FORTY-SIX PERCENT
An Incomplete NaNoWriMo novel

By
Luke Gattuso

This is not worth reading. Enjoy!

Cars should not overheat in February. In August, sure. May, June, and July are all reasonable. Even March is acceptable. But during February, even Southern-California-warm-as-Maine-May-February, cars should not overheat. Under any circumstances.
I’m thinking this on February first, as I glance between the road and the gauge on the dashboard that’s pegging well above the “H.” As I drive to work. As I realize that I’m going to be late to the new job for the first time today, only a month in.
The day didn’t start out looking like it was going to suck- at least, it didn’t look like it was going to suck any more than it usually does at 6:35 in the morning when my clock-radio with the lousy tuner wakes me for the first time with what’s supposed to be KROQ but more often than not is just static. It didn’t seem like it would suck any more seven minutes later when the snooze alarm made the noise start again, or when I half-dozed while I showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, and dressed.
A little side note here: I’ve noticed that, in three paragraphs, I’ve already managed to complain about two inanimate objects- but my complaint isn’t really with them; it’s with the horrible jobs I’ve forced them to take. My car, an old Toyota with two hundred thousand miles on it, has been my thankless servant for years, even though I’ve rarely changed the oil, purchased new tires only when forced to, kept the same wiper blades through multiple winters, and in general neglected it. The radio station the clock is trying to pull in sometimes seems like it has a signal weaker than most cell phones, and still it manages to find bits of the morning show through the curtains of static. In short, the inanimate objects in my life perform admirably, and my complaints that involve them are rarely caused by them. Thank you, Mister Car, for stopping when I put on the brakes, even though I haven’t changed your pads since Clinton was first elected. Thank you, clock radio, for still striving to complete your mission of information delivery under very harsh and unsympathetic circumstances. As for the other inanimate objects I’m sure I’ll mention later, most of them will also be innocent of any crime, although I’m sure some of them will perform in a manner which indicates they are trying to piss me off.
Now I’ve pulled over. I’m at the gas station air-and-water-for-a-quarter thing. I’ve had cars that have overheated before, and I’ve found that the problem is usually (surprise) not enough water in the radiator. So, I’m spraying water on the radiator to cool it down enough to be able to take the cap off without shooting a fountain of boiling, rusty ethylene glycol all over myself. Now, taking off the cap (with a rag, just in case the engine isn’t cool enough), I see that… there’s plenty of water. Deep orange water, but still, water. Hmm. Let’s check the rest of the engine- the rest that I know how to check anyway.
Here’s the dipstick – no, not me, the oil dipstick. There are marks to indicate if the oil level is too low or too high. I don’t really need the marks to know which of those is the case right now, since there is absolutely no oil on the thing. Into the market for a couple of quarts oil- overpriced, but they come with a keen paper funnel!
Both quarts into the engine. Check the dipstick again and… now there’s oil on it, but still well below the “L,” which stands for “Loser, how did you let a car that only holds four quarts of oil get three quarts low?”
So, after one more trip in to the store (where the clerk seems very surprised to see me buying another quart of oil- I mean, I’d have to be an idiot to need that much oil), the level is finally reasonable. Problem solved. Back into the car, engine on, and-
-the temperature gauge pegs again. “The oil just needs to circulate a bit,” I think to myself, “and then the gauge will be right as rain.
The gauge stays up.
I turn off the car. Now, I’m faced with a two part dilemma- do I drive the car or have it towed, and where do I drive it or have it towed to? If I drive it, it could destroy the engine. If I tow it home, I’ll probably have to pay to tow it again to a mechanic. I don’t have a mechanic, so home seems like the only place to go. Still, if I tow the car, it won’t blow up, and if any car deserves a little pampering after years of abuse, it’s this one.
So I drive it home.
Back at home, the first order of business is to call work and tell them I’ll be late. The secretary lets the world know that I’ll miss the first meeting of the morning. Next problem- getting to work. Finding a mechanic and fixing the car is a very distant third problem until I work out how I’ll get to the place that will give me the money to fix it.
Normally, getting an alternate car to get to work would be no problem- between my brother and I, there are three cards at the house. When one of our “regulars” breaks down, we use the spare for a while until the primary car is fixed. Today, however, is different. His car is also broken- would you believe it’s a radiator leak?- so he needs the spare to get to work. I work days, he works nights, so I tell him I’ll be back before he has to leave. I grab the keys for the spare car and do the “move everything I need from the car I was driving to the car I now must drive” ritual.
By this time, I’m at least an hour late. Common sense would dictate that I should make a beeline to work- but my stomach argues that point. My stomach is not used to a morning without breakfast. In fact, my stomach expects me to give it breakfast as the two of us head to work each morning. I would never be foolish enough to argue with someone as big as my belly, so I give in. 
Now, the morning breakfast problem is a whole different quandary. There are two basic choices: Carl’s Jr. and Jamba Juice. Each breakfast has positive and negative points. Carl’s Jr. is cheaper, warmer, and usually faster, but Jamba Juice lets me pretend that I’m having a healthy meal, even though I’m consuming more calories and lots of sugar. Yes, the sugar in Jamba Juice is in a “natural state” and “drawn from individually quick-frozen all-natural fruits and vegetables,” but I’m sure that doesn’t fool you any more than it does me. Besides, any health benefit I may gain from the smoothie is offset by the big parmesan pretzel I get to go with it. Liquids only for breakfast? I don’t think so.
The breakfast burrito combo meal from Carl’s, on the other hand, makes no attempt at all to appear healthy. It doesn’t try to hide its nature with silly things like lettuce or rice- instead, it’s a tortilla filled with eggs, bacon, cheese- and nothing else. Oh sure, it comes with a packet of salsa- but the folks at Carl’s are smart enough to know that doughy fussy-eater white guys like me are just going to toss that packet. As a bonus, you get a side of hash browns- unless they run out of them and give you French fries instead. That’s right- French fries for breakfast. Healthy, healthy stuff. The regular combo meal comes with coffee, but I always get the little plastic-and-aluminum-foil container of orange juice instead, because it’s healthier. Also, I hate coffee.
I end up choosing Jamba Juice- partially because it sounds more appealing, but mainly because I’m already late so I know I can miss a few more minutes of work by going in instead of driving through for a burrito. Sure, it costs two bucks more, and I know I should be saving as much money as possible to pay for whatever needs to be done to prevent my long-suffering car from becoming a mobile Old Faithful/Mount Saint Helen’s, but the thought of that cost has made my stomach disagree even the idea of eating big lumps of grease this morning, so I settle for the big lumps of sugar and cheese (plus an “Energy Boost” in the form of a mysterious white powder added to my smoothie) that only a breakfast-Slurpee can provide.
I’ve only been at the job for a month, but I’ve noticed some things about my morning car meal. For example, if you gave me a map of my route from home to work, I could tell you what I had for breakfast that day, and I could plot on that map exactly how much of my breakfast  I had consumed up to that point in the drive. I’m hoping that this somehow figures in to a major murder trail in the future: “Your honor, I can tell you exactly where I was at that point, for I had nearly finished my orange juice and still had three bites left of my not-pretending-to-be-healthy-at-all breakfast burrito! Therefore, THAT MAN IS GUILTY!” I’m not saying that it would work exactly like that, but it is how I imagine it.
So, Jamba Juice in hand, I get back in the spare car and head toward work. I kind of wish I were even later than I already am- then I could use the old “well, it’s too late to go into work now” excuse and go catch a movie or something. I won’t have much of a chance to get out tonight- having no car when you live in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley effectively means having no reasonable ability to leave your house. I mean, what am I going to do- ride my bike somewhere? I’d be a mass of sweaty blubber before I’d gone a mile. And don’t try and convince me to try to use public “transportation”- even if the bus were reasonably priced, it doesn’t GO anywhere, and it takes forever to get the nowhere places that buses seem to find.
But it isn’t late enough to claim too late to work privileges, and even if it were, it’s a little too soon in my job to be taking “personal days,” even if those personal days are based on actual need, let alone so I can catch Corky Romano before my brother needs the car. So I finish my pretzel, pull into the parking lot, turn off the motor, gather my stuff, and go to work.
Driving home, it hits me that I’m going to have to figure out how to fix my car. I mean, I’d been thinking about it in an abstract way since the needle first climbed up to H and stuck there, but it really hit me on the way home- how am I going to get this thing fixed? When will I have time to find a mechanic? When will I have time to take the car to the mechanic? How am I going to pay for the mechanic? Maybe I should try to fix it myself first.
Me trying to fix my own car is actually a quite silly thought. There was a time when I had a car I could sometimes fix. That car was a 1968 Dodge Coronet. A monster of a car, but the thing was so simply designed that you could have trained a class of second grade students to fix the thing with a hammer and a rock. It was so generic that no spare part ever seemed to cost more than thirty dollars. The engine compartment was big enough for me to comfortably climb inside and work.
The Toyota is an entirely different kind of monster. Everything is electronic and calibrated by special computers. The engine block scrapes the walls of the compartment. If you want to change a belt you have to pull the engine. Parts, while not rare, certainly cost more than the thirty bucks I was used to with the other car, and every part requires a special tool to install/remove/calibrate/align it.. I’d have to find a mechanic or I’d end up spending hundreds of dollars on parts that may do nothing but cost me hundreds of dollars. Also, if I did it myself I’d probably get all sweaty and stuff.
My life is so dull.

Meanwhile, in my brain’s secret dream-world:

It was time to send another carton of monkeys back to the mainland. The demand for monkeys in America had grown exponentially since the discovery that monkey-coated materials were impervious to most terrorist attacks, including the deadly anthrax. Shipping monkeys to the States had become a normal part of nearly every monkey-infested country in the world. Attempts were made to cut import costs by breeding the monkeys in America instead, but they were all failures- apparently, the only way a monkey-coating is at all effective is when it’s made of exotic and distant monkey parts. All attempts to duplicate foreign monkey-growing environments were at best useless, and at worst- deadly. Congress passed a series of  anti-monkey growth laws after the death of nearly 30 people in the Michigan Incident.
So the monkey importing business remains brisk. My company, MonkeyGo, has shipped more than 200 thousand units in the last eight months, and we’re on the smaller end of the business. Larger firms like MonkTECH regularly ship that many on a slow day.
Of course, we have to work harder to survive. A big McMonkey firm like MonkTECH can provide a ton of monkeys for the same price we’d charge for a barrel of them. To keep from being absorbed by Big Monkey, we’ve diversified to offer a range of specialty monkeys, including miniature monkeys, Rainbow Monkeys © , and ActiveMonkey© (the monkey who jogs with you)! We can make a profit by selling these exotic monkeys, but our biggest- and most dangerous- monkey-moneymaker is the mysterious kima punju: the Poison Monkey.
For many years, the Poison Monkey was thought to be an impossible thing, like the perpetual motion machine or a good Steven Segal movie. It was a mythical creature, spoken of in whispers in dark alleys and hidden rooms. 
Most people thought of the Poison Monkey the way they thought of Santa Claus: really fat and wearing a red suit. But the poison monkey is not fat, and the only red it wears is it’s fur, naturally a golden brown but often dyed crimson by the blood of its enemies. This knowledge came at a terrible cost to the people who discovered the true nature of the poison monkey. Dozens of men were killed before proper Poison Monkey Control Mechanisms (PMCMs, pronounced pim-sims)were discovered.
Even with these PMCMs, control of the Poison Monkey is difficult at best- which is why this shipment I’m preparing is taking so much effort. If they were regular monkeys, I could prep and crate 30 in an hour. With the Poison Monkeys I’m lucky if I can pack that many in a day.
I’m fitting the last monkey of the day with the PMCM collar when the phone rings. Distracted by the phone, I look away for the smallest of moments- but the Poison Monkey has been watching, waiting- before the first ring has finished, the monkey has leapt from my hands and disappeared into the boxes and shadows.
I grab the tranq-gun and load it with darts, put on the protective armor and helmet, pick up the cattle prod and head off to find the monkey. What a day. Why can’t I have normal problems?

The trouble with broken cars is that they need to be fixed. And they need to be fixed by someone who’s actually aware of how to fix them. Broken cars would be no problem if you could just let them rest for a few days, feeding them soothing high-octane gas and exotic, synthetic motor oils until they healed.
But cars do not heal, and so must be repaired- usually, by someone who gets paid a ton of money to fix something that would have been inexpensive if you could do it yourself. Today’s example: my still-broken car. Overheating. In the old-and-simple Coronet, I’d know the overheating was probably caused by one of the following: bad radiator, bad fuel pump, bad thermostat. Each of those parts would have been fairly cheap, so I could have replaced one of them without fear, since it wouldn’t hurt to have a new one. In the “new” car, it’s a different world. Yes, the problem could be one of those three things, but it could also be some strange computer glitch I couldn’t diagnose. I could spend hundreds of dollars to get the parts, put them in myself, and still have the thing overheat. Or, I could take it to a mechanic, let him figure out what the problem is, have him replace just the parts that need replacing, and get away with spending the same amount of money to fix the thing without having to dirty my precious hands.
I take the car to a mechanic recommended by a neighbor- a neighbor a rarely talk to, but I’m willing to take her advice about mechanics at face value because I haven’t got a clue how to find one otherwise. The shop is just around the corner from my house, so I decide to save the tow charges and risk blowing up the car. The car takes pity on me (again) and makes the trip without incident.
Here’s the thing about saving money by going to the mechanic instead of doing the work yourself: you don’t. The mechanic can always fix the problem you would have fixed for less than it would have cost you to fix it yourself- but the mechanic can also always find other, more expensive repairs that have to be done, but you didn’t know about – or you knew about but had been ignoring. In my case, I didn’t need a new fuel pump- the overheating was caused by a failing thermostat- but the radiator was also rusted out to the point that it needed to be replaced. Beyond that, the valve cover gasket was leaking (which is how I came to be three quarts low in a four quart engine), the plugs were worn, the car needed a general tune-up, and the CV boot had torn. The CV boot is this thing that holds the grease in your axle- apparently, no lubrication in the axle is a bad thing. Actually, I’m surprised they didn’t tell me they had to replace the whole thing. Grand total for these repairs: about $1300.
You might be saying to yourself “Hey, why didn’t you just put that $1300 toward a new car instead of spending all that money to fix the old one?” The answer lies in the method of car repair needs discovery. If the mechanic looked at the car once and said “this car needs these things and it will cost $1300,” I might have said “No thanks, I’ll sell it for scrap and get a fresh, new car with fresh, new problems.” 
But you don’t find out about all the repairs at once. You find out about each repair one at a time though a series of phone calls. Each call adds one more thing. First the thermostat. Then the radiator. Then the gasket and the CV boot. The more work you’ve approved, the more likely you are to think “I’ve already spent the money- might as well go all the way.” That was my attitude until the bill cracked the thousand dollar barrier. Then I told the mechanic “Please don’t find anything else wrong with my car.” He agreed, and the cost stopped going up. If I hadn’t said anything, he probably would have found that the seats need reupholstering, the pads on the brake pedals need replacing, the wiper blades need to be rotated, and so on until my bank account could no longer supply those cool green bits of paper that all the stores seem to love so much.
But now the car is repaired, and I’ll be able to drive without feeling like The Accidental Car Bomb Terrorist. Besides, car bombs are so last century. The modern terrorist uses “white powdery substances” – anthrax, powdered sugar, that kind of thing- or the oh-so-fashionable “plane as missile.” If I did blow up my car, terrorists around the world would yawn and say to their terrorist friends “A car bomb? How quaint. I would have used a polymorphic computer virus to crash the Internet, but every little bit helps, I suppose.”

As I drive to work, I see the first ad. A billboard. Thick black letters on a bright yellow background:

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for Pork Loin!”

Then another, on a bus shelter:

“Buy me some peanuts and Pork Kabobs!”

…and another, on the way home:

“One potato, two potato, three potato, Pork!”

Once again, new, strange pork advertising slogans have appeared. They started years ago, when the Pork Advisory Board apparently felt threatened by the beef slogan – “Beef- it’s what’s for dinner!”  Pork wants to be what’s for dinner, too, so they keep trying to find the perfect slogan to encapsulate the wonder and joy that can only be found by chewing on pig.
The first slogan was slightly off, but at least it had some basis in logic:  “Pork: the other white meat.” Yes, pork is white. Yes, it is not chicken, which most folks think of when you say “white meat” (unless they are characters in a seventies blaxploitation film). Still, it lacked the strength of “it’s what’s for dinner.”
So, back to the drawing board. This time, the ad guys tried for a “Pork is Cool” kind of feel: “Pork: taste what’s next.”  That sounds like a bad bet: “I’ll give you ten bucks if you taste what’s next!” I don’t want to taste what’s next. I want to taste what’s tasty. Edible, at least.
Now we have pork slogans based on random kid’s sayings that mention any other food. What’s next? Four-and-twenty pork chops baked in a pie? Def Leppard doing “Pour Some Bacon on Me?”
As I’m reading these signs, I can’t help trying to figure out what the next big wave of pork based advertising will feature. I do have some guesses:

Pork: The Meat That Surprises Your Mouth
Pork: A Pure Food Solid
Pork: Eat, Like, a Pig
Pork- the Next Generation
This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Pork!
Pork: It’s What’s For Dinner if You Aren’t Eating Beef or Chicken
Pork: The Actually Kind of Gray Meat
Pork: It Won’t Kill You if You Cook it Properly

When I get home I decide to contact the Pork Advisory Board and share my brilliant new slogans. Unfortunately, their website seems to be shut down- but porkforkids.com is still up! Yes, porkforkids.com- a special website devoted solely to the task of teaching kids to taste what’s next:  the wondrous, glorious, majestic other white meat we call pork. The site features tons of  carefully-gender-and-race-balanced, smiling, dancing, laughing cartoon kids explaining where pork comes from (with accompanying cartoon cute pig pictures instead of  photos of slaughterhouses stuffed with carcasses), why pork is good for you, and even pork recipes “that you can try with your parents!” Ooooh, remember when you were a small child and you’d beg your mom to let you help cook the pork-based family meal recipes you found with your friends?
Porkforkids.com is why I love the internet. On the internet, every stupid idea, ridiculous crackpot theory, terrible business plan, or freakish photograph has a home. If you are looking for something, no matter how obscure or bizarre, you will probably find it- and as a side benefit, your search for stupidity will probably lead you to other stupid things you’d never thought of. Do you want to know how to cook a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey? The internet can help! Do you need the English translation of the Japanese lyrics for the Speed Racer cartoon theme? The internet has them? Do you have a burning need to balance your hunger for Golden Girls porn fiction with naked pictures of Bea Arthur? These things and more can all be found on your special cyber-friend, THE INTERNET!

The next day starts out normally. Alarm at 6:35, seven minute of extra snooze-button sleep, then into the shower. KROQ plays on the boombox on the sink. A song ends and Kevin and Bean, the “wacky morning deejays,” start into one of their bits:
“So, have you seen the new ads all over the place?”
“You mean those giant pork ads?”
“It’s like the ad people said ‘What’s the strangest thing we could use to sell pig? I know- KID’S songs!’”
“Well, they’re really more like folk songs or something, but you’re right- they are weird.”
Hey! The morning DJ guys think those ads are bizarre, too! They continue:
“I don’t even know what ‘One potato, two potato, three potato, pork!’ means! Are we supposed to eat three potatoes every time we eat pork chops? Can they be those little baby potatoes, or are we required to eat three giant baked potatoes or something?”
“I don’t know, but whatever the”

And the radio goes silent. I look to see if the thing has shorted out or something, but the little red light is still on, so there definitely is power. Just before I get the chance to dry off enough play with the knobs to see if the station is tuned properly without electrocuting myself, a song starts up. I go back to showering. As I get out the song ends and the deejays come back on.

“Sorry about that- a little technical glitch, here…” says one, with an odd sound in his voice that I can’t quite identify.
“Some sort of technical glitch! We’re still shaking the bugs out of this place.” says the other, sounding far too cheerful about a brand-new multimillion dollar  broken radio station.
They continue talking as I finish getting ready for work, but I get annoyed that never get back to the pork advertising slogans- in fact, they don’t mention them again for the rest of the show. I decide to call them- well, not them directly, but the voice-mail line they’ve set up- they’ll take the best of what they hear and put it on the next morning’s show. It’s a great way to get your audience to do the work you’re supposed to do. I leave this message-
“Hey, Kevin & Bean! I heard you talking about the pork slogans today. They’ve been bugging me, too. I’ve actually thought of a couple of alternate slogans the Pork Advisory Board can use when they get tired of the ones they have. My favorite one is probably “Pork: The Meat That Surprises Your Mouth!” but I also think “Pork: The Actually Kind of Gray Meat” is pretty damn funny.”
-then hang up.
It’s a short day at work- it’s to make up for all employees being forced to attend some sort of teamwork-building seminar over the weekend- so I decide to grab some lunch on the way home. I stop at my favorite cheap Chinese restaurant. Please understand- prices are low, and you get large quantities of mostly edible food, but the only time I’m really dying to go there is right at noon or right at five, when they bring out the barbequed pork. Big, deep red, fat-encrusted chunks of fried pork. When I walk away from the counter with my order today, I can’t help quietly singing “buy me some peanuts and pork kabobs” as I head for a table. Well, I was heading for the table before I was heading for the floor, which I did right after I first noticed the most beautiful Asian midget I’d ever seen.
She said her name was Kim. She helped me off the floor- as much as a midget can help a six foot guy off of a floor- and as the busboys came to clean up my mess and the manager apologized for the slippery floor and brought me a replacement tray full of food (with extra pork!), Kim and I found a table. By the time I left the table, I knew two things: you should look carefully when walking with a tray full of pork, and that I was hopelessly in love with a beautiful midget.

Have you ever fallen in love? I have, several times. Each time, a lot of the same feelings show up- the desire to be with her, the worry I’m not good enough for her, the joy that she wants to be with me, the warm and fuzzy visions of the future together. But each time, the actual Falling In Love part of falling in love was very different.
The first time I fell in love was in high school. She was young and beautiful, and I was… well, I was young at least. We had classes together, and we soon found ourselves as part of the same circle of friends. My love for her showed up like a spring sunrise- gradually filling my day with light and warmth. First love is a wonderful thing. I couldn’t get enough of it- when she left, the sun went down and I was left in the dark.
The next time was in college. We were in the drama department- I worked stage crew and Diane was on the costuming crew. I was actually more interested in one of the actresses, but I later found out the two of them agreed that the actress would not go out with me. Finding that love was like opening the wrong door in an unlit hallway and accidentally stumbling into Willy Wonka’s chocolate room. This time I left- I’m still not sure why- and I was left in the dark again.
I met Jen at work. We were “just friends” for a long time. We started dating as a dare: I actually bet her that she wouldn’t go out with me. I lost the bet. Maybe it was because I’d felt enough pain from past love to be cautious, or maybe it was because we started out as friends, but for some reason I didn’t get the same full body warmth as quickly I did from the others- it was more like I was in a house that was gradually being lit by more and more Christmas lights. At first, I could barely see anything, but as the lights grew in number I saw more than I’d ever seen with anyone else. Maybe the gradual change gave my “love eyes” more time to adjust to the light. I never felt as intimate with anyone as I did with her. When we split, I declared myself Done With Love, the man who would only have meaningless relationships with total strangers, now and forever.
Until Kim showed up.
When Kim walked over to my collapsed, rice and pork covered body and gave me her hand, it was like the whole world was lit by floodlights that somehow made everything brighter without glare. She was like a beacon and a pair of BlueBlocker sunglasses. 
I was mesmerized by her. She was far too well-dressed for a place like this- she didn’t look at all like a plastic-fork-and-styrofoam-cup kind of person- but she somehow merged seamlessly with the crowd. We sat at the table in the cheap Chinese restaurant for hours, talking about everything and nothing. We spent twenty minutes just talking about the kids two tables over. Here it was, the twenty-first century, and these kids were dressed like it was 1979 – spiked and mohawked bright green and red hair, leather jackets with British flags and old punk bands sewn and painted all over them- and thought they were showing their individuality. I thought that anyone who had been into punk when it was new and vital would think these kids might as well have been wearing poodle skirts and beehive hairdos.
By the way, in case you think I’m pulling the Old Man’s “These Kids Today” rant, I’m not. I’m not brave enough or old enough to have been into punk when it was actually something original. I was much more of a late-seventies AM radio kid. I’ve only listened to punk on my stereo, where I can turn it down when it gets too loud. Okay, maybe I am pulling a bit of the Old Man Rant… but just a little.
I told her about my job as a faceless drone at a local company- she told me she was an advertising executive. I told her I’d buy anything she was selling. She told me how she got to Los Angeles. She had started out as a copy-writer for a big firm back East, but moved to LA to start her own shop, and brought with her the clients she had found at the other firm. When I asked her about her clients, she became a bit coy- she said that most of her contracts, especially the big ones, had very lengthy non-disclosure agreements that forbade her from discussing ongoing campaigns with anyone other than her personnel, but she was positive I had seen some of her work. I thought non-disclosure rules sounded a bit extreme for advertising companies, but I deferred to her knowledge of her job- and I would rather hear about her than about some silly sneaker ad or something. Within two years she was the proud owner of the third largest advertising firm in Los Angeles County.
I asked her why the president of a huge advertising firm would spend her spare time picking low-wage shlubs like me off of bad Chinese restaurant floors. She laughed and said “The barbequed pork is great at any price. And I didn’t come in here to pick you up, but I’m glad I did.”
I didn’t want to leave her side, but she had to go back to work- and I really needed to clean up; I didn’t want to spend the rest of my day soaked in pork grease. We traded numbers and agreed to get together that night. I walked her to her car- a giant 4x4 truck. Before she closed the door, I said “Hey, thanks again for picking me up.” She said “I would have picked you up even if you weren’t on the floor,” kissed my cheek, closed her door, and drove off.
Ten minutes later, I stopped blushing, walked to my car, and blissfully drove home. Love was somehow back, and I was right in the middle of it!

Thirty minutes after that, I was pretty much out of it again. 
I raced home from the restaurant, tore my pork scented clothes off, and jumped in the shower to remove any lingering swine remnants. As I stood in the hot water, the spotlights slowly dimmed and I became less frantic to see Kim again. In fact, I was starting to have some doubts. What was it about her that made me want her so badly? Did I have some sort of subconscious midget fetish? I didn’t think so- I’d seen a ton of midgets before I met her, and I never wanted them like I’d wanted her. And not to be too insensitive or anything, but just how did the physical act of love (as the great philosopher Austin Powers called it) work? I mean, I know how it’s supposed to work, but it seemed like it would be… I guess the word I’m looking for is challenging.
When I got home I meant to call her right away, but I jumped in the shower first. After the shower, I wasn’t in a hurry to call her back, so I puttered around the house for a while- sinking into the couch to test the batteries in the remote control, checking my email, picking through the Calendar section of the paper, generally wasting time- until my discomfort over calling her was outweighed by my guilt over not calling her. I picked up the phone and dialed the number she’d written on the back of her business card.
“Hello?”
There was the voice- the voice that had captivated me for hours, the voice I couldn’t get enough of this afternoon- and it didn’t interest me at all. Maybe I’d burned out on it over lunch, but I didn’t think so. When she drove off, I remember wishing I’d had a tape recorder so I could listen to her speak all day. Now, her voice meant as much to me as the guy reading the movie times on the AMC’s answering machine.
“Hey, it’s Bob- the Lord of the Pork Dance from lunch. Remember me?”
(Yes, my name is Bob. And you only had to get 6,299 words into this to find out. Maybe around 15,000 or so you’ll find out my last name- although I can tell you it isn’t Roberts, Patterson, Barker, or Dobbs.)
“Oh, yes! How could I ever forget the master of the pork pirouette and accompanying belly-flop?”
We talked for a little while, and the conversation was good- better than most, actually- but I wasn’t hanging on every word like I had this afternoon. It was more like a conversation with a good friend I hadn’t spoken to for a while- interesting, but detached.
She said we should meet at her place, then go to dinner from there. I said “Aren’t you a little worried about being alone with a strange man in your house?” She said “You have no idea what strange is!” and stared to laugh. I didn’t understand, so I made that little chuckle noise that people make when they don’t know why something is funny but they don’t want to look like an idiot because they didn’t get it, but that makes them look like more of an idiot than they would have if they had just admitted their lack of comprehension.
I got in my long-suffering (but no longer overheating) Toyota and headed to her place. Halfway there, I decided I’d better stop for flowers or something. I pulled into a mini-mall with a florist and a liquor store (it also had a tanning salon, a nail place and a donut shop, but California law requires all mini-malls to have those).
In the flower shop, I was struck with a case of First Date Flowers. Should I get roses? That seemed a bit much for a first date – even considering how smitten I had felt about her earlier. Maybe a bouquet of midget roses? Oh yeah, THAT would go over really well. Daisies? Maybe, but this is a woman who’s probably used to the finer things in life. Then again, she might find them charming and refreshingly non-pretentious. Lilies? No. I’m pretty sure she isn’t dead.
After spending fifteen minutes debating which set of dead plants I should get, I walked out of the shop with a single rose, which I hoped would make the potentially contradictory statements “You deserve the best things in life” and “a single flower shows I care without making the monetary value things the focus of our time together” and avoid sending the message “I’m a cheap/poor guy who didn’t think to stop for flowers until he was halfway to your house.”
Then I walked over to the liquor store for a couple of forties. No, not really- I went for gum. The forties just sort of came along for the ride. Or I didn’t buy any and I’m being a huge smartass- you make the call. I had to leave the sidewalk for a second to avoid stepping on the homeless guy who’d set up camp in the space between the shops. He asked for money. He didn’t try the “spare change?” line, none of that “I need five bucks to get gas” stuff, not even the “got a cigarette?” warmup that most homeless folks use- just straight out: “May I have some money?”
Normally, I would give the deaf man’s walk to the guy, or at best say “sorry” and walk on, but I was so refreshed by the guy’s question- and I still had my flower change in my hand- that I threw him a buck. I was inside the liquor store before he could finish saying thank you.
Now, it was gum-picking time. Picking date gum makes picking flowers look easy. You can never be sure what kind of gum your date chews, or wether the gum you pick will be compatible with her gum. If you don’t chew gum, you probably have no idea how many choices are out there. Old favorites like Doublemint and Juicy Fruit have to compete with newer sugarless gums like Trident and Extra. Then there are teeth-whitening gums, enamel-building gums, tooth-brushing gums, and a dozen flavors of each type of each brand. 
After a great deal of deliberation, I finally opted for the Eclipse Wintergreen gum, paid the cashier (almost TWO BUCKS for twelve pieces of gum!) and walked back to my car. I expected to hear nothing from the bum as I walked past him, except maybe another “thank you” or “god bless you” (all homeless people in California are required to take an eight-hour course on homeless etiquette), but this one had something else to say:
“Watch out for the pork.”
I stopped, and after a very long second I turned toward him.
“Excuse me?”
“The pork! Watch out for it. Promise?”
“I’ll try.”
“Good! You know they’re watching us, right? Right?”
I stood there a second more, then smiled awkwardly and went to my car. As I drove, I noticed more of the yellow and black billboards, and I realized that my pork-obsessed friend was probably not completely anchored to the facts in this world. He probably sees these billboards most of his day- no wonder the poor sap thinks the pork is after him. I had satisfied myself with this line of reasoning until I saw the new billboard that made me stop the car:

Pork: The Meat That Surprises Your Mouth.

What the hell? I called Kevin and Bean with that slogan this morning as a joke, and now the Pork Board is actually using it? How could they have done that so quickly? And why would they use it? It was a JOKE, damn it.
I finally decided that there was no way an ad company could have somehow heard my joke slogan this morning, designed billboards, had them printed, reserved billboard space, and had the ads posted within twelve hours. It had to be a coincidence. It was the only solution that made any sense.
Satisfied (again) with this (new) line of reasoning, I drove on.

She lived in a gated community up in the hills near Calabasas. The guard at the gate seemed a bit surprised at me pulling up in my cruddy little car, but grudgingly let me in after he found my name on Kim’s guest list. I drove along the winding little streets the guard had marked in yellow highlighter on the photocopied map of the community until I found her house.
It was huge.
I walked to the house, half-expecting the doors to be half-sized, but they weren’t. In fact they were massive- my front door would easily fit three times in the space of the front door. The door handle did seem to be slightly lower than in a standard door, but I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t just imagined that it would be.
I rang the bell and waited for the butler or maid or someone to answer, but they did not come. Instead, the door opened, and there was Kim.
And I was in love all over again.

The inside of the house was just as impressive as the outside, but the only thing I cared to look at was her. My heart beat faster as she took my hand to lead me into her kitchen.
“Instead of going out for dinner, I thought I might cook something. Is that all right?”
“That would be wonderful!” I said, staring at her impossibly beautiful, tiny face. “What are we having?”
As she picked through her fridge, she turned back to me and said “Since you seemed to enjoy the food this afternoon so much, I thought I’d make some (she turned toward me at this point, showing me that she was holding a package of) pork chops!”
Suddenly, Kim’s voice was drowned out in my head by the homeless man’s warning: Watch out for the pork!
I could feel myself starting to freak out. Why pork chops? Why now? What the hell am I doing in Calabasas in a huge house with a tiny stranger I desperately desire trying to feed me pig parts, against the advice of a guy who is apparently my new personal advisor, a guy who’s life choices now including sleeping in a cardboard box? My brain didn’t know what to do, so my body came up with a novel solution: it collapsed.

Meanwhile, in my brain’s secret dream-world:

The poison monkeys now had control of nearly all of the compound. A few of us managed to barricade ourselves into the warehouse, but it was only a matter of time before they figured out how to get in here.
Damn the poison monkeys! Damn them all to hell! Why did we ever think we could contain them? We should have done more fieldwork- then we might have known how the poison monkeys spread their power. Whenever a poison monkey sees a non-poison monkey, it attacks. No regular monkey could ever hope to match the strength, ferocity, and strange charm of the poison monkey. Victorious in every battle, the poison monkey unleashes it’s greatest weapon- the poison of the poison monkey. For most monkeys, the result is instant death- but for those few with the right combination of genetic factors, the result is rebirth as a new poison monkey. The compound is overflowing with new poison monkeys scampering over the bodies of their former fellow prisoners.
Now, we are the prisoners, and the kima punju are our jailers. We survive on the foods we created to breed them. They were not designed for human taste buds- they taste like old vegetables covered in dirt- but they are fortified and enriched with vitamins, minerals, and chemicals that, while not created for human consumption, can easily sustain us. As we eat, we find ourselves acting like monkeys- grunting, swing-walking, pretending to pick bugs out of each other’s hair. Gallows humor. I hope we get past it before we start throwing our crap at each other. I hope we live long enough to get past it.
There is another problem- up until this point, the monkeys have been trapped within our walls. The only way to leave is with a cardkey- and we have all of them with us. If they get to us, they may be able- excuse me, I forgot we were talking about poison monkeys- they will be able to use one of them to open the doors and unleash poison moneys on an unsuspecting world. We’ve agreed to destroy the cards if it looks like that might happen.
But that won’t be good enough. Our suppliers will eventually return with more monkeys, and when they realize something’s wrong they’ll call our corporate offices. Eventually, someone will come down here and open that door.
We’ve got to get rid of the poison monkeys before that happens, no matter the cost.

“KIMA PUNJU!”
I wake up screaming this. I don’t know why. Then I realize I’m at home. In my bed. In my pajamas. And the phone is ringing.
“Hello?”
“Why aren’t you here?”
Trying not to sound like I’m completely confused, I say “Where is here?” Yeah, that sounds like I’m clear, all right.
“Here is the seminar! You know, the place all employees are supposed to be at today?”
Crap.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” This is a lie, because I’m going to shower and eat breakfast first, and I live thirty minutes from the “training center” where this seminar takes place, but people who are mad at you for not showing up for employer-mandated events usually don’t want to hear “Oh, jeez- sorry I’m late, I’ll be there in an hour or two.” Yes, it does mean I’ll probably get another lateness lecture when I get there, but the chance I might be able to sneak in a back door to avoid hearing it makes the lie worth it. Besides, it’s a California law that when confirming your planned attendance of any event- social or business- you must give an arrival time that is wildly inaccurate. Showing up on time is more than rude- it is a criminal offense punishable by up to six months in jail. Of course, the severity of this law, as with all other California laws, varies according to your current celebrity status. Tom Hanks would get off with a warning. Jack Nicholson wouldn’t even get that. Screech from “Saved By The Bell” would be executed.
I hang up the phone. Then I notice the card on the dresser:

Thank you for the wonderful evening. Call me.

Kim

The wonderful evening? Is she thinking of the same evening I am? The one where I passed out on her kitchen floor screaming about pork chops? And how did I get home? Shouldn’t someone be here to make sure I’m okay? The more I think about it, the less comfortable it makes me. She didn’t bring me here- she’s too small. Someone helped her carry me home and dress me.
Then it hits me- she’s rich. She has servants. She probably had them help with me. I still don’t like the idea of strangers removing my clothes while I’m passed out, but at least it makes more sense than me being dragged up here by a midget.

I hate working on the weekend. But more than I hate working on the weekend, I hate “seminars” and “trust-building exercises” on the weekend. I have, like nearly every sane person on the planet who has a regular job, work friends and “regular” friends. Sure, the occasional work friend makes the crossover into the “regular” friend category, but this is rare. Because of this split, each group of friends has a different set of rules- when you see them, how you act around them, what you can say around them, and what you can wear around them. With regular friends, you can throw on just about any thing in the closet and get away with it, especially on a lazy weekend. Feel like wearing those shorts you’ve worn every single Saturday for the past ten years? Go for it! Got a shirt with a beer logo and holes the size of tennis balls? Nobody cares! As long as you aren’t too stinky, regular friends will accept just about anything- as long as you’re willing to accept the initial fifteen minutes of potential taunting. 
Work friends expect you to have your shirt tucked in, your shoes shined, and your belt on. After all, you always dress that way when you see them- why should it be any different just because it’s supposed to be the day when you can actually relax and skip shaving if you feel like it.
Saturday workdays completely upset the balance of the work/regular friends equation. Suddenly, on a SATURDAY, I find myself up before ten. I find myself shaving. I find myself looking for socks that match and a shirt that somehow manages to be work-appropriate and weekend-acceptable at the same time. I find myself wearing jeans during the day (it may be February, but it is a California February…) instead of shorts, and tucking in my shirt and putting on a stinking belt. 
I throw on a beat up denim shirt to try and pretend I have some control of my appearance today, and head to the car. It’s later than I usually leave for work, and I’m actually going to this “self-actualization facility” or whatever, so I have to think more about breakfast than usual. Jamba, Carl’s, or someplace exciting and new?
I decide I’ll hit El Pollo Loco. It’s almost eleven- I can get away with a brakfast burrito that resembles a real burrito for once. I walk to my car…
…to discover my car isn’t here. Crap! Who would steal my piece of shit car?
Then I realize that no one has stolen my car. My car is safe and secure, resting comfortably on the road in front of a huge house, inside a beautiful gated community just outside of Calabasas. Might as well be in France. So, spare car it is- except the spare car is gone, too. My brother’s car is still here, which mean’s my brother’s car is still broken and he took the spare. Crap again.
So, back into the house to figure out alternate transportation. First, calls to all the work friends who are supposed to be going to this thing to see if they can give me a ride. No luck- either I’m the only one in the whole office who’s slept in, or I’m the only one dumb enough to answer his phone on a Saturday when he knows work might call. Next, friends and family, to see if anyone will take pity on a poor loser who’s desperate to ruin his weekend with a eight hours of moral-building exercises. No luck again- everyone seems to be out and about enjoying there time not working, just to make me jealous.
Finally, I think to call Kim. The phone rings. And rings. And continues to ring. After eighteen rings I hang up. For a rich midget she sure has a poor voicemail system.
And it hits me- I know what I have to do. I have to do something that every California dreads and fears. Something that every citizen of Los Angeles prays will never happen. But it happens. Eventually, it happens to everyone.
Sooner or later, you have to ride the bus.

If you’re not from Los Angeles, you may think I’m exaggerating the horror of our bus system. You might think that everyone in LA is a stuck-up self centered jerk and that we don’t use public transportation because we value our freedom of movement over protecting the environment or reducing traffic. Some of that is true- but the legendary suckyness of  our public transportation system is not an exaggeration. People in Los Angeles would use the bus, if it we just take us where we want to go.
The problem is this: Los Angeles is not New York, Our city is not huge vertically, but it is gigantic horizontally. There is no “center of town.” Instead, Los Angeles is more like a thousand small cities all stapled together. The important parts of the city are constantly moving, so permanent transportation like trains or million dollar per foot subways are doomed for failure- by the time they are built, the city has moved away. Still, the Metropolitan Transit Authority spends billions of dollars on these projects, which draws away from their ability to provide useful public transportation, like, oh, buses.
There was a time once when Los Angeles buses were fairly common and reasonably priced to ride. That time was in the eighteenth century, I think. It certainly isn’t now. Now, you’re luck if the bus comes twice in an hour. On weekends, you’re lucky if it shows up at all.
I was exceptionally lucky today. Not only did a bus show up, but it was a bus that would drop me within a half-mile of the gate to Kim’s rich midget community. After I paid the fare and sat down, I figured out why. The bus was filled with cleaning ladies. A whole bus full poor, overworked women speaking at least three languages I didn’t understand. They probably get bus passes from their employers so they can always get to work on time. Wow, what a fabulous perk. Much better than Fridays off or a raise. Occasionally I see a look my way and I hear the unmistakable-in-any-language tone that says “Look at that poor guy stuck riding the bus!” I’d probably be annoyed if I didn’t agree with them. 
At this point, you might be thinking “Why didn’t he just take the bus right to the seminar? Wouldn’t that have been faster?” Oh, you make me laugh with the questions I imagine you asking. No, it would not have been faster. The seminar is in Santa Monica, which means I would have had to transfer at least three times before I got there. I could walk there in the time I would spend waiting for three buses.
Also, as poor as the bus service in the day, it is like a magic set of instant teleport machines compared to the service in the night. Plus, the night bus usually has the bonus feature of being full of insane people, for no one but an insane person would dare to climb into one of these diesel-powered death-whales after sunset.
Besides the full janitorial staff, the bus is also full of information that no one who rides a bus will care about, or if they do care about it they already know more about it than any advertisement could ever tell. Bus schedules. Ads for the Hollywood Bowl. And there, right between the Lexus dealer ad and the poster for Corky Romano:

Pork: It’s the childhood friend you never had.

I closed my eyes.

Sixty-seven minutes later (that’s about fifty-seven more minutes than it would have taken to drive myself) the bus full of mocking cleaning women lets me and a few women off at the stop closest to the guard gate. This is when I remember that the gate is a half mile up a hill, and I look up the hill and sigh at the though of  physical exertion on my day off. The women with me laugh as I sigh and head up the hill. I keep up, with effort.
At the top of the hill, I realize I’m going to have to get past the guard gate, and today I am on no guest list. I picture myself begging the poor rent-a-cop stuck working on a Saturday (did I mention I hate working on Saturday?) to let me get my car, and him explaining he can’t let me pass with either a “I may be wearing a polyester cop suit and fake badge in the middle of the day but I’ve got more power than you” or a “Hey, I can’t because I’m already demoted to the crap job of working Saturdays and if I make one more mistake I’ll lose my job” story.
But I worried over nothing. As we approached the gate, the cleaning women surrounded me and began talking to me as if we had been carrying on a conversation for years. The guard didn’t give us more than a glance before he went back to reading his book. After we were well past him, the ladies broke away again. One of them hung back a second,  took my arm, looked me in the eye, and said “We watch out for each other” before she briefly rejoined the group. They had one more huge laugh, then each headed toward their jobs. Their Saturday jobs that they for some reason didn’t seem to mind.
I was afraid that after making this trip I would find my car wasn’t here either, towed away for daring to be less than beautiful in this fishbowl of a mini-town, but it was still there. However, I did find a ticket on the windshield for needing a wash- or for being parked overnight in a four-hour zone, whatever.
Ticket safely stored in my glove compartment, I headed out to Santa Monica. Again, the guard paid no attention as I went by him- after all, if I got in, he must have let me, right? 
It was well past noon, so I treated myself to a real burrito from a hole in the wall Mexican place on the way. I thought about getting it with carnitas, but decided to avoid the pig thing and went for dead cow instead. It was a good choice- my head felt clearer with every bite. By the time I actually made it to the seminar, I was ready for my inevitable firing for missing the exercises.
But I didn’t get fired. It was far too late for that.

Normally, being extremely late to a mandatory weekend work event means walking in to a room full of  misdressed people who stare at you with eyes that burn with a combination of resentment and envy that you’ve managed to avoid the hell of the past few hours that you were supposed to be suffering in with them. But this was different. For one thing, most of my fellow employees were not in a room.
The meeting was at  the Personal Orientation Realignment Center in Santa Monica. The building was right next to the beach, and that’s where the rest of the staff was- and not in the horrible polo shirts and “nice” jeans that I expected everyone else to be wearing. Instead, they were wearing old, faded t-shirts, old sneakers, and huge comfortable shorts- in other words exactly what I wished I could be wearing but thought I couldn’t because it was a work thing. The weather had assisted in my feelings of foolishness and misplacement by being unseasonably warm, even for Southern California- well into the eighties.
A guy from some office on the third floor (at least I think he had an office on the third floor- I’m pretty sure I saw him get on and off the elevator there fairly often) walked up to me as if we’d known each other since high school.
“Hey, Bob!”
“Hello.” I didn’t call him by his name because, well, I didn’t remember it.
“Looks like somebody didn’t get the message!”
“Message?”
“Yeah- did you even look at the flyer for this thing? It said ‘dress as casual as you would if you didn’t have to be here.’”
“Yeah, I read it.” I actually had skimmed it, saw the words Saturday, mandatory, and seminar, and automatically went into my I hate work on weekends mode. “This is what I usually wear outside the office,” I lied. As I was saying it, I realized that the effect of this statement was not the desired “No really, I’m comfortable at the beach wearing long pants when it’s eighty degrees out on a Saturday” but actually “I’m a big dork who wears strange clothes to the beach.” 
“Well, take it from your old pal Jeff” – and now I knew his name was Jeff and that he was my old pal – “long pants and socks are not for the beach. I think I’ve got an extra pair of shorts in my trunk- wanna borrow them?” The thought of getting into a near-stranger’s pants seemed wrong at every possible level.
“No thanks, Jeff.” See, I used his name, so I must have known it all along, right? “I’m okay. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ve got another set of clothes in the car, so I can always change later.”
Actually, I realized as I was saying this lie that it was actually not a lie- in my trunk I always kept some other clothes- not for a good reason, like “there might be a natural disaster” or “I might be spending the night with a beautiful midget so I’d better have some clean underwear with me” but because I sometimes came down to the beach to go skating, and nothing is more pleasant than walking into a beachfront restaurant and plopping your sweat and stink filled clothing in a chair.
“Great! Hey, don’t miss the barbeque!” my old pal Jeff said as he walked away.
I pretended I was comfortable for another thirty seconds before I went for my other clothes. As I walked to the lot I was stopped by a security guard. He had one of those Secret Service sleeve and earphone walkie-talkies.
“Excuse me, sir- can’t go in there.”
“I can’t go to my car?”
“No, sir. All employees are required to stay on the grounds until the end of the day.”
“But I’m not leaving- I just need to get some clothes out of my car.”
“We also had some trouble with theft in the lot, sir.”
“But I can’t get in or out of the lot without you or another guard allowing me to.” I ignored the implied statement that I was a thief for the moment.
The guard thought for a second. “Hold on just a second, sir.”
He had  a fairly long mumbled conversation with his sleeve. I don’t know if he was talking to another guard, his supervisor, or just enjoyed speaking into his cufflinks, but at the end of  his little half-monologue he seemed satisfied.
“All right sir, I’ll escort you to your car.”
Whatever, as long as I can get out of these stupid long not for the beach at all pants.
At the car, I thought of another potential snag. “Hey, am I going to be able to come back to my car and put away the clothes I’m wearing now?” I had this image of me at the party (and yeah, it looks like more of a party than a “seminar”) with my jeans neatly folded over my arm.
“That won’t be a problem sir- there are lockers in the building that are provided free of charge to all guests.”
“Cool. Thanks.”

I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I like them when they are made with Jif creamy peanut butter and Welch’s grape jelly. I used to like the bread to be that awful, super bleached white bread from Ralphs, but I now prefer the bread to have some substance- not too much, but some. Maybe a nice oat bread or something. No rye, please- that’s just plain disgusting.
I’ve probably eaten ten thousand peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As a kid they were my absolute favorite food- I ate at least one nearly every day. Now that I’m an adult, I still manage to have at least a couple every week.
I wish I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich right now. I’d be willing to settle for Smuckers grape jelly and crunchy peanut butter. I’d even be willing to go back to the super-thin fog-like store brand white bread, or switch to a dense and hearty wheat bread. For, as I stand here at the company party/picnic/in-no-way-a-seminar, I find my only choices of food to be pig-based. Sausage, pork chops, bacon, pork rinds- it’s as if someone was told to make a barbecue with no pigless products. Maybe the chef was told to “make sure everybody at the party will eat like a pig” and he somehow missed the ninth word of the sentence. 
Normally, this abundance of pig parts wouldn’t be a problem- I love the pork, baby- but the encounters with pseudo-psychic homeless guys and the freakish appearance of my pork slogans on bus advertisements has me feeling a bit unwilling to eat the stuff.
Actually, I’m not really particularly hungry- my burrito is still resting comfortably within me, happily being broken down in to components my body can either use, store, or expel. It’s just that everyone else is eating, and I’m sticking out like a sore thumb as The Guy Who Isn’t Trying To Eat With A Fork While Standing. If I had a Jif creamy peanut butter and Welch’s grape jelly sandwich on Orowheat oat bread in my hand, I would at least match in the standing and eating categories.
But no such sandwich is available to be eaten right now. Instead, I grab a scrap of bread and a bottle of water. This does not go unnoticed.
“Hey, buddy- you on a diet?”
It’s my old buddy Jeff. “How’s it going, Jeff old pal!” I say, just to see if he catches the sarcasm in my voice. He doesn’t.
“It’s going great! This food is fantastic! Have you had some?”
I wave my bread scrap at him. “Just this. My stomach’s a bit upset- I’m just getting over something.”
“That’s horrible, buddy! Are you okay? Do you need to go home or something.”
”I couldn’t get out right now, even if I really wanted to,” which I really did want to do, “because the Fuzz is guarding the parking lot. Trespassers will be shot or something.”
“The Fuzz?”
“Yeah man, The Fuzz! You know- The Man, The Heat, The Pigs…”
When I say pigs all conversation within twenty feet of me suddenly drops to whispers.
“…you know- the police?”
“Oh… OH! The police! That’s funny, what you just said! HAHAHAHAHA!” Conversation around my old pal Jeff and I begins again. “Okay, enough about the police- you have to try the braised pork shanks.”
I fall back on my escape of last resort, which seems to be becoming more popular for me lately. I pass out.

Somewhere in Ohio, there is a man named Tim. Timothy, really, but he hates being called that. Actually, he doesn’t really like “Tim” all that much either, but he’s stuck with being called some sort of Timothy-derived named, and let’s face facts here: There aren’t any cool ways to shorten “Timothy.” What choices do you have? Timmy, so you can have the same name as the kid from “Lassie” who was dumber than his own dog? Timmie, which is just like Timmy, except that it’s about a thousand times worse? Plain and simple Tim is your best bet, unless you have a cool last name. If you have a cool last name, like Blake or Connors or Murphy you can pull the “last name without the Mister” trick and live happily with a less than stellar first name.
Unfortunately, Tim’s last name is Shinkler.
The strange thing about the miserable quality of the name “Tim” is how close it is to some great first names. “Jim” is a good, strong, construction worker with a heart of gold type of name. Tom is a name a guy can be happy to carry around. But Tim is, well, Tim.
Tim Shinkler does not fit the standard rules of appearance for a guy named Tim. People named Tim are usually thin and wiry, with blond or red hair. Freckles are a possibility for a guy named Tim, but they aren’t required. Tims are laid-back and relaxed, and, while they aren’t particularly quick to spit up a quip, they does nod and smile knowingly when a good one has been delivered (usually by a guy named Mike).
Tim Shinkler, on the other hand, is short and doughy, with thick, curly, unruly dark hair glued to the top of his shiny pale head like a licorice mop glued to a volleyball. He sweats. A lot. He wears the finest work clothes available from Mervyn’s: short sleeved white work shirts, deep brown Dockers knockoffs, white socks, brown to the point of almost being black shoes, and (if required) polyester ties he buys off the three for ten dollar rack. Tim Shinkler is not the king of fashion, and he knows it. Worse, he knows something can be done about it, but he doesn’t know how to do it. When he asks for help from his much better dressed friends, they won’t give him a straight answer for fear of hurting his feelings. Instead, they tell him he looks great, even when everyone (including Tim) knows they’re lying.
Tim thought about trying to find his clothes by looking at other people, but it didn’t help. Whenever he saw someone dressed in a way he liked (or rather, someone dressed in a way that he thought look better than the way he dressed) he would try to figure out what made those clothes look better than his- but he could never figure it out. If he could, he probably would have left the three for ten dollar tie rack at at Mervyn’s long ago.
The amazing thing about Tim is that he is extremely popular. He has a great number of friends- not “hey, we should be nice to the weird guy” friends, but actually “Hey, this guy is pretty cool” friends. He has never had to struggle to find dates- women find him attractive because of his personality and are somehow able to overlook the pale blue work shirts with maroon ties. Imagine that. Even in college, where the mating ritual competition is more difficult and complex than singing underwater, Tim could easily find a girl to “help him with his homework.”
If anything, his friends are oversensitive about Tim’s feelings. They won’t help him with his clothes- not because he doesn’t need the help, but because they don’t want him too be hurt. Tim, on the other hand, wishes that his friends would be honest with him so he could attempt to make his appearance more in line with his personality.
But Tim doesn’t have to worry about his clothing any more. From now on, he will be dressed by his friends and family, as well as a few strangers who are well aware of how to make Tim look his best. His clothes will come from well known designers. They will fit him perfectly, and his socks will no longer gleam from the space between the bottom of his pants and the top of his shoes. His belt will no longer look like a reject from the Herb Tarlek collection. In fact, he shall be dressed in fine clothing from now on- at least until the cloth rots with his body. 
For Tim Shinkler is dead. Dead from the bite of a poison monkey. And with him dies the most complete picture of any character that has appeared so far in this story. Seriously, who’s in here? A guy named Bob with a bad car? A beautiful rich midget named Kim? A guy named Jeff? A couple of security guards? That’s all you got from the first ten thousand words or so- then BAM! Seven hundred words that actually described a guy, gave his appearance, and (heaven forbid) a LAST NAME- all so he could die from the bite of a poison monkey??? What the hell kind of a story is this, anyway?
Well, he’s still dead. But if you slog through another ten thousand words, you might actually get another fairly developed sketch of somebody, who will also be bitten by a poison monkey and killed. Or maybe not. You never can tell with novels these days.

When I woke up, I remembered the dream. I was on a tour bus- not just any tour bus, but the tour bus for the fine eighties rock band Journey. Yes, I was on a journey in the Journey bus- gosh, my dreams are full of hidden meanings!
The actual band didn’t seem to be on the bus. In fact, I was on the bus with Kevin & Bean from KROQ as part of some sort of world tour contest or something. Sure, KROQ playing a Journey song, let alone being part of a Journey promo giveaway, is about as likely as Limp Bizkit switching to an all-polka format, but there they were.
Then I was in the car- apparently, the Journey bus comes with a car- getting gas. The man in the passenger seat was on the phone. Apparently, somebody wanted to know if they could do their job by number instead of coming in and actually, you know, working or something. I knew this because I could hear the phone call even though the phone was nowhere near my ear, like a voiceover in a film. The passenger said “sure” and as he smirked showed me a stub that looked like one of those car wash tickets that gas stations give you, but above where the wash code was printed  a line read “WORK NUMBER.” He was gone when I looked up.
Then the car began to roll backwards into traffic. I couldn’t stop the car, so I steered backwards, turning the car to follow along the road, until I finally pulled over into a field.
Then it was the next day, and I was explaining why I couldn’t stop the car. The mechanic checked it out, and found the car needed new “brake tips” because the old ones had worn off. No, I don’t know what “brake tips” are, but when I discussed it with someone else, we both came to the conclusion that the were the ends of pointy sticks (like arrowheads) that pushed against the wheels of a car to stop it. Even though they were pointy, they wouldn’t puncture the tire- I mean, what’s the point of brake tips if they break tires?

When I woke up this time, I realized I wasn’t at the picnic/party/seminar anymore- but at least this time I hadn’t been stripped, re-dressed, and stuck in my apartment by a stranger. This time, I was wearing the same clothes I had on when I fainted, and I was in the passenger seat of a car.
My old pal Jeff’s car.
“Hey, you’re awake!” he said stupidly.
“What happened?” I replied with equal stupidity.
“You passed out at the party. The doctors thought you were just a little run-down, so they said you should go home and rest. Since you were passed out I said I’d drive you home.”
“What about my car?”
“It’s still there- the folks at the institute said it’s all right if it stays there until you can come and pick it up.”
My car is in Santa Monica and I’m going home? NOOOO!
“Let’s go get it right now!” I yelled.
“Can’t. I have to get home, and I won’t make it in time if we go back right now. I can give you a ride out to pick it up after work Monday, if you want.”
The rest of the weekend with no car? Why? Why is my car being kept from me.
“Thanks- but I’ll probably go pick it up later tonight or tomorrow.”
“Well, call ‘em before you go down there- they have all sorts of odd things going on there, and they might get annoyed if you show up unannounced.”
“Right.”
And then I was home. I said thank you to Jeff and headed inside. The spare car was still gone. Actually, it turned out it was gone again- my brother had come home, changed, and left me a note saying he’d been gone until the end of next week. Which meant no car for me until I could figure out how to get to Santa Monica. On the weekend. Using public transportation.
Maybe I’ll wait until Monday- but I can’t. I have to work Monday, which means I have to drive Monday, which means I need to get my car by tomorrow.
And tomorrow I will get it. Right now, I’m going to curl up into a ball on the couch and watch Pop-Up Video until I fall asleep. Then I’ll wake up a little while later, turn off the TV, and sleep some more. Then I’ll wake up again, realize I’m extremely uncomfortable, and drag my groggy self off the couch an into my bed. Then I will sleep in like I should have been able to do today.
Then, maybe I’ll call Kim.

The night is filled with jumping monkeys and screaming pigs. Not just in my dreams- TNT is running a Planet of the Apes marathon, and AMC is showing Lord of the Flies. In my stupor they combine into a massive, interplanetary battle between the forces of pork and the simian system. I picture huge flying banana-shaped spaceships raining death onto cities of third world pigs. Some escape, but for most their fate is sealed. Charlton Heston’s pig is the leader of a covert group of pork soldiers who have learned the secrets of monkey technology. Also, he has a gun. A special gun, designed to be worn and used by pigs without limiting their ability to walk and move. In my dream, I find myself wondering who would take the time to build this gun. The pigs couldn’t do it- they don’t have the capability. That leaves the monkeys- but why would they arm their hated foes? I can think of a couple of possibilities:

One: Traitor Pig Shock Troops. Monkeys could be secretly recruiting disgruntled pigs to work for them. Maybe the pigs are promised treasure of fresh slop and clean, modern pens. These traitor pigs could be sent in to wipe out the pig population. Then, the evil monkeys (POISON monkeys) could wipe out the double-crossing swine, saying as they killed the traitors: “You betrayed your own people- how could we ever be sure you wouldn’t betray us, also?”

Two: Slave labor on other planets. Pigs could be forced- maybe by blackmail- into being the first to fight (and the first to be slaughtered) in monkey campaigns against other animals- maybe even ALIENS! The pig-guns could have some sort of mechanism that monkeys can use to disable them. Thus, the monkeys’ sworn enemy, the pigs, could be forced into becoming their greatest weapon. 

Of these two theories, I feel that the “traitor pig” theory is much more likely- after all, would you arm your slave pig? I don’t think so. Besides, you know some of those pigs have to have some sort of monkey envy going on; the monkeys can walk upright, the monkeys can swing from trees, the monkeys can wear spiffy uniforms… really, the pigs get the short end of the stick in the appearance department.
But how would Charlton Heston’s pig get the gun? If I know anything about Charlton Heston’s pig, I know it would NEVER side with the forces of monkey oppression. My guess is that Charlton Heston’s pig somehow found out about the traitor pigs, and managed to eliminate the traitors, capturing the weapon for himself. That’s why I love Charlton Heston’s pig. 
Actually, that’s just one reason why I love his pig. I also love the way his snout curls when he laughs, and they way he effortlessly covers himself with mud. He is quite a talented little porker. If I were a pig, I’d want to be a pig just like Charlton Heston’s pig.

The morning comes, and my car is on the wrong side of a mountain range. Again, I make calls to find a ride. Again, no one is available. Again, I call Kim, and again, there is no answer. I’m starting to think I have the wrong number. I check out the web site of the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority), formerly the SCRTD (Southern California Rapid Transit District), but still as always a WPOS (worthless piece of shit), and discover that, if I  can get to the bus stop in ten minutes, I can get to my car by six o’clock tonight- only three transfers! Otherwise, I’m screwed until tomorrow after work. So, unshowered, unfed, half-awake, and foolishly dressed I rush to the bus stop to start my full day bus journey. The bus arrives just before I do, and the driver forces me to do the degrading “hey, wait for me!” dance before he bothers to stop.
And then I’m on the bus. My first transfer isn’t for nearly an hour, so I set the alarm on my pager and take a nap. And I’m back in a dreamland haunted by pigs and monkeys.

I’ve decided the monkeys must be French. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes. 
First: monkeys like to wear berets. This is a scientifically proven fact. Who else likes to wear berets? Nobody- except the French. Even Monica Lewinsky gave up on berets, but monkeys just love ‘em.
Second: The monkeys are trying to get the pigs to work for them. Do you know whe else forces pigs to find succulent rewards for them? That’s right- the French. The French use of pigs to find truffles is well documented.
The monkeys are winning the war. Charlton Heston’s pig has disappeared. Rumors are flying that Charlton Heston’s pig was captured, slaughtered, and eaten by the leaders of the monkeys- The Poison Monkeys. Others say that Charlton Heston’s pig has gone into hiding temporarily, but will re-appear when the time is right- or when the situation becomes most desperate. That’s just ridiculous- this is Charlton Heston’s pig, not the Second Coming of Christ’s pig.
The monkeys now have control of all media, but the only real change is that ER now has an orangutan opthamologist, and “Friends” has replace Ross with a gibbon. At least, I think they did- with ross, it’s pretty hard to tell. I’m sure they must be doing something behind the scenes- maybe they’re putting subliminal “monkeys good- pigs bad” messages into all of their broadcasts. I’ve decided to do nothing but watch television for the next three days to figure out if anything is being programmed into my brain. I’ve got a big bag of Funyuns and a two gallon pee-bottle, so I’m ready.

Then the chatter or the rough road wakes me up, and I’m back on the bus. The Filipino woman I’m sharing a seat with talks to me as if we’ve been having a conversation for the last forty-five minutes, even though I spent those forty-five minutes in dreamland.
“What they need is monkey-eating eagles,” she announces.
“What are you talking about?”
“Monkey-eating eagles,” she repeats, as if my problem with the phrase monkey-eating eagles is simply that I didn’t hear her, “They’d get rid of the monkeys in a heartbeat.”
Then I realize that I must have been talking in my sleep about the monkeys and the pigs fighting in DreamTown. I decide to try and keep the conversation going, just to see how far it will go. “Where can I get one of these eagles?”
“Where I come from they are everywhere!”
“And they really eat monkeys?”
“Oh, yes! Sometimes they eat squirrels or lemurs or deer, but they love toeat the monkeys!”
I’m a little spooked by the idea of an eagle eating a deer. Lions eating deer, no problem- but eagles are so small… I think. “How big are these eagles?”
“Oh, you know- maybe three feet long.”
“Wow.” Still seems a bit small to eat a deer, but I guess they could be working in packs. “Do they eat pigs, too?”
My carseat mate suddenly gets a frown and looks away, apparently having decided that our conversation is over.
We sit in silence for a few minutes. Then she breaks it.
“You ever been to the Philippines?”
“Uh, no.”
“You have to go! You have to. It is warm and beautiful. And you could get an eagle!”
“Why would I want to get an eagle?”
“For the monkeys, silly!” 
That’s right- the monkeys. How could I forget them? “Well, maybe I will.”
Then it was time to get off the bus. My bus bench friend let me out, and called to me as I walked out the door “I can help you with those monkeys! I can!”
I called out “Thanks!” over my shoulder and stepped onto the sidewalk.

Do you know what the problem is with transferring buses? It isn’t the extra effort of walking on or off a bus. It isn’t the amount of time you waste in the day. It’s that it means you have nothing to do for the next significant portion of time that’s more important than standing around waiting for a bus. Writing a book? Nope, waiting for the bus. Curing cancer today? Nope, sorry- gotta wait for this bus. Having a life? Gee, I’d like to, but there’s this bus I need to catch...
It wouldn’t be so horrible if bus stops had something entertaining at them- a TV, an internet connection, a laminated copy of the day’s paper- but they don’t. Bus stops are Spartan places. Some are nothing more than a pole with an MTA sign. The fanciest have a covered bench with billboards attached- and you can read an entire bus ad, including the fine print, in well under five minutes. I know this because I’ve done it. 
But I don’t need to pore over the ad today to know everything it says- I’ve read this ad a trillion times. I’ve memorized the entire page. I could draw an exact duplicate of it with my eyes closed.

Buy me some peanuts and pork kabobs!

Yes, I get to spend the next half hour camped out next to a pork ad. The bright yellow bastard and I will be alone for the next thirty minutes or so. The street is empty-who wants to be out of bed, much less driving, this early on a Sunday? The stop is in the middle of nowhere, so I don’t have any buildings to carefully examine to distract myself. All I have to look at is that damn pork ad.
So I look at the ad. I try to figure out as many things as I can about the ad without actually reading the words- you know, things like how wide/tall the ad is, how many colors are used, how many letters are on it (looking at the letters from left to right so I don’t actually read the ad). I’ve discovered approximately 30 “interesting” facts like these when I discover The Most Interesting Fact: the glass door that holds in the ad is normally held in by screws. On this bus ad, the door screws are missing! My chance to do my small part in the battle against the pork ads is finally here. 
By the time the bus arrives, the bus bench no longer displays the pork ad, which I’ve neatly folded to notebook paper size. I take I with me onto the bus, not sure exactly how to dispose of it. If I’d left it there, the bus people probably would have found it and put it back up. I couldn’t just tear it into pieces and leave it there- I don’t want to be a litterbug. A vandal and destroyer of semi-public property, sure- but not a litterbug.
I finally decide that the only safe and absolute method of destruction is to take the ad home, cut it into small strips, and mix it into the trash- maybe between the pages of the newspaper. Satisfied with my plan, I travel the rest of the way to my car with a smug smile, knowing I’d finally been able to have some effect, no matter how minor, to turn the tide against the terror of the pork.

I’m ten minutes from my car when I realize that I’m going to have to deal with those pain in the ass security guards. Will they let me get to my car? Will it still be there, or will they have decided it was abandoned and had it towed? God, I hope not- who knows where the impound lot would be. I might not get to the car for years. Then, the real fear hits me: Will they figure out that I stole the ad? I don’t know why this should scare me- they aren’t the Pork Police, after all- but it does. Before I get off the bus, I manage to hide the ad by wrapping it around my leg and tucking it into my sock. I get off the bus, knowing my concealment is undetectable-
-to discover that I didn’t need to hide the thing at all. The place is deserted. Nobody, not even a lonely rent-a-cop, is around to see me. If I hadn’t seen my co-workers and staff here yesterday, I would have thought this place was completely abandoned. Without all the activity, this place looks, well, shabby.
I could have held the sign up and spun around and it would have been just as unseen by unfriendly eyes. I resist the temptation to do that and walk to my car, which has been moved out of the very locked parking structure to the special visitor parking spaces in front of the building.
My car is in good shape- well as good of a shape as it can be in when you consider how it’s been treated for the past few days. No new dents, no broken windows, nothing missing. They must have used my keys to move it here when I was passed out. I pull the ad from my sock, throw it in the trunk, then get in the car and head for home.

Driving home, I concentrate on looking at anything other than the pork ads. They’re everywhere, so it’s difficult, but I manage to avoid most of them by scanning for the big yellow blocks of color in my peripheral vision. Instead, I look at license plates. First I look just for out of state plates, but I quickly graduate to vanity plates. Why do people spend money on a vanity plate to tell me what kind of car they’ve got the plate on? I’d like a “HOTPRSCH” plate a lot more if it was on a Hyundai. It wouldn’t make any sense, but at least it wouldn’t tell me something I already know. 
Vanity plates morphs into looking at vanity frames. Some of them appear regularly, like 99% ANGEL / 1% BITCH or  I’M NOT A SPOILED BRAT / I’M NOT I’M NOT I’M NOT, but strange and/or nonsensical ones occasionally appear: BIG WITHOUT VIAGRA,  I WAMMA BE YOUR BABY DADDY. I decide that anyone with a vanity frame must be insane.
But vanity frames are just the tip of the car fashion iceberg. From there you can go to:
•	Bumper stickers that express your valuable personal vision (“GOT BEER?”) to the world.
•	The press-on Jesus fish and variants, including the GEFILTE fish with a Star of David, the DARWIN fish with legs, and the TRUTH fish eating a DARWIN fish
•	The sublime Calvin peeing/crapping series, where you show how much you dislike something by having a comic strip character urinate or defecate on a symbol of the thing you dislike (a car company, a sports team, Osama bin Laden), and the counterpoint “Angel Calvin” series, where we see Calvin praying to some religious symbol.
•	Clear brake lights- because you wouldn’t want any pesky red to draw attention to the fact your car isn’t moving any more.
•	Ground effects and spoilers- to make your car “faster” – if you define “faster” to mean “cluttered with useless junk that would fly off the car if you ever gained any real speed.” 
But my current favorite car addition is the car flag. Around here, car flags started showing up when the Lakers were in the playoffs a few years back. Then more appeared for other sports teams (although Clippers and Ducks flags were conspicuously absent). Then Dale Earnhardt died, and a bunch of black flags with his number started showing up- which would scare anyone who realized that these people were driving their cars saluting a guy who died because he drove like a jerk. Then, of course, the post-WTC car flags appeared. Thousands of them. Most made in China- because China LOVES America, and certainly not because they want to make a shitload of money selling tons of cheap slave-labor produced products to a suddenly patriotic market. 
For a while, the flags were everywhere. Having a window flag became the norm, not the exception. Some cars had two or even four flags. The roads appeared to be filled with diplomatic vehicles.
Then the odd mixtures started appearing- folks would fly multiple flags right next to each other, giving each one equal standing on their car. Dale Earnhardt was suddenly as important as the American flag, which was now only as meaningful as a Lakers pennant. No one with these multiple flags saw any problem with this.
Now, months later, most of the flags are gone again, but some remain- faded and tattered, they continue to suffer the abuse of the elements. The cars which salute the flag casually destroy it, leaving it to the wind and rain, somehow seeing that destruction as a symbol of their respect.
I notice a bright yellow flag that I at first think is yet another Lakers fan’s statement of appreciation. But when I actually look, I notice the writing is not the purple Lakers logo, but a simple statement written in black Arial Bold:

One, two, three o’clock,
Four o’clock PORK!

Yes, the Pork Board has wormed itself into the car flag market. Now, pork is on the same holy level previously reserved for patriotic fervor and basketball giants. Now, I must keep the bright yellow flags out of my direct line of sight, for fear that another song or slogan will be forever perverted by my mind into another reason to eat pig flesh.
So, I widen my line of sight a bit to try and find distractions from the flags. I see a sign on a flower shop: 

GOD BLESS
AMERICA

DRIVER
WANTED

I’m not sure if that’s one message or two. I see a church sign- it’s about four feet off the ground, one of those white backlit signs with slots for clear rectangles with black letters painted on them.

HARD TIMES REQUIRE
DEEP FAITH

I resist the urge to stop the car and change the sign- mainly because a guy in his thirties shouldn’t be messing with a church, unless he really wants to get arrested over something really stupid- but I can’t help moving the letters around in my head:

HARD TIMES REQUIRE
DEATH PIE F

If I ever start a band, I think I’ll name it “Death Pie F,” just so Rolling Stone will have to try and figure out the deep meaning behind the name. I can see the writers and editors sitting around, trying to figure it out: 
“What do you think the F stands for?”
“Oh, probably ‘Fuck.’ They probably dropped the ‘uck’ to get a chance at being played on the radio.”
“Death Pie Fuck? What the hell is that?”
“Well, maybe the ‘Pie’ part is a slang name for a vagina- you know, like a ‘hair pie?’”
“Death Vagina Fuck, then? What the fuck does that mean?”
“I’ve got it- AIDS! It’s a statement about the dangers of promiscuous sex in the post-HIV world!”
“Wow, that band is deep.”
And that’s how I will confuse the writers and editors of Rolling Stone.

There may be a way out of this place. So far, all attempts to escape have been, at best, futile- at worst, deadly. Charging the gate in makeshift armor made from the boxes around us cost us two lives. Attempts to signal the outside world have been ineffective- either too weak to be noticed by humans, or too strong to get past the senses of the poison monkeys. The walls, designed to keep the animals in, do their job equally well in keeping us restrained. Even the floor has been reinforced to prevent any kind of tunneling.
But yesterday, when there were still two of us, Mike Jackson sacrificed his life to confirm the existence of something we’d long suspected- monkey-based space portals.
For months, we had noticed that things in the lab or in the cages would disappear, only to resurface in seemingly-impossible locations. A bowl of Monkey Chow would be gone from a cage and show up in the bathroom. A microwave oven from the dining area would show up in the chimp exercise compound. No one was ever seen to move these objects. When surveillance tapes were checked, they would become mysteriously fuzzy or dark during the times that the items would go missing or come back.
Most people thought that it was some sort of practical joke- in fact , it was exactly the kind of thing Mike and I would do to freak out our co-workers- but Mike and I knew, after each of us repeatedly accused each other of trying to play a trick on everyone, that this was no practical joke. Some unknown force was at work in the area- a previously unheard of matter transference method that Mike and I had come to call The Monkey Vortex.
When others heard Mike and I talking of the Monkey Vortex, they just figured we were working on some sort of elaborate silliness and left us to carry on our shenanigans. But we were never more serious than when we talked about the Monkey Vortex. We had no method of detection, or even proof of it’s existence, but each of us lived in fear that the Monkey Vortex (MV) would someday place us, or the world, in danger. At the time, we never thought that the MV might also be our only hope of survival.
The exact trigger for the MV was something we had discussed innumerable times. Our first theory was that it was caused by a high concentration of monkeys in a confined space- that each monkey carried only a small potential for creating the MV, and that this potential, when sufficiently collected, would trigger the MV.  This was quickly dismissed- after all, we were a pretty small monkey shipment outfit. If it just took sheer numbers of monkeys, then a big firm like MonkTECH should have monkeys flipping in and out of MV events constantly. Instead, their monkey factories seemed to be stable.
Then we thought it might be that specific individual monkeys could create the MV. We thought each monkey might contain the potential to create an MV, but they would only be triggered by a very specific set of conditions that our lab simulated but the big labs avoided. This was closer to the truth, but still not quite right- after all, MonkTECH certainly has all of the equipment and facilities that MonkeyGo does (well, that MonkeyGo had before the monkey uprising).
Then we thought it might be an ability shared by the Poison Monkeys- after all, we had ten times the number of Poison Monkeys that MonkTECH did, and all in a extremely contained space. But we decided that it wan’t that, either- if the Poison Monkeys had the power to control the Monkey Vortex, the world would have been converted to Baboonland decades ago.
No, it was something else- something we somehow created or stimulated with our environment and monkeys. We figured it out as we sat choking down the foul-tasting MMREs.
The composition of the monkey meals was enough to keep us alive, but it did more than that- somehow, we had become more monkey-like. We didn’t grow hair all over our bodies (except Mike, who did that naturally before the MMREs) but our physical structure began to subtly shift. We felt stronger. Our bodies seemed more flexible. Our arms seemed longer, and we started to bend over more and drag ourselves along with the knuckles on our fingers- not all the time, but occasionally.
Today, we sat and performed what had become a ritualized set of actions. One of us (today, me) would open the packets while the other (today, Mike) made sure that the olfactory sensitive and starving to the point of eating each other monkeys didn’t break through our barricades when the scent of the MMRE reached them. If they had found a way in, we couldn’t have stopped them, but it made gave each of us a misplaced sense of security to know that we would be aware of the attack before it happened.
Then we would sit down and silently force ourselves to consume the vile contents of the packets.
Tiday, however, Mike broke from the ritual. Maybe he was bored. Maybe the MMREs had changed his body chemistry to the point that he could no longer contain himself. Whatever the reason for the change, the results were spectacular. Mike looked at the MMRE in his hand, and his face turned red as he fought to hold himself back, but it was no use- he would have had a better chance at holding back an avalanche with a kite string. He threw the meal to the ground and screamed “I HATE THESE FUCKING MONKEY MEALS!”
And it happened.
The meal he threw down was gone.
A group of Poison Monkeys at the far end of the containment yard began to scream and howl, fighting over something, but Mike and I sat staring at the empty space and the MMRE that wasn’t there.
The howls became louder, and we both stood up slowly, cautiously, to see what was causing the monkeys to react so violently. At the far end of the compound, a Poison Monkey, bloody but triumphant, hung from the fencing, casually batting away any monkey that dared challenge him. In his paw, we saw it. The MMRE.
Mike and I stared silently as the Poison Monkey consumed the MMRE, then rejoined the general monkey population. Then we turned and stared at each other. Mike’s mouth slowly worked it’s way into a smile, and from that smile came a laugh that started small, but soon became so loud that the monkeys stopped their commotion to listen.
“Mike, the monkeys are gonna come after us for sure if you keep up that racket!”
“Monkeys? You think I’m worried about the monkeys? Sir- THE MONKEYS ARE NOW PART OF ME!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Do you know what I just did? I just generated an MV effect- and I think I’ve figured out the cause!”
Mike’s theory worked like this: Every monkey/primate brain has the potential to create the “monkey” vortex, but a very specific set of circumstances must be in place for this to occur. A concentration of monkeys alone would do no good- there must be a large group of Poison Monkeys (which explains why MonkTECH rarely if ever had this occur- their entire stock of poison monkeys was smaller than ours, and spread out over an area eight times as large). The grouping causing a concentration of MVE (Monkey Vortex Energy). This energy can only be released and controlled by a brain that has been properly nourished- and apparently, the MMREs we were feeding the monkeys (and now ourselves) contained whatever combination of nutrients is required to prep the brain.
There were still some holes in the theory- for example, we didn’t know if our geographic location was a factor, or if groups of properly fed humans could generate a MV without the aid of Poison Monkeys, but we did know this- right then, right there, at least one of us was capable of activating Monkey Vortex Energy.
Mike worked to increase and refine his control over the MV energy. At first, things would move or disappear sporadically, if at all. However, Mike quickly became more skilled, to the point that he could make my wallet disappear from my back pocket and reappear in his hand. “If nothing else, I’m becoming an excellent pickpocket!” We kept making Star Wars jokes- “The Force is strong in this monkey!” 
We also noticed a side effect of Mike’s MV control lessons. Whenever he tried to use the MV energy, the monkeys around us would become quiet, almost as if asleep. Our theory was that we were somehow becoming linked to the monkeys, and drawing the MV energy from them would leave them weak- at least, weaker than normal. However, we weren’t sure that would help us- after all, even a “weak” Poison Monkey is much stronger than either of us.
Strangely, even though I was starting to feel connected to the MonkeyMind, I never felt drained when Mike drew power- in fact, I usually felt revitalized. Our theory on that was that the MonkeyMind energy was trying to balance our strength, monkeys and humans alike, and drawing from the strongest while feeding the weakest.
As Mike practiced, he gained more and more control over where he placed objects, and learned to move larger items. He was able to move a monkey cage nearly thirty feet straight up in the air. The apes ran in all directions when the thing crashed into the courtyard.
We soon decided two things: 
1)	If we had enough time and MMREs, Mike could easily transport us out of here, and
2)	We didn’t have enough time or MMREs.

We had to act now. We would be out of food within the next five days, and without the food, we won’t be able to link to the MonkeyMind. After long hours of strategizing, plotting, and yelling, we agreed on what we felt was our best chance.
Mike would try to use the Monkey Vortex to escape. If he made it out, he would go and find help. If he didn’t- well, I would have plenty of MMREs to eat to increase my powers- which were certainly there ( could move spoons, that sort of thing), but at a much lower level than Mike’s.
We waited for dawn- the monkeys usually seemed more docile then, and our connection to them felt strongest first thing in the morning. We didn’t speak for a long time. Finally, Mike said “No matter what happens right now, make sure you get the hell out of here alive, no matter what.” I nodded.
Then Mike stood up, closed his eyes, and began to concentrate. He began to sweat from the concentration. The monkeys outside grew even quieter- if I didn’t know they were there, waiting to kill us, I would have thought them all to be gone or dead. It stayed like that for a long time- or at least, what felt like a long time. It may have only been a few seconds, but I couldn’t tell. Time seemed to be stretched and twisted.
Then there was a tiny popping sound – it must have been the air rushing in to fill the space where Mike had been standing- and he was gone. I stood up and ran to the intercom, hoping to hear Mike speaking through it from outside the gate, when I saw him. In the courtyard.
He had missed the outside wall by eight feet. He now stood at the edge of the compound, which was filled with groggy but gradually more aware Poison Monkeys. He looked toward me, then grabbed a stick off the floor. He yelled “When you do it, go about twenty feet farther south!” Then he began laughing manically as he fought off  the barrage of monkeys that had surged toward him as they awoke from their stupor to find a man in their midst. He managed to take out four of them before one got behind him and snapped his neck.
I turned away and half-listened to the carnage. Thanks, Mike. Now I know I can get out of here… if I’m lucky.

I walked in my house and checked my voice mail. Four messages:

1.	Hangup.
2.	“Bob, it’s Jeff from work. I hope you’re feeling better. Give me a call at the office. I’ve got an offer you might be interested in.” Multi-level marketing, I thought to myself. Then, as if phone machines can read minds: “No, it isn’t Amway or some weird multi-level marketing thing- it’s work-related travel that might be a nice relaxing vacation for a guy who faints at the office.”
3.	Hangup #2.
4.	“Hey, it’s Kim. In case you’ve been trying to call and wondered why you haven’t heard back from me: I had to go out of town unexpectedly, and I somehow forgot to turn on the stupid answering machine before I left. I’m home now. Give me a call, would you? I’d love to hear from you.”

I don’t call work or Kim back right away- I decide to check my email first. Most of it is the standard “increase your penis size/increase your breast size/lose weight fast/accept credit cards/refinance your house/hot naked coeds/10 trillion email addresses for a dollar” garbage, but buried in it is one that catches my eye: “monkeys and pork- answers to your questions.”
The email is from a random hotmail address- not usually a good sign. The entire content of the email is just a few web page addresses:

http://galen.u-max.com/red_colobus.htm
http://www.hawk-conservancy.org/priors/phileagl.htm
http://pork4kids.com
http://werfgo.com

So, with my anti-virus software on, I check out each page. The first one is about the red colubus monkey. Lots of descriptions of the monkey, and even some decent pictures. Toward the bottom of the page, it says

In Zanzibar Kiswahili, the name for the red colobus is kima punju -- "poison monkey"- and this has associations with a kind of poison used by evil-doers. Local people believe that when the monkeys have fed in an area, the trees and crops die. And dogs are thought to lose their fur if they eat the colobus. The term punju is also used to differentiate the smell of the colobus from Sykes and vervet monkeys. Colobus smell stronger and are therefore never kept as pets.
For some reason, this description makes me uncomfortable.

The next page is about a different animal- the Philippine Eagle. Where was I talking with someone about the Philippines and eagles? At work? No, that was somebody talking about football. I remember when read more of the page:

Philippine Monkey-Eating Eagle - Pithecophaga jefferyi

Diet: Arboreal mammals, such as flying lemurs and squirrels, are the most important food. Monkeys, deer, palin civets, bats, snakes, monitor lizards and large birds, such as hornbills and young owls are also taken at times.

It was that woman on the bus! She was saying I should get one of those eagles! But why did she think I need one? And how did she send this to me? Was actually her sending this to me at all? I didn’t give her my email address, and she didn’t exactly seem like a traveler of Al Gore’s Information Superhighway. I suppose it could be just a coincidence, but even if it is- who sent me this, and why did they think I needed answers about monkeys and pork? Why does my life seem to now center around monkeys and pork?
Speaking of pork: The third site on the list, Pork4kids.com, is a very strange site. It’s an entire website dedicated to convincing children that not only should they eat pork for health reasons, but that pork is a food that’s fun to cook and eat! It almost seems to say “Pigs love to be slaughtered, cut into strips, and consumed!” 
I don’t understand why anyone would create a site like pork4kids.com. Kids don’t cook meals- parents do. Kids don’t buy food- parents do. It isn’t like pork products are candy or ice cream. Very few children would scream and cry, as they walked the aisles of the supermarket with their parents, complaining that “It’s not fair- you NEVER buy me bacon!” or “Tommy’s mom ALWAYS buys him pork chops! Why can’t we get some?” until the parent finally can’t stand the howling and goes to the meat aisle to pick up some pork loin. What’s next- will they arrange the meat aisle like the cereal aisle, with “adult-themed” meats at the top and “kid-friendly meats” at the bottom? Will the trend slip over into the other sections of the grocery store? Can we expect all the fun bleach to be at the bottom of each shelf, while more serious bleach will be at the top? Will the candy racks at the checkout line be replace with bacon racks? Where will the madness end?
The last site, werfgo.com, is the biggest puzzle of them all- no references to pork OR monkeys. In fact, very little writing at all. Even the explanation of the meaning of “werfgo” is strange. All it really says about the word is that the guy who made the site claims to randomly yell it at strangers, and that “Werfgo is not to be confused with ‘wufbow’, which as we all know is the word you yell to find your friends in a large crowd, especially at Disneyland.” Then it goes off to talk about prehistoric ants and horses. Why would anyone bother to make a site like this? Who would want anyone to think they thought this way? And what the hell does this have to do with the monkeys and pork and monkey-eating hawks? The email claimed it would give me answers, but it leaves me with nothing but more questions. I hate that.
Next, I call work. It’s late on a Sunday afternoon, so Iknow the place will be empty, but I can still honestly say I tried to call without having to actually speak to anyone.
But I’m wrong. In fact, if I’d thought about it, I would have realized that if Jeff was calling me from the office on a Sunday, he’s probably got something going on that’s going to keep him in the office until he resolves it. Which turns out to be exactly the case.
Jeff, it turns out, has ordered some sort of expensive equipment for the company that needs to be picked up from Northern California and hand delivered to the office by tomorrow night. He’s arraigned a flight out of Burbank tonight, a motel room for the evening, and a rental car for tomorrow. He works really, really hard to convince me that this will be a relaxing break from a normal workday, but I can see it for what it actually is- a boring gofer job featuring lots of waiting around in tiny, featureless airports and driving down the 5 for ten hours tomorrow, hitting the Grapevine just in time for the mad traffic crush. Still, I do get to trade my stationary cubicle in for a mobile one for a day, a night in an “exotic” town- and Jeff is promising incredible overtime pay, plus bonus paid days off- so in the end I agree to go. At least it will be something different.
Of course, in the end, everything turned out to be something different, but I didn’t have any way to know that when I agreed to go.

My flight leaves in ninety minutes, and I’m thirty minutes from the airport, so I don’t have much time to pack. Not that I really need much time- I’ll be driving by myself all day tomorrow, so I won’t need to be dressed to impress. I throw shorts, a t-shirt, and bathroom stuff into a daypack and I’m ready to go.
Then I remember I haven’t called Kim back. I’m not sure what to say to her- my feelings seem to shift wildly about her depending on her proximity to me- so I decide that the “I’ve only got a minute, I’m leaving for the airport, I’ll call you when I get home” call is probably a safe call.
Ring, ring.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Kim- it’s Bob.”
“Oh, Bob! How is my Lord of the Pork Dance?”
“Great, thanks. Listen, I can’t talk right now- I’ve got to catch a plane- but I wanted to call you and let you know I got your message.”
“Urgent, last minute, late night plane flights? Your life sounds a lot like mine right now!”
“Not really- I’m supposed to go pick something up for work. But, I gotta go! I’ll call you tomorrow night when I get back.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Click.
And she was gone again. I’ve noticed a trend in our contact with each other- it keeps getting shorter and shorter. I spoke with her for hours on the day we met and couldn’t get enough, and told her everything going on in my life. I talked with her today and I was done in less than a minute, even though the last two days have been filled with weird events. Maybe I burned out all my Kim connection circuits at the Chinese restaurant.
And now I had a plane to catch.

Every airport has something about it to hate. LAX, for example, is too far away, too crowded, and only accessible by the 405, which is Southern California’s most crowded-and therefore, slowest- highway. If you fly through LAX, you will probably spend more time traveling to the airport and checking your luggage than you will actually spend flying- and you’ll quite possibly spend more time at the airport than you will at your destination. Also, parking is a (very expensive) nightmare.
Burbank’s problems are by comparison insignificant. You don’t need to travel any distance at all on the dreaded 405- instead, you take the rarely-crowded (except at peak times) 118, AKA the Ronald Reagan Highway. (side note: When Reagan was President, he signed a law saying that monuments could not be named after people until they were long dead. Now there is a highway named after him. My theory is that he was replaced by a robot early in his second term after suffering a crippling stroke. After he left office, he was switched back and the public was told that he had Alzheimer’s. I think the people who petitioned for the freeway name change knew about this, and considered “brain-damaged” to mean “pretty much dead.” It’s just a theory- I haven’t worked out the kinks yet.) Then it’s a quick hop onto the 5, and you’re there. Parking is a breeze. In short, Burbank has few of the problems LAX does. Burbank has it’s own unique set of problems.
The main problem at Burbank is boredom. LAX is huge, and that means there is a lot do there, even if it’s just walking from the check-in terminal to your gate. Burbank is small- you can walk the length of it in under five minutes. LAX is full of crappy shops and bars- Burbank has one of each, so you can’t pull the “read an article a few pages at a time in twelve different stores” trick. Instead, you have to actually PURCHASE what you want to read, and that just seems like a waste of time.
Now, if you are traveling in the day, and you have a significant amount of time to wait before your flight, there are places you can go before your flight- for example, the mall is close, and there are theatres there. But my favorite place near the Burbank Airport to waste time is the geek toy store: Fry’s Electronics. Ah, Fry’s… home of Chippy, the microchip mascot. Home of legions completely uninformed “sales associates.” Home of twelve billion odd little electronic parts that no one has a use for.
Fry’s is a huge warehouse of a place, but it tries to pretend it’s friendly though bizarre decorations. For example- every Fry’s store has a theme. In Woodland Hills, the theme is “Alice in Wonderland.” Yes, every electronics geek dreams of a place decorated with giant plaster recreations of Lewis Carroll creatures.
At least the Burbank store has a more “electronics” related theme: science fiction movies- mostly from the fifties, but there is the occasional Darth Vader or Mars Attacks guy around. 
The overhang above the front door is designed to look like a spaceship has crashed into the building. Strangely, this is not the only crashed spaceship overhang in the area; up at CityWalk, Universal Studio’s shopping complex that’s less than ten minutes away, a comic shop has a spaceship overhang, too. Fry’s is a bit more “Stylized” – the ship over the comic shop has that “fake realism” thing going on, as if we’re supposed to think that their roof had actually recently completed a trip through the solar system.
Fry’s also tries to look more like a department store by stocking a lot of non-electronics items. My favorite example of this is the Wall of Hygienic Reminders you must walk past in order to reach the checkout. Somewhere along the way, some guy at Fry’s realized that the prototypical Fry’s customer was not exactly the type of guy to shower every day- instead, they cater to those people who can spend days at their computer, unbathed by anything but light from their monitor, until they are forced to creep out of their dark and smelly caves to replace broken (and by “broken”, I mean “last week’s model of”) hardware and software. In a normal electronics store they would dart in, grab their necessary parts, and dart out quicker than you could say “There goes one stinky computer geek!” But the Fry’s Wall of Hygienic Reminders changes that- as the electronics-obsessed freak walks down the aisle, his eyes are attracted by the candy hanging on the walls. For hardcore geeks, candy=meal. Then, eyes already drawn to the wall by the candy trap, they see the Hygienic Reminders- toothpaste, tooth and hair brushes, deodorant- and they think “these are at an electronics store. I need the things an electronics store has. Therefore, I need these things.” Hoisted by the petard of their own Aristotelian logic, they are forced to purchase product that they would never think to need. This wall benefits everyone: Fry’s makes money, the geeks become a bit more sanitary, and the people around them find the constant discussion of such topics as “What speed bus does your motherboard have?” and “Who’s hotter: Tasha Yar or Princess Leia?”  a lot more tolerable when they don’t have to breathe through their mouths in a vain attempt to avoid the clouds of underarm stinkiness.
As I said, if you travel early enough in the day and you know you have a lot of time, you can go to one of these places and waste a few minutes looking through the crap, marveling that Fry’s built an actual working malt shop into the store for effect- except for the lack of malts- yet they can’t find employees that know the difference between a resistor and a CD player. Unfortunately, I am limited in time. I have exactly the wrong amount of time before my flight leaves- too much time to just sit around without being bored out of my skull, but not enough time to actually find something entertaining. I decide to poke through the magazines at the gift shop until either a) I so bored that shredding the magazines and throwing glossy confetti everywhere sounds like a good idea or b) I have to actually get on the plane. However, before either of these events comes to pass, the previously unforeseen c) shopkeeper informing me that the gift shop is not a library occurs. I pick at random one of the magazines I had already flipped through- the fine, fine investigative journal “People”- and let the guy sell it to me.
The chairs by the gate are for the most part taken. Apparently, I lot of families end up flying on Sunday nights- probably families that spent the weekend visiting relatives that they thought they liked, but actually just annoy them. So the room is filled with cranky children acting out, and equally cranky parents acting out in return. I find a chair next to a relatively quiet family and wait for the Southwest counter to call my boarding pass number.
After I dsit down, the family, apparently cranky that they weren’t cranky enough to keep a stranger from sitting next to them, explodes into full cranky-mode. The parents start to argue about who packed what where and why. The eight year old son starts chanting “Look! Look! Look! Look!” in a desperate attempt to draw attention to himself. Only the little girl seems to be free of anger and worry, but she makes up for that by being incredibly loud as she sings along to some cockamamie call and response song that’s blaring from her Barney tape recorder, trying to drown out the recording with her screeches and howls:

Oh, I like chickens,  (I like chickens!)
chickens are good! (chickens are good!)
They’re my best friends! (They’re my best friends!)
I keep one in my nose! (I keep one in my nose!) 

…and so on, and so on, until I find myself trying to find the meaning of the lyrics- you know, the way that “Ring Around The Rosie” is actually about the Black Plague, and people dying, bodies being burned, that kind of thing- but I can’t figure out how a chicken could be a sane person’s best friend. And if chickens are your best friend, why would you keep one in your nose? And how would you get a chicken up there, anyway?
So it has to be a code of some sort. The chickens aren’t really chickens at all- they’re something that’s related to a chicken in some way. Maybe they have little feathery projections on the. Maybe they have red and yellow chicken markings. Maybe they were made from some part of a chicken. Maybe they make a clucking noise, or make the people who have them up their noses make clucking noises.
And maybe it isn’t really a nose- maybe it’s just a storage area that resembles a nose. Maybe it’s the nose of a plane.
And then there’s the second verse! The first three lines are exactly the same, but the fourth changes to “They’re better than cows!” So now there are some other things called “cows.” Maybe they are actual cows. Maybe they are cow-like objects. I can’t think of many places you could call a nose where cows would fit- but then again, the song doesn’t claim that the writer puts cows in his or her nose.

So, let’s recap what we know so far:

•	The author of the song likes something he or she calls “chickens.”
•	The author feels that chickens are good.
•	The author feels that chickens are his or her best friend
•	The author has the ability to place chickens in something he or she calls a “nose.”
•	The author believes that chickens are better than something else which he or she refers to as “cows.”

In the end, I come up with two theories.

Theory One: “Chickens” refers to some sort of drug- maybe a red and yellow capsule full of powder. The author enjoys the high he or she gets from putting the “chickens” in his nose. He or she has also tried another drug he or she refers to as “cows,” but the effect was not as pleasant. The author may like the “cows,” but prefers the “chickens.” Why drug abuse would end up as a goofy song playing from a tape recorder shaped like a purple dinosaur I cannot say, but weirder things have been made into children’s songs – see the previously mentioned “Ring Around The Rosie” for a perfect example.
Theory Two: the song was written by a parent with a small child- probably a father and son, but not necessarily. The child has a farm play set, and – as small children often do- sometimes explores his nose with some of the toy animals. The child stuck a plastic chicken into his or her nose, and gleefully made a show of blowing it out for his dad. The Dad laughed, which encouraged the child to try other animals. But when the child tried the cow, things did not go as well as they did with the chicken. Maybe it wouldn’t go all the way in, or it got stuck. Whatever the reason, the child never tried to stuff a plastic cow in his nose again, instead sticking with the comfort and safety of the plastic chicken.
These are the things that go through my mind when I’m bored.
I’m listening carefully to the tape repeating over and over (while trying to look like I’m not listening), trying to find hidden meaning in the subtle nuances of the “I like Chickens Song,” when a hand taps my shoulder.
“Hello again.” says the man I don’t recognize. “How are you feeling since we talked last?”
“Do I know you?”
The man laughs, and I look at him a little closer. He’s dressed well but not overdressed, and he has what looks like a fresh haircut and neatly trimmed beard.  “Yeah, we’ve met- but I looked a little different yesterday. Did you stay away from the pork?”
Holy Crap! It’s the bum from in front of the florist’s shop! What’s he doing here? And how did he get so CLEAN? The other night he was like a half used bag of potting soil that a cat was using for a litter box, and today he looks like he could hasn’t been within ten feet of a dust speck for years. “Aren’t you the guy…”
“Who was laying in his own urine raving like a madman two nights ago. Yes, that would be me- but I’ve had a change of fortune.”
“Well, yeah…” I say, and then realize I don’t know how to ask what happened without sounding like an insensitive jerk. Luckily, I’m saved by the boarding call. “I’ve got to go- I can’t miss that flight.”
“Oh, I believe you think you can’t,” said my friend the ex-bum, “but you’ll soon find you easily can.” I give him a confused look, which he responds to with a laugh and a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out!” Then he laughs again, and I pass out for what seems like the one thousandth time this weekend.

Imagine total blackness- the blackest blackness you can picture. That would be like the sun compared to this. The blackness is so black it seems to be beyond black, that the only way to define it would be to find a word that means “even blacker than the blackest black.” Derek Smalls looked at the black cover of the Spinal Tap album and said “How much blacker could it get? The Answer is none- none blacker.” He was wrong. This is much blacker than that. Oooooh, it’s really black. Do you understand what I’m saying here? It’s pretty dark. And silent.
The sounds start to come back first- not with a gradual fade-up, or with a slow increase in clarity, but in strips, like shards of sound are whizzing past my head like a kingdom of mechanical bees. Like a window broken in reverse, noises jump and interlock.
Then the blacker-than-black is gone, replaced with ordinary, garden variety black. The increase in light is so huge that for a moment I am blinded by flashes of misshapen creatures moving around me. Then my eyes adjust to the normal world and regular blackness surrounds me.

I must have passed out. I wake up in what looks like a hospital room- but it seems small. Maybe there was some sort of overflow at the hospital and I’m in the children’s ward or something- but the room doesn’t look like a kid’s room. And even if it were a kid’s room, why would the chairs and table be so small? Wouldn’t they have some full sized chairs for visiting parents?
Then I realize where I am- or more specifically, where I am not. I am not in a warehouse, eating animal food, surrounded by the deadly poison monkeys! I’m somewhere outside that hell-hole! The Monkey Vortex must have worked- which is great, because before I tried it I had discovered a potentially fatal problem- the Faraday effect.
See, the entire compound was surrounded by a wire fence. Even the roof had a layer of wire mesh as an added precaution. While it was helpful in keeping the monkeys in, it had the annoying side effect of blocking all incoming and outgoing radio signals. Inside the compound, cell phones didn’t work. Radios could only communicate within the compound- and even that was usually an exercise in learning to hear voices thorough static. And it seemed to be blocking the Monkey Vortex- every time I tried to send an object past the fence it would reappear at the very outside edge of the compound on this side of the fence, which would cause the monkeys to jump with glee as they discovered a new toy to destroy.
So, I thought I was stuck. I sat and ate the MMREs, knowing they would do me know good. I practiced opening Monkey Vortexes, knowing they would never get me out of the compound- which helped me relax, since I knew my life no longer depended on my skill. In fact my life no longer depended on anything, for life had become pretty damn undependable.
Then it happened. I ran out of food. I had nothing to do but slowly starve as the monkeys threw around the furniture I’d MVed into the compound. But I didn’t really starve at all, for the monkeys had done me a favor with their rioting- they knocked a hole in the fence! Not large enough for me or even a poison monkey to get through, but large enough that the MV might be able to pass through.
But the wasn’t much time to work out if it would work or not, for the Poison Monkeys had discovered that the same objects they were throwing at the fence would also work admirably well to break into my formerly fairly safe little room. As the walls began to cave, I focused on that hole in the wall…
…and apparently ended up here. I’m not sure exactly where “here” is, but it sure beats a tiny room in the center of a whirlwind of evil monkeys. AT least, that’s what I think until the door opens.

And then the world exploded any everybody died. The End.