skills her programming just wasn't up to.
So, she'd need yet another ally to pull that trick off.
Scanning the entangled timelines, she found someone.
Dr. Daniel Suede sat in the cafeteria of Killer Robot Hospital still feeling deeply philosophically unsure about his current career path.
Just to further complicate things, an android maid materialized next to him like a rippling mirage.
Before he could inhale to speak, the maid rapidly clipped out "I'll explain along the way. Come", and then crabbed his forearm.
A cool waterslide-y feeling washed over him, and the cafeteria whooshed away to be replaced by stars and galaxies zipping by.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, Phineas/Krazyfool introduced his next guest.
A rather portly internet movie critic who was met with perhaps the most violent booing in talk show history.
Meanwhile, at Chez Labelle, a battered Steve Torrent hobbled over, and absent mindedly reached over and helped himself to a left behind mug of paradox, and vanished with a look of surprise on his face.
"Christ. Glad that's finally over", grumbled Jake Prong.
But it wasn't over.
Just after completing his last word, Celine and Daniel rippled into existance next to him.
Jake recognized Celine, and simply said "oh, it's you again, what do you want?", as if it were business as usual.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, all hell had broken loose.
Several members of the audience had stormed the stage, joined by several members of the production staff, and were proceeding to hurl physical and verbal abuse onto Krazy's last guest, the rotund ginger haired internet movie critic.
The camera zoomed in from a decent vantage point to witness all the fun, and beam it to the television audience.
The critic's shirt had been torn open to reveal a vestigial conjoined twin sticking out of his big fat belly.
The fetal twin was moaning something about "starting the reactor", to this mysterious person named "Quaid".
The audience members and production people alike unphased by any of this were burying the critic in a thick inescapable cloud of epithets, and hurled movie candy.
Goobers, ju-ju bees, Mike-N-Ike's, malted milk balls, snow balls, you name it, all rained down apon his head at hailstone velocity.
Stray Mike-N-Ike's bounced off the twin's head as well.
Regardless, the twin continued to moan "Quaaaid! Quaaaid! Opeeeen youurr miiind, Quaaaid!", unabated as if in a trance.
A constant wave of boos and profanities poured fourth, as well as the occasional "bloated sellout!!", and "so fat!!", as well as the clincher "so godDAMNED fat!!".
Children threw their half-drunk sodas at him, the women spat on him, the men kicked at him, and El Flatulato farted at him.
All the while, he simply sobbed like a little boy, and rolled back and forth, holding up his hands, and sniveling.
A big bulls-eye pee stain had started to form over the crotch of his pants.
Just then, a short skinny blond woman with short spiky hair, wearing a red usherette uniform, complete with organ grinder monkey hat, and white gloves, ran out carrying a pot full of bubbling hot butter topping, and proceeded to pour it all over his ass and genitals.
She curled her lips into a sneer of disgust, and whispered aloud "so...god...damned...FAT!!!!!!!".
Steve perked up in recognition of the woman, but the curtains closed on the whole scene before he could say anything.
Krazyfool smirked and said "wadn't that sumthin?", and then the station cut to commercial.
Meanwhile, back at Chez Labelle, Dr. Dan had finished using his formidable people skills to tell Jake Prong the story he had heard from Celine in such a way as to want to help them.
"Wow, that's some story all right. Boy, you sure are one persuasive sonovabitch. Indeed, your people skills are formidable", said Jake Prong in a way Daniel wasn't sure was sarcastic or not.
Jake paused in thought for 5 seconds, and then said "yeah, sure, what the hell? I'll give it a shot".
And with that, Celine put her hands on Jake and Daniel's shoulders, and phased them all into hyperspace.
Meanwhile, back at the Krazyfool show, just before Krazy could introduce the next guest, Anubis materialized and opened fire on the stage.
He layed down a sweeping voley of plasma bolts that took out a camera man, and a paige, but mostly hit walls and curtains as everyone else dove for cover.
Karen, the pocorn butter girl, and Steve's wife from an alternate timeline popped out from behind the curtain to see what was going on.
Anubis reflexively fired on her.
Steve jumped out in front of her, and took the full brunt of the blast wich plucked him out of the trajectory of his fall, and flung him back, knocking Karen over.
Steve opened his eyes, mentally scanned his body for pain, and squeaked with a dry throat "I'm not hurt at all!".
He looked himself over, and saw that the blast had vaporized all the bug guts off him, leaving him laundry fresh, but otherwise, he was in perfect working order.
"Get the fuck offa me you pot bellied beer scented bald bastard!", snapped Karen.
Steve made an awkward David Letterman frog face, and complied.
Anubis hissed "damn, I've already killed you in the future, wich means until then...", he stopped himself.
Steve grinned wickedly and finished for him "...I'm fucking indestructible. Screaming time, little bitch!!".
Meanwhile, in hyperspace, Jake was making a futile effort to manually untangle the timelines.
He pushed his mind into hypertrance, while Celine scanned his brain and tuned her aura, and thus the wormhole, to the corresponding flux.
With a little practice, they had become synchronized, and Jake was effectivly tugging at the wormhole himself with Celine as a relay.
Celine, Jake, and Daniel were standing at the point where the wormhole pretzeled at the intersection point of Steve's three selves wich initiated this whole mess, but the wormhole was too big and tied too tight for Jake to yank apart.
As the wormholes coiled and strained against him, several possible futures shimmered by.
In one, they along with Steve Torrent and others were helping Harry Hembock complete his adventure.
In another, they fought alongside Johnny the donut man in a strange medieval world where knights dressed like chefs, and the countryside was besieged by giant mutant donuts.
In another, he and Celine were doing a crazy Saturday Night Fever meets Lambada dance across a booby trapped tile floor with saw blades popping up out, and arrows fired from mechanical crossbows, all the while, dodging the dangers to the tune of "behind the groove".
The swirling kaleidascope of alternate timelines as well as the tension of trying to unwravel them was tiring and nausia inducing to Jake.
Finally, Jake collapsed gagging, and all three of them snapped out of hyperspace a second after leaving Chez Labelles to let Jake rest.
After 15 minutes of sitting in a chair and drinking several glasses of water, a sweat soaked Jake finally was able to compose himself and speak.
"It's...it's no good...gonna need help".
"Are you fit for hypertravel?", Celine, who was standing over him, asked blandly.
Jake looked up and said "probably not, but I gotta do it anyway, don't I?".
Moments later, they were away.
Meanwhile, back at the Krazyfool show, Steve Torrent was giving Anubis a fairly respectable ass whupping.
He now had him on the ground and at his mercy, his hands at his throat.
But, as he went in for the final squeeze, his thumb brushed a hidden switch on Anubis's collar, wich made a beeping sound, and then Anubis's head rippled like a mirage and revealed.....
Steve reeled back in shock.
It was...Lord Fulcrum!
He was unmistakable, the evil Chris Sarandon face, the eyepatch from Jake's dinner fork incursion into his eye socket.
It WAS him!
Steve thought of lots of questions to ask him, but they'd have to wait, as he had beaten him into unconsciousness.
Just then, Celine, Daniel, and Jake Prong rippled in.
"Fancy meeting you guys here", Steve said with a smirk.
"Look at what I found", he said pointing at Fulcrum.
"That's nice", Jake said dismissively ignoring Steve while staring out into the studio audience.
"I know you're here, old man! Show yourself!", he shouted into the crowd.
With that, a youngish tech-nerdy looking gentleman stood up.
His appearance, wich now stood revealed as a disguise aura, rippled away to reveal a shirtless old man in a bathrobe and boxer shorts.
"You found me across time, and through a disguise! Splendid, your skills are improving", said the old man.
Jake extended his hand toward the old man like Vanna White displaying a prize, and said "Steve Torrent, Phineas Phallow, Celine, Daniel Suede, Popcorn Girl, meet the Volcano Guru".
Meanwhile, two days after the Krazyfool show, at El Flatulatos, Harry Hembock stared agape at Steve Torrent's lifeless smouldering form on the floor, and then back up at Anubis, who proceeded to sniff the air, eat a scarab beetle, and vanish.
Before Harry could say anything, a hand popped out of a small wormhole behind him, grabbed his shoulder, and pulled him backward making him vanish into the afformentioned wormhole wich slithered around his mass like the surface of water.
Meanwhile, at The Donut Place, the corresponding hand reached out and grabbed Johnny.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, the Volcano Guru yanked Harry and Johnny into their timeline.
Volcano Guru nodded with satisfaction and said "there, I've got everyone who had a hand in this mess in the same place. Now, let's put an end to this foolishness, shall we?".
And with that, the Volcano Guru nodded, and all of them, Steve, Jake, Daniel, Johnny, Harry, Celine, Fulcrum (now awake), Krazyfool/Phineas, and Karen all fell into hyperspace.
Within seconds, they zoomed in on the knot in time.
Volcano Guru nodded as if he'd seen this sort of thing every day and said "Ah, I see the trouble you were having. You were trying to untie time. A natural mistake. I know it's counter-intuitive, but the best way to fix this sort of thing is with MORE tangling. You need mass and momentum to reset the whole thing. Here, I'll show you".
And with that, the Guru carefully and smoothy wound the length in front of them onto the knot, and then a little more, and a little more, until eventually, the mass of the knot began to naturally attract more wormhole, and it became easier to wind more on faster.
As the Guru tied more wormhole onto the knot, Celine adjusted her flux field, and pulled them backward away from it, until finally, she had no choice but to pull them back millenia and then aeons away.
From their new vantage point, they could now see the Guru log-rolling a now massive yarn ball of timeline. And since it was from a fourth dimensional perspective, eons worth of rolling was occuring within seconds, so that within minutes, he had the whole galaxy rolled up.
They pulled back further, and gazed from yet a higher dimension, and within a few more minutes, most of the universe was rolled up.
And all the time, they could swear they could hear him....singing.
It was hard to make out, or describe.
It was like Pavoratti doing the Beatles doing a sea shanty.
Finally, the Volcano Guru had all the universe but their wormhole rolled up, and then rolled them up.
And with that, the ball collapsed to a point, and that point exploded into a second big bang.
Everyone, including the Volcano Guru, was flung free inside a self contained bubble of wormhole-stuff.
As they were hurled free across space, they also were hurled free across time, and as they pulled way from the big bang, eons of history whizzed by, and all the galaxies coalesced before them in a matter of minutes.
"Say, how come we weren't just killed right then?", asked Karen.
"We must all be surrounded by my indestructibility aura", replied Steve.
"From a certain perspective. Given that the full explanation would split your head open, it's as good a theory fragment as any", said the Volcano Guru with a grin and a wink.
"So, how do we get home now? Or DO we?", asked Daniel.
"Glad you asked. Start rolling...that way", said Volcano Guru pointing westward.
And with that, Volcano Guru literally got the ball rolling, and started to sing his weird song. Bit by bit everyone, including Celine, picked up the rythm and joined in.
Soon, the hampster ball in time made it's way back to Earth.
First, it rolled up to Daniel in the cafeteria of Killer Robot Hospital, and as it passed through him, the Daniel in the ball stuck to the Daniel outside the ball, and they fused.
As the rolled onward, the fused Daniel was left behind, and the ball shrunk a little.
This process repeated when they rolled up on Harry Hembock a second before Anubis showed up to kill Steve.
But in the reset timeline, this didn't happen.
Then, Fulcrum/Anubis was fused into this timeline's Keith Sprunk.
and since he was Keith Sprunk instead of Fulcrum/Anubis, there was no Anubis to kill Steve.
Wich erased Steve's temporal invincibility.
Wich wasn't noticed, nor at this point needed.
Then, Johnny was dropped off a second before he was plucked out of time by Volcano Guru, wich didn't happen now in this reset time.
Then, Krazyfool was dropped off before Steve and Wuboe arrived and screwed up his show, wich didn't happen now.
Celine was dropped off a second before she scanned Wuboe, and vanished into hyperspace for the first time, wich didn't happen now.
Jake was dropped off at the same time.
Steve was dropped off at the moment all this started.
Sitting in his recliner, watching "spies like us", on Comedy Central.
Karen had rolled on to he knew not where. Then, he realized that to know that, that meant he could remember the whole thing.
For some reason, he figured he'd lose all memory of the whole mess once he became his past self.
Just then, Karen strutted in wearing a see through nighty, and her organ monkey hat, and carrying a six pack of Sam Adam's Spring Ale.
"Found this in the fridge, figured it must belong to you", she said with an eyebrow wiggle.
She handed Steve the six pack, and he noticed a note attached to it.
He peeled it off and read it
It shortly and simply said "Thanks -The Universe".
As Karen crawled into Steve's lap, he chuckled and said.
"Heh. Wow. That's great".
THE END.
Read More......
You totally have to have read Torrent 1, and the stories that comprise Torrent 1.5 to be up to speed with this story.
It also wouldn't hurt to read The Krazyfool Show, Harry Hembock and the Zone Dweebies, and Nobody Loves Harry Hembock for extra background.
Steve tapped out a button combination on his multi-purpose arcade cabinet, and a Little Debbie oatmeal cream sandwich cookie popped out of a slot at the bottom.
He tapped out another combination, and anticipated a bottle of Sam Adam's Spring Ale, but nothing came out.
He tapped out the right button sequence again.
Still nothing.
Steve froze.
His eyes bulged.
"Oh shit!".
Then he calmed down a bit and mumbled "ah, I'll just order some more".
He punched up the internet connection and scrolled up Sam Adam's webpage.
That's when he new he was really in trouble.
His jaw dropped open in horror.
"They didn't fuckin' make it this year!!??! Wha...wha...how can they DO that?!?", he sputtered.
"Well, maybe I can find it's clone...yeah there we go! It will be a quest! A quest for a new Spring Ale!".
He then proceeded to punch up the steering controls of the Green Mamba, and blasted off.
Jake Prong stared back at Steve from the other side of the table.
"So you've spent the last week scouring the planet for a replacement for your favorite beer?", Jake asked.
"Yep", Steve confirmed.
"Ah", Jake answered.
Jake ate a couple ice cubes and then asked "so you brought me here just to tell me that?".
Steve grinned nervously "well no, I was wondering if it wasn't too much trouble, if you could use your 4-D karate to snatch me a couple cases out of time and space".
Jake buttered the last dinner roll and answered "yes it is too much trouble, and no I won't".
"Oh", Steve said with a downcast defeated look.
Then Jake got a look of inspiration "wait, why not just wait until the summer ale comes out? it's exactly the same, but with a hint of lemon".
Steve glared anger at Jake and barked out a quick "no!".
Jake hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
Jake looked out the window and said in a bland disaffected tone "ope, gang members have stripped the Mamba. Gotta be careful in this neighborhood. Want me to use my cel to call the cops?".
Steve sighed "no, no,....they're um...they're not good...I'll walk home".
"You wanna doggie bag your tripe?", Jake asked.
Steve sighed again and said "no, I just got it to impress you. Throw it to the seaguls in the parking lot".
"Alright then, bubye", Jake said lazily going through the social motions.
He didn't mean it though.
Once Steve was gone, he grabbed a bottle of spring ale out of the past, and chugged it out of spite.
Steve stepped out of Chez Labelles, and looked up at the clouds.
They weren't Kool-Aid clouds yet, it was too early.
Nor were they tightly packed like gorilla turds.
Steve appreciated it when the clouds were tightly packed like gorilla turds.
He did not appreciate when they weren't gorilla turdlike and irregular as they were now.
Neither did he appreciate the spontaneous rupture in spacetime that opened up just then, and proceeded to hurl him across the universe.
Oh sure, the waterslide feeling was cool and refreshing as well as exhilarating, and all the pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzing by like Star Trek were fun to watch, but Steve had important things to do.
TV to watch, porn to read, Televangelists to crank call, today was going to be a busy day.
Now it was all ruined.
Plus after the 15th big brown nebula with rainbow-ey edges, it started to get old.
Soon, he saw a big blue and purple striped planet veer up in front of him, get bigger, and then surround him as the vortex finally let go and spat him out onto dry land.
The landing was surprisingly light, Steve landed right on his feet, and barely bent his knees from the impact.
It felt like he had only fell from a one foot high window ledge.
Steve observed his surroundings.
Aliens of every size, description, and texture milling about like any typical science fiction city or spaceport.
Flying cars and frieghters choked the purple afternoon sky.
And the torquoise clouds were tightly packed like gorilla turds.
Steve sighed with relief.
Life finally made sense.
He spun around, and saw that directly behind him was what could only be a bar.
It just kept getting better.
Steve went inside.
Steve was greeted by sights, sounds, and smells that were at once alien, but at the same time familiar as an old shoe.
Especially the smoke and vomit.
He looked around and took it all in.
It was your basic sci-fi alien bar, the kind you see in every B-grade SF film trying to evoke Star Wars.
Tootling snyth band that sounds like DEVO, holographic rastar video games in all the tables, alien and android hooker standing in the back, bartop made of green translucent stone with opaque marble patterns swirling through it, neon trim everywhere that was really bent laser beams, and a swirling cacophony of put downs, come-ons, and cruel laughter buzzing all around.
Y'know, alien bar.
Steve could tell this was a place where everybody knows your name.
What with the telepath with the big bulbous brain shouting out "hey! Steve Torrent! I'm a fan from way back! Come sit a spell!".
Steve gave him the finger and sat at the opposite end of the bar.
Steve knew that telepaths always sponge drinks. It's what they do.
Steve pulled his pack of gum out of his shirt pocket, slipped out a stick, slipped off the paper but kept on the foil, and slipped it behind his ear.
He'd learned that a silver gum wrapper was all you really needed to keep out the telepaths, not a whole foil hat.
A whole foil hat was just crazy.
"So, whaddya got for beers?", Steve asked the bouncing jelly thing behind the bar.
Before the jelly could answer, he heard a strangely familiar voice holler out "hey! Steve Torrent! Long time no see!".
"Aw no, not another telepath, I've got my gum wrapper on, how did he get a lock on me?", Steve thought to himself glumly.
A two foot tall blue reptilian creature walked up to him.
Actually, it was more reptilian-ish.
It had scales, and a small vestigial tail, but it's face was more gargoyle-like, with a long pointy nose almost like a bird's beak, and two flexible pointy things on top of it's head that were either ears, antennae, or horns.
The scales all over it's face and most of it's body were of course blue, and fine like a chamelian's skin, and it's belly had soft ridged scales like on an alligator's belly, wich were orange.
Finally, it had a row of plates on it's back like a stegosaurus which were green, and outwardly tapered arms and legs like Popeye which ended in 3 fingered hands, and 2 toed feet.
Steve had seen him before.
Before he could open his mouth to say where, the creature spoke.
"Yeah, you're not going nuts, it's me, Wuboe, you dreamt about me as a kid! I'm your dream boogins!".
Steve struggled for how to phrase his next question "but how..".
"Yeah, y'see, there's a planet where all the dreams in the galaxy are made. Like TV shows, y'see, and I had the gig of starring in your nightmares for a couple weeks".
Steve blinked in confusion for a second, and then smiled "nightmares?? Those were awesome!".
Wuboe grinned back showing a ridge of yellow fangs "damned straight!".
Steve rambled on. "Remember the one where I'm on the raft, and those annoying elf things were singing that repetitive annoying song, and you flew down from the sky as a bird, and then chopped all their heads off with a butcher knife, and chucked 'em in the water for the sharks? That was my favorite! And the one where we smeared peanut butter all over the kitchen? And the one where we stuffed Charles Manson down the toilet? Aw man, those were great dreams!"
"Great dreams? Those were great TIMES, man!", Wuboe chimed in.
"So what are you doing here?", Steve asked.
"Well, the whole acting thing dried up, what with the strikes and everything, so I've taken up bounty hunting here and there, but mostly I'm on a sort of vacation", Wuboe answered while pulling up a stool next to Steve.
So, Wuboe ordered up some glowing orange drinks that tasted like Red Bull, and for the next hour or so, they reminisced, and caught each other up on their lives, and told dirty jokes.
Until a giant 7 foot tall cockroach wearing a sombrero stood up and hissed threateningly at them.
Wuboe clucked his tongue and said "what the fuck do YOU want?".
The cockroach held up a metallic rod to it's mandibles wich translated it's hisses into "I...am La Cukaracha! You keelled my father, prepare to die!".
"Ah Christ, not another one of THESE", Steve grumbled while rolling his eyes.
The cockroach then proceeded to reach behind it's back with one of it's arms, and produced an axe seemingly from nowhere.
"Oh...bring...it..ON!", Wuboe snarled.
But just then in between blinks, a red laser beam lanced out, and burnt La Cukaracha away like a dried leaf.
Steve and Wuboe stared agog for a couple moments and then turned and looked in the direction of the laser beam and saw...
Steve Torrent!
"Ah, more with the time travel again", our Steve remarked with a by now trademark smirk.
"Indeed", the other Steve remarked with an identical smirk after blowing the smoke off his laser watch.
"Let's call you..", our Steve started.
"I know, Torrent", interrupted the other Steve.
"You know, that's kind of like cheating", Wuboe huffed with a sneer while nodding towards his laser watch.
"Kind of like? It IS cheating!", beamed Torrent smugly.
"So, how did you get here? I thought the Mamba was dismantled?", Steve asked.
"A paradox", Torrent replied matter of factly.
"What caused it?", Steve asked casually.
"No, no, not that kind, it's the name of a drink they serve here", Torrent answered.
"A DRINK!?", Steve said slightly taken off balance.
Torrent smirked slightly "Yeah, good shit, it really effs you up".
Steve raised an eyebrow "delicious as spring ale?".
Torrent pulled a half empty pitcher from behind his back, and bobbed his eyebrows "just like it, but with a hint of lemon".
Steve glared anger at Torrent and barked out a quick "no!".
Torrent hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
Torrent changed the subject "so, how do you like the watch? It's a Rolex from 2901".
Steve perked up "say, can I try it on?".
"Sure", Torrent said while taking it off, and then handed it to him.
"How's it work?", Steve asked while putting it on.
"Well, the clock resets itself from anywhere and anywhen off the subatomic clock at the center of the galaxy. Then it's got a telefractal scanner with various modes, a cable band TV tuner, two way communication with just about any open communication device, then there's the laser, and the micro tractor beam that can be used as a grapnel. And all the features are cued to personalized brainwave control", Torrent said.
Steve showed that he was noticeably impressed by nodding with his bottom lip puffed out "I see, so you just wish for it to happen, and it sorts out the rest?".
"Yep", said Torrent.
"And does the laser have a stun?", asked Steve.
"Oh yeah, you just wish for stun, and aim and...".
Steve aimed and fired a stun pulse into Torrent cutting him off mid sentence.
Torrent crumpled to the floor spilling half his pitcher of paradox.
"Yeah, that's got it", said Steve with a smirk.
Steve then reached down, picked up the pitcher, and emptied the rest into Torrent's mouth.
Seconds later, he rippled like water and faded out.
"Well, I'll be jiggered, the stuff woiks", Steve said with another smirk.
"I'll say!", said Wuboe, who had sidled up to the bar having grown bored with Steve and Torrent's discussion, and had finally walked back in once he saw the old zap and disappear transpire.
Wuboe pulled out another pitcher "good thing I ordered some. Take a swig. It may not be spring ale, but it'll get you home".
"I wonder how this shit works", Steve asked to himself, not fully realizing he'd said it out loud.
Wuboe chimed right in with "well, the bartender told me it collapses your time awareness into a singular point from wich you can go anywhen in your past by sheer act of will. You just chug and flashback".
"Alrighty then", said Steve, and with that, he took a glug out of the pitcher.
Meanwhile, seconds in the past, Steve reached down, picked up Torrent's pitcher, and emptied the rest into Torrent's mouth.
Seconds later, he rippled like water and faded out.
A cool refreshing and exhilarating waterslide feeling washed over Torrent and roused him into consciousness in time for him to see all the pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzing by like Star Trek wich were fun to watch.
Torrent struggled to remember where he might have wished to go while he was knocked out, but just then he realized he was about to find out as he saw a familiar blue and green planet veer up in front of him, get bigger, and then surround him as the vortex finally let go and spat him out onto dry land.
But, he landed right on the same spot he was standing on when he walked out of Chez Labelles, and thus knocked his past self out of position, hurling him across space and time into a random location.
His past self didn't appreciate it.
Meanwhile, seconds in the past, seconds after Torrent dematerialized, Steve took a glug out of his pitcher.
A cool refreshing and exhilarating waterslide feeling washed over Steve and soon he began to see all the pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzing by like Star Trek which were fun to watch.
Soon, he saw a familiar blue and green planet veer up in front of him, get bigger, and then surround him as the vortex finally let go and spat him out onto dry land.
But, he landed right on the same spot he was standing on when he walked out of Chez Labelles, and thus bounced off of Torrent who was materializing at the same time, and added some of his momentum to his past self, allowing him to go across the galaxy to the alien bar, while Steve himself was hurled across space and time into a third random location.
"It's the hallelujah, holy shit, biff bam boom, anything goes KRAAAAAZYFOOOOL SHOOOOOWW!!!!", screamed the announcer.
The song "Black Sabbath", by Black Sabbath began to play in the background.
When the song got to the part where Ozzy screams "OHH GODD PLEASE GOD HELP ME!!", a strange looking man who Steve took to be the host of the show emerged on stage from a chute that ended with a giant fiberglass head in his likeness with dry ice smoke coming from the mouth. An effect of a synthesizer deepened voice going "MUUAAHAHAAA!! MUUAAHAHA!!", was dubbed over for the duration of Krazyfool's exit from the giant mouth.
Confirming Steve's suspicion, the announcer then screamed "Now here's your host FUUUCKINGGG KRAAAAAZYFOOOOLLL!!!!!!!!!".
Steve looked back and forth to take stock of his surroundings, and noticed that Wuboe was sitting right next to him on the bleachers that the slim audience for this farcical show was given to sit on.
"What the hell are you doing here?", Steve asked.
Wuboe thought for a moment and then answered "well, the paradox makes you travel into your memories, and as your dream boogins I was attuned to your brainwaves, so our residual psychic connection appears to have towed me along with you".
Steve looked out at the host "funny, I don't seem to remember ever going to see a crappy talk show".
Wuboe thought some more and then said "well, perhaps the link has also made it possible to go into my memories as well as yours".
Steve asked the obvious question "so when did you ever go to see a talk show, Mr. alien actor?".
Wuboe squinted at the host, who was now finishing his monologue, and jogging towards his desk that was for some strange reason several yards from the main performance stage in the half built warehouse sized building the show was taping in.
"Um, no, I never did", he finally said when the host made it to his desk, and took a drag off an asthma inhaler.
Wuboe then perked up with inspiration "well, if we're still residually linked, I must also still be residually linked to all the other kids I gave dreams to. So, this must be a memory one of my other dream hosts".
"Any of those other kids grow up into an obnoxious talk show host?", Steve asked.
Wuboe squinted at the host again "I dunno, there were so many, and I didn't exactly keep tabs on 'em all".
Suddenly, a voice interrupted them "excuse me, don't let me disrupt your precious conversation".
It was Krazyfool. He had called attention to them.
"Well, now's your chance to come right out and ask him", said Steve to Wuboe with a smirk.
Krazyfool squinted at Wuboe, and then his eyes bugged in recognition.
"Hey! I know you! You're the monster dude from the raft dream!".
"Yeah, y'see, there's a planet where..", Wuboe began to explain.
"Yeah, yeah, I don't care", Krazyfool said with a dismissive gesture.
"Save that life story crap for the interview, I'm short on guests, and was going to have to do two musical numbers. This saves me the embarrassment".
Krazyfool waved to Steve and Wuboe to come down to the stage, and to come to the desk.
So, for the next 15 minutes or so, Krazyfool (who's real name it turned out was Phineas P. Phallow) and Wuboe reminisced, and caught each other up on their lives, and told dirty jokes.
Steve quickly became bored with this, and absent mindedly took a swig of paradox.
"Ooops", he said as he rippled away.
It was the year 2740.
The prostitute, clad in a neon glo-plastic g-string, unfolded the crinkled piece of paper handed to her by the 6 foot tall pine tree (or was it a man in a tree suit?).
An ecstatic giggle came from the tree as she read it aloud "you naughty little tree, you've been a bad Christmas tree. All you're getting for Christmas is a spanking you naughty little shrub".
"Read it louder this time", ordered the tree calmly.
She read it again, loudly as the tree had asked her to.
"More feeling whore!! you're getting paid I want quality!!" shouted the tree, obviously becoming irritated.
She read it again, this time louder and simulating a scolding tone of voice.
"No I'm sorry, you're just not working out. Tell that other one to come in", sighed the tree disappointedly.
A thick hipped, bucked toothed, four eyed, flat chested, girl dressed like someone who obviously was doing this to pay the bills walked in.
"I'm doing this to pay the bills", said the girl matter of factly.
"This little college girl is gonna lose her innocence in a big way", thought the tree wickedly to his/itself.
The tree showed her to an armchair in the corner of the room
"Hello doll, names Spruce, read this note, and make me feel it".
She read the note at just the right tone and volume. Spruce rustled and shook rapidly, and sickening slapping sounds came from him.
"Yeah, yeah, that's it baby make me pay!! Say the words baby!", said Spruce shakily.
Spruce gave one last hard twitch "aaauuuagghh eh eh ahhh there, perfect, not much to look at but boy what an actress ".
A zipping sound came from Spruce, then a hand came from within his branches and gave the hooker a $50 bill.
"See ya round, baby, that was just what the tree surgeon ordered ".
As Spruce walked away the girl noticed a small puddle of what appeared to be pine sap but she wasn't about to examine it.
Spruce was now tooling along asphault space at 10 LYPS (light years per second) when suddenly a Pholdhouse jumped out of nowhere and brought his nice little ride to a screeching hault. "well what a stupid place to put a world, that wasn't here last time I came this way. Frigging construction crews got nothing better to do I guess", cursed Spruce repulsed.
Harry Hembock, a skinny, bug eyed, 5 foot 4 inch tall goon of a man with a ridiculously black greasy pompadour and an almost comical overbite and dressed in white sweatpants and sweatshirt with a big black "H" on the chest with a third line in the middle drawn on with black magic marker, and red rubber boots with the fronts cut to come to points like superman boots, was fast asleep in his electro chemical heated slush bed.
Soon, Harry woke up from the annoying back story dream he had just had, and vowed never to dream it again.
But, just as he was going to go back to sleep, a fat bald guy holding a pitcher of beer, and a short blue lizardy guy materialized with a teleport effect he'd never seen before.
Harry's eyes bugged with recognition "Hey! I know you! You're the monster dude from the raft dream!". He then bugged his eyes at Steve torrent "and you're Steve Torrent!".
Steve raised an eyebrow "you'll have to excuse me, I don't remember ever meeting you. And trust me, I'd have remembered seeing someone like you".
Harry thought for a second, and then said "oh, right, time travel, you haven't met me yet. But you will, at El Flatulatos in 2004. You tell me all about the whole deal with Fulcrum, and Waverly, and Torbrigriago the dragon, and Jake Prong, and Lenny who shits his pants and...".
"Okay, okay, I believe you", Steve cut in.
He then looked at Wuboe and asked "okay, Wuboe, so how did you jump us into a guy from the future?".
"Well, the alien bar was in the 30th century, and clearly by the make of the pholdhouse we're standing in it's the 28th, so there was plenty of time for me to give dreams to someone in his time range".
Harry jumped in "well yeah, I had the raft dream in this time, but actually I'm native to the 21st century. This is just a little stopover adventure I had once".
Harry paused "pardon my tenses, more time travel, it gets complicated. How about you promise not to ask me to get into it, if I promise not to ask why your little blue buddy there is traveling under the name Wuboe, when I knew him in 2003 as Pobb, who supposedly died".
Steve's eyes bugged at Pobb/Wuboe, and Pobb/Wuboe answered back with a simple "done".
"This conversation is more stultifying and dull than that crappy talk show we just left", Steve grumbled while rubbing his eyes.
"Agreed", Harry answered "well, good night then", and with that, he lay back down in his slush bed.
He was about to dream about how bathroom sink water tastes better than kitchen sink water for some reason, when suddenly the Pholdhouse was torn in half by a green jagged edged space ship the size of an oil truck and resembling a Christmas tree. Harry and his cohorts were flung 300 feet from the crash and all landed in the lake outdoors.
Harry crawled out of the lake. He shook the water off of his watertight pompadore, and switched on the heat dryer switch on his belt buckle.
The hatch on the pine tree ship opened up and a very familiar pine bough clad gentleman hopped out.
"Spruce, it figures, just when I'm enjoying a good rest he has to come along", Harry thought to himself.
"Harry!! Its you, I knew you'd survive, you always do", Spruce remarked joyously.
"How did you survive?", Harry asked amazed and annoyed to see his off and on sidekick again.
Spruce pulled out a crude map drawn in magic marker "remember, you sold me this map of spots to stand on when the world blows up, for 20 bucks".
Harry nodded "that's right, I remember now, I needed the money for a pornographic video game".
Steve crawled out of the lake angrily waving an empty pitcher above his head.
"Thanks a fuckin bunch! Now I'm stuck here, you goofball sons of bitches!", he growled.
But just then, another Steve and Wuboe rippled into existence.
"Aw christ, no! I can't take much more of this!", Steve whimpered with exasperation.
"We're you from a few minutes in the future, after we get some more paradox, we come back in time to give you some more paradox, which is where we got the paradox in the first place", said the future Torrent.
"Isn't that a paradox?", asked Wuboe.
"Hence the name", future Steve said with a grin, while pouring half his pitcher of paradox into present Steve's empty pitcher.
"But wait, if you give us just half a pitcher where do we get the other half a pitcher that you just gave us?", Wuboe asked, flabbergasted.
"We go back to the bar for some more", answered future Wuboe.
"When?", asked past Wuboe.
"Anytime you feel like, there's plenty of time", future Steve answered smugly.
"ARRGH!! Let's get the fuck out of here!!", screamed Wuboe.
"Agreed", replied present Steve, and with that, he took a chug.
A quick watersliding through hyperspace later, Steve landed back on the couch of Krazyfool's talk show set.
A quick scan of his surroundings revealed that Wuboe, Harry, and Spruce had come along with him.
Steve looked into the pitcher and shook his head in grudging respect "christ, this shit effs you up alright, godDAMN".
Krazyfool meanwhile, stared dispassionately out into the audience, and witnessed Harry and Spruce running out into the bleachers wreaking mayhem and disorder.
Harry began dry humping a woman's hand while Spruce made obscene gestures behind a senior citizen.
Wuboe tilted his head with inspiration and looked at Steve "hey, I know, if you're the positive terminal of this time travel circuit, then I must be the negative! Which means if I drank the paradox, it would send these jokers back to their story where they belong!".
"Worth a shot", Steve belched as he handed Wuboe the pitcher.
Wuboe proceeded to take a glug, and sat the pitcher down on the coffee table.
Just then, the earth shook slightly, and Harry, Spruce, and sadly, Wuboe rippled out of existence.
"Ah shit!", Steve exclaimed.
"Just as well", injected Krazyfool "there was too many guys for me to keep track of".
"Yeah, but even bumping into Spruce and that Harry Hembock guy all seems really pointless now", Steve observed.
"Well, not entirely pointless. Think of them as the Jay and Silent Bob of this universe. They gotta make their appearance sooner or later. It's obligatory", Krazyfool consoled.
"I suppose that's one way to look at it", Steve mumbled.
"Yes, yes it is", said Krazyfool eying the pitcher of paradox and licking his lips.
"Oh look, a couple in the audience are fucking!", shouted Krazyfool as he pointed out to the bleachers.
"Alright!", shouted Steve who then proceeded to scan the audience with his tongue hanging out.
While he was distracted, Krazyfool leaped over the desk, grabbed the pitcher, took a glug, and rippled away.
Steve recoiled and then sneered "Aw fuck! I always fall for that!".
In the past, Steve tapped out a button combination on his multi-purpose arcade cabinet, and a Little Debbie oatmeal cream sandwich cookie popped out of a slot at the bottom.
He tapped out another combination, and anticipated a bottle of Sam Adam's Spring Ale, but nothing came out.
He tapped out the right button sequence again.
Still nothing.
Steve froze.
His eyes bulged.
"Oh shit!".
Then he calmed down a bit and mumbled "ah, I'll just order some more".
He punched up the internet connection and scrolled up Sam Adam's webpage.
That's when he new he was really in trouble.
His jaw dropped open in horror.
"They didn't fuckin' make it this year!!??! Wha...wha...how can they DO that?!?", he sputtered.
"Well, maybe I can find it's clone...yeah there we go! It will be a quest! A quest for a new Spring Ale!".
He then proceeded to punch up the steering controls of the Green Mamba, and blasted off.
Krazyfool rippled into existence just in time to see the Green Mamba rise up into the clouds.
"Hey, cool, a big green frog ship, you don't see that every day!", Krazy said with a goofy grin. He then looked own at the pitcher and said "thank you, beer!".
Krazy then took another sip, and vanished again.
Instants later, after watersliding around in hyperspace, Krazy landed cozily into a chair at a table at Chez Lebelle.
He turned and looked, and saw Steve Torrent sitting across from a tall, icy eyed, bony faced creepy guy with slicked back hair at the table across from him.
Jake Prong stared back at Steve from the other side of the table.
"So you've spent the last week scouring the planet for a replacement for your favorite beer?", Jake asked.
"Yep", Steve confirmed.
"Ah", Jake answered.
Jake ate a couple ice cubes and then asked "so you brought me here just to tell me that?".
"Exciting discussion", thought Krazyfool grimly.
Steve grinned nervously "well no, I was wondering if it wasn't too much trouble, if you could use your 4-D karate to snatch me a couple cases out of time and space".
Jake buttered the last dinner roll and answered "yes it is too much trouble, and no I won't".
"Gee, that was kind of prickish", thought Krazyfool to himself.
"Oh", Steve said with a downcast defeated look.
Then Jake got a look of inspiration "wait, why not just wait until the summer ale comes out? it's exactly the same, but with a hint of lemon".
"Good point", Krazyfool thought.
Steve glared anger at Jake and barked out a quick "no!".
"Aw christ", thought Krazy while rolling his eyes.
Jake hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
"Hmm, I wonder if any of this would happen if I could just persuade the dumbass to try the summer ale", Krazyfool thought.
He then looked at the pitcher "no, no, then I wouldn't have the cosmic fun juice here", he mumbled.
Jake looked out the window and said in a bland disaffected tone "ope, gang members have stripped the Mamba. Gotta be careful in this neighborhood. Want me to use my cel to call the cops?".
Steve sighed "no, no,....they're um...they're not good...I'll walk home".
"You wanna doggie bag your tripe?", Jake asked.
"Mmmm tripe!", thought Krazy as his mouth began to water.
Steve sighed again and said "no, I just got it to impress you. Throw it to the seagulls in the parking lot".
"Shit!", shouted Krazyfool's stomach.
"Alright then, bubye", Jake said lazily going through the social motions.
He didn't mean it though.
Once Steve was gone, he grabbed a bottle of spring ale out of the past, and chugged it out of spite.
Krazy's eyes bugged as he watched Jake's hand slip into a small wormhole, and pop back out holding a spring ale "Well I'll be jiggered, he DOES have 4-D karate!", his brain exclaimed.
Steve stepped out of Chez Labelles, and looked up at the clouds.
He then rippled in and out, shook his head, and walked back in.
Gimme that! He said to Jake as he walked in and grabbed the spring ale from him on the third big striding footstep from the door.
He then turned and saw Krazyfool "and YOU gimme THAT!", he said indicating the pitcher.
"NOPE!", Krazy said quickly, and half a second later had the pitcher to his lips, and rippled out.
Krazyfool was greeted by sights, sounds, and smells that were at once alien, but at the same time familiar as an old shoe.
Especially the smoke and vomit.
He looked around and took it all in.
It was your basic sci-fi alien bar. Yadda, yadda, y'know, alien bar.
Krazyfool turned and looked, and once again saw Steve Torrent.
He scurried into the corner where he could have a good vantage point, but remain relatively unobserved.
Just then, a guy at the other end of the bar with a big bulbous brain shouted out "hey! Steve Torrent! I'm a fan from way back! Come sit a spell!".
Steve gave him the finger and sat at the opposite end of the bar.
Steve pulled his pack of gum out of his shirt pocket, slipped out a stick, slipped off the paper but kept on the foil, and slipped it behind his ear.
"So, whaddya got for beers?", Steve asked the bouncing jelly thing behind the bar.
Before the jelly could answer, Krazy heard a familiar voice holler out "hey! Steve Torrent! Long time no see!".
It was Wuboe.
Krazyfool noticed the note of recognition in Steve's face.
Wuboe spoke then. "Yeah, you're not going nuts, it's me, Wuboe, you dreamt about me as a kid! I'm your dream boogins!".
"But how..", Steve asked.
Krazyfool quickly deduced this must have been their first meeting.
Wuboe proceeded to empty himself of the whole tedious explanation he had told Krazyfool on his show, so Krazy tuned it out and ogled one of the android whores.
After a time, Krazy realized they were going to prattle on for some time, so he went up to the bar and had the bartender blob top off his pitcher.
Indeed, they prattled on. Krazy passed the time by picking some songs on the jukebox, trying the love tester, and sampling shots of anything that glowed.
This went on until finally, a giant 7 foot tall cockroach wearing a sombrero stood up and hissed threateningly at Steve and Wuboe.
"Ah, finally some friggin action", Krazy said with a grin.
Wuboe clucked his tongue and said "what the fuck do YOU want?".
The cockroach held up a metallic rod to it's mandibles wich translated it's hisses into "I...am La Cukaracha! You keelled my father, prepare to die!".
"Ah Christ, not another one of THESE", Steve grumbled while rolling his eyes.
"Come on, stop fuckin around and fight the goddamned thing", Krazy whisper hissed.
The cockroach then proceeded to reach behind it's back with one of it's arms, and produced an axe seemingly from nowhere.
"Ah, there we go, now it's gettin good", Krazy said with an even more sinister grin and sipped his glowing stuff.
"Oh...bring...it..ON!", Wuboe snarled.
But just then in between blinks, a red laser beam lanced out, and burnt La Cukaracha away like a dried leaf.
Krazy hissed in irritation and turned and saw seconds before Steve and Wuboe did...Steve Torrent!?
One mind meltingly boring discussion on time travel later, and Steve Torrent finally disposed of his temporal doppelganger, and time traveled himself and Wuboe out of there with their pitcher of paradox.
"So that's how it all started", said Krazy with a nod as he sipped from his pitcher.
"It's the hallelujah, holy shit, biff bam boom, anything goes KRAAAAAZYFOOOOL SHOOOOOWW!!!!", screamed the announcer.
The song "Black Sabbath", by Black Sabbath began to play in the background.
Krazyfool looked around and noticed he'd landed in the bleachers of his own talkshow just two rows behind Steve and Wuboe.
He looked up at the stage and saw himself coming out of his own head wich was laughing in a creepy voice.
"Man, just look at me up there, I'm really great", Krazy thought to himself with a shit eating grin on his face.
Krazy half listened to Steve and Wuboe's dull discussion on temporal mechanics, until finally, a voice interrupted them "excuse me, don't let me disrupt your precious conversation".
It was himself interrupting them.
"Well, now's your chance to come right out and ask him", said Steve to Wuboe with a smirk.
Past-Krazyfool squinted at Wuboe, and then his eyes bugged in recognition.
"Hey! I know you! You're the monster dude from the raft dream!".
"Yeah, y'see, there's a planet where..", Wuboe began to explain.
"Yeah, yeah, I don't care", past-Krazyfool said with a dismissive gesture.
"Save that life story crap for the interview, I'm short on guests, and was going to have to do two musical numbers. This saves me the embarrassment".
Past-Krazyfool waved to Steve and Wuboe to come down to the stage, and to come to the desk.
So, for the next 15 minutes or so, Past-Krazyfool and Wuboe reminisced, and caught each other up on their lives, and told dirty jokes.
Steve quickly became bored with this, and absent mindedly took a swig of paradox.
"Ooops", he said as he rippled away.
An instant later, Steve rippled back, and had brought Harry and Spruce along with him.
Steve looked into the pitcher and shook his head in grudging respect "christ, this shit effs you up alright, godDAMN".
Past-Krazyfool meanwhile, stared dispassionately out into the audience, and witnessed Harry and Spruce running out into the bleachers wreaking mayhem and disorder.
Present-Krazyfool sat back in bemusement as Harry began dry humping a woman's hand while Spruce made obscene gestures behind a senior citizen not 2 rows awy from him.
Wuboe tilted his head with inspiration and looked at Steve "hey, I know, if you're the positive terminal of this time travel circuit, then I must be the negative! Which means if I drank the paradox, it would send these jokers back to their story where they belong!".
"Worth a shot", Steve belched as he handed Wuboe the pitcher.
Wuboe proceeded to take a glug, and sat the pitcher down on the coffee table.
Just then, the earth shook slightly, and Harry, Spruce, and sadly, Wuboe rippled out of existence.
"Ah shit!", Steve exclaimed.
"Good riddance", muttered present-Krazyfool.
"Just as well", injected past-Krazyfool "there was too many guys for me to keep track of".
"Yeah, but even bumping into Spruce and that Harry Hembock guy all seems really pointless now", Steve observed.
"Well, not entirely pointless. Think of them as the Jay and Silent Bob of this universe. They gotta make their appearance sooner or later. It's obligitory", past-Krazyfool consoled.
"No, it was pointless", whispered present-Krazyfool.
Present-Krazyfool then remembered that he still had his mic pack on, and it gave him an idea. He fiddled with some buttons and nobs, and switched it to transmit on his own frequency, he then used the earpiece as a microphone and spoke to his past self "beeeer, driiiink the beeeer. Dreeeenk tha beeeer", he whispered in an imitation of the voices in his head.
"I suppose that's one way to look at it", Steve mumbled.
"Yes, yes it is", said past-Krazyfool eying the pitcher of paradox and licking his lips.
"Deestraahct heeem!", present-Krazyfool commanded.
"Oh look, a couple in the audience are fucking!", shouted past-Krazyfool as he pointed out to the bleachers.
"Alright!", shouted Steve who then proceeded to scan the audience with his tongue hanging out.
While he was distracted, past-Krazyfool leaped over the desk, grabbed the pitcher, took a glug, and rippled away.
Steve recoiled and then sneered "Aw fuck! I always fall for that!".
Present-Krazyfool finally chose that moment as the oppurtunity to jog down to the stage and sit back down behind his desk.
"And now for our next guest! But first, these commercial messages!", said present-Krazyfool with a goony grin.
Meanwhile, in sideways time, Harry, Wuboe, and Spruce were hurtling across hyperspace.
Eventually, they hit a fork in the tunnel, and the trio lost Wuboe, as Harry and Spruce continued onward to their original destination.
Harry and Spruce rippled back into normal space, and were greeted by sights, sounds, and smells that were at once alien, but at the same time familiar as an old shoe.
Especially the smoke and vomit.
They looked around and took it all in.
It was your basic sci-fi alien bar. Yadda, yadda, y'know, alien bar.
They turned and looked, and saw Steve Torrent.
They turned in the other direction, and saw Krazyfool.
Krazy scurried into the corner, apparently to hide from Torrent to preserve the timeline.
Harry was stricken by the same impulse, which reminded him of something he had in his pocket.
He pulled it out. It was a pack of gum.
He pulled out a stick and gave it to Spruce "here, chew this", he said "I got it out of a vending machine while we were in the 28th century. It's disguise gum. It colors your aura into a hologram. Every stick is a different look".
Spruce looked at the picture on his stick "mine's a big brained guy. It don't wanna be a big brained guy, what you got?".
Harry looked "a bouncy jelly blob thing. Wanna trade?".
"Sure".
They traded, and slipped the gum into their mouths and began to chew.
Instants later, Harry and Spruce morphed into a guy with a big bulbous brain, and a jelly blob respectively.
Harry pulled up a seat at the bar, and Spruce took a wrong turn somehow, and ended up behind the bar.
Harry saw Steve and was stricken by the impulse to reveal himself to test the disguise "hey! Steve Torrent! I'm a fan from way back! Come sit a spell!", he hollered
Steve gave him the finger and sat at the opposite end of the bar.
"So, whaddya got for beers?", Steve asked Spruce, obviously assuming he was the real bartender.
Before he could answer, he heard a strangely familiar voice holler out "hey! Steve Torrent! Long time no see!".
It was Wuboe.
A long boring conversation bogged down with much exposition resulted.
After a time, Krazyfool came up to the bar, and had Spruce top off his pitcher of Paradox.
Spruce leaned toward Krazyfool "Psst, it's me, Spruce, we met on your show", he whispered.
Krazyfool tilted his head like a confused dog.
Spruce looked down at himself and then back up "oh this? this is just the effect of disguise gum. I'm really a guy in a pine tree costume. ....it's my kink".
Krazyfool snapped back in recognition "ooooh, riight! Pine tree guy! Blue lizard guy teleported you by drinking the magic beer! Yeah, I know you".
The guy with the big bulbous brain leaned over "and I'm his creepy pal!", he said with a toothy confident smile.
Steve and Wuboe continued to prattle on.
Krazy passed the time by picking some songs on the jukebox shouted out by Harry and Spruce, trying the love tester, and sampling shots of anything that glowed.
This went on until finally, a giant 7 foot tall cockroach wearing a sombrero stood up and hissed threateningly at Steve and Wuboe.
Krazyfool stuck around to witness the drama a while longer, but Spruce told him he and Harry had had enough, and proceeded to pour their own mugs of paradox, and took off.
Instants later, after watersliding around in hyperspace, Harry and Spruce landed cozily into a set of chairs at a table at Chez Lebelle.
They turned and looked, and saw Steve Torrent sitting across from a tall, icy eyed, bony faced creepy guy with slicked back hair at the table across from him.
They turned the other way, and saw Krazyfool totally engrossed in what was going on at Steve's table.
They looked down at themselves, and then at each other, and noticed that the time travel had distorted their disguise auras to look like two generic businessmen.
Jake Prong stared back at Steve from the other side of the table.
"So you've spent the last week scouring the planet for a replacement for your favorite beer?", Jake asked.
"Yep", Steve confirmed.
"Ah", Jake answered.
Jake ate a couple ice cubes and then asked "so you brought me here just to tell me that?".
"Exciting discussion", thought Harry grimly.
"Who's this douchebag?", thought Spruce.
Steve grinned nervously "well no, I was wondering if it wasn't too much trouble, if you could use your 4-D karate to snatch me a couple cases out of time and space".
Jake buttered the last dinner roll and answered "yes it is too much trouble, and no I won't".
"Gee, that was kind of prickish", thought Harry to himself.
"Ha! Take that, Boozy McWhindbag!", thought Spruce.
"Oh", Steve said with a downcast defeated look.
Then Jake got a look of inspiration "wait, why not just wait until the summer ale comes out? it's exactly the same, but with a hint of lemon".
"Good point", Harry thought.
"Why is this conversation being allowed to happen? Why doesn't the ugly guy just smack Torrent and tell him to go swivel on it?", thought Spruce.
Steve glared anger at Jake and barked out a quick "no!".
"Aw christ", thought Harry while rolling his eyes.
Jake hissed with annoyance "oh come on, it's just a little lemon, you can barely taste it, you have to focus on it to notice, hell you almost imagine it's there".
Again Steve barked "no!".
"Maybe I aughtta just go over and smack him", Spruce thought.
Jake looked out the window and said in a bland disaffected tone "ope, gang members have stripped the Mamba. Gotta be careful in this neighborhood. Want me to use my cel to call the cops?".
Steve sighed "no, no,....they're um...they're not good...I'll walk home".
"You wanna doggie bag your tripe?", Jake asked.
"Yeah, just go right over and smack him right across his fat stubbly face, and watch the jowls wobble", thought Spruce.
Steve sighed again and said "no, I just got it to impress you. Throw it to the seagulls in the parking lot".
"Yeah, I'm gonna do it. Getting up....now! No, no, no,...NOW!..no...", thought Spruce.
"Alright then, bubye", Jake said lazily going through the social motions.
He didn't mean it though.
Once Steve was gone, he grabbed a bottle of spring ale out of the past, and chugged it out of spite.
"Well I'll be jiggered, he DOES have 4-D karate!", Harry thought.
"Ah, so THAT'S 4-D karate. Fancy name for magic as far as I can tell", thought Spruce.
Steve stepped out of Chez Labelles, and looked up at the clouds.
He then rippled in and out, shook his head, and walked back in.
Gimme that! He said to Jake as he walked in and grabbed the spring ale from him on the third big striding footstep from the door.
He then turned and saw Krazyfool "and YOU gimme THAT!", he said indicating the pitcher.
"NOPE!", Krazy said quickly, and half a second later had the pitcher to his lips, and rippled out.
"That does it!", shouted Spruce who then proceeded to do a series of acrobatic flips, land in front of Steve, and beat the everloving shit out of him, sending his bottle flying.
Harry just stared agape.
"JUST LIKE MY FATHER!! JUST LIKE MY AWFUL FUCKING FATHER!! FAT!! FAT!! FAAAT!! FAILUUURE!!!", screamed Spruce as he wailed on Steve.
Jake just sat there with a creepy grin on his face.
Finally, Harry jumped in, grabbed Spruce, took a swig from his mug of paradox, and with that, they both vanished.
Steve was helped to his feet by two waiters. He was groaning, bloody, and nursing two shiners.
"Sunsabidges! Sunsabidges!", he slurred pitifully.
The then hobbled over, and absent mindedly reached over and helped himself to Spruce's left behind mug of paradox, and vanished with a look of surprise on his face.
"Christ. Glad that's finally over", grumbled Jake.
Meanwhile, in sideways time, Harry and Spruce materialized back at the Krazyfool show as an old man, and a woman.
Minutes later, after being accosted by themselves, they looked at each other awkwardly, and said in unison "well, that's taught us a lesson".
Meanwhile, in sideways time, Harry, Spruce, and Wuboe hit a fork in the time tunnel, and the trio lost Wuboe, as Harry and Spruce continued onward to their original destination.
Wuboe landed at the same destination an hour and some minutes behind them.
To be more precise, he landed in the same spot Spruce had been standing in as he took off to Chez Labelle, and landed inside his disguise aura, and became the jelly blob bartender.
He looked around and saw himself and Steve facing La Cukaracha again, and he also saw Krazyfool watching from the sidelines, and idly wondered if he just arrived in this timeline, or if he had always been there.
Just then, a red laser beam lanced out and burnt La Cukaracha away like a dried leaf.
A boring discussion about time travel and future Steve's watch ensued, and his past self became bored and came up to the bar.
"What have you got that I ain't tried yet?", past-Wuboe asked.
"Well, there's the paradox", present-Wuboe said, smirking behind his faceless disguise aura.
"It's not one of those pussy college girl drinks, like 'oops I made a poopie' is it?", his past self asked.
Present-Wuboe chimed right in with "well, it collapses your time awareness into a singular point from which you can go anywhen in your past by sheer act of will. You tell me, is that fucked up enough for you?".
"No shit?", his past self asked, eyes bugging.
"No shit. You just chug and flashback", present-Wuboe answered matter of factly while pouring him a pitcher.
"A whole pitcher?", his past self asked.
"Might come in handy to have plenty in reserve", present-Wuboe answered.
The two Steves were finishing their discussion as Steve had just tazed his future self, and forced paradox down his gullet, so past-Wuboe walked away from the bar to get invlved.
Present-Wuboe poured himself a mug of paradox, swigged, and vanished.
Meanwhile, in the past, At Chez Labelle, Jake ate some bread.
Lenny shit himself.
Steve laughed.
Jake kept eating his bread.
And Celine just kept staring.
Just then, Wuboe materialized a couple tables away.
He looked down at himself, and noticed that he'd brought Spruce's disguise aura with him, but the time warp had morphed it to look like a generic businessman.
He shrugged with resignation, and started fiddling with his placemat.
Celine noticed him materializing in her peripheral vision, and multi-tasked her concentration between the inane discussion amongst Steve, Jake, and Lenny, and what this mysterious teleporting gentleman was up to.
She ran an EM scan on him, and noticed strange things about his aura, so she ran a filter, and saw that he was really a blue lizardy guy surrounded by an electromagnetic hologram. Intrigued, she then ran a resonance scan, and noticed strange things about his body chemistry. She then noticed that this same strangeness centered on his beverage.
She zoomed in with an electron microscope scan of the drink's molecular structure, and noticed that segments of it's molecule were phasing in and out of the continuum.
She then ran a V-ray scan on the alien's brain, and then zoomed in on a single neuron with electron scan.
She then ran a test by plugging a computer model of the temporal molecule into a computer model of the neuron, and then patched the output into her sensory boards.
Just then, a cool and refreshing waterslide feeling washed over her circuits, and pretty multicolored planets and nebulae whizzed by like on Star Trek.
Wuboe saw Celine ripple away, and did a triple take that looked like a nervous tick, shrugged, and then swigged his drink and vanished again.
Steve, Lenny, and Jake stared in shock at where Celine had been for about 15 seconds, and then proceeded to prattle on about ninjas and such.
Lenny let out a wet fart and refreshed his stink.
Steve and Jake laughed.
Meanwhile, Wuboe's wormhole spat him out into the middle of an ocean.
After sputtering and choking, and struggling to tread water for a few moments, he then realized that his paradox was gone, and fell into a funk.
But, just as he was about to let himself sink, he noticed a raft off in the distance.
His eyes bugged "nah, it couldn't be", he grumbled as he swam towards it.
Meanwhile, Cache Ballard, a neglected 8 year old boy sat on the raft being entertained/annoyed by these odd critters that looked like Treasure Trolls, but with colored cardboard party hats instead of hair.
They were doing this annoying repetitive insect speed dance to the tune of the piano music to the keystone cops coming from nowhere.
Just when Cache thought he was going to snap, Wuboe hurled himself out of the water up onto the raft, his disguise aura washed off revealing his true self.
"Wow! What are YOU?", Cache asked.
Wuboe then had a quick flashback of what Harry Hembock had said.
"How about you promise not to ask me to get into it, if I promise not to ask why your little blue buddy there is traveling under the name Wuboe, when I knew him in 2003 as Pobb".
Wuboe instinctivly assessed the situation and said "oh, me? Pobb. Just call me Pobb".
Wuboe/Pobb heard the music, and saw the trolls, and then it all came back to him.
"Meh, trolls eh? Yeah, I got a solution for this that usually works", he said as he pulled a butcher knife out from behind him like a cartoon.
He then ran over and began to hack the trolls into bloody pieces like so much fish, and then kicked their grizzled remains into the water.
The awful music stopped when he killed the last one.
Wuboe/Pobb stood back in satisfaction and said "there, that's got it".
He then lay down on the raft and said to Cache "wake me when we get to shore".
He sunk into sleep for what felt like a minute, and then opened his eyes and saw that he was standing in the child's bedroom at the head of his bed while the kid looked at him in awe.
It took him a couple seconds and then he realized "the kid brought me out of the dream! Fuck, this is gonna make things weird".
Wuboe/Pobb then burped up some paradox, and now it was 35 years later.
Memories of this alternate life flooded in, and he understood what he was seeing now.
Cache, now a crimefighter (allied with Harry Hembock of the past) was shot by a heat seeking bullet fired by the nefarious Nick Blickley.
"Oh shit!", shouted Wuboe/Pobb as he poofed out of existence.
On the next blink, he saw that he was back at the dream studio.
"Hey! Get off my set! Security!", shouted a megaphone warbled voice.
Four iron gripped gorilla sized hands grabbed him, and threw him out the back door and into a dumpster.
"What an odd day this has been", grumbled Wuboe.
Just then, an empty soda cup bounced off his head.
He looked to see who threw it, and saw Anubis strolling past.
"Oh, that's right, this is also the afterlife planet. I always forget, because I was never allowed to mix with them. ...snobby cunts", Wuboe thought to himself.
Wuboe heard a faint skittering sound, and saw a scarab beetle crawl out of Anubis's belt pouch.
Anubis didn't seem to either notice or care.
The scarab however headed right for the garbage.
"Why, hello, little fella", Wuboe said to the scarab in an instinctive baby talk voice.
The scarab munched on a piece of wilted lettuce.
"Aren't you a big boy? Yes you are! Yes you are!".
Just then, an inexplicably bloodied and black eyed Steve Torrent materialized.
Meanwhile, in 2004, 2 days after Steve Torrent was on the Krazyfool show, Phineas P. Phallow (A.K.A Krazyfool) walked out of El Flataulatos, a Mexican themed bar and grill with strippers and comedians.
"Happy trails. Sayonara", he said as he waved goodbye to the other patrons.
In the next instant, Wuboe materialized several yards overhead, and landed on Krazyfool, snapping both their necks, and killing them instantly.
Anubis's scarab scurried out from under Wuboe's lifeless head, and into El Flatulatos just before the door glided all the way shut.
El Flatulato, the restaurant's mascot, and headline standup act noticed the scarab, and picked it up, balancing it along his index finger.
Karamba! La Kukaracha! He proclaimed proudly of his new pet.
Meanwhile, in 2740, a day after Harry Hembock arrived in that era, the aforementioned bloodied and black eyed Steve Torrent landed at the future incarnation of El Flatulatos (now a galactic chain).
Unlike Wuboe, Steve's fall was properly cushioned, and he survived.
Like Wuboe, that fall was cushioned by another being.
Unlike Krazyfool, this being had a bit more give.
Unfortunately, this give meant a big mess.
A big mess of luminescent green giant bug guts.
To Steve's casual observational bemusement as he inspected himself, luminescent green bug guts that apparently had healing properties.
A smaller bug which Steve took to be it's offspring hissed and clicked at him.
If he could have translated those clicks, he would have heard it say "You keelled my father, prepare to die!".
Steve just kicked it aside.
Steve looked for his beer mug, and saw it shattered on the floor.
"Fuck", he cursed, as he absent mindedly rubbed a remaining split in his lip.
The wound vanished, and then his eyes bugged as remembered the guts.
Just before he could respond with a decent retch, he rippled away like water.
The bartender walked up to La Kukaracha's splattered corpse.
He pulled out a palm scanner, and waved it over the remains, and looked at the readout of the chemical elements.
Then he grinned devilishly at the possibilities.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, Steve Torrent got his mug back from Krazyfool, and took a swig of paradox and vanished.
He immediately reappeared smothered in bug guts.
"Ah, so THAT completes the loop", he observed.
Meanwhile, the other Steve completed that loop by going to the 2901 incarnation of El Flatulatos, and "giving", his past self his Rolex watch.
Meanwhile, on the dream/afterlife planet, Anubis's ear twitched.
"Why, hello, little fella", he heard a baby talk voice say from the dumpster he had just thrown his soda cup into.
He saw a blue lizardy guy standing in the dumpster talking to one of his scarabs wich was munching on a piece of wilted lettuce.
"Aren't you a big boy? Yes you are! Yes you are!", continued the lizardy guy in baby talk mode.
Just then, an inexplicably bloodied and black eyed fat guy with a mug of beer materialized.
"Steve! Thank god, get me out of this place!", said the lizardy guy.
The fat guy swigged his beer, and touched the lizardy guy's shoulder, and they both began to ripple away.
Anubis thought fast, pulled out his ankh staff, and fired a volley of energy blasts into the ripple.
Inside the hyperspace wormhole, Steve and Wuboe were violently flung away from each other in opposite directions in a fork in the road one of the blasts had created.
Steve was hurled violently to El Flatulatos in 2740, while Wuboe landed fatally in front of El Flatulatos in 2004.
Anubis sniffed the air for the sweet traces left by the wormhole, and determined where they had went.
He then pulled a scarab from his belt pouch, and chewed it up, releasing it's precious juices.
An instant later, Anubis rippled away like water.
Meanwhile, in 2004, Anubis's scarab scurried out from under Wuboe's lifeless head, and into El Flatulatos just before the door glided all the way shut.
In the next second, Anubis rippled into existence, and saw Wuboe's and Krazyfool's corpses.
He prodded them with his ankh staff, and grumbled "well, that saves me some work".
He then walked inside the bar, saw the fat bald guy talking to a skinny, bug eyed, 5 foot 4 inch tall goon of a man with a ridiculously black greasy pompadour and an almost comical overbite.
He quickly and wordlessly fired an ankh blast that burned a neatly cropped hole through the fat guy's torso, ending his life instantly, and making him slump to the ground like a dropped sack of laundry.
He then sniffed the air, and noticed a sweet chrono-phage trace around the pompadour guy who was staring agape at the dead fat guy.
Anubis crunched another scarab, and vanished.
In the late 21st century, at the state mental hospital, inside a padded cell, Anubis materialized before a decades older version of the pompadour guy.
Harry looked up at Anubis, and with watery eyes pleaded "please...".
Anubis fired.
Harry slumped, and with his last puff of breath, whispered "thaaaank yoouu".
Anubis shrugged, crunched another scarab, and vanished again.
Meanwhile, the Harry Hembock in 2004, 2 days before Anubis would appear, sat in the audience of the Krazyfool show in his disguise aura of an old man.
As he looked up at the Steve Torrent onstage, he flashed back to their first meeting at El Flatulatos, which for him was in the past, but would occur for himself in this time in 2 days.
Harry had just told the bartender the whole winding complicated tale of the death of his childhood friend, Cache Ballard, and how he had avenged his death.
Steve Torrent then walked up to him to compare tales, and had told him this whole story.
Tim Waverly, project Shazam, the Green Mamba, Jake Prong, Lenny "shitpants" Sours, Krazyfool, Wuboe/Pobb, Anubis, everything.
A shame he couldn't hardly remember most of it, the future foreknowledge would come in handy about now.
Anyhoo, after that, Krazyfool from that time showed up and told them what had happened on his show the night before (which would make it the episode after the one that was taping now, Harry calculated) and ranted a bunch of funny rants, then had stepped outside, and had gotten squished by a falling Wuboe.
To top that unusual day off, Anubis, jackal headed ancient Egyptian lord of the underworld made a guest appearance in reality, and cut Steve down with a laser blast.
But the most curious aspect, was that Steve looked like he had expected it, and was okay with the whole thing.
But, Harry realized, that was ultimately Steve's problem, and Steve's story, not his, he realized he had his own story to get back to.
So, he swigged his paradox, poked Spruce in the arm with his index finger, and rippled away, taking Spruce with him.
Back in 2740, Harry and Spruce rippled into existence.
"Aw christ, no! I can't take much more of this!", Steve Torrent whimpered with exasperation.
Harry and Spruce looked at themselves, and each other, and saw that their disguise auras had morphed into duplicates of Steve and Wuboe respectively.
Harry remembered that he had sat in on this conversation, and although he could only remember the gist, he decided to wing it.
"We're you from a few minutes in the future, after we get some more paradox, we come back in time to give you some more paradox, wich is where we got the paradox in the first place", said Harry/Torrent.
"Isn't that a paradox?", asked Wuboe.
"Hence the name", Harry/Steve said with a grin, while pouring half his pitcher of paradox into present Steve's empty pitcher.
Well, what looked like a pitcher in the disguise aura, it was really that last dregs of his mug of paradox, but why split hairs?
"But wait, if you give us just half a pitcher, where do we get the other half a pitcher that you just gave us?", Wuboe asked, flabbergasted.
"We go back to the bar for some more", answered Spruce/Wuboe.
"When?", asked past Wuboe.
"Anytime you feel like, there's plenty of time", Harry/Steve answered smugly.
"ARRGH!! Let's get the fuck out of here!!", screamed Wuboe.
"Agreed", replied past Steve, and with that, he took a chug.
The past incarnations of Steve, Wuboe, Harry, and Spruce, rippled out, while the disguise auras of present Harry and Spruce faded out, leaving them to pick up their adventure in 2740 right where they had left it.
Of course, some decades later, Anubis would hunt down and exterminate Harry and his friends, but that was neither here nor there to them.
Meanwhile, back at the Krazyfool show, Krazyfool looked into the camera and said with a goony grin on his face "and now for our next guest! But first, these commercial messages!".
Steve Torrent got his mug back from Krazyfool, and took a swig of paradox and vanished.
He immediately reappeared smothered in bug guts.
"Ah, so THAT completes the loop", he observed.
Meanwhile, the old man in the audience took a swig from his mug of beer, poked the woman sitting next to him in the arm with his index finger, and rippled away, taking the woman with him.
No one noticed, or caught it on camera.
"Say, you're covered in some kind of vomit or entrails", remarked Krazyfool casually to Steve.
"That I am", Steve said, sighing and looking down at himself.
Krazyfool received a signal from the producer.
"...and we're back! Our next guest is the mascot and namesake of the popular bar down the street from this studio, ladies and gentlemen, EL FLATULATOOO!", said Krazy into the camera.
The curtain parted, and in ran a hideous Mexican stereotype wearing a giant cartoonish sombrero, and an ornate bedazzled poncho.
Immediately, the Mexican, or more likely, a white actor in Mexican-stereotype drag began screaming in a blaring high pitched voice "Flatulaaaaatooooo!!!!!!", and then cutting what seemed to be real juicy farts into a microphone taped to his ass.
The audience went wild.
Steve just smirked and nodded in approval.
"Flatulaaatooooo!!! *BROOOMPT!!!* Flatulaaatooo!!! *BROOOMPT!!!* This es TV? I am movie star? TELEMUUUNDOOOOO!!!!!! *BROOOOMPT!!*".
On and on it went.
Steve decided he could watch this for hours.
But sadly, it only lasted 15 minutes, and then they cut to commercial.
Krazyfool walked up to El Flatulato, and shook his hand furiously and said "I'm a MAJOR fan of your work! You have NO idea how you've inspired me! When...when times were really tough for me as a kid, I'd put in one of your albums, or play my homemade tapes of your TV commercials for the bar, and things wouldn't seem so bad".
With that, Krazyfool's eyes watered and he looked away in embarrassment.
El Flatulato hugged him.
Then he let out a massive fart that Steve guessed had to have messed his drawers.
Steve shook his gore covered head at this whole scene, water in his own eyes, and said "it's a beautiful world, and I'm a lucky son of a bitch".
Celine had been floating around in hyperspace for several hours by her relative timescale.
During that time, she learned she could control the directional flow of her passage through the void by manipulating her field of electro-magnetic flux.
Doing so had allowed her to perpetually suspend herself within the time corrider, and "zoom in", and "zoom out", across history, and witness things as a passive observer.
Through this process, she had followed the tangled web of intersecting predestination paradoxes Steve Torrent, Phineas Phallow, and Harry Hembock had caused, and formulated a plan to untangle them.
But, she would need a powerful ally. She had someone in mind, but he'd be very difficult to persuade.
Unfortunately, persuasion was one of the many interpersonal skills her programming just wasn't up to.
So, she'd need yet another ally to pull that trick off.
Scanning the entangled timelines, she found someone.
Dr. Daniel Suede sat in the cafeteria of Killer Robot Hospital still feeling deeply philosophically unsure about his current career path.
Just to further complicate things, an android maid materialized next to him like a rippling mirage.
Before he could inhale to speak, the maid rapidly clipped out "I'll explain along the way. Come", and then crabbed his forearm.
A cool waterslide-y feeling washed over him, and the cafeteria whooshed away to be replaced by stars and galaxies zipping by.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, Phineas/Krazyfool introduced his next guest.
A rather portly internet movie critic who was met with perhaps the most violent booing in talk show history.
Meanwhile, at Chez Labelle, a battered Steve Torrent hobbled over, and absent mindedly reached over and helped himself to a left behind mug of paradox, and vanished with a look of surprise on his face.
"Christ. Glad that's finally over", grumbled Jake Prong.
But it wasn't over.
Just after completing his last word, Celine and Daniel rippled into existance next to him.
Jake recognized Celine, and simply said "oh, it's you again, what do you want?", as if it were business as usual.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, all hell had broken loose.
Several members of the audience had stormed the stage, joined by several members of the production staff, and were proceeding to hurl physical and verbal abuse onto Krazy's last guest, the rotund ginger haired internet movie critic.
The camera zoomed in from a decent vantage point to witness all the fun, and beam it to the television audience.
The critic's shirt had been torn open to reveal a vestigial conjoined twin sticking out of his big fat belly.
The fetal twin was moaning something about "starting the reactor", to this mysterious person named "Quaid".
The audience members and production people alike unphased by any of this were burying the critic in a thick inescapable cloud of epithets, and hurled movie candy.
Goobers, ju-ju bees, Mike-N-Ike's, malted milk balls, snow balls, you name it, all rained down apon his head at hailstone velocity.
Stray Mike-N-Ike's bounced off the twin's head as well.
Regardless, the twin continued to moan "Quaaaid! Quaaaid! Opeeeen youurr miiind, Quaaaid!", unabated as if in a trance.
A constant wave of boos and profanities poured fourth, as well as the occasional "bloated sellout!!", and "so fat!!", as well as the clincher "so godDAMNED fat!!".
Children threw their half-drunk sodas at him, the women spat on him, the men kicked at him, and El Flatulato farted at him.
All the while, he simply sobbed like a little boy, and rolled back and forth, holding up his hands, and sniveling.
A big bulls-eye pee stain had started to form over the crotch of his pants.
Just then, a short skinny blond woman with short spiky hair, wearing a red usherette uniform, complete with organ grinder monkey hat, and white gloves, ran out carrying a pot full of bubbling hot butter topping, and proceeded to pour it all over his ass and genitals.
She curled her lips into a sneer of disgust, and whispered aloud "so...god...damned...FAT!!!!!!!".
Steve perked up in recognition of the woman, but the curtains closed on the whole scene before he could say anything.
Krazyfool smirked and said "wadn't that sumthin?", and then the station cut to commercial.
Meanwhile, back at Chez Labelle, Dr. Dan had finished using his formidable people skills to tell Jake Prong the story he had heard from Celine in such a way as to want to help them.
"Wow, that's some story all right. Boy, you sure are one persuasive sonovabitch. Indeed, your people skills are formidable", said Jake Prong in a way Daniel wasn't sure was sarcastic or not.
Jake paused in thought for 5 seconds, and then said "yeah, sure, what the hell? I'll give it a shot".
And with that, Celine put her hands on Jake and Daniel's shoulders, and phased them all into hyperspace.
Meanwhile, back at the Krazyfool show, just before Krazy could introduce the next guest, Anubis materialized and opened fire on the stage.
He layed down a sweeping voley of plasma bolts that took out a camera man, and a paige, but mostly hit walls and curtains as everyone else dove for cover.
Karen, the pocorn butter girl, and Steve's wife from an alternate timeline popped out from behind the curtain to see what was going on.
Anubis reflexively fired on her.
Steve jumped out in front of her, and took the full brunt of the blast wich plucked him out of the trajectory of his fall, and flung him back, knocking Karen over.
Steve opened his eyes, mentally scanned his body for pain, and squeaked with a dry throat "I'm not hurt at all!".
He looked himself over, and saw that the blast had vaporized all the bug guts off him, leaving him laundry fresh, but otherwise, he was in perfect working order.
"Get the fuck offa me you pot bellied beer scented bald bastard!", snapped Karen.
Steve made an awkward David Letterman frog face, and complied.
Anubis hissed "damn, I've already killed you in the future, wich means until then...", he stopped himself.
Steve grinned wickedly and finished for him "...I'm fucking indestructible. Screaming time, little bitch!!".
Meanwhile, in hyperspace, Jake was making a futile effort to manually untangle the timelines.
He pushed his mind into hypertrance, while Celine scanned his brain and tuned her aura, and thus the wormhole, to the corresponding flux.
With a little practice, they had become synchronized, and Jake was effectivly tugging at the wormhole himself with Celine as a relay.
Celine, Jake, and Daniel were standing at the point where the wormhole pretzeled at the intersection point of Steve's three selves wich initiated this whole mess, but the wormhole was too big and tied too tight for Jake to yank apart.
As the wormholes coiled and strained against him, several possible futures shimmered by.
In one, they along with Steve Torrent and others were helping Harry Hembock complete his adventure.
In another, they fought alongside Johnny the donut man in a strange medieval world where knights dressed like chefs, and the countryside was besieged by giant mutant donuts.
In another, he and Celine were doing a crazy Saturday Night Fever meets Lambada dance across a booby trapped tile floor with saw blades popping up out, and arrows fired from mechanical crossbows, all the while, dodging the dangers to the tune of "behind the groove".
The swirling kaleidascope of alternate timelines as well as the tension of trying to unwravel them was tiring and nausia inducing to Jake.
Finally, Jake collapsed gagging, and all three of them snapped out of hyperspace a second after leaving Chez Labelles to let Jake rest.
After 15 minutes of sitting in a chair and drinking several glasses of water, a sweat soaked Jake finally was able to compose himself and speak.
"It's...it's no good...gonna need help".
"Are you fit for hypertravel?", Celine, who was standing over him, asked blandly.
Jake looked up and said "probably not, but I gotta do it anyway, don't I?".
Moments later, they were away.
Meanwhile, back at the Krazyfool show, Steve Torrent was giving Anubis a fairly respectable ass whupping.
He now had him on the ground and at his mercy, his hands at his throat.
But, as he went in for the final squeeze, his thumb brushed a hidden switch on Anubis's collar, wich made a beeping sound, and then Anubis's head rippled like a mirage and revealed.....
Steve reeled back in shock.
It was...Lord Fulcrum!
He was unmistakable, the evil Chris Sarandon face, the eyepatch from Jake's dinner fork incursion into his eye socket.
It WAS him!
Steve thought of lots of questions to ask him, but they'd have to wait, as he had beaten him into unconsciousness.
Just then, Celine, Daniel, and Jake Prong rippled in.
"Fancy meeting you guys here", Steve said with a smirk.
"Look at what I found", he said pointing at Fulcrum.
"That's nice", Jake said dismissively ignoring Steve while staring out into the studio audience.
"I know you're here, old man! Show yourself!", he shouted into the crowd.
With that, a youngish tech-nerdy looking gentleman stood up.
His appearance, wich now stood revealed as a disguise aura, rippled away to reveal a shirtless old man in a bathrobe and boxer shorts.
"You found me across time, and through a disguise! Splendid, your skills are improving", said the old man.
Jake extended his hand toward the old man like Vanna White displaying a prize, and said "Steve Torrent, Phineas Phallow, Celine, Daniel Suede, Popcorn Girl, meet the Volcano Guru".
Meanwhile, two days after the Krazyfool show, at El Flatulatos, Harry Hembock stared agape at Steve Torrent's lifeless smouldering form on the floor, and then back up at Anubis, who proceeded to sniff the air, eat a scarab beetle, and vanish.
Before Harry could say anything, a hand popped out of a small wormhole behind him, grabbed his shoulder, and pulled him backward making him vanish into the afformentioned wormhole wich slithered around his mass like the surface of water.
Meanwhile, at The Donut Place, the corresponding hand reached out and grabbed Johnny.
Meanwhile, at the Krazyfool show, the Volcano Guru yanked Harry and Johnny into their timeline.
Volcano Guru nodded with satisfaction and said "there, I've got everyone who had a hand in this mess in the same place. Now, let's put an end to this foolishness, shall we?".
And with that, the Volcano Guru nodded, and all of them, Steve, Jake, Daniel, Johnny, Harry, Celine, Fulcrum (now awake), Krazyfool/Phineas, and Karen all fell into hyperspace.
Within seconds, they zoomed in on the knot in time.
Volcano Guru nodded as if he'd seen this sort of thing every day and said "Ah, I see the trouble you were having. You were trying to untie time. A natural mistake. I know it's counter-intuitive, but the best way to fix this sort of thing is with MORE tangling. You need mass and momentum to reset the whole thing. Here, I'll show you".
And with that, the Guru carefully and smoothy wound the length in front of them onto the knot, and then a little more, and a little more, until eventually, the mass of the knot began to naturally attract more wormhole, and it became easier to wind more on faster.
As the Guru tied more wormhole onto the knot, Celine adjusted her flux field, and pulled them backward away from it, until finally, she had no choice but to pull them back millenia and then aeons away.
From their new vantage point, they could now see the Guru log-rolling a now massive yarn ball of timeline. And since it was from a fourth dimensional perspective, eons worth of rolling was occuring within seconds, so that within minutes, he had the whole galaxy rolled up.
They pulled back further, and gazed from yet a higher dimension, and within a few more minutes, most of the universe was rolled up.
And all the time, they could swear they could hear him....singing.
It was hard to make out, or describe.
It was like Pavoratti doing the Beatles doing a sea shanty.
Finally, the Volcano Guru had all the universe but their wormhole rolled up, and then rolled them up.
And with that, the ball collapsed to a point, and that point exploded into a second big bang.
Everyone, including the Volcano Guru, was flung free inside a self contained bubble of wormhole-stuff.
As they were hurled free across space, they also were hurled free across time, and as they pulled way from the big bang, eons of history whizzed by, and all the galaxies coalesced before them in a matter of minutes.
"Say, how come we weren't just killed right then?", asked Karen.
"We must all be surrounded by my indestructibility aura", replied Steve.
"From a certain perspective. Given that the full explanation would split your head open, it's as good a theory fragment as any", said the Volcano Guru with a grin and a wink.
"So, how do we get home now? Or DO we?", asked Daniel.
"Glad you asked. Start rolling...that way", said Volcano Guru pointing westward.
And with that, Volcano Guru literally got the ball rolling, and started to sing his weird song. Bit by bit everyone, including Celine, picked up the rythm and joined in.
Soon, the hampster ball in time made it's way back to Earth.
First, it rolled up to Daniel in the cafeteria of Killer Robot Hospital, and as it passed through him, the Daniel in the ball stuck to the Daniel outside the ball, and they fused.
As the rolled onward, the fused Daniel was left behind, and the ball shrunk a little.
This process repeated when they rolled up on Harry Hembock a second before Anubis showed up to kill Steve.
But in the reset timeline, this didn't happen.
Then, Fulcrum/Anubis was fused into this timeline's Keith Sprunk.
and since he was Keith Sprunk instead of Fulcrum/Anubis, there was no Anubis to kill Steve.
Wich erased Steve's temporal invincibility.
Wich wasn't noticed, nor at this point needed.
Then, Johnny was dropped off a second before he was plucked out of time by Volcano Guru, wich didn't happen now in this reset time.
Then, Krazyfool was dropped off before Steve and Wuboe arrived and screwed up his show, wich didn't happen now.
Celine was dropped off a second before she scanned Wuboe, and vanished into hyperspace for the first time, wich didn't happen now.
Jake was dropped off at the same time.
Steve was dropped off at the moment all this started.
Sitting in his recliner, watching "spies like us", on Comedy Central.
Karen had rolled on to he knew not where. Then, he realized that to know that, that meant he could remember the whole thing.
For some reason, he figured he'd lose all memory of the whole mess once he became his past self.
Just then, Karen strutted in wearing a see through nighty, and her organ monkey hat, and carrying a six pack of Sam Adam's Spring Ale.
"Found this in the fridge, figured it must belong to you", she said with an eyebrow wiggle.
She handed Steve the six pack, and he noticed a note attached to it.
He peeled it off and read it
It shortly and simply said "Thanks -The Universe".
As Karen crawled into Steve's lap, he chuckled and said.
"Heh. Wow. That's great".
THE END.
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