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 Campaign Tour - Day 7

Campaign Managers Journal 8/29/06 - somewhere in the Midwest

McDougal seems to have instituted a new system of navigation. We are travelling from ice cream shop to ice cream shop. Chain stores are not acceptable, nor are hard ice cream shops. Only locally owned soft serve. Preferably in some sort of novelty building. McDougal seems to know the exact location of every Dairy Duck, Tast-E-King, Curly Top and Bunky's Igloo between Bangor and Baha. We are making poor time.


Utah speeches could have gone better, but I wouldn't call them a complete disaster. McDougal has abandoned the podium and taken to giving all speeches perched on the edge of the stage. "Crowds" seem impressed with his down-home charm. If we could only get him to talk about the issues he could be unstopable. Even if his positions on the issues are complete nonsense, when combined with down-home charm the voters will eat that shit up like a soft serve sundae. Fuck, it's been working for Bush for decades. Utah seems to conservative for McDougal's style of politics, however I like his instincts in this case. Those Mormons are always going door to door. Could be a good way to build word of mouth about the campaign.

The extra truck (Interns have taken to calling it Vehicle X, not sure I approve) is still with us. Highway cops seem to ignore it the same way the press ignores our campaign. A few reporters have turned out for McDougal's appearances, but they are from tiny local papers like the Nosepick Corners Union Register. They mistake McDougal's tortured genius for the rantings of a common lunatic and rarely print an article. Does a common lunatic travel in a luxury bus with an inflatable gorilla? I think not.

Found out yesterday that McDougal has been giving pills to the convoy drivers. Truck drivers are used to taking lots of pills, but I'm worried about the effects on the interns.

McDougal Campaign Speech Transcript

This speech was given to a crowd of seven in Provo, Utah on August 22:

It has not been edited for accuracy, brevity, or clarity. These are the words just as they rolled from the big man's gullet:

What manner of fruit is this? I thought it was a pink lady. The
apple. Its exterior is soft and supple ... but smooth ... like a lady ...
almost plasticine. And behold. It has a pit. Like a
peach. Dear God, man. What manner of fruit is this?

"crowd" sits in rapt silence

Never thee mind.

McDougal knocks over podium and walks to front of speaking platform. Sits on edge and addresses "crowd" directly.

If you have a dog. And a cat. Say you have both. And you
take them swimming. You notice the dog is the more efficient
swimmer. He has a stroke, nay a paddle named for him. The cat
flails
and thrashes about in the water, stirring up a fuss. "Why flail
you,
cat?"
Damn cat. And the dog retrieves the duck or mallard or
whatever it is
that you people -- and I am assuming you are all hunters --
call them.
And you grab that cat by the scruff of his catneck and you say to
him,
"What sex are you, damn cat?"
And you turn him about, but you cannot
tell. And he does not
answer.
And you say unto him, "I should like
to make the babies with you."
And he does not answer.
Trow are then
dropped.
And finally ... "I am a man," says the cat. "Same as
you."
Then we cannot procreate.
And we do not.
Say I to him, "Where ist
thou penis?"
And he says you cannot see such things.
"But I can see the
dog's cockandballs."
"Aye," says the cat.
"And why can you not
swim?"
The cat says the cat can, though he choses
otherwise.
"The
flailing and such?"
"Yes."
"And later, I take you home and put you on my
waterbed, and you poke holes
in it with your talons."
The cat agrees,
this is what he does.
"They are tiny holes that I do not notice, until I
awaken in a pool of
stale water at 4:13 a.m. on a Tuesday."
"Aye," says
the cat.
"And on the next day, a Wednesday, I crush your skull and eat
you."
The cat does not respond.
He is submerged under the water.

And tomorrow we dine on cat stew!

The audience has gone and McDougal is left alone on the stage ... alone with a bag of Habnero Doritos and a half-empty fifth of gin.

'Twill be a good year.

McGrammar

The pondercation point was originally addressed by Mr. McDougal several months ago on this blog; however, due to failure of adaptation by the masses, McDougal has requested (nay insisted ... at gunpoint) that we re-address in its own post.

Please note and incorporate into your written vernacular:

The pondercation point is a punctuation mark that fills a critical need in written communication. In spoken word, inflection and tone are used to indicate inquisitive statements. In the written word, however, there is no official punctuation mark to delineate a statement intended as a question (e.g. "I wonder if beverages will be provided.")

With an increasing amount of communication being conducted in written word (e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging) the need for greater clarity in punctuation drove research grammarians at the "Toughest Guys in the World" think tank in Provo, Utah, to develop a new punctuation symbol using existing punctuation available on a typical Western keyboard.

The pondercation point is represented by the combination of the ~ (tilde) and the `(apostrophe), and is used at the end of inquisitive statements that require an answer from the recipient. Therefore instead of saying, "I wonder if you are lying to me, asshole?" intent is better indicated with the pondercation point: "I wonder if you are lying to me, asshole~`"

Examples:
* Perhaps that happened because you tried to retread my monkey~`
* I wonder if your problem is that their reaction is fueled by the blood of Christ~`
* I thought you were going to kiss my black ass~`