I am saving up my money for the most life-like dummies out there.

pictures of the dummies

I need at least five of these suckers, one to sit shotgun with me in my minivan, one to act like it's mowing my lawn, one to stand next to the mailbox to greet the Daytime Mailman, one to hide in the closet with a machete and creep me out at night, and another to sit in the bathtub holding a half-empty bottle of whiskey, mascara dripping down her face and a box of Kleenex by her side.

You might ask, why so many? You've probably heard this before, but the logic is that if you have only one dummy, chances are it'll probably come alive and try to kill you. But if you have several, you have a chance that one or more of them will come alive and try to save you.

One day...

There are two cups of fluids sitting in your friend's backyard.



Your friend says, "Hey, drink one of those cups of fluid."

"Why?" you ask. "What's in them?"

"Well," your friend explains. "One of them is full of magic lotion that will turn your skin so silky smoothe you will lose all your friction. No more friction."

"And the other?"

"The other is fruit juice that expired three years ago. Tastes like shit."

"I don't want to drink either of them," you say. But your friend just looks at you for a long time real serious-like. You realize that you will have to drink one of the cups of liquid. Your love of friction versus your hate of foul tasting beverages. "What does the magic lotion taste like?" you ask.

"Like the sweetest laughter of a baby that will one day grow up to be the Catholic patron saint of love."

"Oh."

So make up your mind, fattie. Your favorite cartoons come on in a few minutes and we don't have all day.

So we think we found a new house, but it seems too good to be true. It's affordable, in a great neighborhood, and plenty of space for both me and Mr. Happy Puppet Head. It even has sunflowers in the front yard and butterflies. It must be haunted or have corpses in the basement or something.

But we've already got in trouble with the neighbors. We told the owner that we wanted the house and she said we could have it, so after that we started stomping around our new house yelling and singing and stuff. Then the nieghbor man ran in and told us to stop. We told him we were just celebrating becase we were moving in. He looked real hard at us, and then left without appologizing or really settling anything.

But I think he'll find that we are good people to live next to, we just get a little rowdy sometimes.

1950, suburban mid-western america.

An old, old man in plaid pants ran screaming from a restuarant where he had been sitting quietly over a plate of pancakes. "My violin!" he screamed. "My wonderful violin! Why?" He was then run over by some gangsters being chased by the FBI.

In searching his house, everything seemed normal, except for one room was mysteriously locked. It had a series of deadbolts and combination locks, which isn't ordinary for a bedroom door. Inside was found a pile of jewels and tiaras. The windows in the room were all painted black. Scribbled drawings of strange creatures and trains covered every inch of the walls.



The man's only surviving family member, a niece, was unable to be located.

I wake up this morning and these three monsters are in my kitchen eating our food. Big bowls full of all sorts of our food, egg shells and banana peels and assorted packaging strewn all over the place. They are eating all my food.



"Hey," I say. "What are you guys doing?"

The one with the tentacles kind of looks up at me, but it's a sideways sort of look and he looks away real quick.

Mr. Happy Puppet Head bobbles in. "Morning," he says. "Hey guys." They kind of grunt at him. He goes and rumages around in the fridge and takes out a half-empty 40oz. of malt liqour.

"Are these your friends?" I ask.

"Yeah." He chugs down the 40.

"Nice cape, asshole!" yells the tentacle one. His mouth is full of my wheat-square cereal.

"That's Marty," says Mr. Happy Puppet Head. "He's funny."

The monsters finish all the food. They look around and start eating other things, like the kitchen table, then peeling up the tiles of the floor, then the plates and cabinets and dishes and silverware and the sink and the refridgerator and the stove and then they move onto the living room and I say "Hey," but they don't pay any attention as they chew up and swallow the tv the couch the rugs my soft chair and the books on the bookshelf. Very soon they eat everything that is inside the house.

"Mr. Happy Puppet Head," I whisper. "Can we step outside for a second?"

"What?"

"I just want to talk to you privately for a second."

"Fine."

Outside I ask him why he's letting his friends eat everything. He says I should have said something if I didn't like it.

Big crash as the house caves in on itself, then the monsters eat their way out of the rubble, then eat the rubble. "Look," I point.

"My smooth jazz collection!" Mr. Happy Puppet Head yells. "Guys! Did you eat my jazz, too?"

The big snappy thing without a face yells out in a woman's voice, "Sorry."

Now Mr. Happy Puppet Head is real mad and he yells at his friends and makes them go away. He doesn't even laugh when Marty tells me to take a shower and get a job.

Now we have to find a new house.

A CARTOON!
**********


Arpit and Bloodbath the pirate captain are standing outside of their apartment complex.

They stand there quietly, saying and doing nothing of any interest to anyone. No one interesting walks by. Jenny, the green cute that lives in Bloodbath's hat has nothing funny to joke about. Nothing strange or funny happens in front of them. The only thing happening is the sun and the wind and the birds chirping in the trees, and you really have to be there to enjoy all that.



...



Arpit yawns. He has a really big mouth so it's a really big yawn. Bloodbath blinks with his one eye. It might start an interesting conversation if Arpit were to ask Bloodbath if his empty eye socket under the pirate patch blinks, too, but he doesn't think to ask.

More birds chirp and some warm wind blows accross their faces.

Hours earlier someone tripped over a rock in the sidewalk, spilling the stack of papers they were holding all over someone's yard. This someone happened to be mowing the lawn, ran over the stack of papers, blew up the lawnmower, causing both people to become horribly mutilated and seek a life of dark solitude in the sewer system of their suburban town. Together, as they searched for a new life, they encountered an ancient secret so horrible and potentially catastrophic that they both vommited all over their mutilated selves. The secret started to glow and englufed both onlookers in glowing green light that mutated them both into monsters that screamed and mauled things. The monsters clawed their way through a mile of dirt and concrete to burst up in the middle of the busy shopping mall. The monsters were so excited by all the consumers toddling about that they started screaming and mauling up the place. If this had happened yesterday, the old security guard Leonard would have said, "Eh, it's my last day. Let the monsters monster." And the monsters would have eventually found their way to Arpit and Bloodbath's apartment complex, and some funny stories for you to enjoy would have surely happened. But today is Chad's first day as the new mall security guard, and he's super trigger happy for doing a good job. So he whips out the gun and blasts the two monsters in their faces and they die.



Hours later, Arpit yawns real big and Bloodbath blinks with the one eye. Jenny snores in Bloodbath's hat.

Later they go watch some tv or something.

1849, England.

Several steam engines go missing. As do the elephants at the London Zoo. As well as several famous diamonds, tiaras, and many years supply of tapioca pudding from a pudding factory.

No one makes the connection, but a small boy from a chimny-sweep family goes missing at about the same time.

1874, Scotland.

The trains, elephants, diamonds, tiaras, and spoons smelling of tapioca are found in a large cave in the Scottish Highlands. The trains are mostly broken and the elephants are old and cantankerous by this time. Everything is returned to their rightfull owners. There are no suspects.

Found underneath a pile of beheaded toy dolls and assorted junk in the back of the cave is a pristine and beautiful violin.

The year was 1734. Colonists returning to their village in Virginia found it completely destroyed, their buildings burnt, their crops leveled. Everyone who decided to stay home rather than particpate in the Pagan orgy in the woods was dead.

The surviving colonists searched for some clue as to what happened, why their village and so many lives had been destroyed.

All they found was a violin, untouched, lying on top of a pile of dead children.

He awoke with a start. It was the year 1573 in Italy. The start woke his wife up, who was sleeping next to him. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. He stared out the window thoughtfully. "I had a dream..."

"A good dream?"

"At first no, something about a play about a clown who killed people with a machete, then came out of the play and chased me around and killed some of my friends, and we found parts of corpses all in my front yard. But then I found this really great watch I could read even with my glasses off... then the important part... the part where I invent a magic violin."

"But you only make regular violins," she said, putting a concerned hand on his shoulder. "You always say those who make magic violins are selling out."

He grabbed her hand and threw it violently off his shoulder. "Dammit, wife! This is like no magic violin ever made! It does more than help you lose weight or enlarge your genitalia or make money with crazy investments, no, it does so much more..." He started coughing and didn't stop for at least a minute.

"What will it do?" she asked.

"You'll see," he whispered ominously. "We'll all see, and it'll be so great."

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She was one of the cutest little blue things in the world.

She found a bird next to a box of arms. She didn't have any arms, so
asked the bird if she could have a few of his.

"No," said the bird. "These are magic wishing arms. You can't have them."

"Why not? What's a magic wishing arm?"

"I'll show you," and he picked up the box with one of his wings and
said, "I wish the little blue girl thing had some arms." There was a
bright flash of light and a small human man wearing a tweed jacket and
smoking a corncob pipe appeared.

"I killed a man, once." The man said with his squeaky voice and bushy
white beard. "I killed him because he looked all googly at my mother."

"That's not what you wished for," the little blue thing said to the
bird. "Those magic wish arms are broken."

"Not broken," said the bird. "They just don't give you what you wish
for, they give you what the arms think you should have wished for."

"That's silly," said the cute little.

"I am wearing five pairs of tweed jacket," yelled bearded man as he
ran away over the hill.

"Not silly at all," said the bird. He picked up the box of arms and
turned his back on the blue cute.

The little blue cute thought hard for a long time, staring at the box
and the back of the bird. An idea came, and already tired from
thinking, didn't bother to think about the thought.

So acting upon this thought, the cute little jumped into the box of
arms headfirst, snuggled up against the magic severedness of limbs,
and squeaked "I wish for fluffy puffs and sparkly shinies!"

With a bright flash of light the cute little blue thing turned into a
can of peas. The bird shook his head at the can of peas, but saved
them in the box for later. He loved peas.