"I really wish we didn't have to do this," Bo grunted as he slowly heaved his generous frame onto the motorized cart Tom Jones had brought to him at the edge of the parking lot, where the bus had let them off. By the time the young monk was settled in his seat, Tom was already a good fifteen yards ahead of him, gleefully pushing a regular cart in a serpentine pattern, narrowly missing a parked brown sedan after trying to challenge a twelve-year-old to a backwards shopping cart race.
Once within the unholy depths of Wal-mart, Bo managed to gather all of the items on the list before he ran into Tom again. He found him in the pets section, having what looked to be a heated debate with the fish, about the welfare system. The fish appeared to remain unconvinced. Actually, to be fair, the fish didn't seem to understand what was happening at all, or why random items were being thrown into their tanks as "visual aids".
"Tom, I've got the ... ingredie--items. Let's go - leave that cart there, we can't afford - and definitely don't need - all of that stuff." Tom's cart was filled nearly to overflowing with women's plus-sized jogging suits, children's novelty sunglasses, two magic 8 balls, a couch cushion from a piece of display furniture, various and sundry office supplies, three Toblerones and a Hanson cd. "Except for the chocolate, grab those." Bo added.
The pair nearly got thrown out when Tom Jones kept trying to get a price on his chest at the self check-out, but the boy managed to distract him by claiming to have seen a doo-wop group in the parking lot. Bo was disturbed beyond words when he exited the store to find Tom singing with a couple of homeless gentlemen.
--------
"Do you think this will work?" Tom asked, squatting in front of the box as he dumped the yogurt in. Bo was still a bit tender from his recent surgeries as well as exhausted from their shopping trip, so he was just observing the experiment from his perch atop the bed. "I ... nothing surprises me anymore." Bo replied, shaking his head.
Tom continued adding ingredients, one after another, until everything on the list was inside the box, and the crotch of his pants was splattered liberally with yogurt, milk, ice cream and egg. "I think I might have added the block of cheddar last, Bo." Tom mused. The boy squeeked painfully in reply, stiffling a guffaw. "Close the box, Tom." Bo ordered. Tom Jones dutifully closed the box. "Now open it!" Bo said breathlessly. Tom lifted the lid and peered inside.
"Well? What do you see?" the young monk asked impatiently.
The deeply tanned crooner began to sing, "Up north where the snow grows colder, I travel onward 'cross the border--"
"Christmas cake!" Bo interrupted. "What the freshly-washed handkerchief are you babbling about this time?"
"It's quite simple, my dear boy," Tom replied, gesturing toward the box, "your precious missing jar is in...
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Friday, June 24, 2011
Part 26
a raging, paralyzing case of gut rot. Bo's rotund hoagie boiler, it would seem, had finally had enough. It endured, unceasingly, a miserable and arbitrary pattern of hoagie enjoyment, intertwined with seemingly infinite periods of grease-soaked reminiscence of said hoagies. The young monk's tummy-tums would have no more of this nonsense, it decided. Bo doubled over and collapsed. The last words to escape his wanton lips before everything went black could faintly be heard, "i regret not a single sandwich..."
Yogurt. Blackness. Darkness. Milk.
Nothingness. Kix. Void. An ambiguously dead/alive cat.
Has our hero's unscrupulous disregard for dietary health finally caught up with him?
Not if Kangaroo Jim has anything to say about the matter.
A sudden rush of pain overwhelmed Bo's senses who, quite frankly, were perfectly content existing in a vacuous plane of numbness. This made it all the much more difficult for our hero's battered and abused mind to cope with all the sensory information he was once again experiencing.
Needless to say, it didn't do Bo any favours as his eyes gradually focused on what hovered atop him. A large bald-eagle, with white leather tassels in place of feathers, large cubic zirconia in place of eyes, and a pair of Pringles chips arranged in the vague shape of a beak in place of a...beak.
The majestic animal proceeded to gracefully devour it's own salty beak, slap Bo across the face swiftly, and take a sip of the coke it just ordered.
Bo was having a bit of trouble putting all this together, and with all the grace and style of piece of roadkill stuck under a car carrying two teenagers making out for the first time, mused rather loudly, "What the FU-" "Fun, fun, fun!" Kangaroo Jones announced, tearing off his makeshift surgeon outfit and adding, "Yes, sir, performing a quadruple-bypass and emergency stomach flush in a questionably hygienic environment with nothing but basic bartending tools on a Friday night is my idea of fun, fun, fun!" It is worth noting that this was said with all the seriousness that someone willing to perform open heart surgery in the middle of a sketchy bar, wearing a giant eagle mask can possibly muster.
Bo, understandably, was still groggy and his mind was working as hard as it could (not so hard) to fill in what seemed to him to be an eternity's worth of blanks. After a long while, Bo finally summoned the courage to speak. "Is this-" "Yes," Jim "Tom" Jones blurted out, "You'll be fine. I'm sure that's the question you were going to ask," and in a moment of inexplicable Kangaroo Klarity, Tom "Jones" Jim made his best attempt to further the plot line through insightful dialogue.
"My dear boy, I'd love to explain to you how I was able to perform a complicated surgery, successfully, under the worst conditions possible, but I am afraid that there is yet work to be done! We must decipher the meaning of this shopping list! It starts with milk, an-"
Bo gasped loudly, memories of his delicate dance with death rushing back to him. "Milk! I've got it! It isn't a shopping list at all. It came to me while I was dead...dying...err..or whatever. It was all so clear to me after everything went black. It is a list of ingredients, for a powerful potion. We must put all these ingredients in a box - and close the box. Inside, it will have precisely a 50% chance of being the correct formula which will serve as the necessary component to lead us to the missing jar. We will not know whether it is the correct formula until we observe it."
"Great googly moogly!" Timmity "Kangaroo Tune" Jonesey exclaimed dramatically, "That's just crazy enough to work! So, where do we get all these seemingly random items necessary for a complex quantum physics experiment?"
A dark and foreboding look cast across Bo's sweaty face. With a deep sigh, he uttered the words...
"Wal-mart."
Yogurt. Blackness. Darkness. Milk.
Nothingness. Kix. Void. An ambiguously dead/alive cat.
Has our hero's unscrupulous disregard for dietary health finally caught up with him?
Not if Kangaroo Jim has anything to say about the matter.
A sudden rush of pain overwhelmed Bo's senses who, quite frankly, were perfectly content existing in a vacuous plane of numbness. This made it all the much more difficult for our hero's battered and abused mind to cope with all the sensory information he was once again experiencing.
Needless to say, it didn't do Bo any favours as his eyes gradually focused on what hovered atop him. A large bald-eagle, with white leather tassels in place of feathers, large cubic zirconia in place of eyes, and a pair of Pringles chips arranged in the vague shape of a beak in place of a...beak.
The majestic animal proceeded to gracefully devour it's own salty beak, slap Bo across the face swiftly, and take a sip of the coke it just ordered.
Bo was having a bit of trouble putting all this together, and with all the grace and style of piece of roadkill stuck under a car carrying two teenagers making out for the first time, mused rather loudly, "What the FU-" "Fun, fun, fun!" Kangaroo Jones announced, tearing off his makeshift surgeon outfit and adding, "Yes, sir, performing a quadruple-bypass and emergency stomach flush in a questionably hygienic environment with nothing but basic bartending tools on a Friday night is my idea of fun, fun, fun!" It is worth noting that this was said with all the seriousness that someone willing to perform open heart surgery in the middle of a sketchy bar, wearing a giant eagle mask can possibly muster.
Bo, understandably, was still groggy and his mind was working as hard as it could (not so hard) to fill in what seemed to him to be an eternity's worth of blanks. After a long while, Bo finally summoned the courage to speak. "Is this-" "Yes," Jim "Tom" Jones blurted out, "You'll be fine. I'm sure that's the question you were going to ask," and in a moment of inexplicable Kangaroo Klarity, Tom "Jones" Jim made his best attempt to further the plot line through insightful dialogue.
"My dear boy, I'd love to explain to you how I was able to perform a complicated surgery, successfully, under the worst conditions possible, but I am afraid that there is yet work to be done! We must decipher the meaning of this shopping list! It starts with milk, an-"
Bo gasped loudly, memories of his delicate dance with death rushing back to him. "Milk! I've got it! It isn't a shopping list at all. It came to me while I was dead...dying...err..or whatever. It was all so clear to me after everything went black. It is a list of ingredients, for a powerful potion. We must put all these ingredients in a box - and close the box. Inside, it will have precisely a 50% chance of being the correct formula which will serve as the necessary component to lead us to the missing jar. We will not know whether it is the correct formula until we observe it."
"Great googly moogly!" Timmity "Kangaroo Tune" Jonesey exclaimed dramatically, "That's just crazy enough to work! So, where do we get all these seemingly random items necessary for a complex quantum physics experiment?"
A dark and foreboding look cast across Bo's sweaty face. With a deep sigh, he uttered the words...
"Wal-mart."
Friday, June 17, 2011
Part 25
Bo looked up at the beet clad woman and began to open his mouth. Before he could even force a sound out, Tom had leapt onto the table in a frantic scurry, knocking over the bowl of beet dip that Anna had brought out with her. He began to do what resembled a river dance, and spewed something from his mouth that sounded much like the strange ramblings of a southern Baptist minister who had been taken over by the spirit. He finished his strange dance with a triple back tuck and the “pew, pew, wink” move. Anna mimicked his “pew, pew, wink” and rushed into the kitchen. How he managed that triple back tuck without cracking his head on that flail completely perplexed Bo, but he had become accustomed to the strange while on this journey. Tom turned to Bo and said
“I just ordered us two cokes”
Bo gave him a puzzled look and pulled out the note.
“Tom..er….Kangaroo Jim, we need to find out what this note means. It’s got to be related to why the other jar is missing!”
Both men had come to the conclusion that it must be some sort of acronym, but an acronym for what, and how were they going to find out what it meant? Seconds later, a mysterious man with bilateral torn rotator cuffs walked up to their table and said
“I think I can solve your mystery, boys.”
Bo’s eyes lit up like the first time he ever saw a hoagie. Then his mouth started to salivate because he couldn’t stop thinking about that very first hoagie and how oh so special it was, and how much it changed his life and his waistline and how everything was surreal each and every time he took a bite. The man was expanding upon each letter of the acronym, but Bo didn’t hear him, all he could hear was the rustle of the wax paper as you tore open a freshly made hoagie, dripping with vinegar end to end. Bo finally snapped out of his greasy coma to hear this mysterious man finish by saying
“And that’s why we can’t have nice things!”
With that, the man was gone in a puff of beet dust. Bo turned to Tom, who at this point was admiring his own chest hair in a small, my little pony pocket mirror.
With that, the man was gone in a puff of beet dust. Bo turned to Tom, who at this point was admiring his own chest hair in a small, my little pony pocket mirror.
“You don’t think I need to wax this, right? I mean, the ladies love a lit..”
“Forget about that! What did bilateral torn rotator cuff guy say about the note and what M I C K E Y meant!” Blurted Bo
“Note? He didn’t say anything about a note. He just recited his shopping list, Milk, Icecream, Cheese, Kix, Eggs, and Yogurt, then started babbling about quantum physics”
“Hush poppet” Whispered Bo.
In that instant, it hit him…
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