The New Year is Upon Us

I've been holed up at the Salt Lake City compound since some time before Christmas. No one has seen or heard from McDougal since he left Haiti, but I received a fairly complex and detailed set of instructions wrapped around a cinder block and hurled through the window of my 1982 Chevy conversion van on I-40, just west of Little Rock some days ago.

The message was written in blood (ox or maybe chicken) on a 3'x5' cured beaver pelt. It said:

FofM ID: 324A(lpha).611.0.9.4:

Report to Compound 04C(harlie) at 0900 hours on October 12,
2006(1.) wearing Santa suit and knee brace. Come armed. Factions gather against us. Revolution is nigh. Bring fancy French cheeses and best nylons. The cause demands a martyr. We all sacrifice for the betterment of Noopsie(2.). Plumbing is shot(3.). Don't crap in ANY of the third floor facilities. Bring wet suit and boot knife. Also, would like to see The Holiday while you are in town. Gratification is instant and only mildly painful. Thought of you while abroad (only briefly). Your time has come. Hope you know a thing or two about phrenology. If not, brush up.

~~~
1. I received the letter some time in Mid-December, so hope I am not punished for my tardiness.
2. Have no idea who or what Noopsie is. This is the first reference I've heard.
3. "Plumbing is shot" is a bit of an understatement. What it should have said is "raw sewage has seaped through through the thrid floor (and now second floor) ceilings and is dripping on the inhaibitants of the lower floors like rain in hell."

So, here I sit stinking of shit water in a Santa Claus costume that has not been washed since the Carter administration, reading about head shapes.

Also, the thermostat is set on 309 Kelvin degrees and penalty for touching the controls (even in McDougal's absence) is to be drowned in a pool of raw sewage ... which now seems my likely fate whether I adjust the temperature or not.

Yet, I find I am surprisingly optimistic these days.

Things are starting to look up.

See, there's the phone. I bet this is someone with good news right now. Perchance they've found my wife and child~`

McDougal's Mailbag 3

While McDougal is on the road for his big presidential campaign tour, I have once again been assigned to sort his mail. Mostly he just gets shampoo samples and Fredericks of Hollywood catalogs, but there were a few items that I think might be of interest to you readers. Most interesting, of course, was a large manilla envelope containing photographs of a certain head of state having sexual intercourse with a chicken. I would love to share them with you, but McDougal left very specific instructions that I should not show them to anyone and take them immediately to a fireproof vault in a secret location, where they now rest. I can tell you a few things. 1. Based on the writing on some signs in the background I believe that the photos were taken somewhere in Thailand. 2. The pictures are probably about ten years old, but the person in them would still be instantly recognizable to anyone in the world who reads a newspaper at least once a week. 3. This head of state is probably going to send agents from his country's security apparatus to assassinate McDougal. 4. These agents will fail like so many others have in the past.

Here are a few letters:

Mr. McDougal,

The position of Pope is occupied for the foreseeable future. The tone of your most recent letter seemed vaguely threatening. We sincerely hope that this was an error in your usage of Latin, however we wish you to know that we have increased security in the Vatican in the event that the threat was deliberate. Ordinarily we would do everything in our power to encourage someone who has taken an interest in the Catholic Church. In your case, however, we would ask that you discontinue all correspondence. The Catholic Church is not for you.

Cardinal XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The Vatican



Dear Mister Mcdoogle,

My name is XXXXXX. I am 8. You came to my town and gave a speech. It was at the parking lot at the bowling aley. I liked the part where you talked about the robots. The kids at my school are mean to me sometimes. I sent letters to Santa Claus and God asking them to make the other kids be nicer but they are still mean. Please send a robot to my school to kill the mean kids. Send two robots if you can. It is a big school.

Love,
XXXXXXXXX

P.S. I thought your gorilla was really cool.



McDougal, My Friend,

May Allah's blessings be upon you. Thank you for the timely delivery of the Narcobovinedefraculator. It has been a great help to us. The United Nations are now shitting themselves with terror. God is great!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The Islamic Republic of Iran


Mr. McDougal,

Unfortunately, your appeal to have your lifetime ban from the City of New Orleans lifted has been denied. Your Godzilla-like rampage (Mayor Nagin's words, not my own) has not been forgotten. I would suggest you make alternate plans for this year's Mardi Gras celebration.

Sincerely,
Issac Panzer
The Law Firm of Claymore, Panzer, Bastille & Cungfu

McDougal Saves Christmas (Final Chapter)

After dropping off the load of toys for the orphans McDougal topped off the reindeer with mescaline and absinthe and we rocketed off into the cold December air. We continued on Santa Claus's rounds, supplementing the toys with BB guns, slingshots, liquor, cigarettes, pornographic magazines, small animal traps and anything else that caught McDougal's eye. Entering the homes became a bit of a problem. McDougal made a valiant effort at sliding down chimneys, but he just didn't have a knack for it. After trying several other tactics we finally decided on simply kicking doors in and tossing the toys inside. Guard dogs were a problem. McDougal knows a highly effective canine sleeper hold, but this takes a few minutes even when the dog does not struggle, which is rarely the case. For expediency's sake many of the dogs (and one medical helper monkey) had to be dispatched using McDougal's silenced 9mm handgun. We left a few extra presents at these houses.

When we finished with Europe McDougal swung the Landrover south, landing in a small village in Afghanistan.

"McDougal, I don't think they celebrate..."

But before I could finish, the big man was out of the truck like a shot.

"This will only take a minute," he yelled over his shoulder as he disappeared into the darkness.

McDougal returned a short time later clutching an armload of tightly wrapped bundles.

"Had to finish my Christmas shopping," he explained. "This place has the best hash."

Once again we flew off into the night. I assume that Santa Claus follows some type of orderly pattern when he makes his annual rounds. McDougal did nothing of the sort. We zigzagged across the globe, collecting nearly as much stuff as we gave out. In Columbia we picked up a bale of uncut cocaine. In Zimbabwe we picked up ivory and rhinoceros horns. In Baghdad we picked up a solid gold AK-47 that had "Uday" engraved on the side. In the Philippines McDougal picked up a pair of champion fighting cocks, and I picked up a particularly virulent case of gonorhea.

As we walked back to the Landrover McDougal looked at his watch.

"Fucking hell! We've got to pick up the pace! We'll head to the United States next, get that finished up."

"Once we get there can you just drop me off at my apartment?" I asked. "I'm tired, hung over and my cock is on fire. I don't think I can handle any more of this."

"Nonsense," McDougal roared, "you've just run out of Christmas Spirit!"

He flipped me another capsule. That was really the last thing I needed at that point, but I was suffering so much that unconsciousness did seem pretty appealing. I swallowed it down and waited for the freakout to set in. As my vision started to fade, slumped in the Landrover's passenger seat, I heard McDougal say "this ought to speed things up." I watched him reach into the back, remove one of the air rifles and take careful aim at the hindquarters of one of the lead reindeer, either Dasher or Dancer I guess. I buckled my seatbelt. McDougal's voice, seeming to be coming from very far away, "But I guess if you really want to be dropped off I can work something out..." That oppressive coldness in my chest. The snap of an air rifle and the Landrover giving a sickeningly violent upward jerk. Sleigh bells... Sugarplums...

A cold concrete floor and the smell of urine. A voice barking at me in Arabic. I don't speak Arabic. A large hand dangled a Ziploc bag full of red and green capsules in my face. More Arabic. Then a kick in the ribs. I coughed up a bit of blood, but my vision cleared a bit too. Thank Allah for small miracles. I was in a cage. No, a cell. That bastard McDougal was nowhere to be seen. But there was that Egyptian prison guard waving the bag of capsules, screaming at me now, still in Arabic. A second guard swam into view. He leaned in close and said quietly in thickly accented English, "He says 'Are these your pills?' You should answer. You are in big trouble sir."

McDougal Saves Christmas (Part 2)

As I began to regain consciousness I expected that whistling to fade, but if anything it grew louder. I soon realized that I was hearing the wind shrieking through the shattered windshield of McDougal's Landrover. In the glow of the headlights I could see the hindquarters of eight reindeer the size of clydesdales, and beyond that only darkness. I turned my head slowly to the right, fearing a flashback from whatever was in those awful capsules. McDougal sat in the driver's seat holding not onto the steering wheel, but onto a pair of reins that snaked out through the hole in the windshield. He was wearing Santa's red coat and hat, and for a minute I would have sworn that he had somehow managed to grow a white beard while I was out cold, but as my head cleared I realized that he was merely foaming at the mouth. He seemed to be in unusually high spirits.

"Where are we?" I mumbled.

"Over East Berlin, I think," McDougal shouted out with glee. "Either that or Detroit. It's hard to tell the difference at this altitude!"

I was fairly certain this was a joke, but to this day I'm still not sure. McDougal's sense of humor is nearly as warped as his sense of direction. A surface-to-air missile arced toward us out of the darkness below, which did not entirely rule out Detroit, but seemed to point more heavily to somewhere in the Eastern Bloc. McDougal rolled down his window and tossed out an empty whiskey bottle. It struck one of the missile's stabilizer fins, sending it spiraling off in a safe direction.

"We're going to need to stop soon so I can refuel those reindeer," McDougal yelled over the howling wind.

"Refuel?" I asked.

"Yeah, the pills didn't really seem to agree with them. Completely uncontrollable! So I gave the ones on the right some mescaline and the ones on the left got absinthe. That seemed to level them off."

"Reindeer will drink absinthe?"

"They didn't go for it at first," McDougal explained, "but I mixed it in with a little egg nog and they really seemed to love that!"

He snapped the reins and the Landrover began to descend. As I began to get my bearings I realized that the roof of the Landrover was partially collapsed. The damage from our earlier accident was confined to the front of the vehicle. I wondered what McDougal had gotten into while I was out. The answer was immediately clear when, after a rough landing on the roof of a Bulgarian orphanage, I stepped out of the truck. Balanced precariously on the Landrover's roof was an oversized burlap sack. McDougal climbed up and began tossing toys down to me.

"We aren't seriously doing what I think we're doing?" I asked. McDougal laughed.

"Why the hell did you think I took the reindeer?"

"I don't know," I replied. "Just for shits and grins?"

"Oh come on," McDougal said, sounding hurt. "Does that really sound like something I would do?"

I remained silent and carried an armload of toys toward the roof's service access. When I returned McDougal was digging around in the back of the Landrover. Dozens of long crates were stacked inside.

"What are those?"

"Daisy air rifles," McDougal replied, pulling a roll of parchment out of his pocket. "Check this out."

He held the parchment out toward me and it unrolled down to his feet. Scratched upon it in tiny archaic script were thousands of names. As I looked at it the script snaked around, weaving itself into a new set of names. The letters held their positions for about a minute and then went through their transformation again, forming a third set of names.

"Naughty list," McDougal said, by way of explanation. "Do you believe that fat fuck was going to give all of these kids coal? Anyway, I dropped all of that coal off in Newcastle then made a beeline for the Daisy factory. There are more rifles in the sack."

"Where is the fa... Er, Santa, anyway?" I asked, still trying to absorb McDougal's BB gun distribution plan.

"Ah, I dropped him off at a safehouse in Cape Town. Come on, we've got a lot of work to do tonight if we're gonna pull this off." And with that, McDougal descended the stairs into the orphanage, dragging a bag of toys behind him. "Grab a couple cases of vodka too," he barked. "These little Ivans love that shit."

McDougal Saves Christmas (Part 1)

It was December 1972, McDougal and I were hiking through the Egyptian desert, dragging our scuba equipment behind us, when we came upon the wreckage of the sleigh. On a recent trip to London McDougal had acquired a looter's map marking the location of several intact tombs, filled with gold and other riches, that now sat at the bottom of Lake Nassar following the completion of the Aswan High Dam. Our plan was to retrieve the gold and smuggle it out of the country aboard McDougal's seaplane. Unfortunately, several miles short of our destination McDougal struck a wayward camel with his Landrover and we had to continue on foot.

McDougal immediately went to the aid of the sled's occupant, while I stood transfixed, staring at several quadruped standing at the top of a distant sand dune, backlit by the setting sun. I assumed they were more of those damned camels, but were those antlers on their heads? I shook my head to clear it and went to help McDougal extract the overweight gentleman from the overturned sleigh. McDougal was easily able to turn the sleigh upright. The man was unconscious, but otherwise seemed to have sustained no serious injury. I glanced around, noticing for the first time the huge debris field of brightly colored toys surrounding the crater in which the sleigh rested. I tried desperately to block the natural, but illogical conclusion from my head. McDougal, however, had no such internal struggle. The years of drug use have left him only the most tenuous mental separation between the worlds of fantasy and reality.

"Well, looks like the looting is out of the question," he muttered as he began to pick up toys. "At least for today anyway."

After a careful examination of the sleigh's remains I believe this is what happened. Santa Claus (there, I said it) was on a routine delivery to a local village of Coptic Christians when the Egyptian military, thinking him to be an Israeli combat aircraft, shot him down with a SA-7 missile. It makes perfect sense if you really think about it.

We immediately set to gathering up the spilled toys, coaxing the reindeer back into an orderly herd and treating the minor wounds of the unfortunate Mr. Claus. When we finished McDougal stood back and surveyed the scene. He then reached into his pocket and removed a large paper sack. This sack contained hundreds of large red and green capsules. McDougal tossed a handful into his mouth like gumdrops.

"What are those?" I asked.

"Christmas Spirit," he replied and howled like a banshee.

McDougal flipped one of the capsules to me and then began distributing them to the reindeer. I looked at the capsule for a minute, but then decided that whatever was about to happen next, I would probably be better off with something, anything, in my system than without and swallowed it down.

A cold feeling began to creep through my chest. My heart was hammering, I could feel my bloodpressure skyrocket. Every breath I took seemed to freeze my lungs, making it difficult to breath. Lines began to etch their way across my vision. Spirals with squared edges, Aztec patterns that formed into serpents, condors and jaguars. Somewhere to my left McDougal was whistling "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" off key. Then I could only hear myself screaming, the sound rising like steam escaping from a teakettle. I blacked out.