Month: August 2010

*Atomic number 280, despite it’s high number it is usually stable unless startled and then it will decay into other smaller emotions.

Having foolishly pressed the stop button on The Remote Of The Universe Joe shoved it into his pocket and continued on, completely unaware that he had in fact stopped the universe. Joe’s mind was occupied elsewhere, he was thinking about getting back home and how great and grand a non insane messed up world would be, one where you could tell a bad joke without threat of losing your status as a proper noun. As Joe wandered out of the lane that led to the passage that went to the alley with the man in a trench coat covering all but his ears he was suddenly struck with a thought, and then an idea. Soon Joe was being attacked by a wide variety of mental facilities, from impressions to feelings to deja vous. He turned and ran from these new unknown assailants only to fall into a massive plothole in the middle of the poorly maintained story sidewalk. Luckily for Joe, the holes were plentiful and deep enough to deter the attackers, as looking in all the holes for Joe would involve too much supervision for a neighborhood like this to handle.
The assailants gathered the rest of their thoughts and trudged back to the lane that led to the passage that went to the alley where the man with a trench coat covering all but his ears was. He would not be happy to hear that their mission to plant an idea in Joe’s head had been unsuccessful. Fortunately for them Joe had not seen any of them and thus they would have the element of surprise* should they be sent to attack again.
“You shall do no such thing!” cried the man in the trench coat “Your failure only confirms that you fail! You are no longer succeeding at succeeding but rather have failed to succeed yet succeeded to fail! I no longer think succeed is a real word and thus you will be doomed to fail, and thus I shall not send you out on another mission. Instead I will employ a more cunning plan, one that is sure to trick Joe into doing what must be done by the man known as Joe.” At this the man pulled out a small object that looked like the combination of a trinket with a MacGuffin and a bauble with a little bit of doodad thrown in. “This is a quest, a device that will carry its owner along a series of improbable and difficult tasks until the final goal is accomplished. As soon as Joe takes this quest he will be whisked along in my plot to remove the flies and allow me to take over the universe for myself!” At this the man threw the quest into the air towards the last known location of Joe.
Meanwhile Joe had been far too pre-occupied with getting out of the massive pothole to eavesdrop on the diabolical plotting. The hole he had hidden in had happened to be huge, so humongous that it had a hoard of H’s hovering around. Joe hopped up and harvested handfuls of H’s and heaped them high. He leaped heavenward and with the help of the hill of H’s he landed without harm outside the hole.
Now that Joe was free of the alliterative clutches of that pothole he could return on his mission to get home. Joe immediately set out in the one direction he was sure wasn’t home (Joe had learned that in a place like the back side of the page his first try would fail) and thus after he fought his way out of the pothole once again he was now ready to continue home, but before he could start something shiny caught his eye. It looked like a small knickknack crossed with a thingamajig with a little widget mixed in. This strange object had an unusual draw for Joe and he felt compelled to take it with him, after all it isn’t every day that you find an object that is so specifically vague. After acquiring the object Joe felt suddenly confused. He still wanted to get home, but for some reason he was suddenly sure that the only way to do such a thing would be to venture towards what looked like a city that had recently been set fire to. Joe was perplexed about this sudden turn in thought, although after thinking about it, it did seem odd for such a sudden and strong idea to suddenly jump into his head the moment he picked up that bizarre object. However Joe felt he must follow his gut on this matter and seeing as his gut and a few other internal organs had already started out towards the smoldering remains of the city Joe rushed to catch up.

*The non-green parts are the frame for the tapestry, not actual tapestry

(The Flies only had green thread to work with after all*)

*See Appendix ε to see the finished tapestry

Now that that strange stunt cow 2 had gone and taken most of his repeated words the rest of the generically named flies were free to finish their tapestry of fly history*. Fly Knitter 1 created the first part, showing the days before the flies were radioactive. There were images of flies lazily buzzing about, flies landing in coffee mugs for a swim subsequently followed by flies flying about wildly, flies tickling people with their little wings and then trying to avoid the inevitable fly swatter assault. Fly Weaver 3 took on the task of showing the series of events that lead to the flies becoming radioactive. It showed the squirrel Chernobyl who graciously shared his radioactivity to the flies making them bigger, stronger, and more glow-in-the-dark than ever thought possible. This then transitioned into flies discovering themselves to be indestructible which lead to them discovering a great pickle recipe. The chronicles of the pickle manufacturing empire rise and fall was done by Fly Baker 56 who had been conscripted into helping. The next section of the tapestry contained images depicting flies rediscovering the power of the tickle and their plans for taking over the world. The bottom of the tapestry was reserved for the flies final conquest and rule of the universe and at the very bottom it clearly stated that the flies were done with the following:

THE END

And now with the last of their yarn used up they had nothing better to do than begin their quest of world domination. The flies buzzed quickly out of their stronghold and started tickilling everyone in sight to death (or a really bad side ache), the wrath of the flies had come and no one could stand in their way without becoming their next victim.

The tsetse flies grew bored. They hadn’t had any ineffective hero’s come by for a visit in many weeks, and their diversionary research into tickilling had been finished resulting in nothing for them to do to occupy their time. The only thing they could think of doing was knitting themselves socks to be used in sock ball fights, but they were down to the last ball of yarn and it was a most undesirable color of green. As the flies milled about idly throwing sock balls at each other one of them came up with a great idea to ward off the boredom, they would use their last ball of yarn to knit a massive tapestry (it was a rather large ball) detailing the grand and majestic history of the giant radioactive tsetse flies, from their initial exposure to their subsequent oppression and hardships at the hand of the paranoid populous and the lack of retribution of such actions.
“Wait a second!” cried an angry fly, throwing down his knitting needles. “The flies have been oppressed too much! We must take a stand against this great injustice!”
“But what can we do?” responded another fly “we don’t even have names. If we were in a movie we would be listed at the end of the credits as Angry Fly 1 and Stunt Cow 2”
“Moooo!” retorted Angry Fly 1 “Just because my name sounds like a generic title doesn’t mean it is, I just happened to have a generic sounding name, in fact I think it’s..”
“Wait a second!” interrupted a rather annoyed Stunt Cow 2 “My name isn’t Stunt Cow 2, how come you get called by your real (albeit fake sounding) name and I get this terribly dumb fake one. My actual name is Florg Stunt Cow 2, not stunt cow 2, HEY!” at this Florg Stunt Cow 2 got rather annoyed at the editing correction of his speaking and decided to find the one responsible so he could make them pay brownies. Unfortunately Stunt Cow 2 had no idea where to look ingredients and thus would have to consult the magic 8-ball of correct-but-mostly-useless-answers go to the store. And thus with the decision apparently made stunt cow 2 set down his knitting needles and went off to fix his name the store.

*not to be confused with a Ted the unit of work.
**Stabbing is the fundamental cause of harm, all other sources of injury or death are a subset of stabbing.

With the search for a hero over it was just a matter of time until the entire world was destroyed. The tsetse flies had no one to stand in their way, and it would only be a matter of time before they decided they were not content to just tickle people to death! (or a really bad side ache) but that they wanted to rule the universe! (or the local neighborhood). With no constant stream of hero’s distracting them with cabbage and colors the flies would soon realize their immense power, being indestructible and all that, and use it to their advantage (as opposed to how they currently used it to their amusement). A full on war with the flies would result in devastating casualties. The flies had perfected the art of tickling people to death! (or a really bad side ache) which they called tickilling, which despite the name could not actually be used to cause the demise of a tick due to their incredibly surly nature. Mankind had spent literally a few hours trying to devise a way to defend against the tickill but to no avail, man would be powerless to stop the flies when they attacked.
Meanwhile in an entirely different location in both space and time, a Ted* was preparing his dinner. It was a simple meal, a little bit of chicken with a small roll and an assortment of steamed vegetables. However, despite it’s benign appearances the meal was hiding something devious, the vegetables contained a unusually high amount of cabbage, cabbage that happened to be very explosive. Unknowingly eating explosive vegetables carried the risk of tooth damage and exploding stomach syndrome.
Elsewhere more trouble was brewing. A large abandon warehouse was slowly filling with water. The sprinkler system had sprung a leak and started gushing water into the rooms. This warehouse had been used to store hazardous materials and thus was fairly well sealed, giving the water no place to go but up, and up it rose. As the water level increased the stress on the wall grew. Soon the force would be too much and the walls would give way sending a devastating wall of water through the city, washing it all out to sea leaving naught but soggy ruins in its wake.
In yet another poorly maintained and unsupervised part of town a man in a trench coat covering all but his ears had just acquired a lucky piece of oxygen. This was the final ingredient in his nefarious plot which would soon go into motion, which when completed would make him entirely immune to stabbing, and thus by extension invulnerable and immortal*. This power would be used gain complete control of the Universe (and the candy store) which he would then sell for massive profits only to repeat the process all over again. The constant cycle of new management and hostile takeovers would surely cause too much strain and the Universe (and the candy store) would implode. Despite the dangers the man planned to continue with the plan he had planned, as he had planned into the plan a plan for what to do if the plan did not go as planned. With all that planning behind him the man set out to carry out his nefarious scheme.

The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) was distraught, all the heroes so far had not only failed to stop the plague of tickle happy tsetse flies, but they also failed to increase sales at the candy store. The scourge of the flies had forced people into hiding, only to come out when in desperate need of supplies and despite their sugary flavor and great taste the treats at the candy store were not in high demand. It had gotten so bad that The Universe (and the candy store) was out of money in their budget to further fund the search for another hero to save The Universe (and the candy store). In fact money was tight all around, the only place with any spare cash was the well funded retirement account for The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner), a source most unacceptable.
News of the ended search spread like butter over bread, and after people sufficiently de-greased themselves they all responded with the same reaction, apathy. At least that’s the reaction averaged from the few people surveyed and extrapolated out. In retrospect it would have been better to survey more than 3 people and a chair and they should have been awake at the time, but those were the people randomly selected and shaping the selection to fit the preconceived notions of how the results should look is downright unscientific. The Ruler of The Universe (and the candy store owner) used this study to convince the populous that the will of the people was in fact to not find a new hero and that anyone who disagreed was obviously in the incorrect minority that composed of only them. This stance was easy to convince people of as due to the fly oppression people rarely had a chance to talk to other people and when one has a rare opportunity to talk to someone one does not was it on a boring topic like politics. With the populous convinced there was no demand for a hero, hoards of prospective heroes desiring to rid the land of the flies trudged back to their homes to accept the fate they apparently wanted.