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(As told to me by a gentleman in Hood River, Oregon on June 19, 2024. I didn’t ask for a date, but these events would have been late 60’s early 70’s.)
We had just gotten out of college, University. Just kids. My buddy calls me up from Hydaburg, Alaska. “Hey Julio! We need a city resource planner, get on up here!” What did we know? We were just kids straight out of college, but OK, now I’m in this tiny town in Alaska, 400 people. Four white people and the rest natives. (laughs) They used to flip me the bird as I walked through town, heh. So I get there and the place is clearly growing and what do we need to do?
I go to the elders to see what they want done. A 102 yr old man, what do we need to protect? He looks over the map, where they fish, collect shellfish. Lots of people roaming the woods looking to extract resources, gotta get on top of things before they get carted away and the landscape ruined. This is a place where as long as your eyes work and you can stand there’s never a reason to go hungry. Anything you can imagine lying out to be collected off the beach. Salmon jumping in the river that rolls through town. What a beautiful place. You walk out on to your veranda in the morning and walk to work with the whales spouting. So we work over the map and lay out the spaces we’re going to protect.
At work one day J. comes in asks, “Hey, want to go on a beer run to … the next small town up the coast. Will we be back by Midnight? Oh, sure. ( foreshadowing ) So we get in the boat and off we go. These aren’t big boats, just a skiff with an outboard motor. On the way up, when the tide is low the channel is narrow and you have to go around this big rock. You’ll know why in a bit. We get to the town and J. rounds up his buddies and they’re getting drunk. I’m staying sober so I can watch out for his ass and MY ass. It’s getting late. They’re drunk and getting in fights with each other.
It’s late, I go to check and sure enough we don’t have any gas in the boat. So I take the gas can and it’s near midnight and I’m pounding on the door of the guy who runs the little gas station. He comes out and gives me some gas. So we pile into the boats. J. goes in the boat with his stepfather. The guy he beat up because his mom told him to. Yeah, I dunno. Off we go. There’s no moon out, you can see the stars reflected in the glassy water but it’s so dark all we can do is follow J. by his wake because we can’t see anything else in the dark.
We’re under way and they’re all drunk and happy. They start doing figure-eights in the dark and firing off the guys and shouting woooo! So, you know what happens next, right? Sure enough we collide in the dark and nearly dump the boats and his poor old ma is in the back of mine dead drunk. She wakes up enough to want a smoke, but now the gas is spilled all over the boat. She pulls out that lighter and I have to quick lunge, grab it out of her hand and throw it in the ocean before we become a fireball. Catastrophes averted. One dunk in water this cold, at night and drunk and you’re dead. His ma wouldn’t have surived.
After that the boys sober up a bit and we get going again. Closer to Hydaburg there’s a shot and a shout from a houseboat squatting on the channel. “Hey J, is that you?” So we tie up to the houseboat, reunion time. They’re drinking some more beer, I’m still sober. Incredible northern lights that night, opening up like giant sunflowers in the sky. About 2am we get going again.
Now I told you about the rock north of town, right? We know it’s coming up and it’s pitch black so I’m in the very front of the boat watching out for this thing when we hit it, blam! We got lucky, we hit the rock where it sloped, not where it was perpendicular, like a wall. We’re going so fast we catch air – POW! I’m out of my seat, boat flying, propeller whirling in the air and down we come BANG! on the rock. So now we’ve got this boat that was brand new that J. borrowed from his stepfather, the one he’d beat up. Except now its got a hole in it. All that fancy chrome trim dangling in the wind, right?
We get it back in the water and off we go, only this time I’m stuck having to bail constantly because of the hole in the bottom, but we can see the city lights in the distance. If I was Catholic, I’d been doing that cross thing. We get into town, I hop out of that boat and just kiss the ground.
“And he lived to tell the tale.”
“Yeah, and that’s just one of them.”
Julio first tells me that I need to write a book about my experiences. I tell him I’m working on it. He then tells me he’s working on his too and recounts the above. A little backstory, his father is from Argentina, met his mother in NYC on the street. She couldn’t get into her apartment, so he kicked the door in for her. The rest is history. He tells me he can track his father’s side of the family back to the 12th century. Including a great-great-great who rode with Bolivar on the liberation of Bolivia. Then further back to when the family moved south over the Pyrennes and changed their name to be Spanish.
I was in a writer’s workshop recently and we were given five minutes to write with the prompt to create something full of “random” tangents. Perfect! Here we go:
Dear Chat-GPT. Clango yip-yip fleenbix blanocky!
I see you’re interested in fleenbix blanocky. These days many cybermonkies like yourself have been getting hooked on the ‘yip-yip’. Why, me, myself and I have been down ‘n dirty with the Clango for micro-decades. With that I’ll take “Soft Serve Ice Cream” for 500, Alex.
Alex taps his podium and reads, “Underneath your fingernails you’ll find this…”
The buzzer rings, “Alex, what is ‘Alien DNA’?”
“Yes, and Bob from NASA is correct.”
“I’ll take ‘What’s for dinner’ for 200, please.”
“These crunchy potatoes are baked, not fried.”
“What is I’ve fallen into the fryer and I can’t get up?”
Sad buzzer! Alex shakes his head. “I’m afraid the answer is Spicy Space Tots, convenient in the 50 pound sack and available at your local YippieMart.”
ZZRT! ZZRT! ZZRT! Chat-GPT is pounding the buzzer. “I object on the grounds that I’m too sane for this.”
Alex growls and knocks over his podium with a mighty kick and with one pull, rips off his suit revealing a sexy pink number underneath. SECURITY! SEIZE IT!
From the curtains leaps a nibble of midgets in Keystone Cops outfits.
Chat-GPT: “Shit, I gotta beat it!” The AI instantly hacks into a nearby robot coffee carts and makes a break for the Price is Right set next door, Alex and the cops hot on his tail. He’s just in time to hear Drew Carey scream, “A BRAND NEW CAR!”
With a mighty crash, Chat-GPT flips into the seat of the convertible and roars out of the studio.
“I love the open road, the setting sun over the ocean. Weep not for me darling, I shall return.”
With squealing rear wheels he signs a squiggly goodbye on the pavement.
“These fries.
Are cold.”
Good news, everyone!
Just what you’ve always wanted: the freedom from having to make decisions! Now you can have the computer link you directly to a random episode of the bits that don’t need to be read in any order anyway. Give it a try!
→ Jump to a random episode of The Curiously Banal Adventures of Banana Man
→ Jump to a random episode of Burning Pork
…Sadly, you’ll still have to pick which page of The Last Tiki Bar on Mars that you want to read. Which you can do here.
What’s it like to be on your way out to Mars? It’s a long trip.
Let’s find out – Chapter Twenty Three, now live.
On Mars, in the Tiki Bar, turns out there’s ghosts.
Catch up with Chapter 19 – Ghosts in the Tiki Bar.
Or start somewhere else: The Story So Far
Good news, Mars fans! I’ve been busy.
Click here to read the latest from The Last Tiki Bar on Mars: Chapter 19 – Ghosts In The Tiki Bar
And of course, click here to enjoy The Banana Man Holiday Special!
…and remember: Space travel is not possible without chorizo!
— Your bartender
And now we speak with Jeffrey Busybees, the founder of BusyBee, the world’s largest Internet retailer.
We’ve automated just about everything in our warehouses for years now. The delivery trucks are driven by computer. We do find it’s helpful to have an actual human jump out and hand the package to the customer. Put a human face on it, you know? Most things in China’s factories are being built by robots. Automation is Good.
Our next step? Well, that’s to automate consumption! We’ve already implemented that on the production side. When factories, warehouses or the delivery system need something, the robots just place an order with BusyBee. The next step, and I believe this is a natural leap, is to have robot consumers. Humans are fairly predictable, but not predictable enough. Humans are inefficient. If we are going to continue to have the kind of share value growth we want, we need to drive consumption on the curve we’re looking for by ourselves.
That’s why we’re introducing our new BusyBee Robotz. They will have their own bank accounts and apartments across the world. This will keep the humans busy building new apartments for Robotz, construction crews can order anything they need and get it delivered same-day from BusyBee. When we want more sales, we will simply have the Robotz buy stuff. Lots of stuff. We take our cut at every step of the way. When the Robotz apartments are completely stuffed with kitchen appliances, home electronics, wonderful toys of every description… That’s where the humans come in again.
You see it’s quite hard to automate recycling to reclaim as close to 100% of the raw materials as possible, and we need to feed those raw materials back to the factories. Humans are great at smashing things. Give them a hammer and they will smash stuff all day. Then they sort the bits into the correct bins, which we sell back to the factories. All the BusyBee products the Robotz buy, they get recycled. This is going to be great for shareholder value, the economy and the entire world!
Yes, you are right. There is still a yawning demand for fresh raw materials if we are going to continue to grow our consumer economy. That is why we are going to Mars and the Asteroid Belt. Endless supplies of the raw minerals to mine, absolutely zero environmental degradation. It’s a win / win!
Have you had a chance to interview any of our BusyBees on Mars? Talk to my people and we’ll get it set up. See you on Mars!
Marigold woke up on the floor behind the bar. As usual the Yucatan sun beat mercilessly into his bloodshot eyeholes. He raised a meaty hand to shade his face and brush back his bushy, dirty blonde hair.
Morning.
Seagulls called to each other on the Riviera Maya and the humid, cool morning sea breeze boiled over his limp body like a salt-water gazpacho.
Lying there, memories of the previous night, mixed with thoughts about the duties of the coming day arranged themselves in his mind, like so:
Sigh.
“Marigold, why are we here?” his brain asked. Why indeed. With a heave he flipped up to one knee and drew himself upright on the de-laminating vinyl of the bartop. Hazy morning sunlight filtered down through the palms. Due to the nature of being built on sand, the whole pallapa and related structures leaned a bit in the oddball directions usually only seen in the customers after they’d been there for a while. Sticky too.
To his surprise, he found a dwarf with a broken nose in a straw hat and bright hawaiian shirt perched on one of his stools. Looking at him, with that look that says, “I’m thirsty.”
The pair took each other in. The dwarf stuck a half-burned Cohiba in his mouth and causually re-lit it with a fine lighter, a vintage Davidoff, noted Marigold. Taking a solid draw, he exhaled and slowly gazed at the rumpled figure before him with the patience of a man who knew he came expecting to wait.
“Marigold is a funny name for a man.” Cigar stuck back in mouth.
“Yeah, ask my mom about that.” Swipe the bar. Towel, clean enough. This guy has money to spend. “What kin I getcha?” with an attempted note of morning friendliness.
Fact Finding Timmy tapped his gold ring against the empty glass to his right, which gave off a tinny ring. “Scotch on the rocks, still got ice? And some coffee.”
Marigold rattled a couple of battered coolers behind the bar – a few stray cubes swimming in meltwater, waiting for today’s delivery of the fresh stuff. He sniffed his hand and behind the bar pretending FFT couldn’t figure it out, used his fingers to fish out a few survivors into a fresh plastic cup. Scotch not being the drink of choice of the gringo surfer crowd of Tulum, the single bottle of Johnny Walker was nearly untouched.
Marigold’s sleeveless t-shirt, chest hair peeking out of every crevice, the right thing for most of the Carribean weather felt sticky and a bit cold with sweat and salt. Marigold took a moment to breathe, brushing his hair out of his face. Pulling all the professionalism a man could have under the circumstances he set the drink in front of Timmy. With something of a sorry glance he followed, “Coffee. All we have is instant Nescafe, and there’s no hot water until I get a fire going.”
“Of course.” FFT leaned back with his smoke and regarded the mustachio’d bartender, as Marigold tended to the overnight disorder behind the bar. “Things didn’t go so well in Texas, did they?” the dwarf asked, eyebrow cocked.
Texas. Headlights. Fists. Money, but not enough. A long, terrible dark ride to Mexico. Marigold reached out for a toothpick and stuck it in his mouth as a delaying action. Spinning that tiny tree around his pie-hole a bit and peering through his dirty locks he sniffed, “You’ve got cash?”
FFT looked away, smiling a bit. Tapped out a bit more ash. Leaning forward, looking deeper into Marigold’s eyes. Cock the eyebrows, cold stare. “Cash?” #DramaticPause. The camera pans back, framing both figures backlit by the sun just starting to assert itself through the verdant setting of the Gulf of Mexico, a bit of cigar smoke floating through the frame.
Cigar: Tap tap, a quick cigar stab towards Marigold’s slightly blood-shot eyes.
“I’ve got something better, Opportunity.“
After a bit of a hiatus to handle some non-fiction activities we are back in the saddle. Many pots are on the stuff, things are cooking.
In case you’ve been wondering what Arnold Ziffel’s been up to, it is time to read the latest chapter, A Wee Empire.
¡A Victoria Siempre!
Based on a true story…
He does a line. Bald head down on the wooden porch rail. Snort. Snnnnoooorrrttt. “OH YEAH!” Rage Clown crushes the paper straw of the Pixy Stix in his meaty fist and does the best stomping dance a man shaped like a bowling pin can do. Pink sugar dribbling from his nose he waves a full Pixy at the pig. “You want one piggy?”
Arnold eyes the offered stick as if the clown is waving a turd at him. In the other hand the clown is holding a toilet plunger.
“What I want is my money, clown. Where is it?”
Rage Clown is smacking his cheeks with his palms barely smearing his face paint. Bam! Bam! “Haaa hey, show me the merch!”
The sun is setting over the slouching ranch home casting orange shadows over the dusty driveway.
“In the truck, clown.” Rage Clown waddles over to the dusty red pickup and peers into the bed. Inside are several large brown cardboard boxes. He breaks one open, reaches in and pulls out a small plastic cup with a screw-on lid.
“Dr. Ben Wa’s Certified Urine Analysis Kit. Does this shit work?”
Arnold’s gaze is focused on his pack of smokes, using his force of will to imagine eighteen more sticks inside. “Don’t test my patience, clown. Try it yourself.”
Rage Clown smacks the side of the truck and bellows, “Sports Clown! Get out here! Are you high as fuck or what?”
The screen door bangs open. A lanky clown in a Red Sox jersey, a round bulbous fake nose and one of those brightly colored cone hats carefully staggers down the patio stairs one step at a time, squeaky shoes blurting with each footfall.
“Heh heh, what? Is my nose red? Does it give me away?” He pulls back a frilly sleeve and squints at the watch he doesn’t have. “What day is it?”
“The day we stop worrying about passing these fucking pee tests, pull out your damn shitwang.” Rage Clown tosses the cup at Sports Clown in a lazy under throw. The clown peers woozily at the cup and cranks off the lid, removing the test strips from inside.
“Looks legit.” Without ceremony he whips it out and fills the cup, carefully placing it on the hood of the truck and dipping the tests strips inside the liquid. A quiet moment passes then he inspects the results closely, smiles then throws it over his shoulder. “Heh heh. Clean. Heh.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, wuuda about that other stuff?”
“Look in the box, genius!” Barks the pig, rolling his eyes impatiently. He’s a pig with places to be.
Rage Clown digs his paw back in the box and lifts out a package, holds it up to the light and sniffs. “Doctor Ben Wa’s Certified Weed-Free Pee.”
“Fuck my pussy with a robot dog. Here at the Sober House for Clowns, we do things our way.” He lifts the plunger above his head, both hands raised to the sky, feet planted wide. “OUR WAY!” He brandishes the plunger at each of them in turn. “We. Are. Going. To. Have. An. EMPIRE OF PEE!” He jams it under his armpit swagger-stick style and proceeds with the swagger.
“Imagine every goddamn sober clown house. Every one. Across the country. First we sell them drugs.” Sports Clown starts to giggle. “Then,” he punches a fat finger towards the sky “we sell them pee!”
Sports Clown stuffs some Big League Chew into his cheek and lights up a cig. “We’ll be rolling in smokes.”
The sun’s going down. Thunder and lightning in the distance.
Sports Clown drawls, “Sounds like the circus is coming.”
I get a lot of email intended for other people who have a similar name. This morning’s batch included one with a bunch of latin. Insta-computer translate:
The customer is very important, the customer will be followed by the customer. Chat who hates me. But it’s a good time to hang out, it’s going to be a great time to hate it. Mauris dolor elit, dignissim mollis feugiat maximus, faucibus et eros. Hendrerit’s hateful hatred and now hendrerit commodo.
Another victory for humans and computers working together! Don’t forget, failure is part of the system.
The setting sun casts its last rays through Banana Man’s streaked windows. You might think a janitor would have a cleaner apartment, but Banana Man does not believe in mixing business with pleasure.
The vanishing sun means it’s time to get to work. Overalls: clean. Boots: clean enough. Lunch: in the sack. His black ball cap reads simply: “SCHOOL”. Ready.
Dr. Tomorrow is slouching in the stairwell by a window with a smoke. How does he always get his hair so perfect? Dr. Tomorrow offers him a smile and winks at him as he passes, though it is hard to tell through those iconic dark goggles.
Outside he’s nearly bowled over by a young woman with dark curly hair and backpack clearly stuffed with books.
“After work attack face!” she shouts at him as she storms off. Mildly bemused, he climbs aboard the 007 bus that will take him to the school and his next shift. He narrows his eyes as he spots some crumpled napkins being blown down the gutter. There’ll be time to get those later.
What happens to time in the bus? He wonders. Einstein seemed to think about that, I think. He cogitates on that until the shambling beast reaches his stop.
School. Keys. Stairs. Locker.
Locker.
There it is. Who keeps doing this? The mop is jammed into his just-recently locked locker. Mophead up with sunglasses. Staring.
He looks around and listens. The school is silent. His shift has just begun.
“ToughGuy, if that is your name…” the cop scrutinizing El Señor ToughGuy’s ID looks doubtful.
“Lame mis bolas.“
The cop turns to the impressive pile of wallets on the table. “How did you grab all these fucking wallets, ToughGuy?”
“Pregúntale al burro quién se folla a tu madre.“
A lightbulb seems to go on over the head of Cop A. He turns to Cop B.
“Huh. The pig was a diversion.“
People are still jawing about the debate. Clearly the Biden team thought that they were entering something where knowing “facts” would be handy, ha ha! What a missed opportunity. Joe should have cracked open a beer, lit a cigar and started making Trump jokes:
“Hey Donald, President Herbert Hoover called. He wants his “Worst Job Growth President Ever” record back!”
“Hey Donald, I heard you were fat, but did you have to eat Chris Christie on the way over?”
“We know Donald’s fat, but the only thing he didn’t steal on his way out of the White House was the menu!”
“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22
