What’s this I spy with my little eye? ‘Tis a man in a wee lifeboat. Soggy, nautical-looking gent with a captain’s hat on. Smoke rising lazily from the bowl of his pipe. Looks to have been out here a while…

Oh, yes… hello out there in cyberspace. It’s your old pal Bozo… I mean, Joe-zo. (Been at sea a little too long, me thinkst.) As you may have surmised from my previous utterance, we did manage to shove off last week, as the saying goes. Our dear friend Trevor James Constable cooked up a little nor’easter with that orgone generating device of his, and we were carried off to open water by a most congenial ocean breeze (12 knots, I believe — knot that that means anything to me). Around 1300 hours GMT, we crossed the tropic of Capricorn and headed into uncharted waters. Take it from someone who’s spent the better part of the last month on a desert island — if you’re going to be in uncharted waters, you’re better off keeping in motion rather than standing still. Word to the wise.

Now I don’t know how many of you have actually been to the Sargasso Sea or any of those other forgotten corners of the world that only seem to show up in naval lore, but let me tell you, friend — they exist. Oh, yes. Our nor’easter blew us into a fog-bound stretch of ocean. Aye, grim and foreboding it was, with the smell of decaying hulks hanging heavy in the air around us. Our pilot Marvin (my personal robot assistant) spotted an albatross — t’was then we knew we were in for a rough passage. Shiver me timbers, I’ll be a peg-legged polevaulter if we didn’t spy a small craft off the starboard side, its master a lone ship’s captain, his haggard features bearing a tale of many months at sea… or perhaps years. Aye, an eternity in the doldrums, perhaps. His pipe still lit, he gave a jaunty little dance… and I knew. T’was the captain of the Titanic. We had entered the dreaded Sea of the Weekly World News.

What lay ahead for us? Bat boy? Bigfoot? The space alien who plays presidential kingmaker? We had to get out of here fast. But nay, there was a strange dampening field at work, a peculiar miasma that kept the orgone generating machine from functioning as our weather-maker. If we wanted to avoid being trapped in supermarket checkout lines for all eternity, we needed to find an alternative source of power — one strong enough to push us clear through to the subcontinent. There was only one option: Big Zamboola. But would he do it? We formed an ad hoc delegation and brought the proposal to our beachball-sized planetoid companion. (He’s been hovering in the power core for the last week or two, pining for the Pleiades).

Well, it was more complicated than you might have imagined. Zamboola wasn’t hot on the idea. And as they say, you can lead a planet to water, but you can’t make him blow. (That didn’t come out the way I meant it to, but let it pass… let it pass….) See you in the checkout!

Ship ahoy, ship ahoy… who wants to marry a sailor boy? Washed ashore, washed ashore… How’s the rest of that cheesy Hollywood shanty go? Mitch? Trevor James? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)?

Okay, okay… so anti-Lincoln had a good idea — I admit it. Even a stopped clock, know what I mean? Besides, in my book, anybody who is anti the guy who booked this last tour has got to be something close to a freaking genius. So… I guess my book must be all wrong, because anti-Lincoln is no genius, but he is — and this is important — smarter than his opposite number. So, okay, we stuck the mast into the bubblegum machine on the roof of our spacecraft, and we threw together a makeshift sail from bits of discarded bedclothes. And like many a castaway before us, we attempted to set sail from this veil of tears know to us as Ben-Lostawhile island. Ship ahoy!

Reader’s note — “attempted” is the operative word in that last line. Sure, we made the sail unfurl and we climbed aboard, expectant of a rapid deliverance from the tropical tedium we had endured over the past weeks. And, well, nothing happened. Nothing. No wind. No freaking wind, here in typhoon alley. We beckoned to our resident quasi-meteorologist (Mitch Macaphee) and asked him what was what. He consulted his pocket weather satellite device and shook his head mournfully. We were in the midst of a kind of tropical doldrums — not even a lazy breeze to push us out to sea. This was the limit. As if it wasn’t bad enough that we should have to resort to wind propulsion to get us out of here… now wind turns out to be at a premium. (Perhaps Mitch was right about that coconut fuel idea. Or perhaps not.)

After a bit of head scratching, it was Trevor James who came up with an idea worth considering. How about training his patented orgone generating device directly on the main mast and turning up the volume to eleven? How’d that be? But was it practical? “Sure,” said Trevor James. “We just lash the O.G.D. to the hull and crank her up.” Mitch had some quibbles about leverage and the principles of thrust, but who the hell cares what he thinks, eh? The idea had more merit than chucking coconuts in a reactor chamber and tossing matches at them in hopes they would cause a mighty fire — one mighty enough to destroy Tabunga. (Tabunga? I’ve been on this island way too long…) So, okay, Mitch. Next time we want to stop the Tabunga, we’ll give you a call.

Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us this week. And now the man-sized tuber isn’t talking to me because of the Tabunga reference. A relative of his, apparently — who knew?

What’s this? Parchment? Could just be old vellum, you never know. Look for the watermark, that’s what Mitch always says. Kind of crisp and, well, fragrant, quite frankly. Good lord, throw that thing away.

Digging around for buried pirate maps of the greater Indian Ocean. What can I tell you? That’s what desperation will do to a man. Let me be the first to report that I am so sick and tired of this bloody island I could lay my head on an anvil and order the blacksmith to give me twenty of his best… that is, if there were a blacksmith in this deity-forsaken place. Yes, it’s that bad. Oh sure, I know what you’re thinking. Tropical paradise, isolated from the insanity of the civilized world. Peace and quiet, or as Elmer Fudd would say, “West and wewaxation at wast.” Yeah, well… that’s a lot of aloha hooey. I like civilization, damn it. I like indoor plumbing. I like having more than one dry cleaner to choose from. And just for the record, I hate fucking plantains! (And no, I haven’t been fucking them, so settle down… settle down….)

Another thing you have to remember about being stranded on a desert island — there’s nobody there but you. Oh, sure… we’ve got each other to keep us company, but frankly, I’ve been cooped up with these assholes for the last month and a half, bobbing around in a cramped spacecraft, and while I like everybody okay (except for Lincoln), enough is freaking enough, already. We’re all getting on one another’s nerves. Matt’s not talking to Mitch. Mitch is pissed off at Trevor James Constable. Trevor James has a mad on against John. John and anti-Lincoln have been exchanging ugly looks. Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been copping an attitude lately. (He’s spending most of his time with the stabilization control unit on the command deck of the spacecraft. Only intelligent conversation he can muster.) And even tubey has had a falling out with the Mango tree.

Wow. Listen to me, dissing Marvin. I have been here too long. So what’s holding us back? Well, a spacecraft with no engine, for one. Not likely to fly again soon, even taking into consideration the scientific “brain trust” we have on hand here on Ben-Lostawhile island. Just try making an ion-magnetic interstellar drive run on coconut shells. Just try. (Mitch did, and the result wasn’t pretty.) Believe it or not, the most practical suggestion came from anti-matter Lincoln — throw a mast and a mainsail on the top of the mock-jupiter 2 and push it into the water, then use some worm-eaten piece of driftwood (posi-Lincoln) as a rudder. Lash a rope to the rudder handle and call it “mother hubbard.” (Okay, that last suggestion wasn’t so constructive. But it was better than what Mitch came up with. Coconut reactor vessel, indeed!)

Right, then — our task is clear. Build us a mast and sew together some scraps for a broadsheet sail. And, if luck smiles down upon us, dig up a pirate map that’s useful as well as being rancid… i.e. one that shows us the way to the subcontinent. Dig, men, dig!