August 1 and August 2

August awoke, beside himself. Literally.

In the night, something happened such that he was divided into two identical selves.

August leapt from the bed, panicked that someone wandered into his room and fell asleep next to him in bed.

August woke in fright when the bed suddenly shook from someone leaping out of it.  He startled across the bed thinking half-asleep that someone wandered into his room and fell asleep next to him in bed.

August standing gaped wide-eyed at a wide-eyed, gaping August in bed.

"Who the hell are you?" they accused. And then bam—the moment they both were completely freed of sleep, they recognised themselves. Their eyes actually grew wider. It was a long, long time before they finally chimed:

"You're me."

Slowly, August the first looked around, searching for signs in the room of some weird trauma in the night, not knowing what signs weird trauma would leave. August the second joined him. When the room seemed in order they moved onto inspecting themselves. No cuts or bruises. Then a very black thought: Were they mad? They didn't think so. They felt fine.

"Well, I'm me," they said.

"So am I."

But in the end, he wasn't himself when he killed him.

Crack is back!

I have graduated to crack. So you weren't at my graduation and I was pretty disappointed at that. I wore one of those black square mortarboard hats and smoked a crack pipe in front of my whole job department. Or something like that. I was pretty out of it.

Business news

Folger's Coffee has expanded its business into broadcasting, and to promote the new radio station the company has distributed thousands of cardboard radios to Columbian peasants. Reception from Marxist rebels has been muted, but once peasants removed their hands from the radio speakers reception was reported to be clear.

The new radio station has been met with skepticism by the Spanish-speaking population, who view it as a propagandist effort to promote the views of Janet Folger, who is not affiliated with the company. Folger's in turn has assuaged their concerns by packing the radios with cocaine and flying them into Barbados in crates.

Recipe for milk and cookies

Take one cup of milk and one cookie.
Place in a baking tray and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Place milk in oven for 30 minutes.
Take cookie and put on a local bus for at least 3 transfer zones.
Return home and wait for milk to be done in the oven.
Remove milk from oven—careful, it is hot—and splash directly in face.
Wipe off excess milk and skin. Sit down and enjoy.

Mmmm, mmm, good.

-- Spleeno

The Mysterious McMuffin

His name was Mr McMuffin. He ate children. If you're not careful, he'll eat you. Now listen. Mr McMuffin had a limp, which he named Albert. McMuffin and Albert would go on late night walks through the town after the streetlamps had been extinguished. "Where are we going?" McMuffin would ask. Albert would never answer.

One day, a parcel arrived from Mr McMuffin's great aunt Elda. "Albert!" McMuffin called. "Something in the post for you." Albert never replied, and the package went unopened.

When Elda died, McMuffin was dumbstruck to learn she had willed him to someone named Silas Muck. McMuffin begrudgingly packed his bags and hailed a passing dray. He and Albert climbed aboard.

"I'm Silas Muck's," he said to the driver, who looked at him. The driver cracked the whip and the dray clopped off into the night, carrying the mysterious Mr McMuffin away to a new home.

Today's weather

Hot on the heels of the weekend's torrential rain, Sydney sweltered yesterday in one of the hottest March days on record. In a quirky one for the record books, the inner-city recorded its second-highest March temperature, with the mercury peaking at 39.3 degrees, beaten only by 39.8 degrees recorded on the same day in 1983, a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said. "The unseasonable heat was caused by a telephone call from Kyle Sommi. He expressed a particular interest in the weather, and compared it with the Vancouver cold." Kyle was in the news recently when Australia collectively wondered if he would visit, the first hive behaviour observed in humankind.

New book

"I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother."

What do you think so far? I call it "Robinson Crusoe," and I feel it is destined to become a classic. It's about a man who loses his job and is stranded inside his apartment, and he does nothing but drink Guinness. Or else he gets shipwrecked, I haven't decided.

CD sale

All CDs $14.95

The Pushers, "The Meat Man is at the door, Mummy! The Meat Man!"
The Johnny Otis Redbeans Quartet, "Soup Socks"
The Spent, the Broke and the Beaten, "The Hoboken Beat Century"
Papa Hitler, "Holocost-effective"
Raw Power, "Medium Rare Power"
The Gnitch, "Power Tool Elbows"
Free Trichinosis, "Does This Taste Funny to You?"
The Feeling You're Being Watched, "Alias From Outer Space"
The Owners, "Hello, we're the Owners. Get out."
The Trite, "Campbell's New Flavour"
Rory is a Nice Name, "Edema of the Face"
The Albion Chamber Pot Orchestra plays too fast
The Abandoned Fridge (self-titled)
The Collapse (self-titled)
The Safeway House Band (self-titled)
The Latest Gimmick (self-titled)

Where's the complaints department?

I tried complaining to the fire department, but they didn't want to hear it.

Found!

I found your salad bowl. It was in the garbage dump in Sydney. I don't know what it was doing there, but I pulled it out and cleaned it up with the shirt I was wearing at the time, which I've since thrown out because of all the garbage water that got on it. Anyway, it's got a big crack in it from one end to the other in such a way that the two pieces separate quite readily and in fact won't stay together at all. Despite this and the oily black marks all over it, it still makes a lovely salad. Well, it doesn't make the salad! Ha ha ha. No, silly, I made the salad, and it wasn't bad, except that it got all over the floor and the table, and it smelled like garbage. Anyway, I'll send it back to you. I'll even throw in the salad.

Hi, how are you?

I am dead. It's rotten luck. Caught in one of those Australian "bushfires" that are engulfing Sydney. I didn't know that bushfires were forest fires, but they are.

Before I died, the laundromat repossessed my sweater because I couldn't afford to pay for the detergent you buy there in a little box. This was how I spent my last day. The day before that, I was packing for the trip I had planned for the day after I died, which was the day before my retirement.

Despite this, since the sweater, the fire and my death I've taken up the marimba! Oh, it's just marvellous. It makes me feel so grand, like I'm all the world's star! And then I remember that all the world's star is actually the sun and not me at all, and that any nuclear fusion would rip me apart. And now I can't cancel my trip to the sun and I'm not going to get that money back. It's bloody expensive.

Microsoft Windows

Wow, have you seen the new Microsoft Windows, codenamed Longhorn? Sometimes if there's a soft error, you'll get a message, like "Error on page" or something, but if you do something stupid it responds with "There's an error in your brain."

Never forget your roots

Or people will know you dye your hair.

Advertisement: Peanuts

New and improved Planters peanuts not only taste great, but they no longer leave you with runny, painful stool.

Sydney has been moved to the moon.

Please send air.

Can you read this?

This message is encoded. I accidentally also encoded my brain, and now whenever I think I have to employ a complex set of concentric algorithms to make any sense of my thoughts. This is time-consuming, but the warranty ran out several years ago and I am forced to cope with it. For example, this message took 8 minutes to assemble, when it should have only taken 44. See what I mean? Fortunately, this does mean that I can write in code quite rapidly. However, I don't understand what it says.

New revelation

Scientists have discovered that it isn't 2005 at all. It's actually much higher than that.

Welcome!

Welcome to Al-Qaeda. Thank you for supporting our enterprises.

Upon payment of your dues in full (martyrdom), you will experience the many benefits of being a globally recognised terrorist, including: Dispossession! Daisy cutters! And best of all, meeting Allah in person!

Advertisement: Floor cleaner

Why spend countless hours labouring over the kitchen floor, when the new Swiffa kitchen floor remover will have you creating an empty void in no time.

Is the universe really deterministic, or is it all up to George Bush?

Once upon a time in the downunder Land of Oz, there lived a cheesy storyteller who began all his stories with hackneyed clichés. He was shortly thereafter murdered by a rioting mob of dissatisfied children.

The End.

And then there was the sequel, many years later, when the cheesy storyteller was broke and had to eat rocks. He resurrected his ill-fated protagonist, despite the abysmal sales of his first and only book (you see, he ran out of ideas)... (but I just happen to know that he adhered to the principle of beginning his stories with hackneyed clichés, even though he didn't actually have the opportunity to demonstrate this)... and... then... Okay, okay! It was me! I've run out of ideas and I don't know what to do after resurrecting myself. Can you help? This is the reason I am writing. I need help. But not just any help. Your help. Because I get by with a little help from my friends.

*gasp* Amazed, the storyteller realised he had in fact used a cliché right in the middle of one of his stories! But his joy was short-lived, as his fingers became trapped between the keys on the keyboard and he died of starvation.

The End.

P.S. The storyteller saga was actually a trilogy, but the final work has never surfaced. It was once auctioned at Sotheby's for US$1.2m, but the story was only conjecture and it was a hypothetical auction with no tangible evidence of the third story. Nevertheless, the highest bidder was an eccentric recluse, and has never since released the story to the public...

UNTIL NOW!

And this is your opportunity not only to READ the fabled third story, but to OWN and CHERISH it for only US$1.2m! Hand-crafted on a beautiful faux porcelain plate, this timeless edition will look grand on your living room wall, inviting comments from your party guests. Soon, it will become a real conversation piece. Soon thereafter, it will dominate the conversation. Eventually, the din of the conversation will grow so loud that no one will be able to hear what anybody else is saying, and your neighbours will call the police. The conversation will grow so intense that the police will not be able to hear your neighbour over the telephone. Finally, the conversation will usurp your house and you will be subject to it as it establishes a dictatorial regime from the relative safety of your living room wall. When you try to take it down, the decibel level will spike and the windows will be blown out of your house, embedding shards of glass in anyone within earshot.

Flaxus

The Flaxus is in control. Repeat. The Flaxus is in control.

Kneel and bow to the Flaxus. The Flaxus is the ruler of the galaxy. Kneel and bow. Heel and toe. Kneel and bow. Heel and toe.

Bow to the Flaxus.

Congratulations. You've won supreme domination. You are now the Flaxus.

Bow to the Flaxus."

—Robert Frost

Have you ever read that poem? I found it in a Robert Frost anthology. I think the guy got really into science fiction later in life.

I'm on bug juice. The skin on my arms is black and leathery, and torn and loose, and crawls in waves down to my wrists and then breaks and flaps and snaps. Robert Frost.'

Yeah, man, can you believe this guy? He got really whacked out on heroin after his science fiction did a crap in the bookstores.

Plastic surgery

I finally went through with the plastic surgery. For years I've been getting up the nerve, but I finally did it and it was a big success, so I'm very happy. The doctor flattened and blended my nose into my face, smoothed my eyelids down into my cheeks, and eliminated my mouth. It looks kind of like a wooden spoon.

Should birds be kept in cages?

I bought a pet peacock a few weeks ago. Boy, was THAT a mistake! Have you ever heard a peacock? Oh my God, it yowls and yowls. It is definitely not a pet for apartments, that's for sure. It wakes me up in the middle of the night by coming in and shaking me by the shoulder. "Wayne, wake up." "What's wrong?" I say, half asleep, and then it just walks away. Christ, I'm telling you, big mistake, that idea.

Advertisement: Laundry soap

New Tide bleach for unbleachables will not only get out those stubborn stains but will get your stubborn neighbour to finally clean that junk off his front lawn.

Rezoning Giza

The Egyptians have sold the pyramids for development, have you heard? The big one went to Wal-Mart.

Sister Faith

My grade 12 form mistress, Sister Faith, called me out of the blue today and said she was "shit hot." I'm not sure what she meant by that; was she in need of air conditioning? Has she renounced her vows and become a slut? Is she suffering from gastroenteritis? I just don't know.

The Electric Boogaloo

The Electric Boogaloo died on the weekend. I don't know what happened to it, but I had to get an electrician in. I thought it was maybe just a fuse, but no, he said it had gone out of style completely and it would cost more to fix than to just make the migration to B-boy. I'm a bit disappointed about that; I liked the Electric Boogaloo. It was just making a bit of a retro comeback, but oh well. What can you do.

Home renovations

Hi, Kyle.

I received your letter, thank you. I must admit, though, I was a bit confused by it. Actually, I was very confused by it. It didn't really make any sense. I mean, if you removed the floor of your kitchen, you'd probably reveal dirt underneath, or a concrete slab, but not a void. And if you could create a void where your kitchen floor once was... well, a void has zero air pressure, so everything would get sucked into it. The toaster, and the garbage can, things like that. Including yourself if you were standing there, air pressure is that powerful. And this is just one of the things in your letter that didn't make sense. There are scores of others.

But I digress. What I really wanted to talk about was A NEW CAR! This sports utility features air conditioning, four-wheel drive, and convertible snow pants, all included in your holiday to HAWAII! You'll spend five fabulous fun-filled minutes looking for your keys to your new car when you take the top down on your snow pants. So DON'T DO THAT! Back to you, Bob.

It's like a million lice are doing the Mexican Wave!

Mr Super Splendid,

How do you get your hair to do that? I am a long time fan of your hair and I would like to know the secret recipe. I have tried paper clips and paving paint, but I just can't get the same quaffed wave. Please tell the world. As I am in it, I will get the news. Or email me if you feel that is more efficient.

Effervescently Yours,

The Chap with the Flyaway Ducktail

Road toll

Word on the street is "XING AHEAD." It's painted on in big yellow letters. I think it's Pinyin for something. "Death," maybe. There is a lot of death on the roads. It could be a council initiative to reduce the road toll. Like on the Coquihalla Highway; the toll is $10! That's a lot cheaper than death, though, so perhaps it's working. Funerals can easily run into the thousands.

Free George Bush

George Bush attacks cameraman with his new terrorist swatter

Hi.

I am an independent worm saloon working for the president of the United States. I am trying to raise awareness about the injustice that is taking place on AMERICAN soil. It seems that our president is not the president we all have come to know and love. Someone has switched him with a Pepsi machine, and through the magic of Hollywood makeup and Industrial Light & Magic, have somehow duped the AMERICAN people into believing that George W. Bush is still in command, when in actual fact it is a Pepsi machine.

I have further proof of this dastardly deed. On October 19th, just last week, while speaking to a group of soldiers in Kentucky, our president seemed to just be repeating the same few lines over and over, and some people commented that these were the same lines he had said in a speech the week before. "We will get them," "We will persevere against the enemy," "Bring 'em on." These few lines were repeated ad nauseum. And then the real proof: a can of Pepsi actually came out of his mouth, right there in front of thousands of U.S. troops, who were ordered not to repeat anything about the incident. As an independent worm saloon, all I am asking is a small donation to help me further uncover this horrible conspiracy, and return the George W. Bush we all used to hold in such high regard to the office of the UNITED STATES. A small donation will prove invaluable, as I will try to actually purchase a Pepsi from the "Bush machine," and expose the awful truth. For your donation you will receive an 8 by 10 glossy of our COMMANDER IN CHIEF, a DICK CHENEY key chain, and a can of Coke. Remember, "COKE IS IT." Buy the real deal, not evil Pepsi.

Send your donations to:

El Spleeno
Maple Ridge, B.C.
Kanada

The Man Called Mountain

His mighty arms were like large trees, and these were mighty unwieldy as he was otherwise a normally proportioned human being. And they called him Mountain. Mountain the Mighty. And he was. Mighty. Mighty mighty.

And he uprooted trees and demolished houses and otherwise made a pretty good living landscaping.

The bank foreclosed on his debt, though, and that was the end of him.

Welcome.

Welcome to the first instalment in a series of random selections from a meaningless correspondence. I plan to make everything a first instalment in a new series of something, thereby saving myself the effort of creating subsequent episodes. Enjoy!