squirrelking.com

Mr. Noah Webster,
spelling reformer, word monkey and child actor (retired)
c/o the afterlife

Dear Mr. Webster,

I’m very sorry to hear that you’re still dead. I had an excellent idea today, and I wanted to share it with you. It a word thing.

Here’s the gist:

First, I will list the 70,000 words I’ve had to invent over the years to fill the gaps you left in the English language. This list of fake words will include such favorites as Neurotica, and Lambatomy and Passhole. When the list is complete, I will make and eat a chicken sandwich. After the sandwich (ATS), I’ll jot down meanings for each of the fake words I listed before my sandwich break. That should take me right up to dinner time. Since this paragraph is already running long, I’ll have my summer intern, Rosemary Chickenbreasts, arrange my fake words in alphabetical order while I prepare dinner. Finally, I’ll stuff the words, definitions and perhaps a few bits of mustard into a big compendium of fake words called a “Fictionary.”

Send me a message if you dig it, Noah.

P.S.: I enjoyed your TV program.

Dear Carbon gobblers,

This is Xenu, galactic villain and scourge of Scientology. Recently, while touring my volcano properties on the planet you call earth, I overheard an argument between two American tourists. The subject was global warming. One of the tourists was a fellow named Al, who is apparently a politician of some standing. Al’s opponent called himself JunkScienceDittohead4U and claimed to be a regular poster to the masslive.com Politics Forum. These two quarrelsome suckas ruined my mood with their endless bickering. As a consequence, I feel obliged to ruin your collective mood with the following announcement.

Tap, tap. Is this thing on, hey? Test, one, two. One, two.

Ahem. Carbon-gobbling humans of earth, your planet is doomed!

That’s right, humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. It’s a big, round time bomb, like the time bombs in Spy vs. Spy cartoons. But it’s larger than a cartoon time bomb and significantly bluer. Oh, and it doesn’t have a fuse. And it revolves around the sun. Eh, I think you now have an adequate mental picture of the type of time bomb I’m talking about.

Let me bottom-line this for you people. Either embrace a carbon-neutral lifestyle now and survive until I destroy your civilization, or carry on with your carbon-gobbling ways and face a cataclysmic catastrophe of catastrophic proportions. (That means big.) In other words, you can either get your heinies sucked through an ozone hole and into the void, or you can clean up your house and wait patiently until I return to drop you all, one by one, into various and sundry pits of volcanic ash and flame. It’s up to you.

Have a nice day,
Lord Xenu

P.S.: for those of you who still don’t know who I am, I’m Xenu (galactic evil-doer), not Xena (sexy barbarian). Got it? Good.

The human-sized sushi rolls jostled me to the edge of the rustic footbridge. They made rude comments as they hurried past. Beneath the bridge, Rusty the Walrus barked at a waitress and knocked his asparagus tusks against a tabletop. Suddenly, two giant chopsticks came down from the sky. They picked me up and dropped me into a puddle of wasabi.

That stung, lemme tell you.

Deja Boo: a feeling that the ghost you just met has said “boo” to you before.

I was driving Mr. and Mrs. Marmaduke Mackintosh-McCampbell back from Dufftown, where they had taken the morning tour of Balvenie Distillery. As I came over the hill and down along the Loch-side, I saw a sort of boiling in the water. I carried on a wee bit, and when I looked again, there was a huge grayish-brownish hump — like a great oak whisky cask — floating half above the waterline. It was huge and shiny and brownish and . . . humpy.

“Sweet Jesu” I said, “Do you see that?”

Mrs. Mackintosh-McCampbell, who is a pathological liar and a drunk, said, “Aye, I see it clear as day, and I’ve not been in a bar yet this morning!”

“It’s Nessy,” I said. “I swear on the Stone of Scone, it’s Nessy!”

“Ach, it’s an eel! It’s an eel!” said Mr. Mackintosh-McCampbell.

“There’s no eels that big,” I said.

”Ach, it’s otters!” he said.

“There’s no otters that big,” I said.

“Ach, it’s Shaquille O’Neal!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mrs. Mackintosh-McCampbell said. “Honestly, Pumpkin, why on earth would an Irishman be swimming in a Scottish Loch?”

Mr. Mackintosh-McCampbell did not reply. He leaned toward the wee wifey and gave her a good loud sniff. “She is full-bodied sweetness,” he said, “with light spicy notes and a hint of sherry fruitiness.”

“Attention, passengers” I said, “Monster on the starboard bow!”

Mrs. Mackintosh-McCampbell giggled. “Oh, Marmaduke,” she said. “Your finish is long and pleasingly rich.”

“Hello,” I said. “Earth to back seat. Come in, please.”

Just my luck. The Loch Ness monster is doing the backstroke right beside my car, and the only corroborating witnesses are the two drunk octogenarians making out in my back seat.

I’m thinking about picking up the guitar again.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’ve tried and failed several times before, so why do I think this time will be different? This time will be different because this time I will be learning to play the guitar WHILE channeling the ghosts of dead rock stars. My first teacher will be Phil Lynott, a dead guy who used to be almost alive enough to lead the 80s rock band Thin Lizzy. With the help of Phil’s ghost, I will learn to play “The Boys Are Back in Town” and all the other famous Thin Lizzy songs. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any other famous Thin Lizzy songs, but dammit that’s Phil’s job.

Okay, I admit it, Phil wasn’t my first choice. I would have preferred to channel the ghost of former Sex Pistol John Lydon, but miraculously and inconveniently, Mr. Lydon is not yet dead. He isn’t a guitarist either, but who cares? Even the Sex Pistol’s guitarist isn’t a guitarist and the tunes still sound good to me. So sod off, you wankers . . . or something like that.

Now who is ready learn some scales?!

A note to actors playing priests in scary movies about demon possession:

Exorcise demons when absolutely necessary, but DO NOT exercise them. That’s unnecessary and cruel.

Why do I say this? Why should you let your ghoulish adversaries slack on their pushups? Because they’re already ghosts, and a little laziness won’t kill them. That’s why.

Anyway, who likes a demon with six-pack abs?

Late in The Poseidon Adventure, surviving cast members gather to discuss a dramatic complication. The only route to end of the movie runs directly through a flooded compartment. For all they know, it’s as wide as the English channel.

No one is in the mood for more icey sea water, but a guide rope must be strung between the complication scene and the closing credits. The volunteer will die. They know this. It’s in the script.

Gene Hackman steps up and is ready to take the plunge, but when Shelley Winters reveals that she was “the underwater swimming champ of New York three years running when she was seventeen,” she gets the last-minute nod. Of course, she couldn’t have been seventeen for three consecutive years, but under these circumstances, Gene doesn’t bother to argue.

In my dream, Flava Flav, Brigitte Nielsen and several U.S. presidents went into the Champagne Room together. Abe Lincoln was a little uptight until Millard Fillmore borrowed his stovepipe hat and used it as a champagne bucket. That really lightened the mood.

Later, a dancer sat on Abe’s lap, and when she got up, Abe dumped the ice out of his stovepipe hat and used it to conceal his stovepipe. He said he didn’t want his generals in the field to know he was pitching a tent.

Recent posts in the masslive.com Springfield Forum — those concerning the existentialist philosophers — have become contentious and loud. In fact, the disagreement has caused such a din that members of the neighboring Leif Garrett Yahoo Group have threatened to notify the proper authorities. Meanwhile, members of another Yahoo Group, the Sugar Busters Low-Carb Dianetic Dietology Club, are ransacking the Masslive Red Sox forum, looking for the ghost of Albert Camus’ severed existentialist head. They have apparently confused Mr. Camus with Ted Williams. What a mess.