Sixteen. Who's Afraid of the Big Red Clown?

Sacred Reader:

This tale has taken so many mysterious detours and strange excursions in to the bizarre that I even hesitate to share with you what happened when I awoke, wet with perspiration, from the Wacky Wobbin dream. There on my pillow was a scrap of paper, upon which was scribbled the following:


You are invited to view a SnoozeTube video which has been uploaded to your PISS system. As I read those words, my PISS instantly played the following audio recording

Voice instructions for the mystery video:


(for you readers who may be reading this in the ancient time, splshsplsh is the newest version of video, short for splish-splash-watching-a-smash), descended from the antique forms such as flv, jpg, MP99M, wav, wag, tail, pck, nos, pop, zit, grs, burp, snk, peek, goto, slp, lit, baby, etc.

As I've always been a sucker for watching SnoozeTube videos on the big screen, and enjoying a bowl of popcorn and M&Ms, I chose to download the video from my cue to the JetSet and prepared to witness the next chapter of "Derby Does Zolly Hood."

I'm sorry to describe this to you because I know you've been through a lot with me on this fractured fairytale. You're as "in the dark" as I am about what happened to Keya, where my mom has gone, why are we lead to understand that the Polish Police are not a belligerant menace to society, who is Hassan DuBois DaFreakshow, why are Ryan and I all tangled up in this metaphorical mishap of mangled mystery and missing mortals and why don't more people think it was pretty cool that the Who sang "Who Are You" at SuperBowl XLIV.

But I fear if I don't share with you the content of the strange video that it will be impossible for us to emerge from this spiralling tale.

At first it was just bursts of color and meaningless symbols with extrordinary sounds and clips of audio arrangements which were too unusual to be described as music, but rhythmically very beautiful and pleasing. It put me in a zone very much like a Zol blast from the past and my senses were stimulated and heightened.

Then the voice...weird and hynotic, sometimes as if a baritone singer and sometimes like a scabby witch, it introduced itself to me,

"Derby, you've been a very bad boy."

"Oh Zol Almighty," I thought to myself, "here we go again with Crazy Characters from the Crypt!"

"Do you want me to give you a spankin?"

My eyes darted back and forth. I looked over my shoulder to see if someone was about to break down my front door. I put my hand under my rear and wondered. "I guess it depends who will do the pattling and what she'll be wearing..."

"Stop thinking disgusting thoughts you moron."

This time it was the voice of nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.










"I want you to build an arc."

Did anyone ever hear that ancient ancient recording of Bill Cosby do the whole Ark Schtick?

This is the LORD!:


Well that was exactly what the voice immitated. Just like Dr. Crosby from the 21st century.

"An arc?," I found myself asking outloud.

At that exact moment the video sequence lurched back to colors and flashing symbols and rhythmic sounds. If it hadn't been so deliciously soothing and fascinating I might describe it as controlled chaos. It seemed to attract my "self" right out of my own body and into the movie. I felt as if my essence was being swept along on a magical carnival ride and that even if I had wanted to resist (which I didn't) there wouldn't have been a darn thing I could have done about it.

I'm not sure how long the ride lasted but all of a sudden, the space between the JetSet and my sofa was just as defined, as before being cast adrift the swirling ferry, and there I was again, held captive with my eyes. The colors and the symbols faded once again and the voice returned,

"Not an ark but an arch."

This time the voice was like my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Harlan, who took us all on an AstroBus trip to Mexico. (He was a strange dude. I remember going in to class after school one day and he was conducting weird experiments in the lab. He got fired soon after our trip to Mexico and none of us ever heard what it was all about, but I think he was smuggling bathtub Zol appliances to sell on the Hack Market).

"Build an arch?," again catching myself whispering questions.

Next, upon my soul, I'm not exagerating what appeared on the screen. It was called a "commercial break" and a clown with big red lips and red hair and red striped sleeves and big red shoes was talking to strange, unearthly characters. They must have been from the future because we've never had anything as bizarre as these odd munchkin like people on our planet (as far as I know).

One was supposedly made of strips of fried potatoes and another was dressed as churned up beef (raised in attrocious and inhumane feeding operations) and pressed in to a frisbee like patty. They all danced around, happy as baby puppies on Christmas morning. They were singing and flitting around some golden arches and promised to rescue me from food boredom.

Thankfully, normal programming returned and the voice continued,

"The arch you need to build is a new passage way between your Zol compartment tucked just beneath your frontal lobe and to a land where all your questions will be answered. Now go take a bath, you filthy animal."

Then the JetSet flickered off, leaving me feeling dirty and alone.