Carbonic Energy

New this year:
• Dr. Gonzo Kablaa vastly increased the pot of cash at stake with his lawyer monies.
• The Refrigerator Award, which honors the worst short story entry by placing said entry inside The Refrigerator and photographing it. Congratulations to Morris Jameson on winning that award. See above photo.
• Nine stories were entered, a record high.

Winners this year:
First place prize of $350: Chuckminsterfullerene, for his story “Hat.”
Second place prize (Crag Dakkins’s pick) of $25: Doug Willis, for his story “Whoops!”
Second place prize (Gonzo Kablaa’s pick) of $50: Bandrew Blarson, for his ENORMOUS story “God Help The Girl”.

The stories follow. We’ve also included Deputy Grutch’s story “The Dick-Balls Problem: The Foley of Man Part II” because he’s Deputy Grutch. We would have published Nickasun’s story as well, but Asun said, “I only ask if you do read this and like it… DONT show it to others.” WUT? What if he had won? Doesn’t he realize how this contest works? One of outcomes of winning is publication of your story on the CE site, guy.

Hat
By Chuckminsterfullerene

“Hi Goober!”
My crazy Aunt June made her entrance again with her usual flair while my parents exited as quickly as possible trying to avoid her altogether. She would be my babysitter for the evening. Odd that my parents steered clear of this woman knowing her to be a complete fruit cake, yet they thought nothing of leaving her in charge of their children.
“Toodle-loo!” she chirped at my parents who were already speeding out of the driveway as if they expected the house to blow up.

“So?”
Aunt June paraded around the room striking strange random poses as if she were a figure on a gilded Grecian urn.
“So??”
I was supposed to notice something. She was fishing for validation and compliments. From a six year old.
She finally gave up with a sigh and an eye roll as if I had missed an obvious cue and, though only six, was already exhibiting symptoms of that disease called “man-ness.”
“So, how do you like my new hat?” she asked as she lifted her long flowery skirt off the floor with one hand and spun about the living room to model it. The hat was a monstrosity of barn straw and plastic fruits with the occasional pine-cone tossed in for balance. At the top was a dinged-up Campbell’s soup can decoupaged with an British country scene that looked like a fox hunt. The way the can shifted as she turned, pulling her head in various directions, indicated that it was still full of soup. Knowing Aunt June, this was likely a design choice. “Today a hat! Tomorrow – lunch!”
“I made it myself!”
Of course she did. No one else could have or would have. Someone charitable should have really taken away her glue gun.
“It’s beautiful!” I said.

Aunt June wasn’t really my aunt. She was the local crazy lady who loved children and had none of her own. This made her an easy target for free, last minute babysitting. We had other babysitters, but in a pinch Aunt June would do. This particular evening, a friend had called with two extra tickets to see ‘Wit’ It’s a comforting thought that my parents would only allow me to be emotionally damaged by a complete lunatic when it was absolutely necessary.
Rumor has it that June’s mother was also somewhat of a loony. Terrified of automobiles, when she went into labor with June, she hopped on her bicycle and pedaled her way toward the hospital. En route, contractions got the best of her and she gave birth in a roadside ditch. With nothing to cut the cord, she tossed the bloody baby into the bicycle’s basket and continued her journey on to the hospital. Due to her pain and blood loss, she had several mishaps along the way leaving baby June with permanent damage. The story has two basic punch lines, the most common being “No wonder she’s such a ‘basket case’.” My favorite ending was, because of June’s infantile brain damage, “I have such a ‘soft spot’ for that woman.”

“Did you bring me something from my birthday??” Even at five I knew she was such a nutjob that she might actually fall for this.
She stopped spinning, put her finger to her chin in a broad “I’m thinking” gesture, and replied, “You trickster you!” Then she chided, wagging a finger at me, “It’s not your birthday!”
“I know,” I said as I faked a laugh to hide my growing disappointment. I was hoping to swindle her for a Hamilton. “I was only kidding.”
Shocked pause.
“That’s not kidding,” she said, “that’s lying.” Then, starting in a low spooky tone and creeping toward me, she crescendoed “Every time you tell a lie, a baby in China Gets Thrown of a Cliff!
“Into the ocean?” I asked, wide-eyed with horror.
“ON TO THE ROCKS!” She declared, emphasizing each syllable as she pointing downward straight-armed at what I guess were imaginary rocks.
Now I don’t know if she was winging this or if it came from some obscure myth she had read in one of the many bibles she stole from the various cults she had joined, but she continued merrily “Then the Giant Pandas come and gobble them up.” She grabbed my stuffed bunny, Mr. Pufflekins, off the couch and tossed him to the spot on the floor where her imaginary rocks were. Then she pounced on him and demonstrated the vicious act of baby gobbling.
She pulled her teeth from the bunny, looked up at me and added, “Some of them, the unlucky ones, survive the fall and get eaten alive!”
She repeated her demonstration, only this time Mr. Pufflekins resisted and screamed, “No! Don’t eat me! I’m a cute little Chinese baby! No!” But it was hopeless. He was eaten.
It didn’t matter that there was no mechanism in place to alert the baby-tossers in China of my lies. The fact that huge tracts of China are free of cliffs and unsuitable for pandas was neither here nor there. It was irrelevant that giant pandas aren’t carnivorous scavenging pack animals. At five years old I still believed in Santa Claus and his good/bad list. Believing that my lies caused Chinese babies to be hurled onto the rocks and devoured by large flesh-eating marsupials really wasn’t that much of a stretch. I believed her, hook line and chopsticks.
“For all lies? Or just the really bad ones?”
“All lies.”
“What about lies you tell to people so you don’t hurt their feelings?”
“Even those.”
“In that case,” I said, “June, your hat is ugly!”

Whoops!
By Doug Willis

John was moving at about 1 meter per second, near as he could figure.  That’s about the speed of a slow walk—of course, it wasn’t really possible to walk out here.  John wasn’t sure why people called it a spacewalk.  This particular spacewalk wasn’t going well at all. John was moving away from his pod, towards nothing in particular.  Unless, of course, you considered his inevitable death to be something “in particular.”  He was headed straight for that.
John was doing some quick math in his head.  He had around 1 kilogram of jettisonable mass on his person, mostly in the form of his space-approved wrench, which was almost exactly like any other wrench.  It was certified to work in zero g, in temperatures between -150 to +200 K.  The notion of temperature in space had always confused John.  Vacuum, he figured, was the absence of temperature, so it wasn’t clear to him how this particular bar of metal was all that much more qualified than his father’s Craftsman wrench.  A nice Craftsman wrench set still sold for around $1600, and they came with a lifetime guarantee.  The wrench in his hand probably cost several multiples of that and without a guarantee…not that a lifetime guarantee would mean much in this case.
John figured that he could throw the wrench at about 10 meters per second.  Even if he was very precise and managed to throw it in the exact opposite direction from his pod, it wouldn’t provide enough delta V to get him back to the pod.  John massed in at around 120 kilos when fully geared up like this, and even a perfect toss would just slow him down.
That left his oxygen supply.  It was pure O2, around 40 kilos worth.  It was pressurized to 30,000 KPA, which gave him more than enough delta V to get back to the pod.  Trouble was, there wasn’t any way to get at all of that reaction mass.  There weren’t any hoses or knobs he could fiddle with on the exterior of his spacesuit; those sorts of things could get caught on a projection and lead to trouble.  Not that they were a requirement to get into trouble.
There were a lot of rules and regulations in John’s line of work, and most of them actually mattered.  Space, after all, is a dangerous place.  One of the more annoying rules associated with a spacewalk is the “tether rule.”  The suit is equipped with two tethers, and at least one of them is supposed to be hooked up to the pod at all times.  Each tether is around 1.5 meters long, and there are hook-up points every 1.5 meters along the surface of the pod.  The idea is, no matter where on the pod you want to go,  you can find a convenient hook.  For the most part, that’s true.
The main communications array is the only exception to that rule, because it juts out a good meter from the surface of the pod, and it’s located about halfway between two of those hookups.  The main communication array doesn’t usually need a lot of work, but one of the gimbals had gotten jammed and it was up to John to fix it.  A pod isn’t much use to the company without communications.  It was pretty tough to reach the gimbal when tethered in, so John had untethered himself to get closer.
John wasn’t even sure how it actually happened—it happened fast.  He was focused on the gimbal, he had his wrench in there, trying to free up the mechanism.  Something distracted John, a drop of sweat maybe, and his hand, which should have been holding on to the capsule, darted up towards his face and smacked into his visor.  John realized that he was free-floating in space and shot out his other hand to steady himself.  Instead of grabbing on to the array, his hand smacked against its surface and sent him slowly tumbling towards nothing in particular.
He had 5 hours of oxygen left.  No chance for anyone to get to him, even if they knew about his predicament, which they didn’t.  His only hope was to use that air to push himself back to the pod.  John wasn’t sure how much he liked that idea.  Modern spacesuit design hadn’t advanced much since the days of the early Astronauts.  They were still just a tough, pressurized sack of air.  John’s design had only a single seal at the neck.  Everything else was a single piece.   If only he had something to puncture the suit, he could control the oxygen flow and his direction.  But all he had was the stupid wrench.  Too dull to poke a decent hole in his high-tech suit.
Well, he only had one shot to get it right, and waiting would only make it harder.  He slid his glove up to the silver ring at his neck, squeezed the safety, and rotated the seal 90 degrees to the right.  There was a woosh as air started to escape from the suit, and the helmet blew off into space.  Further into space, thought John.
He contorted his body, trying to keep the sun at 20 degrees to his “right” and 20 degrees “up.”  He was doing it, more or less.  It was hard to see and harder to breathe because that’s what it’s like in space without a helmet.  6 seconds later, his right leg hit something hard, and he saw the pod go sliding by. In desperation, John whipped the wrench between his legs with all his might.  This sent John into a slow, looping, spin, and he saw the pod rotating in and out of his view, but getting just a little smaller with every pass.   John smiled, and his last thought before losing consciousness was “so close.”

God Help The Girl
By Bandrew Blarson

The funereal Cadillac Deville careens next to the curb. The brakes more happen than were applied causing the car to stop none the less. The casual observer would conclude that these actions reflect the reckless abandon or disregard for ones car, Richard Byrne watches the auto make its way in front of his apartment building and though the car is new the way the machine handles is unmistakable. He notices what the normal observer overlooks. However, Richard would be forced to agree that the driver is reckless and cares little for his car or self, but what Richard has known for years is that Django Rosenbaum is simply a terrible driver.
They had both learned this at fifteen, an age where many of life’s most valuable lessons are thrust on young men. Django had then, just as he has now, arrived in an unfamiliar car barely able to manage the art of the brakes and laid on the horn, just as Richard knows his friend will do any minute now. Richard had burst through the doors of his parent’s home and leapt into the passenger seat in a single fluid motion that can only be made in those exact circumstances. When Richard had asked his friend where he had picked up the old Ford, Django told him politely to shut up, before handing him the cigarette he was smoking and lighting a new one for himself. Before either cigarette was finished, the car at Django’s hand had demolished five traffic laws and a picket fence. Django had laughed the whole way pausing only to look at his friend and assure him that he would be fine. Once the business with the fence was completed Richard had tumbled out of the passenger seat while Django waltzed out of the driver’s side with the punch drunk grace he would later cultivate into a personal style and made his way over to Richard and placed his hand on his back as a way of signaling that they were both alive. Then the laughter that had possessed Django during their ride moved to Richard, making it almost impossible to ask what they were going to do about the car.
“Leave it,” Django replied. “It’s not our problem anymore.” And like that it wasn’t.
Now Richard sits on his window sill with a cup of cooling coffee in his hands watching his dearest friend exit a Cadillac. The frame of the car bends closer towards the street and shrug’s once Django left his seat. He is wearing light grey slacks that looked crisp and freshly laundered; his white dress shirt on the other hand looks as if it has been slept in and strains against his shoulders while the sleeves barely make it down his forearms exposing the tattoo that marks his right arm, a royal flush done all in red for hearts. A tidy grey fedora sits on top of his head, slightly pushed back. Sunglasses on an overcast day, a sure sign of a hangover.
Richard unlocks his door, knowing his friend will soon find his way up the stairs and to the door. And sure enough Django makes his way through the entry and slides into the kitchen two steps away. It is a small apartment. From shower to oven in three easy steps, it could almost be a selling point if it wasn’t so sad. By way of greeting Richard places the cup of coffee in his friend’s hands with instructions to “Hold this” while he retrieves his bag from a living room/bed room/study. A room plainly put Richard seldom leaves. With bag in hand Richard turns around just in time to see Django finish off his cup of coffee. They both shrug saying different things, Richard’s says, “Fuck you”, and in turn Django’s says, “What are you going to do? It was getting cold, plus with this hangover you wouldn’t want to be in a car with me if I hadn’t drank your coffee. And I’ve had better coffee in the drunk tank down at the station, so fuck you too”. And then they embrace. It is a quick hug, the kind where you use the time to check and see if the other person is the same as you last saw, and to get reassured you are the same too. The results must have cleared on both of the friends because they are both smiling after.
“Shall we?”
“Let’s hit the road.”
And with that they both exit the apartment which possess barely enough space to house them both and not instantly become a fire hazard. At the car Django tosses Richard the keys and says “You take the first shift.”This really means that Richard will be doing the bulk of the driving. They are both fine with this. Django is not fond of driving, mostly in cities. And Richard would like to live to see their destination.
The car starts perfectly, as if it had just rolled off the assembly line. It is a black box of automobile heaven. The Deville pulls out much smoother than it entered.
“This is a very nice car,” Richard puts forth.
Django looks over at him, trying to sense anything that might resemble a patronizing tone lurking underneath his friend’s words and finding none nods responding “Thank you. For such a trip as this I saw it only fit to acquire us a new set of wheels.”
“When you say ‘acquire’, what do you really mean?”
Django’s eyes roll behind the blackened lenses. “That the car is mine. Conditionally.”
“You see why the ‘conditionally’ part might bother a fellow”.
“Yes, but not such enlightened and understanding fellow as the one seated next to me on this fine day.”
Richard shots him a look that says “We will have this out later”. And then to drive his point home he says those words as well.
Once the car had become better acquainted with its driver and the road beneath it Richard let forth with something he feared might sour their journey, and while he felt bad about bombarding his friend with this he knew that to not alert Django of the odds he would be setting him up for a situation he would be unable to escape from, “Hey, you should know that there is a fifty percent chance things won’t turn out well once we get there. Things between Dagmar and I have been different of late, which is part of the reason we’re doing this. I just didn’t want you to walk into something you weren’t ready for. I needed to warn you. Now you’ve been warned.”It is all said in one hurried breath and after Richard stops breathing all together and focuses his eyes on the road ahead, afraid to look at the man next to him. By way of response Django lights two cigarettes, giving one to Richard, who thanks him, and then exhales his smoke and reply at one.
“Well, it’s a good thing you brought me along. Keep you both honest”.
And then they both laugh.
For Richard and Dagmar it had been a summer romance, the simplest kind. One filled with slow walks around the lakes until the late evening sun disappeared from view and they were forced to retire to a place filled with light, or as often as not stay in the privacy of darkness longer. Often after the sun had set Django would join them. The days were shared by two, while in the evenings they became three. Django would appear without any announcement but with a regularity which could have modeled an appointment he could never miss. He would take them to restaurants they would have never found or thought to enter without him or clubs that played the music he favored, ones with an old man doing his best to mimic Sinatra. The drinks were always strong and the clientele a rung below that which Richard and Dagmar were used to. These were Django’s places and his people and he was always met with a fresh drink and more than one woman giving him a look that was either distilled love or finely ground hatred. The three of them would eat, drink and dance together until the morning when Django would clap Richard on the back and kiss Dagmar on the cheek sending them home together while he stayed on a bit longer to either finalize the terms of an agreement with one of the female patrons or surrender and go home alone.
It’s easy to fall in love with someone you’ve known for years. You just look at them one night, usually through eyes tinted by liquor and things align themselves. Richard and Dagmar became two of the only people to have that moment accrue simultaneously. Django saw it too and just smiled to himself and had another drink.
One thing during that summer that Richard and Dagmar never missed was when Django had a fight. He was a light heavyweight amateur boxer and took fights as often as he could. The fights didn’t pay great but that was also where Richard came in. He placed bets for Django, usually in favor, but he was smart enough to know when he was outmatched and also when he was getting something extra to make it look good before he fell down in the fifth not to get up again. Richard always felt a tinge of betrayal betting against his friend, but Django was clear about how his money was to be bet. As much as he loved boxing he loved being able to survive even more. If a new car or suit was thrown into the mix as well it pleased him even more. He knew he was a good fighter; his record didn’t have to show him or anyone else for that matter. And if the matter needed to be decided out in the back of a bar Django happily obliged.
Fall started weeks ago. Summer ended and with it Richard worried about his relationship with Dagmar. She had left to continue school in Milwaukee while he remained in their native home of Minneapolis. They were separated by a six hour car ride made even worse by the fact that neither of them owned cars. The train remained an option. However between the arrival and departure times they would have only an afternoon together, which is not to say either of them would scoff at an afternoon alone together. They had seen each other only twice since the end of the summer. Once, on a lark, Richard did board a train bound eastward and surprised her at her apartment, which he was able to reach from memory pieced together from helping her move in and her letters and calls. It was a short visit made even painfully shorter by her constant need to pause their interlude from reality to make sure that she was on course with her school work. Richard had felt more frustrated than before and silently cursed himself for in a small way ruining what he had built up to be a defining moment in their relationship. He pictured himself the dashing romantic and her, the lady in waiting. The more Richard thinks of those moments, which he does in fact do, it is truly rather defining. The second visit had been with Django. There was a bout in which Django was the main event. Richard saw it as an opportunity to see Dagmar and support his friend who hated to travel alone. A small part of Richard suspected Django of requesting the fight in order for the three of them to be together, if only for a night.
The fight had been a hard one. It was clear to everyone by the fourth round that Django was outmatched and no one knew this better then Django himself. It seemed like everywhere Django bobbed his head his opponent ferreted out its location and connected with his right, or left for that matter. By round five he was slow on his feet and by seven it was obvious he was having trouble standing up after rounds. His trainer wanted to throw in the towel, call off the beating his man was taking but Django threatened to give him a beating himself if he used that towel for anything other than wiping blood off his face. Django wasn’t doing well as he was not outright dying. Only about one in eight punches found their mark and when they did it was plain to see he had nothing left in him besides his will to not fall. Part of Richard saw it is as friend’s Jewish ancestry coming out, his unwillingness to submit to insurmountable odds. Richard had never closed his eyes or turned away while watching his friend get pummeled but this fight he missed the final blow. His eyes clenched shut so tight he feared it might do damage to his eyes while his hand grasped Dagmar’s so hard it left a bruise.
They waited for him outside the locker room, hand in hand. Neither of them wanted to really see what his face looked like after all that punishment. The fight doctor had been in there a long time. Finally Django made his way through the double doors. Dagmar shook her head while Richard choked back tears. A line of stitches cut from the right side of his hairline to his cheek. His nose was broken. Most of his face was yellow from bruising and he had a bad case of raccoon eyes. By the way he walked Richard guessed at least three broken ribs. But when he saw who was waiting for him he smiled. It hurt to do so, but in the midst of the pain it only became wider. He sidled up to Dagmar and whispered in her ear so softly Richard couldn’t hear and started to walk a head of them. Dagmar reached for Richards hand and followed after him.
“What’d he say?” Richard asked her.
“He needs a drink.”
They left the choice of bar up to Dagmar. All Django wanted was a place that “serves vast quantities of booze,” which in dealing with bars is a simple request. She chose a small place that was far enough from the college to make Django feel comfortable and dim enough to make the damage to his face more bearable for them to look at. Django made instant friends the woman tending bar and a few regulars who huddled around the taps. He let loose with elaborate stories about how his face had become so banged up. He was an actor researching the role of a boxer or a racecar driver depending on how his story went. He claimed he had it in him to be the next Errol Flynn. They all laughed and bought him rounds. Django always had the gift to inspire generosity among strangers.
Dagmar and Richard enjoyed the time to themselves and their drinks. Hands flirted and lips exchanged coy messages. They paid as much attention to what the other was saying as they did to the shapes their lips were making. All the while Django drank and lied. Soon his fantasy world became too big to populate one man and they were dragged into the Hollywood mess. Richard became a Great Russian director and Dagmar a once famous ballerina they had rescued from a life of servitude in a Memphis honky tonk. Things seemed almost magical and they loved their Django for providing them with such a fantastical escape from their normal lives. And they played their roles, elaborating back stories and mannerisms. Richard faked an accent while Dagmar created a dance routine that brought the house down.
Django got too drunk. He downed anything they put in front of him. Richard knew it was time to leave once he started to willingly drink rum. Django hated the very essence of rum. It was time to get the hell out of dodge. The two carried the boxer/actor out of the bar, once outside Django seemed composed, almost sober.
“Dagie, my dear, would you please allow me a moment with our boy?” She complied and walked seven steps ahead of them. The act of being sober vanished in an instant. Django was all liquor again.
“I was going to win,” He grabbed Richard by the back of the neck, bringing their faces close together. Richard made out the smell of six distinct types of booze on his friends breath. “I was going to knock him on his ass. Flatten him. The old one-two.”
“I know pal, you had him on the ropes for awhile there”. Lying to a drunk was easy.
Django flashed a smile. It was brief. His mouth quickly setting into what could be called either a grimace or a look of supreme hatred. “You don’t get it, never did. I never stood a chance. A real chance, knew it from punch one. But I wanted it, God; I wanted it more than anything.”
“Why did this match matter so much? C’mon you’ve lost a dozen matches before.” Richard wasn’t sure if bring up past loses was a mistake or not.
“For her,” He made a jagged motion with his head towards Dagmar who was at the corner looking electric underneath the street light, as if she powered it on radiance alone. “She’s happier when I win, when I win fair. I wanted her to be happy for you. You need this.”
And then Richard realized why Django had agreed to fight an opponent who was clearly his superior. In light of this the wounds looked worse. Richard met his comrade’s swollen eyes and then kissed him once on the forehead, trying for a place that was not as bruised. Arm over arm they returned to Dagmar, who split them up only to join them together again with her in the middle.
The second ride to Milwaukee is taken up with talk of nonsense. They both know that during the ride back they will have more than enough time for silence and serious discussions. Music is a topic. Richard enjoys the new music hitting the scene where as Django sees it as a waste and preferred only the old standards. Everyone woman imaginable is mentioned besides Dagmar.
“I’m telling you, put me in a room with Sandra Dee and within an hour, tops, she would be all over me,” Django brags to Richard.
“Yeah, I’m sure a high-class woman like her would go for a guy who smells like he bathed in gin, I mean really did you spill the bottle last night?” Richard shots back ending in a laugh.
Django mockingly smells himself, “Huh, you know what; I don’t think his is my shirt.”
“What do you mean? How do you end up with someone’s shirt?”
“There was a lot of shouting this morning and I left in a hurry. Let’s just say her guy isn’t my size and I wasn’t going to stick around and get fitted for a shirt”.
Every time the car requires a filling station they switch who drives. And in each small town they stop in they see themselves as the world does: a Jewish palooka who dressed in finer clothes than they could dream of and the Irish academic who has a constant look as if he is about to mouth off. A perfect pair. Django buys as many apples as he can, tossing the cores out the window as they drive, aiming for signs but seldom hitting his mark. Both of them different times have the notion that this could be a perfect life. Never reaching a destination. But of course Milwaukee comes into view eventually. With Richard at the wheel they reach her apartment right as the day could be considered over and night has taken over. They ring the buzzer and wait to be allowed in. Django lays a hand on his friends back in a show of support.
“Keep me from ruining things right off the bat will ya?” Richard asks.
“What’d you have in mind?”Django raises an eye brow until it meets his scar from his last visit to The City of Festivals.
“You got any rye in your case?”
“Never leave home without.”
“Then we should be fine.”
The buzzer finally goes off and they march in. Richard leads Django to the door and Django gives it a much lighter version of his old one-two as a way of knocking. The door opens and there she stands looking fabulous in dress and apron, as if they were meant to be paired together and she picked the outfit from a mannequin. First she goes to Django and wraps her arms around him. He returns the gesture with vigor and resists the urge to swing her around. Next she moves to Richard and Django averts his eyes. Her apartment is no bigger than Richards. A one room palace. But it smells great. From the looks of it Dagmar has been cooking all day and is ready to feed a long boat full of Vikings, or at the very least two weary men who have been stuck in a car for over six hours.
“You two are just in time; the food is ready to be served. Would either of you like wine with the meal?”
“Yes.” They both reply.
“Red or white?”
`    “Yes!” It was obvious what the answer was going to continue to be.
The dinner is amazing. Some exotic dish that combined pasta, a red sauce that made your mouth water before and after you tasted it and vegetables neither of them had heard of let alone tasted and bread so warm it hurt to touch. It had been a long time since either of the men had consumed a home cooked meal and their hearts were thankful for it. Once the plates were cleared by Django and washed by Richard with an occasional assist at drying by Django when he wasn’t showing Dagmar how he laid out some Polack. After all that is completed Django brakes out his bottle of rye and pours generous helpings into three glasses, taking the trouble to water down one which in turn is handed to Dagmar. Once half the bottle is polished off the question of what to do now is finally broached. Django wants to dance and no one could see any reason why they shouldn’t all be permitted to do so at that very instant. Dagmar put on a record. Django goes into the bathroom to change his shirt into a much crisper white naturally fitting dress button down, one that belongs to him. As he opens the door he sees Dagmar and Richard swaying in each other’s arms. He waits in the door way until they both notice him when the record skips.
They decide a night club is in order. Dagmar leads the charge, this being her turf and finds them a former speak-easy that has low lights, high hats and a band that knows how to play. It seems every other round is on Django. Dagmar spends four slow dances with Richard, three with Django in which during the last steps she whispers in his ear, asking him, if he would please take a few laps around the block once they returned home, taking his time. He immediately understands her meaning; this isn’t for his health but theirs. After that they spend the rest of the night dancing as a trio, which is where they look their best.
The cab returns them to the apartment and as promised Django takes his laps around the block. He counts thirteen times before he comes back to the door worse for the wear begging to be allowed inside. The buzzer ushers him in and Richard meets him at the door in his undershirt and pants.
“Ten more laps.”
“Six, it’s cold.”
“Nine.”
“She have a bathtub in there?”
She does. So Django Rosenbaum spends the night in a bathtub, fully clothed with his hat covering his eyes.
Morning creeps up on them all. They all in turn use Django’s bed to wash the night off before while Richard makes eggs. They keep their eyes on the clock. They know time is running out.
“These are the best eggs I have ever had,” Django declares smiling with his mouth full.
“What about the breakfast I made you last time I housed the both of you? You claimed that it was and I will quote you now, because it has been stuck in my mind ever since, ‘better than fucking Gina Ellis back in senior year’, I mean I’ve never seen her in action, but I can imagine it’s better than runny eggs made by him,” Dagmar hooks her thumb to indicate Richard who looks in mock horror at the words coming of her mouth.
“And it was a fine breakfast no doubt. But, the prize still goes to our boy here, I can’t count the number of times he has made me eggs and every time they reach new heights, he works miracles.” It has become obvious that Django will not betray his friend, even in matters of eggs. Richard just laughs and Dagmar feigns pouting over the slight and Django looks down at his plate, smiles to himself and finishes off the best eggs he has ever had. They all try not to look at the clock which sits on the oven ticking away their moments together.
“I would kill a man for some orange juice right now.” Django proclaims knowing it will give him an excuse for Richard and Dagmar to talk before they are forced to retreat back to their proper home. So Django leaves them at the table silent and wanders the streets of an unfamiliar city in search of a pulpy drink. Upon his return, drinking straight from the container, he sees Richard on the steps waiting for him, not looking either sad or happy, just like Richard.
“We need to get home. She has work in an hour and I need to finish up my thesis.”
“I’m just going to say my good-byes”. Django polishes off the juice and throws the carton into the street.
She is sitting where he left her the dishes still on the table containing what is left of everyone’s morning meal. She looks like Richard does. He smiles because it is all he knows how to do. She returns the smile everywhere but her mouth. They hug and this time he does spin her.
Richard takes first shift again. Right before they exit the city limits he asks a question, “Do you mind if I turn in the radio?”
Django sees no problem with this. Richard finds a station he likes, one that is playing Bob Dylan.
“You know I dislike this fellow,” Django starts. “I know you know this. It has been discussed, I believe on our way here.”
“I do know this”
“I want you to notice how I am not reaching for that dial. How I am letting this sit.”
“I noticed.”
“Only for you, sweetness.” And not another word is uttered for 40 miles.
When words do find themselves back into the car it is Django who forces it.
“So. How was the exit conversation?”
Richard pauses before he speaks. “About as well as expected. Nothing is ever really settled. She loved me. I love her. But, what else can be said?”
He lights two cigarettes, hands one to his dearest without him asking. He says thank you, just like he does every time.

The Dick-Balls Problem: The Foley of Man Part II
By Deputy Grutch, ATBE

Sean Connors had a dick-balls problem.  Not that his dick or balls didn’t work as advertised.  No sir, no flaccid hose risk here.  He could get strong.  All that email about penis enlargement pills must have been for a different Sean Connors, or perhaps whomever connor23@usu.edu was.  Was connor23 a chick or dude, he wondered?

A cool breeze brought Sean back to reality.  The dick-balls problem in question was that neither was covered by underpants.  And the non-existent underpants were covered by equally non-existent pants, which matched his non-existent shirt.  That Sean Connors wasn’t wearing any clothes wasn’t so terrible, except that he was outdoors, in public, and USU took a dim view of public nudity.

Technically speaking, Sean was off University property.  The Theta Beta Tau sorority house and its lot were privately owned.  Not that that mitigated Sean’s circumstances.  That didn’t help things at all.  The daylight darkened slightly, and Sean became aware of someone else.

“Hey!  Come over here!” commanded a husky, yet feminine voice.

Sean turned to face his interlocutor, and saw a brick shithouse of a woman, in a police uniform.  He read the officer’s name tag:

•    KUNT

“Yes, how can I assist you, Officer, uh…”

The cop sighed.  “Go ahead and say it.”

“Uh, thank you, yes, how may I assist you, Officer Cunt?”

Kunt kicked Sean in the genitals.

“HOLYFUCKINGCHRISTWHATTHEFUCKYOUTOLDMETOSAYIT!!!”, he moaned.

Kunt considered the sobbing man-child curled before her in the fetal position.

“I didn’t tell you to misprounounce ‘coon’, she said calmly.

“GODDAMNITILLFUCKINGSUEFUCKINGSUE!!!”, Sean whimpered.  He was trying to remember the phone number of that “Ask Gary” lawyer whose ads were all over.

“Says the naked man outside the sorority house”.

As Sean’s vision shifted from nebulous colored blobs to more concrete sights, he considered the cop’s words.

“There is that.”
“Don’t feel too bad son.  If I had a nickel for every young man I found naked outside of TBT…”

“You’d have quite a bit of money?”  Sean asked, hopefully.

“No, I’d have a nickel now.  But too many people don’t get that nickels and dimes add up, you see.  I appreciate the value of  a dollar.  Or a nickel, as it were.”

“Umm…”

“But enough about me, let’s talk about you.  Why are you naked outside of TBT?”

“Well, there was a party, and these girls, got me to take off my clothes, but then they pushed me out the window!”

Kunt thought for a minute.

“Interesting story.  Might even be true.”

“It IS true!” wailed Sean plaintively.

“Could be.  I’m going with I responded to a call of a possible sex pervert outside of TBT.  Yep, that’s the story I’m going with.”

“WHATIAMGOINGTOTELLMYPARENTSMYGIRLFRIENDTHESTUDENTCONDUCTBOARD!?” Sean cried.

Kunt squatted and looked Sean in the eye.

“Whatever you tell them, would it be worse than a swift kick to the junk?”

Sean did not have an answer.

Vegasasun
By Nickasun

<Entry withdrawn at the request of the author (he lacks confidence)>

Day Eighteen

As I gazed over the railing into the gaping maw of Mount Mihara, I was overcome with a feeling of awe for all creation.  This experience was heightened by the presence of Meiko’s prehensile digits wrapped tightly ‘round my cock.  The other tourists didn’t seem to notice.  If they did, maybe they thought she was seeking the warmth of my nether regions – it was kind of a cold day.

In the 1930s, a lot of people visited Mount Mihara.  They visited it to die.  The volcano has long since become inactive, but back when it wasn’t, back when America and Japan were undergoing Depressions (America’s was economic, Japan’s was biochemical), over 600 Japs developed an addiction to lava and launched themselves over the protective railing into the molten rock below.  It was an especially silly time in Japanese history.

The mountain lies on an island about 60 miles away from Tokyo, and there is a ferry that takes you over there.  The trip was going to be an all-day investment, so I had to skip work.  I’m not getting paid, so I don’t care.

This morning I waited outside of Language Institute in order to snag Meiko before she entered the building.  I’m still not very good at telling Japs apart, even the beautiful ones from the ugly ones, but with a little bit of luck I was able to find her.

She was overjoyed.  We hadn’t had a chance to hang out since the time I fucked her in a restaurant bathroom.

I gave her the cubed cat and she became so excited that she jumped up and down, clapping her hands.  I thought the police might arrest her for such a display of emotion.  Fortunately, none of those funny little men in their adorable little suits and blowing their cute little whistles were anywhere in the area.  Meiko said, “I like cat”, which I took to mean that she liked the cat, fucked-up cube as it may be.  Then she hugged me.  Thinking about the law, I resisted the urge to start feeling her up right there on the street.  Mount Mihara would be a more appropriate public venue for lewd conduct with a minor (if that’s what she was).  And so it came to pass that her arm was placed under my jacket and her hand inside my pants while I beheld the concavity of Mount Mihara.

You’d think a 60-mile ferry ride would take a while.  Think back to the last time you were in a pool.  Remember how it was harder to walk through the water than it was to walk through the normal, waterless areas of everyday life?  That’s because water offers resistance.  There’s also the fact that a ferry is big.  Think back to the last time you saw a manatee.  They have corpulent bodies that make them move slowly.  A ferry has to deal with being both big like the manatee and it has to traverse waterful areas. Logic would dictate that the ride would be ungodly slow and boring.  Not so.  It took an hour to get to the island.  Don’t underestimate the Japanese.  Remember that these are the people who invented the bullet train.  You don’t think they could make version  2.0 of the ferry?  What are you – stupid?

I told all of this stuff to Meiko in the interest of giving her a science lesson that she could use.  I don’t ask that the women I’m banging be especially smart, but they do have to know the fundamentals, one of which is “water is thicker than air”.

A Jap ferry is a pontoon; a pontoon that hovers; a nuclear pontoon that hovers.  I don’t know the exact science of it.  What do you want from me? Maybe they like nuclear things because it’s a part of their history.  Who knows?

I blew my load in my pants as we took one last look at the inside of the dead volcano.  We started back toward the ferry, arm in arm, and I got to thinking about stuff – about my shitty job, about my Yakuza job offer from Jeffries, about my dumbass roommates, about my go-nowhere life back in the states, about being in a foreign land, and about life itself.  Yeah, I think about stuff like that sometimes.  So?  It doesn’t mean I’m a pussy!  I had this beautiful girl on my arm and untold possibilities for the future.  I thought that maybe this right here – taking nuclear ferry rides, looking at dead volcanoes, and getting whacked off in public – were just about as sweet as life could get.  I paused, then headed back toward the volcano.  From my pocket I withdrew my tin of weed.  The one engraved with Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo symbol.  (If you don’t know what that symbol looks like, fuck you.)  My grandfather had given me that tin, but he probably didn’t intend for me to use it to store marijuana.  I held my hand out over the volcano pit and splayed my fingers, effectively dropping the container.  It bounced around on the rocks below.  Change was required and this was the first step.  I had been doing too much drugs and alcohol and this was just the sort of dramatic gesture I needed to get me back on the right track.  I needed to say goodbye to that part of my life.

I looped my arm through Meiko’s, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and we resumed walking down the path to the ferry.

“I love to you,” she whispered in my ear.

“You what?  You love me?”

“Yes.  So sorry.”  She smiled and blushed.  She had a look in her eye.  Not the I-want-to-get-my-pussy-wet sort of look, but the I-am-frightened-and-vulnerable-and-I-therefore-want-to-suck-the-life-force-out-of-you sort of look.

Fuck.  She did love me.  This always happens to me!

“What?” I said, worried. “Did you look into my eyes or something?  Cuz let me tell you, my eyes are traps.  Pay no attention to them.”

“No.  You do what you do.”  Here she mimicked my dropping of the weed tin.  “Very strong of you.”

How would she have understood the significance of that gesture?  My stomach was starting to hurt.

“Excuse me for one second,” I said, and ran back up the path.  As I climbed over the railing and carefully slid in a standing position a few hundred yards down to the bottom of the volcano, I had to wonder exactly what the fuck it was Meiko thought she saw when I dropped the weed tin.  She had no idea what it contained, nor had she ever seen me use drugs.  Why did she say my gesture was strong?  As far as I could tell, she had no understanding whatsoever of the implications of the act. I’m sure she saw some emotion in my eyes – it didn’t matter what kind of emotion – and this was moving to her.  Passion is all these fucking women understand.  Reasons don’t mean shit to them. Women are the same the whole world over, even in the superior nation of Japan.  I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up dope smoking for Meiko or for anyone else.  See, women make you stupid.  Their illogic rubs off on you.  I won’t be getting all misty-eyed and sentimental with Meiko, or any other woman, ever again.  Even if she does tug on my junk. I found my grandfather’s tin amid the ash and obsidian chunks.

As I got back to Meiko, I must have given a hint of my emotional state (that is to say that I was experiencing some kind of emotional state), because Meiko gave a loving smile in response to my passionate discontent.  I showed her that I had retrieved the weed tin and it seemed to make her love me even more.  Why?  Fuck if I know.  I made out with her and felt her up on the ferry ride back to Tokyo.  The elderly couple sitting across from us pretended not to notice.

When I got back to my apartment there were ambulances everywhere.  Apparently, a lot of people had to go to the hospital and a few people died when the building was fumigated this afternoon.  I crossed my fingers as I opened my front door; alas, it was too much to hope for: Dumbass Adrian was still alive and well, and watching some Japanese television.

“Did you hear the news?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“NO!  DID SOMETHING HAPPEN!!?” I shouted as I ran in a few panicky circles around the room for dramatic emphasis.

“Yes, didn’t you see the ambulances outside?”

“How could I fucking miss them?  There are about 20 of them out there.”

“Twelve people died.  Over a hundred more have been hospitalized.  Lucky for you and me, we were at work at the time.  Lucky for Chris, he was in jail.  It almost makes you believe there is a God.”

“Don’t tell me what I fucking believe.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.  I meant ‘you’ in the general sense.  Like how people use the word ‘one’ sometimes.”

“One is a number.  You some kind of idiot?”

“I mean ‘one’ when it is used the other way. You know?  Like, for example, ‘One should vote Democrat,’ you know?”

“Don’t vomit your slogans on me.  The Democrats have ruined America.”

“Forget it,” he sighed.

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

Adrian ignored this.  I restrained myself from smiling.  Sometimes it was fun talking to this guy.

As I grabbed a bottle of Suntory, Adrian ended his 20-second silent treatment.

“Oh!  The director of the building left a message for you.  It’s in an envelope on the counter.  If you’re having rent problems, maybe I can help out.”

“Naga pays my rent, but I’ll gladly accept any contributions you’d like to make.”

Dumb shit.  Pay my rent?  Empty words.  He just thought it would be a nice thing to say.  Empty words from a dumb shit.

“Seriously though.  I know you like to make wisecracks, but I could probably help out if you needed it.  I like having you around, Gonzo.  You’re a good guy.”

“That’s Dr. Kablaa to you, scumbag.”

Adrian went back to his TV program.  I opened the envelope and read the message.  The short of it is the Human Warehouse Director believes that I’m responsible for the day’s poisonings and says he has video evidence to prove it.  He wants to meet me tomorrow to “discuss my options”.  Fun!  This must be that evidence for God’s existence that Adrian was talking about!  I took my Suntory and wedged myself in between two foldouts, drinking myself stupid as I watched the program Adrian was watching.  It was a cartoon about a hippopotamus that eats children.  Every five minutes or so, the program cuts to live action children dancing in front of an animated background.  They live inside the hippo’s stomach and do a lot of dancing or something.  It was all so stupid.  And I’m not saying that because I’m upset about possibly getting into some serious shit tomorrow.  It really was a stupid show.

Day Nineteen

I was pretty hammered this morning.  I expected the worst and I wanted to soften the blow.  I walked into a room that I assumed was a waiting room, since there were lots of people sitting in chairs waiting.  But then I saw the Human Warehouse Director kneeling at his desk and conversing with someone, and I knew this had to be his office.  It was kind of a tight space, so any conversation you had with the HWD would likely be overheard by everyone who was waiting to speak to him.  The Japanese are superior to Americans in many ways, but they still haven’t made technological improvements in the ways of privacy.  These are the people who still have paper walls in most of their homes.  You can hear every sex grunt in every other room in those houses.  This office showed a regression in Japanese privacy technology, as there appeared to be no walls at all, not even paper ones.  Maybe part of the reason Japs are so filled with shame is because of their lack of privacy.  If I knew that all my actions and conversations were being watched I might be more self-conscious, too.  Then again, I have had public sexual relations with Meiko a few times during my stay here and that didn’t bother me.

The HWD was not a Jap.  That much I could tell from his brown hair and eyes that were ovals instead of slits.  He looked like he was German or something.

When the HWD saw me enter the room, he excused the Jap he was talking to and motioned for me to come and have a kneel.  I was apparently a VIP, which was cool, though it was kind of a bittersweet feeling under the circumstances.  I stepped over the long legs of two twin blondes as I made my way to the desk.  I winked at them and they looked at each other and laughed, seemingly at my expense.  I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t have winked.  That split second when they weren’t able to see my eyes was probably enough to turn me from Don Juan into Donald Duck.  By the way, Johnny Depp was in a movie about Don Juan.  It wasn’t as good a performance as the time he played Hunter S. Thompson (OBVIOUSLY!) but it was still one of the best performances ever.  Depp, like Christian Bale, is one of the greatest actors of all time.

I took a seat (kneel).

“So, you like Johnny Depp?” said the HWD.  “He is pretty good, isn’t he?  I especially liked him in that pirate movie.”

This was fucking trippy.  “Dude, can you read my fucking mind, or what’s going on here?”

The HWD seemed taken aback.  “I really don’t like that kind of language, Dr. Kablaa.  I was simply commenting on the DVD case you are holding in your hand.”

I looked in my hand and saw that I was holding a copy of Don Juan De Marco.  Shit, I was really drunk.  It all started to come back to me though.  Last night I had been watching some of my DVDs that I had brought over from the states.  By “watching” I mean that I was watching the DVD cases, since none of the fucking machines over here would play U.S. DVDs.  It was a good activity for the imagination, though.  I got to try to imagine the scenes from the movie and even make up a few scenes of my own.  When I “watched” Equilibrium, I imagined a scene in which Christian Bale finds me, Dr. Kablaa, under a pile of rubble and I join forces with him.  We machine-gun a lot of people with those super machine guns they have.  Then we have sex with Keira Knightley.  Not at the same time, guy!  I’m not a gaylord.  We took turns.  And I know that Keira Knightley isn’t in that movie, but I made a few directorial decisions in my version of the movie.

“Oh…yeah.  Johnny Depp is pretty good,” I said to the HWD.  “Listen, am I in some trouble here?  Because I really didn’t intend to cause any trouble, Mr. Human Warehouse Director.”

“Oh, I’m not the director.”

“No?  I was told to go into this room to talk to the Human Warehouse Director.  Could you direct me to him?”

“Certainly.”  The fake HWD scooted on his knees a few feet to the side.  Directly behind him was a small television screen with an ordinary everyday looking Japanese man staring out of it.  In fact, he looked about as ordinary and everyday as the Japanese man who visited my apartment that one day when I was fucking around with all the foldouts.  He dropped some acid, if I remember correctly.  And not the good kind of dropping acid.  The bad kind; the kind where the floor melts and it’s implied that this is what will happen to you if you don’t start to behave.  Yeah, I remembered this ordinary-looking, everyday Jap all right.  He had made quite an impression on me.

“Can he see me?” I asked.

This was met with lots of incoherent Jap shouting from the screen.

Fake HWD said, “He says that he can see you.”

I knew I should just come clean, maybe be a little apologetic (but not too much) and things might work out in my favor.

“OK, so two days ago I cleaned a robot’s clock in one of your hallways.  He started it, though!  He hung one of those flyers on my back pocket.  I think one of your programmers must have given it mischievous directives.”

Fake HWD moved back to his original position, blocking the real HWD from my view.

“Why do you speak for him?” I asked. “Can’t I talk to him myself?  He’s the one who is going to decide my fate.  Frankly, I don’t see what you have to do with any of it.”

“Mr. Naganoto does not speak to anyone but me.”

“Just a second ago he said that he could see me.  He responded to one of my questions.  That qualifies as talking to me.”

“Forgive me. I was just telling you that to be polite.  To paraphrase, he was really telling me to get that f-wording derogatory American slang out of my sight.  He wanted me to block you from his field of vision.”

“He’d rather just look at your back?”

“Yes.”

“What was the derogatory slang? I can’t think of any derogatory terms that would actually insult Americans.”

“He called you a hot dog.”

“Hot dog?  That’s not derogatory.  In fact, it might say something about my endowment.  Are we talkin’ foot-longs here?”

“No, it is derogatory.  In Japan, the slang ‘hot dog’ refers to the constituent elements that comprise a hot dog.  This part from a cow, this part from a pig, this part from a donkey, et cetera.  By calling you a hot dog, he is calling you a mongrel.  He means to say that your race is impure and it has made you stupid, dirty animals who die an average seven years before Japanese people do, usually from heart attacks caused by real hot dogs.”

“Well, I may be a mongrel, but he’s a mongoloid.  Years of incest among close-quartered Asians and Asian royalty have created people that look unmistakably like the people with Down Syndrome do in our country.  Coincidence?”

Fake HWD was silent.

“Translate that for him.  I’d like to see his response.”

“I believe it would be best if I did not translate that for him.  He has likely translated it by now anyway, because he has his own machine.”

“Yeah, maybe we should stick to business.  All this good-natured ribbing is kind of pointless.  Say, if he doesn’t need you to translate, what does he need you for?”

“I speak for him.”

“So you are a translator.”

“No.  I represent him.  He does not tell me directly what to say.  You might have noticed before that he is capable of shouting out of that television screen whenever he wants.  That is the only way that he communicates with me while I’m in this room.  I do not have a radio in my ear or any teleprompter before me, as you can clearly see.  He mostly just sits back and watches me engage in meetings.”

“Interesting.”

“Now, to the business at hand.  You interfered with our delivery-bot’s duties two days ago and it had catastrophic consequences.  What we are mostly concerned about is the bad reputation that this will give us.  People do not like to rent apartments where they are not given advance notice that their apartments will be filled with poison gas.”

“It was dumb of me to throw those warnings in the garbage.  I’m sorry.  Could I take over delivery duties or something for a while to make it up to you?  I’m far more logical than a robot.”

“No.  Asimo robots don’t make the mistakes that human beings do.  Our robot does a much better job than you would do.  This is not meant as an insult, but as a fact of reality that people living with robots have to come to terms with.”

“Hey, didn’t you listen to my fucking story?  The stupid robot hung a warning notice on my back pocket instead of Jeffries’s doorway.  Did Jeffries even get out of the building alive, by the way?  I hope to God he did, because otherwise his death is on your ass, not mine!”

“Jeffries is fine.  He’s in jail.  He’s under suspicion of being connected with certain criminal organizations.  You might find yourself investigated for the same reason sometime in the near future.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I told you to watch that language.  And I think you know what I’m talking about.”

I thought it best to be quiet and let him talk.  I really didn’t know what they knew about all of my goings-on.

“Mr. Naganoto believes that you did not attempt to bring him to financial ruin.  He laughs derisively at the idea of any American even thinking of thinking of thinking – his words – that they could ruin him financially.  However, he is certain that the recent poisoning will result in some economic setbacks.  The court fees will likely be enormous and he’ll probably have to lower his rates in order to ward off this shame.  Mr. Naganoto is a reasonable man…”

“Oh good!  I like reason!”

“Yes, he does, too.  He understands that you probably don’t have the means to give him restitution in the amount of several million dollars, so he is going to ask you to do a favor for him.”

“Don’t you mean that YOU are going to ask me to do a favor for him?”

“Well, yes.”

“Here’s what I don’t get.  If he only talks to you, how come he personally visited my room that one night I was trying to bend and break the foldouts?”

“Dr. Kablaa, it is not in your best interest for me to discuss all the nuances or inconsistencies of his character.  Right now I would just like to tell you what you have to do in order to avoid a prison sentence for the rest of your life.”

I didn’t like the idea of prison for the rest of my life, so I paid careful attention.

“There are two tasks.  They are relatively simple.  One: Mr. Naganoto would like you to re-stock the beer machines in the building every week.  So far, this is one area in which the Asimo robots have proved useless.  Two: Mr. Naganoto would like you to impregnate his daughter.  The details of this task will come at a later time.”

“Uh, your boss wants me, a ‘hot dog’ American, to knock up his daughter?”

“Yes.  Incidentally, he is not my boss.”

“Of course he isn’t.  How silly of me.  OK, I guess if that’s all I have to do, I can swing that.  What’s the catch?  Is his daughter real ugly or something?  Is she barren?  If she’s barren, I don’t accept the deal.  There are many sexual miracles I can work, but making babies where they can’t be made isn’t one of them.”

“Don’t be concerned. She is actually both beautiful and fruitful.”

“Something about this doesn’t seem quite right.”

“Do we have a deal, Dr. Kablaa?”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Fake HWD had me sign a few papers and he handed me a janitor’s uniform that already had my last name sewn onto it.  He must’ve known beforehand that I’d accept the deal.

We shook hands and I stepped over the legs of several people who had listened to everything that just transpired.  Most of them were Americans, so they likely understood what was being said, too.  I guess I felt a slight increase in shame that they knew I had basically been forced into the life of a Janitor Stud.

I napped for the rest of the day and resumed drinking in the evening.  I had missed a few days of work, so I’d probably go tomorrow.  I suppose there will be repercussions.  Same old, same old.  My life is one long series of repercussion after repercussion.  My janitor job is very part-time, so I hope I’m not fired from teaching just yet.  Naga would stop paying my rent if I got fired.  That would increase the stranglehold that this Naganoto cocksucker has on me.

I tried to forget about these thoughts and instead I started masturbating to thoughts of those two blonde twins I saw in Naganoto’s office earlier in the day.  Someday I’d seek them out for sex in a less imaginary setting.

Loaded with spoilers from the first two seasons:

KABLAA
Uh oh, Lori’s upset because she can’t find Carl! I guess her practice of never keeping track of his whereabouts ever didn’t work out so well.

DAKKINS
Lori in the bag.

KABLAA
Asian Glenn got pretty good at shooting, considering his accuracy at shooting from a moving car.
I guess that training really paid off.
You know, that one day of training.

DAKKINS
“Let’s drive really fast and haphazardly around the yard and shoot at the zombies. Let’s completely lose all sense of order.”

KABLAA
Grimes had the sort of good idea of leading the zombies into the barn and lighting them on fire. They should be doing more things like that.

DAKKINS
Yes.
The Videogum reviews kept calling him Grimes and I thought it was a joke of some kind. I didn’t know it was his actual name.

KABLAA
Got a big horde of zombies that are everywhere? How about instead of shooting some small portion of them while you drive around aimlessly, you work together to lead them all away as pack? Drive in a straight line, just slow enough that they can follow you, then lead them like 10 miles away.
They might come back, but at least it’d give you enough time to formulate a plan for dealing with a horde of zombies that you’d never bothered to think about before.
Maybe find a way to lead them all to that swamp where zombies seem to get stuck pretty easily.
Then fucking torch the swamp.

DAKKINS
If they led the zombies ten miles away to leave them there, the zombies would say something that would suggest that they know where the humans live. Then the humans would have to take the zombies back to the farm, lock them up in a shed, and debate about what should be done with them. Dale would probably cry during the debate.

KABLAA
If they really want to solve the zombie problem, maybe they should just build a giant refrigerator.

DAKKINS
yes yes

KABLAA
That shotgun that Herschel is using that’s fired like 20 shells sure holds a lot of ammunition.

DAKKINS
Yes, I laughed at that.

KABLAA
“I can’t get through” -Just about the dumbest fucking thing said in this series so far. Oh, your fucking car can’t drive through 10 zombies? What does it have, like a .5 cylinder engine?

DAKKINS
I wasn’t even sure what she was looking at in that scene.

KABLAA
Hey idiots, maybe try leading the zombies to that big fire you started.
Daryl: “I’m going to kind of sit back and watch. Maybe it isn’t the best idea, but it seems better than just sort of driving around aimlessly”

DAKKINS
He knows the score.

KABLAA
HE GETS THE GIRLS!
Not yet, though. I don’t think he’s gotten laid once.
SHUT YOUR FACE, CARL!

DAKKINS
Rick should present the barrel of his gun to Carl and say, “Carl, now if you don’t be quiet, this is going up your pooper. I won’t pull the trigger yet, but I’ll put it there if you don’t be quiet.” in that tone of voice he always uses with Carl.
“Dale’s death was your fault, buddy,” what Rick should say to Carl when he starts up with the sass

KABLAA
“Remember the time you caused Dale’s death? We don’t really want a repeat of that, do we?”

DAKKINS
“Remember how you were a weak pussy and Shane used that bit of info to goad me into killing him? We don’t want a repeat of you being a weak pussy.”

KABLAA
Oh, neat, everyone showed up at the exact same time.
Wait, who’s Patricia?
I guess she’s dead, but I don’t remember who the hell she is.

DAKKINS
Fuck, I don’t know.
One of Hershel’s daughters?
“Oh woah woah what WHOOPS!” – the guy who opened the door of the RV to a horde of zombies

KABLAA
I like how they seem to have a preference for the most gas inefficient vehicles they can find.
Shane’s retarded plan to kill Frank was pretty funny, but I guess not really in a LOL sort of way.

DAKKINS
“Ow! What are you doing to my neck!?”

KABLAA
No, Frank Grimes, not that random guy they had no idea what to do with.
Or maybe his name isn’t Frank.
You know, whatever the Sheriff’s name is.

DAKKINS
Frank Grimes is a character from the best Simpsons episode.
Rick

KABLAA
“We have to go back for Frank!”
“Who?”
“Frank. You know, my husband.”
“I thought his name was Graham.”
“No, that’s not it. Randy? Does that sound right.”
“No, that’s not it either.”
“You know what, it doesn’t matter. We need to go back for the Sheriff guy. The one who’s my husband.”

DAKKINS
“Hey, Hershel, remember how great life was for your family and zombie farm before we all stopped by? Great times.”

KABLAA
“Shane is dangerous. He thinks I belong to him. You need to be careful, because I suspect Shane might mean you harm.”
“I killed Shane after he told me point blank that he intended to kill me.”
“HOW COULD YOU DO THAT?! GET OUT OF MY SIGHT!!”
“I killed Shane” Rick tells everyone, and then explains Shane was unstable. Hey, guy, maybe you should mention the part where Shane told you point blank he was going to kill you, and had a gun pointed at you. Couldn’t hurt your attempt to convince everyone you aren’t insane.
And maybe don’t phrase it like “I killed my best friend for you people.”

DAKKINS
Probably didn’t want to get into the whole Shane-wanted-to-butt-my-wife-and-rear-my-child thing.

KABLAA
Yeah, that would be more awkward than everyone thinking you were an unstable murderer.
“You wanna leave? Go ahead! No, I’m actually serious. I don’t fucking like you, I think you’re worthless, and I’m confident the group would be better off if you were gone. You don’t have any fucking useful skills at all, you’re not really attached to anyone in the group, your stupidity gets you in trouble repeatedly, and all you ever fucking do is bitch at everyone. I don’t want you to be here, at all. I think your idea of leaving the group is probably the best idea you’ve ever had, at least from my perspective. Fucking leave.” -What I would’ve told Sophia’s mom, instead of that impassioned speech about how I murdered my best friend and how I was going to run things like a dictator from henceforth.

INTERMISSION!

KABLAA
“CHRIST, THERE’S ZOMBIES EVERYWHERE! WHAT’RE WE GONNA DO!”
“I guess we could gut a zombie and cover ourselves in its guts so they think we’re just another zombie like we did that one time when we walked through the horde of ten thousand zombies, but then never bothered doing again.”

DAKKINS
They forgot about it, just like Lori forgets about how she feels sometimes.

KABLAA
By the way, that scene was gay and fake and stupid. Like the one scene from Shaun of the Dead. You know what one I’m talking about.

DAKKINS
No, not as gay as that scene.

KABLAA
In the interview I sent you an excerpt of, the show runner guy said Lori was so sad that Rick killed Shane because she suddenly realized that she loved Shane, and she was upset that the man she loved killed the other man she loved, and then half in the bag whatever.

DAKKINS
Yeah, I don’t really think Lori’s behavior is unrealistic.

KABLAA
No, it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of how women act.
He also talked about how Daryl and Sophia’s mom were friends. I mean, I guess he’d know since he runs the show, but it doesn’t seem like they’re friends. They talk cordially with each other every now and then, but certainly not to the extent that I would’ve thought they were “friends”.

DAKKINS
Maybe they’ll sex each other some point, and gross.

KABLAA
I doubt that, but if there’s definitely routes they could go that would be AIDS, like Daryl starting to become a more compassionate, caring character.
Dale’s dead, maybe they’ll make Daryl the new moral compass. Because whatever and all.

DAKKINS
“So, how you doing? Your daughter still dead and such?” – How Daryl should break the ice with his supposed woman friend sometime
“This Asian coward is simply irresistible.” – Maggie
“You’ve proven yourself a hero, by simply being in the same place as we were during a gunfight. Sure, you didn’t do anything to help us, but whatever, here’s your trophy. This ring or whatever.” – Hershel

KABLAA
Well, he’s one of the only dicks around. What were here other options? Old guy, psychotic guy who’s obsessed with a married woman, incompetent hero who’s married to the aforementioned woman, her father, the redneck hillbilly, the black guy who’s just kind of boring, and a 10-year-old.
Oh, and that other random guy. You know, the one that lived with Hershel and was maybe married to one of the girls, or something, but that we never saw, and then he got eaten by all the zombies when he opened the door to the RV he was in even though there was a thousand zombies outside.

DAKKINS
I believe he was the boyfriend of the Suicide Girl.

KABLAA
I think he said like 4 words during all of Season 2. And he also screamed that one time when all the zombies started to tear at his flesh with their teeth.

DAKKINS
Videogum said he had one line. Something like, “I’ll help.”
I remember that part, and my brother saying, “Who the hell is that guy?”

KABLAA
“So what part am I auditioning for?”
“One of Hershel’s daughter’s boyfriends. You don’t really have any lines, or anything. You just sort of randomly stand around in some scenes. And then you die horribly.”
I knew who he was, I guess, but it might’ve helped that I watched all of Season 2 in a week span.
And I didn’t know who the other random chick that died was. I did not know who the fuck she was at all, even though I watched all the episodes within a week period.
“At least all my daughters made it.”
“Ah, Hershel…one of them didn’t make it.”
“What’re you talking about?  Sad Blonde and the one dating the Asian are right here.”
“That other one died.”
“What one?”
“Your third daughter.”
“Third daughter?  What’s her name?”
“I don’t know.  What’s-her-face.  I’m pretty sure she was your daughter.”
“Oh.  Well, whatever.”

DAKKINS
I thought the whole making-it-look-like-Carl-was-going-shoot-Grimes-when-he-was-really-aiming-at-Shane part was really, really dumb.
I like the part below the picture more than the picture: http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blog/post/721986/the-truth-about-the-walking-dead/

KABLAA
He fucking wasn’t aiming at Shane at first. He was aiming at Grimes well before Shane even fucking twitched. Carl fucking aimed his gun at his dad because that’s what 10-year-old kids who generally seem to worship their dads do: they threaten their dads with lethal weapons when they find them in a possibly compromising situation.

DAKKINS
Yeah, that. That was stupid.

Day Sixteen

I delegated responsibility to Adrian.  I told him to figure out this whole age of consent thing.  He gave me kind of a dirty look when I gave him this job.  I wasn’t sure if it was because I ordered him to do something or because he suspected my motives were impure.

After about two minutes, Adrian had his answer for me.

“Japanese national law has 13 as the legal age of consent…”

“Yes!” I said, pumping my fist.  Adrian got that nauseous look that he gets once in a while when I say something.

“…however, each jurisdiction makes its own rules regarding the matter.  In Tokyo, if you have sex with someone under the age of 17, you are going to have legal problems.”

“What the hell?  How can they have two legal ages of consent at the same time?”

“I don’t know.  That’s what it says.  There are a lot of things about this country that aren’t exactly logical.”

I rushed forward and swiped his bowl of cereal onto the floor.  “You take that back!  This is the most logical country in the world!  It’s so difficult to find a place with such a high volume of logic!”

Adrian walked away from me.  “Well, I’ve got to get ready for work.  Do you think you could clean up the mess you made of my breakfast?  Also, you might want to lay off the dope before going to teach English.  You are acting pretty loony, and I’m still not sure about the drug laws in this country. ”

“Hmmm,” I mused, scratching my chin.  “Adrian, I have a job I’d like to delegate…”

The door to Adrian’s bedroom slammed shut before I could finish my sentence.  For those of you interested in trivia, I was going to finish the sentence with “to you”.

Today was paycheck day.  It came as quite a surprise to learn that I wouldn’t be receiving a paycheck.  Other people got theirs.  Hattori handed them out to them from behind his glass cage.  About twenty of us had congregated around the cage wondering why we had been specially selected to work for free.  I was the most outspoken person in the group (well, the most coherent outspoken person) so I thought I should probably handle this.  Unfortunately, I was also the most hashed out of my mind.  I shouted profanities, slobbered on the glass cage and beat my hands bloody against it.  Hattori cowered on the far side of his cage.  Perhaps his translator machine had explained to him many of the things I intended to shove inside of him.

“Ok, Dr. Kablaa, let’s get to class.”  It was Hiroshi.  All the other teachers who were supposed to uprise with me were gone.

“Where did everyone go?” I asked.

Hiroshi grabbed my arm and led me to the elevators.  I resisted the urge to clean his clock for touching me.

“Dr. Kablaa, I should probably fire you on the spot.  Hattori might in fact be in the process of doing that right now.  However, he has the disadvantage of probably not knowing who you are.  You’ve done something good as well, though, so I’m not going to fire you.  Your histrionics scared all your co-workers back to their classrooms.  Naga Corporation would like to thank you.  We can now put off our explanations for lack of paychecks until a further time.  Later, I will explain to Hattori that your barbaric actions were all done for the sake of Naga.”

“Where is MY paycheck?  I don’t care about everyone else’s.”

“It will be taken care of, I assure you.  You were at the assembly the other day, were you not?  Our financial debacle should make things clearer.”

“It doesn’t!  You owe us money for services rendered!”

“Yes, well the services you have provided for us are somewhat unclear, aren’t they?  You didn’t even show up to work yesterday.  Not a good sign.  NOT a good sign.”

I was going to strangle this bastard to death.

“Here we are!” Hiroshi said, as the elevator stopped at the English Language floor.  “Let’s have a good day of class today, shall we?”

I didn’t even respond.  I had had enough.  When I entered the classroom, I threw my briefcase across the room.  It busted open against one of the cubicles and all my papers and visual aids fell out.

“Class, today we are going to learn about a man.  He was a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and said ‘Fuck society.  I can do things on my own.’  He was an American man…hold on one second.  Hey you!”  I pointed to a fat girl in the front grid.  “Go change cubicles with Meiko.  I’m going to improve my surroundings around here if I’m not getting paid for what I do.”

The fat girl and Meiko changed places.  Meiko blew me a kiss and giggled as she took her cubicle.

“As I was saying, this was a great man.  One of our students in this class is actually named after him.”  I pointed toward Hiroshi.  “Hiroshi, won’t you come to the front of the class, please?”

Hiroshi reluctantly came forward.  I put my arm around him as I lectured.  “The great man’s name was Hiroshi Alger.  He worked and slaved when he was a young man, but it was all worth it because he eventually became extremely wealthy.  Hiroshi Alger showed what is possible in America if you have determination and you don’t consider yourself a victim.”

The Japs stared blankly.  Meiko was smiling, though.

“Hiroshi, how did you get your job here at the Naga Corporation?  I bet your daddy gave it to you, didn’t he?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, he did.”

I wasn’t expecting it would be this easy.  “Well, you are kind of a hypocrite aren’t you?  You are a horrible blasphemer of your namesake.  You are no better than Paris Hilton.  Class, this is what we call a parasite.”  I tapped Hiroshi on the head with my index finger until he forced me to stop.

“Dr. Kablaa, you are mistaken about a few things.  First of all, his name was HORATIO Alger, not Hiroshi.  Second, Horatio Alger wrote stories about determined people who worked their way up from the bottom.  He didn’t do this himself.  Lastly, the characters in these stories didn’t become incredibly wealthy.  They usually just worked their way up to modest or good means.  You’ve probably attained this level of accomplishment just by being alive, just as I have.”

Man, if all of that was true, I really looked stupid.  Never had I been so happy that nobody in my classroom understood a word I said.  Meiko continued to smile.  Whew!

“Alright, Hiroshi” I said, trying to regain my composure.  “That will be all.  You can go sit down now.”  I calmed down, picked up my briefcase and papers and taught like I normally did for the rest of the class period.  I’d never been shown it was I who was wrong so completely in all my life and I needed to re-establish a steady baseline or I’d go mad.  Adrian was right that I should not do drugs before class.

After class, I thought I’d go buy a gift for Meiko.  I’d give it to her on the date I planned to take her out on tomorrow.  The gift had to be special, because I wanted to continue to derive pleasure from her, but it also had to be bought in Little Edo, because I had to show Crag Dakkins that it was he who was wrong about it being the center of Japan’s white slave trade.

Little Edo was 20 blocks from where I lived, so I took the subway.  Upon entering the subway car, I saw a large photo of a Japanese nurse’s head with a Macauley Culkin surprised expression on her face.  In both Japanese and English, the woman had word bubbles saying “Did you believe Heaven is so near?”  Underneath the nurse head photo was a button.  I pressed it.  The subway car immediately smelled of flowery perfume and the sound of a baby cooing played over the speakers.  I pressed the button again, and the perfume smell became stronger.  I pressed it again.  More perfume, more baby coos.  Again.  People were coughing now.  Again, and again and three more times after that.  Finally, an old Jap raised his hand.

“Yes?” I said.

“Prease no do that,” he said.

He had passed the test.  This was the Jap I was going to sit next to.

“So, do you know anything about Little Edo?  I sent a white girl down there one day.  Do you think she was kidnapped?  I never really followed up on it.”

“I no speak Engrish,” he said.

“Sounds like you speak ‘Engrish’ just fine.  Do you speak English, though?”

“I no speak Engrish,” he repeated.

“You said ‘prease no do that’ earlier.  You obviously know some English.”

“I need those words when Americans around,” he said.

“How about THOSE words!?”

“Onry Engrish I know.”

We weren’t getting anywhere.  I sat in silence for the rest of the ride.

Little Edo was pretty damn shitty, and without the clean orderly nature of the rest of Tokyo.  People were loud and imposing.  Poor people lined the street to hawk their wares.  It was a loud, shrill shouting of incoherent languages convention.  This would probably be where I’d have to find something to buy Meiko.  I wasn’t sure if she liked rabbit or dog meat, so I ignored those kiosks.  Then I saw something that I was sure she would think was cute and adorable.  It was a cat and it was in the shape of a cube.

Asian cultures enjoy mathematical perfection, and they see much more perfection in a cube than in a sphere.  After all, you can stack cubes.  If you try to stack spheres, they will spill all over the place.  You will remember that the desks in my classroom are arranged in a cube.  The Chinese cubed women’s feet for a long time – this also had the practical reason that women would not be able to run away from their husbands with box-like feet.  The Japanese cube watermelons, and now I see that they cube cats.  I can see their point.  Cats and other things are really much improved when they have more right angles.  I bought a white cubed cat.  It fit perfectly in the box that came with it.  The cat meowed a little bit, but mostly it appeared to be pretty lethargic.  If it had energy it couldn’t move, anyway.  Its legs and overall skeletal structure were too boxy for it to ever do anything like that.

As I headed back to the subway, a Jap in a Yankees cap approached me.

“Hey, you want job?  I have job!”

As a matter of fact, I did want job.

“What do you have?”

“Come this way!”

He led me behind a building that looked like it was probably a whorehouse.  There was a semi-truck at the end of an alley.  The back door of the trailer was open.

“Go in there!  Jimbo sign you up for job.  He American!”

“What sort of job is it?”

“Go in there!  Jimbo exprain everything!”  He pushed my shoulder.

The back of the semi was pitch black.  I wasn’t going in there, even to prove Crag that there was no danger of being kidnapped in Little Edo.

“No, I think I’ll pass,” I said, walking away.

“Hey you!  You get back here!” the man shouted.  I moved more quickly.

I turned my head to see if there were any more of them.  He was still the only one.  He threw a handful of objects that landed on the sidewalk pretty close to me.  People walking around looked at the objects.  They all exploded and a lot of people went down grabbing their eyes.  Time to get out of here.

I ran onto the subway and went home.

Day Seventeen

The scent of greasy sausage pummeled me as Jeffries opened his apartment door.  His combover wasn’t very combed over; it was out of control, like Bill Murray’s hair at the end of Kingpin.

“Have you seen that fat woman since your party the other night?” I asked him.

“Who do you mean exactly?”

“I don’t know her name.  I just remember that she was real fugly, annoying and whiney.  She is the only woman of that description who was at your party.”

Truth be told, I knew the woman’s name was Clarice.  Earlier this morning I checked my journal and found this information.  I just didn’t want Jeffries to think that this woman made an impression on me.  Impressionable people have rememberable names.  With his droll – no doubt, Pythonesque – British wit, the ribbing I would receive from Jeffries would be intolerable if he thought I wanted to surmount that gunt.

Abigail walked by.  “Lovey, who’s out…oh…hello, Gonzo.”  She was wearing a silky grey bathrobe.  Very sleek, like a seal.  Only if she were a seal, she’d be sexy even by human standards, which is just preposterous.  A side view of Abigail revealed that the outline of her breasts looked like a bell curve.  (If you tipped the bell curve on its side and it was subject to gravity.)  I made a mental note that some day I’d try to fuck her.  It would start with me proposing a threesome to Williamsburg.  Knowing that he’s British, and therefore pretty faggy, he will jump at the chance to have a 2 to 1 male to female ratio for a Holy Trinity.  Then comes the important part.  I will devise an elaborate scheme that would prevent him from joining us at the last second.  “Well,” I’ll say to Abigail, “I’m already here, and my cock is hard, so we probably should make the most of it.”  Then I will caress her normal curve and we’ll presumably begin rutting a few seconds later.

“Abby, do you know the name of the pleasantly plump bird we had as a guest the other night?”

Abby was piling what looked like hundreds of sausages onto a tray.  “Yes, her name is Clarice.  She works at the Language Institute where Gonzo works.  Why do you ask?”

Jeffries repeated her question as if I was stupid.  I tried not to focus on his yellow-brown crooked teeth.

“I told you.  I just wanted to know if anyone has seen…hey!”

Someone had touched my butt.  When I turned around I saw that it was actually someTHING.  An Asimo robot was walking slowly down the hallway hanging notices on door handles.

“Check your back pocket, mate,” said Jeffries, smiling.

A notice was hanging there.  I took it off and read it: “Fumigate Tomorrow – Time 4.  Extinguish Insects.  POISON – LEAVE! Come back later – Time 7.”  I hadn’t seen one damn bug in this building since I got here.  Seems like wasteful spending, which is more of an American thing to do.

“Doesn’t that fucking robot know the difference between my pocket and a door knob?” I wondered aloud.

“Easy there, Tiger.”  Jeffries could probably see the red rising in my yellow face.

“I mean, just because I’m standing in your doorway doesn’t make me a door.  A robot should have reasoning faculties that adapt to the circumstances.  That thing is poorly designed.”

I walked toward the robot.

“Don’t do it, Gonzo.  Your luck is going to run out with them sooner or later.”

The robot was wearing a GI Joe backpack from which it was pulling out the fumigation notices.  I grabbed him by the backpack and swung him around in a circle.  After I gained sufficient speed, I let go and Asimo flew 20 feet and slammed hard into the pocket between the wall and ceiling.  He landed like ten Tonka trucks and portions of the ceiling tiles rained down on him.  Almost instantly, Asimo was SPRINTING toward me.  I got into a football stance like my favorite football guy, Jimi Kleinsasser, and prepared to knock him back onto his ass.  As he got closer, I realized that the whirling circular saw at the end of his outstretched arm was going to make that difficult.  I parried the saw-arm and Asimo drove it deeply into the wall behind me.  He wasn’t stopping either.  He kept trying to sprint forward and drill deeper into the wall, but he just wasn’t going anywhere.  I decided I was safe from future attacks. I removed his backpack and dumped all his notices into the nearest trashcan.  This wouldn’t prevent him from attacking me; it would make him pretty confused, though.  How is he going to carry out his primary directive if he doesn’t have the materials to accomplish said directive?  Asimo was in for the tortures of the damned.  I left him to resume my conversation with the Brit.

“I told you to be careful with those robots.”

“Mind your own business.  As I was saying before, I was wondering if you or your wife have seen this Clarice woman since your party.”

Jeffries leaned back into his apartment.  “Lovey, have you…”

“No, I have not.  Your bangers are ready.  Please close the door and come and eat.”

Jeffries made the face that married men like to make when their wife acts all bitchy.  It was kind of a wide-eyed, gritted teeth gesture.  I smiled, but not because I felt camaraderie; it was because he looked so foolish when he made that face.

“Well, there’s your answer, Gonzo.  I haven’t seen her either.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

“Oh, don’t be like that.”

“Like what?  I was being sincere.  Thank you for providing me with no information.  It was the best you could do with the information you had and I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your exceptional usage of your excessive dearth of helpful information.”

“When you say it like that, I feel foolish.  I should be grateful for your thanks, not offended.”

What an idiot.

“Tell you what, Gonzo.  How about you come in and have some bang…sausages with us?”

Sausages did sound good.  The food would provide fodder for all kinds of Jeffries-is-gay jokes to fly through my head, and I’d get to stare at his wife’s tits some more.

I scarfed down more sausages than the other two combined.  So I guess that makes me the gayest of all the sausage-eaters.  Wait a minute, not necessarily.  Abigail ate the fewest sausages – she mostly just sat there looking annoyed that I was in their home and eating their food – so wouldn’t that make her pretty dykey?  She should have gobbled up those sausages if she wanted us to know that she wasn’t a lez.  Mr. and Mrs. Jeffries weren’t really playing the game though.  Part of the problem was that I hadn’t mentioned anything about it being a game.

Abigail dropped her silverware onto her plate.

“Well, Gonzo,” she said.  “You and your friends destroyed our party and our living room the other night.  Now you’ve probably gotten us marked by apartment security for your idiotic nonsense with that robot out in the hall.  And you’ve ruined Sausage Day, the only breakfast meal I like out of the week.  Do you bring destruction with you wherever you go?”

I liked this woman.  She wasn’t a bullshitter.

“Ma’am, are you certain that you are not that high class lady who always gets her life turned upside-down by the Marx Brothers?”

Jeffries shot milk out of his nose with laughter.  This was strange because he had been drinking water.

Abigail’s cheeks flushed.  Like all women, being humiliated made her horny.  Horny for me.

“I guess that makes you a Marx Brother then.  They are a rather ridiculous sort, and don’t really possess ANY logic at all!”

Ouch.  She knew just where to get me.  Before I could respond, she rose from the table, stormed off to her bedroom and slammed the door.  It was very dramatic.

“Yes,” said Jeffries, reclining in his chair.  “You should have eaten fewer sausages.  She likes to pig out on Sausage Day.  Most of the rest of the days she doesn’t eat so much.  You can tell from her trim figure.  She’s sexy, isn’t she?”

I didn’t want to talk about his hot wife with him.  That would make me think of her having sex with him.  That would be revolting.

“Tell me, Jeffries.  You shot milk out of your nose earlier, yet I didn’t see you drinking milk.  Do you have a milk flask hidden under the table?”

“It’s not milk, guv’nuh.  It’s cocaine.  Probably mixed in my nose with the water I laughed out.”

He was very frank, I’ll give him that.  But I thought this might be a Python-esque joke of some kind.

“Cocaine?  The fluid that came out of your nose had such a strong white color, it looked like whole milk or even Elmer’s Glue.  It didn’t look like water diluted with a slight amount of cocaine nasal residue.”

“Well, sir, I had a lot of cocaine.  Gets me going in the morning.  Gets both us going.”  He gestured to the closed bedroom door.

He got up and walked to his kitchen.  “Come on in here.  Let me show you something.”  I didn’t realize it at the time, but as I’m writing this down now, it hit me like a bolt of lightning.  His request of me seemed really pretty gay!  I missed an opportunity to mock him there.

Williamsburg revolved some of his kitchen cupboards into the wall until he found the one he wanted.  He pulled out a large metal container of sugar and set it on the counter.  He removed the lid and waited for me to do something, I guess.  I didn’t know what he wanted me to do.

“Take a lick,” he said.  (Man, that was a really gay thing to say, too!)

I stuck the tip of my forefinger in, and drew it out.  White powder was on it, exactly as I had planned.  I stuck the finger in my mouth and had a taste.

“I don’t know what cocaine tastes like,” I said.

“Well, that’s cocaine.  Trust me.  And here’s the beauty part.”  Jeffries put his hand into the cocaine and pulled out a clear plastic bag of what also appeared to be cocaine.

“OK, you hide another stash of cocaine inside a sugar container full of cocaine?  Is the kind of cocaine in the bag MORE illegal than the kind in the sugar container?”

“No, mate,” he said, shaking the bag.  “This is baking soda.  If the cops ever search my place, and break into this container, they’ll overlook the ‘sugar’ and focus on the little bag with the twisty on it.  They wouldn’t think I’d be so stupid as to hide the cocaine in plain sight.”

“My roommate had kind of a similar attitude about committing crimes in Japan.  None of you seem to give the cops here much credit.”

“Listen.  You know as well as I do that they are a very logical species, these Japanese.  They will conclude that the most well hidden object is the most illicit.  That’s what logic dictates.”

“You have a good point, but you also have to consider that the Japanese are not very imaginative.  I’ve seen their drawings that prove this.  They might look in your sugar jar and test the first white powdery substance they see.  They might not be creative enough to assume that you would hide your drugs.”

Williamsburg thought about this.  “Hmmm, perhaps you’re right.  I might rethink my strategy.”

“What are you doing with all this cocaine anyway?”

“I sell it mostly.  But wifey and I also use a lot.”

“Who is your supplier?”

“Heh, let’s just say it’s a little underground Japanese organization.”

“The Yakuza?”

“Don’t speak their name out loud.  There are sensors in this building that are designed to pick up only that word.  I’m sure I’ll get a visit from the apartment director tomorrow.  I’ll explain to him that the word was said on the telly.”

“I’m not a fan on limitations of free speech.  I should let you know that right now.”

“Yes, well, certain areas of Tokyo are Yak…Y-friendly, and certain areas are not.  This area is not.  It’s why you find certain funny law variability around the city.  In Little Edo, for example, you can legally shag a 13-year-old, but if you do that in this building with anyone under 17, they will haul your ass to jail.”

“I thought that rule applied to all of Tokyo.  Interesting you should mention this actually.  My other roommate, the gay one, no offense, wanted to screw this 15-year-old guy he knows who he thinks is really hot.”

“Uh…he could go to certain sections of Tokyo to do what he wanted to do.  The Y-government is more lenient.  They are more like the American Libertarian party than the national government.  It’s why I like them.”

Now you better believe that I was interested.  The funny thing about that previous sentence is, as I typed that, Adrian pulled out some cereal for a late night snack (because he’s a moron).  It was Naruto cereal and on the box was Naruto delivering his patented catchphrase “BELIEVE IT!”  Naruto can properly tell you how interested I was in this relationship between the Yakuza and Libertarianism.

“I can see you’re interested,” said Jeffries.  “How would you like a job in the organization?”

My heart was racing now, and not very much of it was due to the cocaine I licked off my fingertip.  I wanted a Yakuza job badly; however, I had been deceived by English-speaking people in this country before – namely Chris – and I wasn’t entirely sure that the Yakuza are very Libertarian.  I’d have to research it some more.

“I think I might, but I’ll get back to you.”

Jeffries looked at his watch.  “Oh my, it looks like you’ll be late for work.”

“Don’t worry.  I’m not going today.  They don’t pay me money there, so I think that sometimes I just won’t go.  I do have some drinking and pot smoking to get to though, so I’ll bid you good day.”

Jeffries said goodbye and reminded me to think about his offer.  As I was leaving his apartment, I whispered “Yakuza” about 30 times real fast, so quiet that Jeffries couldn’t hear me.  I guess we’ll see how well those sensors really work.

Day Fourteen

On Wikipedia, I didn’t find anything about 35^th level black belts or there being only nine people with that ranking in the world.  Chris might have been lying to me.  I wasn’t pleased.

As I trudged to work on another rainy Japanese day, someone grabbed my shoulder and said “HEY!”  Acting on instinct, I wheeled around and punched the guy hard in the mouth.  Oh…it was Williamsburg again.

“Krikey, you punched me right in the gob!” he said, through tears and blood.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that, man.  You could have been a thief for all I knew.”

He pulled himself together.  “They don’t have thieves in Japan.  They don’t have hobos here either, you might have noticed.”

“Actually, I did.”

“The Japanese do not approve of dishonorable thieves or the odors that come off of the common hobo.  The only thievery they permit is from their government and the pseudo-government of the Yakuza.”

Williamsburg was speaking my language.  I disliked government and other organizations that use force to achieve their ends.

“I’m sorry I punched you.  You can punch me in return if you’d like.”

“Well, ok,” he said.  He was in mid-windup, and he was slow and uncoordinated, looking like a competitor in the Monty Python sketch “Upper Class Twit of the Year”.  Instead of knocking him down, I grabbed his fist and told him the punch would have to wait until later, because I needed my face for the time being.  I needed it to wow a 15-year-old girl.  But I didn’t tell him that part.

“Ok, then,” Jeffries said.  “What I meant to ask you is did your friend give you your hat back?  During the scuffle the other night, he took it off your head and was wearing it for a time, but he wasn’t wearing it when the policemen took him away.”

Holy Christing fuck.  The Brit was right.  I hadn’t even noticed my hat was gone.  Not wearing my hat made me dumber, and that’s probably why I hadn’t been able to figure out that the hat was no longer on my head.

“Shit, man, did you look around your place?  Underneath all the police batons and stuff?”

“Yes, Gonzo.  Abigail and I looked everywhere.  I even looked through our garbage bags more than once.  There were over 40 batons, and lots of liquor cups and bottles, but no hat.”

“Son of a bitch!” I said, kicking my knee up in the air and slapping it.  I was surprised I’d make such a gesture involuntarily, but I did.  Without my Gonzo hat I was less self-aware of acting like some stupid seersucker from The Dukes of Hazzard.

I issued the command that Jeffries keep looking for it and I rushed in to Language Institute before the doors locked me out.

When I got to my classroom, a note redirected me to a lecture auditorium several doors down.  All the English teachers had gathered there and some Japanese-American Naga Corporation guy was standing behind a podium.  I assumed this meant that he was going to be speaking, but I guess I shouldn’t trust my Logic so much without my Raoul Duke hat.  Chris was going to pay dearly if I am not able to find it.

“Welcome, all of you.  Is this thing on?” he tapped the microphone.  The mic was working fine, but he was tapping on it too much.  The volume went out and he started speaking.  It was kind of like the speaking you see in old movies from the 1920s, The Silent Movies.  They just kind of mouth the words.  That’s what this guy was doing.  The problem with this was that I didn’t like silent movies.

“BOOOOOOOO!!!!” I shouted.

Some other people had been making gestures to indicate to the speaker that they couldn’t hear him, but it was my booing that got him to fix his fucking microphone.   Someone had to take the initiative. The speaker eyed me.  I was way back in the 50^th row, and he had slanty Japanese eyes, so he probably didn’t see me all that well.

“Well, my name is Brian Schwartz.  Yes, I know I don’t look like a typical Jew.”  He paused here, smiling, and waiting for laughs.  Almost everyone laughed.  I didn’t.  I had never met a real life Jew, so I couldn’t honestly concur with his statement.  A real life Jew could look like a Pygmy for all I know.

“I’m the vice president of the Naga Corporation, and I am very impressed with all of you.  Each and every one of you.  Coming over to a foreign land away from your friends and family for such a long time is a very difficult thing to do.”

This guy wasn’t impressed with us.  He probably didn’t know half of us.

“There is something else that is difficult to do, and that is to tell you the message I have to tell you.  Because of a large number of unforeseeable problems involving Naga board members grafting their way to Naga profits and other board members using Naga funds for their personal piggyback, we have a lot less money than we initially thought.  Because we are being sued by thousands of individuals and we will be suing several others, the court and settlement costs will be astronomical, and there is the possibility that we will face collapse.”

Some of the crowd members were murmuring to each other, as if this would help them learn new information.  Stupid fools.

“Calm down now.  We aren’t at that stage yet.  We are in a precarious position, though.  That is a reality.  In the next week 15% of you will lose your jobs.  I know of no easier way to put it.”

Some girl in the third row stood up.  It sounded like she was crying.  “Why do you have to blurt it out and say it so directly like that!?  We have to work hard for a living and we aren’t exactly getting a lot of money for our efforts!  Can’t you show us some respect!?  I know we’re just educators, but we’re people, too!”

She sat down and a few of her friends started hugging her.  I couldn’t help myself.  I shouted, “Whore!”

A few people turned around and looked at me with anger or mild confusion.  Brian Schwartz looked up my way again, but I don’t think he saw me, again on account of his slants.

“Like I said,” Schwartz continued.  “I know of no easier way to put it. I’m truly sorry for all of this, and it’s unfortunate that we all have to suffer for the unscrupulous actions of a few bad apples.  Don’t say I said this to you, but I’m glad a few of the board members committed suicide rather than going through their tedious court proceedings.”

Naga seemed to be falling apart at the seams.  I might need to look into new employment.  There was a good possibility I’d be in the Unlucky 15%.

Day Fifteen

This morning I think I added fuel to the fire at my home base.  I was pissed about the whole possibly-going-to-lose-my-job thing and I was also pissed about Chris lying to me about his kung fu skills and for stealing my hat.  I was angry at both things. I need you to understand that so you don’t think I was displacing the anger I had about my job onto Chris.  It was purely logical anger.

I put a Sprinkter To-Mah brand pastry into the toaster and was trying to wipe the hangover out of my eyes when I noticed Chris was in the kitchen area.  He was standing at the counter, up to his elbow in a giant bowl of ice.  Chris was groaning, or making buffalo noises, but I wasn’t done with what I was doing yet. Sprinkter sounded a lot like sphincter, I thought. The advertising mascot was a pair of feet inscribed in a red circle.  Cinnamon or salt or jimmies seemed to be raining down on the feet.  Most advertisers around the world anthropomorphize things to make them cute or scary or whatever.  These feet were plain old feet.  No cartoon eyes or mouths on them or anything. They were situated tight together at the heel and each was kicked up 30 degrees in a kind of two-pronged erect-penis effect.  Maybe they were supposed to be excited – excited to be sprinkled in food they lacked the mouths to eat.  More noises came from the other guy in the room.

“Chris, what’s the matter?”

He stopped being a baby and ceased moaning for a second. “My arm burns, man.  It’s in rough shape.”  He took his arm out of the bowl and I did my best to withhold a womanly scream.  It came out as hiccup. Chris’s arm had flesh falling off of it. Skin was hanging from his arm in tattered rags like he was The Mummy.  The flesh underneath was bright pinkish-red, except for one area, where a purple vortex of decay had formed.

Well, now was a better time than any to air my grievances.  The blinding pain he was in would likely prevent him from flying at me with rage-fists if he didn’t like the words that were coming out of my mouth.

“Chris, you’re a bald-faced liar.”

He was hyperventilating now but managed to ask “What?” with a pretty convincing amount of incredulity.

“You lied about being a kung fu expert.  There is no such thing as a 35th degree black belt.”

“Shit…man. Go to the…dojo.  Origami…Tetsuo will confirm…my story.”

“I thought his name was Tetsuo Origami?”

“last names…sometimes first names…in this…crazy country…I sometimes…can’t keep straight.”  He was huffing and puffing. The pain was making it hard for him to speak at a normal tempo.  That is what all those ellipses are all about.

” Earlier you corrected me about a Sonny Chiba movie, showing me that you know something about obscure Jap-Film. Tetsuo is the title of a Japanese film. I suspect that’s where you got that from. As for origami, everyone knows what that is, and it was foolish for you to presume that I wouldn’t.”

I paced back and forth.  If I had a pipe in my mouth it would have been perfect.  I was Sherlock Holmesing all over this crybaby bitch. “When you robbed the Games Plaza a few days ago you explained that you believe people often overlook the obvious. This explains the your use of the term ‘origami.’ Yes, Tetsuo Origami is a construct of your degenerate mind.  A liar’s mind.  Nobody likes a liar.  You stole my Raoul Duke hat, too.”

“That’s the second time you called me a liar.”  He was no longer gasping for air.  I moved closer to our apartment door.  “I suggest you check all the facts before you make these accusations.  I don’t want to mop the floor with you since we’ve had a pretty nice home here, and I usually prefer to make my trouble elsewhere.  A dog doesn’t shit where he sleeps.  You’re pushing me, though, and I’m in no mood.”  He made a semi-quick move with his good arm.  I was out in the hallway before he finished the move, but as the door was closing, I saw that he had just grabbed one of our bottles of Suntory to pour whisky on his wound.

On my way to work, I saw three American soldiers fraternizing with some Japanese girls in sailor outfits.  They must be with Sailor Moon.  I think that’s a pornography or prostitution outfit.  As I walked by I overheard one of the morons say, “Well, I’ve been up in an SR-71, and I could go up again if I wanted to, but my specialty is really on the field.  It’s up close and personal where I like to be.  The Army is where it’s at.  None of that pansy Air Force stuff for me.” I saw the Army guy caressing one of the Jap girl’s hands.

“You god damn fool!  She doesn’t even know what you’re saying.  How illogical are you?  I guess VERY since you’re an Army man.”

The Japanese girl squinted (more so) and frowned.  “I am an American, jackass.  I’m in the US Navy, and I thought I would talk to a fellow American.  Some of them aren’t jackasses like you seem to be.”

I wasn’t going to let this mistake stop me.  If anything, it made me strengthen my resolve.  God, I was angry. I was angry about being wrong, but more angry from finding out that she was in the US Navy.

“Ennnnnnuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh!”  That was the roar that came out of my throat as I clenched my bowels and forced the veins on my neck to pop out.  I was so angry.

“WHAT ARE YOU GOD DAMN UNITED STATES MILITARY PERSONNEL DOING HERE IN JAPAN!?  I’M PAYING FOR IT THROUGH MY TAXES SO FUCKING TELL ME RIGHT GOD DAMN NOW!  I’D LIKE TO KNOW HOW MY STOLEN MONEY IS BEING SPENT!  THERE ISN’T EVEN A WAR GOING ON HERE, ASSHOLE!”

A black Army soldier said, “Dude, chill.  We are stationed at the American base in Tokyo.  We don’t need a politics lesson today, and you don’t need an asskicking.”  The Army guys and the Navy girls laughed.

“Think you’re funny?  Why do I have to pay your salary?  You don’t pay mine.  In fact, there’s a good chance nobody is paying my salary anymore.”

A guy with a buzzcut said, “We fight for your freedom, friend.  There is a price you have to pay for that freedom.”

“Yes, it costs a buck o’ five. I’ve heard the Team America song.”

“That’s about the exact math of it, yes.” said Buzzcut, nodding.

“The problem is that I pay a buck o’ five for all sorts of other things I might not want to pay for.  It starts to pile up really fucking bigtime when I have to pay a buck o’ five every time a God damn bridge collapses due to our shitty government infrastructure programs or every other time our government sets up preventative-measure programs for things that have ALREADY HAPPENED.  Fuck them all!  And FUCK YOU!”  Here is where I tapped Buzzcut on one of the medals on his chest.

“Don’t touch my medals, boy.  What is your problem with what we do?  We stare death in the face and don’t even flinch.  It’s hard to find people like us.  You should be grateful.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to find people who want to be plumbers, too.  But I like plumbers, even incompetent ones, because I don’t have to pay their salaries.  My problem with what you do is that you are self-serving pricks.  True, everyone is a self-serving prick, but you have the audacity to call it ’selflessness’ and ’heroism’, and you expect – nay, demand – accolades and universal praise in return.  In reality, you fools are a bunch of suckers who signed a contract into slavery and possible suicide.  If you want to get your brains exiled from your skulls don’t ask me to pay you for it or to salute your God damned casket when your corpse is shipped home to momma.”

Buzzcut made a swipe at me.  So did the other two military guys.  One of the Japanese-American Navy girls clawed down my face. I punched her hard in the breast, hoping to rupture her inner boobery containment unit.  This would contaminate her bloodstream with milk and hopefully give her milk poisoning if she happened to be pregnant.  But I couldn’t count on that.  I was about to kick all their asses at the same time, but then I remembered I hadn’t yet learned kung fu. I bolted down the street.  They were after me, and they looked furious.  Their eyes were moving all crazily around and junk, tongues flapping, as I imagined it.

I was heading in the opposite direction of Language Institute, so I’d probably miss my chance to work today.  Shoot, I had had perfect attendance, too.  I headed down tight, efficient and clean alleyways, jumping over a chicken-on-a-leash here and there and the soldiers continued to rampage after me.  I thought about getting my Mossberg 500 shotgun and making their bodies look like strawberry shortcake, but then I remembered my gun was on my coffee table – and not the coffee table at my Japan apartment, but the one at my Winona, Minnesota apartment.  It was not feasible for me to run all the way over there to get my gun.

Eventually, I ended up losing them.  If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have read this, since I’d have been hospitalized or killed.  I guess it’s gotta be kind of disappointing to know that I’m not going to die in any of these chapters that you read, isn’t it?  Does it kill the story for you?  Does it deflate it of suspense?  I hope it does, because I don’t care about you or anybody.  I just want my fucking job and my fucking money and I want to have a good time here in Japan.

I had a meal at Sake Joe’s and took a nap on the table for 2 hours and 37 minutes.  I know the exact time because I set the timer on my watch to see how long I could get away with that before they asked me to leave.

When I returned home, Adrian was eating afternoon cereal.  God, what a douche.

“Don’t you work?” I asked him.

“Don’t you?” he asked.

I thought about saying “Touché,” but that sounded kind of faggy.  Instead I said, “Fuck you.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Did Chris make it to the hospital before his arm finished molting?”

“Nope.  He went to jail instead.  Look around you.”

Adrian was right.  There were police batons everywhere and all kind of broken bottles, glasses, and decorations.  Chris had had a struggle with the cops and ended up in the slammer again.  But why?

“Remember that videogame system he stole?” said Adrian.  “It turns out that the protective cover he removed from it wasn’t as harmless as he thought it was.  It gave him flesh-eating bacteria – a very, very deadly, but curable strain.  The cops waited for him to call the hospital before they came barging in here.  He  had the choice to call or not call. Not calling would allow him the honor of committing seppuku, ritual suicide by way of his flesh falling off, for his shameful crime. Calling meant he would face Japanese law and public shaming like a coward.  Chris called the hospital and chose the coward’s route.”

“How do you know all this?  Nobody could have explained this to you.”

“I wikipedia-ed Japanese Videogame Armor.  Wikipedia is a good tool.”

Adrian was right again.  I liked it when people were right.  Maybe Adrian wasn’t so bad after all.  (He probably was, though.)

While you are alive, you are a witness to much death. Or are you not a witness, but an active contributor? The odds are likely at least 50/50 that your reality is of your own making, whether consciously or not. The following are Facebook wall-to-wall eulogies from the last year. Who are you to presume that you are not responsible for these deaths?

Dakkins to Kablaa, February 11, 2012
Unless there’s an afterlife, Whitney Houston won’t “always love [Kevin Coster's character]” since her timeline has ended, precluding the possibility of bodyguard-loving continuance, and it’s all your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, February 10, 2012
Adam Adamowicz, concept artist behind such conceptually outstanding games as “Fallout 3″ and “Skyrim”, is fucking dead, and you’re the one done it.

Dakkins to Kablaa, February 3, 2012
Ben Gazzara, aka Jackie Treehorn, aka The Guy Who Fucked With the Wrong Roadhousin’ Philosopher, and also an actor in other such fucking awesome films as Dogville, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Happiness, has exited this plane of existence and possibly voided his bowels, and you, guy, are the one most assuredly responsible.

Dakkins to Kablaa, February 2, 2012
Angelo Dundee, “the brilliant motivator who worked the corner for Muhammad Ali in his greatest fights,” has ceased to exist in the sense that most Western cultures would consider to be existing, and it’s all your fault. Normally, I wouldn’t feel a person like this was adequately significant to eulogize, but I wanted to break your current streak of “your fault that this person is dead” posts.

Kablaa to Dakkins, January 30, 2012
Ian Abercrombie, the guy who played one of Elaine’s bosses on Seinfeld (and ate candy bars with a knife and fork) has lost any chance he had to become the world’s oldest living man, as he is no longer a living man. If we considered his death to be an “effect,” you would surely be the “cause.”

Kablaa to Dakkins, January 22, 2012
Joe Paterno, that guy famous for being one of college football’s greatest coaches and then later on famous for being fired because it turns out one of his assistant had pediddled a bunch of underage boys, is fully in the bag, gone to the refrigerator, and dead as a possum who is not pretending to be dead but is actually dead, and the fault are belong to you.

Kablaa to Dakkins, January 20, 2012
Etta James, the woman famous for singing “At Last,” is now dead (at last (LOL!)). Authorities have released a press statement indicating that the cause of death was “likely attributable to you, and yes, we mean ‘you,’ as in Crag Dakkins, the guy reading this right now, unless you’re not Crag Dakkins, in which case we don’t mean ‘you,’ but instead ‘Crag Dakkins,’ who is the person at fault and responsible for the passing of famous singer Etta James.”

Kablaa to Dakkins, December 18, 2011
Kim Jong Il is the dope. You know, whatever.

Dakkins to Kablaa, December 15, 2011
Virulent atheist Christopher Hitchens has found out that he was right that there isn’t a God in the Judeo-Islamo-Christian sense, but wrong about there not being any sort of “God” at all. It is your fault that he gained this divine wisdom.

Kablaa to Dakkins, December 9, 2011
Jerry Robinson is dead and…you know, never mind. He’s not very important.

Kablaa to Dakkins, December 8, 2011
Guess who’s Dead As Hell? Harry Morgan. And guess who’s fault it is? LOOK IN THE DAMN MIRROR, BUDDY!

Dakkins to Kablaa, November 29, 2011
Comedian Patrice O’Neal, one of the few blackricans who had the right attitude about the Michael Richards meltdown, is dead, and it’s because of something you did.

Dakkins to Kablaa, November 28, 2011
Director Ken Russell, whose films I so far haven’t liked at all, is dead, and as Nickasun would say about Fistsay’s misfortunes (but really he’s just copying me), it’s all your fault (or “your fault”). I haven’t seen Russell’s “The Devils”, because it hasn’t been released in any form, but apparently some people jizzed all over their mouth, nose and eyes about it. It was made in 1971, which was generally a good year for movies, what with Vietnam making everyone’s art all winner while at the same time making everyone Sad.

Dakkins to Kablaa, November 9, 2011
I can no longer write a fake caption on a Family Circus cartoon without knowing that its creator Bil Keane is dead and that it is your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, November 8, 2011
Heavy D, the man most famously known for sitting next to Jim Goad on a TV show and discussing politics for one episode, is dead, and it’s all your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, November 8, 2011
Smokin’ Joe Frazier is a dead-ass boxer, and you are the reason behind that hyphenated adjective.

Dakkins to Kablaa, November 7, 2011
COME HOME TO FUCKING* DEAD ANDY ROONEY EVERYWHERE? And your fault, as well?

*Not intended as a verb, but you can take it that way if you’d prefer.

Dakkins to Kablaa, October 20, 2011
Muammar Qaddafi/el-Qaddafi/Gaddafi/Gathafi/Kadafi/Gadafy/Qaddafiasun is dead, and it’s all your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, October 9, 2011
Lovable film rapist David Alexander Hess, mostly known for “Last House on the Left”, is dead, and it’s all your fault. ENNIO MORRICONE!

Dakkins to Kablaa, October 8, 2011
You were the cause.

Dakkins to Kablaa, October 5, 2011
Steve Jobs is iDead, and it’s all your iFault. iLOL!

Dakkins to Kablaa, September 22, 2011
Some guy who allegedly killed a cop 22 years ago was executed tonight, perhaps unjustly; meanwhile, those six cops who allegedly beat that gentle homeless man until his brains were on the opposite side of his skull are probably walking around free as a bird, perhaps unjustly, and maybe hassling long-haired, sideways-capped teenagers they don’t recognize. And it’s all your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, September 11, 2011
Ten years ago today, lots of people died in a jet-fueled fire or by bungie-jumping off one of the tallest buildings in the world without a bungie-cord, and then a lot of other people put those aesthetically displeasing Flags of Our Fathers all over the fucking place. Never forget: It was all your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, August 10, 2011
An extremely friendly uber-Christian, firefighter, and basketball league coach of mine was crushed to death by a tree, and it’s all your fault. At his funeral a firefighter said, “His glass was never half empty, it was never half full, it was 110% full.” Does this mean he didn’t cry over spilled milk? That he DID cry over spilled milk? HOW DID HE FEEL ABOUT THE OVERFLOW? Did it mean he was prone to gluttony? Did it mean he was bad at pouring? WHO KNOWS!? JEEPERS! lolololololllllollllolll(pffffffffft-SBD!)lollollollloll!

Dakkins to Kablaa, July 24, 2011
Oh yeah, Sigmund Freud’s grandson artist died a few days ago. I don’t know if he wanted to fuck his mom or if he had a fear of losing his penis, but his death is surely due to your gross malfeasance.

Kablaa to Dakkins, July 23, 2011
Amy Winehouse has become the latest musician to turn into a dead corpse at the age of 27, and you can be assured the fault lies entirely with you.

Dakkins to Kablaa, June 24, 2011
Peter Falk and his weird eyes are dead, and it’s all your fault. I could’ve sworn he had already died before, again because of you, but maybe I was wrong.

Dakkins to Kablaa, June 20, 2011
If they ever make a “Jackass 4″, Ryan Dunn won’t be in it unless it’s in a “Weekend at Bernie’s” manner, and this is your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, June 6, 2011
James Arness – norger, Minnesotan, and star of the longest running network television drama in history – has expired. The culprit? Look in a mirror. At first I thought James Arness was the old man in The Notebook, but that was James Garner. Oh well. Don’t cost nothin’.

Dakkins to Kablaa, June 3, 2011
Jack Kevorkian…[you know the rest].

Kablaa to Dakkins, May 28, 2011
Jeff “Kenickie” Conaway is dead as hell, and it’s assuredly due to some sort of commission or omission on your part.

Dakkins to Kablaa, May 17, 2011
Harmon Killebrew, the greatest home run hitter in Minnesota Twins history, and a legitimate home run hitter unlike many of the home run hitters today, is dead, and it’s all your fault. From wikipedia: “Despite his nicknames and his powerful style of play, Killebrew was in fact a quiet, kind man who was not much given to the partying lifestyle enjoyed by his peers. Asked once what he liked to do for fun, Killebrew replied, ‘Well, I like to wash dishes, I guess.’”

Kablaa to Dakkins, May 6, 2011
Claude Choule, the last known WWI combat veteran, is dead, and it’s all your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, May 2, 2011
Holy shit, I almost forgot! Osama bin Laden is dead, Americans are jumping around and celebrating it all monkey-like just as the Sandfrican-Americans did after our towers fall down go boom, and it’s all your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, April 9, 2011
Sidney Lumet is dead. You are the cause. One of his daughter’s has awesome tits. Also, he made a few good movies.

Dakkins to Kablaa, March 23, 2011
Elizabeth Taylor is dead, yadda yadda, your fault.

Dakkins to Kablaa, March 16, 2011
Nate Dogg is dead, and, seeing how it’s all your fault, it’s your duty to do all future regulating with Warren G.

Dakkins to Kablaa, February 16, 2011
Uncle Leo is dead, and it’s all your fault.

Day Twelve

The next thing I remember is waking up with that Brit’s ugly mug in my face.

“Wakey wakey, sir.  I must say it looks like Japan seems to have had an effect on you.  I think you are becoming one of them.”

“What do you mean?” I said, groggily.

“Your skin is yellow, like that of an Asian.”

I got up and had Jeffries direct me to one of his mirrors.  My skin was indeed yellow.

“Oh, that’s just my jaundice.  It happens when I drink bottles of whisky for days on end.”

I looked around the apartment.  Everyone was gone.  The room was trashed and there were Japanese police batons and fragments of police uniforms everywhere.  Some blood stains, too.

“What went on here last night?”

“Your friend went on here. That’s what.” It was a British woman’s voice.  “Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me given the way that you treated my husband.”

“Ah, Gonzo, this is my wife Abigail.  You didn’t meet her last night because you went off to occupy a corner before she had come home.”

Abigail was hot, so I had no problem shaking her hand when she extended it.

“Jeffries, I never told you my name.”

“Correct!  But your friends did.  They seemed like good gents, even the one who became a tad bit rowdy last night.  He regaled us with stories about Iowa cornfields and trials he had to go through to get his 35^th level black belt.  It was a bunch of rubbish, but entertaining, nonetheless.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is no 35^th level black belt.  I daresay that your friend Chris a pathological liar.”

“Well, how in the hell did he beat the shit out of all those cops at the same time?”

“Gonzo, those were JAPANESE police officers.  You aren’t in America anymore, where the cops drink beer, eat steak and carry firearms.  Japan is a veritable Lilliput.  I think you’ll find that if you get in a tussle with Japanese cops you will end up winning unless they greatly outnumber you.  Very few of them even know the basics of any of the martial arts.”

I’d have to store this information away for later, since I DID intend to get in some tussles with police officers.  However, this news about Chris’s lying upset me, and I’d have to check into it later.

First I’d have to get to work.  I said goodbye to Williamsburg and Abigail.  I didn’t thank them for the whisky or the party though.  That would show vulnerability.  Abigail said that next time they throw a party, I should actually have a conversation.  She doesn’t know what’s best for me.

I went to class.

I thought about asking Meiko out on a date right in front of Hiroshi and rubbing my authority in his face, but I had to remember that he was the actual authority, and he had indicated that I would probably be fired if I made any more advances toward that girl.

After class got out that day, and we all made a mad dash for the front exit, I kept my eye on Meiko the whole time, trying not to lose her in the sea of indistinguishable Japanese people.  When we were out on the streets of Tokyo, I grabbed her and spun her around.

“Would you like to join me for dinner right now?” I asked.  I wasn’t sure how much English she actually knew.

“Yes!” she said, without hesitating.  This was a good sign.

We went to a restaurant called Chicken of the Moon.  Chicken didn’t appear to be the main item on the menu.  Shrimp and shrimp-flavored meals were the predominant things.  I ordered some shrimp-flavored tacos and Meiko ordered some shrimp-flavored rotisserie chicken-style shrimp.  We knelt at a booth and ate.

“So, how do you like class so far?”

“It pretty good.  I am rearning,” she said.  Apparently, she was.

“I’ve always wondered why the Japanese people are so polite and non-confrontational and filled with shame.  Do you have any insights on this?  My roommate thinks it has to do with getting atom bombs dropped on them.  I think it extends much farther back into the past.  Feudal samurai culture made everyone feel subservient and shameful.  What do you think?”

She had a perplexed look on her face.  She shook her head.  “I no understand.”

Well, she had a ways to go yet.

I had a boner right now, turned on that Meiko had been able to learn any English words (and probably because she was hot), and I wanted to embed it in her, thus allowing the boner to reach its rational conclusion.  My apartment was out, since Adrian was probably there.  Chris might be there, too, and if he’s just gotten out of jail, he’s probably in a bad mood and wouldn’t want to hear my sex sounds.

“Here, come with me,” I said, taking Meiko’s hand and leading her to the Chicken of the Moon restrooms.  In my normal dealings with women, I’d usually put up with bullshit conversation before “driving the point home” (into her vagina), but Meiko and I aren’t capable of having anything more than the basic rudiments of conversation, so I figured I’d do away with the formalities and get right to the ramming.

Now, the question was – chicken or egg?

I looked at the restroom doors, trying to decide if I wanted to hump in the men’s restroom or the women’s.  Both restrooms would have stalls.  The Japanese don’t use urinals, because they are more private about their dick-slinging than Americans are.  Women’s bathrooms probably smell better though.  Not because women’s shit doesn’t stink; it most assuredly does (in fact, in the US it probably stinks worse than men’s shit because of woman’s predilection for eating large amounts of vegetables), but because they use suffocating perfumes to cover up the smells of things we expel from our bodies.

“Egg it is!” I said, leading Meiko into the women’s room.  She giggled.

We went into a stall. I flipped up her skirt and jammed my engorged penis into her baby canal.  I didn’t have protection, but I wasn’t too worried.  For one thing, I quickly discovered that she was a virgin, so I probably wouldn’t get STDs.  For another, I would be out of Japan in three months.  If she became pregnant, I would be long gone before she realized it.  From what I’ve heard, women don’t learn that they’re pregnant until they’re about five months along.

I rubbed my penis against her vaginal walls vigorously in the standard sexual motion.  That’s sort of an up-and-down, back-and-forth style, for those of you who don’t know.  I ripped her shirt off, because I was sure she would like the dramatic gesture.  Because she’s a woman, and blinded by romantic ideals, she probably wouldn’t think about how she was going to get home after all the buttons on her shirt had been torn off.  We were making a lot of noise, especially her.  Sometimes virgins have bad experiences their first time, but there was something special about this first time:  IT WAS WITH ME!  She was so loud, the other people in the restroom had to have heard it.  They politely ignored us.  I had almost reached my climax. That’s the part when the stuff comes out of the dick, for those of you who don’t know.  With a few more thrusts, I pulled out at the last second.

Which came first – the rooster or the egg?  The rooster did, all over the egg’s tits.  Meiko came several times before I came onto her.  I just KNOW she did.

I fell in a heap on top of her after I was finished. She was soft so this felt good.  She was pressed against the toilet, so she probably wasn’t as comfortable.  You wouldn’t know it, though.  She had a permanent smile on her face.  I hadn’t seen a Japanese person smile like that since I was in the Games Plaza.  I stood up and pulled her off the toilet.

“Frank you for depositing your waste,” said the toilet’s recording, in Japanese first, then Engrish.

“Meiko, I’d like to see your identity card for a moment.”

She handed it to me and I looked it over.  According to this, she was 15 years old.  Later, I’d have to look into the Japanese laws on this sort of thing.

Day Thirteen

I handed my identity card to Hattori.  He put it through his machine and handed it back to me, along with a summary of my honorable and dishonorable locations from yesterday.  I had to laugh.  My salary was actually raised slightly because I went to the Chicken of the Moon restaurant.  Either Naga thinks that Chicken of the Moon makes good, healthy, honorable food, or they are involved in business with them in some way.  Regardless of what the facts may be, surely they wouldn’t have injected more money into my day’s salary if they had known I was blasting 15-year-old cooch in the bathroom at the restaurant.

At the beginning of class, Meiko brought me a gift.  In 1940s-America students would sometimes bring apples for the teacher.  Some of these apple-giving students were sucking up so they would get good grades, but others were having sex with their teacher, like Meiko was with me.

Meiko’s gift was not an apple.  If you asked me if it was bigger than a breadbox I’d have to say yes.  It was a large package containing a plush bear that was unmistakably Winnie the Pooh.  He was only the appetizer – the main course was the set of 16 honey jars.  The label on the package said “American Honey Arranging Bear”.  Under a heading that said “MANY VARIETIES!” there were diagrams of the many ways (varieties) Winnie the Pooh could arrange his sixteen jars, whether by stacking them, lining them up in rows of varying lengths, etc. In one of the diagrams, Pooh had actually built a fence of honey jars around Christopher Robin.  There was a look of apprehension on Christopher’s face, and there was an arrow pointing toward him that said “Boy”.  Pooh had a look of glee on his face.  Pardon me, but I don’t remember Winnie the Pooh being either diabolical or having superior arranging abilities.  I remember him as being something of a retard.  The Japanese sometimes miss the point, but they usually do it with gusto, so I applaud them.

I thanked Meiko, and she sat down.  Call me crazy, but I kind of got a sense that the others knew that I had boned her.  It was like the elasticity of her vagina hadn’t resumed its former non-penis-filled state and everyone was able to see it through her clothes.  Some might call this feeling guilt.  NO!  I gotta remember to look up the rules of consent.  Understand that I will not feel guilty if I find out she is jailbait.  I’d just rather know than not know.  Then if the cops come, I’ll be ready for them.

Hiroshi didn’t seem to suspect anything.  In fact, he complimented me on how I honorably I dealt with a young girl who had a crush on me.  If he had seen the bulge in my pants, he probably wouldn’t have said so.  When my dick arose in response to Meiko’s entering the classroom, I deftly bent the tumescent appendage to the side of my pants opposite of where Hiroshi was sitting.  I had thought the days of uncomfortable classroom erections were over.  However, I had never counted on being in Japan copulating with an unbelievably attractive English student of mine either.

I decided not to Press My Luck, lest I land on a Whammy.  Do you get that game show reference?  If you’re not stupid, you probably do.  I mean that I wasn’t going to screw Meiko again tonight.  She’d have to wait.  I went to Sake Joe’s for a while and had a few shots of whisky.  Not enough to get ruinously drunk, but enough to keep that yellow pallor going.  I kind of liked looking Asian.  It gave me a feeling of kinship with Bruce Lee, and with his lesser, but still kickass, subordinates Jet Li and Tony Jaa.  I think Jackie Chan is overrated.  Sure, his acrobatics are pretty good, but he never uses his skills to seriously ruin anyone’s shit.

I stumbled in my apartment door to find Adrian eating a bowl of cereal.  Oh, what a fashionable non-conformist tree-hugging commie he is!  He eats his cereal at night instead of the daytime!  God, he made me sick.

“Chris should be home soon.  I guess he got out of jail.  What’s that?” Adrian was pointing at the giant honey jar set under my arm.

“Honey jars.  You use them to drink whisky out of.”

I walked up to one of the corners of Main Area, pressed my face against the wall and let my body drop to the ground.  This didn’t feel good, because my face slid all the way down the wall, making a screeching noise the whole time.  That’s friction for you. I got some marks on my face for that illogical decision.  I got some more when I punched my face a few times for being so illogical.

Chris burst in the door.  My God, his face was black and blue.  He looked cheerful, though.

“Ho ho ho!” he said.  “I come bearing gifts!”

He did indeed have a couple bags over his shoulder.  He set them on the floor and took out one of the latest consoles in Japanese videogame technology, the Sega Devious.  This was some offshoot of the Sega Genesis that never materialized in the US.  He also had about 20 games for the system.

“Japanese TV really sucks because we can’t understand Japanese, so I thought I’d get us some videogames.”

“Oh, Chris, that was very thoughtful!” said Adrian.

I said, “Shut up for a moment, Adrian.  You made me forget my question.”  I thought for a moment, looking like I was about to sneeze.  “Oh yes, where did you get these games?  It all looks pretty expensive, and I don’t have any money to chip in if that’s what you’re expecting.”

“No, man.  Don’t worry about it.  I got these from Games Plaza on my way home from jail.  They were on a 100% discount.”

“You stole them?” asked Adrian, suddenly looking nauseous.

“Well, yeah.  The cops had just let me out, so there is no way they’d ever expect that I’d go commit crimes the instant I got out of jail.  I’m the least likely suspect, the way I see it.”

“You know,” I said.  “Your identity card keeps track of everywhere you’ve been.”

He got a serious look on his face.  I had remembered something Chris had said about “not liking the way people worded things to him” back in the States, so I tried to recover, lest he shoot the messenger.

“But you’re right, why would they suspect you?  How did you steal them?  I remember a glowing orange box around one of the systems.  It promised to put fire into any person who touched it.”

Chris was happy again.

“The warnings are bullshit.  I flipped the box off and didn’t get hurt at all.  Kinda funny when you think about it.  You wouldn’t think of the Japanese as liars.”

I hadn’t thought Chris was a liar either, but now I had my suspicions.  I didn’t verbalize this to him.

“Let’s see some of those games,” I said.

About half the game boxes were written entirely in Japanese.  The others had English translations.  The object of “Thermal Gerbil” was to maneuver your gerbil through obstacle courses inside an athlete’s rectum and intestines.  If you supply the proper amount of heat with your activities, your athlete will win his event and you move on to the next level.  “Municipality” was a Sim City sort of game, but there are no people, disasters, or conflicts of any kind.  You just design a city.  There are no particular rewards for correct design or limits on building materials.  I guess you just have fun with it.  “Rapeman: The Comic Book” was not so much a game as a comic book.  You click buttons and the page on the screen turns to the next page.  The character of Rapeman doesn’t actually rape anyone, and I wondered if the word had a different meaning over here.  “Nigger School” was the exact same game as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  I guess things sometimes get translated differently over here.

(Note from Crag Dakkins: Although there is a real person who goes by the nickname Dr. Gonzo Kablaa, the story “100 Days in Japan” is an entirely fictional account, written by me, about Kablaa’s entirely real trip to Japan. I don’t want any confusion about that, while at the same time I do want some confusion about that, which is why I posted photos from Kablaa’s real trip to go with these fake accounts. What I’m getting at is that he didn’t sex any 15-year-olds in Japan or do any of the other things he does in this story. I guess if you did believe that these were non-fiction accounts, you’d have to be pretty stupid. This notice shows how little I think of you.)

Day Ten

On my way to Language Institute this morning, pedestrians were re-routed through a tight, makeshift corridor so that we wouldn’t amble into a construction area and get ourselves killed.  The rain was aggravating, and so were the Japanese people, whose legs were so short they didn’t know how to move quickly.  The tightness of the corridor made it difficult to walk around them.  Japanese children make Japanese adults seem like the Roadrunner.  The child in front of me was a small girl child.  She was wearing a pink hooded raincoat and a Hello Kitty backpack.  Her pace was ungodly slow, as if she was deliberating over every goddamn step.  We were all backed up, but the Japanese people behind me didn’t seem to mind so much.  They were patient.  Figures.

I pushed the girl roughly on the shoulder.  No change in speed. I pushed her shoulder harder and said, “MOVE IT!”  I wasn’t about to miss a day of work for some dumb little gash.  I kicked her in the backpack, and then again. I kept doing so until she stopped moving completely.  I had had enough.  Putting both hands on the little girl’s shoulders, I shoved her with all my might into the side of the corridor.  A metallic clank accompanied this collision.  She rolled over and I saw her face for the first time.  It wasn’t so much a face as a flat noseless sheet with light receptors for eyes and a speaker for a mouth.  This was one of those Asimo robots.  I had heard that you see these every now and then around town.  Sometime when I wasn’t in such a hurry I’d be sure to steal one of those.

“Careful now.  Sometimes those things fight back, and they move a lot quicker when they do.”

The voice that wafted through the air to my ears was British.  Brits are always trying to be careful about things.  Look at the way they outlawed guns.

“I’d be sure to put you in between me and the robot if it did,” I said.  I tried to move more quickly.  I had to get to work and I could feel that this was going to turn into a conversation, given that we speak the same language and this fool probably thinks that gives us common ground.

“Ha ha!  Very good, sir.”  We emerged from the corridor and he ran up beside me.  I glanced at him briefly.  He was 30ish with blonde hair that was arranged in a ridiculous combover.  He had one of those gnarled British faces that you see all the time.  You know, the real ugly faces with the bad teeth?  That’s what this guy had.

He extended his arm as I continued trying to get away from him.

“How do you do?  My name is Williamsburg Jeffries.”

“That’s dumb,” I replied, slapping his hand out of my field of vision.  Finding no success when extending his shaking hand toward one of my hands, he had tried to put it in front of my eyes.  The gall of this son of a bitch.

“Ha ha!  I suppose it is a rather cumbersome and pretentious name, isn’t it?  Well, you can call me Willy for short.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.  What I meant is that I don’t believe you.  I don’t believe anyone would be named so stupidly.  What are you trying to do?  Make up shit about yourself because you’re in a foreign land and you know that I have no way of checking the facts?  I know your type.  In fact, you’re my type.  Later, after I meet some Americans, I plan on making up all kinds of lies about myself.”

I had arrived at Language Institute and was trying to get in the door.  “Williamsburg” had grabbed my arm.

“No, sir.  That is indeed my name.  I should very much like to invite you to a party I’m having tomorrow in Human Warehouse Building – American.  You could meet Americans and lie to them!  I decided that rather than go around the building inviting people to the party, I would ask whatever English speakers I met on the street today.  Get a little luck of the draw involved in my selection.  Today’s your lucky day!”

He handed me an invitation.  A picture of Jeffries holding a martini was at the top.  Overall, it looked like a standard invite.  At the bottom it said “ENGLISH SPEAKERS ONLY!”  This part appealed to me, so I maybe I’d give it a shot.

“Fine, I’ll be there.  Now let go of my arm.”

“One more thing!” he said, grabbing me once again with more force than I cared for.  I had about five seconds to get in the building, so I did the first thing that came naturally – I swung my arm around and popped Jeffries in the nose.  He went down, clutching the blood filtering through his fingers.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing my way into the building.  “I have no time to explain.  I’ll see you at your party.”

In class, I reclined against a wall and kicked my legs up on my “desk”, if that’s what you want to call it.  This desk was too low for me to get my legs underneath even when I was kneeling.  Didn’t matter, though.  I had my legs ON TOP of my desk, sort of like what Fonzie would do if he were teaching a Japanese class.  Students were bringing forward some assignment I had them do and dropping them at my desk.  My reasons for my relaxed pose were twofold:  1) it was relaxing; 2) As more and more of my 216 students came to the front of the class I noticed that there were more than a few hot Jap girls.  Women like it when you act laid back like The Fonz.  That’s one of the things I’ve learned about women over the years.  Women like cool casual.  If it looks like you’re struggling valiantly to maintain an erection, she’s probably going to be less interested in putting it in her mouth or up one of her holes.

I suppose I should tell you a little about women, how I relate to them, and how they relate to me.

Here’s the thing.  I’m a really attractive son of a bitch.  It might be hard for you to picture that, because I’m really into Star Trek and Monty Python, but I assure you it’s true.  Women in the States would throw their baseballs at me and I would catch them in my glove.  (That was meant to be a clever metaphor wherein baseballs means “pussies” and glove means “my dick”.  Did I express that properly?).  My soulful eyes are what really captivate women.  Many women have become lost in the mystery of those jelly-filled light receptacles of mine.  When I close my eyes, women cry.

The rest of my body is kind of like a combination of Christian Bale and Bruce Lee. Those are good-looking guys, but the important thing you must know is that good looks alone will not get you women.  You must also have a winning personality.  I believe that my personality is most like that of Bill Murray.  So think about it: Christian Bale + Bruce Lee + Bill Murray.  If you wouldn’t want to have sex with that composite, I don’t want to know you.

That last sentence sort of describes my feelings toward women’s attitudes toward me.  I don’t waste a whole lot of time with them if for some unfathomable reason they aren’t interested in me.  Usually I have to beat them off with sticks, or rulers – whatever the case may be.  I spend a lot of time denying women my essence, and to the unintelligent eye it might seem like I’m undermining my own cause in getting pussy.  Not so.  You see, women like it when you don’t act too interested.  They like it even more if you dismiss them completely.  They need that thrill of romantic conquest, and they can’t get it if you are immediately interested in them.  Also, women like it if men have certain cliché non-conformist attributes – women like guys in bands, guys who do drugs, guys who ride motorcycles, guys with tattoos, guys who yell at authority figures, guys with long hair, guys with grungy shitty clothes.  I am in a band and I have long hair, and I do these things solely for the purpose of attracting women.  I also do drugs and yell at authority figures, and I’d say 50% of my reasons for doing each is for the purpose of attracting women.

Crag Dakkins said that this was dishonest and ridiculous; that behaving contrary to the way I’d act in the absence of women made me look foolish.  Well, guess what, Crag?  I’m not in the absence of women!  I have to adjust to that particular reality.  Crag believes that the “feigning disinterest” thing is gloopy as well.  But it works!  How can you argue with the results?  Crag does his honest “I want to fuck you” routine with women and they run for the hills.  One has to adapt to the irrational conditions of the feminine mind if one wants to get laid.

A girl named Meiko, who looked like she was between 14 and 30 years old (who could tell with these Japanese girls?), dropped her assignment off at my desk.  She dropped her seductive gaze on me and it reminded me of the power of my seductive abilities.  I gave her a wink and a thumbs up, which was the classiest thing I could think of at that moment.  She smiled, covered her mouth, laughed coquettishly, and returned to her seat.  I paid careful attention to where her desk was.

“Hey, Hiroshi.  Do I have a monitor that I can use to look at students?  It seems unfair that they can look at me and I can’t look at them.”

Hiroshi got up from his cubicle and fiddled around with my desk.  He flipped up a computer monitor that was divided into six screens.  I could look at up to six people at once.  I only wanted to look at one person, though.

I really appreciated Hiroshi’s help, but I didn’t want to share this with him.

“Thanks for nothing,” I said, scornfully.

At first I set all six monitors to Meiko’s cubicle, but after a few minutes of staring at her, it got kind of redundant.  I mixed it up a little bit.  I set one of the screens to this fat kid who was pretty comical looking.  He made me smile, so I looked at him for a while.  I chuckled a little bit.

Hiroshi made a loud pretending-to-clear-his-throat noise.

“Go get a drink of water and shut up,” I said.

“Do you plan on teaching the class today?”

God, I hated this Hiroshi prick.

I was going to continue staring at Meiko, but Hiroshi didn’t stop staring at me.  Then he started writing something down in his notebook, and based on what I knew about him, he probably wasn’t doing regular old homework.  He was probably making notes to report to his boss.

“Alright, fine!”  I got up out of my desk, and opened my suitcase.  I had just the thing for this situation.  It was a bag of Laffy Taffies.  I went around the room and gave one apiece to the students.

“Now, in America, the jokes on the wrappers of these candies are what we call ‘lame’,” I lectured.  “But since you’re all Japanese, I’m sure this humor is something of a delicacy.”

When I arrived at Meiko’s desk, I gave her what candies remained in the bag.  The other Japs weren’t going to care enough to complain.  As I left her cubicle, I “accidentally” brushed my hand through her long hair.

When I got back to the front of the class, I wasn’t pleased with what I saw.  What I saw was Hiroshi standing behind my desk not being pleased with what he saw.  He was looking at my monitor screen, no doubt noting that 5 of the 6 screens were filled with beautiful Meiko.  He also probably remembered that I had spent a deal of class time staring at those screens.  His face reddened a little bit and he flipped the monitor closed.

“You are on thin ice, Professor Kablaa.”

“I knew that already.  Is there anything you can say that would actually enlighten me?”

“I could say you’re fired.  Would that enlighten you?”

“Woah now, let’s not go nuts here.  I was just kidding around.”

“I’m not kidding around, Professor Kablaa.  You are in actuality on thin ice.  You appear to have designs on seducing an underaged female, and that will not be tolerated.”

“What is ‘underaged’ in Japan?”

“I don’t know what or if there is…that’s beside the point.  She is your student.  It would be unethical for you to do what you want to do with her.”

“What is it you think I want to do with her?”

“You…” Hiroshi reddened, this time blushing from embarrassment.  His repressed Asian heritage was now shining through.  “You know exactly what you want to do with her.”

I played dumb.  “Um, nope.  What?  Tell me.”  I tried my best to look like a yokel, and eventually Hiroshi got uncomfortable and sat down.

“Remember that you are on thin ice,” he said.

“Yeah, well, you are on thin RICE!” I replied.  Zing!  Got him.  Asian-American didn’t know what hit him!  I hope Meiko heard that.  She would see that I am a badass.

Day Eleven

I found a Raoul Duke hat today and all is well in the world.

No, I lied.  I didn’t find one.  I think that feat would be next to impossible in Japan.  Instead I had some friends ship my hat from home via express delivery.  Now I can sit in my apartment with my hat on my head and the brain juices will flow more smoothly.

Raoul Duke, if you didn’t know, you moron, is Hunter S. Thompson’s alter ego in some of his books. Hunter S. Thompson is my favorite author, and possibly the greatest person who has ever lived (next to Bruce Lee).  You might have noticed that my first name is Gonzo.  My parents were drug addicts who were fond of Dr. Thompson’s writings.  His method of journalism in which he cast himself as a character was called “gonzo journalism”.  In Thompson’s honor, my parents decided to name me Gonzo Journalism Kablaa.  I thought the middle name Journalism was unnecessary, but whatever, they were drug addicts.

Work today was uneventful except for the fact that I was wearing my new hat.  I mostly just lectured about English and led the class in repetition exercises with the help of my visual aids.  This doesn’t make compelling fiction so I won’t dwell on it too much, except to say that when I was holding up a picture of a shoe, saying the word shoe, and having the class say the word shoe after I said it, I got the idea that tomorrow I would ask that Meiko girl out.  What was it about shoes that made me come to this conclusion?  Nothing.  You see, you need to know something about the human brain.  It makes decisions based on stimuli, yes, but the decisions are made based on a complex web of stimuli you’ve already experienced.   That I was looking at a picture of a shoe at the same moment I decided I was going to try to pork one of my students is nothing but coincidence.  I’m sure I had thoughts in my unconscious forming that led up to this decision long before I looked at the picture of the shoe.  Most people believe these “shoe coincidences” to be causes for their behavior and they then struggle to figure out why, possibly through things like Freudian interpretation: does the shoe look like the penis I want to jam into her?  No, it’s just a shoe.  There is nothing to interpret.  My reasons for coming to this decision are ultimately irretrievable.  That is what is clear about it and that is what is mysterious about it.  See, I think better with my Raoul Duke hat on.

I brought Chris and Adrian to the party of Williamsburg Jeffries tonight.  This wasn’t necessarily because I wanted to involve them in some social activities (especially in regard to Adrian) but because Jeffries had said something about only inviting random English speakers he met on the street.  I disapproved of this mystical approach to party invitations and I thought that bringing Chris and Adrian would be an appropriate gesture of civil metaphysical disobedience.  Jeffries came forward, gauze in and around his nose, and a great big smile on his face.  As I introduced him to Chris and Adrian he didn’t seem in the slightest bit nonplussed.  That kind of disappointed me. I remembered something.

“Hey Jeffries, just before I punched you in the nose, you were about to tell me one more thing about your party.  What was it?”

“Oh, you read my mind already, dear boy!  I was going to tell you to invite your friends.”

D’oh!  I moved away from Jeffries so that I could see what sort of liquors he had.

There were ten other people at the party.  The lights had been dimmed and “pinked out” with filters and there was music softly playing in the background.  It sounded like Neil Diamond or some other gaylord.  The liquor table had plenty of liquor, which was nice.  And it had my brands.  I had had a lot of Suntory whisky lately, so I chose a bottle of Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite, Wild Turkey.  I took the bottle and was about to go off into a corner to quietly drink myself into oblivion when I was accosted by a corpulent, homely woman.

“Oh my gosh!” she said, her fat face not really jiggling excessively, but I imagined that it was.  “I’ve seen you around Language Institute!  I think we teach on the same floor!”

“That’s a distinct possibility unless you teach some language other than English.  There is only one English language floor in the whole building.”

“Yes!” she laughed.  “Oh, I’m so FRUSTRATED with my students!  They can’t learn anything!”  She laughed some more.  I disliked it when people laughed about things they were really very angry about.  I looked across the room and saw that Chris and Adrian were engaged in conversation with people who were better looking and less stupid than this cow.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I said.

She stepped in front of me.  “Have you found an effective way to teach these students?  I think it’s like teaching a bunch of zombies.  I bet you’re really good at it though, huh?  You look like you’re smart.  Are there any tips you could give me?”

“Listen, I don’t…” I began.

“It’s just that I hear that Naga is going to be firing some of us soon, and I want to have a fair shot, you know?”  She nodded, seemingly trying to get me to nod with her.  I didn’t.

“I’ve had a long day,” I said.  “I’d sort of just like to roll up in a ball and have some drinks and maybe listen to some music.  Excuse me.”

“Too good for me?” she said, laughing, but I could tell she was bitter.  “Go then, if it’s too difficult to lend some help to a fellow human being in need! Haha.”

I hated the “need” argument more than most things.  I hated pity inspiring. Crag Dakkins had made an assertion about Doug Willis that I’ve wanted to ascertain the truth of, and now might be an opportunity to experiment.

“I’m sorry,” I said, with the best false sincerity I could muster.  “I am tired and I do need to go off to drink and get rest, but you seem like a nice girl.  How about we meet tomorrow night in Little Edo for dinner or something? I can tell you some of my teaching strategies.”

She lost the bitterness immediately.  Women are on emotional roller coasters, so I wasn’t surprised.  “Ok,” she said. “Where do you want to meet and when?”

I knew that if I was too specific, she would lose interest.  Women like mystery.

“Just look from restaurant to restaurant in the evening hours.  It’s not a very big section of Tokyo, so you should find me.”  In fact, I knew nothing about the size of Little Edo.  “Here’s a hint to help you find me:  I mostly stick to sushi shops.”

She smiled and said, “Ok.  By the way, what is your name?”

“Gonzo.  What’s yours?”

“Clarice.  I’ll see you tomorrow, Gonzo.”

She waddled off.  I had probably left her feeling happier than she had ever felt before.  I kind of shivered at the thought of making someone so repulsive feel so good, but then I remembered that she would be in Little Edo tomorrow.  If what Crag had said was true, Doug Willis’s men would kidnap her for being a white person and sell her into slavery.  That would probably not happen.  What would probably happen is that Clarice would never find me, and she would either feel frustrated at her fruitless search or angry that I stood her up.  Since she is really stupid, it would probably be the former.

I went off to a corner and started drinking with complete abandon.  I don’t remember much else about the night, except that at some point Chris got into a disagreement with someone and started beating his face in.  Shortly after that, what seemed like 100 Japanese police officers stormed the room and pigpiled onto Chris.  He threw them this way and that.  The music went out because the machine that it emanated from became broken.  I was out of the way of all the action, covered mostly by a pile of coats, and in an extremely altered state of mind, but it seemed like a lot of people were screaming and panicking.  Eventually, about 15 cops had Chris’s arms pinned behind his back and they walked him out of the party.

By Dr. Gonzo Kablaa

Eddie sat at a cheap vinyl-covered card table, ashing his cigarette into a cheap plastic astray, and blowing second-hand smoke into the cheap motel room he was currently sitting inside.  Sitting across from him was a black man in his late 20’s, his appearance almost diametrically opposed to Eddie’s own.  It seemed to incorporate every significant fashion trend of the last 50 years:  dreadlocks were slightly draped over Aviator sunglasses, a significantly form-fitting Chicago Bulls jersey was covered by a shiny yellow puffy jacket, and a massive belt buckle in the shape of a banana fastened the belt looped around his acid-washed bell bottom jeans, all capped off with a pair of immaculate 1987 Air Jordans.  Almost anyone in Blacktown would instantly recognize him as Stevie Jam.

“So what you got tah say, Pip?  My time be short, can’t be wastin’ it all in here.”

Eddie took a drag on his cigarette before answering.

“Speech as colorful as your attire, Mr. Jam.  What have I got to say, then?  It seems your patriarch is deceased.”
“Patriarch?”  Stevie Jam smirked.  “I assume you talkin’ bout Nigga X.  Yeah, he dead.  Dead as dead ken be.  Muthafuckin’ cop Shitface peel off all his skin.  I ain’t seen the body, but they sayin’ it was a mess.  What about it, then?”
“Well,” Eddie said somewhat expectantly, “now that Mr. X has been removed, there may be room for new civic authority.”
“Civic authority?”
“Yes. Let me put it this way.  Who’s the next in command?”

“Next in command?”  Stevie Jam laughed.  “Seem like Shitface ain’t start an’ end with ‘ole Nigga X.  Most the high-ups dead as he is, least the ones around that day, ones still alive mostly gone.”
“Gone where?”
“GONE, muthafucka.  Disappear.  See what they see and decide they ain’t wantin’ it.  Feel me?”

Eddie thought for a couple seconds.

“Has anyone made a move to take charge?”

Stevie Jam laughed again.
“Take charge?  Of what?   Blacktown?  You seen Blacktown?  Niggas and nougat, that’s all they be in Blacktown now.”

Eddie nodded.
“Exactly my point.   Right now, there’s a power vacuum, and either someone rises to take the place of Mr. X or Don Puncinello moves in to fill the void.”
“Punchy?  Yeah, he be real taken with claiming Nougatville fo’ his own.  Sho’ he wants that all for hisself.”

Eddie sighed impatiently.

“Even if he doesn’t, someone else will.  Chaos is a powerful ally for anyone keen to leapfrog the status quo.  Blacktown needs new direction, and you,” Eddie pointed to Stevie Jam, “could be it as well as anyone.  You’ve got the clout to claim the prize, and with my help, you could do it.”

“Your help?”  Stevie Jam laughed even harder than he had before.  “From you?  This bein’ the same cat who kill Johnny Hall to make eryone think Negrosun the one to do it.  That’s why we here in this motel, ain’t it?  Your building’s all blown up.  Least the first floor.  Rest supposed to be.  I’d say Nigga X ain’t trustin’ his own to be settin’ bombs no more, ‘cept he too dead to trust no one no more.”

“So it would seem,” Eddie said through clenched teeth.

“I still ain’t see where you come into this. How you gonna help me take over?”

This was a good question, considering that all of Blacktown was a nougat-coated chaos.  No one had been able to figure out where the nougat had come from yet.  They’d discovered the container it came from: it still had significant amounts of nougat in it, but the pipes had been clogged up with “Avatar” plushies.  All in all, the whole neighborhood was a disaster area.  But Eddie had always flourished in these kinds of situations.  He had a plan, and all he needed was an ally to back him.

“I’ll tell you exactly how.  Killing Detective Shitface.”
“Shitface.”  Stevie Jam looked incredulous.  “Yea.  Real cake walk, sound like, being that Nigga X already tried and got hisself skinned for the trouble.  I ain’t see how doin’ the same gonna end betta for me.”
“That’s exactly the point.  If you WERE the one to do it, your claim would be unquestionable.  Shitface has already gone rogue, more or less, and his demise won’t cause the shockwaves it might’ve before, IF it can be done quietly.  Mr. X never appreciated quiet. Too much of a penchant for grandiosity, even where the opposite would’ve been prudent.”

Stevie Jam waved a hand dismissively.  “Talk straight, Pip.  Enough with this shit.  How you gonna kill Shitface?”
“Correction.  How are YOU going to kill Shitface?  My part is more subtle.  I’ve got the snake in the grass to make it happen.  An inside source who assures me he can provide all the information we need to take out Shitface.”
“Who?”
“A police officer,” Eddie said as he ashed his cigarette again.  “A newly minted detective, actually.”

*****

The atmosphere in the lobby of Panness, Inc. was languid.  It was late afternoon, and rays of intense sunlight pierced through the front windows.  A receptionist named Melissa, relatively young and attractive, sat behind a counter applying nail polish.  Her primary job was to tell people that everyone in the offices above were busy.   An ever-present security guard sat in a stool in the corner, equidistant from the reception desk and elevator.

Three other men were in the lobby: Antonio, Benito, and Carlo.  Antonio and Benito were sitting on a leather couch and Carlo was leaning against the wall next to it.  Unlike the security guard, these men were not a consistent lobby feature.  They were only there because Don Puncinello was there, in an office on the top floor of the building.

Panness, Inc. had been one of Puncinello’s larger front operations for years.  Puncinello generally did not spend much time in any one building, but in the aftermath of recent events in the city, most notably the Blacktown Riots, Puncinello had moved most of his operations to Panness, Inc.  Antonio thought it was a waste of time.  He didn’t very much like spending the entire day sitting around in a lobby, and in Antonio’s opinion, just twiddling their thumbs gave the impression that they didn’t have any balls.

He was thinking about going outside for a smoke when the lights went out.  This elicited no panic: the riots had caused a fair share of chaos in the city, and a power outage wasn’t out of the ordinary.  Antonio looked at Benito, who just shrugged.  He was about to take out his cellphone to check in upstairs when a man walked into the building.  He was wearing blue dress pants, a white short-sleeved button-up shirt, and a grey tie.  The badge on his belt made his affiliation clear.

“Can I help you?” Melissa inquired in a monotone.

The man ignored her and walked straight up to the couch.  Antonio didn’t know what purpose he had, but he figured he must’ve known Punchy was there.

“You got a problem or something?” Antonio asked the man, not bothering to rise from the couch.
“I’m here for Puncinello.”
“Yeah?” asked Antonio in a scornful tone.  “I ain’t know nobody by that name that’s here.  Elevator’s down anyway.”
“Stairs aren’t.”

Antonio stood up.  He was a large man, 6’7 and around 280 pounds, solid and well-muscled.  He had worked his way up from bouncer at one of the strip joints owned by Puncinello to one of Puncinello’s primary enforcers.  He looked down at the cop as his face broke out into a condescending smile.

“I’m sorry, officer, but we can’t allow you further into the building without a warrant.”

At this point, Benito also stood up, moving himself next to Antonio.   The man said nothing, reacting only by reaching into his right pocket and taking out a pen.  An impressively thick fountain pen.  He then stood there impassively.

Antonio was about to break the silence when the man suddenly drove the pen into his jugular vein with considerably impressive force, and then sent him flying back onto the couch, blood spurting out of his neck.  Just as quickly he plunged the pen into Benito’s chest, impaling him directly in the heart, and then thrust him upwards and off his feet before removing the pen and letting him drop to the floor.

Carlo, who didn’t have the quickest reaction speed, began to draw his pistol.  He fully intended to unload his entire clip into the man, to show him a thing or two about doing such things that he’d done, but with the same uncanny speed with which he’d dispatched Antonio and Benito, the man glided across the room and stabbed the hand Carlo had just placed on the handle of his gun with the pen.  In one fluid motion, he disarmed Carlo and sent him crashing into the security guard.

As Carlo started to get up, the man fired a shot at him using Carlo’s own gun, hitting him in the head and killing him instantly.  He then walked up to the security guard and cracked him across the jaw with the butt of the pistol.  After briefly looking over the room, he nodded and started walking toward the stairwell door.  Melissa began to scream as he went through the doorway, but he didn’t seem to notice.

For years afterwards, Melissa would never forget the abject terror she felt that day.

Or the impressive mustache that had adorned the man’s face.

*****
Marco Caparelli stood against a wall next to the doorway, his heart thumping against his chest. He held his .38 revolver with two hands, both shaking.  He had tried to radio Luciano shortly ago, but he wasn’t responding.  He thought that the screams and gunfire that he’d been hearing for the past couple of minutes likely had something to do with that.

Marco had barely ever FIRED a gun before, much less killed anyone with one.  He mainly stuck to things like smashing people’s kneecaps with a bat or cracking people’s ribs with a bat. This was entirely different.  The gunfire was getting closer, and it was a time to shit or get off the pot, however much he wanted to get the fuck out of there.  In fact, Marco WAS contemplating hiding under a desk or in a closet, but then he heard the door at the end of the hallway open.  He knew this was it.

Mustering all the courage he could muster, Marco spun out from against the wall and into the doorway, his .38 raised in front of him.  He unloaded all five of his rounds into the man in the hallway, hitting his mark every time.  This accuracy was unexpected, and for the shortest moment of time he was on the brink of elation.  Then the man he had shot was thrown aside by another man that had been standing behind him, a man unscathed by any of Marco’s bullets.  His face was a dark fuchsia color.

Marco began to run toward the doorway at the other end of the hall, the one to the office containing Don Puncinello, but just before he got there a shot rang out.  It was hard to say whether Marco’s body or his brains hit the door first, but it didn’t matter so much in the end.

*****

Shitface stood in the office, covered in blood.  The bodies of Don Puncinello’s bodyguards were strewn about the room.  Puncinello himself lay kneeling in front of his desk.  His shattered skull rested on its surface, ruined by the mini refrigerator Shitface had used to repeatedly bludgeon it.

Nigger X and Don Puncinello were both dead.  Thoroughly dead.  Two of the greatest threats to the long-term health of Shitface’s family.  He knew his next target.  Negrosun would be more of a challenge, if only because Shitface didn’t know who or what or where Negrosun was.  But he aimed to ask someone who might know, someone who had managed to elude him thus far.

Nickasun.

Day Six

In Japan, the symbol on the ladies’ restroom is an egg.  The symbol on the men’s restroom is a chicken.  At the Kentucky Fried Chicken near my apartment complex I asked various Japs what this meant.  Few of them could speak English, which was disappointing, but it made me remember my English-teaching duty I have while I’m here.

One of the more coherent Japs told me, “Chicken excrete egg.  Man excrete woman.”  I didn’t think he had that quite right, but I could look into it.

I’ve used the word “Japs” a few times now and it has probably offended you.  I’m not sure why.  It’s simply a shorter version of “Japanese”.  At some point the ethnic nickname became derogatory.  That point was World War II.  Can you imagine that there was a time when Japanese people were considered ferocious and reckless?  I can’t.  The stories of kamikaze fighters are hard to believe.  Especially when I feel like I could tear the clothes off of random Japanese people and nine times out of ten they’d politely ask to receive their clothes back.  What happened to them?

“What happened to you people?” I asked my class.

Blank stares.  I was so fed up with blank stares.  I was fed up with a lot of things.  They weren’t learning English as fast as I wanted them, too.  I know how to speak English – why can’t they?  I went to the virtual chalkboard and picked up the laser chalk.  On one half of the board I wrote, “This is an R”.  On the other half I wrote, “This is an L.”  Then at the bottom I wrote, “Got it?” and stormed out of the room.  Maybe this is the kind of no-nonsense teaching they need.  Simple, and straight to the point.  I was gonna go get drunk or something.  The front doors of the Language Institute were locked, so I returned to the classroom.  I thought maybe my Jap students would be mad at the linguistically insensitive remarks I had left on the virtual chalkboard, but they had the same expressionless faces they always have.

“WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU PEOPLE!?” I shouted.  Some of them flinched.  Most of them continued to stare.

I went from cubicle to cubicle, throwing all their books and writing materials on the floor.  None of them tried to stop me.  Then I went to the upper story of the cube and started pushing a small child out of his cubicle. The kid latched onto my arm with his teeth and wouldn’t let go. Finally!  Some resistance!  I applied minimal pressure to his eyeballs and he finally let go.  Then I carried him down with me and brought him to the front of the class.

“The innocence of children,” I said.  “It took someone with childhood innocence to show you all how to behave properly.”

I hoisted the boy above my head, trying to evoke the Kunte Kinte birth scene from Roots, but I think it was lost on my audience.

“For the rest of the class period, Kunte…um, Akira…will teach this class.  I think everyone in this room could learn from him, including me.”

I placed Akira on the kneeling post behind my desk and gave him the c’mon gesture to urge him to complete the day’s lesson.

After a few minutes of silence I thought it my logical imperative to step in.  The rest of the class period I rehashed the plot of Roots, as best as I could remember it, instead of lecturing about English.  I don’t think they noticed the difference.

This evening I asked my roommates what happened to the Japanese people?  Why are they so lame?

“They had two atomic bombs dropped on them sixty years ago, each killing over 100,000 people in a manner of seconds,” said Adrian.  “If your people had that kind of history, you’d probably feel a little defeated by the world as well.”

“My people?  My people are the Norwegians, who were killed by Nazi Germans in World War II.  My people are also the Nazi Germans, who were slaughtered mercilessly by the Americans and the Russians in World War II.  Remember Dresden?  My people took quite a beating there, you god damn liberal bastard. Don’t lecture me on pain.”

Chris, who had been sitting on the television, slipped off, pulling the TV down onto its face.  The alarm went off.  The glow of the TV was reflecting on the carpet, and it sounded like an informational video on how to operate the television properly had started playing.  Chris muttered some expletives and set the television upright.  The alarm stopped but the video kept playing. He tried to turn the TV off but that didn’t work.  Then he unplugged it, but the video continued to play.  He pried off the battery power on the side of the TV and then red lights flashed “Emergency Batttery Power Engaged” on the side of the TV, and the video continued to play.  Chris seemed angry, and I didn’t like where this was going.  He delivered a roundhouse kick to the TV screen and his foot bounced off as if it were made of superball material. The ricochet sent Chris to the floor.  He picked the TV up over his head and walked to the window.  Part of me wanted to object, but part of me wanted to see where this was going, so I remained silent.  He threw the TV at the window of Main Area and it bounced off, landed on Chris’s toe and tumbled into a corner.  The screen was facing the wall, but it sounded like the instructional video was still playing.

Chris’s rage had no choice but to turn into amazement.  “Well ain’t that the damnedest thing?”

“Yes,” I said.  “The Japanese make durable products.”

Day Seven

In class today, everyone presented a skit on Where the Wild Things are.  They didn’t understand all the words in the book, but they were able to pronounce them (besides the obvious problems with two letters).  They were instructed to make costumes of all the monsters, but there seemed to be some confusion here.  The monsters looked more like people.  And those people looked like stick people.  And those stick people weren’t costumes, but were drawn on sheets of paper.  None of the students in the class deviated from this artistic lameness.

I held up pictures of the monsters from the book side by side with some of the pictures the students had drawn and I asked them if they honestly thought that they looked similar.  Their responses were mostly indifferent.  They didn’t know or they didn’t understand the question.

I told one of the students to draw a picture of me.  The drawing looked exactly like one of his drawings of a Wild Thing, but it had a stick in its hand, which I assumed was a ruler.  This attention to detail notwithstanding (and, in fact, it is highly commended) these people were really shitty artists.  I’m not that good of an artist, but I understand the basic concepts of shape and proportion.

It was in the midst of demonstrating how to draw a Wild Things monster that a thought occurred to me.  This Wild Things projects was exactly the kind of pointless distracting busywork that I remembered doing in foreign language classes.  I didn’t articulate this revelation out loud, so my students probably wondered why I started viciously slapping my ruler hand until it bled.  They might have also wondered why I started banging my head against the wall.  I had behaved illogically, and illogic should always be punished.  That is a categorical imperative.

So what if the Japanese didn’t understand art?  They could make slick, aerodynamic cars, thermonuclear microwaves and pristine computer programs.  This was an English class, not a faggy arts class.

I spent the rest of the class period writing out 60 IOU’s to my students for wasting their time with such childish nonsense.  The IOU’s were good for one free sake at Sake Joe’s (a Japanese restaurant modeled on American Japanese restaurants).  I don’t know if there is a legal drinking age here, but I didn’t discriminate when handing out the IOU’s.  I haven’t tried sake yet, but from what I understand it’s not a far cry from warm pisswater and it has a low alcoholic content.  So it probably won’t damage the young kids’ brains too much.

I sat (kneeled) at Sake Joe’s and waited for my students to show up.  Three of them did.  They were all named Hiroshi and they were all in their twenties.  I was kind of disappointed with the turnout.  The IOU’s expired after this evening, so tough shit if they didn’t look at the fine print.  I bought three sakes for the Hiroshis and bought a bottle of Suntory whisky for myself.

“For relaxing times, make it Suntory time,” I said to them.  “That’s something Bill Murray says in Lost in Translation.”  They didn’t understand.

I asked them how they thought class was going.  They weren’t sure what I was saying.  Conversation seemed to be pointless.

There was a small TV behind the front counter playing a Japanese baseball game.  I had learned a few things in the past few days about Japanese people and about Japanese televisions so I figured I’d employ logic to achieve my desired end.  I got up and walked behind the counter as if I owned the place.  Two workers were watching the television, but I knew they wouldn’t pose a problem.  I grabbed the TV and pulled the cord out of its outlet; the battery power kept the TV on.  I brought it back to my table so that I could watch the game.  Most of the players in the game were non-Japanese.  Those that were Japanese all had the same characteristics: they were short and they hit for high batting average and low slugging percentage.

“I dislike baseball,” said one of the Hiroshis.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I replied, not looking away from the screen.

This may seem like one of those moments where I’d do a comical double take, since I had just casually acknowledged one of my students speaking flawless English for the first time.  But instead I continued to stare at the screen for the next several minutes, watching Americans who aren’t good enough for Major League Baseball pound the piss out of our tiny Asian friends.

“Don’t get me wrong.  The game appeals to me mathematically.  I just happen to think that it’s really damn boring,” said Hiroshi.

“I like football.  I wouldn’t know about mathematical appeal,” I said.  And that was when I did a CLASSIC double take.

“You speak perfect English!  It’s not even Engrish!” I said.

“Yes,” said Hiroshi.

“How long have you been able to do that?”

“Ever since I learned how to speak.”

I looked at the two other Hiroshis.  “Can you two speak English as well?”

They shook their heads.

“Engrish?”

They shook their heads.

“So your parents are bilingual?” I asked the first Hiroshi.

“No.  They only speak English.”

“Well, isn’t that something.  I didn’t think there were people in Japan who don’t speak Japanese.”

“Americans,” Hiroshi said.

“Well, yeah.  People like me don’t speak Japanese.”

“Or like me.”

“No, it is you who is wrong.  Japanese people speak Japanese.  A lot of them do.  Look around you?  Hear that sound all these people are making by flapping their tongues?  That’s Japanese.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.  I’m American.”

I had to think about this for several moments and then I remembered back to my days in the states and struggled to convince myself that there were indeed some people over there who looked like Hiroshi.  Next I had to consider the implications of this new development.  I just wasn’t sure what those implications those were.

“So what are you doing in my class if you are American and you already speak English?”

“You’ll remember that you are in the employ of the Naga Corporation, which is based in the United States.  Because you are far away from the United States right now, you might have forgotten this fact.  It is probably the reason you have decided that you can do whatever you want on the Naga Corporation’s dime.  You are like a small child who thinks ‘out of sight, out of mind’.”

I wasn’t very fond of the way he was talking to me.  I thought about throwing my glass of whisky in his face and running off, but then I remembered that, despite appearances, he is not Japanese.  He is American, and he would run after me and want to fight me.

“What are you saying?” I asked, doing my best to sound innocent.

“You’ve behaved in a manner that is not befitting of a Naga employee.  Yesterday in class I observed you throw the students’ objects about and even try to knock a small child out of his sixth story cubicle.”

“I…” I began, but couldn’t think of a way to finish that sentence.

“Naga is willing to tolerate some deviant behaviors.  We understand you are operating in a culture you don’t fully understand.  However, Naga is in a precarious position financially, and some of our employees will likely lose their jobs.  I’m giving you fair warning that you could be one of those employees if you don’t stop this abominable behavior.”

He took something out of his pocket.  It was a bunch of IOUs.

“Don’t ever give coupons for alcohol to young children again.”  He slapped them onto the table.

With that, Hiroshi stood up, grabbed the TV and brought it back over to the employees, who hadn’t moved since I took it from them.

“Are these two Americans, too?” I pointed to the other Hiroshis as he was walking out the door.

“Maybe you should ask them.”  He closed the door and was gone.

I asked the other Hiroshis if they were Americans in disguise, but they seemed confused by the question.  I wasn’t sure though.  I didn’t know if I could trust anyone anymore.

Day Eight

The sign had a yellow happy face and it read: “Are you smile?  Try it and see!”

I didn’t see much to smile about.  Neither did the hordes of Japanese who were walking around downtown Tokyo.  It was raining and I didn’t have an umbrella.  I didn’t care.  The weather suited my mood.  Let me be clear.  My mood was not wet, but rather it was sad and depressed, which are common mood associations for rainy weather often seen in movies.  There was no thunder or lightning, but that would have suited my mood, too, for I was also very angry.  I had a God damned Japanese-American spy in my classroom.  I was willing to put up with the Naga Corporation’s spying on my private life.  Their identity card tracers didn’t reveal anything that I did anyway, just the places I went to.  I had a little more trouble with the idea that they were watching me work, too. Employers should place their trust in their workers.  Constantly monitoring them is like they’re just waiting for them to fuck up.

It was Time 3-1/4 and I was contemplating skipping the day’s work and maybe opting to look around Tokyo for a bit.  I hadn’t been outside of the same four or five blocks since I got here, and I thought maybe I had been wasting my time.  One thing I had on my to-do list was to stop by Chris’s dojo, but with my work, drinking and pot schedule, I hadn’t been able to find the time.

I could see a massage parlor down the street and I started walking in that direction.  A handjob would do me good right about now, I thought.  Then I thought of my students sitting there in my classroom with no teacher there to teach them.  They wouldn’t be getting handjobs like I would be.  They’d be having significantly less fun.  I turned around and started back toward Language Institute.  Then I thought to myself, what about me?  What about my needs?  Fuck those Japs in my classroom!  I turned back toward the massage parlor.  But I had a categorical imperative to do the job I was being paid to do.  Plus, if I didn’t show up, it had been made clear to me that I might lose my job.  Back toward the Language Institute.  I could probably find another job, though.  Tall Americans could be hired to get stuff off of high shelves at stores.  Massage Parlor.  This went on for a while.  I made all kinds of hesitations and reversals in my directionality.  The feeling I’m trying to express here is “inner conflict”.

Eventually, I went back to work, because I couldn’t convince myself that there was any demand in all of Japan for Americans except for their ability to teach the English language.  Logic proved itself a powerful ally once again.

When I checked in at Hattori’s window, I noticed my pay had been docked significantly for the previous day.  That is, it was docked 70%.  Instead of arguing with him, I figured it would be best if I just sucked it up.  This place is non-negotiable, unlike the United States, which likes to make compromises through negotiations on every single human right that we have.  These negotiations take the form of frivolous lawsuits by people who think their rights were violated but weren’t and Congressmen who make motions for laws that put more controls on people.  Anyway, I sucked it up and went to my classroom.

Hiroshi, that worthless scumsucking turncoat, was in his desk and ready to learn, along with all the other students.  I sneered at him to make sure he understood that I was not his friend.

“Professor Kablaa, it would be in your best interest to teach the class and not focus on your negative personal feelings toward me.  You’ll be more productive that way.”

“Well, don’t you just have an opinion about everything.”

“Yes.  And, please, no more recaps of famous television mini-series.  I expect that this won’t happen again now that you know there is someone in the class who understands what you’re saying.”

“Any more demands?”

“Yes.  Try to incorporate some of the students beyond the front grid for once, too.  The Japanese are a modest, unobtrusive people, but they do like to be involved in mentally stimulating exercises.”

On this last point, Hiroshi was correct.  I had mostly forgotten about those students behind the first vertical grid.  I had also made a gross miscalculation as to the number of students in my class.

The cube of cubicles was not a 10 x 6 arrangement as I previously stated.  It was a 6×6x6 arrangement.  I had forgotten to add a dimension and to count the length of one dimension correctly.  I told you I’m not that good at math.  So I did not have 60 students like I previously thought (though, I did multiply 10×6 correctly here, you’ll see), but rather I had 216.

Maybe there was some truth to Hiroshi’s comment that things that are out of my sight are out of my mind.  The last five 6×6 grids were definitely out of my sight and I really didn’t consider them very much.  I decided not to ponder any longer about the things Hiroshi might be correct about.  He is a douchebag.

I began class by handing out a pop quiz from a few days ago.  Students were supposed to put the name beside each picture of an animal: cow, fish, squid, etc.  I even threw in a picture of a Pikachu so that the test wouldn’t be culturally biased.  Even so, test results were really shitty.  I must not have been clear in my instructions, because every word they wrote on the quiz was in Japanese.  To add to my amazement was the fact that the question the students got the most wrong was the Pikachu one.  Most students left it blank; and one student wrote a sad face in the blank.

I was so frustrated by these test scores I didn’t feel like being very devoted to the act of returning the tests to the students.  I flicked them about, this way and that; in some cases they landed in the student’s cubicle, in others they did not – I didn’t worry about it too much either way.  For the students in the upper stories, I just kind of dropped their tests on the floor.  It’s pretty hard to throw a sheet of paper 30 feet into the air.  I didn’t care.  I was pretty casual.  The exception was when I got to Hiroshi’s cubicle.  I pressed his test into his face, acting like I didn’t notice that it was causing him discomfort.

“I know what you’re doing and I want you to stop.  It’s very uncomfortable.”

I dropped his test.  “You will be made less uncomfortable to know that you got the highest score in the class.  100%.  Do you feel like a big man beating all these Japs on an English exam, you lousy American?”

“I resent that remark.  Again, I’d like you to focus on how you are going to make these students learn, not on the malice you have for me.”

“One thing that would make it easier would be if I knew some Japanese.  It’s hard to translate things into English if you don’t know the word it’s translated from.”

“You have visual aids for translation purposes.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hey.”

“I need an interpreter or something.  Do you speak Japanese?”

“No.  I know English and I learned some French in college.”

“Ok, I don’t need your life story.  It was a yes or no question.”

Something about Hiroshi’s answer got me thinking, though.  If he didn’t know Japanese, perhaps I could learn Japanese and talk to the students without his knowing what I was saying.  His spying would be useless.  I could lecture about V or Shogun or Stephen King Presents: The Stand, and he would be none the wiser.  I rubbed my hands together in a way I hope evoked the malicious glee of an old dirty miser.  I had practiced this gesture often enough in the mirror for the occasion it might come in handy.  Barring any unforeseen circumstances, now was that occasion.

After school, I acquired a Japanese-English/English-Japanese book and I vowed to use all my free time to learn the stupid language of this country.

Day Nine

I’ve decided to give up learning the Japanese language.  It became really difficult really quickly.

This morning I received an email from Crag Dakkins:

“I advise you to stay out of the Little Edo district of Tokyo.  Seriously.  Doug Willis informs me that that is where his white slave operation ‘recruits’ members.  I’ll sum it up this way: unless you want to end up in Mongolia mining for precious metals and being sodomized by wealthy Mongolian slave-owners for every day and night for the rest of your lackluster life, steer clear of Little Edo.”

My reply?

“Hey you.  Fuck you.”

Crag Dakkins was always telling me about what a supervillain this Doug Willis is.  I didn’t see it.  The one time I met Doug at Buffalo Wild Wings in Rochester, he seemed like a regular enough guy, maybe a bit more intelligent than the average person.  We did get into a minor scuffle over something I can’t remember, and were both asked to leave.  We didn’t though.  We continued to eat our wings.  Minnesotans are about as impotent in their authority as the Japanese are.

Speaking of the Japanese, I’m in Japan right now, so I don’t want to think about stupid Americans like Crag Dakkins and Doug Willis.

Today I had finally earned enough “credits” to get a day off from work.

Chris, Adrian and I walked over to the Games Plaza to see all the latest in videogame technology.  You see, in Japan they are always one videogame generation ahead of the United States.  They have the Playstation 4 and the Nintendo Butterfly over here.  When the latter system comes out in the states it will likely have a name that’s not so gay.  I shouldn’t speak so soon, though.  The Nintendo Wii kept its INCREDIBLY gay name when it hit the US market.

The Games Plaza is packed with videogames.  The arcades here have more than your standard arcade machines.  They also have the home consoles.  How do they prevent theft of these easily stealable devices?  Well, the PS4 I saw had a clear box on top of it that was emitting a faint orange glow.  There were warnings next to it written in Japanese and English:  “Hands on console machine and eyes forwards – HANDS OFF FOR BURNS!”  I decided I wouldn’t challenge that cryptic warning yet.

There were several videogame rooms.  The room I was currently in had videogame machines on all six sides of the room.  People used ladders to get up to strap themselves in to play the games on the walls and ceiling, and chutes were used to get down. It looked a lot like the game Chutes & Ladders.  (I realize I didn’t try to hard with that analogy.)

I began playing a game called InterStar Fight Warrior 3.  It was a sidescrolling beat-em-up like Double Dragon.  You don’t usually see classic games like this anymore.  I miss them.  After defeating level 4 of the game, I received the instruction “QUICK – Advance to Console #27! to continue play!”  I looked at the side of the machine I was playing and saw the number “342” was printed on the side.

Well, this was going to be annoying.

I left my game machine and started running around wildly, looking at the numbers on all the machines.  When I first had entered Game Plaza, I had seen a lot of Japanese people running wildly from room to room with giddy smiles on their faces, but I didn’t think much about it.  I figured they were in their TRUE environment and doing what they like, whereas I usually see them where they are doing what they don’t like – English.  I climbed one of the walls and strapped myself in to game machine #27 and continued playing InterStar Fight Warrior 3.  After three more levels of this I received the message ‘WHAT HAVE WE IN STORE FOR YOU – Transport you to machine #119 – QUICK!”  Before leaving, I noticed a hatch on the wall next to my machine.  I revolved it open to see what was inside.  The small room was in darkness and all the game machines and children inside had fluorescent blue and green glow-in-the-dark labels of various sizes and shapes all over them.  A yellow glow-in-the-dark Buddha sculpture was in the center of the room.  The children stared at me until I closed the hatch.  Then I went on my way.

Machine #119 was one of those Dance, Dance Revolution machines.  Adrian was on one of the dance pads and I think the idea was that I was supposed to get on the other one.  This didn’t appear to be the logical consequence of defeating level 7 on InterStar Fight Warrior 3.  I walked up to a Japanese person who appeared to be in charge and was about to ask for my money back when he took out a microphone and started speaking English and Japanese into it.  I guess he was an emcee or something.

“We see you and your friend come in to pray our superior games systems.  Ret’s watch dem pray!” the emcee shouted.  “We enjoy American very much and would rike to make you see Japanese hospitah-rih-tee.”

The crowd of children and young adults cheered.  Some of them walked away from their machines to watch the proceedings.   I tried to do the opposite, and walk away from the proceedings, but the crowd and the emcee pushed me towards the Dance, Dance machine.

“Come on, Gonzo.  It’ll be fun.  Loosen up a bit,” said Adrian.  “I was playing a car driving game that led me here for whatever reason, but I figure we should just roll with it.”

“Fuck that.  I don’t have to roll with it.  I don’t dance, and I sure as hell don’t do dance simulations.”

“I think you’re just afraid that I’ll kick your ass.”

Normally, I don’t take the bait, but for the last couple days Adrian has been the only person I’ve been able to effectively lord power over.  I was not going to give him an opportunity to beat me in anything.

“I am going to beat your God damn brains in at this game.  Afterwards, you’re going to buy me whisky.”

Adrian accepted the terms, assuming that the latter had as a prerequisite the condition of the former.   He didn’t understand that he’d have to buy me whisky whether I won or lost.

I didn’t notice the rotating platform we were on until a fresh breeze hit my face and I saw that the crowd, me, Adrian, the emcee, many of the videogames and most of the room that used to be inside was now outside.

The emcee shouted “BEGIN!” and Adrian and I started jumping on the pads with the corresponding symbols that flashed on the screen in front of us.  The crowd cheered.  Then they didn’t cheer as much.  Then they stopped cheering.

Crowds were apparently quite fickle in Japan.  Nobody was watching us any longer.  Even the emcee had migrated somewhere else.  I got off my machine to see where everyone went.  They were around the corner watching a 100-foot TV monitor on the side of a skyscraper.  Famous Japanese Person Kobayashi filled the screen.  He was standing street-side in some Japanese city getting ready to compete in a hot dog eating contest.  His challenger was a 7-foot-tall 400-pound shirtless man from Poland.  I noticed that the fickle crowd had now stopped watching the giant TV screen and were looking at something else.  I didn’t care what they were looking at; I wanted to see Kobayashi eat 50 hot dogs.  When the emcee from the Games Plaza walked onto the 100-foot screen, I realized that maybe I should be interested in what the fickle Japanese were now watching.  I moved my eyes from the screen to the side of the street and I saw the Polish guy standing high above a sea of five-foot-tall people.  I knocked several Japanese people out of the way so I could get up close to watch Kobayashi do his thing.

Let me tell you this: Kobayashi can really eat hot dogs.  He can eat 54 of them in ten minutes.  The Polish guy had 38 and was gasping for air afterwards, pork meat probably clogging his lungs.  Kobayashi was standing erect and proud. However, here’s something you may not know about these eating contests.  After the camera went off, Kobayashi keeled over and spewed an endless stream of hot dog bits and hot dog water out of his mouth onto the street.  The Polish guy did the same, except he was in a seated position and the vomit just sort of slopped out onto his naked belly.  It didn’t have the projectile coolness that Kobayashi’s vomit had.

Adrian came running up to me, out of breath, telling me that he won the Dance, Dance game.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“So that means I don’t have to buy you whisky.  Also, I’d like it if you and Chris would pitch in for groceries once in awhile.  I think I’ve bought them every day so far.”

I patted him on the back.  “Sure thing, buddy.”

“Thanks, Gonzo.”

He walked away and I looked at my hand – the hand that hadn’t patted him on the back.  That hand now had Adrian’s wallet in it.  I had the idea that I’d use it to go buy some whisky and maybe some groceries.