Back it up a bit. Bit more. Bit more. Good, good, that’s it. Now make it smaller… much smaller. No, not that way. I mean by material transmogrification. No, I did not make that up. Just ‘cuz you don’t know how…
Bickering, bickering. Seems like that’s all we ever do these days. That and sleep. No more oldies, though – we’re off that particular plantation, thanks to the somewhat blurry-minded ingenuity of one sFshzenKlyrn, the creature from Zenon and Big Green‘s perennial sit-in guitarist. How did we get him to use his enormous etheric brain? Elementary use of flapjacks – quite simple, really. Read last week’s blog entry. Finished with it? Take your time. How about now? Jeezus, you read slow! Too much Internet, young lady – it’s rotting your brain! Got it now? Good, good. That’s right – I threatened, and then I delivered on the threat. Our sFshzenKlyrn got a tall stack of buckwheat flapjacks just after I posted. Am I a liar? Huh?
What happened next? Well, I’m gon’ tell yuh. All hell broke loose, that’s what. Old sFshzenKlyrn reared up like an angry elephant, his 
eyes (or rather, protuberances that might be mistaken for eyes) flaring like torches, his voice a deafening lash of white sound, his pseudopods pounding the tarmac until it splintered like early winter’s ice on a marsh pond. Then something unusual happened (truth is, that’s what sFshzenKlyrn always does when he gets good grub – irks the shit out of the neighbors back home). Our Zenite friend floated off towards the remains of our space craft and began making himself useful. Quite unusual. Of course, he had to displace Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who had been mounting a quixotic effort to repair the ship by himself. (Trouble is, Marvin doesn’t have super powers. I should leave him outdoors in lighting storms more often. What doesn’t kill you gives you super powers.)
Strong word of advice – never let a Zenite guitarist work unattended, especially when he’s speeding along on flapjacks. We thought we’d take an hour or so to stroll into town and, I don’t know, watch the denizens of Cancri 55.3 go about their lives. We became particularly engrossed in a display of lava lamps in a shop window, and by the time we returned, sFshzenKlyrn had grown to the size of a large-ish house… or a small-ish office building. Predictable side-effect of the flapjacks, of course. Trouble was, he had been so focused on his work that he had actually busted 
through the ceiling bulkhead of the spacecraft, having ballooned to forty times his normal size. Still working though. Oh sure, he wrecked our ship again, but you gotta’ admit – he’s a professional. (And as you know, professionals come in all shapes and sizes.)
Okay, but listen… that isn’t even the weirdest thing that happened to us this week. Just this past Tuesday, Lincoln and anti-Lincoln somehow got themselves on the Jack Parr show. Very popular in this corner of the universe, along with other sixties pop culture items. Gotta ask how they managed it… when they get back from the Monterey Pops Festival…
like. In a way, it reminds me of that classic board game, Clue, where there are three groups of cards – suspects, weapons, and locations – and at the start of the game one card from each group is taken out and secreted away; ultimately the winner is the first one to surmise which cards they are. Colonel Mustard did it in the Parlor with the Candlestick Holder, right? Well, particularly on the Republican side, you’ve got maybe three issues that all the major candidates demagogue about, based on G.O.P. polling data – say, immigration, detainee abuse, and the broader “war on terror”. So Rudy, Mitt, Fred, and Huck range about trying to guess what the winning positions will be. (Hmmm…. the Undocumented Mexican Gardener did it in the Anbar Awakening Council with Stress Positions.) They try to outdo each other to the point where it gets pretty ugly. Thus are major national policies born. 
Mitt’s crib on this topic comes from Cofer Black, former C.I.A. official and head of counter terrorism at the Agency (for 3 years, not 30, as 
Circle Game? Done it. Keep the Ball Rollin’? God, yes. Lodi? Oh, Lord… yes. Fucking hell… Wait, I’ve got it. “Six drops of essence of terror. Five drops of sinister sauce!” No? Come on – it’s from 1964, damn it!
the first few days, worked through the bubble-gum cheese, and are truly into the dregs at this point. (As you can see, we’re starting to pull out the T.V. cartoon theme songs.)
than a mere compulsion. Some of you may remember what happened the last time he went on a major binge. If so, I need not remind you… but from the very earliest days of our association with the man from Zenon, the dreaded half-stack of buckwheat flappers has been like a gun to his oddly misshapen head. The first time we witnessed a sFshzenKlyrn bender, the space critter grew to the size of a fifty story building. That was after a rather large serving, I will admit – with the right kind of controls, we may be able to induce a pavlovian response out of him… perhaps induce him to use his enormous talents to get us off this musically-challenged cinder. And perhaps be incinerated in the process. Hmmm…