New China Town Buffet Food of House and Family

         I was on my way to pick up my sesame chicken from the local egg-rollery, New China Town Buffet Food of House and Family, when I ran into this skinny guy passing out flyers. I mean, I ran right into him. Didn't mean to, I was just totally absorbed in some old DJ Jazzy Jeff b-sides, you know? Yeah, ran right into his back. We exchanged "scuse me"'s and I was about to walk on when he thrust this into my hand,



I read it and walked on, but not before turning around to see that that the "skinny" guy was actually a skeleton! A real skeleton, right there! On my street! I didn't see that anyone else was taking the flyers, and he looked like he was really cold. Our eyes met briefly before we both turned away. I thought about it for awhile, but I don't think I want to be a skeleton.

Why I Killed That Panda

         Whoa, whoa. Let’s just slow down a second here. Just stand up and listen for a second. Please stop screaming. Please. Please stop. Thank you. Now, I know, I know we have a big mess to clean up. But before you. . .What? No I didn’t mean “we” as in you and I. I meant it in the collective sense. Now please listen. Don’t look down, look up here, we’ll worry about ‘down there’ in a minute, and stop screaming, stop, everything is going to be fine. Right now I want you to look at me, and listen, so I can tell you why I killed that panda.

         Honey, I know things look bad, and certainly you have every right to be shocked and a little angry, but if you don’t pull yourself together. . .What? Yes, I am fully aware that the panda had a name. . . No. Because it doesn’t matter if I tell you what the panda’s name was, that won’t help our situation and. . .Honey, Honey, I know. I know. I told you I knew Prince Bobo’s name. I told you I did. Please stop shouting. It’s what Prince Bobo would have wanted. Thank you.

         This is a testing situation, no one would disagree with that. Also, I don’t think anyone would say that I am completely blameless in bringing us into it. But just as the Scottish philosopher David Hume said, “If one particular event is said to cause another, are the two events logically connected, if all inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning?”, I think that in a way, this, Prince Bobo’s final tableau, is not my fault, per se, so much as an event giving rise to the customary illusion of fault. After all, isn’t this horrible fate simultaneously everyone and no one’s fault? For example, although it was my idea to come to China for our second year anniversary, it was your idea to come to the zoo today, not mine. Does that mean that. . . Okay, okay, I know that you didn’t “force” me to drink ten beers at the monkey house concession stand, but you know how hard I work during the week! Don’t I deserve the occasional restorative?. . . I take your silent, open-mouthed glare as a sign of disbelief, but I assure you, a twenty-six hour week is more than enough to drive man to drink. So please don’t hold my own terrible cross to bare against me. As it appears our time for discussion is waning let me sum up my reason for killing that panda. . . sorry, why I killed Prince Bobo.

         To be completely frank, this hot air balloon wasn’t going to make itself any lighter. Admittedly, it was I that forced the three of us, you, myself, and Prince Bobo, into what I thought was just a large prop for a wicker basket exhibit, but sometimes the past and the illusions of gross negligence to which it will inevitably give rise must be put aside in order to focus on the present, i.e. forgetting how we got in this hot air balloon in order to focus on not letting said balloon collide with that very large mountain range. Yes, Honey, that mountain range right there. But of course, we’d still be on the ground if not for the unforeseeable consequences of my previous actions at the Insectatarium.

         Nobody, and I mean nobody, could have predicted that those vacationing taikonauts would have reacted so violently when I stood up during the “instructional video of welcome” and called them “orange wearin’, tube eatin’, slant eyed, moon fuckers.” Who would’ve even thought they speak English? Certainly not I. Of course some response was to be expected, but, again, how was I supposed to know that all Chinese astronauts are also expert martial artists? Why would they need that in space, honestly? And no one could have suspected that they would hunt us down later and untie the balloon’s only earth bound tether. Perhaps the Chinese space program should focus less on perfunctory kick-boxing skills and more on recruiting level headed adults that don’t get so mad at a simple stranger’s drunken epithets.

         In summary, I fully admit to making a poor decision when I bribed the comely assistant animal handler to let me take a panda out for half-an-hour. It was neither thrifty nor respectful of Prince Bobo or our beautiful, meaningful sense of marital trust and obligation. By, what some people would call, “kidnaping” Prince Bobo, I put not only myself, our visa status, and the future of the Asian panda population in danger, but also, most importantly, you. And for that I apologize.

         But, now I am sure that you see why, when the weight of the balloon brought that ever closer mountain peak into our path, I had to do what had to be done. When you were over there, screaming down to the emergency vehicles tailing us below, I chose the heftiest half-brick from that pile of half-bricks in the corner of the basket and in one deft and athletic motion helped Prince Bobo shuffle off this mortal coil. Now, we must find some way to lift this gentle giant over the side of the basket. . . Now, Honey, don’t say that. This isn’t Prince Bobo, just his physical husk. Prince Bobo will always be with us, in our hearts. And please, darling, remember as I stand here, bloody half-brick in hand, that I am a man that killed this panda for one reason and one reason only. . because I love you.

Priceless Document Found in My Backyard

Recently, the American Society for Securing Socially and Historically Interesting Traditions, ASSSHIT, has been digging an excavation pit in my backyard in order to find more of those dubloons I told you about back in June. They had been here for almost a month with nothing to show except half a chimp skull and an old bag of Moon Pies until yesterday, when they discovered a rotting black trunk adorned with Christopher Columbus's coat of arms,



Needless to say, they brought the trunk inside and we opened it without hesitation. But instead of dubloons, maps, or the ubiqitous slave corpse, we found only a moist, semi-disintegrated parchment. On further examination it was concluded that this was a portion of the journal of Brittel MacAckack, a Scottish mercenary that served as third sous chef sencond class on the Santa Maria around 1490. How this manuscript ended up in Birmingham is still a mystery and a constant source of tension and infighting amongst the dig team. Here I have posted the journal's entire salvageable contents:

It was a fortnight and a weekpenny before master Christopher was well again. His first night back on his feet he came bursting through the galley hatch at a quarter past midday on the eleventh of October wearing nothing but his knickers, an Italian flag, and a hat he had fashioned from driftwood and rat pelts.
"Anon," he said, "by Henry's watch we should be in India within a month's breast. We shall have our tea then, gentlemen, that I can assure you!" He grabbed Timmyson's goblet and used his mulled wine to gargle the Spanish national anthem, which was customary after the bearing of good news at sea, then sprang back outwards of the hatch to whence his quarters wherethefore he came. The men became restless as they knew of Henry's disposition to inaccurate timepieces, but I only smiled and said, in Italian, "Wherewithal boys, wherewithal, that's what we need, some good old-fashioned wherewithal." only in Italian.
For some time afterwards the crew made a good effort to avoid Captain Christopher as if he were the very bubonic plague that had ravaged our home port of England only some weeks before. It was during this invlountary exile that Master Columbus wrote his best poetry. He called his poems his "barbies" and scrawled them on the railings with sticks of dried rat dung.
"Don't be lookin' at me barbies," he'd say, "or I'll give ye the old Cordovan One-Two One-Two. Aye, then we'll sees what ye laugh at like school children." But we laughed anyway. Good days those were.
Master Columbus's writing flurry was over and done, though, the week the storm came. The men and I were playing Pigs and Spoons on the tertiary poop deck when, out of a heretofore clear blue sky, a school of thunderheads and rainyladies rolled in from the southwesterly. Once we finished our game, Robertonson having won the queen, we barely had time to soothe the dogs or finish our hatch battening before our ship was awash in a sea of water, only this sea came from the sky! The rain washed away all of our captain's poems, at which some of the men burst into song. Captain Columbus had them beaten, shot, and beaten again before anyone could stop him. Although the altercation admittedly lowered morale, the surviving members were ecstatic that Harringfortonton, the ship's resident bully, had been among the beaten, shot, beaten. His wife and children remarked that the last beating, publicly held, had been unnecessary. They were promptly kicked in the teeth and tossed overboard.

Great Fiery Bird of Zeus!

Look, on the horizon, it's Ok Times!! Like a great drunken, mythical bird rising haltingly from it's pile of ash and empty cans, I have returned to you, and so be ye not afraid, my children. And of course, by "me" I mean "us", for the authorship of Ok Times has not singled, not doubled, but tripled! Behold the three headed blog-hydra! Thy name be Andy and Dana. It won't be so lonely around here with two more pretty faces roaming the vast hallways, of this, the information superhighway.

I'm not gonna do some song and dance and apologize for letting the blog die and rot in the summer sun, but I will say this. . ."It will never happen again. I swear on the risen body of Christ our Lord, the swollen belly of the Laughing Buddha, and the pleather beanbags of our old uncle Allah." And so, with a fresh eye towards tomorrow, a spring in our step, and a quart of vodka hidden behind the car owner's manual in the glove compartment, let us ride into the future. Giddy up.