From the yet-unpublished columns of Spider Jerusalem, embittered and miserable bastard and sometimes journalist:
I have now been stuck on this miserable, backwater planet for three damn weeks, and I have thoroughly hated every minute of it. Ever since "the bathroom incident", when a freak rip in the space-time continuum was created by one of my more awe-inspiring bowel movements to date, I have found myself trapped on this backwater planet with no hopes of rescue and no long term prospects, save for the possibility of another truly legendary shit. To this end, I am eating vast quantities of cheese in the hopes of rescue.
I am currently staying in the small mining town of February - for some reason, the people here name most of their cities after months - where I spend my days at the local "saloon", watching grizzled old prospectors with nightmarish dental diseases drinking rotgut made from cactus and sagebrush.
This feels foreign to me. I have no tools, no journalistic equipment. My bowel disruptor is somewhere on the other side of the desert, my shades have a giant crack in one lens, and my supply of journalistic equipment and drugs resides on another planet. I don't even have my cat any more, although this creepy black-eyed moggy keeps hanging around me, watching me with its giant yellow eyes and occasionally rubbing its crotch against my leg. I think it runs the show out here.
The energy that powers the towns comes from these giant things called "plants" that sit on the outside of the town and look like overturned lightbulbs. Nobody really knows how they work, save that they do; apparently I'm not the only person who has mysteriously crashed here from another planet. This requires further investigation.
The esteemed proprietor ot the February Saloon is a man with the truly horrible name "Waltzing Grismo Bluddbuck". That's another thing - the names here are insane. Nobody has a normal name like, for instance, "Spider Jerusalem" - no, they have to go by the name "Splatgort Electro Bootlaces." Names with three words are popular; I tell people my name is Spider Jerusalem and they ask me, "Spider Jerusalem the What?"
There are five moons hanging in the sky. It is foreign and mysterious, an older and perhaps more primitive time, and I might actually enjoy it if it had any redeeming features whatsoever.
-- Spider Jerusalem
Spider Jerusalem, journalistic hack, outlaw, drug czar, and general all-around nutjob, got up from his table with its ancient typewriter and reviewed his manuscript. It wasn't bad. No, actually, it WAS bad. This whole damned, rotten, lousy stinking thing was bad. Trying to write without something to write about - nevermind something that he could sink his teeth into, something with scandal and violent sex and people that he could hopefully shoot - was next to impossible.
He got up from his seat and wandered over to the bar, where Waltzing Grismo Bluddbuck was polishing a beer mug with his spit. In lieu of anything better, Jerusalem had taken to drinking the local "rotgut". It grew on him, but was really no substitute for the comforts of home, either. How great writers of years gone by ever managed to write without essentials of life like, say, Monkey Burgers, filthy assistants, space dust, and crack, was beyond him. It was like trying to dig a path to China with a teaspoon.
Jerusalem sat down at the bar and sighed. "I need a story," he moaned to nobody in particular. "What do you people do for excitement around here?"
"Tractor pulls," muttered Grismo Bluddbuck as he spat into a beer stein, and shoved its contents around with a filthy gray rag. "That, and shootin' stuff."
"Fuck," said Jerusalem.
"Yeah, we do that too," replied Bluddbuck, "but mostly shootin' stuff." He plunked the now-"clean" beer mug down on the table, filled it full of some horrible liquid and passed it to Spider, who eyed it trepidatiously. "Most excitement we had around here was when Vash the Stampede came through."
Jerusalem took a sip of his drink, careful not to swallow any of the horrible things floating around in it. "Vash the who?" he asked, and wondered if the object in his beer really WAS a finger.
"Vash the Stampede," replied Waltzing Grismo with awe in his voice. "The man with a sixty billion double dollar price on his head."
"What'd he do?" asked Jerusalem, intrigued.
Grismo shrugged. "Nobody knows, really," he said, and spat into a shot glass. "They say (Hwaarrk! Ptui!) that he destroyed two towns single handed. The cities of July and August? Gone - destroyed, like they were never there."
Hmm, thought Jerusalem. Interesting.
"Not only that," continued the bartender, "but (Hwaarrk! Ptui!) you know that big hole in the moon out there? Vash the Stampede's work, they say."
"Very interesting," said Jerusalem. "This Vash the Stampede - do you know what he looks like?"
"Can't miss him," replied the bartender. "Eight feet tall, two heads, wears a leather nun's outfit and he sleeps with a python named Bubbles."
"Funny," mused Jerusalem. "I knew a man like that once."
"Small world," agreed the bartender, and spat on the record player. "Why do you wanna know, anyways?"
"Well," replied Spider, "I think I'm going to go do some journalism now."
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Thu, 13 Jan 2005 15:46)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.