The Diamond Island

I’ve mentioned the illustrious Pizza of Doom before. However, I don’t think I’ve actually ever posted any pictures of the magnificence that is summoning your own personal pizza to serve you good tasting satisfaction. Well, worry no more my illustrious 1d6 non-bot readers!

I have yet to try the recipe since moving out to the Pacific Northwest wildlands, where bigfoots roam and beers beg you to drink them. How will the water and climate affect the dough rise and ultimate consistency? The cooking, if you allow for an oven variance, how long will it take and how will the crust turn out? Questions galore that refuse to be put off any longer!

I must practice my kung fu in a new way and in anew time zone cooridnate, solar systems are go and wooo!

Luckily, I am able to assemble the ingredients in an appealing manner. Pepperoni and cheese are whatever you can scare up, but because there is the Tillamook cheese manufacturing power in this area, i am able to score a grated cheese combo attack of mozarella, provolone, and parmesan all in three! Yowza. Feel the power.

Oh, and bonus. The package has enough to cover the pizza. Those other cheese conglomerates, always short you cheese such that you can never quite cover the mega-mutha. May they roast in profits hell. You see, these little details matter! One must always have access to the proper goodies. Every small ingredient, physical or mental, affects the space time continuum of crafting.

Came out well too. I like it when the ingredients sink nicely and the rim forms a good crispy final bite to a slice. Sauce was iffy since I had to go with the tomatoes I could and the pre-cooking of the sauce is a random variable I have not compensated for in the phase variance. But still tasty. I ate it. K ate it. Our tummies thank us.

But wait, there’s more! We also went picking triple crown sweet blackberries and brought some back for pancake toppings, general snacking, and cobbler. Alas, I could not translate my cobbler recipe so I had to crib from the internet. More work is to be done, yes I need to meditate on my cooking powers. But the topping was cooked well, and the blackberry sauce was delicious.

This thing will not last the week, I tell you. Iron rations for dungeon adventures in the Cascade range!  Eeegah, prepare for doom.

A while ago I decided to explore my own Tomb of Horrors, thanks to some helpful exposure osmosis insights from my trusty Chimera friend Shanna Mann. After some meandering about with various ingredients I am starting to build a formula of exploration.

I was going to put out an ad for a psychological being to handle the specifics, but this dude came knocking at my door as soon as the commitment formed in my brain. After some dialogue of a sort using mysterious hand signals and lip reading apparatus I believe we have come to an accord.

We’ve leased some imaginary property from a psychic patron in a settlement suitable for our needs. I had no idea such a town was located near the Diamond Island! Hidden treasures everywhere you look, if you see with the eyes of joy.

Of course, the inhabitants are going to be mighty surprised to see all this sudden activity in their accustomed unconscious existence. What can I say, I am shining a candle in my own individual way and this is where it has led me. There may be benefits as well as difficulty.

I have decided to explore, through the exploits of my new found friend, the role of horror host. He will be doing this in his own particular way, according to his own individual stance. I will, of course, be responsible for his actions as his conscious manager.

To this effect I have created a secret door to our mutual venture. The password will be most easily obtained by those with the secret decoder wheel, which is part of my Sooper Fun Pak currently only available on my Facebook fan page. by request.

So stay tuned for more tidbits, and if you are one of the fortunate folks to have a password wheel at your disposal (or have a small microchip brain for ciphers) you may be entertained!

There’s this courageous and original artist I know who does good work. Her explorations are top-notch: She is by turns vulnerable, honest, out of the ordinary, and determined. Watching her struggle and make slow discovery is similar to witnessing a lone brilliance dig up the forms that future civilization will be composed of.

I draw a simple picture of a kind of expression she was dealing with. That of having to do with allowing yourself to let go of the parts of your life that no longer suit the direction it is taking.

This is no small thing!

To give yourself permission to jettison those things you no longer need? It can be a grim ordeal. You feel as if you are betraying something, or admitting to yourself that bad news has come to town for real.

Facing up to denial of the shadows in our lives is a heroic act, especially when the taking of action is crucial—to allow ourselves to experience the warrior and swing our sword is shocking. When the warrior destroys what is outmoded, corrupt, or harmful there is a rush of energy in our body.

I’m sure Rogue Priest would have a thing or two to say about that, being of the warrior spirit.

My Hek-sistah once told me that there are times when you take an action and you experience it as an act for the sake of all beings in the universe. Your wishing for the enlightenment of all beings is, in a single moment, the same as that actual moment because in that moment it is experienced as true.

Even if that’s all you do—act with the intention—that is a tremendous step forward that benefits all beings in the universe. If you can follow it through and continue onwards that is great, but if you can’t it’s enough to intend for it to be so.

I’ve let go of the crummy butt jerks and misery nightmare torture wagons I’ve been hauling for the last two years. This Pegesus has kicked them all to the curb and moved on to new life.

I’ve given myself permission to do this. Even though it feels like failure on my part, and I never like admitting to myself that I can think of myself over other people.

And I’m dedicating this to all beings in the universe. Yes, even the bums I’m leaving behind to stew in their own juice. We all need to be free from domination and control, and to find our shining in this world of suffering.

All you beings in the universe, for the sake of our enlightenment I’m sayin it as I move on: “See ya sucker!”

The other day UFO Girl delivered a pizza to my brainpan, compliments of the Naughty Louse. Wait, who? Might that be another name for my Bad Ronald?

I know he’s been out there in the world, breathing the fresh air and squinting at the sunlight. By owning up to my own problems and breaking free, I got him outside to a new dimension of life.

I guess he has UFO Girl’s pizza delivery number, and maybe even a coupon. Come to think of it, a redeemable coupon or token for UFO Girl delivery must be a highly unusual contrivance.

In any case, this information extravaganza inside my brainstem calls up all the necessary ingredients for moving along to the next step in the building of the karavos, this UFO I am participating in.

In order to fly a UFO it may be necessary to adopt a control panel or command module of some kind. Consciousness works by directing disparate and in-conflict parts unified by a tendency towards out-of-chaos-into-dance using the twin beasts of the chariot to carry us home.

Here, out of the past, from a child’s hand in a different sector of space and time, an adult calls forth the preserved image of a kind of desired control panel interface. Touch, and the universe responds with your intent. This, the Dark Goddess has shown me.

Drawing upon the active imagination of movement from one form to another, one might advance the shy and hesitant emergence of a beautiful treasure from the unconscious, adapt it with the ability to breathe air and switch modes of existence.

I use the small and slightly more mature tools of thought at my disposal to render another version of the control panel. Connected to the previous version, yet also individual. An eye opens, an eye blinks, and a moment passes. In the gutter of that moment is revealed another image.

For you see, in order for this to be a navigation tool to fly with, from which other panels might spring from, you need to know what reality you are in. One must take a reading, so to speak, of where one is in psychic existence in order to know your non-existence parameters.

Remember, nothing is where it calls from!

I mean…err…comes from. You will explore more fully the abyss seeking where the unknown is likely to be. And again, a map arises out of the wondrous imagination of a child’s natural witnessing of what is all around and within. This is the baseline from which springs the core of a UFO’s wanderings at play.

This is a dangerous proposition to consider. To generate a star chart of this comprehensive a manner requires a spirit of adventure, but it also requires a readiness to be changed by what you encounter. As Doctor Who would say, “Travel broadens the mind”, yet behind that one must also realize that to embark on a venture seeking new ideas is to be exposed to risk if those ideas are to be fresh.

The spoor and tracks of the supernal super-predator mean business, yo.

Since this is a newly emergent ancient UFO, the display panel from the adult perspective is blank for now. Anything and everything might emerge upon this nothingness. The fool’s zero begins our journey with a bronx cheer.

All that remains now is to materialize a starting point with which to begin our journey of the UFO. In this case, the input of another person is useful in suggesting that which we might ourselves be blind to, or lack the courage to tackle ourselves. A true companion is a great assistance in regarding those things we might lack the resources to reckon with fully.

Home is a good place to decide upon as a reference point. Departure, return is a cycle that matches the lifeforce of the universe. Breathe in, breathe out. Eye open, blink. Time and space appears in the vast indescribable eternity that runs with us wherever we are or aren’t.

A form, an interface, an occupant, a journey. All pieces are now complete.

The pizza has been delivered.

I want to thank Birdman for taking over hosting duties for a while. As it turns out, I’ve been consciously occupied with outside events of personal importance that have allowed for very little in the way of inward journeys. So, thank you Birdman, you have been a true friend in keeping this haven for me while I was away.

What happened?

K and I moved to the Pacific Northwest. This is something we have been wanting to do for a long time.

I quit my job, we donated or recycled a bunch of our belongings, and declined to renew our lease. We packed up Gamera with some luggage and a pair of cat carriers (one medium and one small), and then anything that didn’t fit in Gamera went inside a huge POD.

Loading the POD and emptying out ten years of stuff from a three story townhouse was a supreme ordeal. You need mad Tetris skills and nerves of steel from having studied several episodes of the TV show “Hoarders.” It took 38 hours, 27 of which was straight-on-till-morning, without sleep.

After making sure the PODzilla transport arrived (they had tried to call us to confirm, but our phone was already disconnected), we loaded the three cats Michael, Frankie, and Blink into their carriers. K and I made sure they had plenty of water, litter, food, and comfy blankees to sleep or throw up on.

With star charts in the crevices of the seats and jammed to the gills with food, bedding, clothes and computers we left Reston Virginia behind and embarked on our galactic voyage across the country. We still hadn’t had any sleep, but we were determined to reach our first stop in Toledo, Ohio.

Sometimes a heroic effort is necessary to break free of the octopus of the past.

We got stuck in traffic. The DC Foundry has a strong gravity well that can be formidable—in this case we spent an hour going 2 miles before we managed to escape. The temperature was brutally hot, but the AC held and the cats managed not to freak out until we were actually out of the jam.

Blink needed some calming medicine and the others a little petting. This was an adventure they had never encountered before! Then we were off again.

I don’t know where I got the strength and the will to go on, but I drove through the night until we reached our goal.  Despite the hotel directions being incomprehensible we found the place.

The hotel staff allowed us to check in late and stay in past check out (bless their hearts) so we could get a few hours extra sleep. 44 hours is a long time to go without sleep, let alone move like a beast and then drive ten hours.

The cats rolled with it.

Then, every day the same: Get up, pack the stuff and then load the cats, check out, get breakfast, gas up, drive to the next stop. Des Moines (Iowa), Cheyenne (Wyoming), Ogden (Utah), Boise (Idaho), and then Portland (Oregon). Six days of travel and full of danger and hilarity.

I didn’t know if I could drive for such long periods of time. That was always something my father did, and did with great skill and stamina. So in a way I have made my contribution to the Drive Yourself Crazy Club of which Ferguses are said to be members.

There is something of a meditation in having to be alert and discerning for endless hours of monotony. The body adapts to the external demands that the mind serves to navigate.

If there is one insight I come away from, having been 2800 miles of distance through the United States, it is that the country is a huge resource extraction wealth grab for the rich.

Corn fields in Nebraska as far as the eye can see, making corn syrup. Beef fields in Wyoming making ground beef for the franchise wars. Refineries processing coal for energy. All connected by roads and truckstops, with a slight nod to tourism (if you can afford it). All fenced in and owned or dominated by big business, with no signs of civilization or individuality anywhere.

When the cheap oil runs out and the diesel begins to strangle the truck lines all of this will die, blow away, leaving ghost towns and blighted landscapes full of nitrates.

It’s already happening—I could hardly believe how much construction was going on with the roads. A third of the roads I drove were in a state of repair, traffic redirected to a single lane for 25 miles at a time, again and again. And the roads that were new were composites—where is the asphalt? The quality of the roads is going to cheap materials as it breaks down faster, talk about surreal.

We passed a lot of wind farms, and that’s great, but you aren’t going to be running trucks or building roads or making fertilizer out of wind power. To see this country propped up like a house of cards with all wealth going to rich institutions with no thought of what comes after is to witness the triumph of mindless evil over decent human life.

As K and I drove through this desolation of self-destruction we encountered the elements. A thundering torrential rainstorm in Iowa that would become a roaring hurricane a few days later sweeping the east coast in a fury, destroying phone and power for millions.

The smoke clouds from the south as we drove through Wyoming were the beginnings of the massive brush fires that would destroy countless homes in Colorado, of a size to stagger the imagination in its scope. We drove through areas where the fire had burned everything to one side of the highway and then gone out when it met the road.

Some fires still blazed in their enclosed firetraps. I thought we were passing through a strip mine, when I realized the black earth was cinders covering the landscape of boulders that remained after everything else had perished. This is the future—nature crushing us back into the savage garden from whence we sprang.

Just remember, global warming is only a liberal hoax!

The vision is a horrific one, and beyond my small power to affect—yet I still ask what it is for and I will to will Thy will in my transformation. I shall remember this and express my own personal potion when the time is right, for do I not also contain a small spark of fire inside me, a thunder being holding a candle alight?

Then we reached our destination. It was as if we had stepped through the protective mists of Lothlorien, where some small craft, healing, and knowledge is preserved.

We stayed at a Buddhist retreat run by one of my oldest and dearest of friends, allowing the cats to stretch their legs and us to remember a little of what it means to be human beings. Eat, drink, walk, recover—our journey done and the real work of building a new home begins.

Our apartment is small, but perfectly placed for us to begin again. Everywhere are trees, ferns, lichens, mosses, and birds. There are secret and hidden places for me to discover new ideas and form new substance in the world.

As I attended college here, I went to the reunion to witness and regard the connections to the past that still shape my life today. There are ceremonies of the soul that cannot be shared, but of which there is great sensation and emotion pouring out into one’s life.

My old life is gone, destroyed by a thunder-fire storm of psychic change. I am nothingness, out of which may come the dawn.

Hello, you can call me Birdman. My real name is a series of squawks and cheeps, so for the sake of ease you can use a name others have utilized for their own benefit.

I have come to inform you that Paul Tristan Fergus is temporarily indisposed. Something about a UFO and dimensional engineering feats involving object packages. A whole lot of technical stuff that quite frankly is for the birds if you ask me. Give me some tasty snacks and a brisk wind on a clear sunny day and I am happy chickadee.

Some of you may have noticed a gradual slowdown in posts here, with a general focusing on bizarre psychological adventures. I assure you this has been quite normal and intended! My fine un-feathered friend has been subjected to a great deal of stress, the misery of which has required his utmost attention to transform into usable materials for the refinement of his quest objectives.

It’s perfectly understandable if some of you have wondered about the sanity or stability of our illustrious super fool. Fear not! Such chills and thrills appear to be part of the general program, or ride, or process. At least, if I’m not a bird-brain and have got it all wrong!

Hold tight, the suspense is in not knowing if the magician is really juggling anti-matter while eating peanut butter cups or is pulling your leg. Oops, is that a real bloody stump or ketchup?

Eeegah aieee ooooeeahh!

In the meantime, you may rely on me to keep the lights on and the oxygen scrubbers pulsating. I will do my best to be a good egg—I have ordered an extra pair of dignity pants so that when I go flying off the cuff I won’t be a dirty birdie! You are all in good talons, rest assured.

For now, kick back, and listen to the transwarp hyperspace jumpspice stargate mechanisms making for a Hek of a fabulous and fantastical display of transformational transmutation of a most winged kind.

Just the other day I got a message from the Dark Goddess. Since I got a message from my self from the future, I needed to write one back. Even though I’m in the moment, this stuff will end up being in the past and read in the future.

I’ve done this before, just didn’t really know it. Write messages to myself about my state of mind, my hopes and fears, and what I believe is going on or will go on. Reading some of these past messages can be a little embarrassing at times, and they can be pretty moving as I see how earnest I struggle to be bright.

So here goes nothing. It’s time.

Hey yo Paul Tristan Fergus, I got your message that I would make it, that I can do it, because I already have, that it will be all right.

All the stuff you showed me I have taken to heart and now know consciously. The understanding will come later. Thanks for sending this back to me. I never really realized how we’ve been supporting ourselves all this time, through time.

When I think about the last two years of absolute terror, humiliation, and defeat that followed the year of rest after the Haunted House it kind of blows my mind. I thought I would be working on my books and my workshop more, yet all I did was push the book out and move it along at a small and insignificant pace. Everything else has been emergency life support.

That must have been the proper and healthy thing to do, because all other resources went into the great change and building the UFO that you are likely experiencing now. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for you, because from where I’m standing it’s beyond my understanding. The battle of the galaxies was something I could scarcely conceive of at the time I realized it was approaching.

I noticed in the previous letter that I had grown a lot since the letter before that, when all was chaos and the sinking of my entire life. The shock of great self-destruction was so total I never realized I would survive and grow, even though that’s all I prayed for. Darkness and suffering for so long it was a real risk for me.

So now there you are, and you are doing the stuff I can only dream of right now. I’ve grieved, I’ve let go, I’ve healed, I’ve moved on. I’m fighting for my life now and I finally see what I’m to do. I know you and all the rest of us are doing our best with what we’ve got, and the nightchild is with us, is us.

I’m building what I can for you, just as I know you are sending me love and encouragement from where you are. We’re entering a new life of the kind it takes an entire lifetime to create. You know how I’m feeling for you and what you are doing right now.

And yeah, that time when we were surrounded by people we thought were glorps and we spoke from outside the light about our secret fire? I’m on it man. All the other stuff too, I’m stumbling along as best I can so you’ll be strong and true.

The awesome is so overwhelming I’m humbled. Keepin’ the Faith Initiated Bullshit while performin’ the secret sign of distress in a world of doom to the ultimate destructoid!

Be you soon,

Paul Tristan Fergus

One of the many kinds of unconscious life forms I encounter during existence patrol is the robotic-minded automaton known as a “clicker”. It refers to someone composed of artificial or inauthentic psychological components, a person who is “not their self” and operates according to collective behavior. They “whir” and “click” like a machine, in other words.

The term originally came to me from a derogatory epithet used for androids in the movie Creation Of The Humanoids. In this movie, a shrinking population of humans grows ever more dependent on manufactured humaniform robots to maintain their industrial, post-apocalypse lifestyle.

A radical group of humans, feeling their existence increasingly threatened by the artificial beings they have created, use the term to describe and focus their mutual dislike of the androids. They personify many of the qualities and wear costumes derivative of hate groups from Earth’s past. A kind of hyper-blended mélange of all the worst humanity has to offer.

The androids themselves are beings unto themselves, with desires and outlooks that naturally bring them into conflict with humans whom they serve. It is their intention to slowly let humans die off or put their brains into android bodies while they build a new world of android needs being developed and explored.

I know; how can I use a term even from a science fiction movie that denigrates and labels beings—even artificial ones—as Others? Just because I define the term as pointing to what I consider hostile or dangerous encounters doesn’t give me a hall pass either.

All I can say is that I’m pulling this use out into the open and examining it, questioning it, exploring it.

Creation of the Humanoids presents us with a story about how outmoded thought patterns are gradually minimized and replaced by the development of new ones. In a way, the hybrids of tomorrow (for that is what an android is) outmaneuver the prejudices and violence of their ancestors over a long span of time.

In real life, however, our range of psychological experiences are much more intricate and complex. Humans, androids, and robots all coexist together in the psychological sphere. The question is always, what kind of consciousness do they present?

As in the book The Runaway Robot, a mechanical being can develop and experience self-awareness and an empathy for non-robots. Likewise, as in the book Caves of Steel, humans can show their worst sides where the rights of mechanical beings are concerned, reverting to ugliness and undifferentiated effects.

The reality is that our concept of being-ness is open to interpretation. Tribalism as a survival instinct may not be enough anymore, or perhaps we have mainly “gone rogue”, become mad robots ourselves as a collective robotic entity and therefore need to reconnect our wires to what it means to be a unified individual organism. Maybe that’s how we find organic connections with people.

Open up the Animism cabinet and you’ll find the concept of everything having a soul. All beings relating to one another according to their nature–stone consciousness to tree consciousness to mosquito consciousness to water consciousness to heat consciousness to radiation consciousness. You get the picture.

Is there such a thing as a malfunctioning human? It seems to me at times as if there are indeed humans who have developed system errors and operate according to spurious logic. They are harmful and often hostile to happy operating procedures. The worst kinds present a fair face while secretly sabotaging your circuitry for the spreading of their does-not-compute static.

Of course, how do you know if you yourself aren’t a malfunctioning automaton? Can you self-diagnose or are you a replicant that doesn’t know who they are? I myself have to keep asking the question, or hoping that if I am then a human element will come along and repair me.

Self-defense procedures can interfere with the hard and necessary work of being human, of screwing up. That discomfort you feel with yourself can lead you to an organic response array.

The risk is always that you will sacrifice your operating functions helping someone else carry their overload another cycle instead of taking the painful step of restarting. Or worse, you find yourself projecting your own corrupt files onto someone’s open jack and flooding them with garbage-in.

I heard tell that the price of crossing the line is having to live on both sides. Am I a human? Am I an alien construct? The hybrid anxiously asks these questions for all beings.

In the meantime, I keep sensors on alert. Manufacturing procedures vary, and there are humans in the neighborhood who have a few bolts loose.

As the horror host transformation does its thing, all sorts of interesting sources of civilization are cropping up and showing us what they got. The Vortexx is certainly a formula worth studying, as they have managed to get quite a few things mixed into the creativity cauldron nicely.

There’s the Internet interface of a movie-based show under control of the hosts brought together by fate to make interesting stuff. Promos, old commercials, monster movies and horror host performances—this is where you start.

Then there’s the chat on the side. You can just lurk if you don’t want to get to know anybody. Everyone’s got the right to be a ghost if they wanna stay secret. Or you can jump in and become acquainted with all the weirdos and creatures out there gathered around a scary campfire for a good time.

Hey, it’s a party and it’s random. Enter at your own risk, just like a real life haunted house experience.

What really makes or breaks the experience though is the non-host contingent and the crowd they attract. You totally need a tight cast of characters or the shows won’t amount to much as they are unveiled.

You’ve got far-out characters like the Crimson Executioner, a deranged torturer dispensing all manner of innuendos and witty quips while pushing jars of his royal jelly. Part charlatan, part Addams Family wicked joy, and part deviant with a passion for entertainment and a mind of courteous surprises—this apparition with a perfect body is far out, man!

There’s DoktorSick, a fiendish high tech experimenter with an electronic eye for captivating clips and disturbing juxtapositions. Yet behind that fevered mask of skeletal cyborg mayhem pulses a brain capable of creative insights with sophisticated impact.

You’ll find Jason “Egg” Brown, a soft-spoken lunatic curator of the forgotten and dusty circuits of the Internet, pushing arcane dials and adjusting human spines to keep the show live as a wire.

Then there’s Sluggo, arguably the crown jewel and mascot of the Vortexx crew, an inter-dimensional pink slug with eyestalks inspiring a tidy ship and dispensing random blessings of outrageous character. Sluggo welcomes everyone and declares the spirit of friendship to all comers.

The line up is always changing. Hey this is vaudeville folks; blink and you miss the rotating walls and trap doors swallowing up people behind you. That’s kind of the theme: the Vortexx as a locale that is both a central gathering point and an unstable dimensional hodgepodge.

The weekly alternating schedule looks like this:

• Monday you’ll find yourself entertained by the inestimable Dr. Sigmund Zoid and his bag of Alternative Realities.
• Tuesday brings you the momentous Mr. Mephisto from Lenny’s Inferno or the fathomless green Freakshow from the Bordello of Horror.
• Wednesday has the insightful yet skeletal Nigel Honeybone from the Schlocky Horror Picture Show or a disturbing chuckle or three courtesy of The Host from Screaming Horror Theater.
• Thursday summons forth the indescribably bizarre Justy Ghost from Shocking Theater.
• Friday blasts off with Demented Drive In Theater and the crack horror crew of Floyd Cadaverous, Nurse Evilynn, Kenny Wickman and Grandpa Larry—or Fright Night Theater hosted by the gotta-see-him-to-believe-him Pumpkin Man.
• Saturday winds up the week with the Late Dr. Lady Show, hosted by the brilliant David Lady and his steadfast band of Laura Lady, Ilean, and Wolfie.

Random spin-the-bottle bonus appearances include the Ghoul Kids and their Undead Show, Riggor Mortiss and Nyte Angel from Riggor Mortiss Presents, Scarewolf doing some Saturday Fright Special, and freaky shorts courtesy of Shocko the Clown.

I’m pretty sure the non-host units keep a few special surprises stashed away, and they are always generating new ammunition to load your brain cells with. For example, the inventive Rizzle MaNizzle the Clown once prank called Crimson Executioner and turned it into a short on the show! Unscripted improv right before your very eyes.

So you hop on over to the website, fiddle with the chat interface to get your nick and text color set, and watch movies that epitomize the greatest attempts at self-civilization since Aristotle, all with a bunch of strangers who slowly begin to take shape as not just horrific creatures of all kinds but also family of the heart.

You better watch out or you might have some fun!

Checking out my quest station and man is it overloaded with indicator lights. It’s been kind of me and my space fleet against return of the skreeker assaultoids part one hundred.

Not like I have much choice these days. All power has gone into the UFO and working that major project out. I’ve had to make do on reserves and emergency power only.

But, you know, I’ve been doing it. This is the battle of the galaxy and here I am using maximum wizard powers with a dunce cap on. For the first time in like years I suddenly realized I’ve got the upper hand and the dog-dooers are on their last jackload of poop.

Outnumbered, alone, every other starbase bought off or neutralized. Here I am on the higher ground with a slapstick and a candle, wearing a funny hat. That’s all I got!

But I know something nobody else does. Smell that slight whiff of smoke, hear that tiny far-off thunder, feel that oh-so nearly undetectable rumble?

I’ve been taking my readings, and I know which way the bright force of new energy is going to run. Power levels are changing folks. Now you see me, now you don’t.

And then the missing trans-warp drive came back from nowhere.

And then the Dark Goddess left a message on my answer machine.

And then the killer bees started swarming awake something fierce.

And then UFO Girl delivered a pizza module to my brain’s back door.

Vuvuzella in effect, yo.