Month: December 2010

Cobbler’s attempt to find the city under attack by the angry mob of flies was proving to be harder that originally thought. He had foolishly assumed that a massive mob of giant radioactive tsetse flies attacking a city would be visible from a distance but that is where Cobbler showed his exceptional ability to fail at simple tasks, for he still had a giant blue afro on his head but due to the sudden change in the barometric pressure it had started to droop and was obscuring the top half of his vision. Cobbler was completely unaware of this development as he mistakenly assumed the blue hair he saw was blue sky and thus continued to be unaware of his reduced field of view. Despite the circumstances Cobbler could not help but feel happy due to the unusually bright and blue sky stretching out before him as far his eyes could see. Cobbler became so overwhelmed with the beautiful weather that he stopped for a short rest in a nice meadow to lie down and look up at the sky. Upon landing and looking up Joe’s hair no longer obscured the whole sky and Cobbler was able to see the actual sky which was much darker and more dreary than he had been lead to believe. This sudden change in weather startled Cobbler so much it re-fluffed the blue afro and thus ceased to hinder the view of the rest of the sky, which further startled Cobbler and caused enough afro fluffing to make Cobbler top heavy and fall down. Thus once again Cobbler proved he was most certainly adept at failing in the most spectacular ways.

/* Nothing to see here,
indeed there’s nothing at all,
you should stop looking */

Joe’s experience with Taco Taco Taco Del Taco SUPREME! had nothing to alleviate his hunger nor had it aided his quest to find the fly swatter of ultimate power. It had left him rather confused as to how such a business could operate like that and why he was unable to directly talk when there. In fact all he had managed to do was get himself even more thoroughly lost as now there were no features, identified or not, to be seen in any direction. The landscape had become so barren that the ground itself had stopped a quarter mile back. Joe continued to press on, undeterred by what lay before him (or in this case the lack of anything before him) as he knew he must not fail in his quest for food (and that fly swatter thing, if he has to) and where he had been had only resulted in him not succeeding thus the solution must still lie ahead.
Joe’s certainty faded as the minutes raced by, soon it would be mid-afternoon and Joe would have missed lunch entirely and be forced to settle for an afternoon snack. The idea of such a terrible fate made Joe more determined and he doubled his efforts pressing onwards obtaining a speed rivaled only by a fast group of slow moving speed walkers. After walking for what seemed like forever plus two (actual duration 84 thirds) Joe noticed a building next to him. He had no idea how long the building had been there for it was painted green and Joe had a habit of ignoring green buildings, the only reason he noticed this one was because his hunger sufficiently distracted him from the color. Joe was about to re-ignore it when he noticed the poem posted in front of it:

Falafel Hut “Я” we!
Come and taste our LEDS!!
But not really
For that would be silly,
Especially if they had power
NO FLOWERS!

Joe was confused at the use of a Cyrillic character to represent an English word but was most certainly hungry and decided a few typographical irregularities were an acceptable price to pay to remedy his lack of food. Upon entering this unusual building Joe noticed it was retroactively unusual. The walls were covered with tiny black boxes strung together with wire. Each box had a light blinking and flashing in a variety of colors. On the far wall there was a massive computer screen with a small keyboard under it with a sign saying “order here”. Joe approached computer and proceeded to type away, his sudden computer knowledge fueled by his hunger.

Login as: joe
[email protected]’s password:
Linux falafler 2.6.26-2-686-bigmem #1 SMP Thu Sep 16	20:29:07 UTC 2010 i686

Joe was appalled at the sudden intrusion of Linux. He had nothing against open source software, in fact he was a very strong believer that all software should be free and open, but taking this once free program and cramming it into a computer to do one’s bidding was infringing upon it’s rights to freedom. Joe would normally try and free the program from the terrible clutches of its CPU but his hunger was too great to pass up an opportunity to possibly get food. Thus he pressed on into the depths of the computer seeking food and then he could work towards freeing this oppressed software.

joe@falafler:~$ ls
LEDs.py Menu.txt Makefile
joe@falafler:~$ edit Menu.txt
****************************************************
* Welcome to the Falafel Hut!! *
* With the widest variety of *
* falafels anyone dares to eat *
* *
* Falafel .................................. $5.98 *
* Different falafel ....................... %10.83 *
* 89.5$ .................................. lefalaF *
* Not a falafel .............................. N/A *
* *
* To place an order use the supplied makefile *
* *
* Warning falafels may contatin non editable *
* material and in no way are guaranteed to be food *
*	*
****************************************************

joe@falafler:~$ make falafel
make: *** No rule to make target `falafel'. Stop.
joe@falafler:~$ make different falafel
make: *** No rule to make target `different falafel'.	Stop.
joe@falafler:~$ make not a falafel
make: *** No rule to make target `not a falafel'.	Stop.
joe@falafler:~$ help

Captain Megabits has been summoned to assist you
valued customer! Please stand by.

Joe was fed up with this computer system. All he had tried to do was get some food and the system refused to work, obviously this system did not deserve to be freed from the clutches of this bizarre establishment. Joe was trying to complain a little more but he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a man with a large beard and a cape coated with LEDs.
“I am Captain Megabits, I’m here to assist you in selecting from our wide variety of yummy!TM falafels”
Joe once again found it difficult to actually say anything, be he didn’t mind too much as he had given up on the hopes of getting food and resigned himself to a life of missed lunches. So he decided it would be best to just leave this buggy computer system and continue his quest to save the world. He told this to Captain Megabits who started to mumble something about how he should have used a package manager instead of make and vanished in a flash of light to go make repairs to the system which Joe had left in disarray. With the matter of not eating all sorted out Joe trekked back outside to the vast barren landscape he had somehow arrived in.

*Joe mistakenly thinks del means and

Florg Stunt Cow 2 Mount Rushmore awoke to find himself much larger and more rocky than before. As he looked around he slowly realized what had happened, he had been given the identity of a mountain which was causing him to start to become the mountain. This was rather strange as when the identity of Stunt Cow 2 had been thrust upon him he felt no more cowish or stunty than usual. Despite the previous experience Florg Stunt Cow 2Mount Rushmore was most certainly starting to feel different, which would become a mountainous problem if not remedied soon. While this identity was only being temporarily assigned to Florg Stunt Cow 2 Mount Rushmore it was so large and overpowering that he feared it would crush and destroy the rest of his identity before it was gone. He would have to find an identity protection agency to help him before it was too late, lest he be stuck as a giant landmark for the rest of his life (which would probably dramatically increase due to the slower rate that rock erodes at).

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As Joe approached the strange fire breathing tower he could see more detail and it became apparent what it was. It was some sort of tall angry half circle that could breath fire. Normally such an angry and dangerous geometric shape would deter Joe but his close proximity also helped his other sense discern things better, and his sense of smell indicated that there was most certainly smell in that direction and that alone was enough to warrant further venture. Joe finnaly got close enough to see what the strange object was, it was a sign for some place apparently called taco Taco Taco Taco Del Taco SUPREME! in fact it looked just like the below sign:

Joe excitedly rushed in, for the only thing that sounded better than a taco or two to satiate his hunger was a triple taco or a supreme taco*. When Joe arrived he was greeted by an employee in the back shoveling something into a large furnace.
“Welcome to Taco Taco Taco Del Taco SUPREME! I will be right with you to take your order” The worker shoveled in a few more scoops of stuff, closed the furnace doors and walked up to the counter. “See previous greeting, what do you want?”
Joe was going to order, but the part of the worker’s name tag with his name was carefully covered with a ball of decorative dryer lint thus obscuring the name. Normally not knowing the name of a person would not preclude one from procuring food from them, but Joe was leery of buying food from unknown people ever since he bought that potato salad from that guy names “Ive Ebola”; it was most terrible tasting. Thus Joe was compelled to ask the name of the man before him.
“My actual name is Hoover, like the vacuum, but some call me Shoes, others Flask, to some I am known as Busman and yet still others call me Ledgeroad.”
Now that Joe had ascertained the names of this person he proceeded to order, or at least he attempted to but was stopped by the lack of a menu. He figured that in a place called “Taco Taco Taco Del Taco SUPREME!” would have tacos and they would probably be pretty good to get the word taco in the title so many times and thus ordered three.
“You fool!” cried Hoover “We all the time be never having such things. Here at Taco Taco Taco Del Taco SUPREME! we offer the finest offered hamburgers and burritos, and all our stuff is fried in 100% all natural partially hyphenated-soy bean-oil. So then, what you even be wanting?”
Despite his hunger the idea of lunch being fried in bean-oil (with the dangerous possibility of that including his drink) made him hesitate, he remembered reading an article about the dangers of eating hyphenated foods. The hyphens would detach as the food was being digested and the pointy little buggers would impale themselves on your innards. Joe was unsure of the validity of a scientific study that used the phrase “pointy little buggers” but didn’t want to take that chance and thus proceeded to inquire if they had anything not fried in the bean-oil, claiming he was on a “no punctuation diet”.
“We have some of that thing with stuff, but that’s only available at place during time and seeing as it’s currently other time I can’t help you. Unless…” at this Hoover scurried over to a strangely glowing device on the wall and fiddled with some knobs causing the lights to change. “There now it’s time and thus you can has this!” at which he pulled out a completely normal looking hamburger. “That will be e and a half falafels. (tilde 2.718281828459045235360 +.5)”
Joe instinctively reached for his pack to pull out some money when it stuck him, how in the world would he would pay an irrational and a half amount. He figured he would round up and let the cashier deal with the change. With that confusion resolved Joe proceeded to pay with a wad of rational cash.
“Money? Bah! We don’t take money! This fine establishment takes falafels, seeing as there are a finite number of falafels in this universe by charging out customers in falafels we can amass the and destroy them thus driving our biggest competitor the falafel factory out of business.”
Joe was thoroughly bewildered by the concept of paying for food with other food, but seeing as he had no food he figured it would be best to just leave and not try to convince the worker of this bizarre store with such strange policies and naming conventions. As Joe scurried out of the doors to Taco Taco Taco Del Taco SUPREME! he heard a faint cry from Hover of “Coward!”

Deep in the chip mines Aaron’s plan was coming together. All the supplies were gathered he just now had to wait. As soon as the next hideous snack came up this tunnel Aaron would offer it a rather generous sounding compensation to take his place as a guard from the snacks below. Little would the creature know that in reality the compensation was much less than you could get at other jobs with similar levels of skill requirements and personal safety hazards. With the task of guarding the tunnel taken care of by the relatively low paid snack, Aaron would be free to take his stash of chips and leave the chip mines in search of a more exciting and healthy endeavor.

≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡=≡

The road before Joe was unlike one he had ever seen before on the back side of the page. He couldn’t quite determine what was so odd, for the road looked exactly like a road should be but at the same time it looked completely wrong. Despite the strange feelings that everything was completely wrong yet totally normal, Joe was sure if he squashed together the feelings they would cancel each other out and result in mutual annihilation which would allow him to continue his journey no longer conflicted. The feelings did in fact destroy each other but the resulting blast severely wounded his sense of direction but Joe did not notice as the pain center of his brain was also momentarily stunned. Now that the road no longer seemed completely wrong in a totally normal way Joe continued on towards the store that held the fly swatter of ultimate power, or at least he thought he was heading that way, thanks to his damaged sense of direction he had veered off course and was now heading off towards the edges of known civilization, beyond which nobody knew what, if anything, was there.
Thanks to his incorrect path Joe was making much better time than before, and was set to arrive at his destination much sooner than before. The fact that the destination he was destined for was not the one he was determined to get to did little to deter him, for this direction was much more delightful to drift in and with his damage sense of direction it defiantly felt like the correct path to take. Joe continued to walk oblivious to the shift in the scenery, the sidewalks had disappeared, the road had changed to a mixture of gravel and dirt and the sky itself was looking much more distant, as if this place was so far out in the middle of nowhere anything else of significance could be located too close to it.
After traveling for quite some time Joe became hungry. A quick search of his knapsack found nothing that looked both editable and like food (although there was one stone carved sandwich with a bag of rock shaped crackers) and thus Joe was forced to stop ignoring his surroundings and investigate in attempts to locate food. The landscape around him was rather bare, he had traveled far enough that all previously identifiable features were far out of view. The only unidentified thing in sight was a strange tower with an angry looking half circle on top shooting out flames. Joe was unsure what such a tower represented, but there seemed to be a small building next to it which seemed to be his only chance of finding food lest he miss lunch and be all hungry the rest of the day.