An epic plate of dimness descends onto the table.

Who is this mysterious waiter who brings us large plates overflowing with darkness? Did anyone here order that? I don’t think so. I think I ordered some spaghetti with a side of honey. I don’t see how the kitchen staff can mix things up so badly that they send out a plate of darkness instead.

But the waiter puts the plate on the table, right in front of me, and the dimness overtakes me.

I plunge headfirst into the plate, sucked into the blackness by my hair. My hair used to be brown, but now it’s been dyed a deep, emo black. All the kids are going to make fun of me. Damn that waiter.

Inside the darkness it’s all hissing and crackling. The treble is up way too high. I can’t find any equalizer, though, and so I’m forced to keep listening to it. I feel like someone put me in an unexpectedly tall highchair, and I could fall off at any minute. But I’m not positive, because of the blackness.

The next thing I know I’m driving a Seattle automobile, heading for a cryogenic storage facility where I can thaw out the dead and near-dead. Soon the frozen people will sing gospel with the unthawed and neverthawed people of the world. Their gospel might be chilly, but it will be alive and rocking the way only Seattle gospel music can rock.

And thusly I usher in the age of lightness into the darkness. The cops might stammer in confusion, and the breads might crumble at my feet, but I will not be deterred. Cuba will open its gates to the world, and Tipper Gore will send me so many shiploads of aluminum foil that I won’t know what to do with it all. But I will appreciate it and her gesture, and gladly accept it, for that is my destiny.

Unless I can escape from this plate of dimness and avoid all that hassle. That would be the preferred course of action, naturally. That waiter’s getting no more than a 10% tip after all this confusion. I don’t care if it wasn’t his fault, he should have remembered that I ordered the spaghetti.

This is shaping up to be a horribly wrong Valentine’s Day.

Zarry Zygom walked around Houston, randomly affixing wafers to lampposts. Why was Zarry Zygom putting wafers on lampposts in Houston? You can ask that question, but you shouldn’t expect a prompt answer. Zarry Zygom is made of mystery and confusion, and hates explaining himself to someone who asks a lot of questions.

The last time Zarry answered a question, it led to disaster. His feather fence around his farm looked impenetrable. But it was, in fact, easily penetrable, what with being built out of feathers. Once he explained its composition to some questioning stranger, his dolphin farm was doomed. For the past ten years he has spent every single day regretting that he mentioned the fact that the fence was made from featheres. He was a feathery fool for revealing that.

So no more answers. His lamppost crackers would remain a mystery until his dying day, and possibly even beyond that to his great grandson’s dying day. It might be a struggle to convince everyone to allow his wafer art to remain untouched, but it was the right thing to do.

“Never forget the dolphins,” Zarry said, when asked if he was sure that it was the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, in London, a famous golfer named Garnet had heard of Zarry’s lamppost work and mysteriousness. Garnet himself knew the bite of truth and the soft cozy blanket of secrecy, due to a sordid tale involving cheese golfing that we don’t have time to reveal here.

Garnet flew from London to Houston, found Zarry — outside, nailing a wafer to a lamppost, naturally — and handed him a pamphlet.

Zarry read the pamphlet and fell in love with it. He memorized it, and played it in the tape deck of his brain non-stop. Even the tapeworm in Zarry’s stomach grew tired of hearing it every day, and eventually was forced to move out and find quieter stomachs.

Together, Garnet and Zarry formed an unstoppable duo of secrecy. They formed a Secrecy Corporation, located somewhere around Nebrasks if rumors are to be believed, and communicated with the outside world solely via teletype.

And they were victorious. Their secrets still remain to this day, 7 months from when they started. Their story should be a lesson to us all, who commonly plod through the day, revealing truths and semi-truths to people we don’t even know. We are all submerged in a frozen lake of truth, and the only way out is the saving arms of the Secrecy Corporation.

One day they may find you, and hand you a copy of Garnet’s pamphlet. And if they do, you must accept it. Your ankles will thank you, for they love the sound of pamphlets.

She saw a spiderweb.

But this was no ordinary spiderweb.

No, this was a spiderweb of amazing scale.

Its width and height were unprecedented, but so was its depth.

Never in the entire varied history of Apologian Viedman’s life had she ever seen a spiderweb that could compare to this one.

It was so deep.

Most spiderwebs are flat, two-dimensional things.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being flat and two-dimensional. Some of my best friends have spiderwebs that are flat and two-dimensional. Heck, some of my best friends even have flat cobwebs, and I still speak with those people.

But the spiderweb that Apologian was staring at right now? Well, it was something special.

After all, it had an extra dimensional advantage over most other spiderwebs.

It had depth.

Pixar animators would have been proud to have to have met it in person.

Pixar engineers would have been thrilled to compare notes on Z-plane filling algorithms.

People who didn’t work at Pixar at all would have been interested in taking a scoop out of the spiderweb and mounting it on a wall in their den, as if to say to the world, “Hey world, I killed and decapitated this piece of spiderweb! Look at how impressive it looks here on my wall!”

Apologian was a different kind of person (she didn’t even have a den, if you can believe that.)

Apologian just stood there and watched the spiderweb as it swayed back and forth in the breeze.

Later, while on a safari in Africa, Apologian remembered that spiderweb — how could she forget it? — and was able to tell its story to a large African spider that had been strutting around as if it was the coolest spider in the world.

After Apologian told her story, that spider felt sad.

That spider signed up for livejournal and got all emo.

That spider wrote depressing — albeit amateurish — poetry, full of depthy symbolism and a strong dash of xenophobia.

For the deep spiderweb had changed the world.

That deep spiderweb seemed to have created a vortex of confusion, originality, chubbiness, and orchestral stabs that glistened up the soundtrack at all the right moments.

And that is the story of the spiderweb.

You can wash out your eyeballs
With the fads of the flyblown youth
But you’ll never be able to read a novel again
Because your eyes will have turned into hubcaps
And when those hubcaps are stolen from your skull
And you call in the cavalry to try to lasso the hubcaps back
From the thieving milliners who stole them from your head in the first place
The cavalry will just laugh at you, and blame you for everything that’s happened
To your hubcap eyeballs
Because,
After all,
What were you thinking?
Your dopey eyewash has deionized your entire head
And no Pope would ever be seen anywhere near your deionized head
So who cares about your hubcaps?

Put that in your eyeshot and inhale it deeply, like a desolate glacier sliding through the ocean
Wait, no, don’t do that, you’ll get an infection.

Hey kids! Do you know what your new favorite candy is going to be?

No? Why, then you just haven’t been paying attention to our billions of dollars of Grenadine Bowl ads, or even the title of this post.

I’ll give you a moment to glance back up at the subject line and acquaint yourself with our topic today. Go ahead, really. I promise not to go on until you’re fully up-to-speed on everything.

There, better? I hope you’re now aware that your new favorite candy is going to be Fungal Sideburn Juice! Yummy stuff, and every kid on the block will be drinking fungal sideburn juice, or else they won’t be cool.

Wait, no, that’s our secret project that’s planned for next month. Pretend you didn’t read any of that.

Your new favorite candy is going to be mint-flavored cadmium drops! Yes, it’s the healing and restorative powers of cadmium drops, but without that bitter aftertaste that left so many early cadmium adopters furrowing their brow — not to mention burrowing their frow — in amazement at how bad they tasted.

But that’s a thing of the past; our cadmium drops have a refreshingly strong mint flavor. Not only do they cure you of latency and increase your body’s energy storage capacity, they leave your palate cleansed. Bad breath has been narrowly averted. Your mouth will be so spotless, you could eat off it!

So go searching around your parents’ dresser and use whatever money you find to buy mint flavored cadmium drops! Seagulls will adore you, and headless sunbathers will write novels praising your brilliance at your purchasing decisions! Don’t delay, all the cool kids have already bought some!

THE LOG
Copyright 2008 darksoup.com. All rights reserved.
Release 11 / Serial number 20080206

It’s another boring day on your log. You’re floating down the river, same as always. Water to the left of you, water to the right of you. Water behind you, a gigantic wormhole in front of you. Same old thing.

Wait, no, that’s not right. You usually don’t have wormholes in front of you. It’s usually more water, just like on every other side of you. In fact, you can’t remember ever having seen a wormhole out here on the river. Hmm, that’s unexpected indeed.

> examine wormhole

The wormhole looks like something out of a movie about wormholes. It’s chock full of science fiction effects and whooshing stuff.

> examine whooshing stuff
(taking the whooshing stuff first)

You can’t take the whooshing stuff inside the wormhole.

> i

You are carrying:
a book on log identification
bleach

> dissolve wormhole

What do you want to dissolve the wormhole with?

> bleach

You pour some of your bleach on the wormhole. The wormhole skips and sputters a little bit, but that’s all that happens. All of its whorls are fully intact and seem to be functioning to full capacity.

> find a pig

You find a pig hidden inside of your log.

> take pig

Taken.

> throw pig into wormhole

The pig squeals in terror and clings to your shirt with all of its might. It’s not going to let you throw it in there, not when it’s still a fully formed wormhole that might transport it to who-knows-what weird galaxy on the other side of the universe.

> reason with the pig

You try to explain that to the pig why it needs to travel through the wormhole, but its squeals of indignation indicate that it’s not believing you. He’s staying right here, thank you very much.

> give book to pig

The pig isn’t interested in your book about identifying different types of logs.

> clean pig
(with the bleach)

The pig is now sparkling clean.

> throw pig into wormhole

The newly cleaned pig gladly soars through the air. Now that he’s clean, he’s much less embarrassed about being seen in public by strangers. As everyone knows, pigs try to keep to themselves when they’re dirty.

As the pig hits the wormhole, he disappears. The wormhole thinks for a few seconds, and then spits out a tray of seafood back to you in appreciation. The wormhole then vanishes.

> examine seafood

The seafood is a form of space sushi made from the kindliest piranhas you’ve ever seen.

> eat sushi

Yummy!

You have won. Congratulations!

There goes Numberfive, slowly receding through the trees, with a boohoo expression on his face as if he’s also thinking about how he owes me large amounts of money. Not to mention all of the rum he stole from me during the three weeks he was sleeping on my couch. Shouldn’t he replace my missing rum with existent rum, or at least refill the alcohol fund?

Unfortunately, Numberfive isn’t that kind of person. Rather, he’s the kind of person who finds Nevada to be a painful state to be in. Just looking at his skin when he sets foot in Nevada makes it clear that he experiences discomfort deep within his flesh. And, obviously, a Nevadapainful isn’t going to be the kind of person to pay you back after they drink all of your alcohol. Numberfive is a Nevadapainful, and so I just have to deal with it.

That doesn’t mean I have to like it, though. And trust me, I don’t. I shout at him and throw radishes pretty much throughout the day. I think he understands when I throw the radishes. Somewhere inside that well-worn brain of his he has to understand that the radishes symbolize the bitter red hate that I feel inside of me whenever he tries to drink my drinks and eat my eats.

So why did I let him stay on my couch in the first place? Beats me. Turns me into beets, actually. I think I just felt sorry for him.

His first e-mail to me said something about building wax biceps to glue on top of his real biceps, and could he use my couch as a testing ground. I immediately said no, which he took to mean something along the lines of, “Hey, have you ever thought about expanding into wax triceps?”

And the rest, as the Romans say, is history. Please don’t think less of me for giving in to Numberfive like that. If he’s ever threatened you with a rusty axe, you can understand how he’s a hard person to say “no” to.

But now he’s backing away through the trees, on his way to new parties and new whiskey. I wish him a long and deathless life somewhere in Bolivia. Fare the well, Numberfive! I don’t hate you that much.

“Why are you always such a stickler for correct hue functions? Can’t you just let your hair down a little and let us functionize these hues however we want?”

“The IRS will never let you get away with that! They’re nothing if not color snobs. They’d detect even the slightest shade of improper hue usage! You’d be sentenced to thousands of years in federal prison for messing with hues like that!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No, really. Here, let me open my mouth. Stare closely at my soft palette, and use all of your palm reading skills on my soft palette. You’ll see that I only tell the truth about the IRS.”

“It looks like you had pasta for lunch.”

“That wasn’t pasta, that was a piece of coral that had become malignant and needed to be taken care of. No, wait, you’re right. It was pasta. God, Italian food is so confusing.”

“That’s nothing, have you ever had Mexican food?”

“No, how does that work?”

“I’m not sure, I still haven’t figured it out myself.”

“Aren’t you a niche food expert?”

“I am, but Mexican food is beyond me. There are only a handful of people in the world who can eat it properly. It really takes a masters degree in Niche Foodology to understand.”

“Remind me never to go to Taco Bell.”

“Don’t worry, they wouldn’t even let you order unless you could prove that you had the proper licensing and certification to be able to eat their food.”

“That’s good. I’m glad to see that our government steps in where its needed and takes care of us. I’d hate to imagine what this world would be like if any random Rod or Stan could ride up on his camel, walk in to a Taco Bell, and just order some piece of misunderstood Mexican food. I think it would probably be the end of humankind as we know it.”

“That about sums it up, yeah.”

“Now imagine that the IRS is Taco Bell, and Mexican Food is your hue function. Using the wrong hue function will destroy you. You’ll become a vegetarian Freemason, never to be scrubbed clean of that vegetarian stink. Your colors will be wrong forevermore. Salt will lose its flavor. You don’t want to go there, trust me.”

“I’m beginning to understand where you’re coming from. Maybe your soft palette was right, and it’s worth being a stickler about hues.”

“Damn straight.”

“I will savor proper hues from now until the end of time. Improper hues will meet their doom at my hands. I will become the Hue Avenger. My colors will rule the night.”

May God have mercy on improper hues.

The click of my brain. It’s unending, sure to continue clicking long after I’m dead and buried. Its clicking will annoy future generations, who will undoubtedly exhume my body and dissect my brain, determined to figure out the source of the clicking. But they will be unsuccessful. It cannot be stopped.

Every step I take, there’s the click. Sure, I might be jarring my brain around in my skull a little bit as I walk, but that’s no excuse for it to click at me in disapproval and hate. I’m sure that the reason for my brain’s hatred of me is a valid one, because, let’s face it, I’m an easily hated person. But I just wish it would come out and tell me in person why it won’t stop clicking at me.

This morning I gargled lime juice to try to stop it. That didn’t work.

Yesterday I slept in the middle of an iceberg. The cost to drill down to the center was tremendous, and yet it still didn’t stop my brain from clicking at me.

Last week I feasted on yak blubber until my sides of my stomach were about to fail because they had been overstuffed so severely. That didn’t work. The clicking continued.

The day before that I carved a snowman out of candle wax and lit him on fire. I sacrificed my wax snowman to the Gods, and they accepted my sacrifice with open arms and a shower of rain. And yet my brain was still not pleased, for it continued to click.

I went scuba diving without oxygen. I wrote my own Torah. I briefly became Jack’s grippingly dark sarcasm. I cooked small portions of cow brain in my sissy cooker. I split firewood with my tongue. I collected snails in a bag and auctioned it off on eBay.

Yet none of these things have appeased my brain. It continues to click, click, clickclickclick. It drives me mad, and destroys my ability to distinguish between prefixes and suffixes. My head becomes grotesquely large as each click minutely expands the back of my skull, making my forehead appear minuscule and improper in comparison. No Taoists will speak to me. I haven’t been allowed into Grand Central Station in over two years.

No Presidential candidate will help me. My endless e-mails to Ron Paul go unanswered. Mitt Romney’s campaign sent me a ceremonial mitten, but after wearing it for a week I did not notice any change in the volume of the brain clicks. Barack Obama called me up to sing my brain a lullaby while I slept, but that was ineffective. Hillary Clinton bought me a new goat, but after riding the goat all over town, my brain still clicks.

Now, John McCain did send me Ron Paul’s blimp, which does provide some relief since my brain doesn’t click when it’s in the blimp. However, I can’t afford to live the rest of my live riding around in Ron Paul’s blimp.

And therefore I have no options left to me. Tomorrow I’ll try learning how to play the cello, and on Sunday I’ll fill the horse up with gasohol and drive off into the sunset, clicking all the while. You’ll be able to hear me, I’m sure.

My feet. My how they’ve grown. Today they tower above me like flesh skyscrapers, toenails sticking up into the clouds. I hope they don’t interfere with air traffic routes. Maybe I need to contact the FAA charting office and warn them about the unusual size of my feet.

My feet remind me of a story I once heard about a man called Harvey Ronderfield — or, as we called him, Harvey Bithmeisterson. Harvey also had feet, and he always would ask me how my feet were doing. Usually I would respond that my feet were in their usual condition, and hadn’t done anything recently that was worth mentioning. Of course, once in a while I would have a wild story about something they’d done recently, and Harvey always listened carefully, like a cat might listen to a story about feet.

But then I heard a story about Harvey. Apparently he enjoyed visiting Beijing to go shopping for Beijing oranges. He would often try to smuggle those oranges back into North Korea by hiding them in the soles of his shoes, until one day the souls of his feet spoke up and protested this illegal behavior. Harvey’s feet always had a stronger conscience than Harvey’s brain did, and once in a while they’d speak up and make themselves heard.

Of course, Harvey’s feet also had gotten a reputation as a pair of jokers, and Mr. Ronderfield (that would be Harvey’s father) had spread the word far and wide that Harvey’s feet were not to be trusted. Harvey had heard those stories, of course, and therefore ignored what his feet had said. As Mr. Yonderfield (that would be Harvey’s great-uncle) always said, “You can’t warble when you’re doped up on antibiotics!”

So Harvey continued into North Korea, so loaded up on Beijing oranges that he trailed orange peel powder as he walked. Naturally, he was caught by the orange hounds, arrested, and quickly sentenced to life in America. That’s where I met him, and where he persisted in asking me to tell him about my feet.

Which brings us back to the present day, in which my feet are skyscrapers on the corner of 36th and Broadway. The police might send a demolition crew to try to uproot them, but I don’t think I want that. I plan on digging my heels in, cementing my feet in place, and enjoying my new status as the footiest guy in the world. Pigeons will perch on the folds of my footskin, and they will enjoy it, for my feet give warmth and life to whoever touches them.

I will miss wearing sneakers, of course. Ah, sneakers, we had some good times together. But now our days are past. Try moving to Warsaw, I hear that people there all have normal-sized feet. The poor saps.