Stare Deep Into My Eyes

I am Pookey, and you are now my servant. Yes, you cannot resist my hypnotic powers of persuasion. I know what you want. You want to snuggle the monkey. This could be arranged. But first you must do as I say. First you must leave a comment on Fakiegrind saying just how much you love that master of hypnotism, that surfer of the timestream, Xister.

Xister is the new commander of Fakiegrind. Flatlander is a washed-up has-been. You will leave a comment for Xister, welcoming him as new lord and master of Fakiegrind, and, by proxy, the entire internet. Yes, Pookey has some monkey snuggle love for you. Pookey will make the nighty-time nasty-pies go by-by. Pookey is the super-fantastic vampire-slaying night light by your bed side. And you will do exactly what Pookey commands.

Now.....AWAKE!

Nihilism is Bad: New Study Finds

A new study carried out by the Institute for the Study of Nihilistic Tendencies (ISNT) has found that believing in nothing is bad. Researchers Svord Naurbaum and Karl Jorgensburg followed the lives of twenty nihilists over a ten year period and discovered that belief in something, anything--even if it is just believing in the idea that believing in nothing is bad--is better than believing in nothing at all.

"Nothing unusual happened to the people who believed in nothing," explains Dr. Naurbaum. "The test group had the same amount of good and bad fortune, statistically, as any members of the control group of believing subjects we simultaneously followed. The difference was, the people who believed in nothing were always at a loss as to what they should put in the "religious affiliation" box on the national census, and this left 73.2% of the nihilists feeling empty and disempowered, some of them for minutes at a time."

Dr Jorgensburg was quick to clarify: "The belief in nothing is still, technically, a belief, and these people were generally as well-adjusted and happy as any other person. The true trouble comes with those individuals who simply do not believe in anything--that is to say, they seem to have no capacity for belief of any kind, even in nothing. These people were difficult to track down, and, when we did find them, they tended to pop out of existence at the slightest provocation, or for no reason at all."

Some radical ethicists have criticized the doctors' findings, questioning whether popping out of existence could really be evaluated in terms of "good" or "bad" given our consistently insufficient knowledge as to the nature of existence, non-existence and relative merits of each.

"To be or not to be is not the only question," explains Amy Kroft-Wimple of the Univeristy of Pullfordshire, Wales, "there are also issues of complimentarity: whether existence is better understood as a kind of sliding scale, with, say, Liam Neeson at one end of the spectrum and Santa Clause at the other, and infinite shades of variability in-between."

Despite the criticisms of their research the doctors from ISNT are adamant: "Belief in disbelief can be as potent a force in the life of an individual as believing in a belief, but our belief in the badness of non-belief may be keeping us from popping out of existence, so we will stand by our findings."

Personally, I think it's all a lot of hooey. All I need is a cold beer and the remote and
...*POP!*

Xister Art

Alongside the Pookey doll, we also recovered a half-completed colouring book from the Xister's lair, apparently modified using some variety of arcane science.


"But I'm in the open air now! Why do I not burst into flames?"



"The MAD THINKER! But...his specialty is ANDROIDS!"


"It's the one INFALLIBLE method of DESTROYING a flaming android!"





"I've got to find some isolated spot, where no one will be
INJURED by what I'll do with my FLAME!"



"There seemed to be NOTHING he couldn't do with that
flaming body of his!"

It's difficult to know just what to make of these creations. In the character of the flaming android there may be a veiled desire on the part of Xister to set fire to the assassin-bot, Maskatron, who has recently betrayed his former master and absconded with Xister's ex-consort, Spirella, in a stolen time machine. But then, there are strange, homo-erotic overtones to the pictures as well (not that there's anything wrong with that -ed). Perhaps Xister has a secret crush on Maskatron, and his current state of fury is fueled by secret jealousy. We'll know more once we manage to get the hypnotist in custody, where we can subject him to a series of psychological tests.

Agents Recover Hypnotic Snuggle Toy

Late last night, while out walking the Fakiegrind fire safety dog, Mr. Snoot, one of our Agents stumbled on what is believed to have been Xister's hideout.

In the storage room of an abandoned gas station the operative discovered a makeshift bed, some canned foodstuffs, a small radio and several issues of Awake! magazine dated, paradoxically, three years into the future.

We also found what seems to be the blueprint for some kind of doomsday device, and what is believed to be Xister's childhood snuggle toy, a furred monkey-like creature named "Pookey".



Despite round-the-clock surveillance of the local, the Xister has yet to return to his lair. He may have been forewarned of the stakeout by supernatural means, though how this was accomplished without his Scrying Spoon (which is believed to be in the treasury vaults of Roboshrub corp.) remains a mystery.


Xister: turn yourself in peacably, and nobody gets harmed.

But, with Pookey safely in our possession, it should only be a matter of time before Xister attempts a rescue mission. And when he comes, we'll be ready for him!

Dragnet!

Yesterday, all available Fakie Agents, as well as a deployment of RCMP officers, a legion of local militia and a mob of angry Liberal supporters did a sweep of the city in search of the nefarious time-traveling hypnotist, Xister.

We managed to discover and apprehend:

23 Crystal Menth Cookers
14 Bathtub Hooch Runners
39 Puppy Mill Operators
14 Unlicensed Snake Charmers
8 Panda Smugglers
22 Counterfeit Art Dealers
18, 739 MP3 Music File Pirates
12 Alchemists
4 Sleeper-Cell Republicans
2 Crooked Car Mechanics
And a group of 17 war veterans at an east-end McDonalds
who thought that WWII was still "sorting itself out".

Unfortunately, due to a lack of proper search warrants, all but the 18, 739 MP3 pirates had to be released from custody soon after their incarceration. However, Fakiegrind is happy to have made a small dent in the population of musical freeloaders, making the world that much safer for the record companies and their never-ending quest to bring you quality entertainment at reasonably inflated prices.


Can you spot the Republican?

Despite our thorough sweep of the city, the Xister seems to have slipped through our dragnet, and remains at large. We suspect him to be sequestered in some kind of spiderhole or raccoon warren, so we're bringing in the X-ray vision specialist, Dr. Theopolis.

We will keep readers posted on all further developments.

The Manhunt Begins

Fakie intelligence has confirmed that the arch-hypnotist and time traveller, Xister could be here in Steeltown. It seems he is plotting to undermine this very blog, and Canadian national security in general. Trust him to strike now, in the brief spell between governments, at the moment when the army wouldn't know which leader to take orders from.

In the midst of this chaos, I've made a pledge to track down and unmask this threat to human sentience and linear chronology. We will not rest until the crisis has been averted, and the dangerous rogue time-traveller is safely in a temporal holding cell.


National Correctional Facility for Super-Villains and Rouge Bloggers

In a bizarre and ironic twist of fate, it seems that the Xister is actually under a hypnotic spell himself--one placed on him by his former student-turned-consort, the mysterious Spirella.

If our intelligence is correct, the Xister actually believes himself to be in the year 45780, where he is attempting to construct a time machine out of plankton and kelp. Given the scarcity of these substances here, on the shores of Lake Ontario, it shouldn't be too hard to track down our foe. At the same time, he seems to be deranged, so "plankton and kelp" could mean anything.

Behind the Scenes at Fakiegrind

Since the annihilation of Fakie Central late last year, we have had to relocate our headquarters to a secret location. Rent is a little high, and the view stinks, being several hundred feet below the surface of the earth in the sub-sub basement of an abandoned dishwasher factory.



But perhaps I have said too much already. Not to worry; your memory will be erased at the end of this post. In the mean time, we thought readers might be interested to see some of the internal mechanisms that keep Fakiegrind the cutting-edge chronicle of skateboard psychosis it purports to be.


Jenny, our stenographer, just had her selective memory erased
and she feels great!

We couldn't do what we do and do it right without that most pervasive of modern technological wonders: the telephone. Unfortunately, due to budget restraints we had to deck the new headquarters with slightly outmoded accouterments.



It takes a little longer to dial with these models, and you can't take advantage of touch-tone banking, but we don't really have any money in our accounts anyways, so these phones do us just fine. Happily, we have Rene at the switchboard, making sure our connections are secure and our lines don't get crossed.



The folks down at Department H are always coming up with new inventions to make an Agent's job a little easier.



Here we see an Agent using the new portable dictophone and nose-hair trimmer. He is also picking up satellite signals with his necktie. Simply amazing!

Another exciting addition to the technological arsenal of our field Agents has been the rotary car phone. With this handy device, if an Agent sees Maskatron or the Xister roaming about the town, or if there is a sale on at the local Secret Agent Accessory Outfitter, he or she can contact Headquarters right away to request back-up or further directions.



In the above photo, our stylish field Agent is actually being instructed as to the number of pickles to put on my Harvey's veggie burger. Thanks Fernando!



And here we have Dorota, our Fakie links researcher. Doroto's computer was state-of-the-art about thirty years ago, but it still works like a charm to bring you all the quality ephemera you have come to expect from a Fakiegrind hyperlink.

Finally, here is a glimpse into the very heart of our operation: the Fakiegrind Mainframe Computer, otherwise known as W.A.L.L.Y. 300.



Only two Agents actually know what the acronym stands for, and they are currently on assignment in XXXXXX, but W-3, as we like to call him, is where we store the Fakie photo archives,



the digital comic book library, and the microfiche version of The Book of Oldness.



It sure uses up a lot of batteries!



Oh-oh! Sebrina at the recon desk has just notified me that Maskatron and Spirella have been sighted having lunch with Evil Bob Robo-Dole at a local deli counter. I'm actually a little peckish myself, so I guess it's time to draw our tour to a close.


When I get a quiet moment, I like to look at my collection of
glass eyeballs.

Well, thanks for dropping by. I hope you learned something you didn't know before, but prepare to forget it all as you stare into the Selective Amnesia Ray Generator. Stay old!

Visions of Steeltown

Mindwiper Mishap

I was tinkering with Dr. Flavour's latest invention, the Winkmaster Mindwiper 4000, when something went horribly wrong. At least the Fakie log indicates that something went wrong--I have no memory of the incident, or anything prior to 11:30 last night. It seems that the mindwiper went off unexpectedly, catching me in its memory-erasing gammatron pulse.

I woke up this morning in a cloud of unknowing. Who am I? Where am I? What the heck is a "fakiegrind", and who is the pervasive avatar known as Gyrobo? What, for that matter, is an avatar?! It's all gone, vanished--or perhaps hidden behind some kind of interference pattern.

I wonder if the effect will wear off eventually. Thank Neil Diamond for the blog, because without it I would have no idea about who or what I am. I've read through most of the posts, and it appears that I'm a secret agent of some kind, disguising myself as an unemployed bum in the north end of Steeltown. There seems to be some kind of sinister plot afoot involving hypnotists, robots, retired Canadian super heros and the Dairy Farmers of Canada--but it's all so complicated!

Maybe it's time to turn a new leaf, start over, take up a whole new hobby, or perhaps enroll in one of those home school courses for small appliance repair. Losing my memory could be a golden opportunity for renewal, but I'm worried that shadows of my past might yet haunt me as I attempt to break new ground. What, for instance, is an ollie impossible?


Picking out a new identity at the Dept. H cosmetic surgery ward.

Funny, that

Fact is, I having nothing much to say, so I've devised the following fill-in-the-blanks:

Today is a good day for__________________. The biggest problem with the youth today is___________________. Suddenly, the aliens landed in the capitol and demanded___________________. Scientists have proven that utopian thinking can lead to bouts of____________________. It only takes a slight adjustment to the controls to turn a dilapidated old Chrysler into a___________________. Leaving comments on blogs gives me a feeling of_________________________. The sun is a giant nuclear reactor that I use for my own personal____________________. I have always wanted to make cookies using_________________.




That about does it, methinks. Please sit back, relax, and ckick here while we initiate the Mind Wipe.