CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 9

The monkeys... my God, the monkeys!

No!

No!

NO!

There is no God! There is no God!



When you read this I will be dead. All of us are... so many...

They came. We weren't ready. We didn't know. And now...

Tell my wife I love her.





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CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 8

It is dark in the jungle. As dark as a pitch-black plum pit sitting in the deepest reaches of a black panther's gastrointestinal tract.

I am writing long-hand. I must guess where the edges of the paper are, occasionally ending my lines on my khaki pants. The canopy is a long, black blanket blotting out whatever distant stars might ponder their way through the heavy overcast skies.

We have just left Sao Paulo. Tomorrow we will sleep in Brasília. Tonight we do not sleep. The forest is practically paved with poisonous snakes and miniscule rodents that climb up pants legs and play bongos with your testicles. Tonight we are like the Israelites, recently escaped from the clutches of the Pharaoh and doomed to wander for 40 years except in our case it's one night.

Chicago Dan finally plotted a route out of Sao Paulo that promised a decent chance of evading the clutches of the literally millions of professional kidnappers. The route took us through an abandoned lava mine, under a salt quarry and thither the University. We then were to ascend 500 feet into the hills before linking up with the sewers where our steel cargo containers would be converted into boxcars for use in a secret section of subway used by government officials smuggling urban development funds. Unfortunately when we arrived at the University we were unlucky enough to find ourselves in the middle of a protest against the forces of soul-crushing capitalism.

"Nós diamos comprar sapatas!" the protesters shouted. That is, "Down with capitalism!"

"Eu amo Bush, configuração de um monumento para honrá-lo!" "Bush is a scoundrel and his association with capitalism makes it even more repugnant!"

As we were trying to attract as little attention to ourselves as possible, the several dozen protesters that one of our massive 22-wheel trailers crushed to death were a bad break for us. And their families, of course. I do not attempt to match my grief to theirs. It's not a competition. The throng surrounded our caravan, incorrectly assuming our huge number of steel cargo containers represented the capitalist transport of commerce rather than a scientific expedition. They shouted, "Meu gosto das nádegas da clementina!" or "Let us kill those who are agents of misery!" as they tried in vain to overturn the trailer.

The lives of everyone I was leading were in jeopardy and so I did what I always do. I boldly stepped into the fray and, pardon my boasting, saved the lives of everyone. On both sides. The police were beginning to set up their crowd control flame throwers.

"Peoples!" I yelled in perfect Portuguese as I exited my armored Mercedes Benz. "Do not set your ire on us. We are you. You are we. Together we are we together!" That phrase makes more sense in Portuguese. "Turn your backs on violence. Save your knives! Unload your guns and drop them to the dust!" They began to quiet more in confusion than at the power of my words. "My name is Jacob Ditkovski," I said. "I am a scientist, a man who thirsts not for monetary gain or to feast on the man-power of the proletariat like so much breakfast sausage but to enlighten and discover. If you kill us you do not mark a blow against capitalism but against knowledge and truth! And that would be ironic because this is a university and you are all students. Do not be ironic! Seriously, it would be so very lame."

"What are we supposed to do then?" asked a six-year-old boy covered in soot and dressed in adorable rags. "We are angry and the rich live in skyscrapers and travel by helicopter so they don't smell the wretched stench of hard-work and death."

"You can struggle through peaceful protest to enlighten the wealthy elite until they give you human rights or you can buy surface-to-air missiles from Bahrainian arms dealers."

When I hugged the boy tears began to pour forth from the eyeballs of everyone around me. Even I was not immune to the tear gas canisters the police fired into the crowd. As I climbed back into my car and we started back towards the sewers and the secret subway I couldn't help but feel my throat closing. I was also dizzy and disoriented. That's pretty much when I passed out.





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NOTE

The next dispatch will be posted on January 5, 2009. Pleasant New Year!

P.A.

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 7

Nossa Senhora Das Orelhas is the best hospital in Sao Paulo. Benvolio’s room has a view of the city’s trademark sprawling squalor and the surgical instruments used in his operation were fairly clean. Benvolio is incompetent when it comes to simple tasks such as neutralizing murderous psychopaths but he still deserves to live and so it is with a heavy heart that I wait by his bedside and the adjacent nine miles that includes the Hotel da Grande Riqueza and my four-person whirlpool jacuzzi where I am currently composing this dispatch.

Chicago Dan, our Brasil expert, has spent every second since we arrived planning our route out of the city. The kidnapping rate in Sao Paulo is higher than the literacy rate in Norway. A recent survey by Sao Paulo Diário had only 5% of the city council with both natural ears. We had originally planned to land in the middle of the night at Praia do Estrume west of here and tie our supplies to the back of black market camels imported from Morocco for the 68 mile trek to an abandoned CIA landing strip where the up-armored humvees we will be taking to the Amazon would be airdropped at which point we would shoot the camels and feast all night on their delicious meat. This plan was abandoned when we received a Travelocity price alert for the Hotel da Granda Riqueza.

Chicago Dan had hired several dozen locals to run test routes through the city trying to find a path that was only lightly coated with gooey kidnappers. So far we’ve received ransom notes for 25 of them. The others are currently missing. I must admit it’s disconcerting but we’re not going anywhere without Benvolio and the recovery time for his punctured organ is expected to be covered by his HMO for 36 hours. So there’s time.

Oh, warm bubbly jets, I shall miss thee when I’m traipsing through the Amazon, trying to protect my genitals from the jaws of venomous snakes and my fingertips from those fish that jump out of the water, pausing only a second to snap off a bit of your digit. We had discussed bringing a jacuzzi with us but unfortunately it was deemed infeasible by the number crunchers. Those horse-ass-fucking pieces of cum-shit! They don’t know a single solitary thing about true adventuring.

There was an expedition led by my mentor, Professor Alastair MacNolte, deep into the highest plains of the Himalayas. We encountered a tribe known as the Sforzo. The Sforzo are a hard-weathered people living in conditions most snow leopards would find intolerable. Conditions are so harsh when a new baby is born its mother is beheaded and her womb is opened and the baby reinserted for warmth. The difficult living conditions had made the Sforzo incredibly tense and they were weary of outsiders. Also, we had just stolen and desecrated one of their gods, an ice sculpture that vaguely resembles Heat Miser (ironically). Our entire crew including Prof. MacNolte and myself would have been mercilessly ground to dust in a gigantic mortar & pestle had it not been for the fact that among our affects was a five-man jacuzzi with eleven independently firing jets and seven comfort settings. Once they had relaxed we were able to explain the importance of our mission through their territory and were able to move on without incident. The elephant-anus-while-defecating accountants never believe that story. Oh, by the way, it was Christmas Day.

God bless us, everyone.





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Amiel couldn’t find a taxi that would take him to the South Bronx so he took the Subway to the Longwood Ave. stop on the 6 train and walked down Longwood to where he was supposed to meet Pasha.

It was an abandoned industrial yard. Grass and weeds had mostly consumed a large, flat, empty square of pavement. The only surviving building was a squat concrete silo. Amiel pulled open a large gaping hole in the rusted chain-link fence and started across the green pavement to the waterfront. Pasha was waiting with a second man Amiel had never met. He was large, wearing a black watch-cap and a bright yellow sweatshirt with ‘Bermuda’ emblazoned on it.

Amiel and Pasha shook hands.

Pasha asked, “How’s your luck today?”

“We’ll find out.”

“Come here,” Pasha said and led Amiel down to the concrete bank. Sitting on the bank was a green canoe. Amiel watched in disbelief as Pasha and the other man carefully lowered it into the water.

“Is this a joke?”

Pasha swung his head around and faced Amiel. His eyes were deadly serious. “What?”

“I said, ‘Is this a joke?’ ”

“Is what a joke?”

“This –” He took a couple steps towards the water and point clearly with his finger.

“This boat?”

“This isn’t a boat,” Amiel said.

“It’s a boat,” Pasha said.

“This isn’t a boat.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Are YOU kidding ME!?”

“This,” Pasha waved his arms in the general direction of the canoe, “is a boat. It’s a boat! Not a boat? It’s a boat! This – is – a – boat!”

“It’s a canoe.”

“A canoe is a boat.”

“No. It’s a canoe. A boat is a boat.”

“A canoe is a boat.

“No it isn’t.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I said a boat.”

“And here it is! What do you want from me? You want a boat, here’s a boat. A canoe-boat.” Pasha, infuriated, turned and walked away a few steps. He said something under his breath and walked back. “It’s a boat. What do you want from me?”

“I want a boat,” Amiel said.

“Fuck you,” Pasha said. “Fuck you, how’s that? That’s your boat. Paddle fucking yourself to the island. How’s that?”

The two men stood a foot apart. Amiel’s body was electrified with rage and he could feel Pasha’s breath on his face. It smelled like pepperoni pizza. He wanted to fucking strangle the man’s fuck-cock with his bare hands. It would seem gay at first to the giant Bermuda guy but Amiel didn’t care.

“Dick,” Pasha said, perhaps reading his mind, “you want this all shady and you want this all with nothing upfront? This is what you get. You want to give me a credit card I can give you a huge fucking 40-foot yacht with a big screen plasma and a wet bar and a dozen wet pussies for you to fuck. You give me nothing and say don’t let anyone know anything you get a canoe. So, my friend, my favorite person on this earth, let me ask you a question, very simple question, do you want this canoe or should I fuck myself in the ear?”

Amiel saw the hesitancy in Pasha’s eyes and realized he was frightened. He’d never seen Pasha frightened before. He had once left a Pakistani restaurant on the Lower East Side with the man when a group of at least 14 Croatian gangsters in long black leather jackets and gold chains called him a dwarf. Pasha grabbed one and slammed him into the brick side of the building and then threw him into the street. He told the rest to eat him out or he’d follow them home and give their sisters trichomoniasis. The Croats looked dazed at first but when they started reaching into their jackets Amiel grabbed Pasha and rushed him away. It was strange seeing fear in those brown-green eyes. Like seeing Adam Sandler trying to act sad.

“Is it her?” Amiel asked.

“No,” Pasha said quickly.

Amiel looked past Pasha to the giant Bermuda guy.

“I’ll take the canoe,” Amiel said.

“Praises be!” Pasha said.

They helped Amiel into the green wooden canoe and handed him a kayak paddle. Amiel knew it wasn’t right but he was already bobbing in the East River and knew he’d lose the argument anyway. Paddle? This is a paddle. You want a paddle, I give you a paddle. He pushed off the dock and started towards his destination.

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 6

We arrived in Sao Paulo just after dawn. The city is beautiful when there is little light to see it by. Just the twinkling shimmer of the shattered glass and the faint autumnal hues of the corrugated metal roofs. The Wayward Trope docked on pier 17 and we began the arduous task of unloading our materials into unmarked locked steel shipyard containers. I have perhaps the hardest task -- writing in my journal while sipping a mimosa. The orange is concentrate and the champagne at best A-list. Plus, there is the nasty matter of reliving perhaps the worst event of my entire last couple days. I have only seen so much blood on 30 or 40 occasions. None of those, except for a delightful trip up the Yangtze, were pleasant experiences.

After our little talk Un decided to consult the other six members of The Sept to ascertain a next course of action. As I had feared blowing up the entire ship won 5-2. It was clear I would have to take matters into my own hands or else risk the lives of everyone I held dear. Especially Carl, the mechanic.

I knocked on Salisbury’s door. The battered and scarred old captain was asleep, snoring loudly. So loudly and fiercely it almost sounded like rhythmic grunting in both a male and female voice. I wrote a note suggesting he get checked for sleep apnea and went to find my assistant, Benvolio.

“What do you want me to do?” he boldly volunteered.

“Fix the situation,” I said.

“How?” It was a call to action.

“Somehow.”

Then I went to bed.

I was rudely awaken at 2:30 am to the sound of vibrant discord in the hallway. Benvolio, as usual, had done his intrepid best but had failed to remember to protect his torso from the end of the first mate’s zebra blade. Blood gushed out of the organ between the spleen and the stomach. When I arrived on the scene his face was white and the first mate’s eyes had become dark and maniacal. He clutched his blade tightly and turned to me. I had no weapon other than my wits and bathrobe. And, I guess, in a feminist reading, what was under my bathrobe could be considered a weapon as well.

“Love,” the first mate said, his voice a sinister ferret of emotion. “Love,” he said again, “but now no love. Now... die!”

I experienced a split second of relief as I believed he meant he was going to kill himself. When the blade slashed towards me I jumped back just in time. The blade, with one smooth side for entering the Zebra just above the linoretic muscle and one jagged edge for skinning the hide, ript into my terry cloth bathrobe sending fine specks of terry cloth into the air.

“You, sir,” I said, “are no gentleman.”

“No gentleman,” he said, tears welling in his eye sockets, “once was gentleman I loved and now -- no more.”

I took the time he was blubbering to remove my bathrobe and fashion it into a make-shift nipaju-fu, an ancient Japanese weapon I was schooled in by the President of the Sanyo corporation. The nipaju-fu is the secondary weapon in the Japanese art of bath house fighting or wa-ko-ke-te. I took the seventh stance and waited. Every samurai knows he who strikes first has great disadvantage.

The first mate looked quizzical at first, his resolve shaken momentarily by the awesome visage of myself standing there in seventh position with a nipaju-fu and no clothing except for my pubic hair -- god’s tighty-whities. Or, in my case, tighty-orangies, because of that incident in May at the Cheetos factory.

“What the fuck is this?”

“I’m prepared to fight you,” I said.

“But... like this?”

“The Spartans exclusively sparred in the nude. There is a proud tradition in it.”

“With a bathrobe?”

“This is a deadly Japanese weapon. If you do not believe me, attack. You shall soon see how deadly a nipaju-fu can be in the right hands.”

“This is fucked up weird,” he said. “Never mind.” He turned and walked down the hallway.

The term ‘shot in the back’ has a negative connotation in America that is not found in nearly any other culture. In French it is tire dans le dos, which is also a phrase used to mean, ‘the victory of the brave.’ In Japan shooting someone in the back is referred to as, literally, ‘taking the rooster and telling it to go home.’ There is nothing negative in that. I have traveled the world extensively and immersed myself in many great and noble cultures and a couple real losers. The world is my culture. The earth is my nationality. Humanity is my race. And so, when I ript the first mate’s head off as he walked away from me I did not feel shame but instead what the goed bij tribe of Western Africa call, ‘the pride of staying not dead while the other one is not as lucky.’

The first mate’s decapitated head had that quizzical expression that all newly decapitated heads have. His jagged neck hole burst forth a fire hose of thick red blood, mixing with the river coming out of Benvolio’s abdomen. Benvolio was nearly passed out on the floor of the hallway, clutching his wound, covered in the blood highball. I could tell he needed me to give him a confident quip.

“I hope he didn’t have west nile,” I said, “because you’d totally have it now.”

And then he bravely passed out.

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Don was sick of the article he was writing about a police detective in SoHo who shot a kid in the chest for stealing a woman’s handbag. It was a sob piece about the plight of the young people forced to rob from old ladies and get shot in the chest. He ripped the page out of the typewriter and slid it under Carrie. He got a beer from the cooler by Huxley’s desk.

“Hey Donny,” Huxley said.

“Hey, Hux.”

“What do you think of this?” Huxley was the regional editor. He handed Don a short, 150 word article.

GOT TEN BUCKS? WANNA BUY AN ISLAND?
City sells island to private firm for $10

How much does an island go for these days? The City Commission of Parks and Public Lands announced yesterday the sale of South Brother Island to Regolith Sand & Gravel of Long Island for the hefty fee of ten dollars. The seven acre plot of land has been vacant for seventy years. There are no buildings, no dock and no way of getting to the island. Councilman James Burke (D-Bronx) sponsored the sale. “We need to clear out unnecessary expenses, considering the current fiscal crisis,” Burke said in defense of the sale. “This was the best offer.” The sale was not without its controversy. The bill to approve the sale passed the Council by one vote. Councilman Alvin Parks (D-Staten Island) called the sale “fishy.” Mayor Beame approved the deal, though his office declined comment. Burke said there were no other islands for sale in that price range. “It’s a unique situation. The Indians sold Manhattan for $24 but that was a long time ago.”

“I know,” Huxley said, “it’s a little wonky.”

“Is this true?” Don asked.

“What? That Manhattan was sold for $24? Did you go to grade school?”

“They sold an island for $10?”

“Don, this is C8 we’re talking about. You’re not aloud to sound so interested.”

“That doesn’t seem like a big deal?”

“Sure. So what? A dog also saved a kitten from a fire. It’s strange and yet it’s also true.”

“Who wrote this?”

“Brian Callahan.”

“Who did he talk to?”

“God, Don, he just made some phone calls. What’s your problem?”

“This is a story!” Don said. “Ten dollars for an island? In New York City!? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Well, I only have 150 words for it. As it is it’s 15 over. If you want it, talk to Morris.”

“Ten dollars for an island!? Holy crap!” Morris said. “If my hat wasn’t bolted to my head it would be flying off. Leave my office now.”

“Doesn’t sound like graft to you?”

“Graft isn’t news. News should be new.”

“How much do you think that island’s really worth?”

“I have no idea. It doesn’t matter. It could be worth a million dollars, I wouldn’t care.”

“Let’s say it’s worth $2 million –”

“I just said I wouldn’t care.”

“You said $1 million.”

“Same difference.”

“It’s twice as much.”

“It’s still in the ‘million’ family.”

“What does ‘same difference’ mean?”

“Don, I want to read about kids being beaten by cops and serial killers raping homeless women. This is financial government mis-dealings. My wiener just collapsed.”

“This could be our Watergate.”

“You’re not Bob Woodward. This isn’t The Washington Post. And I sure as fuck ain’t Ben Bradlee. Do you understand? Even if Mayor Beame breaks into the Republican Party offices and tape records himself telling people to do it, I STILL wouldn’t care. If Mayor Beame fucks and kills a homeless vagrant, that’ll be our Watergate.”

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 5

The Sept. In French, Le Sept. Known throughout the world as the most feared group of French assassins. Period. Virgule.

My first encounter with the troupe du mains non lavées, as they are also known, was on a warm night in Algiers. It was April, the rainy season, and I was hold up in a motel off Pastèque Boulevard. I had become entangled in a game of international intrigue that had escalated to the point where one false move by a Monsieur Dévastent could mean chemical warfare between Myanmar and Laos. I had run out of options and run out of friends. I took a room at the Motel Feuilles d’Résidus under an assumed name and waited. And waited. It was just after 2:00 am when I decided to go out and get something to eat.

People say very rude things about the cuisine in Algiers. Zagat called the entire city, “A cesspool whirling in the middle of a hollowed-out dog carcass being stirred by a naked homeless man’s syphilitic penis as diarrhea flows down the contours of his body.” Personally, I disagree. I thought the tapas at L’aisselle Espagnole was excellent! After dinner I walked down Boulevard du Chiot Mignon back towards the motel. The palatial estates of the drug and animal barons were like silent museums dedicated to historical figures in high school textbooks since lost to the ether of adolescent sexual obsession. White marble and stone, gleaming with the constant up-keep that wealth affords. Hey, that one’s exploding!

Out of the house of a very wealthy German industrialist named William Wohlhabendes, through a gigantic smoldering hole, came seven rogue men dressed all in black except for white scarves draped across their throats. Alarms began to ring, sirens began to blare and the men rushed directly towards me. Unaware that Wohlhabendes was gathering together the resources to end orphanism throughout Northern Africa, I let the seven pass. Later it was revealed to me that the largest investor in an Algerian orphanage conglomerate had hired The Sept to kill Monsieur Wohlhabendes. The Sept work quickly and without conscience. They attack with equal viciousity the serial killer who cuts the eyes out of living children with sharpened q-tips and the nun who spends most of her time regurgitating food into the mouths of war orphans without their own stomachs.

The next day as I lay sweating in my thin hotel sheets I heard a knock on the door. Certain it was the sharp rap of impending death I climbed out the bathroom window and spelunked the seven stories to the dark alley between Pastèque and Miellée.

It was there, in the dark, surrounded by the smells of rotting pita and sour tahini from the dumpsters, that I saw them, The Sept. Surrounding me. They had correctly assumed that if I heard a knock on my door I’d go out the bathroom window to this very spot. Actually, I had seen them before, when they came out of that exploding building. And this second time I actually could not see them because it was pitch black in the alley. All I could see was the faintest whisper of their bright white scarves blowing in the warm desert breeze.

“You will now die,” Deux said to me in French. “You are a witness to one of our fantastique capers and so you shall now end your life just as a caper does, soaked under a briny depth for two or three weeks.” In French the pun on the word ‘caper’ does not exist and so he did not sound like a complete ass.

“Wait,” I said. “I need your help.”

“Ha!” Deux, who was serving as spokesman, as I later found out, because they have a bi-monthly rotation worked out, laughed. “You are in no position to ask for our help.”

“I will pay you €200,000.”

“We know who you are. Our research is as fast and ruthless as our various murder techniques. You do not have that kind of money. You are nobody. You have no passport, no bank account, no nationality, no birth date, no middle name, nothing. And so you will also not be missed. No one will come looking for Johnny Madeup,”

“Comrades,” I said, “My true identity is Jacob Ditkovski, world renowned adventurer. I have been forced to use an assumed name...” Well, the rest is pretty much redundant. What’s important is that I paid them to kill the head of the Laotian Secret Service in a completely unremarkable plan that went off without incident and in the process struck up a very strong friendship with Quatre who ended up the emergency ring bearer at my wedding when the original ring bearer was attacked by mechanical seals designed by Doctor Aquatic. Again, pretty boring stuff.

What’s important here is that I met The Sept and befriended them and so when Captain 'Salisbury' Pendulum’s first mate asked me to kill Cinq I did not consider it for even a gastrotrich’s age. I simply barfed on the knife he gave me, passed out, and told Un.

“Yes,” Un said under the bare bulb illuminating his second class cabin. “I shall take care of this.”

“Do not blow up the entire boat,” I said.

“I will not.”

“Seriously.”

“I will not blow up the entire boat.”

“Or any part of it.”

“Or any part of it.”

“Say the whole thing together.”

He paused. His dark, French eyes narrowed and then closed. He sighed and shook his head. “I will not blow up any part of the boat,” he said.





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“So it was Fredo?”

“God damn, Vance, he fucking says it. He fucking says it! He SAYS it! Are you that fucking stupid?”

“But who – I mean, what did Fredo DO?”

“What?”

“I know he says, he says, ‘Fredo, you did it.’ But what did he do?”

“He tried to have Michael killed. At the beginning of the movie. The gunshots and all that. It was Fredo.”

“He shot at him?”

“Yeah. Or he told them where to shoot or something. He did it. That’s the important thing. He fucking did it.”

“But what did he do?”

The conversation drifted across the room into Rof’s half-asleep brain. He opened his eyes and the room was bright. Kyle’s window treatments were shit. Rof was on the floor, on top of a Josie and the Pussycats comforter with a stained blue Fat Albert one on top of him. It was hot in the apartment and Rof was so sticky and sweaty he feared that he had pissed himself. His hand quickly patted his crotch. All clear. Thank god.

“I just told you.”

“He told them where to shoot?” Vance asked.

“Or something – will you just leave it the fuck alone? You’re an idiot. Just accept it. You don’t know and you can’t even watch a simple fucking movie without having a hundred stupid questions because you’re too dumb to fucking breathe, okay?”

Rof lifted himself up on one elbow.

“Rof!” Kyle said. “Welcome to the world of the living.”

“I didn’t die.” Rof’s voice sounded scratchy and strained. “Don’t joke about me dying.”

It was too hot to shower so Rof put his old dirty clothes on. Kyle and Vance didn’t have anything to eat so the three got breakfast at the diner on the corner.

Kyle turned his wild yellow-green eyes to Rof. “So . . .” he said, his face twisting into a mad smile, “how did you sleep?”

“I had the worst fucking dreams.”

Kyle cackled. “Oh man, right? Huh? Right? Yeah!”

“They were – they were vivid.”

“So fucking vivid.” Kyle grabbed a piece of Rof’s toast and started to gnaw on it. “Tell me about it.”

“This scorpion was stabbing me in the chest –”

“Holy shit! Yeah!”

“– and I could like feel the texture of the scorpion’s stabby thing as it went into my chest.”

“Christ!”

“I was breathing and I could feel my lungs go in and out with the stabby thing rubbing against . . . the . . . the – you know – the inside of my, of my lungs. Then other scorpions came and their tails jabbed at me and their stabby things dug deep, open holes into my face, my hands, they cut off fingers. They were crawling all over me. Stabbing and stabbing. And my body wasn’t bleeding, they were just making more and more holes, cutting me out, filling me with pain as my organs were punctured and ripped. I mean, they were raping my organs, raping my whole body to death.”

“That’s awesome,” Vance said.

“Awesome!? Are you fucking insane!?” Rof said.

“Oh, man. That’s great. I fucking love it,” Kyle said. “I jumped out of a fucking airplane, man. I jumped out, no parachute or anything, and I was soaring through the air for like a solid half an hour and when I hit the ground I could actually feel all my organs, bones and shit LIQUEFY. And, man, I could still feel them, still feel all my cells and molecules and stuff even as I was this like twitchy pool of goo. Man, it was crazy awesome.”

“You’re such an fucking prick,” Rof said. “Why did you give me that stuff?”

“What? You didn’t like it?”

“It was the worst thing of my life. A scorpion was fucking stabbing me in the fucking chest!”

“Yeah, but didn’t you feel awesome, man?”

“No! It was fucking – sucked.”

“You know, it was engineered by the Defense Department as a vitamin supplement they were going to give to every soldier to keep them from having any fear. But, you know, instead it gave them horrifying nightmares that caused like, I don’t know, 5% to commit suicide. Hey! Don’t look at me like that. I mean, that means 95% didn’t commit any suicide.”

Vance had been staring at them with his mouth agape, a small globule of saliva hanging from his bottom lip. “You guys are awesome,” he said.

“How come you never give these stupid-ass scorpion drugs to Vance?”

“I don’t know. He’s never around when I feel like doing them. What were you doing last night?”

“I don’t know,” Vance said. “I was in Astoria. I went to this club and then this other club and I saw this band . . . I forget the name, but there was this chick in it and she had long-ish hair and a t-shirt on and I followed her to another club and I watched her drink for a couple hours and then I touched her shoulder and she looked at me really weird and I went outside and walked to the subway and fell asleep on the subway and I missed my stop and I had to take the train going the other way to get home and then on the way back to my apartment I saw this poster for this movie with that guy from that movie that was out a while ago and I looked at that for a while and then I went back to the apartment and I fell asleep for a while.”

“Well, look,” Kyle said, “let’s just all do the Defense Department shit tonight. I know someone who has a print of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. That’ll really fuck us up.”

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 4

Rough seas are much like a woman. Except without a viable uterus. Admittedly some women are also without a viable uterus. Rough seas are like those women.

Voyaging through the Corniphlo Pass is always challenging. Far more sinister than the Bermuda Triangle or the Klegrhoomp Straight. The Pass scrambles men's brains and irrevocably interrupts brunch service. The Wayward Trope is a plucky vessel well equipped to command the waves, stormy winds and precipitation. Salisbury is a well-regarded captain who once won the Arthur Stinbritches Award for most accomplished man of the sea whose body is 83% or more covered in scar tissue. We have nothing to worry about. But still, I can't help but feel there is a bad omen somewhere in the voluminous bucket of upchuck next to me.

The last time I traveled through the pass was Easter 2005. We had just returned from a very successful expedition to the forbidden caves of Horatio Benevietrez in the Xajihu province of Uruguay. We had feasted for days on the enormous chocolate Easter Christs that are part of the Fiesta del Cristo Muerto in that area and my stomach felt as though a tube had been inserted directly into my intestines and molten brownie had been poured in until it was overflowing simultaneously from my nose and anus. And yet I did not vomit that time as we traveled through the Corniphlo Pass and we arrived safely back to the States. This time I had eaten only oatmeal, dry toast and 7-Up and yet my room stank of bile-marinated steak-umms wrapped in moldy bacon and left behind a radiator for several hundred thousands years.

As I finished the hour's vomiting Salisbury's first mate knocked on my door. I was alarmed to see him as his appearance is extremely alarming. “Ditkovski,” he said, his voice even more dirty, dark and gravely than I had imagined. “I to talk to you.”

I slowly opened my door. His face was streaming with tears.

It was clearly a trap and so I steeled my loins and girded my abdomen and the action made me so nauseous that I had to sit down on the floor.

“Ditkovski,” he said again. “I love. I love and I no see. I love and I no see.”

“Yes,” I said, grabbing my cramping stomach. “I understand completely with just the amount of words you've used so far. It will all work out. Let's talk about it more tomorrow.”

“No,” he said. “No. I must to talk more. I must to hear you. Tell.”

I patiently explained that I was currently barfing. He waited until I had finished.

“Love,” he said. “Hurt,” he said. “Love hurt.”

“Yes,” I said, the taste of pork taquitos swimming in pools in my jowls, “I see. Love hurts. You should write a song about it. You've sparked on a universal truth.”

“Cinq,” he said. “Cinq,” and his tears turned to sobs.

Cinq. French for 'five.' Also, a bearded, long-nosed French mercenary and part of The Sept, the world-class troupe of assassins we hired to protect us in the treacherous reaches of the deepest Amazon. Which did he mean? Which one 'love hurt?' It had to be the number. This was the fifth time his heart had been broken. Or he had been playing dice and five was his point and he missed it.

“Love,” the man sobbed. “Love Cinq. Loved Cinq. Romantic loved Cinq. Many, many orgasms. So much love! Now --” He couldn't even continue.

“Oh, very sad person,” I said, realizing I did not know his name, “Cinq is not good enough for you. He's really mean. He specializes in killing invalids. You can do better.”

“I kill invalids!”

“Yes. That's alarming. You're meant to be. Tell him your true feelings.”

“Years past, many years,” he said, “I meet Cinq. Algiers and many murders and we meet. Dark, he is, stormy, a loner. Protecting, he, a German baron hiding. I, me, to kill baron. Baron in wheelchair and tube to breathe. We fight. Blood drawn. Hearts beating. Breath. Blood. Love. Morning he leave. Now, to I this ship -- Wayward Trope -- and he, to this day, to here. Why? Why!? I say to him, I say to him, 'hello.' He turn his head and now I no see. Love, Ditkovski, love. True love. Never before and now --” he shuddered, “never again.”

“That is just tragic,” I said, tears streaming down my face.

“Yes,” he said, snot pooling in the ledge above his upper lip.

“But why do you come to me?”

He reached into the back of his shirt and produced a nine inch knife I recognized as a panther blade. He handed it to me. “Back,” he said, “below shoulder.”

I looked down at the blade solemnly and nodded. I hugged the man, our bodies locked in a deep and meaningful covenant of murder and vengeance. When he had left I locked the door, pushed every piece of furniture against it and called Benvolio's room.

“What is it?”

But I couldn't speak. I looked down at the blade in my hand. Covered now in what was once toast.





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P.A.

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 3

We assembled in New York City and then took a tramp steamer from Pier 82 to Calston, Flordia where we boarded The Wayward Trope, our home for the seven-day voyage to Sao Paulo. Our captain is a weathered old sea dog named Farnsworth L. Pendulum but everyone calls him Salisbury. The first night he invited me to dine at the captain’s table along with Mya Danner Dungle and her fiancé Efron Cax. Salisbury’s first mate is a ridiculously tall man, skinny as a 17-year-old Hot Topic sales associate. He sat next to the Salisbury and used his steak knife to shave his 7:30 p.m. shadow. It was not appetizing.

“How smooth is our voyage expected to be?” I asked Salisbury.

“Smooth? Smooth!? SMOOTH!? SSMMOOTTHH!?!? This is the Ad-tlantic! A salty brine brimming with sea anemones! You’ve never seen Her horrifying whore-face! You’ve never gazed deep into Her bosom, been squirted in the eye with the foul milk of Her teet! You’ve never had your hand plunged deep between Her butt cheeks and come out tattered and torn like it had spent six weeks in a blender on the pulse setting! There is nothing smooth about Her except for the way She turns glass into very smooth shiny pebbles that sparkle when you’re walking on the beach! Let me tell you a story, Mr. Ditkovski. Let me relate to you a tale. Let me chronicle for you an apologue.

“When I was but a lad of six, my father sent me off as an intern on a sturdy ship called the Giardiasis. It was a rough-hewn hell-pit stuffed full of the worst type of murderous sociopathic villains. The nicest person on that ship was a guy named Cal. The first time I met him he stabbed me in the face with trench knife. Within four days of our 428 day tour the ship’s engine exploded. There were no life vests or rafts. Of the 4,120 crew members all of them died except for me. I was lucky enough to have been so badly burned by the explosion that my flesh tasted of gristle. The bottle-nosed dolphins that came to feed on the survivors simply took a few licks and several hundred nibbles of my charred flesh and left me alone to drown. But, as you well know, I did not drown. My flesh was so puffed with horrifying boils from the deep fry I suffered in the explosion that I was rendered super-buoyant. Not even a hundred perched seagulls could have sunk me. And lord knows they tried. The poop was... the poop was deafening.

“I ran ashore on a small island with no name on the King’s map but in America it is known as ‘Juji Bo Weefle.’ It’s a small speck of garbage off the coast of St. Christ. The locals are a tribe whose ancient sun-worshipping religion took them to mistake me for someone who had personally met their god. They cleaned my wounds, mostly with frequent forced baths in a citrus fruit most closely resembling a lemon mixed with a plum oozing pure gasoline. I became the most revered person on the island and was married to at least seven of their most buxom women. My seared and blistered member was forced repeatedly to satisfy their wanton sexual desires. I fathered a son. He was named Boo-ti-koo after his maternal grandfather who was a very successful real estate agent in South Boca Raton.

“Once I had regained my strength I built a raft out of the row boat I had been given as a wedding present from my third wife’s brother. I pushed off into the unknown, placing my foolish, misguided, severely retarded faith in the sea. The Great Sea. The Ad-tlantic.

“On the 17th day, the 16th without fresh water, my near-corpse was picked up by a fishing vessel from Vietnam. The men cut each of my fingers off and re-attached them for sport. When they were boarded by a coast guard vessel they locked me in the engine room. I would not be sitting here today had I not remembered exactly how I had made the previous engine explode.

“The currents of the Ad-tlantic, Mr. Ditkovski, as every one knows, have a keen and very well developed sense of irony. They deposited my body back onto the shores of Juji Bo Weefle. My wives had been married off to various friends of ours after I had been certified dead by the chief constable of Juji Bo Weefle. My home had been converted into a fast food spiced chicken franchise called Spookies. Destitute, I moved in with Boo-ti-koo. It was horrifying. He was, after all, an infant. I became addicted to spiced rum. It was the only way I could tune out his nightmarish screams for attention and food. Finally I was able to sell the child to a couple from San Diego in exchange for a flight to Newark International where I became a toll booth operator.

“Do you understand, Mr. Ditkovski? There is no such thing as a smooth voyage on this ocean. This ocean will destroy you on a whim! She sucks! She really, really sucks! I fucking hate boats!”

I was deft enough to steer the conversation towards more congenial topics of conversation and we all had quite a pleasant meal after that. It turns out we had both recently purchased cold mist humidifiers and compared notes. The whole while Salisbury's number two gave me a chilling stare, his stone-dead eyes burning the fires of hell into my immortal soul.

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CARLOUGH WAS SERIOUS

I can't even believe he was serious.

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One has to wonder if that's truly Togo's midriff.

TRUE PERSON OF DARING: WILL CARLOUGH

The first time I met Will Carlough was in a fox-hole in an unauthorized war you will not find in any text book. Since then he has become an award-winning filmmaker, talented comedian and world-famous gangsta hip-hop artist. His Paraphrase Theater, a series of recreations of famous movie scenes, can be seen on Comedy Central’s late night show Atom TV. His paraphrasial of a Star Wars scene has had over 500,000 views on YouTube, more people than voted for the President of Bolivia.

His genius has attracted actors of acclaimed dramatic skill such as Sam Rockwell and CSI: Miami’s Jonathan Togo as well as comedic thespians of the likes of Justin Long, SNL’s Will Forte and Will Carlough.

A person of daring? He proved as much with a machete and 30 yards of cellophane under the skies of Kyrgyzstan. But that was a lifetime ago. Had he lost his daring and become some kind of fuck-hole? I intended to find out.

You are a filmmaker, rapper, actor and now a True Person of Daring. So congratulations on that.
Wow, thank you.

Do you consider yourself daring or are you just incredibly humble?
I would not consider myself daring. But I’m also mind-bogglingly humble. I’m probably the most humble person you’ll ever meet.

I assume that you’re doing all sorts of illegal things when you’re making your movies.
I try to. The first movie that I made out of college, The Great A.T.M. Heist, we shot in an A.T.M. The cops eventually came and they said, do you have permission to shoot at this A.T.M? And we were like, no, we absolutely, really, do not have permission at all.



Robin’s Big Date would be perhaps your biggest short or at least your flashiest one.
When I first posted it on my website, RedheadedLeague.com, it cost me five times the cost of the movie in bandwidth in about two days. My server just crashed. Then six months later it got into Sundance.

How did you get that cast together? Sam Rockwell, Justin Long.
The director and I went to Vassar with Justin and he knew Sam, I believe, from Galaxy Quest. So Sam basically said I will be in a movie that you make as long as it takes three hours to shoot on this particular Wednesday. James was like, oh, okay. Then I wrote it. It is not an exciting story. I’m going to come up with a more exciting story.



You have a web series called Casted staring Justin Long and Jonathan Togo. The one you’re in, you take your clothes off. And you are pasty and white. How dare you.
It was originally going to be Sam [Rockwell] that takes his clothes off but we just were, like, too chicken to ask him to do it.

You’re an underground filmmaker, subverting the mainstream media. You point out the absurdity of American mythos.
Sure.

Are you trying to sell out and failing or do you have a kind of integrity?
Oh man. That’s, uh . . . I have . . . um . . . I’m trying sell out and failing. But I ain’t licked yet. I’m actually working on a new short series for Comedy Central/Atom.com with Togo, but I don’t . . . actually maybe I can’t tell you.

Are you afraid of screwing it up or getting sued or something?
Yeah. I guess.

What if you only told me things that weren’t true about it?
I play a talking penis. I play Jon Togo’s talking penis in it.



What’s the diciest situation you’ve ever found yourself in?
The G train wasn’t running so I’m like, well, I’ll walk. Part of my walk took me through Bed-Stuy and this guy grabbed me from behind, got me on the ground and was pointing a gun at my head. He was like empty your pockets and I had recently bought an iPhone and I did not want to give him my iPhone. I had like 20 bucks on me and I took that out right away and then he said, “No, but, keep on, you know, emptying your pockets.” And I was like that is all I got. I really stuck to my guns, risking my life to save my iPhone. And it worked. He eventually gave up. And I then lost my iPhone a month later.



Daring Tales of Daring! Tales of Brother Island

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 2

Before setting off on my latest adventure I stopped by the University to consult with Professor Ashua Kellinsworth. The principle goal of the expedition being to find Captain Quinn Danner's crash site somewhere in the Upper Amazon, Prof. Kellinsworth is the world's premier authority on all things Danner. Captain Danner was attempting to find the mythical Original Spring, the place where the Amazon supposedly originates and, as local legend has it, from whence all water on earth first sprang forth. His plane is known to have crashed but the site is unknown. Danner's aeroplane, The Indefatigable Hummingbird, was never found. Or, to be more precise, the innumerable flaming pieces of The Indefatigable Hummingbird were never found. Danner built the I.H. himself and left no plans or specifications. He claimed it was indestructible and could even survive a direct collision with the side of a solid steel mountain. If we find the crash site the exercise will be a success but if we find even one small piece of the I.H. it will go down as the single greatest endeavour in the history of all mankind.

I arrived at Prof. Kellinsworth's office with a fifth of scotch under my arm. Ashua is a connoisseur of being intoxicated. It was office hours and a young, skinny nerd was sitting before the good professor with a bright red back-pack on. Prof. Kellinsworth's brow was wrinkled more than usual, his stringy white hair spread out in all directions perhaps in exasperation.

“No no no no no,” he was saying. “Wrong. Wrong again. You are wrong.”

The nerd's eyes were wide. His lip trembled. “But –” he began.

“No. Wrong. Wrong.”

“How –”

“Wrong.”

“If I –”

“No.”

“Can I –”

“Stop it. Just stop it. You're wasting my time. You're wasting MY time. Here's my advice, listen carefully because I will not repeat it, go home. Not to your dorm room, to your parents' home. Look around yourself. Soak it in. Because that is where you are going to live your entire life because you are a moron and will never amount to anything.”

The young man shifted his eyes as he passed me. Prof. Kellinsworth does not believe in the Socratic method. Socrates, he often points out, was killed. Obviously he made some mistakes.

“Ditkovski,” Kellinsworth mumbled. Then he saw the liquor. “Have a seat!” He smiled brightly, all his teeth showing. I pushed the bottle onto what little spare space there was on the cluttered desk. The Professor flipped the top off with one thumb and poured a health dose into his mouth.

“I'm going,” I told him. “The Amazon.”

“You're a damn fool,” he said. “You'll never find it and if you do you'll never survive.”

“Survive what?” I asked.

“I can’t say.”

“Why not?”

“I don't want to.”

“Why?”

“Because I don't. What? I don't feel like it. Go away.”

It was an ominous beginning to a trek that was already certain to feature danger as its main entree. I pressed Kellinsworth for more information but he said he was sleepy.

For this trip it is important to keep the size of the expedition party small. We will be traveling in very sensitive areas amongst some peoples that have never seen a civilised man before. My assistant, Penelope Atwood, can not make the expedition as her fiancée, a rugged man's man named Gregory Pince, is insisting that she attend their wedding. I am therefore trusting my very life as well as copious note-taking to my second string assistant, Benvolio Sinclair. Joining us on the expedition are a who’s who of the most rugged, intellectually hungry scientists, adventurers and servants in the world. Our Amazon expert is Paulo Kwampis, a half-Brasilian/half-Australian professor from the University of Bali. His assistant is Maxwell Penchant from College du Quebec. Our Brasilian emissary is Chicago Dan, an Ohio State quarterback from Chicago who was kidnapped on a college summer abroad to Brasil. He killed his captors and set himself free but loved the country so much he never left. Our resident Captain Danner expert is his great grand-niece Mya Danner Dungle. She's brought along her fiancée, Efron Cax, heir to the Cax Uranium fortune. To analyze the remains of the Indefatigable Hummingbird, if we're so lucky, is experimental aviation engineers Joel and Bill Hollister formerly of Lockheed-Martin. Joel designed the first successful stealth aircraft and Bill flew its first test flight. It crashed. And it took four months to find the crash site as there was no way of tracking its flight path. Bill survived by very slowly ingesting the only food source – the poisonous Cackle Berry. Eventually he was able to build up an immunity. For protection we've hired a tight-knit crew of seven mercenaries known only as Les Sept. They are French. We also have a mechanic for our armored caravan known only as Carl. Our meals will be cooked by Rufus Antonio, the man who chef'd my very first expedition. They will be served by Amy, Alexa and Sara, three interns from The Culinary Institute of America. Essential to such a cloistered group as ours is always a troupe of entertainers to stave off cabin fever. We were lucky enough to land zydeco band Brother Buford from the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. This is our intrepid group. Just 26 plus our seven various toadies to do any manual labor and heavy lifting. The perfect group to assault the Amazon!

THE FATE OF MARY MALLON

Chandler checked his watch. It was 6:23 A.M. Walt would be one of the first people aware of the bounty. Word spread fast, by afternoon every two bit scumbag and professional assassin in New York City would probably be on him if the bounty was north of $2,000.

Chandler hailed a taxi and took it to Penn. Station. He stood on line at the ticket counter. He would buy the first ticket to Philadelphia and wait there until he could plan his next move. He would call his mother from Philly so she wouldn’t worry.

“Chandler!” The voice was cheerful and friendly. And that should have been the tip-off.

Chandler turned and the line evaporated as Roofus Platts, a thick-nosed, wrinkled hitman Chandler knew well, took a large revolver out and pointed it at Chandler. In the middle of Penn. Station. In the middle of the morning. As broad daylight streamed in through the cathedral windows.

Somehow Chandler was able to keep his sphincter closed and simultaneous dive behind the thick, five foot marble base of a lamppost. He scrambled to his feet and ran as fast as he possibly could up the marble stairs and through the doors.

Outside now, Chandler turned the corner and ran full out down the block, across the street and down into the crowded rush hour subway station. Pressed into the car like a sardine being made into a waffle, Chandler was finally able to breathe. The smell was thick with body odor and the heavy, fragrant spices immigrants cooked with and, apparently, substituted for soap and water. Chandler tried to think. Grand Central would likely also be staked out. This was getting serious. He decided to go see his mommy.

-

Mother didn’t answer the bell at his childhood home in the Doily Gardens section of Brooklyn. Chandler took the key from under the matt and let himself in.

The house had a very distinctive smell of bleach and cookies that was both sentimental and suffocating. He walked down the hall to his old bedroom. The ceiling of the closet had a panel that led into a small attic. Chandler removed the board and felt up there with his hand, afraid any second he’d touch something hairy with long sharp front teeth. He felt the oily rag and pulled it down. He peeled back the red, soiled fabric. It was his father’s cavalry pistol from the Spanish War. The one that the old man had chosen to spend his last moments on earth with instead of his only son. Chandler hadn’t seen it since he was 13, when Father Simon gave it to him after the reception. Chandler had taken it home, cleaned it and hid it in the closet. He told his mother he threw it away.

Ben Chandler never spoke of his time as one of the famous Rough Riders, marauding through Cuba under the command of Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt. Chandler knew from his mother some of the less glamorous aspects of the story. After the Battle of San Juan Hill, the Rough Riders were bogged down in Cuba, being gunned down more efficiently by malaria and various tropical fevers than they had by the Spanish garrison. It was over a month before the U.S. War Department approved the evacuation of the regiment to Long Island where they were held in quarantine for another month. The men, starved and mad from months of disease and death in isolation, staged theatrical productions of Shakespeare plays. But the language and general sweep of the stories suffered from their state. Hamlet survived their version, furiously masturbating until Fortinbras entered and promptly shot himself in the thigh. Which was apparently an ad-lib.

Chandler’s father was a hard, quiet, stone-faced man. When he came home from work at a plant on the East River he would usually go to a bar and come home late, stumbling into the kitchen chairs. Still, the man was a solid consistent rock of withheld affection and it was a mortal shock to Chandler when he was suddenly gone. He hadn’t even seemed sad.

AMAZON

The book is now available on Amazon. This is a very good thing. You can get free Super Saver Shipping and if you have Amazon Prime you also get free shipping. If you have an Amazon credit card I believe you get double points. It's a wonderful event. If you're near a mountain top, rejoice from it.

P.A.

CRASH SITE AMAZON P. 1

In my first memoir: Deepest Depth of a Dark Dragon Called Adventure I described adventuring thusly:

The true adventurer is the man who eschews all respect for man and beast, for decency and morality, for intellect and truth. The true adventurer travels and subdues for one reason and only one reason – the adventure itself.

I stole this quote from a man I knew and had the pleasure of traveling with – Horace P. Trumbull. A true intrepid spirit, he inspired me up to the moment his corpse was ript apart by a pack of uncouth Omilia Panthers in the darkest region of Bolivia. Almost every word of the memoir is in one way or another directly plagiarized from things Trumbull said, thought or published in the years I knew him. The book is currently out of print because of an unrelated legal dispute with the royal family of Uruguay.

My plane had just touched down at Heathrow when I received word from the home office that the expedition to the Amazon had been cleared by the relevant governmental agencies. All that was left was my insurance physical. On my last voyage I was stabbed through the chest by the snout of a swordshark in the Crystal Waters off the coast of Madagascar. The scaly sword passed through my body just south of my heart, collapsed a lung but missed my major organs. (Unless the lung can be considered a major organ and I hope, based on my years of Peyote endulgance that isn't the case.) The worst part was the thrashing, my body like an olive at the end of a toothpick being carelessly flailed by an older drunk woman wearing too much lipstick. Luckily I was able to strangle the shark into submission with my vice-like grip. But it definitely called into question the cost of insurance for my next trip. I needed a solid gold bill of health or Bernstein, Goldman & Juex would not allow me to venture deep into the moistest jungles of the Amazon.

Dr. Klem Von Rogula is my favorite doctor in the Kingdom. His offices are in an 400-year-old castle south of Holtonshire on the top of rolling green hills fully roamed with livestock. His man-servant, Whol, welcomed me and my assistant, Penelope Atwood, at the draw-bridge. Whol is a 24 year old Dr. Rogula rescued from an orphanage in southern Prussia that was set aflame by an angry mob of anti-orphan protesters. Whol was badly burnt and crushed in the collapse of the building. Dr. Rogula has been slowly and carefully replacing the boy's charred and gristled flesh with soft, vibrant skin. He had already finished half the face, most of the left arm and the right foot. His beautifully pedicured toes poked out from his designer sandal. His other foot was in a heavy black boot.

Whol showed us into the stone great hall. It was a long drive from London and we were very hungry so before my physical we had a succulent feast prepared by Chuczink, Dr. Rogula's personal chef and a former Serbian body-builder. As we ate Chuczink and Whol crouched at Dr. Rogula's feet. He fed them from hand like masculine, obedient birds.

After dinner Dr. Rogula examined me extremely thoroughly. He films every examination for his archives. I have to admit there were moments of pain and discomfort but it's always worth a sacrifice to maintain a high standard of physical well-being. With my clean bill of health in Ms. Atwood's brief-case we declined Dr. Rogula's generous offer of staying the night at the castle and started down the twisting road back to civilisation. In the night the haunting cries of the nocturnal cows almost sounded like human moans of pain.

BOOK SALES

The book is currently on sale here. It will be on Amazon by the end of the month. Frankly, though, we have a much better deal with CreateSpace. Don't tell Jacob I said that. He maintains Amazon has panache.

P.A.

COMING DISPATCHES

All,

I'm very excited about the coming launch of this website as well as the entire Daring Tales of Daring! series. Mr. Ditkovski is currently in Brasil on expedition and I have just begun going through the early dispatches, preparing them for publication. I would like to note to all of Mr. Ditkovski's fawning well-wishers that the dispatches are rife with spelling, grammatical and intellectual errors. I am doing my best to 'clean up' Mr. Ditkovski's words but I am also planning a wedding and am not a miracle worker. Please excuse in advance any such errors in the coming weekly dispatches.

Cheers,
P.A.

LAUNCH DATE

Daring Tales of Daring!

Coming Monday, 10 November 2008.


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