In Dog We Trust

As many of you no doubt have heard, evil is running amok. This is no ordinarily agile evil, hopping nimbly from cliff edge to cliff edge in its never ending quest for cardboard and tin cans to eat. Nor is this an eviler brand of evil, 21,000 strong waiting to swarm down from the skies and ravage the fish-eating populations of the world.
(Confused? Me too...it's got something to do with goats and pelicans. Check the archives).

Nay, this is something much, much evilerer: cats!

Now I know what some of you are thinking, 'But Jake, How can my cute cuddly Mr. Cuddles be evilerer? He's adorable! Just look at the way he plays with his paw'

Well Friends, I've got news for you. Or more accurately, the BBC has news for you:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/6917113.stm


Yes, that's right folks. This cat is killing our seniors! Now I know what some of you felineaphiles are thinking "oh he's not killing them! He's so smart he can detect their deaths! He's letting us know who among us is dying!"

But you can't fool me. Healthy old person goes into senior center. Cat lies down next to healthy old person. Old person dies. It's the only logical explanation.

While in Senegal, I reserved a special type of glee for those rare moments when I'd hear a pan or bowl outside my window go "crashbangclatterclatter" followed shortly by the sound of a cat meowing in surprise: "reeooowwaaaw" is the closest I can come to transcribing it. Perhaps I wouldn't have been so gleeful if I had known that those cats were trying to lie down next to me and kill me.

I have long considered myself at the forefront of the movement bringing the truth about the evil nature of cats to light. This is just the final piece of evidence needed. Consider:
- Witches turn into black cats when they don't want to be discovered. Your cuddly cat could be a wicked witch in disguise, waiting until you're asleep to cast a spell that will turn you into a newt. At which point you will be eaten.
- Cats have long been a symbol of bad luck to the more superstitious amongst us. Everyone knows its bad luck for a black cat to cross your path, should it really be any surprise that they're killing us when they lie down next to us?
- The feline is the perfect evolutionary creation. They're fast. Is it any wonder that the cheetah, the world's fastest land animal, is a cat? No. They're smart. Cats are probably some of the smartest animals on the planet, next to that know it all in my 7th grade science class. They're more agile than goats playing happily on a cliff (except cat's don't play - they hunt). Have you heard of the Tiger? According to some hastily researched numbers, tigers kill over 300 people a year - and that's only in this one part of Bangaladesh! This article tells me that they also chase down boats like 'dogs chasing cars." Except of course my dog doesn't flip the car over and devour its inhabitants with bone crushing jaws like a tiger does. Remember Sher Kahn in The Jungle Book? He wanted to do nothing more than eat Mowgli, just because he was a human. I heard somewhere that in the jungles of India, people have to wear their faces on backwards so that tigers won't come up from behind and eat them. Sneaky tigers, what happens if they just come from the front? How will they see them then? They won't, that's how. And then they're dead - eaten by some tiger just because he was hungry.

But, you say, those examples are from cat's bigger cousins, Jake. It's not fair to judge my cute Mr. Cuddles because of something his big bad cousin does, is it? You wouldn't judge me poorly if my cousin Lennie attacked an old woman and stole her purse, would you (note - cousin Lennie does NOT exist)?

No, I suppose not, but have you tried catching a normal housecat? I once went chasing after my friends cat, trying to play with him by raising my hands up above my head and going "boogie boogie boogie!" When I do this with my dog, she gets excited and we wrestle. Not cats, cats do not want to play. He ran out of there faster than a one-eyed man in a three-legged sack race (what is he talking about?). Later that night, I found the cat lying on my pillow. When I went to move him, on account of I'm allergic to cats, he swatted at my hand and hissed at me. Not only was this cat missing some crucial fun-gene, but he was vindictive and aggressive to boot. All I had done was try and play with him, and here he goes trying to cover my pillow in cat hair so I die in my sleep! Evil, I tell you, Evil!.

If you read that BBC article, you'll notice that a noted "cat expert" claims that cats "can sense when the weather will change, they're famous for being sensitive to premonitions of earthquakes."

This is merely propaganda from the "I want to watch the world burn in a fiery ball of feline-inflicted doom" crowd. Cats don't "sense" changes in weather. They cause changes in weather. Those of you in Kansas better watch out. Next time a tornado comes ripping through your flatter-than-a-pancake state (it's true - the US Geological Survey measured), don't blame the dynamics of warm and cold air currents. Blame your neighbor's cat, or your own cat.

Everyone knows that the Japanese have a strong preference for cats, but nobody's told them that this is the cause for all their earthquakes. Wonder why they don't have earthquakes on the island of Tarawa in Kiribati, the tiny island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? I'll tell you why, it's because they consider cats bad omens and drown them as soon as they're born. Good for them.

What then, can we do when faced with such an evilerer and insiduous menace that threatens none other than our very existence on this planet? (Say what you will about the evil hoards of evil goats trying to implement their evil plot for world domination - they were merely going for power. Cats are actively trying to kill us all).
You could round up all the cats in the world and stick them on some remote island that nobody cares about like say, Australia. Everyone knows that cats hate water and so will never swim away, so it seems like the perfect solution.

But I see no reason to subject the good people of Australia to a fate worse than death - death by cat. Without their fun-loving carefree lifestyle, who would pop another steak on the barbee? The days of cheeky "gday mate" would be gone forever. (Though on the plus side, the myth that a boomerang actually flies back to you would be dispelled once and for all).

So no, we'll save Australia for now. Besides, can you imagine the logistics of such a thing? Not to mention the risk that cats would for sure overtake a ship or two and use it against us. And there's always the threat that cats learn how to build boats and then were right back where we started.

No, this requires a long-term focus. Something that will not only get protect us from cats now, but will protect our children in the future. Something that attacks all sides of the problem: a two-fanged approach if you will. We shall follow Bob Barker's advice (well half of it anyways): start a worldwide campaign to have all cats spayed and neutered. At the same time, we'll stop spaying and neutering all dogs, the natural enemies of cats everywhere.

Can you see what will happen? The dog population will explode, chasing an ever declining number of cats up trees where they will remain and hopefully mutate into something more benign, like a little monkey which we can then train to dance as a jolly fat man in a goofy suit plays a pipe organ. We'll call it the "Best Friend for Everybody on the Planet" campaign. With a name like that, only feline apologists will be against it, and they will be exposed for the world-hating crowd that they truly are. Who else would be against giving every man, woman, and child on this earth a playful best friend? Cat lovers (or more precisely, people haters), that's who.

It's sure to work. If not, I fear for all of us.
In Dog we Trust.

Love,
Jake

Note to Self: Stay Away from Border

It's weird, as much time as I spend in our nation's political center, and as much political reading as I do, that I haven't written about politics at all on this little blog of mine. After all, aren't blogs the new medium for political commentary (that's what they're telling me these days anyways)? Regardless, for whatever reason, I have consciously decided to stay as far away from political topics in this blog, preferring to tell other tales.

Unfortunately, current events have forced my hand. I simply must comment on the recent uproar over the President's new Immigration Plan. It seems that Senator Trent Lott has cast in his two cents on the issue:

http://www.sunherald.com/278/story/81785.html

Now, put all politics aside for a moment, shall we? Nevermind the technical difficulties of building a fence, nevermind that a fence doesn't even begin to address the poverty that drives Latin Americans to risk everything just to try and get into the US, nevermind all that. The central question that this speech raises is this:

What the Hell is Senator Lott doing with goats? This man is the most powerful member of the minority party in one of the most important institutions of our government, and he's spending his afternoons feeding, nay worse, raising his own evil hoard of evil goats that will one day revolt against him and implement their insidious schemes for global domination? Has he not been reading anything on goats this past year?

While abroad in Senegal, I braved stifling heat, rolling power outages, and yes, the occasional evil hoard of evil goats while shedding countless gallons (or liters if that's your preferred standard of measure) of blood, sweat, and, yes even the occasional tear to uncovering the evil plot of the evil hoards of evil goats in Dakar, so that you and your family may take the necessary precautions to ensure our survival on that fateful day of reckoning.

When I returned to the boring and chillingly air-conditioned world of America, I dedicated myself to updating you about heroes involved in small-scale efforts to head off this goat threat before it comes to a crisis point: Goat hunters in the Galapagos Islands involved in a goat eradication campaign. City officials in Tennessee ingeniously using goats to get rid of the kudzu that has been such a scourge to our southern states. It's a brilliant plan- it helps get rid of the kudzu while keeping the goats occupied on an impossible and never ending battle against kudzu, thereby preventing them from organizing and implementing their evil plot for global d0mination indefinitely. I highlighted the little known US Department of Evil, and it's evil goat-man's plans for the impending apocalypse, as reported in The Onion.

I did this not out of any selfish motive such as keeping a running theme throughout my blog to keep you readers interested, but rather out of a general goodwill towards humanity: no less than the fate of our species may hang in the balance.

And THEN I hear that one of our most powerful and influential politicians is harboring goats? Is this man clueless to their evil plotting? Is he ignorant of their deceitful nature?

Judging by this comment, the Senator at least understands the type of opponent that we're likely to be up against once the evil plot has been implemented, and that a multi-pronged defense strategy is the only way to go:

"There ain't no fence big enough, high enough, strong enough, that you can keep those goats in that fence," the Senator told reporters.

He seems to be suggesting that we take the offensive, but even here, he is aware of the limitations of the human form, and the superior physical and mental capacities of the goat:

"Now people are at least as smart as goats...Maybe not as agile."

Now that I think about it, maybe the honorable Senator from Mississippi isn't so ignorant about the impending evil plot. He goes on to suggest that a multi-pronged attack is the best way to keep goats at bay, that we can't just rely on a big wall:

"Now one of the ways I keep those goats in the fence is I electrified them. Once they got popped a couple of times they quit trying to jump it."

The vital part of this quote is the phrase "one of the ways," suggesting that the Senator is using a number of methods to control his goats. What other techniques is he using? We can only guess due to the secrecy of his office, and the fact that his staff refused to comment (the fact that I never asked might have something to do with it..shhhh), but I'd suspect it has something to do with keeping the goats on horribly flat land, thereby negating their natural climbing and jumping agility, while maintaining a strict all-organic diet devoid of any man-made materials such as tin-cans and cardboard.

It seems that rather than an innocent hobby, Senator Lott's goat-keeping is for more humanitarian, scientific purposes. I'd venture to suggest that he's keeping these goats in order to study their techniques and gain intelligence that will prove useful in the impending evil goat/human battle for world domination.

Hopefully, the Senator is also working on a device to translate goat-speak, so we can finally decipher the goat messages I've acquired through a brilliant act of espionage (I asked a sheep, because though they look like the evil goats, their morally ambiguity is easily exploited). Only then will we know the full extent of their evil and nefarious plot.

Whatever the case may be, now that the Senator is on our side, I feel much better knowing that I'm not the only one concerned about the evil hoards of evil goats. It's good to have friends in high places (just so long as they're not rock-hopping evil goats on the cliffs above you). Good luck Senator Lott.

Love,
Jake

PS: I'd like to thank Ms. Aaron for bringing this subject to my attention. Humanity needs to know just who it can trust in this upcoming battle for global domination. Ms. Aaron, you truly are a crusader for humanity, defender of the evil hoards of evil goats, and you should be commended for your efforts. Thank you.

At Last! Definitive Proof!!

Goats really are evil! At last, someone has independently confirmed it! Look at the head photo! I'm not making this stuff up!

read about it in the Onion!

I am in fact, ahead of my time

If you peruse any of my previous posts, you will notice that they are filled with apocalyptic visions of evil goats implemeting their evil plans to take over the world and establish a new world order that looks suspiciously like the United Nations.

It appears that a radical contingent of anti-goatists have taken my apocalyptic visions to heart and have launched a pre-emptive strike against the goat population of the Galapagos Islands under the guise that they're "destroying the environment." I've got news for all these anti-goatists out there: Goats are protecting you! Evil heards of evil Goats aren't the problem, its the eviler hoards of eviler pelicans that are the problem! who do you think is going to protect you when their eviler hoard descends 21,000 strong from those tiny rocks in that river in Senegal. Hitchcock was right: birds are freaky.

“We’re at war, and we’ve won one of our biggest battles,” said Mr. Cruz, the hunting overseer. “But we can’t rest until we kill them all.”
(i'm not joking, he really said that. you can check)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/world/americas/01galapagos.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


And in other news from the animal kingdom today...apparently ducks have been taking a little too much of that enzyte stuff...they're becoming rather well endowed. i'm talking the length of their bodies well endowed. thats not even the craziest thing. the thing that got me was that somebody actually has to study this stuff! thats just weird.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/01/science/01duck.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

a few choice quotes first:

“Obviously you can’t have something like that without some place to put it in. You need a garage to park the car.” - Dr. Patricia Brennan, duck scientist


"To test her hypothesis, Dr. Brennan plans to team up with a biomechanics expert to build a transparent model of a female duck. She wants to see exactly what a duck phallus does during mating."

Think about this one for a second. Malaria, AIDS, and cancer - three of the biggest killers of people on the planet have no actual cure, and we have people trying to figure out how ducks get it on?? Dude, people are weird...

The End of an Era :(

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this past weekend marked the end of an era in my Senegalese life.

Many of you may (or may not - it's ok) remember my sandals. At the beginning of the semester, I had a pair of sandals which I wore every day in Senegal (cause lets face it, it was WAY too hott-yes with 2 t's- for anything else on your feet there). These were a black pair of sandals, with velcro tabs. One day, my little brother Bebecheikh stepped on the heel as we were playing football in the courtyard, and the strap broke. I resorted to duck-taping the straps to the soles so as to avoid doing something crazy (like say wearing socks). Let's just say I really loved washing my feet.
One day, as we were walking through the village of Toubab Dialaw (remember that???) your friend and mine, Scott Belden asked me why, exactly was I wearing duck tape on my feet. It was a question that I had been faced with many times before - mostly by my MamaRama as she was called, and the little devils that I called my nephews/brothers. My answer was, as is usual - I'll get around to it. Now this chance meeting with Scott happened to coencide with a secret mission of his to find sandals that fit, for alas, poor Scott, for all his kindness and friendliness, apparently had feet the shapes which were unseen in Senegal (that is to say - he had trouble finding sandals that fit).
So Scott leads a party which, including myself, intended to seek out and find a pair of sandals at the local boutique for him to wear. After trying on numerous pairs in all colors, black, gray, red, and blue, he finally, like dorothy, found a pair that was juuuuuuuuuust right. And thus Scott found his elusive well-fitting sandals.
Suddenly, Scott found himself in a dilemma. He had 2 pairs of sandals, and only use for one. What was a toubab to do? Luckily for us, Scott was fairly observant and noticed the structural additions that I had pieced my sandals together with, and so he struck upon an idea - give the toubab with the broken sandals the ill-fitting sandals, because anyone would rather have ill fitting sandals than broken sandals with structural adjustments. And LO! like the glass slipper the sandal didst fit perfectly! Scott had found his midnight princess (me)!
And so I came to acquire a fantastic pair of sandals that carried me through the rest of the semester, protecting me from the heat of the ground, and creating a wide swath of white pristine clean where the band wrapped around my foot. They gathered the dust of Dakar's streets, and when I returned to the cold, coldness of the States, I took my toothpick and saved that sweat, dust, and who knows what else-filled paste that had collected in the bottom of my sandal and sealed it in a plastic bag. You know, for posterity's sake and all. so i should show my kids one day.
I continued to wear my sandals, first at the pool (cause it was so freaking cold) and then as the trees started getting greener, and the weather started to get warmer, i ventured to wear them outside. It was glorious.
but no more.
At approximately 12:30 on sunday morning, I attended a cast party for my theater company's final show of the semester. i was looking spiffy in my toga complete with that blue indigo cloth that everyone liked so much and a kente cloth belt from ghana. there we engaged in endless debauchery, the kinds of which would make a sailor blush and lets just say thank GOD that no pictures have surfaced. needless to say, it was a lot of fun.
As the party was just getting started as the saying goes, i ran from the back patio through the kitchen and into the living room where the dancing was going on (yes, we danced too). all of the sudden, i felt something heavy fall on the back of my heel, something briefly holding me back and then it let my foot go. but my sandal did not come with it.
Yes, dear friends! in a cruel twist of irony, my sandal strap broke, a victim of the same sort of accident that killed my first pair! oh i was devestated! my sandals that had carried my feet through the dust, the dirt, the blinding heat and sweat of Dakar had finally perished! oh woe was they!!!
i ended up walking three of my ladyfriends home (as i learned to do in Senegal), barefoot. in a toga. with no goats to escort me home, its a miracle i made it.

and so thus, with my pair of sandals gone, i have laid to rest one part of senegal. :*( tear.

in other news, has anyone else found themselves as hostile to air conditioning as i seem to be? I'm finding the whole notion of it absolutely absurd.

hope all is well. ba bennen in'challah

love,
jake

huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge

http://www.nytimes.com/uwire/uwire_JUUJ02092007481452.html?ex=1249016400&en=9cd3f1a4c73bf49f&ei=5034

look at the byline.
thats yours truly
im about as happy as a clam in chowder. but really good chowder. new england style. not that nasty manhattan style with the tomato (whose idea was it to put tomato with clams anyways?)
:)

love
Jake

Geeze its been a while...Chapter Three (Finally)

Sorry bout that...schools taking up a lot more time than i thought...hm go figure.
anyways, here it is...chapter three

* * * * * * *

In the days that followed, the streets and buildings of Dakar turned into some sort of evil beehive – with evil goats running helter-skelter, willy-nilly. They darted into and out of traffic with a purpose now causing huge traffic jams. Sentries were posted, fortifications were constructed, buildings were scaled. Defenses were erected facing the sea on the north and west sides of the city, since that would be the mostly likely point of attack – the pelicans were dependent on the ocean for their food and to attack from inland would risk overstretching their supply lines. They stole change to use as ammunition and materials in constructing fortifications, causing a huge shortage of small and medium sized coins in Dakar. The battle plan called for negating the eviler pelican’s aerial superiority by luring them to the ground with fish where they could be attacked with horn and hoof and coin. In the air, the eviler pelicans were a fearsome force, but on the ground they were nothing more than dead ducks. So many evil goats running about with such impunity truly was a horrific site to behold.

But alas, not all was well in the evil hoard of evil goats. While the evil seeds of evil goat unity had been sown thanks to the deft leadership of Charles and the wisdom of Boo the Elder, nefarious elements were seeking to undermine the evil structure that had been constructed. The evil curved-horned goats of the Libertés feared. They feared that the eviler pelican’s aerial superiority, combined with their superior protein source, would lead to the swift demise of the evil goat hoards of Dakar. To them, the evil goat defeat was a foregone conclusion, and when it came, there would be little mercy shown to the survivors of the battle. It was an outcome they’d rather not partake in.

Led by Todd from Liberté 3, the curved-horned goats decided that if they were going to partake in this battle, they were going to make sure they were on the winning side. Together, the 21 of them strapped themselves to the roof of a sept-places heading north for St. Louis where they asked for, and received from a somewhat confused warthog, directions to the boat launch that would take them to the roosting grounds of the eviler flock of eviler pelicans, where the evil hoard of evil curly-horned goats hopped into a boat, and began to make their way down the river using pure evil as a surprisingly efficient power source.

When the evil herd arrived at the nesting grounds, fear took over, rendering their evil power source useless. The evil herd just floated helplessly in their boats: the sheer eviler of it all – 21,000 birds just resting on three longish rocks sticking out of the river. Clearly they were up to something. If the evil hoard of evil goats drove the hellish demons from Hell from whence they came down to New Jersey, then the site of 21,000 eviler pelicans drove them further down, from New Jersey to Wisconsin.

The evil curly-horned goats quivered in their evil hooves. Wilbur from Liberté 4 panicked and jumped into the river, forgetting that curly-horned goats don’t know how to swim. He floated in the water, struggling pathetically while the evil herd of evil curly-horned goats in the boat just stood there watching him helplessly. A few eviler pelicans that happened to be flying by landed on nearby trees to watch the pathetic show going on in the river. Wordlessly, and without warning, the pelicans took off at the exact same moment, as if by some form of eviler ESP or mental communication. They dove into the water, using the great bag of their throats to scoop up water, and then flew high up into the air. The eviler pelicans soared around the struggling curly-haired goat, circling him menacingly in perfect military formation in the shape of a V – truly a horrifically terrifying sight to behold. The lead pelican suddenly dove, leading the Flying V, as the formation is called, on a beeline (pelican-line?) straight for Wilbur’s struggling form. At the last second, he pulled up and emptied his throat-load of water straight on Wilbur’s poor head.

One by one, poor Wilbur bobbed up and down in the water as eviler pelican after eviler pelican emptied throat-load after throat-load of water on his head. After the last pelican had emptied his throat-load, Wilbur was nowhere to be seen. He had simply disappeared under the eviler aerial assult. The evil curly-horned goats in the boat stood there, jaws flapping in the wind dumfounded into a terrified silence by the precision with which the eviler pelicans had dispatched of poor Wilbur from Liberté 4.

At last, Todd gathered his evil curly-horned goat chin from the bottom of the boat and spoke somberly. “If anyone of you needed reminding why we’re here today, let that display of pure eviler military superiority be a lesson to you. If we fight the eviler flock of eviler pelicans, make no mistake, we will lose.”

One by one the other evil curly-horned goats collected their jaws and chins and managed to summon up enough evil to take them in close (slowly!) to the eviler flock of eviler pelicans. A hideously eviler pelican landed on the bow of the boat and glared at the evil herd of goats. He was truly a hideous sight: his forehead was lumpy and had wart growing on it. His beak was cracked and rotting and his feathers were mottled with some pelican form of scurvy.

Eugene, from Liberté 2 made eye contact with him. What he saw in the eviler pelican’s eviler eyes was pure eviler – a blacker black than the blackest black; so black it was almost white, and he understood what it meant to be truly and utterly eviler. Immediately and without warning, Eugene was gone, evaporated into nothingness, right there in front of Todd’s own evil eyes. The pelican looked around at the other goats in the boat, but they all refused to look into his eyes, choosing instead to stare fearfully at the marks their jaws and chins had made in the bottom of the boat after Wilbur’s death. At last, Todd spoke. Although he tried to be brave in front of his evil curly-horned companions, the words came out broken and cracked like a mirror, betraying the utter terror that had gripped him like a cold glove. “um, can we leader speak yours?” After a beat, the eviler pelican wordlessly flew off into the eviler flock of eviler pelicans. The curly-horned goats breathed a collective sigh of evil relief after the eviler pelican took off.

As soon as the sigh escaped their collective goat lips, the manifestation of eviler landed on the bow of their boat and it was thrown back into their evil goat faces – not metaphorically or figuratively, but the eviler pelican leader actually caught the sigh in the air with his eviler throat bag and threw it back in their faces. A few curly-horned goats fainted, and Albert from Liberté 1 fell backwards into the water where he was promptly eaten by a morally ambiguous but very hungry crocodile who welcomed the introduction of something other than eviler pelicans into his watery domain.

Santa, the eviler pelican leader, truly was the physical manifestation of eviler. If you dared to even look at him, he was a gorgeous bird, large and magnificent; his feathers a brilliant white hot. On his forehead (if you risked looking into his eviler eyes) a blood red streak ran from in between his eyes back down his neck. The tips of his wings (I suppose you could call them fingers if you choose) were as black as a wet raincoat. But perhaps the best way to describe Santa is silent. Yes, the magnificent bird spoke not a word, and yes when he flew he would descend noiseless as the night sky upon his hapless victim, but Santa exuded silence like a black hole – sucking in everything around him and rendering it completely and utterly devastated – physically, emotionally, and morally. His mere presence (not to mention the very sight of him) was enough to drive the demon spirits further into hiding – from Hell from whence they came to Camden, New Jersey, on to Wisconsin, and now further down into – to Quebec.

Todd’s mind was immediately filled with dread, covered like a wet sponge, and he knew that Santa was inside his mind. Todd understood that Santa knew his cowardice and why he was there. Todd regretted giving up the secrets of the evil goat hoards defenses in Dakar, he regretted betraying his brethren. And then Todd understood that his curly-horned herd did not belong with Charles and Lou and Boo and all the other straight-horned goats. And then black, a blacker black than the blackest black, so black that it was almost white. And then everything and nothing and a little bit of something all at once.

* * *

Thats all for now...enjoy the next installment sometime soon!
Love,
Jake

Im scared...so scared.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Goats+in+trees

story chapter 3 coming soon!

Chapter 2...sorry its late

“Wait.” A voice arose from the evil hoard of evil goats. It was weak, feeble, yet screeched as rocks across a chalkboard so that every evil hair on the evil goat’s evil backs stood up on end as if to hear better. “Let me say something.”

An elderly figure limped forward from out of the crowd. The emaciated figure struggled to crawl onto the pile of gravel where Charles had leapt so nimbly from just moments before. “I want to say something.”

Nobody really knew where Boo the Elder, as the elderly goat was called, hailed from. For that matter, nobody really knew how old he was. There were rumors that he came from the Great Forests to the west, back before the great earthquake had shaken the Land and created the beaches that the evil hoards of evil goats once called their homes, before the great Exodus to the cities and villages and towns of the interior. These, however, were merely rumors, never really believed by anyone, passed around like stories about Santa Clause, or the Easter Bunny, or like Economics. Most chose to believe the most likely explanation: that he was spawned out of the Primordial soup that reigned so many years ago and has been old ever since.

“I have a story. One that concerns all of you, and all of your fathers, and your father’s fathers.” The evil hoard edged closer to the gravel pile so as to hear what this old and respected goat had to say. Boo the Elder began his story:

“Once upon a time, many, many years ago, back before the great Exodus to the cities and towns and villages of the interior, we evil goats lived a carefree life along the beautiful beaches of paradise. Playing and laughing in the sand along the shores of the ocean by day and by night leaping, nay bounding from craggy crag to craggy crag along the cliffs of the Great Escarpment. There was general evil mischief and mayhem making. Ahh yes, those were happier days.

“Food was plentiful and never anything to worry about. The humans would just throw us the remains of what they caught from the sea, and we were free to play amongst their children as we pleased.”

“Yeah, we know all about that, get on with it!” Todd, the impatient Liberté goat from Liberté 3, shouted.

“Alright smarty-horns, do you all know the story of how we ended up in the cities and villages of the interior then?”

“The Great Exodus, duh. Everyone knows that!” Todd responded.

“Does anyone of you what the Great Exodus actually was?” Boo the Elder asked. “Think about it. Why would your father’s fathers have traded in a life of plenty and craggy crags for the dusty dangers of the cities and villages of the interior? Do you think that your father’s fathers wanted to raise their kids in an environment where they could get hit by the mis-named Cars Rapids at all, no matter how un-rapide they be?” He paused for a moment, to let the question sink in.

“Well, what do you think over there smarty horns? Do you know what the Great Exodus really was about?” Boo the Elder shouted at Todd.

Todd stood silent, dumfounded. It was a question he had never thought to ask himself. It was just one of those things that one understood happened: the sun rose, Boo the Elder had been an old goat since time immemorial, and their father’s fathers left the beaches for the cities and towns and villages of the interior during the Great Exodus. There was no why.

Boo the Elder continued. “One day, Charle’s father’s father, the legendary Alham the Nimble saw a great cloud in the sky a ways off to the north. In and of itself, that was nothing strange. Clouds passed to the north all the time. But something about this cloud was different. Most clouds at that time moved west to east, but this one was heading due south, straight for the evil hoard of evil goats living and playing along the beach.

“Alham knew that a southerly heading cloud was up to no good so that night he conveyed a meeting with all the evil goats of the area to raise his concerns. All of the other goats however, felt that there was nothing to be worried about. ‘I mean sure clouds moved west to east, but why should a cloud be locked into one pattern of movement?’ they said. ‘If it wanted to move north to south, or south-southwest to due east who were the evil goats to stop it from doing as it pleased?’ So the evil hoard of evil goats stayed put. But the cloud kept coming.

“When the cloud finally arrived, the evil hoard saw that it had made a terrible mistake. For this southerly-moving cloud was not just a normal cloud. No my Brothers, this horrible directionally challenged cloud was none other than an eviler flock of the eviler pelicans! The eviler pelicans landed on the beach with a terrible hunger, and very soon ate every fish in the sea for miles and miles around. With no more fish, the humans living in the village had to start growing corn, and a good many of them moved to better lands in the interior, thus forming the first cities and towns and villages of the interior. And the evil goats were forced to follow them, forced to leave the lands where they had grown up, forced to abandon the craggy crags of the Great Escarpment for the flatter than a pancake plains of the interior! All because of the eviler flock of eviler pelicans that descended like a plague from the north!”

Boo the Elder was shouting by this point, and his screeching voice was shattering windows, setting off car alarms, and making babies cry all across the city. The evil hoard of evil goats, for its part, was unmoved.

“Wait a minute,” said Todd, ever one to offer a helpful comment, “If all this is true, why haven’t we heard this story before?”

“Because you have the average intelligence of a seven year old human!” Boo the Elder responded. “Humans aren’t told this story until they’re at least nine.”

“Then how come you know it?” Todd asked.

“Because I’m as smart as a 12 year old human, that’s why.” Boo the Elder said.

“Oh, ok,” Todd said. It made sense, with age comes wisdom. “But I still don’t see what this has to do with the eviler flock of eviler pelicans plotting to attack Dakar.”

“Don’t you idiots see?” Boo the Elder’s voice was now waking babies in the next administrative district. “The eviler pelicans have already kicked us off our lands once, and that led to nothing but generations of prancing about the flatter than a pancake plains of the interior. Now that we finally have some place where our kids can jump and play like our father’s fathers, the eviler pelicans are coming to kick us off it again!” Boo the Elder was shouting himself hoarse by this point, no small feat for an evil goat whose entire natural state can be adequately described as “hoarse,” whatever that means. “We can’t just keep leaving every time the eviler pelicans show up or else we’ll be forced to spend our days in the flat and empty lands of Kansas!”

When he finished his speech, he stopped and looked at the evil hoard of evil goats standing before him. They were silent, but this time it was a different silent. Instead of the awkward silence and weight shifting that followed Charles’ plea for help, the evil hoard of evil goats was now standing on the edges of their hooves, straining their necks forwards to hear every hideous syllable that Boo the Elder rasped.

“Let’s do it! Let’s fight!” someone shouted in the back. Immediately there was pandemonium. Evil goats everywhere were shouting a din so evil that the demons that had previously been forced to flee back into Hell from whence they came were forced to flee deeper; they fled to Camden, New Jersey.

* * *

Enjoy it...
Love,
Jake