Super-Duper 3-in-1 Spectacular! (*)

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*Note to readers (HA!): This post contains three selections, two possibly unrelated chapters

from Version Preta-Volno in the main section separated by a horizontal line, and a third

comprising the 'captions' of the accompanying images, read in sequence, top-to-bottom

from Version Kosimu-Losmita. Yes, dear ones, there WILL be a test, so please read carefully!

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The woman who will accompany our family to an Oral Roberts Jr Revival Crusade at the Tulsa Oklahoma International Fairgrounds on the 27th of July, 2026 has been accused of placing a nondescript smallish  piece of dull gray metal near a municipal parking facility in a neighboring community. When I've tried to console my wife she snaps at me like I'm the 'bad guy' here. I try to explain to her that my hearing aid is quite expensive and I haven't even begun to piece together the sequence of events that seems to have us stymied in more ways than one.

When I received a call from my brother, Dr. Ralph Pesmo, who serves as Adjutant Physician with the United States Emergency Corps in the suburban Chicago area, I was at that very moment engaged in a bitter real estate consolidation/impalement arbitration process with a third party land-trust enfeeblement mismatch league that had been dragging on for what seemed like several hours. So you can see that I wasn't in a particularly stable frame of mind when my brother asked me to lend him the equivalent of sixty-five Scottish farlings to help him settle a gambling debt to an Albanian racquetball champion who'd been diagnosed with terminal Alfa-Baster syndrome: life expectancy fifty one seconds.

When my wife rolled our remaining vehicle into the side alley, which abuts the Hirshorn Dishware Outlet, in an obviously hopeless strategy to cultivate an image of 'casual cool', I just about hit the roof. I slapped the kitchen table with my right hand and said a word that I'd never before uttered and—may God be my witness—hope to never utter again. Once I extinguished the overhead lighting in the den everything fell back to Earth and an eerie calm prevailed in a way that, frankly, wasn't quite 'right'. Since my third youngest son, Milver, is starting middle school in a few weeks, time is of the essence. I've been informed that Connecticut Law Enforcement will be commencing remote sensing operations in our District within the month so, as is readily apparent, there's barely a moment to spare.

If I could give anyone who might read this one piece of advice, it would be done in a way that would induce full and complete cooperation. Then I would escort them into a peripheral escutcheon and roundly praise their decision to resist the urge to raise their voice in situations that would seem to be quite ripe for that sort of response. And I wouldn't think twice about it, just so you know.

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There is an argument which often breaks out when the six of us, by now approaching our middle namelessness with not one ounce of despair, are seen to walk near a transparent display case containing a scale model of an unfamiliar non-earthlike planet. For my part, it's a cardinal rule to never participate in any sort of dispute, unless food is involved. The token, which I've taken to calling 'the brimby', a small copper affair with a long string, is rectangular and fits snugly beneath my huge and odorless blanket. I'm oversold on the notion of flight or fright at all costs, however, my third oldest temporary companion, Josh Ribner, needs to have an operation the next morning, so we have to walk quietly and argue using only soundless abstract symbols, or other things you'd never see underwater if you knew what you were doing.

I've been donating a carefully curtailed sense of exhaustion to an orphan who once lived in a dry streambed in anticipation of a unique separation from his native time zone. The six of us are given to understand that the way he likes it is not to be trusted. Our knees tell the whole story to anyone who cares to look, but still we pull ourselves forward in a jagged line. We've been warned that 'tongues will wag' but our torpulence forges a bond with like-minded appendetars the world over and any undue concern is no longer at issue.

It's when we round the final clump of bastardized rail furniture that an idea hits me like a jumbo package of lozenges. All along I've been making ends meet by selling access to a Phase 3 hideout in a rickety padded velmation cell and all the while a grievous rift has opened like a gaping artificial maw between myself and our retired notation inspector. If I were to place a dull flavored substance inside his tightest set of non-flammable injection vests, I'd soon be free to monitor a partial settlement agreement between the renegade Cayuga tribemembers who congregate in Borough Park on hot Summer evenings and a couple of Irish retards who have skin in the game. I could take all the colors and still be free to assemble a king-size mattress from scratch. This is where people like you could help me by trying to do a better job of fitting in. You might try watching TV once in a while or even walking as if still alive. Also, don't steal my candy anymore, if you don't mind. I'm going to eat your brain.

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