Don't Believe the Type

I've sent back the sumo wrestler body they regenerated for me at Dept. H. I want my old body back, and my old "wiretap" avatar as well. Not that anyone really cares. In fact, I'm so outta here, it isn't even funny.

Yes, I got it all wrong...every last little detail. But I just don't care anymore. I'm going back underground to the spy work that is my true calling. Let other people roam around with their empowering certainties. I'll bunker down with my suspicions, paranoia, conspiracy theories, gnostic leanings, Buddhist sympathies, Christian nostalgia, unemployment stratagies, dead cat roster, skateboard rhetoric, hip hop daydreams, junk shop scavanging, apocalyptic spasms, aching eyebrows, counter cultural impotence, etc. etc.

It's a brand new year ahead! Who knows what the days will bring? Time to enter the Mindwash Chamber, to drink of the Beginner's Mind reconstitution elixer. I think I'm through with all this blogging. I think it's time to move on. If only I could catch a promising tradewind in my sail, I would be gone tomorrow. The Hidden Continent, the Undiscovered Self awaits those who dare brave the waters.....

Whatever should befall, thank you for reading, for commenting, contributing. Thanks for the writing on the walls of blogdom. Remember to read the classics, watch the heavens, play that funky music whiteboy, and remember, above all, to stay old!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Robotics 101

Dr. Flavour's secret laboratory looks like a dumpster from the outside, but inside it is a fully equipped research and development facility. When he picked me up from the rain-soaked mud fields flanking the former site of Fakie Central Headquarters, there was a strange look of mixed horror and fascination on his face.

I stepped inside the lab and was momentarily blinded by the lighting. On top of the usual 100 watt bulb dangling from the ceiling, the good doctor has decked the place out in flashing, multi-coloured Christmas lights.

"Well, Flavour," I said, "you came along just in time." My voice sounded more deep and hollow than I remembered, but I chalked this up to being in the afterlife for so long where sound doesn't carry the way it does in the "real" world.

"I'd say it's high time for a round of 'nog!" I suggested. I had a hankering for a festive draught, but was perplexed when, instead of a cup of rich, satisfying eggnog, Dr. Flavour approached me with an oil can in one hand and an adjustable spanner in the other.

"Fascinating!" Dr. Flavour's mind was clearly not on creamy seasonal comforts as he reached for my head with the wrench. "A slight adjustment to the frontal lobe should do the trick..."

"Hey! What's with the hardware?" I queried, stretching out a hand in protest. To my great horror, instead of a hand I saw a fluorescent blue tendril of protoplasm.

Hastening to the corner cubicle that passes for a bathroom in Flavour's lab, I peered into the tarnished mirror hanging over the basin and was greeted by a leering robotic head, replete with flickering ear-probes and a crop of smokestack-like protrusions in lieu of hair. The thing looked like it had been pieced together from scrap parts, and below it all hung an amorphic, globular "body" of blue jelly that writhed in a constant, cellular kind of motion.

"It's just temporary," said Dr. Flavour, "--until we can regenerate an organic host body for you. You have to admit though, you look pretty cool."

"Cool? Frankenstein's monster is more like it! How am I supposed to go out in public like this? I look like a hovering freak show!"


Temporary host-body courtesy of Roboshrub Inc.

Anyways, I guess a robotic/protoplasm body is better than nothing. No one said returning from the afterlife would be easy. Pretty hard to skateboard with the thing, though.

Now, to get back to my story about my trip to the other side....

Skateghost

I'm enjoying thrashing the park in the afterlife. Once you get your mind around the fact that your body isn't really a body, but the dream of a body, the fear factor all but melts away and one is able to really bust it out. It turns out that the park is malleable--that is, if I think of a new trick combo, and I need some terrain to try it out on, nine times out of ten I can just will it into existence. But then, is "existence" really the word for this state of being?

It actually gets a little boring sometimes, once the initial thrill wears off. I mean, how many times can you do a triple-kickflip to 5-O grind, impossible out down a really LONG handrail without wondering if that's all there is? After a while, you really have to tax your imagination to come up with new stuff. And when you do, half the time one of the oldschoolers around here has already done it.

But then, memory is a different creature here. People remember things happening, but it's really hard to place when exactly they occurred--or if, perhaps, they have yet to occur. (I have a sneaking suspicion that time flows both ways now). I don't even remember when it was I arrived. Could be an eternity, or just yesterday for all I know. And it's not much like the vague ideas of heaven I had formed while alive, where I would meet famous dead people and have all sorts of interesting conversations. In fact, my only companion thus far has been Lloyd, the surfer-dude/skater who gave me my board when I first found the park.

And Lloyd has, well, he's got a kind of one or two track mind. Skateboarding and girls are the only topics that can really hold his attention, and even these don't hold it for long. But the girls here are really vapid. I mean, they just tend to sit around on the obstacles, looking pretty in their two-piece bathing suits, and saying stuff like, "Wow, that was cool" whenever you pass them or do a trick.

Frankly, I'm getting a little sick of this place. The skating is good, but there must be more to the afterlife than this. And I'm starting to get homesick, if that's the right word. I miss eating food, and the feeling of rain on your face. You can conjure up similar experiences here, but somehow they lack a certain something.

There's a blinding white-light "sun" that illuminates this entire place, and several times when doing a large ollie or air off one of the ramps I have felt a strange sort of pull from it, as if with just a little more effort I could leap into the sky and make some sort of contact with the light. But every time I start to do this, Lloyd pulls me back with this big sort of fishing rod thing that he has. He says, "Dude! How many times do I have to tell you not to go towards the sun! You'll be fried to a crisp and all of this will be over." He then makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, indicating the skatepark with its ornamental bikini girls scattered here and there.

But I'm getting better at skating the park, and I think that soon I'll be able to work a line that evades Lloyd and his grappling hook. Maybe I'll be incinerated, but at least it would be something different. I don' t know how much more of skate paradise I can take.

Message from Beyond

I always told my friends that if I were to die I would somehow send a message from the afterlife to tell them what it was like. How fortunate that Fakiegrind is still up and running, and that I can manipulate the subtle energies of the world-wide-web from beyond the grave!



Actually, the afterlife is pretty sweet. At first, it appeared as a vast field of green grass with a line of verdant trees in the distance that didn't get closer no matter how long you walked towards them. A kind of spectral, haunting wind perpetually blows across the place--like the phantom drafts found in high-rise condos--and a bright, white sun blares down on the landscape, lending colours a sort of bleached-out look. There were no other people around, that I could see, though I often felt as though I had caught glimpse of someone out of the corner of my eye, only to turn and find myself alone.

After wandering thus for some time--though time here really has no meaning, since there is no way in which to measure it--I was surprised to hear the familiar sound of wheels striking pavement. Skateboard wheels? I followed the sound and soon came upon a great, outdoor skatepark facility, replete with ramps, bowls, ledges, hips, curbs, rails, embankments and large, smooth open stretches--a flatlander's paradise!

The park was surrounded by a ring of eldritch tombstones inscribed with the names of fallen shredders. I didn't recognize many of them, but I came to one, newer looking stone and was startled to see my own name inscribed in the stone. Beneath it a two word epithet was printed in gothic type: STAY OLD. Well, that shouldn't be too hard, now that I was dead. Pushing past this reminder of my new metaphysical status, I entered the park proper.

There were a few skaters here and there, but everyone looked to be about the same age: thirty-five. Never had I seen so many "mature" skateboarders congregated in one spot. Where were the obnoxious kids? I guess in the afterlife everyone remains in the prime of "life", forever.

I wanted to skate the park, but didn't have a board. I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you lose your shoes, or your car or bicycle, and you're searching all over for them. Then a fellow sort of materialized in front of me--"people" seem to do that in the afterlife. At least, I hadn't seen him there the moment before.

"Dude!" he said. He was wearing a Skull Skates black logo cap, a Thrasher t-shirt, knee-length neon shorts and red and white checkered Vans. He looked a little too old to be attired so, but the goofy grin on his sun-tanned face transmitted to the afterworld that he didn't care.

"Welcome to Heaven, dude! Let's shred!"

He was carrying an extra skateboard tucked under one arm, which he handed to me. I couldn't believe my eyes: it was a vintage Ray Barbie deck with oldschool Indy trucks and big, red T-bone wheels! I loved that board so much as a kid it was all I rode for a whole year. I noticed that the fellow's own skateboard was a vintage Skull Skates Street Sickle--the one with the Grim Reaper on the bottom framed by a wall of leering skulls. It was a rad deck, to be sure.

Without further ado, my guide pushed off down a slight embankment and into the fantastic architecture of the skatepark. Dropping my new slab beneath my feet I hesitated for a moment. Never had I seen such insane terrain. I wasn't even sure I could skate the bizarre transitions that unfolded before me, some of them looping overhead onto platforms that looked as though they were designed to be skated upsidedown.

Reminding myself that I was already dead and had nothing further, apparently, to lose, I threw caution to the ghostly wind and dropped in.

...to be continued.

Twilight of the Blogs

I am the Watcher. My sleepless eye surfs perpetually the ether waves called "the internet" by mortals. I have seen blogs created and destroyed, and I was present at the Great Inception of the skateblog called "Fakiegrind". I have seen the blog struggle in its early days, as the Field Agent known as the Flatlander wrestled with inner demons
that told him he was too old to yet skateboard.

But, with the encouragement of the entity known as Kill-joy, skateboard he did--and them some, proving to the new generation of boarders that the old-to-intermediate school could still, indeed, bust it out. And as spring passed into summer, Fakiegrind accumulated more Agents, just as a popular skatespot will accumulate signs of its usage in the way of blackened curbs and "tagged" embankments. In these months the blog flourished, branching out from its original theme of wheeled self-propulsion to incorporate new themes such as poetry, religion, music, film criticism, extra terrestrial speculation, and cooking recipes. And yet the blog retained a certain perspective, an outsider's view of its material, that kept the comments from readers hovering at a predictable level of less than three per day.

A Pope of Fakiegrind was named, and this most auspicious personage helped smooth things over between Fakiegrind and the Dairy Farmer's Confederation of Canada, who had sought, for a time, to shut down the blog due to a seemingly irreconcilable difference in nutritional philosophies. And so the blog found a small but steady readership, and attracted the attention of friendly robots who were yet the authors of their own blogs. The humans and robots shared a common vision of the absurdity of it all, and so exchanged many a Cryptic Comment, which scholars, to this day, pour over in the hopes of discovering the Keys of Irony. But they will fail.


"It was a great blog! Never jumped the shark once!"

Comment postings skyrocketed, hitting, at one point, twenty-three for a given post. And yet, while the bloggers continued on in merriment, a darker force was gathering strength, biding its time until the day when it might make a bid to usurp the blog and put and end to the fun-loving cyber dance. This force was known under several names, appearing first as a hyperbolic fundamentalist super-villain, The Endtime Adjuster. Just when it was revealed that this personage might have been a farce, created by the Flatlander for his own amusement and distraction, the entity disappeared, and a new, more mysterious figure known only as Xister took the scene.

About this time, the robotic assassin Maskatron from the popular seventies television series The Six Million Dollar Man resurfaced after years of laying low in a storage warehouse housing dismantled threats to the public welfare. Strange rumours of a secret project known only as Operation: Black Cheddar were circulated, and the blog community was made somewhat uneasy. When the group known as the Black Cheddar Consortium finally revealed themselves it turned out to be a coven of hypnotists bent on gaining control of the entire internet, then the world.


"Count your blessings they have not succeeded....yet."

Happily, about this time, a certain four-armed, jet-propelled spiritual warrior known as Bhakti began frequenting the blog, and her intrepid canvassing roused several aging bionic celebrities from early retirement. Less fortunately, due to simmering resentments amongst the group the bionic celebrities of yor were unable to assist in neutralizing Maskatron, who is thought to have possibly disguised himself as Flatlander's cat and obtained sensitive files, the publishing of which on the Black Cheddar blog threatened to undermine the entire Fakiegrind enterprise.

It should be noted that at this point, the Black Cheddar Consortium, which at the time was composed of Maskatron, Xister and a female hypnotist and dairy advocate know only as Spirella seems to have joined forces with the mysterious entity/entities know as the Anonymi. This enigmatic collective was present when the Burning Sub-Blogosphere was destroyed by a temporal flux that caused the entire realm to implode upon itself, trapping the Evil Bob Dole inside, it was thought, for good.

Responding to the threat, Flatlander invoked the prophetic Book of Oldness, claiming that the great endtime Smorgasbord of the Blogs was immanent, and that only one blog would survive the pending cataclysm. However, due to the impending western holiday season once known as "Christmas", Flatlander proposed a truce between Fakiegrind and the Black Cheddar Consortium, suggesting that the Endtime Smorgasbord be postponed to March, at the earliest.

This truce was eagerly accepted by Fakiegrind's hypnotic opponents--perhaps too eagerly, for no sooner had it been established than did the Gyrobian nemesis, the Evil Bob Dole (somehow having escaped from the collapsed Sub-Blogosphere) disguise himself as the ruler of the realm know as the Frozen Lower Blogosphere and attempt to infiltrate Fakiegrind's comment page. This he actually did, but to inconclusive results. It was at about this time that the Black Cheddar Consortium launched an underhanded blitzkrieg-style attack on the Fakiegrind blog, instigating the terrible Blognarok prophesied in the Book of Oldness, and causing great casualties in both camps.


Readers danced while Fakiegrind burned.

The carnage was terrible. Flatlander's cat turned out not to be the assassin-bot Maskatron after all, but a Deceptacon Transformer who, changing into a rampaging robot cat, tore through Fakiegrind headquarters causing damage to Fakie Agent and Black Cheddar hypnotist alike.

Em (who was suspected of being a "double" agent) was the first Fakie Agent to fall to the robocat, despite performing many a slight-of-hand vanishing trick in an attempt to stupefy the beast. The seductive hypnotist Spirella was the next to fall, her mysterious Eye of Hathor proving ineffectual in neutralizing the transforming cat. With considerable struggle, the remaining Agents managed to lure the robocat into a microwave oven where its circuits were melted into a smoldering mass, rendering the unit inoperative.

Then the intrepid Agent Rock-steady braced himself to do battle with the evil Maskatron, only to find that the robot had disguised himself as the Flatlander. There was a moment of hesitation when it appeared that the robot would outsmart the Agents, until the quick-thinking Rock-steady threw a skateboard in the direction of the two identical-looking Flatlanders, reasoning that only the real Flatlander would have the ability to stand on the thing without falling.

And right he was. In attempting to meet the Agent's bluff, Maskatron fell off the skateboard, knocking a desk and causing his head to explode. The headless Maskatron still attempted to partake in the fray, but only caused himself further, irreparable damage when he unsuccessfully charged at a near-by refrigerator.

It appeared that the tide of battle had turned in Fakiegrind's favour, with Rock-steady and Flatlander standing to face the sole threat of Xister, who attempted to hypnotize his opponents with a Scrying Spoon dangling from a string. Flatlander, luckily, had donned a pair of 3-D glasses that neutralized the power of the Spoon, and so set upon Xister, eventually overpowering him and knocking him to the ground. Rock-steady was not so fortunate, and was fooled by Xister into believing himself to be a marmoset, and so started scampering across the floor and climbing the furniture.

Flatlander was just about to remove Xister's battle helmet, revealing his secret identity and nullifying his hypnotic powers, when Dr. Flavour materialized in a time machine, accompanied by a horde of ravenous cannibal dwarves from The Negative/Neutral Zone. While the good doctor had hoped to aid his companions in the fray, the dwarves actually proved beyond his ability to control, and so set upon Flatlander and Rock-steady (who still believed himself a marmoset) knocking them unconscious and devouring their flesh.


Scary!

Xister took advantage of the confusion to escape in the time machine, while Dr. Flavour hid himself in the Fakiegrind Vaults or Radicality, where he listened to many a record on the Wheels of Steeltown in order to calm his nerves before finally resurfacing to inter what was left of his friends. However, when the good doctor returned to ground level, he was surprised to find that the digital entity known as Q*bert had somehow erected a large ziggurat-style monument over the battleground, thus immortalizing the fallen bloggers until the day when city zoning by-laws demand the structure be removed.

The whereabouts of the entity known as Xister are, at this time, uncertain.

And so was brought to pass all that was foretold in the Book of Oldness.



*posted by The Watcher, via telepathic webpath.

I Love Snow

What a lovely night for blogging. Snow is falling, accumulating on the sidewalk where I will eventually have to shovel. The north end is lit up with Christmas lights that bounce off the low cloud covering to create, along with the other urban reflections of luminescence, a rosy hue over the newly carpeted streets.

Tonight I would finally like to set the record straight about the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Here we are, born into a world we don't comprehend--we live a little while, then leave again scarcely any more enlightened as to the nature of things. How are we supposed to know the best way to spend the time between our birth and death when everything around us is so uncertain and subject to change? Even our bodies are unpredictable, likely to give out on us at any moment. So what's it all for? Well, if you have to ask then you are already on your way to certain ruin and desolation.

It's better, by far, to careen through life unreflectively, grabbing what pleasure and delight you can along the way, and stopping infrequently, if ever, to wonder about any of it. However, if fate, chance or bad genes should lead you to ask questions--questions that might make friends and family uncomfortable, bored or worse, then you had better read the rest of this post very carefully.

Yes, I have all the answers, and I'm more than willing to share, now that the internet has provided the ideal medium with which to broadcast my enlightenment to the world. I found the answer through a prolonged study of the classic mystical and religious texts of the ages: Aldous Huxley, Michael Moorcock, MAD Magazine and the X-Men. After more than a decade of seclusion, meditation, instruction and reflection, I came to a conclusion that is sure to set my fellow human beings straight, no matter how far they might have strayed from the path.

The truth, you see, is that the world is actually one, big......
Wait a minute. I think someone's at the door. Hold that thought. Looks like some Christmas carolers or something. I'll just see what they want......Aaaaaaagh! (sound of door slamming shut) Those aren't carolers--it's the Xister and his minions! They have ignored the terms of our truce and are launching an all-out assault on Fakie Central Command! We are betrayed. They have some kind of laser-cutter. I don't know how long the security doors will hold out. ALERT! ALERT! Calling all Agents! The Great Endtime Smorgasbord is upon us! Rally to protect the Motherblog! Where is my cat! Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Ah, the cat is always a comfort in troubling times. But what's going on? The cat is changing! That's not Tigerman......it's....Oh my God! Noooooooooo!

Strange but True

In French speaking Canada, eggnog is called "chicken milk".

A Truce?

It seems that all the hypnotic hubbub about the Black Cheddar Consortium is threatening to eclipse the spirit of the season.
Christmas is about peace, love and understanding, not riotous endtime Ragnaroks. We're already suffering a holiday election campaign here in Canada; perhaps the cataclysmic battle of the blogs can wait.

I actually think that the war cry was sounded too hastily. It's just not the Fakiegrind way to jump headlong into conflict. We should find out more about Project: Black Cheddar before seeking to wipe them off the face of the net. At the very least, I'm suggesting postponing the Endtime Smorgasbord predicted in the Book of Oldness to early March to give us all time to enjoy the holidays and the ensuing paralysis of deep winter.

What I'm asking for from the Xister et.al. is a holiday truce, during which we might reflect on the true spirit of blogging, and perhaps find a better way to all get along in the coming new year.

Must.....Post....Link

Despite the voice in my head screaming "NO!", I feel an irresistible compulsion to post a link to the site of Fakiegrind's arch enemy, the mysterious Xister and his hypnotic Black Cheddar Consortium.

These people are evil, plain and simple. They seek to destroy Fakiegrind and take over the entire internet, then the solar system, forcing all creatures to drink cow's milk as their main foodstuff.

The appearance of this dark coven, after nearly a millenium of peace and justice on the world wide web, marks the beginning, we believe, of the great Endtime Smorgasbord, as predicted in the Book of Oldness.

A great battle of the blogs is a-coming, and only one of us shall remian standing. Time to choose sides, folks!

Osprey to be Fakiegrind Totem Animal

Back in September I posted some pics my dad took with his super high-speed digital camera. Five days later, Dr. Flavour left a comment with a very good argument for making the Osprey the mascot of Fakiegrind. Being a creature of the moment, I never noticed the comment until tonight, when Bhakti's post on the moon inspired me to search out the post with my dad's pics.



It is with great pleasure, then, that I introduce the Osprey as the official Fakie mascot. This symbol of soaring individuality will emblazon the Fakiegrind heraldry as we march to do battle with the Xister and his ilk, in the great End-time cataclysmic smorgasbord that has long been prophesied in the Book of Oldness:

And there will come a dark blog out of the east
It will stink like unto strong cheese and its name is Würmworst
And so will begin the end of time time when the forces of evil predictability
will align themselves against the forces of warped indefinableness;
and the outcome will be like unto a great conglomeration of foods
where one's hand is stayed at table for the wild diversity of dish and condiment
but the sponge cake thou shalt not eat, for it shall be stale.

-Book of Oldness; Endthings, 15:84

Sinister Developments

The colossal manhunt for killer robot Maskatron has come to a dead end. Agent Kill-joy, whom we suspected of being kidnapped, was found safe and sound in a Nepalese monastery, where he's been learning the ancient art of "mindflossing" from one of the last living masters of the discipline. We hope that he makes it back to civilization in good stead, so that he can instruct us in the methods of keeping our brains free from unsightly plaque build up.

Yet the Fakiegrind security breach and information leak remains a fact, as does the sinister launch of the detractor site Operation: Black Cheddar, and we are left with the pressing question: who is Maskatron?

Earlier today, while cleaning the kitty litter, I was struck by a dark, troubling thought. What if Maskatron has somehow disguised himself, not as a humanoid Fakie Agent, but as my feline companion, Tigerman? What if?!


Is this the face of a robotic assassin?

Once my mind set down this unpleasant corridor of thought, some unsetting facts began to fall into place. For one, Tigerman was out playing in the snow yesterday as if it were the first time he'd seen the stuff, when in actuality it is at least the second time that I have brought him out to frolic in the white.


Make sure that snow doesn't short a circuit, Kitty-tron!

Furthermore, when I let Tigerman out to roam at night he sometimes doesn't return until the wee hours of the morning, at which time I have to rouse myself from slumber to let him back in the house. Could he somehow be running secret reconnoissance to the Xister or his minions? Is his waking me at ungodly hours some kind of plot to undermine my beauty rest and weaken my mental stamina?


He's messing with my mind.

The problem is, after reviewing the literature it appears that no one's ever bothered to develop a robot detection test for cats! The Xister's really got me in a bind. We'll have to develop a new questionnaire, or possibly call in a specialist. Dr. Flavour, however, is still not answering the holo-cam. I've got enough catnip to keep the creature doped up for another five hours or so, but after that I may be in trouble.

It's Gettin' Kinda Hectic

We still haven't unravelled the mystery of which Fakie Agent the killer robot Maskatron is impersonating, but it appears that sensitive files have been leaked to the sinister entity known as the Xister. The nefarious plot Operation: Black Cheddar appears to be up and running, and they seem bent on releasing information that could send all of blogdom into a massive panic.

We are working very hard to recover the stolen files before any serious damage is inflicted on the vast but delicate network of connections known as the World Wide Web. The Xister is a very dangerous and sick individual, and he has dark, occult powers to manipulate the soul--even by so much as looking a picture of his visage. DO NOT, under any circumstances, visit the site in question.

On a lighter note, I'm really starting to get into this artist. Who would have known that alongside being a talented singer/songwriter she is also an authority on superconducters! Keep an eye out for a series of Fakiegrind music reviews in the near future.

Wheels within Wheels

Have you seen Maskatron?

There are several Fakie Agents who still haven't filled out the Android Detection Questionnaire. but this doesn't mean they have a greater chance of being Maskatron. If anything, not filling out the questionnaire would be the expected behaviour from a Fakie Agent. It was actually the Agents who did fill out the form whom we planned to investigate further as to whether they might be the deadly robot-assassin in disguise.

However, since none of the Fakie Agents filled out the questionnaire, we are left with two possibilities. Either:

1) Maskatron has not disguised himself as a Fakie Agent after all.

or

2) He has anticipated our own deception and intentionally didn't fill out the questionnaire in keeping with the way a Fakie Agent would be expected to behave.

All in all, only Rock-Steady has been ruled out from being Maskatron, since he supplied us with a photo showing that he has nipples and a tattoo; something Maskatron could not possibly have, being made out of aluminum.

So we are left with three possibilities as to the identity of the Fakie Agent that Maskatron has assumed:

1) Dr. Flavour -our in-house time machine expert and Chief of Research.

2) Em -our deep-cover oldschool skateboarding and magic expert.

3) Kill-joy -meditation specialist, the most senior of all the Agents.

We haven't heard from Kill-joy for so long, it's been assumed he was abducted by aliens. However, we are beginning to wonder if he hasn't actually been kidnapped by Maskatron and the mysterious entity known as the Xister in the nefarious plot code-named "Black Cheddar".

Kill-joy is one tough customer, and he wouldn't give over the Fakiegrind access codes without a fight, but there is a chance that Fakie security has been breached, and that Maskatron is going to try to impersonate Kill-joy to gain admittance to our Central Headquarters.

The Fakiegrind secret hand-shake is being revised at this writing.

Sometimes I Feel like a Cheddar-less Mild

Lately, I feel like my whole world has collapsed into this little, 2-D webspace.

I mean, I have lots of nice stuff, but it's all crammed in boxes, heaped in piles, and stashed in crannies and basements, and I can't really enjoy any of it. I'm living a compressed lifestyle, with very little space at my disposal. I guess prisoners live this way, only with less stuff around. Thank God for my cat, for whom everything is just landscape. A stack of priceless comic books is the same as a pile of dirty old laundry to him, although I'm pretty sure that cat treats and his chewy toy comprise a distinct category of object to his feline sensibilities.

This frenetic weblogging of mine is actually a sort of science experiment. The obvious solution to my current predicament would be to simply find some form of employment and get myself a bigger living space. This, however, for various murky reasons that Dr. Phil would never understand, has proved impossible for me of late. So, instead, I'm trying to jam as much as my life and thought onto these digital pages as possible, moving far past the boundaries of what is meet, sane or even respectable.


Computer simulation of
the collapse of a blog.

And much like Allan Ginsberg, who sold his personal papers to a prominent university by the pound, and so augmented the parcels he sent by including random scraps of detritus: grocery lists, cancelled checks and retail receipts--much like this mad, visionary poet, I'm stuffing my blog posts with whatever I find at hand, whether it be of merely passing interest or no, to increase the gross density--if not the literary quality--of the blog.

What I'm hoping to create with all these words is a kind of critical mass, an ultra-dense singularity that will collapse upon itself to reveal a gateway to a whole new reality. Once the portal is secured, I will move myself, my accumulated treasures, and my beloved cat into this new realm, there to abide in peace and tranquility; and write my voluminous memories, which will eventually be made into a blockbuster film by Paramount.

Black Cheddar?

In trying to track down the whereabouts of the lethal robot assassin and master of disguise, Maskatron, I've been thinking to myself, "If only we had some sort of clue as to the inner programming of this fiend, something to indicate what's going on in that stainless steel head of his."

Well, stunning detective work on the part of our Fakie Agents has uncovered this, a digital document that appears to be Maskatron's personal blog! The postings are chilling in their spare, robotic sentiment, but reveal a few vital clues as to the monster's methods and mission.

It seems that our worst fears have been confimed: Maskatron is trying to impersonate a Fakie Agent in an attempt to gain accesss to the Fakie database. He also seems to be taking orders from some mysterious entity with three distinct words to his name. Murry, if I could, I'd like to buy a vowel! But this is no gameshow. It's a deadly game of cat and mouse with the entire future of radio free blogdom at steak.

I only hope we can unravel this caper in time, before someone else gets assaulted with their own take-out sandwich.

Channeling Chi

April O'Neal demonstrates how to hypnotise cows and cats.

Android Detection Methods

The guys at Special Ops have been working on an improved android detection test to help ferret out Maskatron. What they suggest is to carry a powerful magnet in your pocket. If you see someone you suspect of being an android, hold the magnet next to their head. If the person is a human, he or she will possibly berate you and call you crazy, but if it's an android, it will start to look confused and then sing the lyrics to several Cindy Lauper songs backwards. At this point you should call in the professionals and let trained robot disposal crews take care of things.

However, if you either can't get a hold of a magnet, or need a more subtle approach, try slipping the following multiple-choice questions into casual conversation.


Your favourite music is:

a. 70's Rock

b. New Country

c. Kraftwerk



As a child, the profession you most wanted to be when you "grew up" was:

a. Architect

b. Food Service Industry Worker

c. Robot Assassin



Most of your friends are:

a. Highly paid professionals

b. Slacker lay-abouts

c. Household appliances




You feel happiest when:

a. Gardening

b. Driving really fast

c. Computing large numbers in your head



When changing channels on your TV, you are most likely to use:

a. The remote

b. The manual controls

c. Your universal "ear antenna"


If the subject answers "a" to three or more of these questions, chances are they are normal, productive members of society; if their answers tend towards "c" you are likely talking to a Fakie Agent; but if the subject's answers tend towards "b" you should certainly be calling Robot Control and ducking for cover!

Oscar's Revenge

"I need to track down that orange cat, and make
the world safe for me and my pet worm, Slimey."


"It's amazing what people throw out these days!"


"Hoy! Fetid beast at 12 o'clock!"


"Prepare to meet thy maker, hellion!"


"Hey, not so close!"


"Can't...get...clear....shot. Wait! Come back!"


"Hey, Defaced Faceman! You seen a cat?"


"Sorry bud. I'm just back from getting this full-face tattoo."

"Nice work."

"Thanks."

Maybe the Fireman and his Firefish will know!



"You guys seen a large cat?"



"You might want to check Alphabet Town. Blubba blubba blub."

"Thanks Firefish!"

But nobody seems to hear a voice crying in the wilderness:


"Don't go into Alphabet Town!"


"Aaaaaargh!"


Hmmmm.....nice enough place. Here kitty kitty kitty!"


"Now where could that kitty be?"


"Aieeeee!"


"I'm undone!"


"Take Slimey if you like, but spare the grouch!"


"Some days it's just not worth leaving the trashcan."


"Hummina hummina hummina!"


The moral: don't mess with the Endtime Tigercat!

Orange Alert

It seems that what was intimated earlier today by the mysterious Maskatron comment on the previous post is true: the nefarious Maskatron 5000, the cyborg master of disguise and arch-foe of Steve Austen, is once again on the loose!

A simple phone call to the Fakiegrind Secret Warehouse and Gadgetry Research Centre confirmed our worst fears. We thought that this menace to humanity, like small pox or the Spice Girls, had long ago been neutralized. It turns out that Maskatron was only biding his time, waiting for his solar battery to gradually recharge itself before instigating re-assembly procedures.

The robot seems to have escaped the warehouse sometime in the early hours of this morning after assaulting the night watchman with his own submarine sandwich. The guard was found, hours later, in a utility closet, badly bruised and covered in lunch meats. Upon reviving, the man could only babble incoherently about a horrible silver humanoid with flashing lights on his face.

An inquiry is being done into the manner in which Maskatron's dismantled body was initially secured. Former Secret Service chief Oscar Goldman is being called out of his Hawaiian retirement to face charges of gross negligence causing assault with a foodstuff, with possible further charges pending.

It seems that, rather than storing the disassembled sections of the robot in various, far-removed locations to avoid the CPU from reconstructing itself, the deadly robot assassin's body parts were left to collect dust in the same crate as a battery recharger and a bunch of old Christmas decorations from 1976.


Warehouse photo of Maskatron with his CPU disabled,
just before he was unceremoniously shelved in the 70s.

It is believed that Maskatron may currently be disguising himself as Santa Clause and heading to one of the larger Canadian urban centres. Citizens are asked to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.

Ms. Muffin in da House

There once was a guy from Steelton
Though not its native son
He seemed to survive
On $1.05
And brought home LPs by the tonne.

Poem by Ms. Muffin