LITERARY JOURNAL The ACST BLAH You drop that thing right now or I swear to God... Vol. 1 No. 4 Meanwhile WHERE DO WE ALL COME FROM? Hello Again Well folks we're back, and no better than before. This time The Mysterious ?! Gave me (D.C.) the power of the Blah! HA! HA! Hold on Kiddies, it's gonna be a bumpy ride! The Cucumber is Back With a Vengeance Hello you mortal putz. We are eternal, when you are gone we will still be here and you will not! So Ha! I am the Cucumber, no one can stop me now, because I don't care anymore. . . No one can stop me now because I don't care anymore, No one. . . Can stop. . . Me Now!!! Thank you for that intro, my friend Trent. TRENT REZNOR EVERYBODY!!!!!! WOOOO!!! HOOO!!!!! YA!!!!!!! So you want to hear my story. Well it all started out on a summer Saturday afternoon in Oiraw, Oiraw is a small town in norther Monditooey. My mother and I were walking through the produce department at Ykcul, the local super market, when I felt these strange psychic waves envelope my being and engulf me. All I remember is that I was in a sea of kidney beans searching frantically for my left shoe. When I awoke I was sitting in the passenger seat of mom's cherry red Chevy Camaro, barreling down the road at speeds reaching 180 m.p.h., in metric that is more than 10 kph, which is how she always drove in her new car. In my hands I clutched a large cucumber that seemed to be glowing on a higher energy level than most humans can perceive. After all I was a second-rate psychic with the ability to predict the past as well as sense certain vibrations. When we finally got home, I sat down at the kitchen table and immediately began to scarf down the cucumber. Little did I know that it was a radioactive cucumber from the planet Ecnednepedni, a large planet in the Andromeda galaxy that is lush with plant life. This cucumber had been stolen by some smugglers while they were on a mission to seek out the platinum grasshopper. Their ship was destroyed by the security system consisting of gigantic laser cannons which were put back into working order, after sitting there for over 50 years, by president Ronald Reagan. The cucumber was in an indestructible case that survived the blast. The case was seriously damaged, I guess it wasn't as indestructible as everybody thought it was, and during entry into our atmosphere it was incinerated, leaving only the cucumber falling through the sky . While it was falling it also absorbed massive amounts of gamma, alpha, and beta radiation. It was therefore, a radioactive cucumber. Anyway, as I was saying; I was scarfing the thing down, barely even chewing. It burnt my mouth, it felt like boiling hot grease was being poured down my esophagus, i could feel my tounge melting. But I wasn't in control of my body, the cucumber needed me and I needed the cucumber. As I swallowed the last bite all the pain went away and a feeling of calm washed over me. But then all of a sudden I felt a tremendous heat inside my chest. Somehow I knew it was the cucumber. It was melting down all of my internal organs and at the same time it was reassembling itself and spreading its vine-like tentacles throughout my body to take over all of the functions of my now liquefied organs. I felt as if I was about to puke my guts out, and I did, and in one enormous bloody ralph out came all of my organs. My body went limp. I was gripped with a dark and powerful paralysis. Suddenly, I felt a rush of superhuman strength flow into me, causing me to sit up so fast that I jumped up in the air and hit my head on the twelve foot ceiling. I felt no pain, I was more enervated than I had ever been in my whole life. Now whenever there is trouble, (or I feel like showing off), I transform my entire person into a six foot tall cucumber with horns, eyes, legs, and arms. No mouth, I communicate telepathically. Um, there. Whether Or Not Report There is no weather this time. That's right. No weather. It isn't just that there isn't going to be a report, there is going to be no weather. That is… that is, there won't be any weather unless we make it. You didn't believe us all the other times? Now, we will finally prove it. If this forecast turns out to be wrong, then you will know our supreme power. Thank you. You've been a great audience. This Corner Of The Patch Untitled #1 Passion is a poison of Love Love is gravitating in the air Love comes as a blast and takes everything away. Untitled #2 A fugitive jewel that glitters on the skin and it permeates with perfume. -Anna Rosso Untitled For it is not a sin, To put your underwear in the bin. And it shouldn't be a crime, To make an outlandish rhyme. As long your pants aren't to tight in the seat. -Simple Salsa Shoes All day I sit and stare At your long long hair But if you know what's good for you You won't wear moccasins Because your eleventh toe smells like poo And Cucumbers are the most wonderful creation on this green and blue (after all the world is mostly water) Earth. Thank you. Oh ya. Clockisins.-The Demon Cucumber Hmmm. What can I say. First of all, The Eye was out of the office for a few days so I'm (D.C.) Will be providing the poetry thingie. Untitled #1,2: Nevermind Untitled: Simple Salsa went all out on this one. I don't know about the rest of you but I smell Academy Award! Good luck Salsa boy. Shoes: At least I tried. -The Demon Cucumber Back have I come from the house Yoda of. Very nice was it to be there, back but is it good to be home. Yes, please. The poetry this month was pretty good. The Cucumber, as usual, had some sort of psychotic episode as he opted to expound in free verse. I worry about that boy. Damn it is a phrase that I would like to use in this sentence. -The Eye Ask The Doctor Dear Dr. $#!+, I was wondering if you could tell me why she threw me out of the house. Also, I was wondering if you could contact the Mysterious ?! for me, and ask him to give me a million dollars. Yes. And NO, ARE YOU CRAZY! Only you can contact the Mysterious ?!. All you have to do is sacrifice a large mammal in his/her name and hope you didn't wake him/her. If I, or anybody else on the staff, besides The D. Eye and The D. Cue, call upon him/her they would be turned into a large pile of Bauchabra. -The Doc. Doc, It's me, Hattie. I wrote the Blah before and was put in the first issue. Anyway I was wondering why the Cue. Said that I could use Javel to bleach my wool on the thirty-seventh of Emember when it says on the bottle to not use on wool. But I trusted in the Cue, and now I have red wool. WHY? Sometimes that kind of stuff happens. -The Doc. You used Javel sold in Douz, didn't you? It has to be Javel sold in Tunis. Sorry I didn't tell you that before, but I was on Thorozine and was somewhat "out-of-it". -The Cucumber Movies, movies, movieS Well, ladies and gentlemen, this time the staff, while on hiatus, was able to return to the good old U.S.A. to experience the Christmas movie glut. Most of the movies out this time just went for the big bucks. I saw some of them, and some were definitely better than others. Well, Quentin Tarantino tried to get back into the swing of things with the release of his new movie, Jackie Brown. The movie was made from a book by Elmore Leonard, entitled Rum Punch. I hope the book was better. The movie was pretty bad. First of all, it plodded, being two and a half hours long. I wanted to go to sleep. The problem with the movie rests in Quentin's trying to deviate from his usual modus operandi. This time, there was less violence, and what violence there was was played for laughs. Now, I don't go in for a whole lot of gratuitous violence, but when it's done, I like it to be done well. Not this time. I think things might have gone better for the new wunderkind if he had just made a crime piece. Oh, well. - D. Eye Hello, it's me the D.C. While back in the good ole U.S. of A, I happened to wander into a movie theater, well actually I was being chased by 1,000 crazed chefs in Vegas for the Annual National Salad Convention (ANSC pronounced: annskee). So anyway, I ran into a movie theater and was promptly thrown out because I did not purchase a ticket, and when I told them who I was they. . . they. They laughed! You should have seen their faces when two balls of fire-like stuff shot out of my hands melted their skin off, it was cool. Anywho, back to the movie review, Starship Troopers: This is defiantly NOT a movie for the squeamish. I for one loved it, but my tastes tend to be a little different than normal people. It is a story about this guy & a couple of his friends that go into the ‘army' and go off to fight highly advanced giant bugs. The idea may sound a little cooky, but with the special effects and gore, it is a must see again in my book, infact I plan to purchase the video, when it is released on video that is. I also haped to see Scream 2, the sequel to Scream (which I purchased) It is cool, funny, gory, and scary in parts, the only word that comes to mind is. . . cool. The Scream series, which is purported to be a trilogy, with all of the movies directed by Wes Craven, is supposed to have the distinction that the movie is more intelligent than your average run-of-the-mill slasher flicks. I thought this was true in regards to the first movie, but this time around, the joke was more subdued. In the first movie, Craven employed the tactic of letting the action lie parallel with scary movies that the characters were watching. Film terminology was tossed around this time, but it was done with more subtlety and panache. The characters were more developed, while the tradition of raising the body-count and amping up the shock-wattage of the second flick in the series was observed. This movie was surprisingly intelligent-I went in expecting a brainless barrel of laughs, but was surprised to find that this was a movie with a heart and soul. It actually tried to engage one's intellect while the production company and the movie theaters reached into his pocket. If things progress in the same vein as they have been, Scream 3 should not only turn out to be great fun, but it will redefine a tired, old medium. Not really much more to say about movies, soooo, bye bye. -D. Cucumber Eye Speye Hello, everybody, it's me again, and it looks like this time, you're going to get a cleaner, more sober Eye Speye from your old friend Dreadful. Well, look, everybody. Recently, some things in my life have led me to believe that despite my general faith in the human race as a whole, that people are pretty stupid. First off, I think that since this is a high school publication, I wouldn't be wrong to give some advice to one and all of you. I don't know how many of you out there are having sex, and truly, I don't care at all. What I want to say, though, is that if you're having sex, then don't be a moron. Protect yourself. AIDS sux, let me tell you, and girls, so does getting pregnant by accident. I don't care whether you're in ninth or twelfth grade, but if any of you out there are getting busy, then please be careful. I'm serious. You all know what a condom is. Girls, if you're active, then you shouldn't be embarrassed to carry condoms. And if wearing a condom isn't something you can talk to your boyfriend (or whoever) about, then think about whether you really think you should be having sex with this person in the first place. I'm not going to get into morality or religion, folks, because we all come from different backgrounds, but one thing I do know is that a lot of teenagers have sex, and not much on this Earth is going to stop them. So if you're going to do it, make sure you don't screw yourself up pretty bad in the process. Thank you and good night. Okay, enough of the boring stuff. I just felt I had to say that. Anyway, I'd like to introduce to all of you the one, the only, Hypersoy. We'd like to welcome Hypersoy into our ranks. Hmmmm… other than that. Oh, by the way, everybody, sorry there weren't any pictures this time around like we promised. We also apologize for taking so long to bring you this issue, but who the hell do you think you are, anyway? Look at me when I'm talking to you. That's what I thought. (Blame it all on the Cue. Not me, I had nothing to do with it, it's his fault. Not mine. Blame him. Lynch him. Burn him in effigy. Not me.) Thank you. Mightier Than The Sword Well, everybody, this time around, my ever-vigilant Eye has fallen on a number of books since we last met. The first of these was Truly Grim Tales, by someone whose name, for the life of me, I can't remember at all right now. Oh well. I'm running this show, anyway. Well, the book was pretty decent. It was well written, and thankfully, it wasn't a YA title. The basic premise of the book is that the author takes the old tales set down by the famous Grimm brothers and retells them, adding some sort of twist to each one. It's not bad, but it's not all that great, either. If you're into fairy tales, then check it out. Otherwise, you could check it out anyway, but don't get all excited. By the way, this book can be found in our very own school library. While I was out with my ankle, and had nothing to do but read and do schoolwork (although let me clear this up right now-I am all-powerful, but I sprained my ankle for fun) I chanced to read Larry McMurtry's Dead Man's Walk. If you like westerns at all, you'll love this book, and you might still love it even if you don't. The prose style is tight and economic, and the characters are believable and interesting. This is my first time reading any of the Lonesome Dove books, but I came to like both Gus and Call. And as everyone knows, sometimes the bad guys are twice as fun as the good guys. I agree. The three menacing Indians, Buffalo Hump, Gomez and Kicking Wolf interested me even more than the Texas Rangers. Great book. I give it four of those things that you would give a book four of if it was really good. Another book that I read recently was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If you like action, you'll love this book. The whole thing goes full-throttle, non-stop. The various acid dreams and trip-outs make me wonder how in God's name they actually managed to film the thing. But let me tell you, it's great. It's sort of like the French Connection on steroids, but French could kick the crap out of the author any day. It's not for the squeamish, and some might say it glorifies drugs and the drug culture of the 1970's in America. Well, I for one say that I read it and went right out and overdosed on three pints of heroin and a trash bag of cocaine. If you get the picture. The third of the books I'll be discussing with you all today is The Winter King, by somebody whose name I'm too lazy to get up and check. Wait a second… sorry, my stupid sister took it somewhere, and I can't find it. (His name is Bernard Cornwell.) But the first book was written by Priscilla Galloway, if any of you have heard of her. Who cares, though? The Winter King is a pretty decent retelling of the story of King Arthur. It kind of got on my nerves that the book only got to the point where civil war in Britain was ended. It's a bit like the movie First Knight, in that there isn't a whole lot of identifiable magic-but there is Merlin. And Merlin is definitely a well-written character. He's dangerous, not wholly sane, and darkly powerful. The rest of the characters were well-drawn, but the absence of Camelot as we know it, as well as the Semite-clad hand of the Lady of the Lake definitely take something out of the story. Read the book if you never liked the lack of realism in the other Arthur tales, and I promise you'll get a good read for your trouble. The next book in the series is called Enemy of God, and the first book interested me enough that I want to read it. Sugar For Gramma Bennie's parents always told him that lots of kids were afraid of their grandparents sometimes, but he knew they were lying. Not lying, maybe, but they didn't understand the extent of his fear. His fear was hot and animal and feral, and it made his bowels twist like snakes uncoiling in his gut. When he was near his grandmother, and he could smell that old-lady smell wafting off of her and clogging his nostrils, and when she would lean over and cackle in her cracked, obscene, wrinkled voice "Give Gramma some sugar, honey," something would run out of him, and his knees would go weak as one of his parents would prod him towards her. He learned early to hate the dried-up old woman, with her dark, apple-doll skin, but he never learned to hide it very well. Going to her house was like stepping into another world. He knew it couldn't be true, but it always seemed darker when he entered her domain-as if the sun shone there with her leave, and was forced to dampen its potency on her say-so. The house jutted from the ground like a titan shaking his gnarled fist at the heavens. The huge, sprawling place seemed to be a shout of defiance at everything that had tried to pull his grandmother's life down into the dirt. Though the paint was peeling, and the windows were dusty and vacant, the house had the same stern, commanding air that one could see in a disgraced but still-prideful woman. In town, there were whispers about the house. It had survived tornadoes and floods when other houses had been washed away or torn up by the roots. For years, it had stood on its lot with the two neighboring lots lying fallow and unused-like some sort of monster crouching on a blasted, cursed heath. Oh, but Gramma was rich. She was rich, and she was powerful in town. She was rumored by the other children to be a witch, but as Bennie grew older, he came to see that even though he couldn't bring himself to like her, his grandmother was a woman made stern and somewhat unforgiving by the hardships she'd survived and surmounted. It was in drear February that Donita Pritchart died and left everything to her children. She had reached the ripe old age of one hundred and six years old, and by that time, Bennie was eighteen-he called himself Ben, but his grandmother had tenaciously hung to the image of him as a little boy, and insisted on calling him by that same old pet name. When Ben looked out of the car window and saw the house standing up there on its slightly raised lot, he breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he had expected, the house had lost some of its forbidding air now that his grandmother was dead. He turned off his walkman and watched, still spellbound as his father pulled up the weed-clogged gravel driveway with grim determination. Finally, the car stopped, and for an unusually long space of time, there was complete silence. Finally, the wind began to pick up, and the leafless but still-shaggy trees began to sway rhythmically with its power. Lightening lanced across the sky, and big, fat, malignant-looking drops of rain fell and spattered on the windshield. "Well, here we are," Ben's father announced. "We'd better get inside before the rain really starts coming down." "It's already coming down, Dad," Ben commented as he opened the door and slid out of the car. The trunk popped up, and his father got out of the car to escort his mother up to the old porch so that he could let her into the house. Ben worked with the obstinate suitcases, pulling them angrily from the car. He hated this place-hated it with a passion. He didn't see why they had to stay here instead of in one of the hotels on the outskirts of the small town. Nobody even knew if the place was livable or not, for God's sake-his grandmother had become something of a recluse in the last five years, allowing no one into the house. And still, they would be staying here and holding the wake inside the putrid old rat-hole just because the will stipulated that they do so if they wanted any of the considerable windfall that the old woman's death would provide. Ben stopped, standing in a daze as he pulled the last of the suitcases out. He was breathing much more heavily than he should have been, and although he didn't want to admit it, he knew he was sweating under the rain that soaked and slickened his body. He had had a hard time with the bags, he knew, but he shouldn't be sweating. Cold, sick fear sat in the pit of his belly, and anger met that fear. He hated it that even the dead specter of the old woman should be able to do this to him. Breaking into a fear-sweat before he'd even gotten into the house? He swore bitterly at himself, questioning his own manhood, and then began pulling the bags over to the old porch and up the concrete steps. Ben's father helped him with the last of the bags, and then stood on the porch smoking a cigarette, staring out into the unbelievably torrential rain. "I never liked this house," he said softly. "I always hated it. Isn't it fitting that the rain should be coming down so hard right now?" "When's Brian getting in?" Ben asked. Brian was Ben's older brother, who was attending Oberlin College-Ben knew that he wouldn't even be coming for the funeral if the will hadn't stipulated it. Ben's father shrugged, smiling softly to himself. Ben wanted to suggest that they go and stay somewhere else, but he knew his father would frown sternly and brush the comment aside. He would never even consider it-but why should he? What would Ben say? How could he convince his father that the leaden frost sitting in the pit of his belly was more important than the two million dollars the woman had left to his only two surviving children. He couldn't do that to his father. Wuss, he sneered embarrassedly to himself, and began carrying the bags into the big house. Ben had forgotten how out in the open the old house could make him feel. The spacious rooms and high ceilings cloaked in shadows always made him feel that anything could come for him out of the further recesses of the dimly-lit rooms. He understood now that he feared the house more than anything, and that his grandmother had served only as a focus for that strange trepidation. After all, she was only a frail old woman. There was a distinctive smell to the place, too. It didn't just smell like dust, it smelled like Old Lady. As if ghosts weren't shadows, or patches of cold, but smells that people left behind them after they were dead and gone. But his grandmother wasn't gone, he reminded himself. She was lying in state in the damn parlor, laid out in her casket like some sort of ghastly carnival attraction. He didn't want to think about sharing the house with a corpse for two nights-but still, the house itself was more frightening than a paltry corpse. A house like that didn't need to employ an immobile thing like a corpse if it wanted to scare the hell out of you. He shook his head, and walked aimlessly around, craning his head as if he had come here for the first time. Ben wandered around in the house, looking at the dusty old books. He found his way eventually down into the basement-goading himself to go where his fear had forbidden him to tread in earlier years. And what he found astonished him. A library. A library that had to be worth easily eight hundred thousand dollars. The place was vast-as big as the west wing of the public library back in Maryland City. The books were dusty-they hadn't been opened in years. He walked around for an indeterminate space of time before his fear of touching one of the books goaded him into doing just that. He pulled one volume down and looked at the binding-it was definitely strange. The covering of the book was of a type of leather that he'd never seen before. It was brown, and it had the texture of skin, but it definitely wasn't leather-at least no leather he'd ever seen before. He looked at the book curiously, examining it. Finally, he opened up the nameless book-there was no title cover, and likewise none on the spine. The pages of the book were thin and fragile, and he saw that it was much longer than it looked. There was no title page, and the book was written in a crabbed, palsied hand-as if whoever had written it had been very old and feeble. The spelling was original, but the book looked like some really interesting stuff. The first sentence read "This tomme is an transcriptionne pertanning to the sacredd misteriees of Yogg Sothoth as practissed by the Cho-Cho poeaple of Lengg's high plateaue." Ben massaged his sparsely bearded chin and put the book back. He shook his head, feeling a queer throbbing. He didn't feel well at all, and he knew he'd be up early in the morning, helping his mom clean up-now that his grandmother was dead, she would be able to pose no objections to his mother's desire to "clean up this horrible clutter." Ben made his way exhaustedly to bed. His dreams were dark and full of horror. He could only remember one of them upon waking, but one was enough, he told himself with a shudder. In the dream, he was standing in the bathroom back home shaving in preparation for school. He bent to wash the razor off before starting on the left side of his face, and when he looked back into the mirror, his grandmother's hideously reanimated corpse was staring back at him. He ignored the apparition with the nonchalance of the dreamer, but his eyes widened as the corpse drew its hand back and rammed it into the glass on the other side of the mirror. Scraps of moldering flesh were left on the jagged edges of the hole that the corpse had punched in the mirror, but the withered arm was still too fast for him. A rotting hand squelched wetly as it clasped him around the neck, and the sockets of the demon's missing eyes regarded him cruelly. Obscenely, the thing puckered its lips and parodied a sexy wink. Give Gramma some sugar, Bennie! The thing growled in a powerful, sneering voice that sounded like two slabs of stone scraping across each other, and yanked him towards the broken surface of the mirror as he tried to gather breath enough to scream through his horribly constricted windpipe. He awakened in the middle of the night, not screaming, but only just managing to hold it in. The darkness in the room was so tangible, he felt as if he could reach out and rub it, hearing an oily squeak. It lay on him, thick and heavy, like an anvil. He seemed somewhat divorced from himself, and he could see himself as he must look-dark skin sheened with cowardly sweat, lying flat in the bed only because he was too afraid to cower. Everything seemed as stark and unreal as a cartoon, and he breathed shallowly so that nothing would be drawn by the sound of him taking in air. His bowels were loose and oily, and he felt as incopretic as a two-month-old baby. The fright still echoed in the room with mildly subdued force. He didn't sleep for the rest of the night. In the morning, he couldn't manage to get the fear to go away. It hung on him oppressively like wet wool, and he could feel the old woman's corpse in the parlor as if it were pulsating there with some malignant form of life. His mother didn't say anything as he drank three mugs of coffee-he knew he was only winding himself up further, but he didn't care. By the time ten o'clock rolled around, he would have been up for nine hours, and he didn't want to risk drifting off to sleep at any time during the day. "Ben, are you alright?" his mother inquired concernedly. "When are we leaving?" he asked leadenly. "We don't know yet," his mother answered. "We've got to get everything squared away before we can go back home. Are you sick?" "No," he answered tacitly. Give me some sugar, Benny, a voice hissed quietly beside his ear. He resisted the impulse to turn and look to see where the voice had come from. GIVE GRAMMA SOME SUGAR, BENNIE! The voice bellowed right into his ear, and he didn't move a muscle, even though he felt as if his head would explode from the sudden assault of sound. His mother didn't betray that she'd heard anything at all, and Ben wisely kept silent even as his ears rang with the memory of the demanding cry. "…what I'm saying?" Ben looked bemusedly up at his mother. "Are you sure you aren't sick?" she asked. He shook his head. "No, no-I'm fine." "I said do you want to come to the store with me?" she asked. "There's virtually nothing in this house, and your father's out jogging already. I'm going to take the car down to the market and stock up for a little while." He shook his head, even though a trip to the store would offer him a chance to get away from the house for a while. But he wanted to see some more of that strange book. He thought he might have heard those strange names before, and he wanted to see if there was anything else interesting down there. He knew he was reacting to his fear of the house again and conceiving this urge to go deeper inside it just because he was afraid to. But the house hadn't been in his dream, he reasoned. His mother gave him a worried look and patted his shoulder. "Maybe you should get some more sleep-though I'm not sure you'll be able to after guzzling all that coffee." He shrugged. "Maybe I'll get some sleep later," he told her. Once he was done eating, he hovered around the foyer, examining the expensive-looking oil paintings there. He had noticed them when he'd gotten there, but unaccountably, they seemed wrong. All of the figures in the paintings had looked terrified to him before, now they looked sinister and triumphant. Ben reasoned that he may have projected his own fright onto the innocuous facial features of the painted figures, but he definitely wasn't feeling triumphant or sinister now. He decided that he would go down into the library and have another look around, and then he was going to get right the hell out of that house and go for a walk around the block. He knew virtually nobody in the sleepy town stole from each other, but even if they did, none of them would dare to steal from Old Widow Pritchart's darkly forbidding old house. Ben went down the stairs humming to himself-feeling good now for some strange reason. He decided not to dwell on why he suddenly felt so peaceful and content, and just enjoy the feeling. He made it downstairs, but when he reached for the switch that controlled the library lights, nothing happened. He spat an annoyed oath and tried to figure out exactly which direction would lead to the shelf where he'd found the book. Suddenly, there was a heavy crash from upstairs, and with an angry frown, Ben looked up at the ceiling. Damn it, that was probably the old corpse falling over for some reason, and he could just see himself confronted with the prospect of putting the old thing back into the casket himself. His childish fears were gone, but he knew he didn't want to touch his grandmother's dead body-even with the help of his father. There was some further crashing upstairs, and then dead silence, and Ben sighed. He turned and walked back in the direction of the stairs, but his extended hands came to rest on the out-turned spines of more dusty old books. He could have sworn he was going in the right direction. His heart pounded as he stood there, his palms still resting on the books' musty old spines. And his heart stopped when he heard the library door fly open. "Bennie," a voice said sternly. "I can't sleep, Bennie." He didn't say anything. If he opened his mouth, it would be to scream, and he knew that he would never stop. "You'd better come here and give Gramma some sugar, so Gramma can sleep. Bennie? You hear me, boy?" He made a whining sound, and felt the thing's head turn in the dark, and its sightless eyes fastened on him. "There you are." He heard it come down the stairs, scenting the air, moving with a reptilian grace that the old woman had never known in life. "All I need is for you to give me some sugar so I can go back to sleep," his grandmother's corpse told him in a pleading voice. "That's all. I promise, Bennie." He wasn't going to think about what this thing was, or why it sounded like his grandmother, or what the crash upstairs was, but he knew he had to think about how he was going to get out of his present situation. Part of him analyzed his position even as the rest of him was cowering in terror. There was only one chance for him, and that would be to lure the thing down the stairs and into the library, and then run up the staircase as fast as he could. The thing was just as blind in here as he was… he hoped. He kept to the deeper shadows as he moved through the gloom. He saw the apparition turning its head this way and that, looking for him, but it was only a deep silhouette. It advanced towards the windows in the back of the room, and he moved quietly behind the bookshelves that divided the room into two large halves. He moved along the darkened carpet with as little sound as possible, and moved onto the staircase with as little sound as humanly possible. It seemed to take years, but finally, he was at the top of the stairs, and he placed his hand on the doorknob, careful not to make a single solitary sound. "That," an angry voice pronounced from just behind him, "is cheating!" Ben didn't utter a sound as he leaned back, throwing his weight into the creature even as he flung open the door. He heard something tumbling heavily down the stairs, but the thing behind him didn't utter a cry of pain. He darted out the door and ran through the house. Everything was unnaturally clear, and in the gloom of the house, he could see the oil paintings. Each face and figure seemed malignantly excited-like Tartaran shades watching a boat race on the waters of the Styx. They seemed to scream silently, and suddenly, he was aware that it was a race. His legs pounded, beating out an urgent drumming on the hardwood floors, but he could hear something behind him, running with great, leaping strides. Ben called on all his prowess that served him so well on the varsity track team as he flung himself blindly in the direction of the kitchen. Just before he made it in there, he felt the thing behind him leap, and he threw his body to the left. Still, he felt the arms clasp around his waist and drag him down. And suddenly, he heard laughing. The laughter was hard and loud and raucous, hurtling up into the shadowed nooks of the dining room and echoing back, as if it sought to fill the entire world. Ben squirmed over onto his back and looked at the thing that had been chasing him. It was his older brother, Brian. His eyes bulged as he stared at his brother, and Brian laughed even harder, pointing at him as he clutched his belly with his left hand and vomited up still more rolling gusts of mirth. Ben sat there, rage filling him with raw, red heat, but all he did was sit. "Gimme some sugar, Bennie," Brian said again in what Ben realized was a pretty poor approximation of their grandmother's voice. "Oh God. Oh God!" Brian choked slightly, and went on laughing, his laughter mingling with exhausted sobs. Ben rose silently, turned and walked into the kitchen. He stood before the sink, staring silently at the drain, his fists clenching and unclenching. And then he walked over to the counter, and his hand closed around the handle of a meat cleaver as the arteries stood out boldly under the dark skin of his neck, and madness shone hectically in his dark eyes. -The Dreadful Eye A Tale To Tell About The Untold Of Tales "One day, there shall be a chosen one!" I, the French Connection, must make a confession to the whole world of the Unwashed, unleashed, undestined, and unenlightened . I may appear to be a hero in those blind eyes, but in actuality I am a true menace to society. Here is how my sad, sorry, and lurid story goes. . . Another day, another bank robbery is committed by my comrades, the French Telephones, and I. But today was different. As usual, the police are chasing us. I just love a good chase. We skid around corners and into garbage cans, and finally we lose them and meet back at the scene of the crime as innocent bystanders. However, an informant of "The Force", recognizes us, so we pull out our .45s and "Click, click, click." As one, we all start crying. At that moment, the rest of the Force notices our depressing condition and arrests my mates. I somehow managed to escape. Why not just get straight to the point? Eventually I was apprehended. Being the French Connection, they put a close eye on me. When they pinched me they beat the living crap out of me, then they kept on beating me, and beating me... till I was hovered precariously within an inch of my life. Lying on my back, in my bed, broken, scratched, in a coma, ripped apart... In one word, DEAD! The Men In Black requisitioned my body to their "department of the broken, scratched, in a coma, ripped apart.. In one word, DEAD. And justice." They used my brain, since I was the best driver in the world, to execute their latest mad experiment. They suspected that by sending radioactive shockwaves through the brain, they could induce life to return to the human body; but they were never certain, until I came along. The project was to create the perfect Man In Black, a man whose driving skills are astonishing. As it turned out, their experiment increased my driving skills, and doubled my I.Q.-which took me up to 80. (But, who is complaining?) They armed me with the best weapons they considered prudent! And back me up in all of my actions and movements. Being the genius that I am, I realized that I was being used, so I planned my escape, and absconded with the car and guns. Now I'm on the run! A fugitive from an operation which never existed. Helping people is my basic aim in life, serving justice and blowing people's heads off is another. So if you ever see a shadow behind you, don't assume that it's your own, because the French Connection is out there, with enough ammo to start World War III. And, if you are ever stalked, frightened, or threatened by any one, (as long as it is not me,) they won't live long enough to get to you, unless... "Only you can prevent forest fires." -The French Connection Eye On Music Well, you can thank our esteemed emeritus, Philipp Klaus for the presence of this little review. He brought a wealth of CDS back from the States when he came to visit, and I must say that some of them were pretty good. I had been waiting a while to hear the newest offering from that girl group who are definitely not a chick band: L7. Their first album, Hungry For Stink, was really no more than pretty decent, and maybe a little surprising for those sexists who think that all women play guitar like Jewel or Dolores O'Riordan of the Cranberries. They rock. And not only did they rock back then, but they rock even harder now. They make great use of their FX boxes, and they play loud and hard. If you like dirty, gritty, greasy, guitar-driven bands, then you'll like their new album The Beauty Process. It's fun, it's cool, and some of the work is well and truly inspired. Songs like "Lorenza Glenda Allesandra" and "Must have more" are scathing and completely wicked. Another album that I managed to listen to was My Brother The Cow, by that Seattle mainstay, Mudhoney. It's almost as good as 1991's Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. They're more cantankerous than Grumpy Old Men, and they're more, shall we say, existent, than Nirvana. Mark Arm's bored delivery takes nothing away from the music or the sense of overall fun in the songs. Cool. For those of you who have an interest in the weird, check out the CD Highball with the Devil, by Les Claypool and the Holy Mackerel. For those of you who recognize the name, yes, Les Claypool of Primus went and did a solo side project, and it just happened to rock. For those of you who are more into vintage Primus, then check out Suck On This, from way back in 1989. It's excellent. If you ask me, it's better than Pork Soda and Tales from the Punch Bowl put together. I happen to own a copy, and I listen to it all the time. Hmmmm… any news? I mentioned that Sublime was putting out a new album, and that so was Jane's Addiction. Let's just say that "new" is a subjective term in this case. Both bands have put out a compilation of B-sides and other lost songs, but the material isn't especially new, and from what I hear, it isn't all that good, either. If you're into either band, of course you'll like it, but only if you're seriously a fan. That's all I got for you this time around, as far as music goes, so TTFN. If you don't know what that means, then go watch yourself some Winnie The Pooh and don't bother me. A Message From The Mysterious ?! On holiday; so long, suckers! Here They Are: Yes, it is us, the Faces! And now it is our turn to tell how we became the Faces! In 1895 (or 1985, I can't remember!) Somewhere in Russia exploded a nuclear power plant! And do you know what happened then??? No? I do! Radioactive rain came all over Europe! And we, the Faces, were balloons before the rain. So then on one nice sunny, excuse me, rainy day we turned into: the Faces! Yeah! Uncle Cue's ‘Tip of the Day' Make sure that the fork is wet before inserting it into the electrical socket, and that the water you are standing in is at least six inches deep. The Horrible, But Really Cool Transformation, or Becoming the Dreadful Eye: a how-to story. Once upon a time, in a village far, far away, there lived a young shepherd named Guth. But he has nothing to do with this story even though he has a pretty cool name. This story is about me, though, since I'm the most important thing in the world. (Besides The Mysterious ?!) Anyway, when I was young, I had a strange fear of glasses-almost as if I knew that one day, I would be transformed into the Dreadful Eye and take over the entire world, beginning with your uncommonly weak minds. So, anyway, by the time I was eight, I knew that I was different from other little boys. First of all, I had only one eye. Secondly, it was really big, and on top of my head. The other kids used to think that I was wearing some kind of turban, but then I would open my Eye and zap them and cackle maliciously as they were vaporized to death. It was a Christmas Eve in the year 67,000 B.C. that I met the Demon Cucumber. Both of us were sitting around at a friend's house complaining about how it really sucked that neither of us were going to get presents for Christmas because Christ supposedly wasn't due to be born for another sixty-seven thousand years. Well, after talking about it for a while, we forgot what we were talking about, and went outside to make fun of the prehistoric men and tell them how ugly they were. Well, it was then that the Demon Cucumber and I got it into our heads that we could manipulate the idiotic masses. There was an eclipse brewing, and Cue looked up into the sky and shouted that the Gods were angry with the Neanderthals for failing to do honor to us. We told them that they better go out and bring us something good, or else the sun would never come out again. Well, when they came back, all they had for us was some dirt and rocks and animal skins, and their horribly ugly women. So then D.C. and I got into a fight about how stupid he was to think that the Neanderthals would have anything cool to bring us-seeing as how they were so ugly and stupid, and stuff. So we beat each other up pretty bad, and then I hugged him and told him that I was sorry for the way we were acting; that we were brothers. So then I hugged him and used the great opening to clout the stupid gullible idiot over the head and practically brain him to death. So I stood there and laughed at him for a while (believe me, if you've never seen a giant cucumber with arms and legs and horns rolling around on the ground, that's real comedy.) and then he suggested that we go and do the same things to the Cro Magnons that we'd done to the Neanderthals. And we decided that if the had any cool stuff to give us, then we'd let them take over the planet and drive all the Neanderthals into extinction. And we've been partners ever since. Oh. I forgot. All of the origin stories are supposed to include radioactivity, and stuff. Um. Okay. What happened was that none of that that I wrote before was true, and I was bitten by a radioactive eye-no! I know what happened. I was sitting and watching that movie, Attack of the the Eye People (I didn't make that up, there really are two "the"s) when suddenly, lightening struck the house, traveled down the television antenna, and the television exploded in my face. When I regained consciousness, I felt as if my face and head were engulfed with flame, and When I reached up to feel my face, I could feel no recognizable human features. I felt only bare, featureless skin! I opened my eyes and… and I could see half of the room! I reached up to pat the top of my head and see if I was bleeding, and my hand met a wet, membranous surface if felt just like I was poking my eye! Italics are really fun to use! They really are! Met with this unspeakable horror, all I could do was sit down on the couch and try to think of what I should do next. It took a long time, but then I knew… I would take over the world! It didn't take me long to come to grips with my new arsenal of superhuman powers. Not only could I fly and see into the hearts of men, but I could direct beams of energy from my Eye and vaporize a normal human to death. One day, I was outside playing with my new powers and establishing myself as the scourge of Tunisian cats, when I saw a mild-mannered young man approaching me. He began making sounds and clawing at himself and I realized that he was none other than Early Layte. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent.) I decided to use my new vaporizing trick on him, and it worked! …Or I thought it did. When the smoke cleared, the Demon Cucumber stoodbefore me, his fists blazing with ambient energy, and his yellow eyes glaring with hate. Then we played a game of paper scissors rock, and both of us chose rock, so we became fast friends. And that, dear readers, is the story of how I became the Dreadful Eye. Shake N. Bake's Recipes That Don't Taste Very Good At All Santa Pie: Ingredients: Santa Clause, one pair of Nike Air Jordans, some Cheese. First ask Santa for everything you ever wanted, and if he doesn't give it to you, hit him over the head with the left shoe. If he does, take your loot and run. If he still doesn't give you your stuff after the beating, force feed him twenty pounds of Cheddar cheese, and stuff him into the oven at 352.43° for sixteen hours. By then I guarantee you he will be sorry that he didn't give you your stuff. That'll show ‘im! However if he is dead after the baking, put on the shoes and run to Japan. There. Stuff: Ingredients: Anything you can think of, cheese. First throw some stuff into a thing, and then once you've thrown it in, think about how the stuff feels, and think about all the times you've thrown stuff into a thing, and ask yourself, if there was some giant stuff, would you like it to throw you into a thing? I don't think so. But who cares? Might makes right. Once you've done that, play with fire. If you don't think you should play with fire, then you're stupid. A little fire never hurt anybody (except for Richard Pryor.) When you're done playing with fire, go get arrested and thrown in jail. Once they've thrown you in jail, pull out the cheese that you've been hiding on your person all this time, and act like you're going to hang yourself with it. Once they take you to the mental hospital, laugh at them and tell them the joke's on them. Your cheese wouldn't hurt a fly, but there will come other cheese that they will be frightened of. And rightly so, because you're absolutely crazy. There. My Story Hi. I'm Hyper Soy, yeah, and. . . I'm new here. Know whyyy? These real, really weird creatures, like an insane green vegetable and, I guess a nurse, just barged in my capsule-apartment and kidnaped me. . . I think. . . See, I came from planet Mrs. Green's Organic Market. It's really far-out and groovy there. . . We had these little "capsules" that can turn into stuff when you spit on them, it really saves space. . . But now I'm imprisoned here for eternity! These crazy thingamajigs that I mentioned before do these experiments on me. . . for fun I guess. They're evil! They test these radioactive substances on me, to see if I can absorb them, they claim its "all-natural and organically grown" stuff. Pshht, yeah, and the moon is made of green cheese! So now, I turned into this Daria Morgendoofer-like chick who always thinks morbid thoughts, criticizes everything and everyone on this planet, and relishes the thought of doing truly evil things to every air-head on Earth! The good thing is that I still have some of my Soy Power, like being able to turn anyone I hate into a puny soybean, yet somehow this doesn't work on the Blah crew. . . I've concluded that they are just too abnormal. . . Ummmmm, okay, that's it for me peps. . . Neither Safe Nor Sound FRIENDS and neighbors, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, something has laid it on my heart recently to bring before you a matter of ominously looming danger. You do not understand the peril in which our society has so heedlessly placed its children. We are all of us sitting on a powder-keg with our head in the noose, waiting for the other shoe to drop with the fuse lit! We are like eggs in the freezer! Like strained rubber bands! Like fish with our heads in the sand! The subject that drove me to come before you and speak today is one of gravest import. It is not to be laughed at, it is not to be sneered at, and it is not to be sneezed at, ladies and gentlemen. I think you all know that of which I speak. I think you have all seen the marks of this insidious influence, this horrific creeping menace. No, I'm not talking about teenage sex today, Romans and countrymen, I'm not talking about red communism, people, I'm not talking about those guys who run up to your car and wash your windshield without asking, and I'm not even talking about people who rip the tags off of mattresses! I'm talking about trouble-right here in River City! I'm sure there's not one of you who has not seen… dirty cartoon characters! No, no, I do not speak of characters in dirty cartoons. Those animals or people are as nothing compared to the evil influence of such characters that so many of us know and love. I speak to you of Mickey Mouse, of Donald Duck, and of course, those damned Smurfs. Now you may laugh, you may scoff and think to yourself "how can those sweet, innocuous Smurfs be dangerous?" but think on this. In the Smurf village, there are 99 men, one woman. What goes on there? And why do most of the Smurfs walk around with bare chests? To tempt Smurfette is the answer! If the walls of their banal little mushroom houses were gifted with the power of speech, who knows what untold iniquity they would recount? I shudder at the thought-and you! You should be quaking in your frock-wetting your boots! And now on to Donald Duck. He's one of the more harmless of the characters that I wish do denounce today, but still, he brings to mind some disturbing questions. First, why doesn't he wear any pants? Now, some may say that since cartoon characters are not real people, they have no influence on us, but this is not so. How many people have denounced the use of "Joe Camel" to sell cigarettes to minors? How many have denounced the violent antics of the "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" as setting a bad example for their children?!? I ask you, are they "real?" The answer is, of course, that they are real enough. Real enough to do harm. Protect yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, do not allow the specter of this demonic little creature in your home, and thus make sure that your children will not suddenly develop a yearning to walk around naked from the waist down! Frontal nudity is a serious matter! And of course, that isn't to mention his famous speech impediment. I am forced to ask why he talks like that. How has his speech degenerated into this unintelligible babble? The answer is, of course, druuuuuugs! Do you want your children so hopped-up on PCP that they destroy the house when they fail to open a window?! Do you want them spouting streamers of spittle as they scream garbled oaths?!? I say thee nay! The question of drugs leads us to yet another agent of subversion on the cartoon television screen. We all know Popeye. Yes, that's right, Popeye. Oh, we think he is a tool to aid us in the battle to get our children to eat vegetables. "It's wonderful," we say, unaware of the irony, "that Popeye gains his Herculean strength from the ingestion of spinach!" Yes, but think about it, how could spinach grant such astounding power to such a small man? The answer is, it couldn't possibly. Unless there was something else in it. Tell me truthfully if you can; when was the last time you felt like that after eating a can of spinach? Popeye is as surely a dope fiend as is Donald Duck! He leans his head back and pops open a can of spinach and gains the power only offered by PCP or the dreaded crack cocaine! And what of the other characters so obviously affected by drugs? I haven't even begun to mention the "Gummy Bears," whose strangely potent "Gummyberry juice" allows them to bounce as if they were drunk absolutely out of their minds, or "Tigger," who seems to have ingested the same sinister substance! Be afraid, friends and neighbors, for as surely as Donald Duck's voice is slurred by either drink or something much much worse, the Devil walks among us! Turn out your doors! Lock your windows! Shut your lights! And I assure you; there is evil in other forms on your television screen. Have you ever asked yourself why, when Mickey Mouse's friend, Goofy is a dog, does he own a dog himself? The answer screams at us from the screen! Pluto obviously cannot walk and talk like Goofy because he is retarded! Loveable Mickey Mouse holds a retarded slave!!!! How can you watch this without it turning your stomach? If you went over to a friend's house and saw a member of your own race in the backyard snuffling at the ground and chewing on a bone, would you not immediately terminate your association with this evil "friend?!" In a minute! Why, then, can't you see that Mickey Mouse is a slave-holder?! And then, his sinister "Mickey Mouse Club." Cute, weren't they? "Annette, Cubby, Bruce…" But their ritualistic incantations at the beginning and end of every show flavor their actions with dark cultishness. They regard Mickey as snake-handling hillbillies regard Jesus-so why, then, does it seem so normal? It shouldn't. Not to you, not to me, not to anyone! Thankfully, though not all cartoons are dangerous, fair citizens. We can see the unbridled optimism of youth and the good cheer of honest young men in the faces of Beavis and Butt-head. These young men are so thrilled to be alive that their joy spills over in such forms as pushing unsuspecting cows over in the middle of the night, in sniffing the fumes of paint-thinner and going riding down the street on lawn tractors, in putting on bras and lipstick and hammering the sweet bejeesus out of each other with baseball bats. Ah, youth! I remember the days when my friends and I would sit and eat chips of lead-laced paint like good little boys! The next time your child turns on that dirty Mickey Mouse, or that occasional transvestite, Bugs Bunny (and why does he so love to dress up like a woman and reduce Yosemite Sam and the Tasmanian Devil to drooling, helpless idiots? The answer is because he enjoys the feeling that men are attracted to him!) lift your head up high, suck in your gut and stick out your chest, and say "Turn that filth off-you should be watching Beavis and Butt-head playing with matches and taking rides in the dryer!" Try it; if you don't immediately feel better after taking a stand, then try putting your toddler's clothes on backwards, packing him a lead paint snack in his lunch, and sending him off to school as if nothing were wrong. Hey, it works! -Alexander Jennings This piece of work is simple stirring. This young man obviously has a far out imagination because all of that stuff is Crap! I only wish that I could meet the author of this stirring, but FAKE, editorial. If any of you The Great Unwashed know where this Alex Jennings is please tell me. -The Demon Cucumber Cew's News On a serious note everybody, I have some sad news to spread. This issue of the Blah was the last issue with the Doc (The Nurse has already departed). Yes, it seems that our illustrious medical staff has been offered a better positions elsewhere (NOT!). Were will be seeking a replacement, who will remain nameless at this time, (Shirley Moody) to fill this empty space that I'm sure you all feel. And just maybe a different, mature, serious publication. Thank you for this time. -The Demon Cucumber French's Tips That Will Tip You Over! Not only should you drink and drive, you should eat as well. Pull the hand brake only at speeds over 200kph. If you are in a hard turn and the 7RF velocity viscosity reading is high (18+), make sure you hear the tires laying down rubber or you did not do it right! When loading a gun while driving keep one eye on the road, one on the gun, and one on your chick (or man, we can't be sexist here) in the passenger seat. When going into a drive-by shooting, make sure that your gun is loaded! It's a starry night, silent crescent moon, and a bunch of people are drunk in a cathedral parking lot. What should you do? Hot shot, what should you do? . . . Skid in front of them, almost sideswiping them off Beerça Hill, then peel out, covering them with dirt, and escape via the ‘back road' that you make as you plow through the surrounding vegetation. If you get annoyed by hitchhikers, pick one up and go over 160kph, in a 60kph in a zone over a bridge, in a grey/silver Peugeot station wagon. That'll scare ‘im off! When speeding down a badly lit street, listen to the person in the passenger seat, when he (or she) claims to see a car ahead in the middle of the road. Don't listen to anything I say, because if you do, it will create competition for me and I will be forced to show you who the real French Connection is. Disregard that last one. -The French Connection Signing Off Don't touch that dial, boys and girls, because it's got nothing to do with what you think, if you ever think at all. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my work here is done. -The Dreadful Eye, E.I.C. Well. . . I guess this is goodbye. I don't really have much to say to all of you unbathed idiots. So I guess "Ta Ta For Now!" -The Demon Cucumber Oh, by the way, THERE WERE TEN!!!!!!!!!!! -The Mysterious ?! No offense to the big M ?! or The D.C or even to The Eye, but there were nine, or my name isn't Mel Gibson. -The French Connection Next Issue! Next issue, boys and girls, we delve into the mystery that is Mister Rogers. Who is this man, and why does he think a train talks to him? No one will ever know . . . unless we reveal the truth.