DEAD ANGEL originally opened up every issue with an editorial section. Starting with # 46, RKF started jazzing it up with the exploits of various "members of the Hellfortress" -- characters (some fictional, some not) floating around the halls of the DEAD ANGEL offices, more or less. The Headless Sno-Cone Girl (aka Antu) was present from the beginning; CyberLieutenant 4-Track (later promoted to 8-Track, then 12-Track) and TASCAM-Girl showed up fairly early on, making their initial appearances in the review section. (You can see those reviews scattered around the review archive.) Once they started showing up regularly in the editorial section, though, things started getting out of hand in a hurry, and you can clearly see.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF THE POSTAL MAGGOT: [#46] ... They practically have a monopoly on the mail to begin with and they can't even get the mail to me without losing half of it, and they think their shitty service mandates being paid twice as much for it? Do they need the $$$ that bad? Have the going prices on blow jobs in Washington from freshly-plucked Capitol Hill pages gotten THAT expensive? It's so obnoxious that i... i... (notices TASCAM-Girl and Cyberlieutenant 12-Track standing in the mike room with him) Hey, how'd you get in here?

TG: We walked in.

TMU: How? The door's locked.

C12 (looking distressed): Um, sir, your maggotship, i forget your actual title... um... the door should be referred to in past tense. I know how you care deeply about proper grammar, so I felt the, ah, need to point this out.

TMU (puzzled): What the fuck are you talking about?

TG: He's trying to tell you that I blew the door up, shithead. There is no more door. The door is toast.

TMU: Dammit, how many times have i told you to hold your training exercises on the Third Level?

TG (suavely inserting the barrel of a .245 Wilmington Revolving Rotomagnum with Extended Magazine under his nose): It wasn't an exercise, maggot. We're taking over. I'm running this show now.

TMU (rolling his eyes): Aw, not again. Abner, why didn't you talk her out of this? I don't have time for this. It hasn't worked out for you the last thirteen times you've tried to revolt and seize the Fortress by force, so what makes you think it's gonna work now? Gawd, to this day i have no idea how the Headless Sno-Cone Girl talked me into hiring you two clowns. If i'd had any idea what Henriette's twitchy trigger finger was going to cost me, i don't care how many years she spent in the same unit with Henriette, i would have told her to find somebody else. Do you know that fully 27% of the Hellfortress annual budget is now taken up by reparations to individuals and foreign nations for all the damage she's done? The United States may have to go to war over what she did to that, where is it, that third-world country... you know which one i'm talking about, dammit....

C12: You mean Fluvonia, sir.

TMU: Whatever! The point is Henriette burned the whole country to the ground and now they're pissed, okay? Government leaders tend to object to that sort of thing, you know. Blowing up embassies or castles or cities or even people, that's one thing, but turning the entire country into Third World Flambe... that tends to bother them, dammit. And they may not have any missiles left now that their whole country looks like barbequed chicken, but their pals do. If we go to war with the entire Third World over this, Henriette, your performance review tanks, you know what i mean?

TG: Will you shut the hell up? For a maggot, you sure blab a lot.

TMU: Abner, get her out of here before i fire her, okay?

C12 (sighing): Sir, with all due respect, I am afraid I must tell you that not only is she absolutely serious, she has my sympathies. We are taking over the Hellfortress and there is not much you can do about it, I'm afraid.

TMU: All right, that's it. I'm calling her to come kick your ass right now. You'd think you'd learn. Every other month or so, you stage a revolt, come in here and make half-assed demands, threaten to throw me down the well, and then i snap my fingers, the Headless Sno-Cone Girl appears, and she wipes the floor up with you. With her umpteen levels of military and martial arts training, you know as well as i do that she could enslave the entire Chinese Red Army and come back with them fixing her dim sum for lunch. She'll make crab meat out of you two one more time and then i'll fire you both. Understand?

TG (laughing): Give it up, you pathetic sex freak. You're going down in the well and i'm going to pee on your head just for laughs.

TMU (snapping fingers to summon the Headless Sno-Cone Girl): All right, i've wasted about as much time as i'm going to on this....

[TG and C12 wait, tapping their feet, as TMU's increasingly frantic finger-snapping brings no sign of the Headless Sno-Cone Girl. Time passes. The sun grows cold. TMU suddenly begins to sweat, somehow sensing pure uncertain doom just around the corner.]

TG (to C12): I told you he'd forgotten. You owe me twenty bucks. Pay up, stiff boy.

TMU (still snapping away): Uh... forgotten what?

C12: That you let the Headless Sno-Cone Girl go on a two-week vacation back to Japan to visit her sister Pym. Just a few days ago, in fact.

TMU (frozen, eyes wide with sudden flood of memory): Uh... I did? Oh, that... that's right. I... did. Oh shit.

TG (digging the barrel of the gun deeper into TMU's face): That's right, weasel-boy. And now you are toast.

MUCH LATER: All is quiet within the bowels of the Hellfortress, save for the frenzied volley of curses occasionally rising from the incinerator well sunken into the floor of the Command Room. The well is the useless leftover of a failed experiment, occasionally used now from time to time for holding prisoners. Its current occupant is the Moon Unit. TG and C12 ignore him as best they can while rooting through the cabinets and files.

C12 (looking at a ledger with great interest): So that's how much she spends on latexwear each annum. Oh my. They could have bought a congressman for that kind of money. Would have been a wiser investment, really.

TG (squirting lighter fluid in a drawer full of confidential papers): Fuck that, have you found anything important about her? Like, for instance, what the hell her name is? I've known her for ten years and and actually worked for her for five and even I don't know what it is. (drops match in drawer) Whoo, look at them go! Yee haw!

C12: In fact, I have. Her personnel file's right here.

TG (looking): Wow, no wonder she doesn't want anybody to know her name. I wouldn't either if it were that.

TMU (from the well): Hey, does it say in there what happened to her head? I'd really like to know. You can't imagine how strange it is to have a headless administrative assistant and not even know what happened to her fucking head....

TG: Oh, that's all here. In detail. It's an amazing story. Too bad you'll never know it. (She holds the file and her lighter over the well opening, laughing as TMU screams when she sets it on fire.)

TMU: NO! NO!

TG: You'll never know now, you maggot.... (shakes ashes onto his head)

C12 (annoyed): If you're quite through, I'd like to ask a question.

TG: What do you want now?

C12: What, exactly, are we doing about the issue? There's an entire lengthy interview to present, CDs to review, who knows what else... who's going to take care of all that?

TG: We are. It's a proven moneymaker; now it'll make money for us. To fund the Resistance. (glances at the well) The less said about that right now, the better. At any rate, i figure that if this slack-jawed monkey boy down there can run the ezine even while the Headless Sno-Cone Girl is out of town, we shouldn't have too much trouble with it, right?

TMU: Man, when the Headless Sno-Cone Girl gets back i'm going to have her beat your wide ass while i watch, devil woman!

C12: She won't be coming back, you fool. We have agents in the field who are working even as we speak to terminate her. They expect to make contact any moment now, after which your only hope for salvation will be buried in a shallow grave somewhere in Japan.

TMU (outraged): So what happens to me, then? 

C12: Oh, we'll be selling you into slavery, i'm afraid. I'm really terribly sorry about that -- it was Henriette's idea, really --

TG: We made a deal with the devil himself and soon you'll be cleaning the toilets in Hell's worst demon biker bar. And it's a really big bar. And you'll only have a toothbrush. You won't believe what the floors look like there. I wish I could be there to see it myself.

TMU: But you don't have the faintest idea how to run this place! The most you've ever done is offer comments in the review section and now you want it all? You don't even know what to do with it!

TG: Nonsense, pig-fucker. All we have to do is answer all this mail and comment on all these notes you've left on this table... my God, where'd you learn to write Swahili? (squints at card) Well, maybe that can be, um, Abner's job. We can read the mail and conduct interrogations --

C12 (looking up from mail pile): That's interviews, dearheart. You can't beat on the band members with rubber hoses the way you do with political prisoners. I'm afraid you'll have to give that up. At least in public, anyway.

TG: Damn! Ah well.... Anyway, we can do this stuff. It's not that hard.

TMU: You don't even know how to rant properly! There's no way you can run this place! My God, you're barely comptetent to blow things up, you have all the introspection of a wave of cholera, and your IQ... well, i've seen your test scores....

TG: I don't want to hear it! (looks at C12) So how's the mail coming?

C12 (looking at card): Slim pickings. Ah, here's an interesting one. Or peculiar, at least. From a fellow by the name of Matthew Silver, who has made a film about toilets and god.

TG: Toilets and God?

C12: Exactly! It's a parody of late-night informercials selling religion. The idea of selling religion as a product, satire, you know, that sort of thing. Those who dare can watch the film at http://www.toiletgod.com .

TMU (from the well): Well, you can try to watch it. I tried and the URL didn't work, but my browser's currently fucked lately, so it could just be my problem.

TG (screaming): SHUT UP! Goddamn it, we're in charge here now, not you! So shut your fucking face, you worm!

TMU: I'm telling you, when i get out of here you're going to be very, very sorry, you grenade-tossing slut....

(TG drops tear gas canister down the well and laughs with jolly malice at the enraged sounds of TMU heaving his lunch across the well walls.)

TMU: You... you evil bitch! (hack, gasp) Just for that i'm... i'm... (wheeze) i'm cancelling your subscription to TERRORIST QUARTERLY and BLACK MARKET ORDNANCE! Buy your own goddamn catalogs from now on! (prolonged bout of heaving)

TG (sliding into place the well cover): Come on, let's get this show on the road. We'll figure out what to do with this idjit later. Now, uh, what are we supposed to be doing here? What's the plan?

C12 (studying Procedures Manual): At this point I believe we're supposed to be ranting. However, as the head maggot pointed out, we are both ... well, I'm ill-suited for it. I'm not so sure about you. Will you put that thing down? Thank you.... I'd suggest we skip the ranting, actually, and go directly into the interview.

TG: He's actually doing interviews again?

C12: Apparently. He and the members of Abunai! are currently scheduled to meet shortly in the Main Conference Room on the Third Level for an in-depth interview. Given that our deposed leader and main interviewer is sitting in the well, and neither of us have any knowledge whatsoever of the band in question, I'm not quite sure how we're going to conduct this interview, either.

TG (fiddling with lots of knobs on the immense Command Panel of Remote-Controlled Doom): Oh, that won't be a problem. I'll dial up the Teleporter and cross it over with the Remote-O-Tron to send his essence across the video spectrum as a redline product of the hallucination engine and simultaneously beam the band to Bonipal Witt when they arrive. That way they'll be able to conduct the interview without physical contact. Given the Moon Unit's history and the band's roots in psychedelics, there's a good possibility they'll all take it to be a flashback anyway.

C12: Um... won't exposing them to Bonipal Witt's sun transform them into cats, the same way it does without everyone else there?

TG: It'll just add authenticity to the hallucination, won't it? (diabolical laughter as she turns the dials all to the right and the control panel begins to shake....)

PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF: [#47] For those of you arriving late to the party, let us recap just what happened in the previous issue. While going about his business, trying to get the issue out on time as usual, the Moon Unit was rudely captured by CyberLieutenant 12-Track and TASCAM-Girl and thrown down an unused well in the Command Center. A helpless captive to their cruel whim, he was forced to listen in ass-shaking rage as they detailed their plan to seize control of the Hellfortress and enact a plan for world domination. They were able to do this only because the Headless Sno-Cone Girl had taken a rare vacation to her native Japan. As the dynamic revolutionary duo were farting around peeking at confidential papers and the like, the Moon Unit was somehow able to send a message for help to an army of death robots, who proceeded to do battle with the upstarts. After much firepower, destruction, and bungled reviews, the duo finished off all the robots and made it to the top of the Hellfortress, only to see the Sno-Copter heading toward them over the ice, a clear sign that their plans to have the Headless Sno-Cone Girl snuffed were a tragic failure.

We rejoin them now, as the helicopter prepares to land, while C12 and TG scramble madly for safety....

[Cue the incoming sound of rotor blades]

C12 (paralyzed with fear): AAAAIIEEEE! We are DOOMED! I can feel the shit running down my pants and into my boots already!

TG: All the more reason to haul ass, hoss. Come on, let's go, let's go, let's GO! [takes off running, gun drawn]

[As they scramble down the stairs and back into the Hellfortress, the Sno-Copter lands. As the rotor blades slowly come to a halt, the helicopter door opens and four figures emerge, two women -- one headless -- and two tall, long-haired men dressed identically in black jeans, black shirts, and black shades. These guests would be the Headless Sno-Cone Girl, her pink-haired sister Pym, and M--w and M--a, mysterious and unnameable agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E.]

Pym: My God, what is that awful smell?

M--w: That, my vision of loveliness, is the raw, stinking reek of cordite. It would seem that mischief has taken place during your sister's absence.

THS-CG (scribbling on her notepad): Look at all these shell casings. Obviously TASCAM-Girl has been running amok. Now it all makes sense -- she and that fat bastard CyberLieutenant 12-Track must have sent the army of maggots who tried to assassinate me. They must have been waiting all this time to attempt to take over the Hellfortress. A pity their miserable little plan failed, isn't it?

Pym (reading note): Wow, I never knew your handwriting was so bad. Are you taking methamphetamines again? [THS-CG jerks the pad away in anger and gives her the finger]

M--a (as they descend the stairs and enter the Hellfortress): Ah, such gaping holes....

M--w: And so many metallic robots that slumber in electronic death, their shells blown out by high-caliber weapon fire! Oh, the ecstasy -- I can only imagine the volume levels that must have been present....

THS-CG (scribbling): Mein Gott, I leave for a few days and look what happens.

Pym: Look at this mess in the Command Center. It looks like they actually set the place on fire --

[A ragged voice howls from deep inside the well] HEY! HEY! LET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!

Pym (peering down the hole): Wow, you look like shit. Are you the Moon Unit?

TMU: Yes! Those evil shits hijacked the Hellfortress and threw me down here! I sent the death robots after them and they blew everything up! The cleaning bills will be immense! Now get me OUT OF HERE!

M--w: It will not be a problem. [whips out scary-looking little black box] I just happen to have upon my person a gravitational inverted phase disruptor with advanced positron filtering. It will free him from his tawdry prison. I must warn you all to stand back, for it is most loud....

[He flips the switch and the room fills up with shrieking, roaring waves of sound. As Pym and THS-CG cringe in a corner with their hands over their ears, he points the device at the well, and the powerful waves of sound reverberate in the well, floating the Moon Unit to the surface.]

TMU (dusting himself off): Ahhhh, the place looks even worse than I imagined. I'm docking their pay into the next century. If I don't kill them first. So, uh, why did two agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E. come back with you? And why is your sister here?

THS-CG (writing): There was an attempt on my life. I was able to defeat the army without breaking a sweat, but the Ministry of Sound officials were so concerned that they insisted M--w and M--a accompany me back home.

TMU: And, uh, Pym?

Pym: I didn't have anything better to do with my time. The club scene has gotten really boring.

TMU: I see. That's a nice leather jacket, by the way.

Pym: Thanks.

TMU (turning to the agents): So, uh, do you guys have some other reason for being here? I can't imagine that Juntaro let you go without giving you something else to do....

M--w: I come in search of the pulse demon.

M--a: And I, my runtlike benefactor, have descended upon your primal fortress to relieve the life essence of that being which is known as Madame Onna.

M--w: Onan? As in the mysterious human from the Bible who dared spite the will of God Almighty by shooting forth the new gold and spilling his seed across the marble stairs of the temple of deliverance?

M--a: No, my noise-loving friend. You are mistaken. It is Madame Onna I seek -- demon goddess of the sine wave, destroyer of illicit planetary orbits, elliptical yet bewitching she-goddess of the ass-shaking psychomatic hydroponic vulpine lipid death groove. She lies in wait beneath the stairway of the celestial heavens, her dark eyes rolled upwards in simulation of divine passage through the doorway of death, her long flowing kimono drenched in the blood of a thousand lusty sycophants -- I tell you she LIVES! Her cruel smile only hints at the depths of depravity of which only she is capable! The robot devil doll of Circle 69 was not able to destroy her! The steel kiss of the bushido blade handed down by generations of samurai was not sufficient to sever her head from her treacherous body! I tell you she is the queen of digital immolation, hellspawn of the frozen ice god, keeper of the space ritual, and she will not rest unless she has enslaved all who walk this earth in her demonic quest for the ultimate orgasm! But she trembles with fear now, for I am on her case! By all that is righteous, in the name of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E., to avenge the honor of the Emperor, to protect the safety and well-being of all those who sleep each night in the land of the rising sun, I have sworn not to rest until her heavy ass is clenched firmly in my hands! Don't let it rest on the president's desk! Rock the house! Rock the house, I say!

M-w: Oh, I see. My mistake, then.

Pym (rolling eyes): See what kind of bullshit we've been putting up with all the way over here?

TMU: Um, what makes you guys think that Madame Onna is here, anyway?

M--a: It is written in the stars. Before leaving our homeland I performed the vestal spacy ritual and the stars spoke to me. They told me that the spirit of Onna rests in the walls of your fortress. Naturally, I will not be able to leave until I have rooted out her spirit and atomized it with one of my many top-secret devices of noise and destruction.

M--w: And I, of course, must travel with him, for we are a team. A dynamic duo, if you will.

TMU: Oh, great. Now instead of two lunatics on hand, I have four. And an additional guest. I sure hope we have enough food in the pantry....

[THS-CG pushes many buttons on what's left of the Command Center Console and scribbles a reply] Actually, it looks like the pantry was vaporized. I may have to go shopping for more food.

TMU (eyes wild): What? WHAT? Are you -- are you saying that my giant stash of Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs is GONE? Tell me you're lying!

Pym: Afraid not.

TMU: Those shit-eating goatfuckers! I'll string them up by their ankles and beat them with the bodies of naked cheerleaders! Aw, why does this horrible shit always have to happen to me?

Pym: Guess you were born under a bad sign.

TMU: And you guys -- what do you fine agents of noise and destruction have to say about this turn of events?

M--w (unfolding small square of origami rice paper): I am so touched, yes, to be in the land of the brave, the free, and the Nike swoosh, that as our helicopter gently ruptured the air around as in flight, I composed this small death haiku in honor of our arrival. I would like now, if I may, to read it for you.

M--a: Please.

M--w: Yes, then. Here it is:

M--a: It is excellent! May I counter with one of my own, then?

M--w: But of course.

M--a: It appears, then, an improvisation:

Pym: Are you guys about done?

TMU: You know, at some point we might actually, uh, want to start doing something about the issue....

THS-CG (scribbling madly): Pym has a talent you may be interested in --

TMU (eyeing Pym's ample curves): Oh, I'll bet she does.

THS-CG: You grotesque pig! That's my sister you're talking about!

TMU: I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to insinuate that her figure was any better than yours....

Pym: Wow, even under the influence of powerful serotonin medication he's still horny all the time. Is it even safe to let him out in public?

THS-CG: Are you gonna let me fucking finish my sentence or what?

TMU: Sure, sure, go ahead... you were saying?

THS-CG: I was going to tell you that Pym can communicate with the dead.

TMU (doesn't believe): Oh sure. And I'm going to crawl into bed tonight with Christy Canyon and Roxanne Hall.

Pym: It's true! Well, I don't know about that part, but talking to the dead, sure. I've been able to to do it ever since I graduated from fashion school.

TMU: Fashion school? They teach you how to talk to dead people in fashion school?

Pym: It was an elective.

TMU (holding his head): Oh, I have a headache now.... Look, if you can really talk to the dead, then how about interviewing Sun Ra? We seem to have gotten off track on interviews and stuff....

Pym (thinking): I can do that. But I'll have to go to Saturn. Can I borrow your Hyperintegrated Dynamic Cold Fusion Plasma Generator and hurl my ions out to Saturn? I've always wanted to see the rings anyway....

TMU (waving impatiently): Sure, sure, I don't care. Whatever. And while you're at it, take these two poetry-spouting noise deviants with you (waves at M--a and M--w). Your sister and I have business to deal with.

THS-CG (who would arch her eyebrows if she had a head): Really? Such as?

TMU: Finding those godforsaken maggots who blew up my Hellfortress and tying them to a table and feeding them a hefty bag of roach kibble while torturing them slowly with hot smoking irons.

[As the Moon Unit shambles off, muttering about roach kibble and dynamite, they all follow except for Pym, who turns to the Command Center's intimidating control panel and begins flipping switches. Soon ion generators hum into life and she begins to feel her molecules vibrate....]

PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF: [#48] After much chasing and excitement, The Moon Unit was finally able to corral TASCAM-Girl and Cyberlieutenant 12-Track and force them to assist in "remodeling" the Hellfortress. We join them now, in the immense lobby of the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice, where the two sullen superagents sit on really tall ladders repairing the ceiling as The Moon Unit "supervises" from below, where Pym, M-a, and M-w are busy repainting the walls and filling the numerous bullet holes with putty.

Pym (wildly splashing paint on the walls): Who picked this hideous shade of blue? Was it my sister? 

M-w: I believe it was, yes.

Pym: Would someone like to tell me why we left the choice of paint colors to someone who doesn't have eyes, or a head for that matter?

M-a: It does seem that perhaps an error was made. (ponders) Do you suppose that when they named this color "eggshell blue" they really meant "the blue of decomposing and maggot-ridden flesh," by chance?

TG (legs swinging from her perch on the ladder): It can't be any worse than what she picked for the bathrooms. Have you seen that? Gawd....

C12: Are those the rooms scheduled to be painted in that yellowish color that vaguely resembles dried vomit?

TG: Yes indeed. (rolls another layer of paper across the ceiling) Funny, I don't remember this ceiling being quite so lumpy and cracked....

Pym: It probably wasn't before you emptied several rounds from the Hyperspasmolytic Freem Gun into it.

C12: So where is your sister, by the way?

Pym: Buying more paint, I think.

TG: Oh, I'm very afraid now....

M-w: So out of curiosity, what is the plan for this fine issue?

TG: Who the fuck knows? The Moon Unit's been so preoccupied for the past two months that everything is behind schedule and he's basically winging it....

Pym: Let's not forget to assign some of the blame to the goat-children at EV1, whose server crapped out, after which they spent two weeks scratching their heads over it, only to take everything offline and erase it all. You should have heard The Moon Unit while he was having to rebuild the whole site....

TG: I did hear him, who can sleep through all that swearing?

TMU (waving for them to hush): Chill your chatter for a minute, will you? I have to get things rolling here.... (addressing the audience) Ah, such an exciting time we have for you this issue! We're just bursting with excitement at all the things we have in store -- a cornucopia of reviews, some pithy observations, and then it will be time to... time to... (turns page over and over again) to, uh, um... (looks around helplessly) to... to... ALL RIGHT, WHERE'S THE REST OF MY NOTES, DAMMIT?

TG: Up here, you cranky little midget. (points to patching on the ceiling) I used it to seal this crack. I can try prying it out of the glue if you want....

TMU: No, no, that won't be necessary. How are you coming on fixing those holes, by the way?

TG: Well... (eyes dart nervously)

TMU: Yes?

TG: It's going okay.

TMU: How many holes have you filled?

TG: Um, three.

TMU (outraged): Three? THREE? You've been working for two hours and you've only filled THREE HOLES? Mein gott, do you think you're a union employee or something?

C12: She's been too busy fantasizing about all her confiscated weapons to pay attention to her work.

TG: Speaking of which, when can I have my guns back? They're lonely... I can hear them calling to me from the lockup... don't look at me like that, it's true.

TMU: And you have the balls to claim I'm weird.

Pym (handing him flimsy paper): Hey, look what just came in over the fax machine. Looks like an article from THE NATION about the leader of the free world...

TMU (snatching paper from her hand with wild excitement): THE NATION is talking about Lori S. from Acid King?!?!

Pym (rolling eyes): Not that leader, you fool -- the President.

TMU: Oh, him. Well, if you say so.... (reads) Huh, this is kind of humorous.

TG: So are you going to fill us in, maggot man?

TMU (ignoring her): Interesting. Normally I figure those perverts at the NATION to be a bunch of pantywaist nancy-boys, but I actually sort of agree with what they had to say lately about da Prez. This guy Miller pinpoints exactly what I've never liked about Bush, and why he's always vaguely worried me; he's a crafty li'l weasel. He's not only smarter than he looks, he's smarter than he WANTS to look. I think he goes out of his way to come across like a country bumpkin or something. I think he long ago caught onto the advantages of appealing to the cult of mediocrity. He's like a politician from an Ayn Rand novel, distracting the public with an aw-shucks, happy-go-lucky persona while sharpening the political knives out of the public eye. The whole Bush clan strikes me as a bunch of devious, brittle backbiters, but they know how to follow the money and how to turn a potential liability into a dazzling political asset.

TG: Yes, but you're a paranoid fanatic. How do we know it's not just you? You think just about everybody in politics is a devious weasel.

Pym: Careful, you'll get him started on Condit....

C12: Or that Democratic senator in Connecticut who just got busted and sent to the pokey for a whole string of DWIs....

M-a: Or perhaps he will feel the need to expound upon the surreal observations of that Democratic senator who recently opened the daily invocation in the House by claiming to have spoken to Chandra Levy from beyond the grave....

Pym: Is all of that true?

M-w: Every bit as true as the fact that El Shrub and his political assassin Mechanical Man Cheney have between them five arrests....

Pym: Really? What for? Were they as exciting as Christian Slater's arrest a while back?

M-a (consulting PalmPilot Web Surf-O-Matic): It would appear that Mechanical Man Cheney fell prey to two DWIs of his own during his flaming youth. Of course, everyone knows now about El Shrub's 1976 DWI, but few are also aware that during his drunken frat-boy days at Princeton he was once arrested for stealing a Christmas decoration from a door, and once for brawling at a Princeton football game.

TG: All right! The two-fisted fightin' Shrub! Maybe he's got more balls than I thought....

Pym: How many times have his lovely daughters been arrested?

M-a: Ah, several. We have here... let's see... offenses for underage drinking... use of false ID for same... Jenna was thrown out of a club for nearly inciting a riot while the band played... these young ladies know how to get down, obviously....

C12: I can certainly see why our fearless leader views the Bush camp with a somewhat jaundiced eye.

Pym: Their deviousness certainly pales by comparison to Burger Bill's, though. We must give credit where credit is due: Burger Bill and his lovely silverware-grabbing wife were High Potentates of Deviousness while renting out the White House for crack parties....

TMU: You know what devious is? Remember when the news of Bush's DWI was "leaked" to the media by someone squarely in Gore's camp just a week or so before the election? It looked like a really blantant attempt by Gore's people to go in at the last minute with a way to taint Bush as people were on the way to the polls, essentially. Overall, it kind of made Gore's side look sleazy, right? Well, I've always been 3/4 convinced that Bush's camp leaked it themselves. because it's never made sense. The whole thing hinges on the idea that Bush's DWI was a big secret that Gore's people stumbled across, but let's get real. The man's been a public figure for a couple of decades, his DWI's a matter of public record, and you're going to seriously have me believe NOBODY knew about it? Hell, Bush was already known when he got the DWI; I think Bush Sr. may have even been President then. And in this day and age when a known drunk is running for Prez, nobody out of all these crackerjack newspapers and magazines thinks to go to the places he's lived and look at the DWI records?

M--a (rolling his eyes): Perhaps it is merely a coincidence, do you not think?

TMU: Nope, i don't buy it.

M--w: I think perhaps the bullet-happy woman in the disturbingly tight latex skirt is correct: you are a paranoid fanatic.

TMU (ignoring him) Which leads to the more interesting conclusion: that people in the political arena, and almost certainly Gore's people, knew about the DWI from the beginning of the campaign... yet didn't elect to play it.

Pym (growing interested in spite of herself): Why not?

TMU: I think it might be because the Bush family, like an octopus, has its tentacles everywhere, particularly in the political arena, and they've all known for being really vindictive. They've got a pretty serious mean streak. I figure most of them were looking at their card and thinking "Yeah, I could play this, and if Bush wins anyway I might as well quit politics (or the news, or whatever)." Because there's no doubt in my mind Bush would step up to the plate to ruin anyone who dragged something out of his closet like that.

Pym: Maybe what happened was that Bush's camp leaked the story and then sat back and let the Republican press machine whip it into a frenzy --" look at those evil Gore people, slinging mud right up to election day!" -- to make Gore look bad. Think of it this way: what did he have to lose? When the news broke, it's not like it was "news" -- more like, "Oh, that's no surprise." And it happened *before* he quit drinking, so he could always point to it as one of the reasons he quit. Plus he got the opportunity to drag his family (and theoretically the public's sympathy) into it by claiming he'd remained mum so his daughters would be spared the trauma of knowing about their dad's drunken past.

TMU (nodding): That kind of thinking is what I associate with Bush. More and more he spooks me. I don't know that Gore would have been any better (he's every bit a champion in the weasel department, but for different reasons), butat least Gore wasn't a thin-skinned, vindictive little ferret.

TG: Gotta admit, I think the Bush administration's biggest PR triumph is not making Bush look like a harmless monkey on a stick, but in making his wife look like the new June Cleaver. Laura comes out in color-coordinated outfits and acts like the domesticated housewife, all fluff and family values, and everybody's like, "Oooo, she's NOTHING like Hillary!" But if you look at her closely and listen to her carefully, you'll find she's no meek jellyfish -- you threaten her family on any level and she'll just smile away while she reaches for the cleaver and then plants it in your forehead.

TMU: All these magazines and papers turning her daughters into front-page news over a couple of margaritas are people who'd best hope they never need a favor from the Bushes, particularly Laura. She comes across at first glance like a Stepford wife -- I keep waiting for her to burst out shouting, "You're the champ, Frank!" -- but I think she's something more sinister than that. I think in private she's another Hillary, but she's just much better at tweaking her public masses than any of the Clintons ever will be

Pym: You could be right.

TG: You could also be a goddamned lunatic.

C12: I'd go with the latter theory, myself.

TMU: I suppose this means I won't get to go to the submarine races with Jenna....

Pym (looking at script): Hey, why is the interview all inked out?

TMU: Because, um, well, see, it's like this.. um... um... (ponders how to fabricate a really big lie)

Pym: I though the really tall Canadian guy was gonna contribute a Spickle interview or something.

TMU: Well, he was, but... uh, he was... um... he was kidnapped by aliens. Brain-eating aliens! That's it! Yes! Brain-eating, soul-munching, seven-lobed monstrosities, the hellspawn of Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth, who spirited him away and are dining on his kidneys even as we speak!

N/A (over loudspeaker): Don't believe him, he's lying. It isn't here because it still needs editing, okay? We'll have it in the next issue.

TG: Don't worry, we all know the runt's every word is pure bullshit. He's just babbling again.

TMU (to TG): Are you finished patching the ceiling?

TG: Not even close, you fawning little shit.

TMU: THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP! I don't know why I put up with this.... (snatches script from Pym) I think I'm gonna do some creative editing here. I don't like this part here... or here... who put this in? Argh, what horrible, soul-stealing crap.... (scribbles wildly, tosses pages out at random) Now, let's see... how about... aaaaah, this....

[The lobby is filled with the sound of celestial guitars playing in slow motion, a choir of dissonance so lovely and hair-raising that everyone in the room except the Moon Unit cringes. As the teeth-grinding sound increases in volume, a golden staircase descends from the ceiling and from out of nowhere, Bree Turner comes down dressed in shorts and a half-shirt so microscopic that to see them would technically require the services of an electron microscope. A baking inferno of lust, she reaches the bottom of the stairs and reaches out one hand to The Moon Unit.]

BT: O precious Moon Unit... take me. I am yours. Plunge your Expanding Sidewinder into my every available orifice at will....

Pym: Oh, right... RIGHT... sure, like this has any bearing on reality at all....

M-a: Perhaps we should seriously be thinking about getting the Moon Unit laid so he will stop being so fixated on Bree Turner.

M-w: I suspect, my noise-loving friend, that he is beyond our help. Perhaps instead we should beat him about the head and shoulders and make off with the lovely Bree and torture her with meat forks and record her dire wails of pain for use in a future noise recording.

M-a (considering): Yes, yes, this could be a plan....

TG: Is that Jenna Bush right behind her? Holding a half-empty bottle of Absolut?

C12 (nervously): Tell me, does the Hellfortress have adequate legal representation?

TG: Only if you count Fat Bob's House of Legal Sleaze. Have you ever met the guy? He has terrible taste in clothes and he needs a better deodorant. You'd think someone so filthy rich could afford something better than polyester slacks, wouldn't you?

Pym (holding her head in her hands): My mother warned me there would be days like this. Can we, uh, get on with the rest of the issue now?

TMU: Uh, sure. Look, you guys can, uh, run things while I take Bree and, um, show her how the Sadotronic Orgasm Inducer works....

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, Main Library of the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice [# 49] :  [We fade in to a part of the Hellfortress we haven't seen before: the Main Library. Located at the far west of the Research WIng, this towering repository of knowledge -- much of it forbidden in many countries -- is lined with endless shelves that reach to the ceiling, a staggering cornucopia of knowledge from every source imaginable. Rumors that the missing Watergate tapes and the real findings of the Warren Commission can be found among its archives have so far proven unfounded; however, given that the Hellfortress hasn't had a proper librarian since the previous one quit over issues arising from a wee bondage mishap, anything is possible. Certainly there's more than enough information overflowing from the shelves to ever properly read and categorize. Most first-time visitors to the Library, though, are impressed by the view of the arctic tundra outside to pay attention to the shelves at first. The library's enormous bay windows face out across an apparently endless plain of white fading to black, a featureless landscape dotted in the distance with glaciers. Brilliant but forbidding pink and gray storm clouds rise in columns across the horizon that fades out to the sea. Against this bleak panorama we see the Moon Unit, standing before the windows looking most disturbed. Across the room, images of terror and carnage flicker repeatedly on the wall screen television.]

TMU: For once the Moon Unit is speechless. He refers you, instead, to these words in THE ONION, which are better than anything else the Moon Unit is going to come up with. Actually, the entire September 26 edition is worth your time....

TASCAM-Girl: Maybe you're speechless, but I'm not. (double-cocks her Freefloating Miasma-Powered Handheld Neutron Evaporator) Bin Laden... tonight... in whatever dung-infested, moth-eaten tent you're sleeping in... whatever disease-ridden, lice-encrusted, undeveloped third-world nation you're hiding in... oh yeah...

M-a: Bring it on!

M-w: That third world nation! (beating on bongos)

T-G: No matter where you are -- mountain high!

M-a: Mountain high!

T-G: Or mountain low!

M-w: Mountain low! (trades bongos for sax)

T-G: Oh yeah motherfucker...

M-a: RIght on sister!

M-w! You tell that motherfucker! You tell him where to take it to the bank!

T-G: Yeah motherfucker, when you lay your sweaty little head down on that scum-encrusted pillow in your tent tonight, as those guards twitch outside your tent, knowing they're responsible for your safety and also knowing that the entire fucking world is looking for you... yeah...

M-a: Tell it!

M-w: You one righteous bitch, sister!

T-G: I just want you to know... as you drift off to sleep....

M-w: Bring it on home!

T-G: Osama... your ass is mine.

[... everybody breaks out into song and dance as strobe lights flash hither and yon...]

TMU (waving arms wildly): Hey! HEY! You up there, kill the lights! All of you, stop that shit RIGHT NOW!

C12: But, ah... won't that eat into the budget?

TMU: Budget? What budget? What the fuck are you talking about?

C12: The video budget. Isn't this a remake of Michael Jackson's "Bad"?

TMU (shaking head): No. Nope. No. This is the real deal.

TG (blinking): What do you mean, the real deal?

TMU: They really did it. The dumb fucks hijacked some jets and rammed the World Trade Center. It's not a movie.

T-G: You mean this is for real and not just another one of your dumb-ass surreal scripts?

TMU: I'm afraid so. For once we can only wish it were one of my stupid attempts at surrealism.

C12 (stupefied): What on earth would possess them to do such a foolish thing?

TMU: Apparently they don't like us. They also apparently they have forgotten what we did to Japan and Vietnam. The winds of change are upon us and they smell like cordite....

FAST FORWARD TO END OF OCTOBER:

Pym: Man, it sure is quiet around here with my sister and those two goofy mercenaries gone.

M-a: Yes, it is most true. When I shout as I chase the Ass of Onna, my voice rings in the halls, so lonely....

M-w: Have you had any contact with them since the CIA called upon them to go kick the ass of Osama?

TMU: Only once. TASCAM-Girl called on a cell phone from deep inside the heart of Afghanistan to tell me how lovely the skies look at night with the constant rain of bombs. They still haven't found Osama and his turdlike henchlings, though.

M-a: I must feel most sorry for Osama, for I saw her strapping on the Telescoping Electroshock Dildo before she left. My understanding is that when she finds the sniveling weasels and plunges it deep into the ass of Osama that the steel head will expand with sharp blades in all directions... he will die slowly in great agony....

Pym: Um, what is it with you guys and this ongoing ass thing? Is this like a guy thing that I wouldn't understand or something?

M-w: The female ass is possibly the finest creation on earth, certainly far more deserving of worship than various irrational mythical deities.

Pym: Does this mean our fearless leader is gonna continue babbling about Jenna Bush's ass?

TMU: No, i believe we'll put that aside for the time being out of respect for the Prez and his ongoing difficulties with the rest of the planet at the moment. We'll get back to that later after we've crushed Osama and his followers like the dung-eating cockroaches that they are.

M-a: Do you think the government is following the proper course of action in this delicate matter?

TMU: For the most part, yes. I think we could all use a bit less jingoism, if only because it's making the media act like an old lady with a bad case of the vapors. But i think Bush has behaved with remarkable restraint so far, and while the military action isn't proceeding as fast as some had hoped, it's helpful to remember that neither did most military actions under previous administrations. I'm not exactly pleased with Ashcroft's reaction -- he looks like a gloating li'l schoolboy now that he's managed to pork the Constitution in the ass, doesn't he? -- and i'm even less thrilled with the tedious behavior of jackasses who apparently think harassing or profiling anybody who's brown or wears a turban makes some kind of sense. I'm even less thrilled that Israel and Palestine continue to behave like li'l boys brawling in the parking lot after school, or that these dumb-ass countries we help all the time suddenly using this as an opportunity to pee on our collective foot. "Oooo, big bad America gets a taste of its own medicine, those poor terrorsts, blah blah blah." The idea of Americans agreeing with them doesn't sit well with me either, but that's what's so beautiful about this country: the freedom to be an absolute, brain-damaged jackass.

On a related note, hysterical bullshit like this (courtesy of syndicated columnist Mona Charen, who could really use the benefit of a better hair stylist and a refresher course in history) sounds remarkably bizarre coming from a Jew, given that you could change every reference to "Arab" in the article to "Jew" and translate it into German, at which point it would look exactly like the articles that appeared in Germany during the Third Reich. Apparently Mona has forgotten (or, more likely, never knew -- it's remarkable how many press pundits seem to be totally unaware of any historical event predating their own personal experience) about that....

And look at Peggy Noonan over here -- what's the deal with these uberconservative women all of a sudden? Is this like some weird mothering instinct run horribly amok or something? I can't tell which is scarier, this dumb-assed column or this purely goofy column. Either way, someone needs to slap this hysterical bitch before she wets her pants in public....

And what's up with this shit? It's bad enough these people are responsible for the existence of my former in-laws, but now i have to see this print-dung? Aren't these shitheads supposed to be pals of ours or something?

M-a: I want to know about the pictures, myself.

Pym: What pictures?

M-w: These most disturbing pictures that showed up on several of the, ah, usenet groups our Fearless Leader frequently, uhhhhh, frequents. Pictures that have absolutely nothing to do with said newsgroups.

TMU (muttering): "stooooone heads, stooooone heads... how did they get there? how did they get there?"

[A moment of silence as they all digest this, then simultaneously decide they probably don't really want to know.]

Pym: So show us the pictures and let's see what the fuck he's talking about. [they look]

M-w: What do you suppose it means?

Pym: I think it's psychological propaganda. A sick form of deviant mindfuck torture, where you bring up the unpleasant in places where it's least expected. Like poisoning the well, if you will. Much, in fact, like the terrorists have done with their first attack on the World Trade Center towers. Either that or someone with a sick need to piss people off. Hard to say which.

TMU: I'm with you on this one. Myself, i find it dumb that they're picking a fight with a country that can squash them like roaches. Apparently they weren't paying attention when we roasted Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Or when we defoliated most of Vietnam. The Taliban may eventually discover that they have violated the First Law of Self-Preservation: Namely, don't start something you can't finish. Because we're definitely going to finish this for them. I feel sorry for all the Afghans still foolish enough to still be there when the US military finally gets tired of wasting bombs and just nukes the whole country and turns it into a radioactive ashtray.

Pym: Um, shouldn't we be thinking about, you know, getting into the actual meat of the issue somewhere along the way?

TMU: All in good time, sweet thing. (snaps fingers) But first... SUSHI!

[This amusing video plays on the Rolldown Wallscreens as they await their feast. Comely asian wenches in skintight pink latex waitress outfits appear bearing a truly frightening number of sushi rolls in all styles and combinations. As they all gather around the table to scarf down the succulent goodies, the burning stench of phosphorus and metallic oxide that gradually fills the room tells them that Fenris-Cthulhu has arrived, in all his many-tentacled glory.]

FC (slithering into a chair): Never shall I understand, Thee Moon Unit, thy fascination for raw fish in rice cakes. (prods happy shiny sushi roll, eel variety, with one dripping tentacle) Why not feast upon something sensible... perhaps peanut-butter and banana sandwiches fried in bacon grease, for instance?

TMU: I may worship the hell out of The King, but i wouldn't have flown halfway around the country for a goddamn peanut-butter sandwich. Sushi, maybe....

Pym: Hey! HEY! (outraged, jabbing at Fenris-Cthulhu with chopsticks) You're dripping slime on my cucumber roll, you hellbound freak from space!

FC (turning his terrifying face, half werewolf and half unspeakable Cthulhuoid monstrosity, to hers): Ah, but my simpering li'l love child, I know that you lie awake at night, burning with lust for the touch of my slimy tentacles.... (moves closer, obscene mouth gaping) In fact, perhaps right this moment you'd like to smooch....

[Pym scowls and tosses her cucumber roll down FC's gaping maw. He falls to the floor gagging and howling, tentacles thrashing wildly.]

TMU: So, uh, did you come down this way for some particular purpose? I thought you were watching a splatter flick marathon or something....

FC (crawling back up to the table): I grew weak with hunger and thought perhaps I might find a... sausage pizza... somewhere down here. Plus I have something on my mind.

M-w: We are perhaps wildly afraid to know such things, O Diabolical One.

TMU: And what might be on your mind, o swami?

FC: Have you ever noticed how annoying the herd is in general? For example, people who make too much noise. You know, I'll be walking down the street and I hear this hysterical, unending screaming from all directions....

Pym: I can't imagine why....

FC: ... and it bugs the Hell out of Me, o moony one.

TMU (shrugging): So eat them. Just like Iscarf down this raw fucking sushi. [gulps down a succession of succulent cakes] Aaaaah.... you know the only thing that tastes better than sushi.... is....

Pym: Don't you dare say it.

TMU (grinning fiendishly): ... is....

Pym (raising chopsticks): I'll fucking hit you if you say it.

TMU: ... Mountain Dew.

Pym: Thank you for not being a gross pervert for once.

TMU: And pussy. Preferably filled with sushi.

[A brief scuffle ensues; M-a and M-w are forced to momentarily abandon their stimulating discussion of the burning philosophical question "Which came first, the Left Cheek or the Right Cheek?" long enough to pull the two snarling opponents apart.]

FC (picking up where he left off): I'm afraid humans are far too unclean to eat without washing them first. And you know I never eat anything uncooked.

Pym: You ate that cucumber roll, didn't you?

FC: Actually, no -- i secreted it in a secret intestinal pocket for safekeeping. I'm planning to regurgitate it on some deserving soul later tonight.

M-a (shuddering): May the Emperor's great and mighty ass prevent you from ever joining forces with the Frightening Ass of Onna.

FC: Or how about those people who get so upset when I eat their offspring?

Pym (horrified): You eat babies?

FC: Offspring. How can I resist? They carry their offspring in those tiny vending carts --

Pym: Those are strollers, you lunatic, not portable vending machines!

FC (ignoring her): ... so convenient, just poke in a tentacle and scoop up a juicy li'l morsel. They taste excellent soaked in buttermilk.

TMU (eyeing him suspiciously): I'm not hearing this. You know i disapprove of baby-eating.

FC (drawing himself to full Satanic height, roaring): I AM THE HELLBEAST OF THEE SIXTH GATE -- I BOW TO NO MAN!

TMU (not impressed): Careful, i'll throw more sushi at you....

Pym: Will both of you SHUT THE FUCK UP and let me eat? Do I have to get up and stick my foot up your asses ONE BY ONE?

TMU: Yep, she's definitely related to the Headless Sno-Cone Girl. [he and Fenris sit down]

Pym: Now apologize to the Moon Unit, okay?

FC (unable to resist commands from saucy Asian wenches): Okay, okay. Moon Unit, I apologize -- I realize you don't allow the discussion of buttermilk in your Hellfortress. I shouldn't have mentioned it.

TMU (eyes him balefully): I suppose that will have to do....

FC (eyeing watch buried deep in a throbbing mass of tentacles): Oops, it's almost time for DARK SHADOWS! I'd better get going.... (He slithers off toward the theater, leaving a trail of slime in his wake.)

Pym: Um, refresh my memory -- exactly how long have you guys known each other? I don't even want to know how you met.... (notices that TMU has zoned out, staring into space in what appears to be a trance) Uh, hello? Hello? Anybody in there?

M-w (nibbling on sushi): It is not likely, for we have seen that look before, have we not, my fine noise-loving friend?

M-a (smirking): It is so true, my samurai brother of noise. This trance, it is known to us -- every time he remembers the stripper, this happens. It is both amusing and tragic.

Pym: Stripper? He saw a stripper? When did this happen?

M-w (studying report): Ah, let us see... Saturday night. Sugars. Stripper in question: insanely tall, blond, gorgeous, ass so wide like the Grand Canyon is deep and ten times more magnificent. Three lap dances, transformation of vaguely unfocused horniness into extremely focused horniness....

TMU: Oooo... that perfect ass.... (eyes glaze over, hands trace curves in the air)

Pym: Must have been some ass.

M-w: It was indeed. It was the mother of all asses. Almost -- but not quite -- the Ass of Onna.

TMU (crazed): The ASS that is the NINTH WONDER of the WORLD! Tits of splendor and the ASS OF FIRE!

M-a: Yes, in a scale of worthiness, this ass may well have been the Holy of Asses. Not, of course, as Holy as the fabled Ass of Onna, but most close. Look at him! (points to jellylike blob of stupor some call TMU) His cerebellum has fused! All his circuits are blown!

TMU: That's not all that would be blown if i had my way....

M-a: It is both humorous and pathetic, how truly he has been enslaved by the Taj Mahal of asses. I find it deeply moving. So moving, in fact, that i have composed a small haiku in honor of the Ass that has so thoroughly destroyed our fearless runt's mind....

Pym (eyes rolling): Oh, please. You guys are such perverts. Can we get on with the actual issue now, or do you feel the burning need to fuck around some more?

TMU (still wrapped up in ass fantasy): Uh, yeah... fucking around with the issue... sure, sure... let's get this ass on the road.... um, what exactly the fuck are we doing?

Pym (consulting notes): Well, we have some stuff Neddal sent....

TMU: Yeah... yeah! That works! Do it! Throw on Neddal's hep shit! Bring on the bass! BRING BACK THE MOTHERFUCKIN' BEAT! O, the ass goes on....

ENDURING THE ENDURANCE OF OPERATION ENDURING ASSFUCK [# 50]: We fade in on a majestic Nordic fjord in the midst of winter -- snow-topped mountains fade into the brooding storm clouds gathering over the sea as birds and animals alike flee for cover from the coming tempest. Great subterranean rumbles of thunder reverberate in the distance, like the booming of war cannons. Gradually a figure becomes visible standing at a plateau halfway up the mountain. It is the Moon Unit, draped in grim black robes, holding a titanic sword to the darkening sky in one armored hand. The clouds part just long enough to reveal a blood-red moon, impossibly large and pale. Wolves begin to lower at the foot of the mountain; snow-covered trees burst into flame, transforming the snow into a torrent of ash-black water cascading down the slopes. It's all so black fucking metal it would bring a tear to Count Grishnackh's eye, assuming he weren't holed up in prison for the next decade or so and thus unavailable to see this majestic scene. As a shattering roar of thunder belches forth and a bolt of lightning descends from the sky to envelop the Moon Unit's blade in a brilliant arc of blinding blue-white light, he opens his mouth and says:

OH YEAH -- Operation: Enduring Assfuck is IN THE HOUSE! Got that sharp cat DJ Ashcroft spinnin' platters and droppin' science to the Poop Chorus of the Left and the Poop Chorus of the Right with the smooth pipes of George "Get Your War On" W goin' straight down the middle! It da motherfuckin' BOMB, baby! Who cares what ol' DJ Ashcroft is doing layin' that pipe to the Constitution's stinky li'l tan track while we're all getting behind Operation: Enduring Daily Reports of How Many People We Blew Up In Afghanistan Today Delivered By Perky Newswhores We'd Like To Gut WIth Dull Spoons! Yessir! No goddamn hippies left in this country now except some addled dope-smokers out west where they're all jumbled-up anyway from having the ground wiggle under them so often -- all you see ... all... uh... (fumbles about in robe) goddamn, where's that script? (steps on robe and falls screaming down the hill)

Pym (throwing down her slateboard): GOD DAMN IT! Shit! Well, maybe we can edit that.... (sighs) Will one of you idjits go see if his legs are still intact?

M-a and M-w scurry off to the set, pausing only to turn off the snow blower. It turns out that the only part of the Moon Unit seriously damaged is his dignity. With their assistance, he struggles back up to the plateau and resumes his position with the sword aloft.

Pym: Okay, do you have your shit together now? Can we, like, fucking continue here?

TMU (coughing): Yes, you horrid slave-driver. So how did we end up with you in the director's chair, anyway?

Pym: I'm a take charge kind of gal. (raises the slateboard) Ready... set... don't even THINK of fucking up this take... ACTION!

TMU: FUCK! What is wrong with all these idjits? Is one act of terrorism -- well, two if you count the anthrax scare, which looks more and more like an American crank -- all it takes to get America's collective attention and turn the whole country into something like a bad outtake from Leni Riefenstahl's TRIUMPH OF WILL, only with botched subtitles on CNN? You blow up a couple of buildings -- something that's been going on in other countries for years, even decades, on a daily basis -- and all of a sudden the entire country is awash in gushing weepy patriotism (or creepy patriotism, just as bad), complete with sappy ads and bad songs -- all celebrating what looks suspiciously like a totalitarian theocracy in the making -- while we continue to turn a country to toast to "save" it by making it even more unlivable than it already was, and replace one set of dickheads with another set of equally clueless dickheads? I'm just as pissed as anyone else that the motherfuckers blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and lots of people, and i'm all for capturing Osama and feeding him feet-first through a glass-grinder, but that doesn't mean i want to live in fucking Nazi Germany circa 1942. What's next? We start rounding up everybody who looks vaguely like a terrorist, starting with the Middle-Eastern and Muslim citizens and working the inevitable way down to anyone who disagrees with the government? When we start running out of room for all those "possible terrorists," do we start building ovens?  I do not like the direction this train is rolling....

The War on Terrorism sure has been a godsend for the Bush administration, though -- man, right now The Man could go on TV and announce that our master plan to deal with Osama, seeing as how we sure the fuck can't find him, is to nuke every country except our own just to be absolutely sure he "pays" for his crime and didn't escape, and about 70% of the US public would buy it... hell, they'd cheer. And wave flags! So what if we blow up a few nations? We'll get the bad guy. Woo hoo! Meanwhile good ol' DJ Ashcroft is fully and openly gutting the dead carcass of the Constitution with a rusted tin saw and in poll after poll, over half the country appears to be fully okay with that as long as it's in the interests of national security. "Oooooohhhhhh, Perrrrrryyyy.... it's all so fucking scary...."

So, like, someone refresh me here -- when, exactly, did we turn into a totalitarian police state while i wasn't looking? Is this why we suddenly appear to have a Ministry of Propaganda? I like to get your war on just as much as the next guy, but isn't war supposed to boost the economy instead of the other way around? If we're gonna get the trains running to the camps, they ought to run on time, you know. And i'm not so hip on the Secret Police being able to watch when i take a leak and listen to the phone just because they "think" i might "possibly" have "said something somewhere, or maybe watched on a TV show, something vaguely related to national security that threatens us because we didn't eat enough bran this monring." When your government is run by paranoid right-wing fundamentalists with ties to the CIA, do you really want them deciding who gets to benefit from the Constitution and its rights? Maybe you do, but i'm not so sure i'm ready to hand my Thinking Cap over to a bunch of people who are so enthusiastic about ass-fucking the Constitution while waiting for the coming of the Rapture and Armageddon and who have such hideous taste in fashion and music. I'm all for national security, sure, but this is fucking ridiculous. When you have airline pilots diverting planes all over the map anytime someone gets the vapors -- or even worse, turning away Secret Service agents who have the bad luck to look like The Bad Guys -- and the entire process of flying is such a monumental pain in the ass, maybe it's time give up flying....

I also notice that some dilweeds seem to think it makes sense for us to improve our airline security by emulating Israel. Sure, their planes are safe -- as long as you don't mind being considered a potential suspect, guilty until they decide otherwise, while having to endure the time-wasting hell of having every single passenger interrogated before the plane can even take off. Fuck, why not just combine that with what i saw in China, where they divert incoming planes onto a runway in the middle of nowhere, make everybody disembark and carry all of their luggage into a warehouse, and make everyone undergo a screeing at gunpoint? (They do that so if you turn out to be a "bad seed" with a suitcase full of contraband, you won't have anywhere to run except a mile of concrete in either direction while a jeep full of "lawmen" with .45s goes toodling after you.) Hell, if we're willing to go that far, why not just suck down the whole... uh, enchilada... and just ground all the fucking planes? That solves everything for everybody -- no lines at the airport, no worries that the doofus who searched people entering your plane didn't know what the fuck he was doing, no invasive luggage searches for the fliers; no troubling "quality of service" issues; and for the airlines and the government, that's more people to lay off so we'll have plenty of people standing around with nothing better to do when Cheney re-emerges from hiding to help Bush sell the public on reinstating the draft. It makes me sad that i tragically cannot serve, however; i always wanted to go to foreign lands and kill people with powerful and sexy automatic weapons and get medals and money for it. An added bonus: the idling airports will make excellent holding pens for all those Middle-Eastern immigrants when Bush and his Disciples get around to rounding them all up and "quarantining them in the interests of national security and public safety."

I'll tell ya what, though, I can really get behind the full-on Orwell moves our Main Man is making. Hell, this is way better than reading 1984, because the cats in this movie are beyond what even Orwell's fertile mind could ever conceive. Look, over here -- they've even got a good slogan already: "If you're not with us, you're against us." Not quite as sharp as "Peace Through Strength," but it'll work.... And look, poof! Now you see Cheney the POTUS Jr., now you don't! Again and again -- whisked away from public view for all but a moment or two, a glimpse from a dark car, a muffled voice on the radio... can anybody really prove that Cheney is even alive? Much less in charge of something? And what's with all these rules and this business of arresting people and holding on to them in total secrecy without a lawyer and shit? When, exactly, did i wake up and find my stinky ass in China? Or Israel, for that matter, where the whole country is on permanent military alert and people put up with all sorts of insane bullshit just for "national security"? And speaking of Israel, how did we end up on the same side as the "Butcher of Beruit," anyway? Why is it that the entire country had a shit fit when Reno and the Feds spirited away poor li'l Elian at gunpoint, but when the Israelis do the exact same thing, only on a much bigger scale, that's perfectly okay? Am i the only person in America who finds it somewhat weird that we are supporting a country of religious fanatics who are technically in violation of various international codcils and United Nations resolutions (and probably their own treaty), who don't quite grasp even the most rudimentary concepts of human rights, whose own Head Hit Man, Ariel Sharon, is wanted to undergo investigation for war crimes in Beruit, and who apparently would be happy to exterminate the Palestinians? The Palestinian terrorist organizations are behaving badly and not helping, of that there can be no doubt, but the Israelis aren't exactly behaving like pacificists themselves, either. And now the whole Operation: Enduring Fucking Up All of the Mideast and Pacific Rim business has pushed+ India and Pakistan into playing a high-tech version of chicken that will undoubtedly end with a big bang. Hell, missiles may be flying right now and i wouldn't know, i haven't checked the news this afternoon... Maybe we should just annex the two countries and take their toys away if they can't stop pissing in the sandbox, eh? Fuck, maybe what we need for a "solution" in Israel and Palestine is to rebuild the Berlin Wall and move it right between the two of them.... (Moon Unit begins coughing)

And then there's... (cough) that goofy idjit with the beard like a nest o' spiders fucking and (cough) the psychotic million-yard stare... man, you know he's going to get one hell of a spanking when he gets home, if his family ever gets to see him again.... (falls down shaking, coughing, hacking like a snake swallowing a bulldozer)

Pym: Aw, not again. How the fuck are we going to get this goddamned issue done if he keeps trying to hack up a lung?

M-w: It is truly a question for the ages. How long, exactly, has he been sick now?

Pym: Way too long. He claims the "doctor" told him it's psychosomatic stress -- something to do with a life full of hassles and the continuing implosion of that puny thing he calls a "record label" -- but I happen to know that his "doctor" is just some big-assed bitch in a rubber nurse outfit who beats his hairy ass with a brush while they listen to Big Black loud enough to wake the dead in Norway, so I'm not buyin' it.

TMU (hacking with grotesque abandon): So what the (cough, hack) fuck (hack) do you (cough) think it (wheeze) is, you heartless (cough followed by repulsive sweat-soaked shaking, waves of burning fever, more hacking) pink-haired slut? (goes fetal, still hacking with alarming abandon)

Pym (standing over him and shaking her finger): You know damn well what the problem is! You and those damn cigarettes! You're always sick now, you should fucking quit....

TMU: Never! (more gruesome hacking)

Pym: Whatever, man -- it's your funeral....

M-a: I think, naturally, that this must call for a haiku:

TMU (sitting up, wincing): Yeah, yeah, i'm gonna quit. Right about when it kills me. So anyway, uh, i guess we should get this issue on... um... let's see... have any more countries started blowing up people yet? (looks out the window) No... not yet... good, we probably have some time, then....

Pym: So are you gonna tell us yet about the big hit albums of the year or what?

TMU: Oh, yeah. (digs out crumpled list) We normally don't do top ten lists, but one of the radio DJs asked, so here's the year's albums at the top of the constant playlist at Monotremata and DEAD ANGEL, presented in alphabetical order. And yes, we know there's more than ten albums here, be glad we didn't do twenty or thirty....

Arab on Radar -- YAWEH OR THE HIGHWAY [Skin Graft]
Jorge Castro -- THE JOYS AND REWARDS OF REPETITION [Public Eyesore]
Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Chris Forsyth -- WIRES AND WOODEN BOXES [Pax Recordings]
Donnas -- THE DONNAS TURN 21 [Lookout!]
Godflesh -- HYMNS [Koch International]
Gravitar -- EDIFIER [Manifold Records]
Impaled Nazarene -- ABSENCE OF WAR DOES NOT MEAN PEACE [Osmose Productions]
Lamb of God -- NEW AMERICAN GOSPEL [Metal Blade]
Null -- PEAK OF NOTHINGNESS [Hushush]
Miki Sawaguchi -- BIG BOOBS [Alchemy Records]
Sour Vein -- s/t [Game Two]
Walking Timebombs -- SAPSUCKER [Anomie Records]
Troum -- TJUKPURRA (THE HARMONIES) [Transgredient Records]
Ulver -- PERIDITION CITY [Jester Records]
Zeni Geva -- 10,000 LIGHT YEARS [Neurot Recordings]

M-w: That is a most... um, unusual list.

TMU: Yeah, we have eclectic and often lurid tastes around here -- what can i say, we're very easily bored.

He would say more, but just then TASCAM-Girl crashes in through a window. Everyone except the Moon Unit dives for cover as jagged spears of glass fly in all directions while she skids across the floor on her back, crashing into a table and turning it over. As she sits up, dazed, the Moon Unit walks over.

TMU: How nice of you to drop in. You know that's coming out of your paycheck, right?

TG (oblivious): Oh shit! We are all so fucked! I can't believe -- my own fucking government --

TMU: Oh, is this the government you mean?

TG (going fetal, guns and bullets scattered across the floor, sobbing): Oh fuck, it was horrible! FIrst the shitty weather and the constant jabber of crazy fucks and then the caves and the Cthulhu and Frank -- I mean Osama, sorry -- and the Headless Sno-Cone Girl and... ah... ah... (more hysterical wailing)

Pym: Why don't you calm down and tell us what the hell happened.

TG (sitting up, still shaking): Okay. It's probably against national security regulations, but fuck 'em, I'm an unperson now, let them come find my fat ass. Look, we found Osama.

TMU: You're shitting me.

TG: We found him. It was me, her, and Abner, leading a small core of Green Berets and mercenaries. We'd heard some information about Osama's whereabouts, and we put on the pressure and boxed him into a location he couldn't get out of. Then we went in and... and... (buries her head in her hands) Oh, it was just so fucking unspeakable....

M-a: Unspeakable? Does this somehow involve the fabled Ass of Onna?

TG (looking up): Actually, yes. Are you gonna let me tell the story or not?

M-w: Will it involve more girly weeping and histronics?

TG: Have you forgotten I have a gun?

Pym (motioning for her to continue): Ignore him, keep going, I want to hear this.

TG: Anyway. (glaring at the agents of G.O.O.D.N.O.I.S.E.) We went into the cave and we found Osama... and he was... he was... Christ, there's no way to gild the lily here. He was acting out the scene in BLUE VELVET where Frank's all hopped-up on nitrous and seeing how many times he can say "fuck." He was even dressed like Frank and huffing from a real can of nitrous. He was doing this while all his Taliban buddies were sitting around laughing like fools, finding this entertainment most humorous. It was bizarre, all right, but not bizarre enough to keep us from going in and turning them all in wet wall paste. If we'd left it at that it would have been okay, but no, no... she had to go and fuck with Osama's head....

TMU: She what?

TG: She cut off his head with a nail file and was using it for a hacky sack. It was... man, I've seen some gross shit, but that takes the cake. So that would have been bad enough, but then somehow the very fabric of time and space was ripped like wet toilet paper and suddenly the cave was filled with minions of the Elder Gods and agents of hell and all sorts of scary shit.

Pym: That sounds like Fenris on a pizza binge. Are you sure it wasn't him? Hey, where the hell is he anyway? I haven't seen him since yesterday, where'd he go?

TMU: He's sleeping.

M-w: Sleeping? All day?

TMU: There was some incoherent confession about overturning a transport tanker filled with Jack Daniels and drinking it dry. I would imagine he's not feeling up to snuff right now.

TG: Anyway, so the dark legions swarmed into the cave with the stink of rotting goat flesh and the room was filled with this awful, awful darkness, like being swallowed whole and festering in the devil's stomach, and then there was lots of blood-freezing howling and grunting and screaming and sounds that I'm pretty sure weren't made by anything human -- man, I sure the fuck hope not. Then it was like a fog lifting, all the evil fading out but leaving behind this huge-ass stink, and when we could see again, nothing was left of Osama but his beard and she was just fucking gone. I think they ate her.

Pym (horrified): You're fucking telling me that Yog-Sothoth made a sandwich out of my sister?

TG: That's what it looks like. They may have eaten Abner too, but one of the Green Berets swears he heard Abner say "I am so out of here, I've had enough" and then didn't hear anything from him again, so he may have escaped during the fireworks and just be AWOL. That's what I think, myself -- unconfirmed intelligence reports indicate that someone matching his description was seen in a stolen Jeep with a portable nuke negotiating his way across the Pakistan border. We think he traded the exoskeleton for the nuke, although no one will admit to selling it or holding the suit. At some point this guy -- whoever it might have been -- sold the nuke for a ride to Bahawatpur and is now moving from gay bar to gay bar as a pianist.

Pym (amazed): He can play the piano?

TG: Hey, it's news to me too. Assuming it's really him. But I'll let you in on a secret -- before they turned me into an unperson I got to hear a tape of one of these performances made by someone in the audience, and when the guy introduces the songs, he sure as hell sounds like Abner. He plays a mean "Benny and the Jets." 

TMU: Wait, wait... hold up... what's this about being an unperson? How did you end up as an unperson? What the fuck are you talking about?

TG: Well, when I made my way back to the HQ and relayed the news back to the appropriate people, the next thing I know is a couple of MPs come to pick me up and drive me in a jeep out in the middle of Pakistan and try to kill me. Obviously they failed, but things got kind of messy, and when I dropped in on them at HQ to express my, um, lack of appreciation for that, one of them finally admitted -- after a few hours -- that the order had come down to wipe me out. Apparently they're going to keep pretending Osama's alive and use him as a scapegoat whenever they feel like blowing up a country, and they're eliminating all the witnesses. I'm already the last one left, and I officially don't exist anymore, which makes getting around a bit of a problem....

M-w: Aaaaaah, so what does this mean for us, then, as we now are of this knowledge too?

M-a: I believe it is meaning that we are deeply fucked. So where is the connection to the Ass of Onna?

TG: During the mayhem, I caught a glimpse of something -- something so round and firm and terrifying in its grandiose assness -- that I'm almost certain it had to be her. They have a file on her, you know. I took a look at it before I burned the HQ down. It doesn't say much, but enough to convince me that she's more than a myth.

M-a: I tremble at the thought! Look! It is so electrifying that my hair stands on end! (offers up an arm, where -- sure enough -- the hairs are standing straight up and wavering)

M-w (looking at his own arm): How unusual. It seems I have the same effect....

TG (looking at the hair rising on her arms): Shit! What the hell is -- look! (points to M-a, whose hair has begun to rise from his head; as the same thing happens with all of them, the room begins to vibrate)

Pym: What the fuck is going on? 

The vibration grows more intense, as a hum like the sound of a tuning fork begins to grow in volume until it renders conversation impossible, filling the room with an wavering, endless drone. In the center of the room, a small but brilliant blue diamond appears; as they watch in terror, waves of energy begin to pulse from the diamond, growing stronger and brighter, until the room is transformed into a psychedelic roar of flickering colors and pure blinding energy. As a face more beautiful than anything ever imagined appears simultaneously in all their minds, a woman's voice speaks to them at the same time.

The Voice: Greetings, my troubled little losers. It is I, the Headless Sno-Cone Girl. Now the issue of my missing head is irrelevant, for I am reborn in the form of pure antimatter. And now, for the first time, I can reveal the truth: I am nothing more or less than the physical, now antimatter, reincarnation of Antu, fuck puppet of the great god Anu -- HAIL ANU! MAY HIS EYE NEVER CLOSE! -- and as soon as Anu is awakened from his vast and endless slumber, we shall rule this dominion until the circle of the Ourobouros closes, an event that is almost upon us. As Ragnarok approaches, so does the moment in which the serpent will swallow his tail and our universe will end and a new one, minty fresh and full of promise, will begin... a new universe ruled by the original gods and the Elder Gods.

Pym: Um, I don't like the sound of this. This sounds like scary shit. Why can't I have normal sisters like other people? Fuck, what a headache....

TG: Look at the bright side, now that your sister's an actual goddess, maybe you can get better bass gigs. It's all about who you know.... (to Antu) So how is that you've always been down with Bishamon and now all of a sudden you're Antu? Isn't that sort of a contradiction in terms for a Sumerian goddess to be worshipping a Japanese war god?

Antu: Camouflage. You never can be too careful.

TG: Um, does this mean I can still keep sacrificing people to Bishamon, or do I have to pledge eternal allegiance to you, or what?

Antu: It doesn't matter. Just don't piss me off.

They are all so enthralled by Antu's sudden appearance that they fail to notice that the Moon Unit is undergoing some cataclysmic, soul-rending display of displaced emotion, jumping up and down and twitching like a man with a live eel stuffed up his ass. Finally, he can withstand the pressure in his tiny skull no longer and begins to rant:

TMU: AAAAAIEEEE! This is IT! I can take it no longer! I... ain't gonna be... your candyman... NO MORE! (thrusts a wad of papers into Pym's face as a piano begins to descend from the ceiling)

Pym (reading as TMU begins to play "Night Moves" on the piano): What the fuck? Have you completely lost your mind? 

TMU (continuing to play): "mmmm hmmm, way up firm 'n high...."

Pym (kicking the piano bench): PAY ATTENTION TO ME! What's all this gibberish (waves papers) about giant robots and Ragnarok and benevolent despots and... and... (squints) man, you've got to stop putting so much soy sauce on your sushi. Does this part say "total fucking death" or "Fidel funding Jettas"?

M-w (horrified): He... he knows about Fidel and the Jettas?!?

Pym starts to follow up on this disturbing train of thought but is interrupted by the sound of the piano exploding. They turn around to see the Moon Unit in a trench coat, grimly fondling some arcane but scary-looking device.

TMU: Listen up, my sweating little pigs. The time has come... to reveal... yes... the MASTERPLAN!

M-w: The MASTERPLAN!?!?

M-a: The... the fucking MASTERPLAN!

M-w (turning to everyone, waving his arms wildly): Look! LOOK! He's going to reveal the MASTERPLAN! The ass-fucking, complete and total, anal by anal MASTERPLAN!

M-a: Yes. The... the MASTERPLAN. (pauses) And what, exactly, is the fucking MASTERPLAN, anyway?

TMU (eyebrows coming together as he whispers): Death. Lots of total fucking death.

TG: I have a bad idea i'm not going to like this.

TMU (twisting knobs wildly): YES! At last it can be REVEALED! The horrible, horrible truth...

M-a: About Burma?

TMU: SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I'M GOING TO SET YOU ON FIRE! Look -- outside the windows! The first signs of the diabolical plan by which i shall assume complete dominion of this earth and use that godlike power to turn all you fucking paramecium into tater tots! Burnt tater tots! Oooo, you'll writhe in the sweaty grip of my iron hand of hate... everyone who disagrees with my infernal wisdom will be shot in the street... mad dogs everywhere... like a shack of hate blown up bad 'n nationwide! Fuck that, worldwide! We da motherfuckin' BOMB, baby, come on over and pull my trigger!

Pym: Does anybody have any idea what the hell he's talking about -- oh, fuck. (eyes go into saucer-mode)

Outside, as the Moon Unit feverishly fondles the arcane device festooned with more dials and buttons and pull-levers than he has brain cells, bad shit is beginning to happen. Glaciers explode in blinding shards of ice as giant atomic robots burst free, followed by a steady stream of hulking ubertanks equipped with nuclear missiles. The drone of warplanes grows louder and more intense, until the sky if black with airborne death. Black holes begin to pulse; stars are sucked into oblivion.

M-w (face pressed against the glass): Cooooooooool....

M-a: Such terror! How can we afford this? Surely we are going far, far over budget....

TMU (eyes crazed): FUCK the budget. (he pushes a button and the entire building begins to shake, throwing them all to the ground)

TG (waving her guns wildly, looking for something to shoot): What's going on? Why is the building shaking?

TMU: Hydroponic lifts. We're takin' it to the TOP now, baby! (crazed laughter)

Pym: You are really beginning to creep me out.... (looks out the window) AAAIEEE! Holy fucking Batdick!

M-w: I am afraid to ask.

Pym: We're in the air! Look!

They all crowd around the window, and sure enough, the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice is now the Hellfortress Way Above the Ice. Clouds swirl around them as they watch the tanks and boats, now the size of pushpins, as they encircle the continent.

TMU: THE TIME HAS COME! This is it! I can stand this world's wretched excesses NO MORE! This is TOTAL FUCKING WAR! I hereby fucking SECEDE! I declare this continent the sole province of the High Epopt of the Cult of Mineko, subject to nothing but my own sick fucking WILL! In the name of ANU -- Hail Anu! May his eye never close! -- I hereby declare this continent MINE! Those who fail to bow before my awesome might shall forever suffer my ETERNAL VENGEANCE!

TG (to Pym): See? See? I told you. You knew this was going to happen if we kept letting him listen to those black metal albums.

Pym: And how do you propose to get rid of them when he plays them constantly and the horrid screeching is so grotesque and unsettling that you can't even set foot in the Listening Room now without wanting to curl up on the floor and heave up chunks of your lungs?

TG: Well, you have a point there.

TMU (pacing now, gesticulating wildly): Aaaaaaah, yes yes yes, the sweet aroma of success... at last, a nation without law, without religion, without good sense... death and destruction for all... Ragnarok is coming and i am fucking prepared! All we need now are the fetish babes! And we'll have those as soon as my Japanese connection coughs them up....

Antu: Pardon me, but have you forgotten that i am technically in charge here now?

TMU: You can blow me, atomic ass bitch. I'm running this show.

Antu's electrical field pulses with black rage. Just as she prepares to immolate him, however, three mysterious figures emerge from the shadows to stand between him and Antu's anger. Two of them are towering Amazon women, scary dominatrixes carrying atomic pistols and swaddled in acres of latex and leather, with thigh-boots laden with tiny buckles; the other is a giant siamese twin, two beautiful and exotic Asian girls ten feet tall and connected at the ass. And what an ass it is, an ass that not only defines assdom but renders all other asses moot. At the mere sight of this amazing alien woman, M-a falls to her feet, scrabbling like a cockroach.

M-a: It is TRUE! At long last! Yes -- the fabled ASS OF ONNA! O, rapture! I am so full of fullness than I must now compose a haiku befitting such magical globes of the gods:

TG (moving away): You goddamned pervert....

TMU (gloating): See how little I fear your little bolts of energy? (she tries to immolate them all without success, as the death blows are reflected by the yards of latex and rubber) You cannot stop me! Soon I will rule this puny world and squash these mewling insects like the maggots they are! I control the missiles -- oh yes, I know all about the cult of the rocket -- and when these dumbshit countries start getting their war on, the minute those missiles leave the silos, they will be mine! Soon the entire planet will be ablaze! First comes Ragnarok, then... the Closing of the Circle!

They all look at him like he's nuts. So of couse this is when a tall, demonic host shows up in a tailor-made Armani suit and elegant Rolex. Apparently his classes in timing are beginning to pay off.

TMU (jumping up and down): You -- YOU! What the FUCK are you doing here! Goat-blowing nun-fucking cheat!

TA (straightening a cuff): I won that poker game fair and square. You're just a sore loser.

TMU: Goddamned fucking Father of Lies! Blow me, goat!

TA (scowling): You know, you just might piss me off here. Are you sure you want to piss me off?

TMU: Oooo, I'm fuckin' shaking... look, i pooped in my pants 'cause you just so fucking scary. If i had a haircut that bad i'd be scarin' people too.

Pym (mystified): Um, excuse me? Do you mind telling us just who the fuck your pal is? We're kind of in the dark here....

TMU: Oh, go ahead, tell them. I know you won't be happy unless they hear it from you.

TA (rolling his eyes): Excuse my friend's complete lack of manners. I am the Antichrist, come to personally supervise the preparations for the Apocalypse, or Ragnarok if you prefer, as he insists.

M-w (appalled): And, how exactly, Mister Antichrist sir, would it be necessary for you to, ah, supervise from here?

TA (shrugging): Hey, this is where they told me to go. I don't make the work orders, I just carry them out. Bureaucracy, what can you do about it?

TMU: So you admit you're just basically a glorified spear-carrier? Woo, that's not what you were tellin' everybody at the poker game. "Oh, I spread fear on earth and eat the mewling young of their sheep, the devil's concubine looks forward to blowing me, I'm the man in charge." All puffed-up like a toad --

TA: That's fucking enough. I'm warning you.

TMU (rolling up): Oh, i am so afraid. Why don't you come stick your tongue up my fudge tunnel?

Everyone watches in amazement as they begin to roll around on the floor, kicking and punching.

TA: Overreaching swine! You dare to attempt to steal what is rightfully mine? This world and its sick, primitive inhabitants have been promised to me, you psychotic runt!

TMU (hitting him on the head with the arcane device): Not if I manage to kill you first!

A deafening siren drowns out all possibility of conversation. The doors open and a horde of nuclear-powered robots fill up the room, dragging the Antichrist kicking and shouting with them. Outside, tanks begin to fire at the other outposts while the warplanes move out for the conquest of other nations. Inside the room everything is pure chaos: screaming, profane ranting, shouts, violence, overturned tables, more rending of space and time. Mistakes are made.

Antu (firing off bolts of energy): If I can't have my head on earth, then I'll rule in hell!

M-w: Pardon my ignorance, Mistress Sno-Cone, but that makes no fucking sense at all.

Antu (nearly incinerating him with a random bolt of pure energy): RARGH! GRAU! ACK! ACK!

M-a: Say what?

TMU (giggling with insane abandon): She may be antimatter, but she's still a woman. And you know women aren't supposed to make sense. (dodges a burst of electric fire)

TASCAM-Girl (frustrated): Man, there's a lot of fuckin' shit they forgot to tell me when i signed up for this shitty-ass gig!

FEAR OF A BLACK METAL HELLFORTRESS [# 51]: Fade into a dark gray light -- night in Antarctica, where the land and sky often look the same and darkness renders the land vast and directionless and utterly without meaning. A flash of lightning reveals a line of tanks stretching to the horizon, all flanked by missile launchers and artillery brigades. The blinking lights of helicopters wink like fireflies in the distance. The only thing preventing them from advancing upon the Hellfortress is the towering army of giant robots, a cyclopean wall of atom-smashing steel and artificial intelligence. High in the clouds, suspended far above the fray on hydroponic stilts, the Hellfortress Above the Ice broods over the eternal northern night. Another jagged wave of lightning reveals the Moon Unit, standing at the rail of his penthouse balcony, watching the standoff below. A big, big girl with all her ample assets squeezed into a latex corset about nine sizes too tight totters up to him on stilleto heels and offers him a grape; he scowls at it, then hurls it into the night. She shrugs and returns to the orgy happening in the heated pool while he continues to survey his empire with an appropriate expression of bleak and total evil. He looks incredibly cult and grim and necro and all that, and is so forbidding that he has decided not to speak while out on the balcony, too concerned about "breaking the mood of fucking evil." He is wearing some seriously evil fetish boots, that's for sure.

Footsteps coming closer turn out to be Pym and a visitor coming up the stairs. We catch a brief snippet of their conversation -- "... don't get funky with him, he's gone completely around..." -- and then they are standing next to him. He does not acknowledge their presence, but continues to scowl grimly at the rest of the planet beyond the balcony.

Pym: Uhhhh, Mr. Unit? Hello? I was already on my way up to check on things up here when Kevin stopped by. You remember Kevin, right? (gestures to poorly-dressed nerd in a SKATE FURY t-shirt and longish, unwashed hair) You know, the guy in charge of doing the, uh, Flash conversion....

TMU (morosely): What does it matter? Godflesh broke up and Linda Lovelace is dead.

Pym: Really? I hadn't noticed. Hey, uh, I figured you probably guessed by now that, um, the Flash makeover has sort of, weeeell, "crash and burn" is what they call it on Wall Street....

Kevin: Unforeseen technical problems.

Pym: Yeah, some problem with the whatchamacallits. Anyhow, we've tried everything we can do, but it can't be done. I know that's like, um, short notice seeing as how the issue is technically supposed to appear in ten days, but you know, that's life sometimes, right? You win some, you lose some. RIght? You know?

Kevin: I'll still need to be paid for my time, of course.

TMU: Ponders this for a moment, still looking grim and necro, then turns to Kevin and hurls him from the balcony with one hand. As the man's scream spirals down into the darkness, he resumes his position at the balcony railing, staring intently at some fixed spot apparently in the neighborhood of Mars.

Pym: Ooooookay.... (scribbles note on pad to consult web designer's next-of-kin) Moving, uh, moving right along then... I guess you want a status report or something? I mean, you haven't been down from the balcony in like twenty-seven fucking days... do you even know what's going on down there? I mean really? For all you know we called up U-Haul last week and had everything taken out of the Fortress and shipped back to my house. Even the Shrine to Mineko. Not that I'm saying we did or anything, but you know, if we had, it's not like you would have any way to know about it. Unless maybe you're psychic now... did becoming cult and necro make you psychic? I don't know much about these --

TMU (holding the point of his sword to her navel): SILENCE! You babble, bitch!

Pym: Oh, like you haven't been known to get incoherent....

TMU: Is there a reason you are wasting my time?

Pym: Well, I was going to let Kevin tell you why we're not on target for the Flash conversion, but I guess that's kind of a moot point now. (peering down into the darkness) Do you think the ice weasels will carry his body away? That always causes problems in Accounting with the relatives afterwards....

TMU (sneering): So give me your fucking status report.

Pym: Okay. (consults notes) Everybody is currently accounted for, although not onsite. Antu -- who is still a hovering, agitated ball of electrical energy, and has not reverted back to being the Headless Sno-Cone Girl -- is still doing the diva thing, but she is currently being held in check by those big-assed amazon girl bodyguards of yours. She says she's decided for the sake of harmony she's going to settle for being queen... stop laughing! You fucker! Fuck, I hate working for assholes like you.... Anyway, the Antichrist is still hanging around. He found your porn library and now he's a permanent fixture in the Viewing Arena. You should see the size of his popcorn bill, Amanda in Accounting just about burst a blood vessel. Of course, no one wants to call him on it since he is the Antichrist, and therefore a herald of Armageddon or Ragnarok or whatever it is you boys call this fireworks party --