The Great Beyond

“Where have I been?

“Where have I been?!

“Well where the hell have you all been?  I’ve been here the whole damn time.  I’ve been sitting right here wondering:

“Where are all my readers?

“Where are all my loyal readers?

“Why is it so dark in here?

“Where am I?

“when am i?”



Ok ladies, gentlemen, transvestites, transgenders, transsubstantiationalists, trainers, tigers, torries, tramps, and telegram mechanism operating professionals, I have a confession to make:

You’ve been loyal, o’ loyal readers.  At least I’m assuming you’ve been loyal, if you haven’t just keep your damn mouth shut because I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here.  O’ most loyal of the loyal readers, I have been less-than-faithful to you.  I have been spending my time(s) writing for more “legitimate” historical publications than my own beacon (bacon) of Absolute Truth (publications like “Antique Chair Appraisal Quarterly,” check out my feature in this fall’s installment).  Oh that and I’ve been dead.  Very, very dead.  I mean I don’t essentially feel that there are degrees of being dead, but if there are I hit a nine-out-of-ten on that scale.  At least.

I don’t know how I died. The last thing I remember was having a heated yet ultimately good-natured argument in the Chicago apartment of author William Shakespeare (I’m sorry to keep outing you Bill but the people have a right to know) when things started to get foggy and dark.  Ol’ Bill and I weren’t drinking but he had mentioned something about his radiators actually being chemical boilers, but somehow I doubt that was the rub.  Maybe he poisoned me, the crazy joker always did take things a little to far.  Yeah that sounds good, let’s go with I died because the Shakespeare and the whole of the literary community conspired to assassinate me with literal poison.

Regardless, I woke up dead.

D
  e
 a
        d

Deadzo baby.

So I suppose that this is me, coming back to you with messages from beyond the veil.  Literal messages (the veil is also literal).

Let’s see here … uh I have a message for a Mr. Moriarty from a Dr. Holmes, says here that “Your mother wants you to call her, please do so as she is bothering me, kisses Sherly.”  I have another from former president and abolitionist werewolf supreme Abraham Lincoln for a mister Barrack Obama Bin Laden, honest Abe says “Presiden’ts day is a sham, give me back Lincoln day.”  Finally I have a message for a Gail Winchester of Millburg Michigan, your husband says “Hurry up and get over here, don’t forget the beer.  Love you, your late leather daddy, Stu.”

That does it for mail call, now let’s get into the meat and potatoes of this.

Ok readers, so you didn’t hear from me for a while.  I apologize but no one can plan to die.  Well I mean, some people leave a will but one, fuck those people I’m living on the edge here, and two finding a wizard lawyer aligned to your guild is nearly impossible and I am what the magical legal word calls “a liability.”  So I didn’t leave a will.  Sue me.  In wizard court.  And I’ll be asking for accreditation.  Also this isn’t exactly my first rodeo, and when you write and cash out your third or fourth will, people start getting suspicious.

Maybe a bit of background is needed here.

I was born a poor black child. I remember the days, sittin' on the porch with my family, singin' and dancin... wait that wasn’t me.  Wrong life story, sorry that happens sometimes folks.  I believe that had something to do with The Pope.  Anyway I was actually born in 1006, the rather affluent sun of a Prussian baron who spent the next 770 years extending his financial and social influence to have me converted from a celestial body to a real boy.  It is from this conversion that my wizardly powers are assumed to have originated, but no one knows for sure.  Upon coming of age I was impressed into His Majesty’s royal service under the Hessian program (little known fact forgotten by history, all Hessians were actually wizards.  That’s what Hessian means, it means Wizard.  In German).  I never did see combat however, as somewhere abouts the Atlantic Ocean I engaged in a disagreement with Frederick II and was promptly thrown overboard and rent to shreds by a pack of sharks.

Literal Sharks.  I was ripped to literal shreds by literal sharks, and as my severed head floated there watching the horror and gore of my own uncommon demise, up rowed Death himself on a little wooden boat.  He hoisted my head onto the boat with him and offender to pass the time of our ensuing travel with a game of charades.  Body or not I am a world-class charades player and, delighted by the long and enjoyable game Death had me put together and sent me on my way.  To tell the truth, that’s how it goes each and every time.  I die, play a fanciful little game of charades (or perhaps Parcheesi or jacks) with Death and he boots me back out into the world of men.  Oh to hear him laugh, you’d never know such innocence!

I won’t belabor the lot of you with a detailed account of each and every time I’ve died,but for the sake of accuracy I have compiled them into a comprehensive, easy-to-read list.  These are listed chronologically in reference to my lifespan, not necessarily in “traditionally chronological” order.

• March 1777: Shark attack, see above
• April 1777: Ditto
• November 1892: Alcohol poisoning; potential shoe polish poisoning, somewhere in Missouri.
• May 1970: The 5th Fatality of the Kent State Massacre and the only faculty member shot in the fray, I was killed by a national guardsman for “being too fancy in close proximity to an authorized civilian shooting.”  
• To this day I collect settlement payments from both the University and the U.S. Government which has allowed me to fund my quest for The Truth
• 75-65 million years ago: Wound up in dinosaur times.  Shot, killed, and ate the 60’s rock band T-rex, died of food poisoning.
• September 1999: Sole victim of the tragic San Fransisco Data Mine Collapse.
• August 1969:  Mistaken for a younger version of myself by a group of young men on LSD believing themselves to be sharks at the famous Woodstock music festival.
• To clarify here, this did not happen at Woodstock, but instead somewhere in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.  The young hippies only thought themselves to be in Woodstock.  They did however pass for fairly convincing sharks.
• Unknown:  Traveled too far into the future, found the end of the universe.  Died of madness & retroactively reinserted back into the timestream.
• July 64: Rome, faked my death during the Great Fire.
• Honestly the writing was on the wall for the Romans after the whole Jesus thing.  When the fire broke out I saw an opportunity to disappear and I took it.
• November 1605: England, wrongfully imprisoned in relation to the plot to blow up the House of Lords.  Released that same night but captured and executed for “Being not thy person or persons of the offense in which ye suspect was apprehended, yet for causing undue expense and tarnish upon the image of the crown for failure to be the perpetrator of the proximate crime”
• Since then, I have urinated on the House of Lords every year on November the 5th in retaliation.  Because of an outdated blue law, this crime is still punishable with the sentence of deportation to Australia, but as I am regularly caught I have found that there is no exile attached to the sentence, effective meaning it is a free trip to Australia.
• Australia is a horrifying place of evil beasts where the sun beats down hot and dangerously.  I fear that death there is permanent there, for not even He dares to walk on it’s heathen sands.
• February 2001: Alcohol poisoning
• April 1987: Zombies, Romeros
• September 1405: Drove a parade float directly into the Philidelphia Ocean during an Oktoberfest celebration.  Suspiciously enough I was testing a new (ultimately unsuccessful) invention of Thomas Edison’s, the electromagnetic motion slowing device (an early prototype of what we now know to be “brakes”).
• January 2010: Car accident somewhere in Nevada, alcohol poisoning
• September 2011: Sacrificed to the pot gods by notorious rock band Mighty Tiny to further their quest to Hempfest
• Usually a sacrifice is a pretty final way of killing someone, even a wizard as wily as I, but the pot gods were far too high and forgot to actually accept the sacrifice, so this time I just sort of walked out and back into life.
• February 1979: Shot in the heart with a heart-shaped arrow after a heated dispute over my recent divorce with the standing cupid at the time, John Belushi.
• Heart-shaped arrows aren’t cure and they don’t fill you with love, they fill you with pain and, in most cases, an overwhelming sensation of “OH MY GOD YOU SHOT ME WITH AN ARROW AND IT’S STICKING OUT OF MY CHEST!!!  WHO USES OUTDATED MEDIEVAL WEAPONRY, YOU MONSTER?!  LOOK AT IT!!! THERE IT IS!!! AN ARROW IN MY FUCKING CHEST!!!”
• Cupid was able to get off by convincing the jury that radiation poising was the proximate cause of my death, despite the fact that I had returned to testify against that theory.  Anyway I ended up getting him in the end
• June 2003: Zombies, Boyles
• October 1994: Sobriety poisoning (it’s a fine, fine line I walk)
• 399 BC: Athens, drank the hemlock solution with Socrates, not only as a sign of solidarity, but because one of the other disciples wagered that I was likely immune.  
• Not only was the disciple wrong, but shocked that I later came back to collect upon the debt.
• Funny story about that one actually, I waited until he was extremely old and appeared before him in a long flowing black robe.  The poor bastard literally pooped his pants (or toga as it were) in fear that I was the grim reaper, itself a concept that would not resurface until the Middle Ages.
• July 1864: K.I.A. in the course of my loyal service to the Confederate States of America
• July 1864: K.I.A. in the course of my loyal service to the Union Army of the United States of America
• Apparently neither the North nor the South liked my proposal of continuing slavery on a non-racially motivated basis.  It would seem that I missed the point, the spirit of the whole slavery thing.
• October 1885: Fell victim to a bout of epilepsy which my primitive doctor refused to medicate me for, instead insisting that I was suffering from a bout of Jake Leg.
• February 1953: As mentioned in the preamble, died in a NYC apartment with Ol’ Shakespeare under the guise of writer William S Burroughs.
• I have to say Bill, that’s your laziest pseudonym to date.  WILLIAM S Burroughs? What are we supposed to think the S stands for?  William Sure-as-shit-ain’t-Shakespeare Burroughs?

So that’s it friends.  I suppose you could say I’ve died a whole heck of a lot, but I prefer to think that I really lived. Over and over again.  For very short durations.  Oh and they all end rather painfully.

Anyway, I’ll leave you all off here, for it is time for me to relax.  I’ve got a nice hot bath drawn, my twister board has been water-proofed, and my bathroom-toaster has not.

See you all on the other side.

-D

No image this time.  I replaced it with 1000 words.  And then some.

Nerves of Steel

Many historical figures get slapped with a bad reputation though the fickle lens of history. Caesar Nearo for instance, did not play fiddle while Rome burned (he actually commissioned an entire orchestra to play along to the disaster in an act most comedians and historians alike cite as the creation of the film score). Similarly, there is a lesser but significant number of fellows throughout the ages who have managed to have a far better reputation than their own sordid deeds would allow.

No I haven't forgotten you Thomas Edison you arrogant bastard.

Today however I intend to highlight an individual neither favored nor slandered by history. No, today I hope to shed a little light on a person about whom the history is woeful wrong. Yes due to a clerical error in the United States Bureau of Visionist and Revisionist history (of which I am, of course, a card carrying member).

Everything you know about Andrew Carnegie is absolutely wrong. Well, except for his name. That part is correct.

Andrew Carnegie was born the daughter of wealthy German immigrants back in 1830, but his parents, refusing to bear the shame of raising a daughter in the male chauvinist atmosphere surrounding the Philedelphia Ocean, sold him to gypsies who killed him and reanimated him as a strong Scottish man.

Looking to make good on all the advantages his upbringing afforded him, he quickly invented the railroad to expand upon his family fortune. That's when I met him. His piercing eyes cut to the very core of me and his massive hand, measuring a whole three feet across, instilled a fear and respect in me I have rarely discovered in another man. I decided I could learn much from him and entered into his propose a business enterprise. We would rob his newly established railroads and establish a security firm to protect it, forcing the senate to mandate that all trains be protected by the very men who would pilfer them. He loved it.

It was up to me to procure the necessary arms, so I slipped across the Mexican border but found it shockingly devoid of any of its famous debauchery that would not be invented until the early 1900's. These are the sorts of thing you forget as a time traveler. So after a brief temporal excursion to post-soviet Russia, I had returned to the vaguely precise 1800's with enough weaponry to impress Kaiser Wilhelm. Carnegie took the idea like a Frenchman to cheese and immediately we set off on our first robbery. Though, admittedly there were a few kinks to work out, as we got just a bit carried away; instead of robbing a train we just blew the fucker up. Our second attempt was even more disastrous as we accidentally ended up robbing a bus, which was even more confusing seeing as busses were still a wild species, domesticated at the time only by the Native Americans for farming purposes.

It was on our third attempt that we really struck gold. Literally. We robbed a train full of gold and decided to smelt it into a giant bell for convenient smuggling purposes. Unable to resist we tried ringing it and realized how frail it was once we drove a giant crack up the side. We painted it black and … well none of that's important but what matters is that having blown up one train, robbed another, and plundered a Wild Bus, we had instilled a substantial fear into the burgeoning railroad industry. The idea really caught on and soon enough nary a train could travel without being in substantial danger. It was now time for the second phase of our plan.

It was Carnegie who came up with the idea of contracting a group of disenfranchised civil war veterans into a protection for hire federation that would later come to be known as The United States Steel Corporation (a name applied for tax reasons). (Also to tie this nifty little tale in with any of what is commonly associated with Andrew Carnegie). It only took a small push in congress (and some grade A lobbying with a few tasteful fruit baskets) to make our infant band of train cops government certified.

Than came the celebrations.

You see probably the greatest crime about Carnegie is not that all of his professional train robberies were glossed over by history. Nor was it the removal of his government strong-arming or even the exclusion of me from the history books. No the greatest tragedy of the revising of this story is that it overlooked Carnegie's love of partying.

Carnegie decided that we would mark the success of our outlandish plan in style by renting out the whole of a real wild-west saloon and stocking it with his own personal steel reserve (see what I did there?). It was there that those piercing eyes met mine again. Nary a word was spoken; instead we headed straight to the upper rooms of the saloon for a bit more private entertainment. We retreated to our quarters away from prying eyes and spent the rest of the evening 'exploring the wild frontier'. It became quite the night to remember, a night that, just to be completely clear, we spent each with individual hookers in completely separate rooms doing nothing that could be in any way recanted as homosexual by any historian ever. Not ever.

Our partnership would be a short-lived one. It seems that in making the west a little wilder, we sort of opened it up to all sorts of unseemly elements, elements that would find an opportunity to make a quick buck robbing a railroad-robber tycoon on his night of R & R. Bursting into his prostitute-filled room with guns blazing they shot him several times, demanding whatever unspecified fortunes that he had. Yes that would have been it for the infamous baron if not for one fatal oversight by the readers … I mean robbers… an oversight by the robbers (seriously thought readers, don't think i don't appreciate you putting up with the crap). You see, next to our fiesta in the adjacent saloon were a group of abolitionists celebrating the recent passing of the … what is it … the 15th amendment? Whichever one freed the slaves. It was that amendment.

Editor's note: It was the 13th Amendment.

Yeah the 13th amendment! So anyway, next door they were celebrating the passing of the 13th amendment when Frederick Douglass, with his keen werewolf ears, heard trouble nearby. Always being a fan of American business, Werewolf Frederick Douglass burst in and saved the both of us from danger in the most gruesome way possible. It was then that he stipulated that Carnegie fly straight from that moment on, and let's face it, when you get a mandate from a werewolf, you listen.

Irrationally,
-D

History!  Now with 100% more Frederick Douglass!

And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programme

FOUR MONTHS?!

FOUR FUCKING MONTHS AND NOT A SINGLE ONE OF YOU BOTHERED TO ASK WHAT HAD BECOME OF ME?!

I’m just so… to think that…

Let me start again.


    After a long time away a man expects a few things. He expects his eager children tugging on his coat, welcoming him back and asking what presents he brought them as they gaze up at him with apple-cheeked smiles. He expects his wife to have a nice goose on the table (and she damn well better) and a glass of brandy poured. He expects his faithful dog to have his most comfortable pair of slippers at the ready and his lazy cat to have cleared out of his favorite chair if he knows what’s good for him. He expects to kick off his shoes, hang up his work mask, replace it with his relaxation one and settle in for a nice night by the fire. Why he’d even half expect Norman Rockwell to be setting up his easel to capture this moment of wholesome American goodness and wouldn’t be surprised in the least to find that image already at the front of his Saturday Evening Post.

    But I fucked up didn’t I?

    See, I don’t have any snot-nosed kids, a trophy wife or a dog of even questionable loyalties. I do have a miserable cat but suffice to say she wasn’t carrying any damn slippers. What I do have, lousy readers, is you, and perhaps I had made certain assumptions about our relationship that were not true… assumptions that may have been a bit grander than the reality of us, but I have come to expect that you and I have developed a certain level of trust and emotional involvement. Maybe it was a bit much of me to expect that you would go looking for me, but in all honesty was it too much to expect that in FOUR FUCKING MONTHS YOU’D MOVE ON LIKE I NEVER HAD EXISTED?! There isn’t even a goddamn memorial! If I’d have died, which I very well could have for all the care the lot of you gave, you’d have paved over my cemetery plot and erected a bocce ball court!

    How dare you. How dare the lot of you. Now here you are, reading my blog as though nothing had ever happened, expecting that I will continue to enlighten you with my own very special brand of truth and humor (though I never do quite grasp what all the chuckling is about). Do you expect that I’ll return and just start dancing like a little chimp again for your mirth? Well I’ve got news for you folks! This monkey has broken legs and a broken heart! Thaaat’s right, you picture the sight of a sad little baby monkey with broken legs, crying as he tries, again and again, to get back up and dance some more, only he just keeps falling down all because you couldn’t be bothered to buy him a decent pair of dancin’ shoes. Why didn’t you buy the little orphan some shoes?! Look at the monkey! That poor metaphorical monkey! Why are you doing this to him?! Aren’t you ashamed?

LOOK AT THAT MONKEY!!!

    Now this is what’s going to happen. I am going to sit down, put on those slippers and explain, to the best of my abilities, exactly where I’ve been the last few months because I, readers, acknowledge that we have a responsibility to each other. We are going to pick up the pieces and try again, me as your writer, you as my reader, and we will make this work. We will get that monkey a cast so that the healing can truly begin

ANYWAY…

Sorry, that was a terrible way to start off a homecoming. I just … well let’s put all that ugliness behind us. I think I owe you a story.

    Firstly, I suppose I need to tackle the matter of how long I’ve been gone. You see, the calendar says three months but my head says at least a year and my liver says a lifetime. Time travel, I have come to learn, is a real bitch for this sort of thing. Next firstly, I should address the matter of where I’ve been, that that in itself is an incomplete question because it’s answer is not only a where but also a when, and for this I have no concrete answer. Confused? Yeah so am I. You see, this morning I woke up and it was February. Last thing I remember it was October and I was drinking with the Democratic President of North Korea (yeah that’s a thing) and Thomas Edison in …

Oh. Well that explains it.

    Anyway something obvious must have gone wrong with my time machine because at what should have been the end of a night of mirthful drinking, instead of ending up in my bed the very moment I left (as is the custom of the time traveling socialite) I traversed the lands of time and space on a bender of untold proportions. Lucky for you, I have pictures.

    The first place I ended up was America sometime in what was probably the 40’s. Time travel isn’t an exact science you see. It’s even less so when Thomas Edison has sabotaged your vehicle. It’s even even less when you’ve been drinking for a straight twelve hours prior to operating physics-bending machinery. Anyway no one really noticed me, probably thanks to my impeccable manners and fine, if not slightly dated, style of dress. Oh they also probably didn’t notice me because of the parade. See for yourself.

    You are probably saying to yourself “Hey I don’t remember that picture being that way!!!” Well loudmouth you’re right and painfully ignorant to the nature of time. You see there are an infinite amount of dimensions with an infinite amount of possibilities, except unlike in the funny papers, each of these worlds isn’t filled with apes or aliens or alien apes, but instead are exactly like the one you are in now except last Tuesday you wore the blue shirt. No, not that one, the one you have in about a third of the alternate universi. Anyway, my escapades take place in one of those conviently-similar-to-our-own-while-still-allowing-me-to-make-things-up universi. Also this my story so just shut up.

    So after I had spent several hours swimming against the current of the parade like a salmon trying to make it back to his Bronx apartment to spawn after coming home from the war, I realized what must have happened: Edison had sent me off in time to be rid of me while he hatched another nefarious plan. I decided to one-up the old bastard and travel back to when he was born and sock him one right in his smug infant mouth. However, due to the aforementioned navigational problems that I will insist were less and less the fault of my high blood alcohol content as this tale goes on, I overshot the mark again and ended up in the 1700’s. Figuring I could have done a lot worse, I decided to relish the last chance I’d get to join a red army without communist implications, however low morale, terrible wine, and lead poisoning from an honest-to-god musket ball had me quickly attempting to return to my own time.

As you can see I didn’t exactly fit in.

Again, you can see that I missed, but I found a nice family to take me in.

Let no one tell you that Marilyn Manson’s dad doesn’t know how to party

   Well I was offered a bargain and I took it: I had to accompany the U.S. Military on a secret mission to St. Brazil, a nation located at the time not in South America but instead somewhere in the Phillidelphia Ocean, just north of Olde Cuba, both of which have since been moved and are part of the state more commonly referred to as Hawaii. That turned out to be a lot of fun as I met a young President Reagan on a mission the military codename “Moonraker”. In later years he would write me to tell me how valuable the experience had been for him and how it really was the inspiration behind his famous Star Wars defense initiative.

Little known fact: Regan was President since his birth in the early 1900’s and was born not with a silver spoon but an iron set of teeth in his mouth

   Still, my friendship with former President Reagan had left a hole inside of me, a hole that no ordinary super-president could fill. I was empty and alone. I needed guidance. So as I finally began to sober up from my time traveling escapades, I gave the ol’ thingamagig one more whirl and set off to find my own personal Jesus. Still a little off in my calculations, I ended up with the Russian one instead, which in my book is good enough.

No matter how catchy the lyric, under no circumstances should you “reach out and touch” anything Rasputin will present as “faith”

    Now here is where I may have to admit a bit of fault: after Rasputin was murdered several times unsuccessfully, he came to realize that his time was at an end. He expressed a desire to leave Russia while the gettin’ was good lest he end up the same way as regular Jesus (he also made some comment to me that I do not understand about already being ‘hung’) so I agreed to take him back to our time but I lost him somewhere along the way. Now I don’t want to make any wild accusations (or blatant admissions of guilt) but with a shave and a haircut, a man of Rasputin’s cunning and power could be anyone in Russian society. Even it’s prime-minister. I mean, I’m not saying that Grigori Rasputin and Vladimir Putin are the same man, but there is something familiar in the face of the current Russian prime minister that leads me to believe that perhaps Grigori Rasputin and Vladimir Putin are the same man.




    Just remember Thomas Edison, Rasputin owes me one for getting him out of whatever the hell Russian crucifixion is, so sleep with one eye open.


It’s good to be back,
-D

RasPUTIN. It basically writes itself! Which is why you can blame it for being so off-mark…

Papa Mighty Tiny’s Learning Book of Practical Witicisims (and other assorted knowledges)

   Week after week I am hounded with the same exact question (mostly from my esteemed editor):

    “What the hell is all of this and what does it have to do with popular alternative rock group Mighty Tiny?!”

    Now this popular alternative rock group, I know very little of. In fact, I don’t care much for rock music at large. For one, rock musicians know nothing of the devil and his works, much less his music (for the curious, the devil actually has a strong affinity for the sterling accordion work of Lawerance Welk). Furthermore, the guitar is not a loud instrument. You want to hear a loud instrument? Head on down to the End of Time every Thursday and see the quartet there. Now the instruments they play (which I would like to add have NO relation to any manner of guitar) are loud enough that they keep Jupiter in orbit! No kidding!

   But this Mighty Tiny band is a different matter entirely. Now I know plenty about them (as I know plenty about everything) and it seems that all the confusion stems from their name. Back in the seventies I found the time to write an almanac entitled “Papa Mighty Tiny’s Learning Book of Practical Witicisims (and other assorted knowledges)” which I then released back in the 1700’s when almanacs were still all the rage. I made tens of dollars back then that amounted to nothing nowadays due to the value of inflation and the fact that no single place from 1700 is using the exact same currency it did back then. My house to this very day is filled with antiquated unspendable money.

   Well perhaps not the whole house, but there certainly is a snuff box filled at least ¾ of the way with antiquated paper property.

   The point I am making is that it is clear to anyone with half a brain (because the phantom lobe actually overcompensates making these people very astute observers of the human condition) that this rock band shamelessly ripped off my name for their own personal benefit! What’s more is that I have been accused of stealing their name and riding of their moderate success! Well in an effort to clear my good name I present the first of an ongoing series of chapters from “Papa Mighty Tiny’s Learning Book of Practical Witicisims (and other assorted knowledges),” reprinted fir the first time since the 1700’s (or the 1970’s depending on whether you adknoledge the flow of time in relation to its standard onward march or the observations of a potentially loony chrononaught)!

♦ ♦ ♦

Chapter the Seventh: Papa Mighty Tiny presents several highly effective strategies on how to fake one’s death!

Death faking, or “grave robbing” as it has popularly come to be known, is a speedily growing division of the modern labor market! Many a common fellow has tried his hand at staging his own demise. Why perhaps even you, o’ loyal reader, have attempted this feat! Yes history is full of fake deaths from Jesus to John Partridge but staging your own is much trickier than it would seem. Follow Papa Mighty Tiny’s advice though and you will be able to slip right on past the final veil.

First things first, you need to decide on a definite reason to fake your death. Having been shamed by your wife speaking out of turn in public is not a good enough reason anymore! For your convenience I have listed some common situations below:

♦ You have lost an important shipment of goods intended for the King
♦ You have been caught breaking wind in church two or more times in a three-year period
♦ The value of your home has decreased due to a lack of slaves (based on county average)
♦ The value of your home has decreased due to an overabundance of slaves (based on county average)
♦ Your slaves are revolting
♦ Your slaves are planning an uprising
♦ Any other social or legal trouble involving slaves
♦ You’ve gotten too fat
♦ The weather is of poor quality
♦ You would like to claim a tax holiday
♦ You have learned the date of your actual death and require a hiding place from the icy hand of death
♦ An airport has recently been built by your home

Now this is by no means a complete list of valid reasons to stage your own deceasement, but from it you can infer the sorts of situations that are most adequately solved through this unique means of problem solving.

Did you know..?
That death faking is on the rise! The stunt is up 70% in the last decade, a trend some have traced to the French and their long held tradition of setting social and fashion standards

Now that you have a good reason, you need to pick a way to go. Common wisdom would have you pick a method that would leave not but the faintest hint of a corpse. STOP! This method is only for professionals; it looks suspicious and often results in an actual death. No, no one wants their loved ones to be tortured by the Spanish under the suspicion of a faked death when you are, in fact, legitimately dead. No what you should do is go into the poorest district of town with a bag filled with some of your favorite clothes. Give them to a local homeless man whose dimensions roughly match yours. Don’t worry, he just has to look like you, DNA testing hasn’t been invented yet! Make sure to do this in a crowded place so the last memory the public has of you is of your charity; this will dispel any suspicion later on. Send this fellow on his merry way for at least one but no more than five hours. Catch back up with him wearing a black cape and top hat and dispose of him as you like. Be creative! Don’t just stab the bastard, really make a show of it! Remember this is your death; the worse you go, the more fondly you will be remembered.

Always remember…
Pick body double with the same skin color and gender as you. Nothing says “burry me in an unmarked grave at least 100 yards from the family plot” like being “revealed” as a woman or a chinaman at the time of your death!

But what now?
At this point it is absolutely essential to move to a different state, colony, fiefdom, or province (whichever is appropriate). There you should blend unassumingly amongst the local population until at least four years have passed. I mean, you have to stay dead for a whole decade but once you’ve faked it for the first four years it becomes second nature. Oh and don’t believe any of this crap about having to be dead for seven years. That common misconception will have you on a peanut picking ship so fast your head will spin (from acute peanut poisoning).

Alternatively you may move to an unclaimed isle and take this opportunity to try your luck at lording over the local population under an assumed name. After enough time has passed, use these people to mount an assault on all your former enemies, or sell the whole lot and come back to life on a higher rung of the social ladder!

And lastly… the reveal!
Yes the grande reveal, as I have lightly touched upon already, is just as important as any other part. All those years in hiding are wasted if your reemergence into the public sphere is unnoticed! Commandeer a galleon, bring a metric ton of Chinese gold with you on the back of a well bread mule! Again, be very creative, the sky is the limit here (literally because outer-space is the devil’s kingdom)!

♦ ♦ ♦

    So to clear up a few issues before you assholes even have a chance to ask them, no I am not Papa Mighty Tiny. He is a fictionalized character I conjured up (magically) to sell more books, and dammit it worked! 101 of the 108 literate people of 1700 (and one pheasant) loved it and wrote rave reviews (the other seven were Dutchmen). The rest of the illiterate population of the world literally ate it up due to the high bacon-count paper that I used to cut costs! Sure I made up every damn word in it, but such was the fashion of the time (for Bill Shakespeare), so there!


Toodles,
-D

See this? This is a Puitzer Prize. I have never won one but I have stolen several.

By The Numbers (Number Two)

Eh?! What?!


Ah I must have dosed off there, right in the middle of my story. Seems I bored myself with all my ramblings on.

Well, let’s get on with it, now where was I?

Ah yes, Rome!

Being in the neighborhood, my first stop upon my arrival into Rome was, of course, The Vatican. Now before you go making any wild assumptions, the papacy had nothing to do with this particular conspiracy; I was good friends with The Pope at the time and frequently visited him for tea and to sample his exquisite selection of international butters and potpourris. I asked His Popiness what he knew of these mysterious numbers and he pointed me in the direction of what I sought. I asked him again, this time insisting that he be more specific, as simply pointing westerly doesn’t really help my case much, and Pope Steve Martin III drew me out a rough map on the back of an unused butter napkin. I thanked him and went along my way to the local Masonic Lodge (also unrelated, I just have an obligation to The Order of The Albatross to assault and magically wedgie one freemason upon arrival in a foreign country).

Before I was able to enter and eventually escorted off the premises of the Masonic Lodge of Rome, the mysterious woman appeared before me again, mysteriously shrouded in the smoky haze one may find in a dark inn, or specifically the darkened inn in which our last encounter took place. It was here in this improbably darkened sunny plaza that she gave me the answers I sought in the form of a riddle. She advised me to find the one man who would seem out of place, the one who seemed most at odds with Italian culture; someone who just didn’t fit.

I was puzzled. Italians are a proud people that stand for many things, but what is the one thing that only one Italian could represent, and why would that person be the keeper of such an important secret as … that thing… I was trying to figure out from the first half of our story. What was that thing again? Well I’m sure it will all work itself out by the end of my little tale.

It was in a government café located inside the Sicilian DMV that the solution to my query hit me right in the face. Literally. It was in the bustling and dingy purveyor of government coffee that an earnest, hard-working businessman tripped, his briefcase briefly walloping me as its contents spilled over my table, nearly upsetting my espresso. As I helped to return the contents of his case to him I noticed it: a calculator made of solid gold with a suspicious engraving on the back.

“I send you this: my finest calculatoring machine and several of my favorite Parisian streetwalkers.
“Fondly,
“Benjamin “Ol’ 34” Franklin”

How could I be so naïve?! The one worthy secret-keeper in all of Italy was the single, solitary, actual legitimate businessman! This one hadn’t the slightest tint of mafia or corruption on him, a sight so unique that I could barely fathom it as even a potential answer to the riddle. Recognizing his honest, steadfast nature and lack of ties to any organized crime (governmental, capitalistic, shamanistic or otherwise) I threatened to expose his lack of dirty secrets if he didn’t spill the beans on this conspiracy (that’s a literal expression; the best ancient secrets are often kept in nondescript cans of beans).

He ushered me to a quieter, more private café in which our dealings would go unnoticed as this location was a favorite for mafiosos and spaghetti western actors to discuss dirty business in open so as to suggest the untouchable nature of their sordid deeds. It was in a pay-by-the-hour backroom that he disclosed to me the truth of the matter brought up in my Pulitzer-prize winning blog “By The Numbers (Number One)”

Numbers, it would seem, were not invented by anyone at all. Numbers have always been and always will be. They are the light that gave us life and the darkness that shall swallow it whole. They are as eternal and timeless as their cousins Joy and Texas, both of whom have gained mild notoriety over the years. Yes, it was numbers that created The Arabs, The Romans, borscht, and the table skirt among many other things. They are the engine of creation and they watch you when you sleep. Every invoice, every math that you do, the numbers are there, scrutinizing every detail and judging you ever so severely.

Now please do not make the same mistake that I did however in assuming that each number is unique. There are only actually a few genuine numbers, the rest of whom having been created by the debauched orgies that numbers also famously enjoy. There is the number “1,” who is a grumpy and slightly racist sort. He handles the placement of the stars and keeps a ledger of lost socks. “2” and “4” are actually Siamese twins (I’m told the more acceptable for of this term is ‘oriental siblings’). They are inseparable, and often hunt orphan children together to sustain their dark existence. “13” is the patron saint of political activism, “329” is that which makes grass grow and babies laugh, “19” notoriously abstains from voting elections, and the number “5” is not distinguishing in any notable way. There is also a tight-knit family of mathematical symbols of whom the gentleman with whom I spoke said little, and “0” slumbers deep below the earth’s crust until the day may come again that he may divide any number he so chooses.

Terrified that he had said too much, the man hastily gathered his things and politely covered the check, declining the complimentary mafia hit that comes with the rental of the back room. I noticed that he left his calculator behind and as I studied it I was startled as the woman appeared again, accompanied by that distinctive glow that seemed to follow her. Snatching up the calculator, a wicked smile cast over her face. Sliding out of the room an envelope fell from the hem of her nondescript cloak onto the table. This too held her signature, familiar glow.

Opening the envelope I found the one thing I had been running from for decades (aside from the machinations of William Randolph Hearst, the forward march of progress, and a paramilitary group of woodland creatures out for revenge from a previous, yet-to-be revealed adventure of mine).

Inside the envelope were the divorce papers I had been fleeing for years now, accompanied with a glowing lipstick kiss and the simple words:

“These items still require your attention,
Love
Marie Currie”


Dammit.

-D

To think I let a woman like this go. If you are out there reading this sweet-heart, you should know by now that I don't sign official papers or open registered mail.