Posted by Chris H.
It's been a while, and this is no accident. Things have been busy. The story of "Hey Dave!" however, will be coming to this space soon, and it will be awesome.
In the mean time, here's a message Laura sent me a few weeks ago that I forgot about. Let's hope it isn't important.
Chris, listen to me. Listen this is very important. The exorcism did not work. I don't know where I am right now, I think physically I'm in the space between the floorboards of our office and the downstairs Russian's ceiling? Physically oh God oh God. Physically Phthirus has been steadily eating his way through the rubber of my boots. He may have reached my toes, I don't know. Physically it feels like somewhere not so much as where what exists is important and sensible, as what does not exist is no concern and cannot be felt. I can't feel my toes. I can feel I'm writing, I can feel something in my hand making marks on a page. I can feel an eight-year-old ghost child's eyes watching me write this. This is where he draws his pictures when his mommy isn't home. This is the bad place he goes. He pets Phthirus and Phthirus's teeth go right through him; Phthirus's teeth go through everything, eventually. I don't know how he ended up here with me. I don't know how I ended up here with the ghost child. I only know the ghost child's able to bring his Crayola drawings to the real world and he might be able to bring this message as well. Chris I want you to know one thing. Listen to me, it's important. I want you to know that after all of this, all we've been through together, the laughs and sorrows we've shared, after all these moments I want you to know that I blame you for all this. And you can put that on my epitaph. Phthirus is shaking. I think Mommy is coming.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
They're cutting the power soon
Posted by Chris H.
We're approaching rock bottom in the office, and by "we" I of course mean "I." Laura and the rat haven't been seen in days. Dave doesn't return my calls. The others never really moved in to begin with so it's hard to say that they've been lost so much as they made a calculated desertion during the turmoil. It's not a surprising result, but there's that bitter tang of disappointment that fills my mouth with a dusty dryness. More likely that's the asbestos in the building, but so it goes.
Trappings are, of course, at times just that. But at other times one must look serious to be serious. While one could easily interpret the coming spell of emptiness in this space as a sign of death, one should not do this! At the very least your trusty narrator (me) will continue with idle chatter until such time that a more substantial product may be put before your eyes.
We're approaching rock bottom in the office, and by "we" I of course mean "I." Laura and the rat haven't been seen in days. Dave doesn't return my calls. The others never really moved in to begin with so it's hard to say that they've been lost so much as they made a calculated desertion during the turmoil. It's not a surprising result, but there's that bitter tang of disappointment that fills my mouth with a dusty dryness. More likely that's the asbestos in the building, but so it goes.
Trappings are, of course, at times just that. But at other times one must look serious to be serious. While one could easily interpret the coming spell of emptiness in this space as a sign of death, one should not do this! At the very least your trusty narrator (me) will continue with idle chatter until such time that a more substantial product may be put before your eyes.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
I Hate the Acronym "TIFF"
Posted by Chris H.
The Toronto International Film Fest has been going on for several days now, and, depending who you ask, you may be entirely aware of this fact or completely oblivious. This is the weirdness of living in a city that occasionally has Big Events in the cultural sphere, but isn't really a Big Cultural City (although, as we are reminded ad nauseum, it is a diverse one.) Things happen here that at times warrant international coverage, but most of the resident’s, upon careful inquiry, will respond to questions about it in the vein of “Oh, yeah well, I sort of forgot and it was a busy week at work and my daughter kept me up until 3 in the morning on Wednesday so I had to miss basketball practice Thursday and make it up Saturday and I was really tired and maybe I’ll go next year.” It’s an interesting phenomenon because really, depending where you are situated, it can massively influence your day-to-day living or have absolutely no effect whatsoever.
For anyone who writes about this business, it is, of course, a Very Big Deal. Here at the offices of Formerly-Never-Later, we don’t really write about anything, which is, I guess, a counterintuitive approach to an organization that is purportedly a patron of writing. However, one might think that in the case of a local event of such magnitude some driblet of content might eke out on this site. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong thinking this, but to talk about the Film Fest itself would not really be in keeping with the office’s areas of interest, which are more inclined towards books and rats and poking each other in the ribs when the other person isn’t looking so as to provoke a reaction of surprise, alarm, and impotent rage.
But of course, there are lots of people interested in the Film Fest, and everyone seems to have their own agenda, which is really all the same agenda – how can I be more famous? The crazy people pressing up against restaurant glass to be closer to George Clooney want it, the filmmakers obviously want it - the smaller and more disaffected the better, and the people who write about the Film Fest want it. These are my favorite people, because they try really hard to perform the same function differently. You can probably divide them into two types, the ones who are aware of this and do it anyway, and the ones that are oblivious because they are so caught up in the details of differentiating themselves that they fail to recognize the overwhelming sameness they are caught in.
For some, there’s the films themselves, and you might be lead to believe this is the point, but that seems unlikely. Reviewing a film to me seems a lot like casting a vote. It’s deeply personal and you want to do your best and at the same time almost everyone else doesn’t give a shit and just wants a little consensus. When the Festival is all said and done, most people won’t know anything more about the movies than before it, except that really good and really bad movies draw enough common opinions that you can’t help but hear something. Lost amidst this vague impression of whether the Festival decided a film was “good,” “bad,” or “okay,” are the reams and reams of words in articles, blogs, essays, and what have you. Critics have their “picks” going into the festival, things they really want to see, don’t want to see. Entire books are essentially written about the Festival before there is a Festival, and for a very small crowd this is Useful Information. For everyone else, it’s so much lost noise. It’s unclear what recognition there is for any of the writers engaged in this somewhat crazy and arguably arcane pursuit, except for the likelihood of recognition amongst ones peers, or the even more unlikely prospect of making a “discovery” that no one has made yet. I can only imagine there is some Freemason-like hierarchy that one can rise through by successfully playing this system, but what the rewards are as yet remains unknown. As it is, of course, for someone like myself who remains minimally in tune with the bombardment of information, it’s just an avalanche of do’s and don’t’s and top ten lists and arbitrary critics awards that the critic will likely give some clever allusory name that isn’t so clever. I can’t help but suspect one can get more mileage writing about the people who write about the Toronto International Film Fest rather than the Film Fest itself.
There is a far simpler explanation for why writers bother – and really upon examination I could have written this post in under a hundred words. The possibility of going to parties and hanging around famous people seems awesome, and worth all the associated bullshit required to make it happen. How true that is probably depends largely on whether you spend four hours at the fringe of a conversation with Michael Cera’s brother’s agent, or find yourself alone with Kate Hudson half in the bag. Don’t give up the dream guys, don’t give it up.
The Toronto International Film Fest has been going on for several days now, and, depending who you ask, you may be entirely aware of this fact or completely oblivious. This is the weirdness of living in a city that occasionally has Big Events in the cultural sphere, but isn't really a Big Cultural City (although, as we are reminded ad nauseum, it is a diverse one.) Things happen here that at times warrant international coverage, but most of the resident’s, upon careful inquiry, will respond to questions about it in the vein of “Oh, yeah well, I sort of forgot and it was a busy week at work and my daughter kept me up until 3 in the morning on Wednesday so I had to miss basketball practice Thursday and make it up Saturday and I was really tired and maybe I’ll go next year.” It’s an interesting phenomenon because really, depending where you are situated, it can massively influence your day-to-day living or have absolutely no effect whatsoever.
For anyone who writes about this business, it is, of course, a Very Big Deal. Here at the offices of Formerly-Never-Later, we don’t really write about anything, which is, I guess, a counterintuitive approach to an organization that is purportedly a patron of writing. However, one might think that in the case of a local event of such magnitude some driblet of content might eke out on this site. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong thinking this, but to talk about the Film Fest itself would not really be in keeping with the office’s areas of interest, which are more inclined towards books and rats and poking each other in the ribs when the other person isn’t looking so as to provoke a reaction of surprise, alarm, and impotent rage.
But of course, there are lots of people interested in the Film Fest, and everyone seems to have their own agenda, which is really all the same agenda – how can I be more famous? The crazy people pressing up against restaurant glass to be closer to George Clooney want it, the filmmakers obviously want it - the smaller and more disaffected the better, and the people who write about the Film Fest want it. These are my favorite people, because they try really hard to perform the same function differently. You can probably divide them into two types, the ones who are aware of this and do it anyway, and the ones that are oblivious because they are so caught up in the details of differentiating themselves that they fail to recognize the overwhelming sameness they are caught in.
For some, there’s the films themselves, and you might be lead to believe this is the point, but that seems unlikely. Reviewing a film to me seems a lot like casting a vote. It’s deeply personal and you want to do your best and at the same time almost everyone else doesn’t give a shit and just wants a little consensus. When the Festival is all said and done, most people won’t know anything more about the movies than before it, except that really good and really bad movies draw enough common opinions that you can’t help but hear something. Lost amidst this vague impression of whether the Festival decided a film was “good,” “bad,” or “okay,” are the reams and reams of words in articles, blogs, essays, and what have you. Critics have their “picks” going into the festival, things they really want to see, don’t want to see. Entire books are essentially written about the Festival before there is a Festival, and for a very small crowd this is Useful Information. For everyone else, it’s so much lost noise. It’s unclear what recognition there is for any of the writers engaged in this somewhat crazy and arguably arcane pursuit, except for the likelihood of recognition amongst ones peers, or the even more unlikely prospect of making a “discovery” that no one has made yet. I can only imagine there is some Freemason-like hierarchy that one can rise through by successfully playing this system, but what the rewards are as yet remains unknown. As it is, of course, for someone like myself who remains minimally in tune with the bombardment of information, it’s just an avalanche of do’s and don’t’s and top ten lists and arbitrary critics awards that the critic will likely give some clever allusory name that isn’t so clever. I can’t help but suspect one can get more mileage writing about the people who write about the Toronto International Film Fest rather than the Film Fest itself.
There is a far simpler explanation for why writers bother – and really upon examination I could have written this post in under a hundred words. The possibility of going to parties and hanging around famous people seems awesome, and worth all the associated bullshit required to make it happen. How true that is probably depends largely on whether you spend four hours at the fringe of a conversation with Michael Cera’s brother’s agent, or find yourself alone with Kate Hudson half in the bag. Don’t give up the dream guys, don’t give it up.
Friday, September 11, 2009
By Contractual Obligation
Our depravity continues. Care of Laura, the second chapter in Dawny Bougainvillea's doubtless Booker-winner-to-be, "His Cowboy Heart, Her Ninja Breast."
HIS COWBOY HEART, HER NINJA BREAST
Chapter Two
By Dawny Bougainvillea
That night Polly's ninja reflexes were alerted to a disturbance in the barn. Her first impulse was to wake her father, but she shook it off with a stubborn shake of her shoulders. “This is something I must do alone,” she said, “though I may die in the attempt.”
Pausing only to slip on her two-toed slippers and arrange a bandolier of secret-filled ninja eggshells around her luscious curves, Polly dropped soundlessly from the third-floor window to creep briefly along the dew-heavy grass before leaping onto the roof of the barn where the animals were kept. She peered through the skylight to behold a sight most shocking!
People were in the barn – feasting on animals!
Their garb was strange and the utterances they made just as strange as their clothes. That didn't matter. Only one thing was important: that she avenge the lives of her beloved farm animals. Shrieking a special soundless ninja cry designed to confuse and terrify enemies, Polly snatched a egg filled with noxious toad-odors from her bandolier and drew her arm back to hurl it.
Someone grabbed her hand – someone she did not suspect! She drew a breath and crushed the egg, careful not to inhale the vapors, before turning to face her assailant.
Her already-drawn breath caught in her bosom. Holding her dainty wrist was A MAN: skin red as sunset on a mesa, cheekbones so sculpted they could have fetched a good price at a museum, black hair tied with feathers and beads and small animal bones. His eyes burned black, if fire were black. He was the most attractive man she'd ever seen. He had fangs.
He said, “Please don't hurt them. I'll do it.”
Still engulfed by toad fumes, and feeling oddly subservient to this overwhelmingly attractive stranger, Polly could only watch as the man jumped lightly to the barn doors, opened them, and said something in that awkward, haunting language.
As one, the feeding frenzy stopped. The strangely-clothed people peaceably left the barn, muttering.
The man jumped back onto the roof. “They say they're sorry. They will not trouble you again. They will replace the animals that are lost with their own.”
“Who are you?” Polly said. “Who are they?”
“I am Winner Longhorn. My father was a Cowboy, my mother was an Indian. Those are my mother's people.”
“They were eating our animals alive!”
“It is their way.” He looked at her through long lashes. “Their vampire way.”
HIS COWBOY HEART, HER NINJA BREAST
Chapter Two
By Dawny Bougainvillea
That night Polly's ninja reflexes were alerted to a disturbance in the barn. Her first impulse was to wake her father, but she shook it off with a stubborn shake of her shoulders. “This is something I must do alone,” she said, “though I may die in the attempt.”
Pausing only to slip on her two-toed slippers and arrange a bandolier of secret-filled ninja eggshells around her luscious curves, Polly dropped soundlessly from the third-floor window to creep briefly along the dew-heavy grass before leaping onto the roof of the barn where the animals were kept. She peered through the skylight to behold a sight most shocking!
People were in the barn – feasting on animals!
Their garb was strange and the utterances they made just as strange as their clothes. That didn't matter. Only one thing was important: that she avenge the lives of her beloved farm animals. Shrieking a special soundless ninja cry designed to confuse and terrify enemies, Polly snatched a egg filled with noxious toad-odors from her bandolier and drew her arm back to hurl it.
Someone grabbed her hand – someone she did not suspect! She drew a breath and crushed the egg, careful not to inhale the vapors, before turning to face her assailant.
Her already-drawn breath caught in her bosom. Holding her dainty wrist was A MAN: skin red as sunset on a mesa, cheekbones so sculpted they could have fetched a good price at a museum, black hair tied with feathers and beads and small animal bones. His eyes burned black, if fire were black. He was the most attractive man she'd ever seen. He had fangs.
He said, “Please don't hurt them. I'll do it.”
Still engulfed by toad fumes, and feeling oddly subservient to this overwhelmingly attractive stranger, Polly could only watch as the man jumped lightly to the barn doors, opened them, and said something in that awkward, haunting language.
As one, the feeding frenzy stopped. The strangely-clothed people peaceably left the barn, muttering.
The man jumped back onto the roof. “They say they're sorry. They will not trouble you again. They will replace the animals that are lost with their own.”
“Who are you?” Polly said. “Who are they?”
“I am Winner Longhorn. My father was a Cowboy, my mother was an Indian. Those are my mother's people.”
“They were eating our animals alive!”
“It is their way.” He looked at her through long lashes. “Their vampire way.”
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Everything is fine
Posted by Chris H.
I've been shirking my responsibilities. Laura has made this clear in no uncertain terms by forwarding me a second chapter of that ill-bred pestilence that conspires under the misnomer "novel in progress." I am thinking at this point installments will have to undergo the fierce swipe of the editor's pen before they see the light of day. Such is my service to mankind.
There are, of course, no actual editors in our offices. There is me, and that only goes as far as the three month course on copyediting I took in which I struggled to "recall" the basic rules of grammar. This was an interesting experience, mostly in that I am fairly confident most of us in the class were "recalling" nothing, having never learned such rules. That they exist and--more importantly-- that people care about the proper places of these squiggles and lines was something I was always conscious of much in the way that I am conscious of the fact that Nicaragua is a country. The country is a place I have no plan to visit, but grammar is a thing that seems determined to visit itself upon me.
This is all well and good, and the periodic blog-like updates I have provided are, as you may have suspected, a sort of cagey manoeuvre to buy time. While I purport to have a stable of writers, the unfortunate, perhaps, yes, even unsavory truth is that I am nominally at the wheel with Laura's hands steering from the passenger's seat, and this does not a dread fleet of fearmobiles make. One might be more inclined to paint our endeavours thus far as a sad little buggy, dripping its way down a desert canvas toward a long, noiseless fall, and then nothing.
Rest assured, I am determined to see that this is not the case.
I've been shirking my responsibilities. Laura has made this clear in no uncertain terms by forwarding me a second chapter of that ill-bred pestilence that conspires under the misnomer "novel in progress." I am thinking at this point installments will have to undergo the fierce swipe of the editor's pen before they see the light of day. Such is my service to mankind.
There are, of course, no actual editors in our offices. There is me, and that only goes as far as the three month course on copyediting I took in which I struggled to "recall" the basic rules of grammar. This was an interesting experience, mostly in that I am fairly confident most of us in the class were "recalling" nothing, having never learned such rules. That they exist and--more importantly-- that people care about the proper places of these squiggles and lines was something I was always conscious of much in the way that I am conscious of the fact that Nicaragua is a country. The country is a place I have no plan to visit, but grammar is a thing that seems determined to visit itself upon me.
This is all well and good, and the periodic blog-like updates I have provided are, as you may have suspected, a sort of cagey manoeuvre to buy time. While I purport to have a stable of writers, the unfortunate, perhaps, yes, even unsavory truth is that I am nominally at the wheel with Laura's hands steering from the passenger's seat, and this does not a dread fleet of fearmobiles make. One might be more inclined to paint our endeavours thus far as a sad little buggy, dripping its way down a desert canvas toward a long, noiseless fall, and then nothing.
Rest assured, I am determined to see that this is not the case.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Management strikes again
HANNEY. HAVE READ LATEST OFFERING (“HIS COWBOY HEART, HER NINJA BREAST”). I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH YOU. HOWEVER MISS BOUGAINVILLEA SOUNDS DESPERATE AND/OR HUNGRY. VAMPIRES ARE CURRENTLY IN VOGUE. INSTRUCT MISS BOUGAINVILLEA TO INCLUDE VAMPIRES IN THE NEXT CHAPTER. MAKE IT CLEAR THIS IS NOT A POLITE SUGGESTION. HER FAILURE AND YOURS IS INADVISABLE.
- M
- M
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Plunging toward the lowest common denominator
Posted by Chris H.
I'm loathe to post this, but then I realized that we have nothing else. What follows is precisely what Laura forwarded to me, unedited, in all of its original glory. Ideally it will be the first and last partial manuscript we post here at what used to be Never Later (and may soon have a new name!), but then again, we never make promises because we are slaves to expediency.
Dear Sir,
Please find enclosed the first chapter for my novel HIS COWBOY HEART, HER NINJA BREAST. It takes place in rural American in the 1700s and follows the life of young Poliamareaux Potato, a French-Irish ninja-born farmgirl, and her struggle to choose between the sweet affections of cowboy Winner Longhorn and ninja Whiskey McBlarneystone and also avoid the eviller affections of Sheriff Dieter von Schweinfleisch. Pirates will also make an appearence.
Yours most sincerely,
Dawny Bougainvillea
Chapter One
Poliamareaux Potato - or Polly, as she was commonly called - swung her buxom frame into the farmstead with a sway of her womanly curves, the basket of freshly-gathered eggs balanced on her hip. With her cream-coloured hand she turned on the stove and placed a cast-iron frypan on the burner and threw some butter into it for melting. With her other hand she tossed an egg in the air and almost absent-mindedly gave it a karate chop that sliced the shell exactly in half and left the yolk and whites continuing their trajectory into the sizzling frypan.
Her Irish father, Fiddles Potato, watched from the barn with pride and sadness alternately tugging at his heart. "She makes eggs the same way her dear departed mother, and thus my wife, did," he whispered in the gloaming. "The ninja way."
It seemed like yesterday instead of seventeen years ago that he had forsaken his dying ninja clan, The Leprechauns, and fled Ireland to America via the ocean. It seemed even more improbable to him that he was the last surviving member of the Leprechauns, and downright impossible that he had decided to raise his precious daughter not in the ways of the vicious Irish ninja, but as a humble farmer.
Yet, as he watched her grow from delicate child to delicate almost-a-woman, it seemed even more impossibly impossible that she had nevertheless inherited his ninja abilities, along with her French mother's skill in cooking and needlework.
And that he now owned a farm in the middle of America, with fifty head and away from a life of constant inter-clan violence - impossible!
But here he was.
"Le sange, le sange est disparu, ou est mon sange, et ou est tu?" Polly sang. In her clear soprano, Fiddles knew he had made the right choice. His eyes misted over.
"La, Papa, what are you doing out in the barn?" Polly said from behind him. In the nanomicroseconds it had taken his eyes to mist over, Polly had managed to sneak up behind him with a buffet-style breakfast.
Memories of his beloved wife Monagamousse overwhelmed him and he hugged the dear girl to his chest. "That's my Polly!" he whispered.
Suddenly Polly pulled a face, pouting out her full lower lip. "Oh poot, there's that skanger Sheriff von Schweinfleisch. What's he doing here so early?"
Sheriff Dieter von Scweinfleisch sauntered up to the buffet table, a self-satisfied smirk under his large, waxed mustache. His pet marmoset Scrofula hopped off his shoulder to snatch up a pastry and hissed at her father with his venomous fangs. "Good morning, Sheriff," Fiddles said calmly. "What can we do for you?"
"You know what you can do for me," Dieter said in his thick German accent. He pointed at Polly. "Zer fair Miss Polly's hand in marriage!"
"That I cannot do," Fiddles shook his head. "She is already promised to one of her childhood playmates who is scheduled to arrive from over the ocean in a fortnight."
"Unt childhood playmate, you say?" Dieter smoothed his mustache. "We shall see whose childhood playmate will be arriving over the ocean in a fortnight!" With that cryptic statement, the sheriff snapped his fingers and strode off, Scrofula leaping to his back to cling to his shoulder.
"Papa, how could you lie like that?" Polly said when the sheriff and his monkey were out of earshot. "What shall we do when no childhood playmate arrives?"
Fiddles sighed heavily. "We think of another lie," he said.
She looked at him sadly. "That was never the ninja way!"
"You are too right, my girl. Back on the Emerald Isle we could have simply removed his vital organs without disturbing the lay of his skin, kept him propped up in a rocking chair, and had done with it. But we are among Indians and Cowboys now, and we must abide by the rules in this strange, foreign land."
Also out of earshot, Dieter tickled Scrofula under his chin. "Send word to the other sheriffs," he said. "I want all incoming ships' passengers arriving within the fortnight killed without mercy!"
"CAW CAW CAW!" howled the marmoset, who leapt off to do his master's bidding.
Dieter laughed. "Ach, mein proud beauty!" he said to himself. "We shall see how you marry a childhood playmate - when he has no body!"
I'm loathe to post this, but then I realized that we have nothing else. What follows is precisely what Laura forwarded to me, unedited, in all of its original glory. Ideally it will be the first and last partial manuscript we post here at what used to be Never Later (and may soon have a new name!), but then again, we never make promises because we are slaves to expediency.
Dear Sir,
Please find enclosed the first chapter for my novel HIS COWBOY HEART, HER NINJA BREAST. It takes place in rural American in the 1700s and follows the life of young Poliamareaux Potato, a French-Irish ninja-born farmgirl, and her struggle to choose between the sweet affections of cowboy Winner Longhorn and ninja Whiskey McBlarneystone and also avoid the eviller affections of Sheriff Dieter von Schweinfleisch. Pirates will also make an appearence.
Yours most sincerely,
Dawny Bougainvillea
Chapter One
Poliamareaux Potato - or Polly, as she was commonly called - swung her buxom frame into the farmstead with a sway of her womanly curves, the basket of freshly-gathered eggs balanced on her hip. With her cream-coloured hand she turned on the stove and placed a cast-iron frypan on the burner and threw some butter into it for melting. With her other hand she tossed an egg in the air and almost absent-mindedly gave it a karate chop that sliced the shell exactly in half and left the yolk and whites continuing their trajectory into the sizzling frypan.
Her Irish father, Fiddles Potato, watched from the barn with pride and sadness alternately tugging at his heart. "She makes eggs the same way her dear departed mother, and thus my wife, did," he whispered in the gloaming. "The ninja way."
It seemed like yesterday instead of seventeen years ago that he had forsaken his dying ninja clan, The Leprechauns, and fled Ireland to America via the ocean. It seemed even more improbable to him that he was the last surviving member of the Leprechauns, and downright impossible that he had decided to raise his precious daughter not in the ways of the vicious Irish ninja, but as a humble farmer.
Yet, as he watched her grow from delicate child to delicate almost-a-woman, it seemed even more impossibly impossible that she had nevertheless inherited his ninja abilities, along with her French mother's skill in cooking and needlework.
And that he now owned a farm in the middle of America, with fifty head and away from a life of constant inter-clan violence - impossible!
But here he was.
"Le sange, le sange est disparu, ou est mon sange, et ou est tu?" Polly sang. In her clear soprano, Fiddles knew he had made the right choice. His eyes misted over.
"La, Papa, what are you doing out in the barn?" Polly said from behind him. In the nanomicroseconds it had taken his eyes to mist over, Polly had managed to sneak up behind him with a buffet-style breakfast.
Memories of his beloved wife Monagamousse overwhelmed him and he hugged the dear girl to his chest. "That's my Polly!" he whispered.
Suddenly Polly pulled a face, pouting out her full lower lip. "Oh poot, there's that skanger Sheriff von Schweinfleisch. What's he doing here so early?"
Sheriff Dieter von Scweinfleisch sauntered up to the buffet table, a self-satisfied smirk under his large, waxed mustache. His pet marmoset Scrofula hopped off his shoulder to snatch up a pastry and hissed at her father with his venomous fangs. "Good morning, Sheriff," Fiddles said calmly. "What can we do for you?"
"You know what you can do for me," Dieter said in his thick German accent. He pointed at Polly. "Zer fair Miss Polly's hand in marriage!"
"That I cannot do," Fiddles shook his head. "She is already promised to one of her childhood playmates who is scheduled to arrive from over the ocean in a fortnight."
"Unt childhood playmate, you say?" Dieter smoothed his mustache. "We shall see whose childhood playmate will be arriving over the ocean in a fortnight!" With that cryptic statement, the sheriff snapped his fingers and strode off, Scrofula leaping to his back to cling to his shoulder.
"Papa, how could you lie like that?" Polly said when the sheriff and his monkey were out of earshot. "What shall we do when no childhood playmate arrives?"
Fiddles sighed heavily. "We think of another lie," he said.
She looked at him sadly. "That was never the ninja way!"
"You are too right, my girl. Back on the Emerald Isle we could have simply removed his vital organs without disturbing the lay of his skin, kept him propped up in a rocking chair, and had done with it. But we are among Indians and Cowboys now, and we must abide by the rules in this strange, foreign land."
Also out of earshot, Dieter tickled Scrofula under his chin. "Send word to the other sheriffs," he said. "I want all incoming ships' passengers arriving within the fortnight killed without mercy!"
"CAW CAW CAW!" howled the marmoset, who leapt off to do his master's bidding.
Dieter laughed. "Ach, mein proud beauty!" he said to himself. "We shall see how you marry a childhood playmate - when he has no body!"
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