. . . also, do you need anyone to help review music?

crackwun@yahoo.com

crackwun@yahoo.com,

If I may take the last part first (and thus answer your question in what my lab assistant, Rob, terms "the dogged style"), I note that I do not, at this time, spend overmuch of my time reviewing of the Music(k)s (although there are some several pieceswhich I enjoy sufficiently to deign to share them with you, Acquisitive Readers, upon this, my fair Poor Mojo's Almanac(k)), and thus am not overneedy of one to be my helpmate in such. But, should the case be that you feel the great and overpowering lust to review of the Ars Musica, and your reviews or at the least quasi-cohate, invective laced and possessed of that certain duende, spiritu and/or chutzpah, then you are much encouraged to submit them to my Almanac(k) as Rants. My lab assistant, Rob, pesters me much to be sure to mention that for those whose work ultimately appears upon this website, they are given to receive one (1) complimentary beer, as just reward for their just efforts. Beer being the leachete of rotting grains, I am given the distinct impression that this would be much the "booby prize"— although Rob further indicates that "boobies fuckin' rule, Lord A.!", so perhaps this is all for the best in your topsy-turvey, updsidebackward surface world.

But, to now do what was to have been done first second (la mode Rob terms dirty sanchezed), I will recount yestereves Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) staff meeting, in which the question of Molly Reynolds was placed upon the agenda, for it is in all honesty that I knew not of where she had come, nor for what reasons.

"Yeah, I've been wondering that, too," Rob did comment, looking fondly upon Molly, "Muy mucho college degrees, prestigious stuff with the old job, then you're here on an unpaid internship. Shit, even I pull 42 large a year, and I'm no—"

"Wait," Editor Dave interrupted, as is his mode, "Fuckin' wait a fuckin goddamn minute!" He took to his feet, shoving back from the conferring table and causing the computer monitor featuring the teleconferring head of Editor Morgan— Mojo himself!— to wobble precipitously. "Are you telling me that this hempseed fucktard," his thinning head hairs shook about his head in a menacing tentacular manner, "Is pulling down $42,000 a year?" I believe the question may have been directed to me.

"Did he say 'forty-two thousand'?" Editor Morgan queried from his pixelated interteleconnection.

"Where the fuck does this money come from?" spittle did fleck in Editor Dave's facial beard, "When you bought this damn magazine off of us—"

"Someone answer me: Did he say 'forty-two thousand dollars'?"

"—it was tits fucking up! What the fuck happened? Where is my fucking share!"

"You received your share, Editor Dave," I gently explained, "Recall the fermented wheat juice? The denim jacket? The 17 thalers americanum? I'm sure Sang can—"

At this point Editor Dave's eyes, they did strain most alarmingly from their orbital sockets as he sputtered "Holy SHIT! I sold you my share for a fucking handful of magic beans!"

"No, not beans. Recall: beer juice, dollars and the jacket denim—"

Editor Dave spun alarmingly, stomping of his feet and flailing with his fists, "Great fucking dog ass shitstorms! Crap eating cat stomping mutherfucking— You!" he pointed at our staff accountant, Mr. Leeks, "Poindexter! What were the net profits in 2003?"

"I'd bet-a-bed-bed— I'd," he stuttered of the glottis, "I'd prefa-prefa-prefa—"

Editor Dave slammed both of his gawky manipulators to the table's surface, causing the papers to swoosh offtablely, the glasses of water to dance and sing, and Editor Morgan's cathode-ray-tube avatar to again nod and sway in ersatz agreement and near topple, "How much?" Editor Dave growled.

"thirty-seven million—"

"Pesos? Shekels? Sparkly sea shells?" his voice climbing higher with each word, "coruscating angelfish skins?!?"

Mr. Leeks stitched of his brows with the confusion, "No, Mr. Nelson: dollars. thirty-seven million dollars. Approximately."

A calm settled over Editor Dave Nelson, a calm far more disturbing than his sputtering spasticated rage. "Oh," he said. It was a calm like unto Death. "Why," he implored, almost a whisper, his eyes rolling skyward, "why has Thou forsaken me?"

"You know," Editor Fritz answered, despite sitting across the table and thus not being at all skyward from Editor Dave— which is to say in all probability not the one Editor Dave was addressing— "Maybe if you didn't cap on His only begotten Son all the time . . ."

"Fuck Jesus," Dave snapped, his jaw clacking shut upon the ManGod's name like a female's beak severing a quickly detumescing and insufficiently pleasing member. He turned upon his heel and exited the lab.

Silence spread thickly through the room, dense and cold as ocean water on the verge of freezing from slurry to icepack.

"Well," Molly began, apropos of little, "I was at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for several years— Clyde Roper"— I shuddered and shook of the headsac, forlorn at the mention of that name, and Molly gestured apology yet continued unabated— "Was there, off and on. A lot of folks came through Woods Hole, back from the field, and there was this rumor— this persistent, weird rumor of a giant squid in captivity somewhere in the Mid-West. Not the sort of thing you'd usually credit . . . I mean, it always came off as being half oceanographer's urban myth and a half funny sailor's in-joke . . . you know, one of those job related jokes that hinges on a juxtaposition or image, like that "by an Occult Hand" thing journalists do? Not a funny-haha in-joke, but a funny-strange in-joke, an in-joke that's more of a shibboleth: you make the in-joke to show that you're one of the folks who's in— although I guess maybe that's what all in-jokes are about, right?" she blushed of the face faintly and looked handward.

"But, anyway, there were threads in the joke, little consistencies that . . . well, I decided to follow it, and I wound up here. And this . . ." she waved her hand around the lab, around the table, "I wouldn't have stayed . . . no, that's a lie: even if it'd turned out to just be an intact giant squid corpse in good shape, or a living specimen of some other species of simply unusual size, I would have stayed for a little while, I would have done my research and gone. But this . . . It's just," a resonating redness crept up across her face, "well the Giant Squid, this Giant Squid— You—" she looked up at me, a bold fire enlivening her eyes, "Are such an interesting specimen. It was an opportunity I couldn't refuse or resist. I was drawn here." Her gaze lingered long, and then dropped floorward, "So, yeah," she rolled her eyes up, to the ceiling, glancing about the lab in its diverse qualities and outfittings, "I'm here."

As you can well imagine, flattered I was and continue to be.

So, then, it would seem the wisdom is this, crackwun: make an interesting specimen of yourself, and the beautiful girls shall present themselves.

I Remain, Humbly,
Your Giant Squid