McDougal Slow Facts

Fact: McDougal has been at war with the Portugese for over 1200 years.

I'm not trying to suggest that McDougal is actually that old though. That would be ridiculous. He's only about half that. So how is that possible you ask?

Fact: McDougal owns and operates the world's only functioning time machine.

He stole the design from the Nazis back in WWII. Actually, he thought he was just stealing a priceless painting by Sandro Botticelli, but the time machine design was hidden on a microfilm embedded in the frame. The Nazis never built the machine because they couldn't figure out how to power it. In case you are wondering, McDougal wasn't an Allied soldier during the war. He preferred to work freelance.

Fact: McDougal's time machine is steam powered.

To create the enormous amount of power required to send himself back and forth through time, McDougal re-routed a river in central Africa to pour directly into the couldron of an active volcano. The steam serves the dual purpose of powering the time machine and hiding it from Portugese spy satelites.

Fact: No one knows exactly why McDougal hates the Portugese so much.

I have heard rumors that one year someone accidently gave McDougal a copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets form the Portuguese as a Christmas gift. McDougal was so enraged that he vowed to destroy whoever was responsible. He probably should have destroyed the gift-giver (who intended it for his fiance) or even E.B. Browning, but that kind of rational thinking has never been McDougal's strong suit.

Fact: McDougal's war with the Portugese is the only war in history to be fought backwards chronologically.

Obviously, the Portugese are now fully aware of McDougal's operation even though they are unable to stop it. But by travelling through time McDougal is able to fight each subsequent battle a few years prior to the former, thereby catching the Portugese completely unaware.

Fact: If it weren't for McDougal's interference, the Portugese would have discovered the Americas a full twelve years before Columbus.

The expedition was fully outfitted and consisted of six ships, each of them larger than Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria. There is every indication that it would have been a monumental success and would have given Portugal a massive influence in world affairs that would have lasted to even the present day. However, at the last minute McDougal showed up and convinced them to abandon the expedition and instead sail East in search of an island which grew a fantastic spice the likes of which Europeans had never tasted. He provided them with a map to the island and a sample of the spice as a gesture of goodwill.

Fact: McDougal provided the expedition with a Shoney's kids menu and a Crown Royal bag full of Lowery's Seasoned Salt.

Convictions

Three days deep inside McDougal's desert compound, the hallucinations have not abated. If anything, they've grown steadily worse.

I was awakened this morning by my dead grandmother and Burl Ives. They wanted money. Money which I, of course, don't have. McDougal doesn't allow "filthy lucre" on his property, and all transactions are handled using a bodily-fluid barter system.

I tried to explain this to them, but the pair had grown violent, and I became fearful for my life and well-being, until I realized the entire conversation had been between me and two three-foot-long talking skinks.

I've lost all track of time in this underground fortress. No sign of McDougal in two weeks now.

A member of his staff said that he was on a working vacation in Kuala Lampur, then laughed hysterically for close to seven minutes straight.

I am told I am not a prisoner here, but have on three occasions been prohibited from leaving the compound. I'm in the guest wing of McDougal's palatial desert estate, which has come to feel more like a prison than a hotel.

The meals are well prepared and served in a massive dining hall, but I eat alone -- which only adds to my sense of imprisonment and despair. Also, I am fairly certain they are loading the mashed potatoes with near toxic levels of salt peter, as I've lost all interest in the concubine assigned to me upon arrival.

I was summoned here in the middle of the night on Saturday. Awakened from a deep whiskey-induced slumber in my London flat by two jack-booted thugs, brandishing chrome revolvers, and a recorded message from McDougal. The message was brief, cryptic, and ominous, and I knew I had no choice but to go with them.

The four-line message simply said,

Revolution is upon us.
The army of change is not staffed proxies, but with the
souls of thinking men.
Those who turn blind eyes will eventually lose the power of sight
altogether.
Act now and secure your destiny.

I was flown by private hovercraft from London to the compound, where I expected to be greeted by an army of rabid communist soldiers. Instead, I am alone, and McDougal is nowhere to be found.

The silence is eerie, and the air so thin that at times I can hardly breathe.

I am treated well by the staff, but can't shake this unmistakable sense that I am being fattened for the kill.

And I'm now sure that McDougal is here. Waiting ... silently watching.

And I am fearful, not of death, but that if I die here today that my life will have been lived in vain. All those hours watching Fox News and eating processed foods in a leatherette barcolounger, while my brethren were scattered to the four corners of the globe, fighting for independence. And McDougal, in his infinite wisdom, has called me on it.

I shall stand bravely in the face of my inevitable death and regret that I had not one life to give to the cause.

Oh wait, McDougal's just arrived.

He's dressed in desert fatigues, and carrying a machete, a dead sparrow, a case of PBR, and an autographed picture of Lee Iacoca.

He wants me to take off my shoes.

Katrina and the Waves

MCOUDGAL SPOTTED CHARGING DOWN BOURBONB ST ON MIGHTY STALLION STOP WEARING CONFEDERATE UNIFORM STOP SWILLING WHISKEY FROM BRASS DRUM STOP MCDOUGAL SPRAYPAINTED GOLD STOP WHEN HE LIFTS ARM AND WAVES HURRICANE FOLLOWS STOP SAW HIM POINT FINGER AT BAR AND LIGHTNING STRUCK IT AND DESTROYED IT THEN DRUNK 18 YEAR OLDS FELL OUT AND FELLATED STOP SAYS HE IS HEADED NEXT TO MEMPHIS AND TAKING OUT FEDEX STOP GOD HELP -- TRANSMISSION ENDED

Found this on my bathroom floor this morning:

Dear Mr. McDougal,

Thank you for your employment inquiry. Shell Oil Global Incorporated welcomes applicants with your qualifications and diverse background. We would like to meet you and discuss further the opportunity to employ you and benefit from your many talents.

We hope you do not consider it to untoward if we ask a few questions before setting up a meeting with yourself and the Shell Board of Directors;

• When you say in your resume that you "fucked an entire army of Marilyn Vos Savant clones", do you mean that you reached fulfillment with each and every one of them? Or are you describing more of a general grab and pant orgy with them, in which all members may or may not have been satiated?
• How exactly did you travel from 17th century China to the present-day home of Barbara Streisand? You made it very clear what you ate and defecated daily on your trip, but the vessel of travel was not mentioned. Just a point that needs clarification.
• If you were to work for Shell Oil would you continue to, as you describe in your resume, rip the knees off anyone you meet in a public restroom who makes less than $800,000 a year? And if so, why?
• Ivica Račan, of the Croatian People's Party, was in the early 2000s the minister of public works alongside Radimir Čačić, who was in turn a former president of the party. At the time they worked together they had two deputies in the Croatian Parliament. What were their names?
• What would you say motivated you to write the words "eat my ass on a plate" on the top of the first 17 pages of your Letter of Intent?

If the answer to question 1 is that all of the Vos Savant clones were satisfied, could you please give us some insight into the pleasure points and erogenous zones of Ms. Vos Savant?

Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Lynn Elsenhans
President of Shell Oil Products U.S.

Young McDougal Busted in Sting Operation

ey guys if you see McDougal today go easy on him his youngest boy just went down in a crack sting operation in Akron. Looks like he gonna do some time on this one.

Nicholas A. McDougal, 25, 179 Dodge Ave., was charged with Possession of Crack,
Possession of Marijuana. Nicholas was stopped at W. Exchange and Beck and was
found to have drugs in his possession.

Keep the McDougal family in your thoughts and prayers i'm making chicken and if someone want a sent a car package of food than you need let myselves or tisha (greene) know right now.

I we are putting together a care package to send to McDougal family (wife Marlene) later today

Sincerely,
Veleka McMickens

if you can put some items in that package just please add to this list that below of me:

Hear are what we have already -

• Spencer's gift card ($25)
• potato salad
• bullets (assrtd.)
• latex gloves (3 so far -- more if you have them)
• Toshiba latptop
• $430
• chicken (one live, two are already baked/fried)
• Some Alanis Morrisset MP3s and a concert t-shirt (boys medium)
• Two unopen tins of ALtoids
• Cheese casserole with glass dish (pyrex)
• Hymnal
• Paperback of "Legend of Big Foot" (North American sasquatch sightings with one chapter on the Yedi)
• Carton of Pall Malls
• SEC College football guide (this one's from 2003 it would be great if we could get one for this year)
• Anti-bacterial soap
• Some loose meat and sandwich spreads (assrtd)
• Autographed Bea Arthur poster
• Dokken

Please, bring what you can ...

Do Bears Shit in the Woods?

"Bears, Terry. Those are bears."

I wasn't sure who this Terry character was, but I knew what bears were.

And if they were in McDougal's kitchen, that wasn't good.

Especially since we were on his cabin cruiser in the middle of fucking Lake Eerie.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yes," McDougal said. They must have followed the trail of all the blood and garbage.

"They can swim?"

McDougal bit his tongue to stifle a laugh. "Of course not, Jonesy. Don't be absurd."

"Then how the fuck did they get way the hell out here?"

Boats.

The fucking bears up there have their own boats.

Fortunately for both of us, McDougal had a couple of leftover bear traps and bloody virgins in his back pocket. Those stupid fucking bears dove right in after them when McDougal tossed them overboard.

But what we didn't know until 90 seconds later is that they'd rigged the boat with explosives. They blew the whole boat into tiny bear-sized pieces. McDougal and I made it out fine, but it was a long swim back to shore. Also, it didn't help that we were pursued the entire way by bear frogmen.

I later told McDougal, "I didn't even know they made such a thing."

"Don't be such a faggot, Percy. God makes whatever the fuck he wants."

That McDougal is right.

Jesus, I've been such a Goddamn idiot.

I recommend printing this out and pasting it to the inset of your shoe or bra.

Helpful Hints:

The best way to calm McDougal down is to let him put you in a headlock, then pull out "The Winds of War" by Herman Wouk. Do not read it, but instead place it gingerly into his pants and sing any song by Art Garfunkel SOLO YEARS ONLY. No Paul Simon.

If he's mad about food, do NOT blink until you are out of his sight. He sees your eyelids and he'll rip them off and eat them like chips, the dip being your eyes.

If he's sad about something, like a lost dog or flat tire, replace the Wouk with anything by Colleen McCullough, or a porno movie on Betamax. Let him masturbate, yes, just let him, and don't stop talking or look nervous.

If he's bored, sometimes he's at his maddest when he's bored, I suggest inviting Carl Sagan up for some blow and veal. If Carl Sagan has passed on, which he has, try anyone from downtown St. Louis or anyone involved in creating the Tamagotchi craze of the late 90s, and replace the veal with orzo pasta and a merlot.

If you try the above and he's still going strong, you may be headed into a Level 10 McDougal Situation, which has only happened a couple of times. If so you will need the following:

• one fat woman
• 14 pounds of solidified Cognac
• a Trivial Pursuit game: Sitcoms Edition
• 14 defeathered Cormorants
• 2 small raccoon statues
• the neck of an Irish clergyman or another fat woman

Gather these into a basket made of winter wheat, and give me a call. I don't want to go into when we had to do this before (once at a Dead Show - Winterland 1968, once at my uncle's bank) in open channels like this.

Mighty Steed

McDougal has a prize bull named Condoleeza Rice that he uses as his primary source of transportation. He trained for six months on a mechanical bull in a West Texas Juke Joint to prepare for this "lifestyle change."

A recent, but adamant advocate of environmental consciousness, McDougal has shunned all gas-powered transportation and rides Condoleeza Rice to and from his job at the steel mill outside Westchester (30 miles each way) six days a week.

The commute takes him four hours each way, but he uses the time to read, reflect, and assassinate SUV drivers along the turnpike.

Last Monday, he stampeded Condoleeza Rice through a refining facility in Louisiana, killing 41 people by goring them to death*. The event, however, was covered up by the Bush Administration who did not want news of this type of event to reach the masses for fear of copycat attacks.

~~~
* McDougal did the actual goring himself. Condoleeza Rice was not involved in the death of any of the refinery employees.

Ball Lightning

A few years ago, McDougal and I were on a work assignment in Tegucigalpa with the Olsen twins (Merlin and Ole), the Chukanovs, and the ghost of Percy Julian. Ostensibly, the project was centered on the study of wild yams and the impact of plate tectonics on growth rates. But three weeks into our mission, Merlin was felled by ball lightning and our focus changed.

Merlin's final words were confusing, humbling, and flat out scary. As he was illuminated by the freakish electrical pulse, Merlin screamed, "As for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there is but one. I do not know the name of the man, but I have seen his horse. And he is McDougal."

But there was also that ball lightning thing.

The Chukanov's believed that modern science failed to recognize the understanding of nature of ball lightning as an important source of energy. They said most people assumed that the energy was insignificant and came from an external source and not from within ball lightening itself. They felt this manner of thinking was disrespectful to ball lightning and to Merlin Olsen.

When McDougal heard how much science had disregarded ball lightning as a source of energy, he completely lost it. He stormed out of the jungle and straight to the Presidential Palace in the center city. When they refused access, McDougal beat the entire Honduran Presidential Guard to death with Merlin's electrified feet, then stormed in and climbed atop the palace, where he summoned Zeus to smite the people of Honduras for their complete and utter lack of respect for ball lightning.

I think McDougal was kind of hoping Zeus would take them all out with ball lightning ... you know ... as kind of a poetic "you doubt my power" sort of message.

But instead he sent a hurricane named "Mitch," which was kind of a white cracker gay name for a storm, but he killed like 18,000 people ... so that was cool.

Agolo-kuluk Lak-shini-tuk Et-kat Mats-jaro-alik

In case you were wondering, one day I opened my car trunk to find McDougal humping a Rally's short order cook and her peek-a-poo. I had a job interview in ten minutes, so I yelled at the D and slammed my trunk, inadvertantly getting the peek-a-poo's neck caught in the trunk latch and spraying tiny-dog blood all over my suit. This infuriated me, and it didn't help that I heard a muffled mix of the Rally's girl climaxing and McDougal laughing at me from inside the car. I said fuck it to the job interview, turned and walked south-southeast, and never had another job after that day.

A few days into the walk, McDougal comes puffing up behind me. I don't mean puffing like he was sorry and had run to catch up and make things right between us, get me that job, and let me do the Rally's girl, I mean puffing like taking massive hits off an ice bong packed with Afghani Hashish while sitting in a chariot made of dolphin bones and old 386 motherboards. Two eskimos held the chariot aloft, and they in turn sat atop two surprisingly fast walruses.

"Fine day for walking," he mused, and pulled out a deck of cards. One of the Eskimos kind of staggered and started to fall. In one lightning fast move McDougal beheaded him, chained the Eskimo's second-born son to the falling handle of the chariot, buried the Eskimo's remains in his homeland, sang a moving dirge in his native Anuit language that brought everyone (myself included, I'm not ashamed to admit) to tears of bittersweet joy, and dealt me five cards: three down, two up.

I took a look at my cards and felt my chest tighten. I had 1 ace down and an ace and a queen showing. The other three cards were a yellow 5 and a blue Skip from a deck of Uno cards and the instructions for an altimeter. I knew I was sunk. McDougal laughed the same laugh that had hit me so hard back at my car trunk, and I hopped up on the Eskimo chariot and took a nap against his big strong arm.



Long story short, we captured the entire White Army of early 1900s Prussia, the Rally's girl had a baby nine months later named Tom Cruise, and I of course forgave McDougal completely.

McDougal Fast Facts

• No wife; no children; three wet nurses on permanent staff.


• Has fully functional gills under his arms.


• Stormed the beach at Normandy, killing 84 Germans with an M-1 rifle ... in 1975.


• In Monopoly, always picks the flat iron.


• Once married Martha Plimpton on a dare. Divorced her on a double dare. Ruined her career on a whim.

Flaming Eye of Death

A lot of you may say, "McDougal ... I know I've heard that name before, but I just can't place it."

If any of you remember the "Flaming Eye of Death," that might be where you've heard it. You see, it was invented by an ancestor of the McDougal clan in the 16th Century. The “Flaming Eye of Death” was designed to act as a primitive laser, burning a hole through the torso of a foe. If anything, it worked too well, and was banned after killing all but the last man of a troop of knights who wore the helmets while following one after another through a narrow mountain pass.

Lady Liberty and the Loose Llamas of Luxembourg

I spent some time in Luxembourg in the late 80s with old man McDougal. We were working at a bakery -- I worked unleavened breads exclusively, but McDougal was something of a utility player, moving between danishes and petit fours with equal ease.

McDougal explained to me that in Luxembourg (unlike in our native Birmingham, Alabama) it was neither lady-like nor homo-erotic to work in a flour-based kitchen service industry.

Our time in the Grand Duchy was indeed grand, though neither elegant nor luxurious, as one might imagine of a stay in the land of Luxembourg. In retrospect, we might have achieved some level of luxury, had we not spent so much of our spare funds freeing Fran Drescher from house arrest in Luxembourg Castle. Had we not dropped two years' savings on this endeavor, we would have been able to embark on our journey* before the greatest decade was pulled out from under our feet like Gloria Gaynor's glamorous run some years prior.

Maybe then we would have been able to live to a higher standard than was afforded at the Libertarian Ladies League (LLL) shelter on LaMontagne Lane, Mertert, Luxembourg. Maybe mad McDougal wouldn't have sold two of my eye teeth and all of my hair for drug money in November of '90, rendering me bald and snaggletoothed with a distended belly and low self esteem that would undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life.

"I can forgive the sale of hair, McDougal," I admitted. "But for God's sake. The follicles? You had to sell the follicles, too?"

Of course, he did have to sell the follicles. For Christ's sake, it's a package deal over there. They don't want hair without follicles the same way we wouldn't want Wendy's without fries -- or whiskey without water and wanton masturbatory mayhem.

But I digress.

You know I don't speak a word of French, German, or Luxembourgish. Which is fine when your days are limited to prepping unleavened bread and scooping pig entrails out of the gutters of the Libertarian Ladies League shelter. But when you get roped into political prisoners and international pseudo-starlets, it helps to be able to speak the language of the land.

Our efforts to free Ms. Drescher were hampered by McDougal's misguided belief that Fran was one half of the balladeer duet of Peaches and Herb. Initially I tried to explain her true identity to McDougal, but he wouldn't listen. And I don't know if it was McDougal's skills at rhetoric, or my own shortcomings (i.e. PCP addiction and IQ of a tree frog), but I eventually came to believe him, and was equally concerned with freeing the pop songstress ... err ... Ms. Drescher.

"We can't let Herb rot in that dungeon," McDougal demanded.

"Err ... I think Herb is the male half of the duo," I suggested.

"Right," McDougal said.

"Ms. Drescher is a woman."

Upon hearing this claim, McDougal just laughed and laughed and laughed for some 36 minutes straight, until his laughter finally convinced me that I was mistaken and Ms. Drescher was not a woman at all, but was in fact Herb.

Negotiations stalled when the Grand Duke Lucas of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg accidentally freed a peasant who was slated to be hanged the next day for clubbing a herring to death with a sock full of raw bacon in the town square.

"We have no black singers in our dungeon," the Grand Duke insisted.

"Poppycock!" pronounced McDougal. "Free Ms. Drescher at once."

The Grand Duke of the Grand Duchy was confused. "Ms. Drescher, or Herb?"

"Precisely!"

This debate went on for a solid 12 hours until the Grand Duke of the Grand Duchy finally relented and freed Herb Drescher, a Jewish haberdasher and Nazi sympathizer, who'd been locked in the Luxembourg Castle dungeon since 1944. Ms. Drescher was finally released under her own recognizance the following Friday.

For a brief time, I tried to convince McDougal that we'd made a mistake, and that all of our efforts had been for naught.

But when the Dreschers belted out a blistering rendition of "Reunited", we knew this whole ordeal had been worth it.

By the end, McDougal and I were broke, unemployed (plus, I was missing the eye teeth and the hair), but we learned that we had been part of something bigger.

That was the first time that I had a sense of God's grand plan for us all. Peaches and Herb were back together, McDougal was an international hero, and I (though snaggletoothed and with a distended belly) had witnessed a miracle.

Also, later that summer, I dry humped a half-dead llama in Lisbon.

~~~

* This post was originally going to be about the motorcycle trip McDougal and I took retracinig Magellan's route to circumnavigate the globe ... which was exceedingly difficult (obviously), as Magellan's was a water-based route and Triumph T140s are not known for their performance on the open seas. However, this post fell apart after I took a bunch of pills and moved back in with my mom and her boyfriend, Larry, again.

Anatomy of a Star

Did I ever tell you about the time that McDougal and I went yachting in his pancreas?

I know some of you have probably heard this before, but the whole thing was just so amazing to me that I feel it bears repeating.

One night, McDougal and I had just eaten about 415 beef ribs between the two of us, and I was lying cramped up on the bathroom floor, bemoaning my inferior digestive system. McDougal - ever the gracious and compassionate host - came to my aid. He lifted me from the bathroom floor and instead of mocking my weak duodenum or making fun of my overly acidic digestive fluids, he says to me, "Son, let's go for a walk."

He then takes me by the hand, opens his mouth four and a half feet wide and guides me down his esophagus.

Let me tell you some things you may not know about McDougal:

First off, his breath is divine. It's holy. It's nothing short of a modern day miracle. Words don't do it justice, but I'll tell you, as we trekked past his uvula, I smelled the sweetest scent ever to drift through these nostrils. The air in the back of that man's mouth is like a cross between fresh cut cedar and sweet crude oil. It's intoxicating in its brilliance.

Secondly, the man's hygiene knows no bounds. I remember remarking upon the absence of sinewy matter lodged between his teeth as we climbed over his right molar. You know what the man told me? He said that he'd trained himself to floss with his mind. After every meal, McDougal actually willed his teeth clean. Listen, I know you're doubting me here, and if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it. He spent about thirty minutes trying to teach me to do the same, but I'm just a fucking dolt, and I couldn't learn. The lesson ended with me and tears at the base of his tongue and him prying out four of my rotted teeth with a pair of makeshift pliers fashioned from a couple of silver pie servers.

I know I've seriously digressed here, but one third amazing thing I learned on that journey -- McDougal's esophagus is lined with delicious aspic. Now I know a lot of you may not be fans of the jellied meats, but when he busted out the pâtés and foie gras, I might as well have died and gone to heaven right there. Seriously, if you're ever in the vicinity of McDougal's liver, please try the foie gras. You just have to trust me on this one.

Anyway, the whole day was really on a rapid downhill slide after about my 39th beef rib. I'd gone from a state of pure ecstasy and unbridled joy to boundless despair and an overwhelming sense of futility in life brought on by incessant projectilvomitingng and shitting out 5-7 feet of my own intestinal tract.

I don't know what powers McDougal harnessed on that cold December night, but the big man managed to see right through me -- to cut through that bravado and faux machismo that I'd strapped on like a prosthetic penis somewhere in the vicinity of my 95th beef rib. He saw deep inside me -- where I was really hurting. And like the miracle worker he is, he tended to that deep open wound that ran from the pit of my stomach all the way to the tail end of my hardened black soul.

He really opened himself up to me that day. And I don't mean that exclusively in the literal sense that you might interpret from me recounting the tale of walking into the big man's stomach. I mean, he showed me a soft, warm side of him that I'd never seen before. And that is something that I will never forget.

And it wasn't until we reached his cystic duct that I realized what a true marvel I was witnessing.

"Go ahead," McDougal said. "Touch it. It's all copper."

"Jesus Christ."

The man had replaced the crappy fibrous tissue that originally lined his digestive tract with solid copper. It was, truly, a thing of beauty.

He said the maintenance was pretty tough, which is why he'd figured out how to do it all himself, but it was well worth a little extra elbow grease for the kind of performance he got from his enhanced system.

Anyway, when we got to McDougal's bile duct, I was only half surprised to find we weren't alone. I was, however, quite surprised to find the original inhabitants of the Roanoke Colony living happily in the safety of the big man's gullet -- 450 years after they vanished from the New World.

I spoke briefly with a Lumbee elder who explained how the tribe had come to live in McDougal's belly, and how he was able to clean the copper around McDougal's sphincter with a brush he'd crafted from beaver pelts, potato skins, and a 5,000-watt diesel generator. I thanked him for the information, and McDougal said it was time to move on -- We'd see the sphincter later, he promised.

And we did eventually make it to his sphincter, which was of course, clean as a whistle, which (as it turns out) is an appropriate comparison because McDougal can whistle Pachelbel's Canon in D Major through his asshole, and it actually sounds better than the London Philharmonic, I shit you not. Which is just how McDougal explained it to me as we climbed out.

I think I left out the part about the boat. I guess it wasn't really that germane to the story anyway.

"So you see, Larry," McDougal announced as he shat us out on stage during some G.G. Allin tribute band show somewhere up in British Ontario. "The digestion you lament is attainable only through alchemic upgrades that you do not currently possess."

And you know what? That motherfucker was talking in metaphors.

And he was completely right.

That night I shot myself in the head and bled to death alone in some shitty hotel outside of Denver.

McDougal Fast Facts

• McDougal owns a $300 stapler made out of gold plated chicken bones.


• He keeps a 6-foot live viper in his right boot and Tina Yothers in his left.


• Likes Yoda. Hates Luke.


• He has eleven fingers. (One isn't his. It belonged to a native American named Charlie White. McDougal won it in a bar bet, and keeps it in his left back pocket for luck.)


• Once beat Yule Brenner unconscious with a sock full of boiled okra.


• Saved Lorne Greene's life in a West Texas juke joint in 1967.

A Pleasant Evening Down South

A couple of hours ago, I remembered that I owe McDougal about $1,600 (US) for several assorted expenses and debts that have added up over the past six nights.

I also remembered that McDougal had my family tied up in gunny sacks in the crawl space beneath his trailer.

I also remembered that he had poked three holes in my liver with an ivory handled letter opener he'd received as a gift from Margaret Thatcher in 1981 ... and that he'd bound my hands and feet with leather straps and had secured a long piece of nylon (maybe about 30 feet long or so) to my ankles and was dragging me behind his Cutlass at that very moment.

I wondered why I hadn't thought of all that before.

I wondered if surgeons would be able to reattach my right thumb or to cosmetically repair the words McDougal had etched into my back with an ice scraper: cogito ergo vagina.

I wondered if McDougal was going to stop the Cutlass and come back and talk to me again.

I wondered if he was going to tell me another joke like the last time we stopped, when he said:

“A rabi, a nun, and a prizefighter walk into a bar. The nun and the prizefighter sit in a booth, and send the rabi to the bar to place their drink orders. The rabi says to the bartender, 'I'll have an imported beer, two bottles of Listerine, and a dozen egg whites.' The bartender says, 'Your honor, I can understand about the beer, and even the Listerine, but what the hell are you going to do with a dozen egg whites?' The rabi didn't say, a word. He shot the bartender eight times in the mouth, then went and sat down with the prizefighter and the nun. The nun was shocked. She says to the rabi, 'Mr. Ashcroft, why on earth did you just shoot that man?'”

I'm not really sure how the joke ended, or for that matter, if it was even a joke at all. I think McDougal might have actually been recounting some experience from earlier in the evening. Either way, I passed out before McDougal got to the punchline because the plastic bag he'd placed over my head restricted the amount of oxygen that was available to me at the time.

He didn't stop though until we got back across the border, when he said he forgot why he had cut off my thumb and tied me to his bumper.

“That's funny,” I said. “Over the course of this evening, I've forgotten most things I knew in my life, too.”

McDougal said that in my case, that actually made sense because he'd removed the left side of my brain and sold it to some Mexican scientists for beer and gas money in Matamoros.

It had been a long night, and McDougal and I were both pretty hungry, so we stopped at a Denny's in Brownsville. McDougal ordered the Texas Scrambler and I just had some toast.

The Big Bukowski

"question and answer"
he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
night, running the blade of the knife
under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
of all the letters he had received
telling him that
the way he lived and wrote about
that--
it had kept them going when
all seemed
truly
hopeless.

putting the blade on the table, he
flicked it with a finger
and it whirled
in a flashing circle
under the light.

who the hell is going to save
me? he
thought.

as the knife stopped spinning
the answer came:
you're going to have to
save yourself.

still smiling,
a: he lit a
cigarette
b: he poured
another
drink
c: gave the blade
another
spin.

"This Bukowski makes me want to blow my fucking head off."

Disgusted, McDougal heaved the thick book of beatnick prose across the lawn.

I was, and still am, unsure of what led McDougal to beat poetry that summer, considering his ordinary literary diet consisted of the absurdist ramblings of Al Franken, Pol Pot, Saul Bellow, Newt Gingrich, and the backs of cereal boxes.

I kept my mouth shut though. Partially because I have learned over the years to never question McDougal, but mainly because he had pulled that .44 Magnum out of the shoulder holster that he always wore, even while swiming.

• (McDougal's pool is shaped like the number eight, incidentally. Or maybe it is the symbol for infinity ... I have never been quite sure. The two little islands in the middle are kind of neat though. The previous owner designed the pool. He was a big shot mathematician or physicist or something. He worked for the government creating either unbreakable codes or doomsday weapons, depending on who you ask. There is, however, one part of the story in which the details are always exactly the same. Whatever he was making, he got caught selling a little bit of it to the North Koreans. Before the FBI could take him in, he blew off the upper-right section of his skull with a .40 caliber handgun, while standing on the Northwest island of that pool. So McDougal was able to get the property super cheap.)

Which brought my mind back to the task at hand. I was still sitting directly across from a very large, drunk, and unstable man whose head was buzzing with filthy beatnik poetry. Whose fucking idea was it to give him that Bukowski anyway? It wasn't mine, that's for sure. Some woman, I'll bet.

McDougal was staggering across the lawn, waving the gun, rambling incoherently about methamphetamines, the man, the system, Jim Jones, and Uriah Heep. He alternately pointed the gun at his own head, then at me, then at the sky.

After several minutes of this, the big man finally stopped, walked up to me, and pointed his hand cannon at my head. At this range, the barrel of that gun did not look like the Holland Tunnel. For a moment, I considered using that simile in an attempt to strengthen my verse, but soon thought better. You deserve better. It just looked like a big fucking gun.

I wasn't afraid for my own safety though. I am a man of no consequence. Just an anonymous narrator, telling tales of The Great McDougal. If I were shot and killed, another would step in to take my place before McDougal had even finished wiping his prints off the gun and faking my suicide note. No, I was more concerned that McDougal would make good on his promise to do harm to himself. What a dull place the world would be without McDougal. The man is a legend for Christ's sake. He once stowed away on the space shuttle. He was personally responsible for starting the Falklands War. He was the 1982 International Shark Rodeo Grand Champion.

I guess I should have been a little bit concerned for my safety though. At the end of the day McDougal came out completely unscathed. I, on the other hand, lost three fingers and all the best parts of my left ear.

Inside the Thunderdome

Has anyone here ever seen the inside of a bull's asshole? Raise your hands. Okay, well, I have too. And guess who was my tour guide? That's right, McDougal.

The backstory on this is pretty long and I won't go into too much detail, but I will tell you it started with a timeshare in Asheville, North Carolina, a Pontiac Vibe, and 14 pounds of hashish stitched into the side of a horse.

As usual, McDougal refused to enter the timeshare after we experienced some initial problems with the French Algerian rug cleaning crew. So I'm in front of the condo, pummeling a couple of foreigners with their cans of carpet cleaner, while screaming "Les Français sont faits de culottes et d'autres choses douces qui devraient être cassées!"

McDougal watches for a few minutes, then says fuck it, he'll just wear the Frenchmen on his feet. So he straps them on, walks across the living room/dinette, pops open the fridge, and grabs a couple of beers. Then we sit down to get to work on the plan.

I'm using rusty nails and Pente rocks to represent the key players in this job, but McDougal starts getting all pissed because he wants to be a corkscrew. I tell him just to cool it, be a Pente rock. He is adamant, and to show his dissatisfaction with my choice of representation, he hurls one of the Frenchmen out the window. No great loss, but now McDougal can't get a beer without awkwardly hopping on the remaining Frenchman all the way to the kitchen. The whole process takes McDougal like four minutes, and it starts to annoy the piss out of me. Finally, I just lose my shit.

This of course is a mistake. I black out a little and next thing I know it's three hours and one torched roller rink later before we get back to planning the fucking job.

So when we finally get it all laid out, it looks pretty damn good. The nails are all inside the Happy Meal box, the Pente rocks are mostly submerged in two week old bottles of Red Tail Ale, and the pile of used condoms (representing both the clergy and a somewhat cerebral strain of Trotskyism) is in the mashed potatoes.

Probably the only way I got the plan all finalized was because McDougal was in the guest bedroom role-playing some sexualized plot from "Maude" with a couple of undergrads from Wellesley.



I give McDougal another twenty, then yank him out of the room, take his Bea Arthur mask off, and tell him to sheath the Excalibur. This is Go Time, I tell him. He sobers up pretty quck, and actually lets his Frenchman/shoe finish off the Wellesley girls, which I've always thought was kind of sweet of the Big Guy.

By the time we get down to the RVs, the plastics crew has already loaded the horse and tribe of Huutus. McDougal gets behind the wheel, downs a bottle of Cisco, and kicks it in gear.

Due to Maritime Laws I can't really say what happened from this point to August 3rd, 2003, but I am allowed to say that George W. Bush's daughters never made it to church the last weekend of that September, dolphins do in fact have a language as complex or moreso that ravens, and the Philadelpia Eagles are comprised completely of Nanobots.

Blue Rondo a la Turk

Earlier this summer, I was on McDougal's cheap ass Glastron cabin cruiser with McDougal, his mistress, the Dutch ambassador, and the Turks.

McDougal's blitzed out of his mind on flapjacks, creatine, and some cocktail he prepared from Redbull, motor oil, and liquid nitrogen. Also, he's completely nude.

The Dutch ambassador is obviously uncomfortable, but we're 40 miles offshore, and there's really nowhere for him to go. He's stopped talking to McDougal or really anyone since earlier in the morning when McDougal bit off the man's right ear. At the time, he acted like it was no big deal, but as the hours passed and the bleeding continued, I could tell he was at least a little angry.

The Turks are somewhere below deck with a porpoise and a bunch of halibut they brought with them from the old country. Common decency prohibits me from elaborating further on their activities down there. Let's just say the Turks have a different and unique culture that should be glorified and honored.

No one's seen McDougal's mistress since the night before, which is slightly distressing, as she was the only member of the crew with any knowledge as to how to pilot the vessel, or even which way the shore was.

I have to admit that though I'd known McDougal my entire life, I was likewise uncomfortable -- filled with a deep sense of dread and hopelessness, the likes of which I'd never known.

I sat down next to the Dutch Ambassador and offered him a shot of railroad gin and a Band-Aid. He graciously accepted both.

"You're gonna need to get that looked at," I said.

"What?" he replied.

"Your ear," I said.

"What?" he said.

"Oh. Sorry. Nevermind."

The ambassador gestured toward McDougal. "The man's a lunatic."

"Indeed," I agreed.

"I think he might have eaten her."

The ambassador was likely right, but I didn't want to give him anymore cause for concern or alarm.

"Nah," I said. "He probably just threw her overboard in a drunken rage."

"Can you drive this thing?" he wanted to know.

I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I wasn't touching McDougal's boat. I've got a family, after all.

There were a few moments of awkward silence as the ambassador and I stared off at the rolling sea. I kept my head at a 30 degree angle so McDougal wouldn't realize I was looking at him, but beneath my Blue Blocker shades, I studied the giant man.

He was holding a three-inch rose quartz elephant the Turks had given him and chewing on what appeared to be a meat-covered human femur.

"It's the elephant," I whispered to the Dutchman.

"What?" he said.

"The elephant," I said.

"What?" he repeated.

"Nevermind, Dutchman."

Of course it made perfect sense, but I couldn't explain it to him. The manganese in the quartz had somehow entered the big man's blood stream and driven him insane.

We had to get that elephant away from him, and find a way to neutralize the manganese that had already entered his bloodstream. He was likely already suffering from diphtheria, dangerously low blood pressure, and hallucinations, which would explain the uncharacteristic behaviors (i.e. inviting the Dutch Ambassador on one of these fishing trips with the Turks).

I was going to need the assistance of the Turks.

I did some quick chemical calculations: Manganese (atomic number - 25) is a brittle element, prone to oxidation. The most common oxidation states of manganese are +2, +3, +4, +6 and +7, though oxidation states from +1 to +7 are observed. Mn2+ often competes with Mg2+ in biological systems, and manganese compounds where manganese is in oxidation state +7 are powerful oxidizing agents.

I was going to need six pounds of Erythromycin, which I'm sure the Turks had to treat their raging chlamydia.

Ignoring great risk to my personal health and welfare, I went belowdeck to solicit aid from the Turks, who had fortunately already finished their breakfast when I arrived.

I explained the situation in a mix of broken Turkish and Pig Latin, and the then-satiated Turks were actually amenable to my plan.

Moments later we were on deck with several syringes full of Erythromycin loaded onto blowguns used for spear fishing.

"Wij moeten hem in de maag ontspruiten," I told the ambassador. "The fastest reaction will come from interaction with his gastric acids."

McDougal, realizing we were up to something, then stood and threatened us with the femur.

His threats, however, were in vain. At that moment, each of us fired our weapons. I struck him square in the gullet, as did the Turks. The ambassador's shot went wide left, circled back and ended up taking out his own eye.

McDougal went down, fell overboard and sank to the bottom of the sea.

For a moment, we pondered leaving him out there. He'd eventually turn into a natural reef, providing habitat for thousands of fish and other sea life. But this was, after all, the great McDougal. And the world would be worse without him.

So we sent the Dutch ambassador down in the submersible to fetch the big man.

Two hours later, the ambassador returned with McDougal and his mistress, who had apparently spent the night at a topless manta ray bar with Evil Knievel and Joe Theisman.

McDougal was laughing when we brought him on board -- seemingly completely healed, save for a spot of mild diarrhea brought on by the Erythromycin.

We spent the rest of the day fishing, and did pretty well. McDougal caught a bunch of flapjacks and a pot bellied pig. I caught John Ashcroft.

Before we got back to shore, McDougal replaced the ambassador's ear with a 30-pound drum, and seems like that was going to work out pretty good.

In the end, we all agreed: no harm, no foul.

The Huxtables

The one thing McDougal really hates is Pi. I don't mean Pi to the 10th or 11th decimal, I mean Pifuckin' Pi, like out to the 80th or 90th place.

So one day we're riding the train into Tegucigalpa and I'm raking in about $60K in whatever the fuck they use for money in Tegucigalpa, maybe chickens or rocks. McDougal is playing the part of out-of-town rube, and I'm pretending to be a tungsten miner from outside Comayagua.

I don't speak a word of Honduran and the game was not going well, but in typical style The D plays it off by standing up and announcing, "cortamos las tarjetas, el hombre con la tarjeta más grande me soplaremos" which brings down the house. Two of the guys are spitting mad, and it's all the train conductor can do to hold them back. A few other guys and this one naked chick are kind of into the offer though, and so they put down their ante.

Next thing you know, we're doing coke and eating clams with Ahmad Rashad and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Now just stay with me, this is where Pi comes into play.

So we're all splayed out in the pool, and McDougal has this huge chicken breast on a stick. Natrone Means (#30) swims up and splashes McDougal, getting both the chicken and his big pile of coke all wet. The Big Man just kind of coughs out a laugh, and drinks the poolwater-cocaine slush off his belly as fast as he can. This was bad luck for the Jaguars because of two reasons:

1. cocaine and chlorine do the following in your brain:

N2(g) + 3H2(g) ↔ 2NH3(g) + ΔH


and

2. McDougal, in this instance, was forced as he twisted diagonally on his raft into the pool to guesstimate the circumference of the arc of his chicken breast on a stick as it flew in the opposite direction.

So in this 3 second span of time - I want you to try to imagine this - you can see McDougal's face run from bliss (chicken/coke) to surprise (Jaguar/splash) to fear (cokechicken/fall/pool) to sorrow (cokepool) to dawning realization (chicken/arc) to incredulosity (arc/math) to wrath (Pi) to murder (Natrone) and back again to bliss (eating/Natrone).

Rashad and I were laughing to beat the band at this split second display, just laughing til tears poured down our cheeks. And that's why to this day crazy ass McDougal will smash any TV that is playing the Cosby Show, or that show with Theo Huxtable with dreadlocks.

McDougal the Fabric Magician

It all started as a drunken bar game. McDougal and I were sitting at the bar in the Bali-Hi Motor Lodge in Phoenix, Arizona.

I was sipping a mai tai, in line with the spirit of the place. McDougal, of course, was having whiskey. We had already run through our entire usual repertoir of bar games (punching random patrons, insulting the cigarette girl until she cries, pinball) which was usually enough to keep us busy until the cops arrived. However, the police response time was slow in Phoenix that summer, due to a rash of liquor store robberies (McDougal claimed no responsibility, but I'm still not convinced) so we were entertaining ourselves by putting words together to make exciting, but oxymoronic, new products. McDougal had just come up with one that had me howling with rum-soaked laughter, but instead of joining in my merriment, McDougal stood up, suddenly stone sober.

"That is the one that will earn me my fortune," he announced to the entire bar (one cowering bartender, the fourteen patrons who had not yet left because they were knocked unconcious by our beatings, and the cigarette girl - still crying hysterically).

I tugged on McDougal's sleeve, trying to get him to sit back down.

"It's a nonsense product,it would never work," I whispered. "Trust me on this, McDougal. I have a doctorate in chemistry; you're just a longshoreman who flunked out of the fifth grade."

But McDougal was right of course. He's always right. Those three words (two of them hyphenated) made him millions, while I sunk into depression and financial ruin.

Color-safe Bleach.

Goddamn ... I wish I'd thought of that.

McDougal Fast Facts

Did you know?

• McDougal conditions his pubic hair with bot bacon grease.
• He sleeps standing up, like a horse.
• Holds nine world records, including longest pinky toe in the history of man.
• Types about 18 words per minute.
• Once choked Jack Kemp to death.
• One of McDougal's legs is twice as long as the other.
• Drilled Justine Bateman in her bait well.
• Drilled Jason Bateman in his bait well.
• Enjoys the salsa, but prefers the rumba.
• Invented "Cool Ranch" flavor.
• Sees the world through flesh-colored lenses.
• Thought the French-Indian war was a war between the French and the Indians.
• Holds a master's degree in Ninjonics from Ninja State University in Taipei.
• Can peer into a man's soul using microwave oven, compact mirror, and six feet of nylon.

McDougal invented that magnetic sign that you put on your dishwasher to let people know if the dishes are clean or dirty.