Categories
Stories

Food Trucks of the Open West, #1: Codpiece Feeshbus.

Note: This is a JM Classique™ post. Photobucket are monsters and broke image links from ten years ago, removing the images from old forum posts. Since I’m going through each old post and re-hosting the image on this server, I figured I might as well shove the post here, too. JM Classique™: Your Trusted Brand of Yestercrap.

During the Great Depression, a tiny gentleman of unknown origin (having been fired from his job as a drill bit at Consolidated Telegraph & Armament) decided that the real money was on vehicles that have food within them, an unknown concept at the time. Fine society reacted with horror as the tiny gentleman carried ingredients on board his custom-made bus; shocked were those who witnessed him grilling a fish inside of it! However, within five years the name of Codpiece Feeshbus was known throughout the land (no doubt helped by its famous advertising slogan “Codpiece Feeshbos — Invast in Ameerica — eh fish BOS”), and it became but the first of a fleet of enfooded conveyances the likes of which had not been seen before, even by Lord Protector Saumarez. Thus, it is only fair that we begin our examination of food trucks of the Open West with the first — Codpiece Feeshbus.

The custom Feeshbus was constructed out of polyrods and unibars and The Colonel’s Own Dimensional Aluminum, such that the different levels could be scaled in realtime to meet customer demand. This allowed for the inclusion of three levels. The primary level, in the middle, is the bus’ raison d’être — the restaurant itself, complete with state-of-the-art freezing, cooking, and larking about facilities. It is strictly take-out, and offered no dining accommodations. The menu features family favorites such as glowing mackeral tongues, beer-battered hammerhead shark, and a charming mixture of endangered oysters and lead shot entitled “The Lieutenant’s Heartbeat.” The defining feature of Codpiece’s titular restaurant is a dish made by dumping 101 live sharks into a tank, and forcing them to fight until only one remains. The patron is then invited to eat the shark who killed a hundred other sharks. It is rumored that there exists a secret menu with a 1001-shark “eat a winner” dish, although nobody powerful enough to order such a thing has come forward to be interviewed.

Below Codpiece’s restaurant lies a satellite branch of renowned Stalinist nightclub Feis Kontrol, promising untold opulence for the select few patrons allowed in. After the fall of the USSR, the Feis Kontrol in Codpiece Feeshbus became the primary location, and attained independent fame as the home of Borislav’s Bathtub Wodkas VLLC., including Borislav’s Cubic Label, Borislav’s Theoretical Label, and the vaunted Borislav’s No Label, renowned for its ability to force a party situation in any terrain, not to mention its unparalleled ability to remove parasitic marine life from the hulls of cargo ships. Feis Kontrol was and remains notoriously selective, requiring potential patrons to demonstrate their peerless attractiveness, shocking wealth, and superhuman mental powers. It is rumored that Former Japanese Prime Minister’s Voss Nose Motoring Concern was founded to build tanks to destroy Codpiece Feeshbus after Hata was turned away by Feis Kontrol perimeter security forces, although Hata forgot about that goal and decided to start the Crimean War instead.

Lastly, the Feeshbus is topped by the office of Lawbear & Partners, one of the world’s pioneers in pastrami rights cases. The proprietor (also the owner of SAAB) and his cronies rented the space from the mysterious owner of the Feeshbus in 1981, after their success in Roginald v. Admiralty Processed Meats; Lawbear & Partners now receive five cents for every pastrami sandwich sold world-wide, and they use their remarkable wealth to ensure the availability of deli meats to all who crave them, regardless of race, status, or height.

Codpiece Feeshbus can generally be found on Saumarez Processional Boulevard, between Guadalarama St. and 44th, or across from the Terrordome during foot-to-ball season. This reviewer ranks their seafood highly, as his family is being held in the Feeshbus’ reactor core until this favorable review goes to print.

Categories
Stories

Infirmapleurisy

The first step is to surprise a cephalopod. A captive cephalopod is no good as they live in a constant state of wonderment at their captors, the bipeds, and so their ink defense produces something closer in spirit to sliced pork. No, my friends; you must go below the ocean’s first two layers (the “chump layers”) and dive deep into the tubelcaine. This is where cephalopods feel at home.

I am a bivalve! You are a bivalve! But although we may disagree on matters which do not concern the separation of the Two Valves, surely you agree that the rich consistency of an octupus’ ink has nothing on the squeezings of noble Dodecaphles, patron saint of the overly grabby. In the tubelcaine, we will find peace. Together, we will be banned from all fountain pen forums.

 

Categories
DIY Junk Stories

It’s-a Me, Blorphlax

I made-a the pizza-pie!

Apart from making good sauce, I found that the trick to it was laminating the bejesus out of the dough — roll it out, cover in butter, roll it up. This is alluded to in the work “Roll it up, light it up” by noted chefs Cypress Hill. Likewise, you have to follow their topping advice carefully, and break off sausage in the right proportion.

One time a reputable lady grated mozzarella right into my mouth.

Anyway, pizza is pretty good, so I suggest that if you want some, you should eat a pizza. Pizza was unknown to the Maratha empire, but a lot of their records still refer to “the Noid” and “Caesar of the Small Temple” and “the raging, cheese-fueled obesity of the North Korean potentate”. So listen to Peshwa Madhav Rao II and eat a goddam pizza. You don’t even have to make one — people will even bring them to you. Good people, people you can trust. Laminate your dough.

Categories
Stories

Strategems of the Reticulated Alaskan Goose-Ox

I understand why old people smoke—like, it makes sense if you were in a C-47 over the Netherlands and then your buddy Stu handed you a Lucky Strike and then jumped out and got blown to smithereens by flak, and then you wrote to your best gal and said “I’m gonna give Mr. Hitler a knuckle sandwich courtesy of ol’ Stu”, and now you smoke. That makes sense. But I don’t get why people my age smoke, especially since I grew up in late ’90s-early ’00s Palo Alto so with my friends that smoked it was like, hey, you can’t use smoking to help you look cool while angsting or rebelling. You gots nothing to angst about. We’re all rich as thieves. I’m low class by Palo Alto standards since my mom was a librarian, but I can go literally anywhere else in the country and they will just give me a motorcycle. Our Aibos are made out of fucking platinum, lady, platinum. Why would you smoke.

Anyway, I’m guessing that’s a huge problem for tobacco companies. It seems like they’re taking all their US marketing money and dedicating it overseas to make Gujaratis and Polynesians chew tobacco like some goddamn relief pitcher, and US legislation isn’t moving fast enough to allow Marlboro to make good money in the ol’ Humboldt Honeydew… the ol’ Tijuana Postholers… the ol’ British Columbia Her Majesty’s Own Marijuanulated Smokeable Goods. No, they need a new idea. One that combines a healthy aspect that’ll appeal to the young people with the “This is America and fuck you” spirit of their moneymaker. And I have it!

THAT IS CORRECT. Beef jerky that you can tear into strips, light, and smoke. Or you can eat it. But if you smoke it, it’s like a cigarette except it makes beefy smoke, then you can eat it. This is up there with my Kinect cable car game when it comes to good ideas, because there is no downside.

It comes in perforated chunks, so it’s easy to deal with. There could even be an extra-chunky “cigar” version for cigar aficionados who want to stop smelling like assholes. It could not be more simple. Cut, light, smoke, eat: Hambalo’s Smokeable Beef Jerky.

Categories
Stories

Half Past Zero Dark Thirty

00:15: LadaNivaGTI: i must go, low petrol for generator
*** LadaNivaGTI Quit (Quit: )
00:17: xxUmarov4Life420xx: ok buddy
01:42: xxUmarov4Life420xx: brothers, do you know what song is good?
01:42: xxUmarov4Life420xx: song of kelly son of clark, “stronger”, this is good
01:43: xxUmarov4Life420xx: blasphemous of course
*** vladimirpuddin sets mode: +b xxUmarov4Life420xx
*** xxUmarov4Life420xx was kicked from #freechechnya by vladimirpuddin (enough talk of kelly son of clark)

Late night Chechen ultranationalist IRC is probably “the bomb”.

Categories
Stories

Neutronic Blorpisy

This may not have quite the same consumer potential as the Ennui Smartwatch, but here’s another idea that I think has real potential for the corporate back-end market.

I guess I spaced out for about 20 minutes and was thinking about companies commoditizing farts, like, electric farts that make corporate logos. It could be in a pill form, and use nanobots or something. I don’t know. We’re still in the R&D phase. So far we’ve only mastered text-based farting — graphics are still a problem. The next step will be full unicode support, including emoji.

For now, though, the initial plan was that a company could have a batch of their fart-logos made, and hire someone to go around putting these in people’s drinks, making them violently ill and delightfully synergistic.

However, I ran this by legal, and an hour later a lawyer came and blew out a notarized fartsponse in my office; it turns out that putting pills in people’s drinks is kind of a party foul, especially at locations like metropolitan opera openings and if the plaintiff—ah, experimentee—might or might not be the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Court records suggest that the experimenter, my unpaid manservant Milosz, is actually a bit of a Hungarian ultranationalist on his one day off each year, and had Prime Minister Sobotka farting distorted pro-Budapest imagery throughout La Bohème. Once again, our apologies to the fine people of the Czech Republic and I wish to stress once more that nobody is more sorry or less responsible for Milosz’s actions than me.

Anyhow, that didn’t pan out, but then my board of director cat suggested that humans are vermin who will do anything with enough incentive. Why not just pay them? Surely there is some amount of money that will convince people to spend a day farting the Audi logo. We need to monetize America’s most gaseous people.

And lo, our new business model was born. As I said, we still have to perfect imagery-gas. But this is a top priority, as our text-based social fartwork is just not taking off as we hoped. But we hope that, in mere months, customized Brandolin™ pills will be available for gaseous co-marketers to spread the word about your business, illegitimate, coup-ridden government, or unlicensed space program.

Categories
Stories

Word to Yo Home Prefecture

Vampires are all worn out now, unless you work for the CW, and werewolves along with them. I say to you that it is time to bring back sexy mummy books, or possibly write some if they weren’t real before. I feel that this is the true way to the #1 spot on the YA Best-Seller List, not to mention true self-reliance as mandated by the Juche ideology (and, it goes without saying, our current Five-Year Plan). Allow me to present some excerpts suitable for use on Western Imperialist Kickstarter:

“Chad slowly unwrapped Amunkhare’s gauze. ‘Gross’, he said.” 


“‘Mortal’, she said, ‘were it not for being packed with natron and linen, I would be as moist as all the waters in lioness Tefnut’s domain.’
‘…Gross’, said Chad”


“‘Chad’, she said to Chad, ‘retrieve the canopic jar which is sealed with a likeness of Anubis. It contains my human reproductive system, removed as part of the mummification process by the temple guardians of Khar-Toba.’ ‘Gross’, said Chad.”

If the market absolutely requires it, we could alter the book to be a dystopian sexy mummy book. Chad’s name would be Chadniss, and Amunkhare’s name would remain the same.

Categories
Stories

H. R. H. the Neptunian Stevedore of Istanbul

Yeah, well, holideux and whatever. I mean, I was up until 4 AM throwing up because of chow mein, but that doesn’t take away from the lights and the gorgons and stuff. I mean, it’s a holideux. My grandma used to drive us down Gorgonnicus Lane in a beige Peugeot and she’d be all “I have a gilded scepter”, but you can’t command gorgons with that kind of scepter. You need a palladium one. It was then, perhaps, that I realized that Möbius strip intestines were a well-trodden concept with almost no remaining relevance in the field. But as the Peugeot pootled along, we’d look at all the yards with the gorgon lights and gorgon figurines and inflatable gorgons and gorgontivity scenes and I’d think “truly, to succeed in this rap game you gots to go hard in gorgon merchandise futures.” And that is the story of how I outspent eight Kaiserins but still missed the Tennyson-Waverley Real Estate Explosion. Man, holideux.

Cat

 

Categories
Stories

Recordings of Robonians III

Gliese Times-Navigator: So, you are the unit known as Li-

LITTLE JIM DOES NOT WISH TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS QUESTIONNAIRE

LITTLE JIM VALUES HIS PRIVACY

LITTLE JIM WISHES TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM ALL GLIESE TIMES-NAVIGATOR PROMOTIONAL MAILING LISTS

LITTLE JIM ASKS THAT HIS PREVIOUS REQUEST BE AMENDED TO EXCLUDE NOTIFICATIONS OF DEALS AT LOCAL BREAKFAST FOOD EATERIES

LITTLE JIM ASKS THAT THE PREVIOUS AMENDMENT BE IGNORED FOR REASONS OF PRIVACY

LITTLE JIM IS LEAVING NOW

Categories
Stories

Clericus Wajimal: Idear Professionel

I have a business idea on which the ground floor has available space: smartwatches for ennui.

It uses advanced motion detection and all that junk to measure the user’s listlessness and dissatisfaction with the state of their life. Like the Apple Health thing, or Fitbit, but for people that are into more than all that jumping and leaping and running about business. So it records all this data, and — the word “gamify” having been run solidly into the ground at this point — it rewards your sadness with a series of achievements.

Using Bluetooth it can sync with the wearer’s phone to collect enhanced statistics like “Quantity of Cup-of-Soup Bought” and “Hours Spent Driving Aimlessly”. I think this device can revolutionize the sort of modern emptiness that epitomizes modern Quebec. And it can revolutionize your emptiness too, American investor. Let’s aggregate our co-marketing strengths to do the stuff. Ennui Watch. www.partybutts.club, my tree fort, eight o’clock. Bring a Chinese OEM and a copy of AutoCAD. Together, we can own and operate the dream of every human, which is to have a data center inside an old missile silo, and have lots of blinking lights in there.

Categories
Stories

Georgius P. Adlethwaite’s Notable Curios & Unremarkable Hats

She shot him a penetrating glare.

“Ow,” he said.

Categories
Stories

Alpreseur

I bought a book on Amazon about the Battle of the Nile, and for some reason they suggested that I might also like this book, even though I’ve never bought a book that has anything to do with religion or politics, with the possible exception of all those biographies I have of Victorians who went “what manner of thing is this?” while firing a full broadside of grapeshot into some decrepit native who happened to have been standing around on his island, eating a guava, when a flotilla of Her Majesty’s Bestest sailed by:

Given that this likely-terrible book seems to acknowledge an ongoing dialogue right there on its cover, I was naturally curious about what sequels might be waiting on the publisher’s hard drive: