A Labor of Moles

The Infinite Navel

2006-02-19T05:23:00.000-08:00

When I was young
I had a recurring
dream I'd grow up to be Captain Infinitron and lead an assorted band of plucky guys named the Super Secret Society of Amazing Super Heroes. We'd have all the usual stuff like secret handshakes, decoder rings, cars with gadgets and all sorts of super powers like the ability to super-freeze or super-thaw, mind control, x-ray vision through any substance, except oddly enough toast, strength, stretchiness, climbing, diving, swimming, invisibility, and super etc., but most importantly the ability to fly, or at the very least hover like Hummingbird Man.
We'd each have a particular Achilles heel known only to the reader and every single one of our arch nemesis and of course we'd have secret identities masked only by sensible eyewear.
We'd work as ace reporters, milkmen, accountants, ditch diggers or idle playboys raised by butlers whose devotion borders on the creepy and of course we'd have the obligatory cast of companions named Connie, Biff, and a dorky sidekick named Kenny, Jimmy or anything that ends in a "y" who serves as comic foil during our endless adventures.
First and foremost we'd fight octopuses of every stripe. Why? For whatever reason left unsaid octopuses indisputably want us dead. Flying octopuses, space octopuses, invisible octopuses, femme fatalle octopuses, and even mad scientist octopuses because everybody knows octopuses have it in for us in general and anything with tentacles is bad, very bad.
Besides we can't let them steal our women. Even dancing around the whole idea of interspecies breeding the notion our Betty's and Jane's would be caught dead sucking face with an octopus voluntarily is entirely revolting.
Pretty much there isn't a billionth of a second that passes where some octopus isn't dreaming up yet another malevolent scheme for Captain Infinitron to foil and he's the one who "gosh darn it-not again" drops everything to do it.
One thing we won't have is a girl join the Super Secret Society of Amazing Super Heroes and I'll tell you why.
It isn't because gals can't make a dandy super heroine either, no sir-ee Bob anytime you slip a super breasted gal in a gleaming gold bra and a sequined Speedo it's a good thing but it's the same reason you don't let them in your tree fort.
Pretty soon your super pals would be falling all over themselves to impress super gal and octopuses would pretty much have a field day while we suck in our super guts every time she walks by.
Or we'd spend all day super bragging about whose eyes shoot a death ray furthest, or even worse one of us would marry her and spend the rest of his life complaining about her super nagging or not being able to go defeat Megatronic Octopus and the Venusian Slime Ray that night because "Sorry Super Guys it's my turn to change the diapers on Chrono-baby."
Oh sure, the rest of us would breathe a super sigh of relief and think hoo-boy he's super whipped but who needs that cluttering up our adventures?
We'd also battle bald evil scientists with gigantic foreheads who want to destroy, enslave, or mutate planet earth for no better reason than that's their day job.
We'd also rescue buckets of damsels in distress from every terror imaginable because if there's one thing a woman does well its scream, faint and fall into the clutches of a mad genius over and over and over again.
I know what you're thinking. What about the other super guys?
Well they're pretty much B-list super guys as far as I'm concerned.
I mean come on, a guy who dresses as a bat with no actual powers?
Or a guy that swells to enormous size, turns green and spends the rest of the day swatting bullets shot at him by the army for no better reason than he's big and green?What about Superman?
Well it says plenty about your lack of self-confidence when you take a name like that.
I mean who wouldn't be conflicted being rejected by your parents and not being allowed to blow up on Jor-El like the rest of your classmates?
What was up with the miniature city he kept in a jar in his so called Fortress of Solitude?
Learn to lock the bathroom door like the rest of us if you want to be left alone.
Why the hell doesn't he take one damn minute out of his busy day to un-miniaturize them?
Instead they sit on his table like a complex aquarium.
What kind of life is that?
So here now a lost episode of Captain Infinitron and the Super Secret Society of Amazing Super Heroes as published in July of 1953 by Astounding & Incredible True Science Fiction of Tomorrow Magazine:

Captain Infinitron & the Octopoidians of Venus.
By Mysterian

Sgt. Brock Bluster runs his fingers over the console punching buttons as fast as he can but its no use.
The sleek patrol ship's retro-rockets are helpless against the pitiless effects of the gravi-ray pulling his ship inexorably towards the gaping maw of the enormous Octopoidian vessel.
As his ship slips into the cavernous black opening he un-holsters his Z-ray blaster and picks up the microphone.
"Mayday-Mayday. This is Sgt. Brock Bluster of the Intergalactic Space League. I'm under attack from an Octopoidian vessel in quadrant nine."
A brittle burst of static is his only response.
"I repeat this is Sgt. Brock Bluster of the Intergalactic Space League..."
The clammy sibilant reptilian voice slithering out of his radio chills him to the very marrow of his bones.
"Yesss Sssgt. Blussster you are in trouble. Our Octo-radio disssrupter hasss completely jammed your callsss for help. Sssurrender or meet your doom."
"Never you eight-tentacled..."
An explosion blasts open the hatch of the tiny compartment and grasping red tentacles spill towards Sgt. Bluster firing his Z-ray blaster.
Zat! Zat! Zat!
Menacing tentacles crackle, roil and sizzle like bacon on a hotplate to no avail.
Then darkness.
The whir-dlee-oop-whir-dlee-oop of the Dictaphone belt being rewound repeatedly broke the spell of the crackly broadcast.
"Mayday...Bluster...lactic...
Oct...Quad...Nine."
"You're sure about this
transmission Radio Boy?"
"You bet Captain Infinitron, I was wearing the octo-filter helmet you got me in our last adventure, [see: Captain Infinitron and the Octo-Sirens of Death, A&ITSFTM #37-Jan '53], and even though its faint I think Sgt. Bluster is in terrific danger."
"I think you're onto something" with that Captain Infinitron's chiseled finger punches the glowing red disc on the panel in front of him.
The high-pitched keening sound pulsing from atop the gleaming chrome and bronze skyscraper of the Super Secret Society of Amazing Super Heroes, located in busy downtown Centralopolis, can only be heard by a
select few who quickly drop
milk pails, shovels,
pencils and tennis rackets
to answer the call.
"Men, we face the very real possibility the Octopoidians have created a spaceship so powerful the Intergalactic Space League's best ships are helpless against it." Captain Infinitron's gaze is returned with looks of grim resolve from the assembled Super Secret Amazing Super Heroes.
"Well I'll be a monkey's uncle on a hot tin roof."
"You said it Mixed Metaphor Man but if we don't find a way to stop them Earth's supply of Mono-Tri-Idium-4 from Pluto will dwindle and space travel will become a thing of the past."
"Not to mention the invasion that would surely follow!"
"Thanks Obvious Boy. I think we should take the Space Guppy out for a spin and see what happens.
"You mean we should poke around for the Octopoidian Spaceship and then what?"
"Good question Totally Oblivious Man. We're going to find them and poke them in their giant eye."
The Space Guppy, a sleek metallic bullet, slices through the atmosphere into space hurtling towards danger unknown.
At the helm Ensign Insanely Jealous mutters and can barely keep his mind on the task at hand because Mr. Busybody asked him how he was getting along with his gal, Peggy Pureskin.
"What's eating you, Ensign Jealous?"
"Sorry Captain I just let Mr. Busybody get under my skin."
"Don't you mean you got a bee in your bonnet because Busybody's under your Pureskin, old chap?" Mixed Metaphor Man grins and slaps Ensign Jealous on the shoulder in an attempt to defuse the situation. Ensign Jealous shoots him a venomous look.
"Don't start anything, Mixed Metaphor Man. Ensign Jealous keep us headed in the right direction and save it for the bad guys. Oh and Mr. Busybody mind your own business til we get there."
"Easy for you to say" mumbles Mr. Busybody under
his breath.
"I heard that" rejoins The Ear.
"Mind your own beeswax lobe-boy" whispers Mr. Busybody who could bicker under his breath for hours with The Ear.
"Can it fella's" Captain Infinitron looks out the porthole as Earth quickly recedes into the black void of space. He absent-mindedly twists the gold ring around his finger, which holds a generous supply of Infinitron pills the source of his super-duper powers.
Without those pills he's just meek and mild Herb Smedley, overworked, underpaid society gossip columnist for the Centralopolis Herald.
"Captain I think we might've found them" Mental Man announces, appearing in a dazzling puff of purple, blue, red, and green smoke.
Captain Infinitron and the others waive the smoke away in a series of annoyed gestures.
"You're getting as bad as Gastro-Intestinal Guy with that smoke Mental." complains Mr. Busybody.
"Sorry old chums force of habit. But my keen powers of the mind developed by years of training with fakirs in Tibet and India..."
"Do you have a point?"
"Thanks, Obvious Boy" mutters Ensign Jealousy to no one in particular.
"I heard that" says the Ear.
"Why yes I do, there they are" Mental Man points out the porthole.
Sure enough the Space Guppy is hurtling towards a dark ominous leviathan.
The Space Guppy lurches once then twice as a gravi-ray locks onto it with bulldog tenacity.
"Butter my toast and pass the ammunition."
"Well said Mixed Metaphor Man. Is there anyway to pull out of that ray Ensign?"
"I'm at full reverse Captain it doesn't seem to be doing any good."
"Might I suggest going forward instead of trying to pull back?" The disembodied voice of the Contrarian floats through the intercom. "After all I would advance the odd notion were you to build a gravi-ray to ensnare space ships for whatever reason you would devote most of
your efforts towards overcoming resistance."
"By Jove Contrarian you might be onto something. Why you have to lurk in the cargo hold of the ship while we're up here is a mystery to me."
"Captain Infinitron If you're there then I must be here. It's my thing as it were."
"I see your point" Captain Infinitron grumbles though secretly delighted at the Contrarian's solution to the puzzle of doom. "Ensign fire all thrusters lets see what those Octopoidians do with a mouthful of full speed ahead."
"Aye-Aye, Captain." Ensign Jealousy pushes the control stick forward.
The Space Guppy leaps forward at terrific speed like a greyhound bolting towards the
finish line.
The needle on the speedometer buries itself past the highest number: mach infinity!
The Octopoidians never know what hit them. The combined force of the gravi-ray and the thrusters slingshoot the Space Guppy into the slowly opening mouth of the sinister leviathan and through the rest of the ship in the blink of an eye.
The Space Guppy blasts out of the tail of giant ship as it explodes in a flaming burst of metal, glass and bits of hissing Octopoids.
"Goodness we went through them like a hot knife to the solar plexus."
"Right again Mixed Metaphor Man, looks like job well done guys" Captain Infinitron pauses and reflects somberly "we didn't save Sgt. Bluster but we sure as heck saved Earth."
"I wouldn't say that Captain" the Amazing Teleport-O shimmers into view holding an unconscious, battered yet still breathing Sgt. Bluster "thought I might sightsee a bit of the ship before you chaps finished your high speed soiree."
Captain Infinitron and the Super Secret Society of Amazing Super Heroes join in a hearty chuckle.
Stay tuned to these pages for the further adventures of Captain Infinitron and the Super Secret Society of Amazing Super Heroes in the next spinetingling installment of:
Captain Infinitron & the Octopoidians of Venus.

The Infinite Navel

2006-02-18T05:23:00.000-08:00

Am I obsessed or alternatively focused?
Why Sandra Dee?
Why not?
I only ever saw Gidget which is Lolita without the controversy or the Nabakov for that matter.
Give Humbert a surfboard and he's not such a bad guy. But the real story is Sandra smoldering like a ripe hothouse orchid of lustful innocence ready for the plucking she'd burst in your mouth like the first taste of ice cream on a hot summer day. Other than that I can't recall another thing about her. But there's purity in my obsession. Like all celluloid virgins she was ultimately sacrificed on the altar of fame but I didn't walk down that littered path of her career, swim through her failed marriage to Bobby Darin or mourn her untimely early demise. So she'll never remind me of my own mortality by aging, failing or leaving. I treasure only prime USDA choice cut memories of Sandra Dee and wonder why anyone need look further than her bee-stung pout or molton adorability in Gidget.
I keep thinking how cool it would be to live in a world of Kookie's, Moondoggie's and Gidgets knowing full well they were about to be ground up like hamburger in a cultural meat grinder and spit out in the snap of a Beatles' finger. I'd even have a cool nickname like Surf Booger, drive a metal flaked hot-rod, and play reverb drenched guitar licks on a pristine white sand beach with a sunburst Fender Jazzmaster. I'd attend an antiseptic white-bread high school where the biggest concern was who to ask to the prom and not even see the looming jungles of Asia casting their long shadow across my Pacific drenched paradise. I'd bag chicks named Connie and Susie with brothers named Brad and Chip and we'd win the State Championship with my last second shot, touchdown or triple followed by groping the night away at Inspiration Point after the big bonfire while Buddy Holly jingle-jangled deep into our psyche before falling from the sky. But all the while I was reaching up the chiffon poodle skirt of my enormously well breasted date I'd be thinking: "Come on Gidget kiss the Moondoggie where it counts." Eventually I'd get Sandra Dee because that's what happens in the movies. No dream unrealized no outcome improbable. I'd be buying a jar of mayo or maybe a copy of Kerouac and I'd bump into her by mistake and she'd smile and I'd smile and I'd say something witty like "Would you like to listen to my transistor radio?" and she'd say "Yes I'd like to bear your
children because you own a nice portable appliance." Or maybe I'd be listening to Chet Baker, smoking an unfiltered Lucky Strike and watching waves crash against the bleak empty tomorrow of my soul and she'd be all trying to get my attention with a really cute pink bikini and telling her friends I was a dreamboat or the living end. Then we'd go to the prom and drink lots of punch while wearing silly hats. Would she be surprised, when we stood under an orange moon the size of Jupiter holding hands, that I'd whisper the reflection of fireflies twinkling in her eyes was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen let alone imagined? Probably not, but right as I kissed those perfect lips the music would swell and a big yellow "The End" would spash across my Ozzie & Harriet world because it's better to freeze at the golden moment than tarnish in the after.

The Infinite Navel

2006-02-17T05:23:00.000-08:00

Let's walk a mile in the moccassins of Alferd Weathergill, noted author of this year's must have coffee table book "Final Frontier, Our Vanishing Dumps" (Harper Collins, 887 pages, illustrated).
I met Alferd on the slopes of the Peaquonsick Garbage Dump located in the scenic rolling hills of central New York.
Alferd is a spry octogenarian with a flair for malaprops and little patience with those who don't share his views.
Over steaming hot cups of black coffee poured from a cracked thermos we discussed his life's work.
"Some say there's no place for dumps in polite society but I say why not? You got a toilet in your house. dont'cha?" He slurped loudly and pointed to a large rat waddling into a hole concealed in a mountain of broken furniture, rain-slurried paper, metal and weeds. "Better he find it here than have to go to the trouble of knocking on your door."
I asked Alferd to explain the title of his book.
"I consider myself the last citizen standing on the final frontier of mankind. A modern Captain James T. Kirk, if you will indulge me a conceit."
"Didn't Captain Kirk live in the future?"
"That's what they want you to think, Sonny, but in reality that were just a television show back in the sixties when your Ma was probably burning her bra. Now getting back to cases. Trash is the final frontier of all objects. My Daddy said so when I was a young galoot and his Daddy told him pretty much the same."
"Only there was no Star Trek then."
"That's right, now you're catching on, when my Daddy was a lil' potato Captain Kirk was well in the future. His only dream was to craft a living the same way his Daddy did by making a living on the impatience of people in general."
"Impatience?"
"Yep, I asked the same thing, see trash is a result of impatience, you get tired of eating that same old meatloaf, your shirt has a hole in it but you buy another rather than mend it, your television only gets half the stations it used to, even though exactly none of 'em are worth watching, impatience. Now I don't expect everybody to see my point even if God gave 'em twice the eyes they don't seem to use but I grew up in a household where you learned early on there's plenty of life left in an old shoe if you don't mind mixing and matching."
"Mixing and matching?"
"Sure, who says you got to wear the same exact shoes on both feet? I didn't. You didn't. I'll tell you who did. The damn shoe maker!" He lit the butt of a dingy grey cigarette. "It don't make no nevermind to your feetsies, they ain't got eyes. I understand if'n you're wearing a sneaker with a boot makes you walk crooked but one sneaker's as good as the next far as I'm concerned."
I fought the overwhelming urge to look at his feet.
"Take this cigarette fer instance. There was still over a quarter of it left when somebody stubbed it out." He glared at me through a thin spire of smoke."
"Impatience?"
"You got it Sonny. I grew up learning to be patient. After all my house was built from the wealth of impatience spilling off the conveyor belt of conspicuous consumption. Did it matter if my sister's favorite doll had no head? No it just grew her 'magination. Did it really matter I thought rats was squirrels until junior high? Nope, they both vex the hell out of you if'n they get inside your house. Was I worse off for finding out the jacket I wore to the formal dance in the 9th grade was the exact same one Wanda Steltz's gram'pop dropped all the way dead in? Nope. He was sure as hell done with it." He poked me and pointed to a geyser of flame shooting out of a pile of trash. "That there's the mee-thane gas. You gotta burn it off less'n you end up dead as toast in your bed. Same as tires them'll kill you quicker than pants full of rattlesnakes."
"Tires?"
"Oh sure when they commence to burning them fumes creep like an injun right up under your nose and snuff you like a church candle. Read about it happening all the time in Dump Quarterly."
"Isn't DQ where you got your start as a writer?"
"You bet'cha. I sent them some humorous notions and such until one day the editor, Philas Trent Fasenwack, a great man if ever there was, called and offered me a job as a roving reporter. It being the Depression and all my Daddy said Son if they going to pay you to scribble what everyone plainly sees then take it til they comes to their senses. My Daddy always saw right through to the nubbin of things. We called Mr. Fasenwack, PT, which made him kind'a angry cause that other fella Barnum gave PT a bad commutation but I think secretly he enjoyed the notoriety, 'specially at the DQ Awards Banquet held once a year in Walnutport, Pa."
"The DQ awards?"
"You think them Hollywood fella's is the only ones to whoop 'n holler at a job well done? No sir-ee Bob. Every year we'd scour the country for the dumps that were doing it right. Why I remember to this day the standing ovation Jenkins got in '42 where he said the fight may be overseas but we'll win it here in the dump." Alferd paused and cleared his throat. "Americans don't realize recycling cuts the income of a dump to the bone. Without aluminum, metal, glass or paper, we're just a lot of spoiled cabbage rotting in a heap of busted furniture. Them were giants in those days that gave their all for the cause of defeating them japanese and german fella's bent on taking over the world. Hard on their families too. Excuse me." He blew his nose. "I was drafted in '43 and served with the 267th Combined Reclamation Battalion in Europe. A fancy word for garbageman and dredger rolled into one. But it did give me a chance to see the world albeit with a dreadful notion some german sniper was going to park a bullet in my noodle while I was bulldozing some trash."
"Was it difficult after the war for you?"
"Well I got my job back at DQ and even succeeded PT as Editor in Chief 'bout halfways through them Eisenhower fifties but by then my Daddy was making noises about wanting to fly fish more and work less so in 1962 I came home for good and put scribbling on the back burner."
"So you've seen the business change in the last forty years?"
"Well it used to be we were the just smelly end of the other side of the tracks. But them suburbs gobbled up land like a fat guy at an all you can eat buffet. Then them damned economists started in on pollution and saving the whales."
"Ecologists?"
"Them too. Next thing you know they ain't dumps anymore them is landfills. Recycling is fine when you needed to make bullets but to make a bunch of hippies happy? All it did was put all the mom and pop dumps right out of business so them big fella's could grab 'em all up pennies on the dollar. Made a right proper mess out of things."
"I see your dump hasn't changed much."
"Well folks has got more sense around here than some other places. Saw no reason why Lum's kids couldn't go on picking up their trash and dumping it here like always. Made them big companies sore as hell but ain't nobody out this way ain't owned their place for generations and they aims to pass it on not see it turn into one of those mountains of trash they call a landfill. Why they'd be persona non thank you at all the church socials if they did sell." He dumped the remaining coffee in a slow moving trickle of coffee colored ground water. "I reckon if I ever sold this place would be filled to the ceiling with New York City trash so I keep going."
"No kid to hand it down to?"
"Hell yes, he's out sowing wild oats like I did and finding out why farming impatience in paradise beats running the rat race."
"I've seen quite a few rats here in paradise today."
"Them is always rats in paradise, Sonny."

The Infinite Navel

2006-02-16T05:23:00.000-08:00

If I reach for a cookie and there is only a cracker am I poorer for the experience?

Who ate the last cookie and left the crummy cracker instead? I'll bet they're happy.

Is the anger I transmitted equal to the anger I received? If not I'd better get going.

When I perceive truth does the it matter that it will have to nest in a thicket of lies in my mind?

Sometimes I'm glad insects don't have lungs because every once in a while they'd all inhale or exhale at the exact same time and I bet that would be a disturbing sound.

Once not so long ago I had a pet ant I named Krispy because he like dragging bits of bread crumbs from my counter to a tiny little hole in the wall. He'd show up everyday at the same time and I would delight in his tiny herculean efforts to wrestle that crumb back to his nest. Then one day he went into an ant trap and I never saw Krispy again.

Sometimes I think what if I hurt your feelings? Then other times I think screw you.

My favorite teacher in high school was a guy named Seeds because he taught biology. He replaced a teacher named Bones. I think it was some sort of theme. I can only hope the new kids at the school have appropriately named teachers like I did.

Toast is both a verb and a noun that must really be confusing to bread.

I once wished on a falling star because as belief systems go it's pretty straight forward, make a wish, star falls, wish granted. It worked too. My next door neighbor who I really didn't care for drowned in a vat of butterscotch pudding while working at the Swiss Miss plant later that night. Lesson learned? Be careful what you wish for it may come true in a steaming vat of butterscotch pudding.

The Infinite Navel

2006-02-15T05:23:00.000-08:00

When worlds collide do any of the inhabitants remark "Boy this is ironic?"

I'm tired and not a minute too soon.

Initiative will be the death of us all.

Whoever died from a lack of initiative?

Is modern society ill or just the current crop of zygotes?

Why should we care about ecology when glaciers clearly don't give a crap?

Sometimes I can hear my heart beating so then I repeat "Lum-Lum-Lum" as loud as I can because I don't want to hear my heart stop beating, which if I understand the literature correctly, will kill you.

I bought advice books until I realized people who give advice should mind their own damned business.

If you made a grilled cheese and it really looked like Jesus Christ but ate it anyway will you go to hell?

If so is there a special section for people who ate food that looked like Christ?

Whenever I watch movies I keep thinking:
"What a bunch of phonies those aren't even their real names."

I just don't care what actress dates what actor no matter how stupid a contraction their name makes.

Why didn't they call Tom Arnold and Rosanne Barr "Barnold" or "ToBar?"

If politics is so important why isn't there a better word for idiot?

Sometimes I see the glass half empty, other times half full, what's your point?

I'd like nostalgia a whole heck of a lot better if it didn't bring back so many bad memories.

Sometimes the voices in my head come up with a good idea.