Here We Go Again

So its happening again. Like a recurring cold sore, a group of marauding hippies have once again invaded our campus. They've set up camp on Science Hill and are blocking an entire parking lot, bothering students, smelling terrible, making our school look like shit to prospective students and visitors, vandalizing property, pulling fire alarms, and the administration is far too pussy to take action against them.

After receiving a letter from one of our campus provosts concerning the now two week long insurgence, I responded with some input of my own. Here it is.


Dear Carolyn,

Thanks for the informative email. While I'm fairly in the dark on what the LRDP represents specifically, I am also quite confident that no matter what the program entails, I hate hippies. Even if the LRDP involved some sort of genocidal rampage, to which I would of course be opposed, I would still massively resent the presence of these societal ne'er-do-wells on my semi-beloved campus, no matter what their stance is on anything.

Is there some kind of spray that can be applied to these people to make them go away or otherwise disappear? I recall a recent airborne dispersal of a certain pheromone that inhibits the reproduction of a local pest, the apple moth. Perhaps there is some kind of chemical that could be employed in a similar manner to these festering tree-bound douchebags as well? I'm thinking of one right now, but I can't remember the name. Hmm... its on the tip of my tongue... reminds me of a war in an east-Asian country... rhymes with Day Balm. Huh. Can't seem to recall. Let's just leave it at spray-on deodorant, I know that would upset those guys.

Okay, well let me present another possible solution. Once I saw a video of a bear that had wandered into a suburban neighborhood and climbed up a telephone pole. The stubborn little bugger refused to come down, so some badasses from animal control came and shot the little dickens with a couple tranquilizer darts, and he fell somewhat safely onto a trampoline that they'd set up directly beneath him.

Now, I know you're probably getting some idea of where I'm going here. You're probably thinking, "Oh, Concerned Student, as amazing and brilliant as your idea is, if only you knew what a shitstorm would be kicked up if we tranquilized a bunch of inbred hippies hiding in trees on our campus." Oh, I know very well the type of shitstorm that would be kicked up! A world-class shitstorm to be sure! But I have a solution!

These imbeciles- er... mentally disabled persons are obsessed with their own ill-conceived concept of justice, right? So what we do is get a team of Navy SEALS to dress up in bear costumes (contrary to popular belief, the SEALS are not limited to disguising themselves as seals) and THEN tranquilize them. That way, it will look to the public and the hippies as if the whole thing was just a bunch of oppressed bears getting their revenge! The hippies, upon awakening after safely being packed into trucks and shipped to Cuba or some other communist country where they can enjoy socialized medicine like they've always wanted will just have to shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, we sure had that coming! If I were a bear, I'd be pissed about getting tranquilized all the time too! It's just like why 9/11 was America's fault!" Fight hippie imbecility with hippie idiocy, that's what I always say.

Here's one more idea: set up some hidden speakers all around the infected area that make a really high pitched irritating sound late at night. Nobody else will be around at that time (I'm talking like three in the morning) and there aren't any on-campus dorms or apartments nearby either, right? One of two things will happen: They'll either leave or pass out from lack of sleep and fall out of the trees, one or the other. If that doesn't work... bears.

Well, I believe I've done my duty here. Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,
Oliver Perez, Concerned UCSC Undergraduate.

P.S. Okay, seriously now. As our campus administrators, you folks need to grow some metaphorical testicles and get these idiots off our campus. I know that the politics of the situation are very ginger, and that the City of Santa Cruz is full of resentful morons who can't seem to get it through their heads that the students whom UCSC brings in play an enormous roll in powering their economy, but still... you folks are obligated to take action.

I know how it works... you guys want to protect your careers. I realize that I probably would too, since I've already grown out of my overly-ideological-rebellious-college-student phase. Even so... please do your jobs. We students don't pay the big bucks to come here and have to put up with this crap.

Here's an idea: arrest them. You won't have to worry about the race card being pulled this time because they already DISRUPTED THE STUDENTS OF COLOR CONFERENCE! Now you guys can dubiously accuse someone of being racist for once!

Thanks.

!!!ICHI BAN!!! KATAMARI FAN FICTION (PART IV) !!!ICHI BAN!!!

King lay in the middle of the highway, flat on his face, gradually regaining consciousness and realizing that he had successfully made his escape. There was no need to worry about getting hit by a car, because all the oncoming traffic had suffered the same fate as the limousine, and nobody wanted to drive into Kyoto right now anyway. He carefully peeled himself off the pavement, slightly bruised and cut, but otherwise okay. He turned towards the city, only about four or five miles away, and could clearly see that it was very much in distress. Fires burned, helicopters circled, sirens blared. He thought he could make out the Katamari rolling between buildings if he looked hard enough.

The momentary elation at still being alive burned off quickly as he realized he had lost his Prince. "My Prince!" he cried out in despair, "Where have you gone? Why have you left us!" King collapsed onto his knees and cursed the sky.

------------

"Now where them big titty girls you promised me, Michael?" inquired Howard "Sludgy Puddles" Jameson, world-renowned blues guitarist, for the fifth time. Mike Greenjeans, his agent, was beginning to get a little irritated, and his growing concern over his own personal well-being was not helping. They had been down in the club's cellar for about an hour now, and the sounds that came from outside had not grown any more assuring. Mike had had enough.

"Listen here, you old fart! I lied. There ain't no big titty girls down here. I made it up to manipulate a senile old man!"

A look of severe distress took hold of Sludgy's face and his bottom lip quivered dolefully.

"Oh God, Sludgy," said Mike, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I'm just a little on edge right now. C'mere." Mike gave the old musician a hug.

"My oh my, Michael. You sure know how to give an ol' man the blues."

"Sorry... sorry."

The blues club, of which the cellar's ceiling was comprised, was abruptly ripped away. A giant ball of urban real estate was making off with Sludgy's venue, and several of the surrounding buildings as well.

"You sho' been settin' up some shit gigs fo' me lately, kid." muttered Sludgy to his agent.

"We're leaving." said Greenjeans. The wine cellar, which was now no more than a large concrete dugout, still featured a set of stairs leading up to what used to be the kitchen. The kitchen (and the the rest of the Blue Lotus of Despair Happy Blues Club) was now a vacant lot, strewn about with a few bits of rubble and furniture that the Katamari left behind. The talent agent lead the aged musician up to street level, and together they began to move in the opposite direction of the creature.

-------------------------

It wants nothing more than to consume, to grow. It thinks nothing of what it devours, or what it has devoured, or what it will devour. Only one question lingers in its mind, the question of whether or not it's being fed. I can feel its hunger, bottomless, insatiable. We are connected, our destinies entwined. I shall find it, or perhaps it shall find me first. But first I have to kill this huge fucking sewer rat.

Let me back up a bit. Yes, I am King's Prince. My father accidentally let go of me when the Doomsphere, the Omega Orb, the Katamari, consumed his car. The impact sent me flying out an open window and I fell directly through a sewer grate, landing in a streaming underground river of Japanese crap... that's right, some asshole had dumped all his Pokemon DVDs and Sailor Moon comics into the sewer system.

I managed to swim for the concrete shore, but upon reaching it I was accosted by a rodent. This thing is probably large by human standards, but from my inch high point of view it's about the size of a rhinoceros. And that's how I got into this wacky predicament.

The rat growls at me viciously. It's angry snarls gurgle as viscous saliva drools from it's infectious maw. I slowly back away, maintaining eye contact. I nearly trip and fall backwards as my heel makes contact with a heavy object on the ground. I glance down. It's a Lego crowbar that some kid must have flushed down the toilet or eaten accidentally. I carefully pick it up, still facing the beast.

The rat lunges, its elongated front incisors glistening hungrily. I dodge, the rat momentarily loses its footing and stumbles. I bring the plastic bludgeon down hard upon its mangy head. Critical hit! Rat loses 50 HP!

The rat is Enraged! Rat gains 15 Fortitude. It spins and rushes me, head butting me to the ground. Prince loses 25 HP! My head hits the concrete hard. Prince is Dazed! Prince loses 10 General Wherewithal. The rat rears up on its hind legs, and prepares to fall upon my body, ripping, tearing, devouring. But I've already spotted the endgame lying on the ground next to me. It's a pointy Lego Dunce Cap from the 19th Century School House Lego Playset. I put the conical plastic hat over the end of the crowbar and aim upwards as the rat's rancid smelling body descends towards me. With a nasty crack, the hat and crowbar combo pierce the beast's ribs and plunge straight into its worm infested heart. Critical Hit! Rat loses 50 HP! The beast lets out a horrific shriek and convulses in it's final death throws. Rat is Defeated!

I shimmy out from beneath the reeking carcass, rat blood dripping from my green skin. I pause for a moment. I must find the Katamari, but which way should I go? All at once my mind is crushed by a searing flash of pain.

WE ARE HUNGRY! THAT IS WHY WE ARE GLAD THAT HAPPY FUN TIME IS CATERED! CATERED BY KYOTO! KYOTO TASTES LOVELY!

Its thoughts pierce my brain. Our connection grows stronger as it grows larger. And now I know where to go. Against the flow of the sewer water, towards the city. I'll find him.

I wander for at least an hour, his thoughts becoming more defined and frequent in my brain. I know I'm close to the Katamari; the sewer water is running red with blood. And then I'm there. It is very near now. I climb a ladder, and pop out of another drainage grate onto the street. There it is, half a block away, and trying on a 10 story apartment building for size. It just isn't quite big enough, but the Katamari is testing the water anyway. Now is my chance.

A light breeze kicks up a scrap of paper lying nearby, and I grab hold of it, fluttering with it towards the Doomsphere. The paper smacks into the monster and, as with everything else, is held fast. But not me, I don't stick to the Katamari; the Katamari sticks to me, when and only when I see fit. I move my arms along its enormous circumference. I don't need proper leverage or power as would someone bound by the usual laws of physics, the Katamari simply yields to my every motion. The next thing I know I'm rolling it down the street, back towards the wreckage and away from the parts of the city that remain relatively intact. It comes more naturally than I would have imagined.

But someone stands in my way.

-------------------------------------------

"C'mon Sludgy, we gotta move faster!"

"My 'roids!" protested Sludgy.

Sludgy and Mike Greenjeans were about two miles away from the edge of the city, traveling on foot. As the day grew darker, the wreckage around them grew more ominous and foreboding, as though the destruction of the city had opened the door for some lurking evil that could never show itself among an intact civilization. Mike was getting ready to ditch this slow-moving demented old fart. He had other clients anyway, and Greenjeans knew his life depended on getting out of Kyoto, fast.

An aroma crept up into Greenjeans' olfactory nerve, and to his surprise it was not an unpleasant one. Something that reminded him of home, too. As they walked further it became unmistakable: it was pizza.

"Back in my day sometime' we had to use the telephone book for toilet paper." said Sludgy.

"Shh! Do you smell that?" interrupted Mike. If the absurdity of having to quiet down in order to smell something occurred to Sludgy, he didn't show it.

"Son, I ain't smelled sheeyit since '73. And by sheeyit of course I mean 'anything.'"

"Hmm, more for me then," muttered Greenjeans to himself. He didn't mention it again. Instead they continued to walk in the same direction, the smell getting stronger. A few moments later they reached what was obviously, based on appearance and scent, the source of the smell. It was a small shop, adorned with a quaint sign reading, "Super Tony-san's Honorable Pizza Pies." The only thing that didn't quite add up was the fact that the store was completely dark inside. Greenjeans was still hungry enough to investigate.

"Wait here, Howard," said Mike. "Just stand here and talk to that newspaper box or whatever. I'll be right out."

Mike tried the door and found that it was unlocked. He proceeded inside, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Indeed, from what he could see the restaurant appeared to have been quickly deserted many hours ago. Nevertheless, the smell was very strong now. "Hello?" he said. There was no answer.

Carefully he crossed to the other side of the darkened establishment, nearing the kitchen. He had never smelt such a strong scent of pizza. It was intoxicating. He felt slightly dizzy.

Leaning through the open doorway, Greenjeans peeked tentatively into the kitchen. No cooks, no pizza, not even the vaguest indication that there had been any recent life in here at all. Then his eyes adjusted further as he stood there, allowing him to see something on the opposite side of the room. A large gaping hole in the floor. The rubble surrounding it was indicative that something had definitely dug up from under, not down.

Carefully he approached it and peered into the small abyss. It was much too dark to tell where it lead, but when he came close to the opening another smell became apparent, even through the intense pizza odor. Raw sewage. This hole had been dug up from the sewer.

A prickling feeling rushed down Greenjean's back and he knew he shouldn't stay. He turned to walk out and thought he saw the top of a head peering over a counter at him. He startled in surprise and then it wasn't there. "Okay," thought Greenjeans, "Getting the fuck out of here."

He rapidly moved out the kitchen door and was halfway across the dining area when a dark shape leaped down off the ceiling and somehow ensnared him in a weighted net. Greenjeans struggled, only to become more tangled and incapacitated. Something like a nunchuck was flung out of nowhere and everything went black.


----------------------------------------------

"Prince! Oh, my Prince! My son! We thought we had lost you forever!" King addresses me from the middle of the street, his jubilancy radiating, lighting the surrounding darkness. "And look at how well you command our Katamari! So deftly and with such professionalism! Could a father be more proud of his son?" I tell the Katamari to stay and run to my father, jumping up in his palm, hugging his pinky. "But we were so worried! Don't you ever leave us again, my Prince!" he says, scolding and praising all at the same time.

"I am sorry Father."

"We are just glad you are okay. But we were very scared. Say, do you know how you can make it up to us?"

"Anything, Father."

"Why don't you go back and grab that Katamari, and we'll tell you."

I hop off his palm and proceed back to the giant ball of city, sitting docile and monolithic in the middle of the street, awaiting my command. "Are we going to take it away, Father? Take it somewhere safe?" I ask.

"HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA!" His manic laughter echoes strangely among the waste. "Prince, you are a peculiar and funny child! No, our son, we have much grander plans for our Katamari!"

"But father, the Katamari is a terrorizing force of evil! Look at how much has been lost to it!"

"We are hurt that you would speak ill of our creation, son. Now do as we say. You will continue to roll the Katamari, and you will roll up as much as you can, until we tell you to stop."

"No!" It was bad enough knowing that this thing was running rampant, but the idea that I could be behind its terror was too much. Why would my father want to incur such destruction? "I won't, Father!" There was a pause, a deadly one.

"Are you defying us, son?" His voice was ominously flat and tranquil, like the calm before a horrific storm. "You do not understand our plan do you? Of course not. To understand our plan would require you to understand where you came from. To understand where we came from." I know that for once his use of "we" is not the royal form, but the genuine "you and I" form. "We are not of human origin." he says, referring to himself once more, "We were cut from the cloth of the cosmos, and destined from birth to rule over existence. But opposing forces cast us down to Earth, sensing in us what they referred to as a 'relentless egotism,' a 'selfish disregard for the needs of the universe.' Our power as King of All Cosmos was stripped away, and we were banished to this planet, doomed to live out our existence as a mere mortal.

"But those fools who deposed us left a small fraction of our power intact. And it was with this power and the genetic meddling of human science that we were able to devise you and the Katamari you command. And now our plan nears fruition. What is the purpose of the Katamari? With it we shall hold the universe at ransom! With an ever growing force of destruction at our command, the Powers that cast us down to Earth will have no choice but to reinstate us as Supreme King of All Cosmos! And if they don't, there's no limit to what the Katamari will consume. Earth will be just the beginning. After this planet is eaten, our creation will cross the void of space with impunity and consume other bodies, eventually in just one gulp! Of course, this will not be necessary. The Powers will not allow for it, they will have no choice but to reinstate us. We shall be King!" His voice has risen in a tyrannical crescendo and his final assertion rings out to the urban destruction, among which most life has already fled or been extinguished. "You are the final piece in the puzzle, son." he tells me. "We admittedly lack the power to command our first creation, but our second creation is in fact just so enabled. That's you, Prince."

"NO!" I shout. I will not, cannot allow such horrors to continue unceasing. A deadly silence follows my insubordinate outburst. Nothing is said.

"Do you mean to defy us?" says King quietly.

My tiny heart is pounding in my throat but I cannot back away now. "I will not be responsible for any more destruction." I try to maintain a level and calm tone of voice but it cracks under the strain anyway.

"THEN YOU CAN EAT OUR SHIT, YOU INSOLENT LITTLE COCK SHINER!" His voice booms in such a way that a listener at a significant distance might assume that Japan had just entered round three with the atom bomb. "Suffer and do our bidding!" Two eerie glows accumulate under his dark brow, one for each eye. Beams of searing energy shoot forth and scorch the ground around me. I am too small to be considered an easy target. I run. I must get away.

Then one of his bolts finds its mark. Excruciating pain roars through me. I fall. He laughs. It is not a wicked laugh. It is a joyous one. My blurred vision refocuses as the pain subsides and he is standing above me, his rage completely absent, and replaced by manic happiness. "There you go, kid! You see why you must not defy us? Now go ahead champ, get back on the ball!"

No. I get up, stumbling, start to run again. "Unacceptable!" he booms. He manages to hit me with another horrible beam. I fall, the pain twice as agonizing. I can't, I won't. But I do. Part of my mind still protests but the pain is too terrible. My feet move on their own volition towards the Doomsphere, where I take hold and hear my mouth say, "Where shall I begin?"

"Here." he says.

---------------------------------

"Dude, what've we got here?" Greenjeans was beginning to come around. His vision was still blurred, but he could at least tell that the shape looming above him was humanoid and green. He tried to move his arms and legs and found that they were bound.

"Dinner, man." said another voice. "And its not pizza this time."

"Way to go bro, I was getting so sick of that shit." At the mention of pizza, Greenjeans briefly noticed that the smell of it was still amazingly strong, though clearly his location had changed. It occurred to him that it was coming off his captor's bodies.

"Well, now that the man has been brought down, we don't have to, like, eat what society tell us to anymore, dude." says a third voice which cracked pubescently. "We can even move up out of this shit hole sewer." So that's where he was. The sewer. Who were these people? They sounded like a bunch of kid skateboard punks. His mind and vision suddenly slipped more into focus and he gazed upon his captors.

They were four giant, bipedal, talking turtles. Their faces were smeared with what appeared to be terrible acne, and aside from various bits of martial arts gear and colored bandanas, they stood completely naked. "Well dudes, let's chow down on some man flesh!"

"Cowabunga!"

"I call his balls and scrote!"

"That's fucking gay, dude."

"Yeah, you're such a fucking faggot, Michaelangelo. It's no wonder the rat named you after some pansy ass artist."

"Shut the fuck up, douchebag. I heard the guy you were named after was a bit of a flamer himself. That's right, I read the DaVinci Code."

"You know, guys," said a fourth voice, "I uh, looked our names up on Wikipedia the other day... We're actually all named after artists."

"I had to go to a museum once. Art is fucking gay."

"Whatever, let's eat already."

And with that, the four adolescent gene-spliced martial arts expert amphibian freaks devoured Michael Greenjeans, talent agent, alive.

-----------------------------

Sludgy was getting bored of talking to the newspaper box. "I'm sorry Reggie, but I gotta get moving. Say hi to the wife 'n kids fo' me." Now where had that Michael gotten off to? In a sudden bout of surprising lucidity, it occurred to Sludgy Puddles that he might be able to spot him from a higher vantage point. He noticed a relatively intact 10 story car park a little farther down the block and proceeded towards it.

He had some difficulty hobbling up to the top, but eventually he got there. Sludgy took a seat on an abandoned Honda Fit and absently began to strum a few chords out of Spicywings, his legendary guitar. The sun set serenely over the far off mountains, paying no heed to the chaos unfolding in Kyoto. The musician looked out over the ravaged city skyline and he saw many things. He saw trees of green, flowers of white; the brightness of day, the darkness of-

"The fuck's that thing?" said Sludgy to himself. A giant ball of random crap was devouring what remained of the high rises in Kyoto's financial district. Unexpectedly his memory vaguely recalled the monstrosity that had destroyed his last venue, the Blue Lotus of Despair Happy Blues Club. "Why, that's the son' bitch spoiled my last gig!" he said. And with that revelation he composed a song.

Giant ball o' random crap,
makin' me into some down 'n out sap,
I had fame and I had fortune,
sittin' here in my lap,
now I wanna lie down,
and take a long dirt nap,
thank's for nuttin'
giant ball o' random crap.

-----------------------------------

Now he wants me to leave the city. I can't let this continue any further.

"Good going Tiger!" he says, excitedly, as he follows me and the Omega Orb through the city. "You gobbled up those skyscrapers like popcorn! We are so very proud! Oh look!" As we roll along a main street towards the outskirts of Kyoto, I notice segments of pavement beginning to rip out of the ground. "Now we know you're ready son! You're starting to rip up the very Earth from beneath you! Now the Powers will have to listen! Soon you'll be rolling up this quaint island country!"

I spin the ball 180 degrees, turn it to face my father. "What are you doing son?"

I roll over him. He sticks like anything else. "BLAST AND DAMN YOU, YOU LITTLE TWAT!"

But I can sense something else. Something else sticking, something immaterial, lacking mass and volume but nonetheless very substantial. Its his ego... redistributing it's immense metaphysical mass around the circumference of the Katamari. I can see it, a swirling flamboyant rainbow-colored aura, moving out of the King and washing over the Doomsphere. Something changes. The Katamari is no longer under my control, or under its own control. It begins to levetate, climbing up into the air, and settling about 30 stories up.

"LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE! WE ARE VERY UPSET. WHEN WE GET DOWN FROM HERE-"

But a sickening, space-time rending crack echoes through the very fabric of existence, cutting off even the King's mighty voice. The ball, collapsing under the massive weight of my father's ego, undulating with color, begins to implode. Slowly at first, it crumples like a papier-mache balloon. Then faster and faster, the skyscrapers, the Blue Lotus of Despair Happy Blues Club, the houses, the army tanks, the cars, the phone booths, the cow, the stupid college girls, the fat kid, the dogs, the cats, the action figures, the Pokemon merchandise, the lab equipment, the mice, all collapsing into a singularity at the bottom of an infinite vortex of absolute black. I watch as it's circumference grows, and I descend into darkness.

---------------------------------

Sludgy knew what that big black dot over the city was the moment it appeared. After all, he had read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time at least four times. "That there's a juicy muhfuckah." he said to himself. "Well, Spicywings, looks like the gig's up. How 'bout one more song fo' the road?"

As the black hole grew rapidly, hungrily devouring what the Katamari had not, Sludgy played his bluesy swan song. And the lyrics went a little something like this:

There just ain't no escapin',
got them black hole blues.
Space time fabric it be rapin',
I got them black hole blues.
There ain't no point to cry son,
once you cross the event horizon,
I got 'dem black hole blues.

And as he neared the end of his song, he felt the darkness' immense gravity well pulling him up and into the expanding pitch. With a surprising gentleness he began to spiral towards it's core. The theory of relativity suggests that with his growing proximity to the hole's event horizon, the perceived passing of time must begin to slow, eventually to an infinitely tiny fraction above zero, for all intents and purposes halting time itself. Crossing the threshold, one final blue note rang out, accompanied by one final chord, frozen, timeless and immortal in the perfect blackness of eternity.

THE END

!!!ICHI BAN!!! KATAMARI FAN FICTION (PART III) !!!ICHI BAN!!!

Howard "Sludgy Puddles" Jameson, a renowned blues guitarist from Detroit, America, was playing a gig at the Blue Lotus House of Despair Happy Blues Club in Kyoto when the sirens began blaring, or as he would have put it in one of his songs, "a-blarin'". As the sound of the city's emergency alert system whirred to life, partially overpowering the down-and-out croonings of the man and his guitar, the audience began to murmur and shift worriedly, no longer mesmerized by his bluesy melodies. After about a minute the commotion had risen to such a point that Sludgy had to stop.

"Now, see here," he said, his mustache wobbling, "what's all this here noise all 'bout?" The stage manager rushed out and addressed Sludgy in as conciliatory a tone as his broken English could allow.

"Sorry Mr. Pudders... Emergency, big trouber coming. We must put down to cerrar right now!"

"Whah boy? I have no idea whatchu tryin' say to me, 'dis here guitah ain't no universal translatah, ain't no Scotteh gonna beam mah ol' ass up. Now whatchu tryin' say son?"

"Emergency, Mr. Pudders, cerrar is prace to go, right now!" The stage manager tugged insistently on Sludgy Puddles' arm.

"Now son, doan go pullin' an ol' man's arm that way!" There was a problem. Sludgy, in the face of his everlasting musical prowess, was a slightly demented old man, and the stage manager was no pro when it came to English.

"Sludgy, it's time to go." Mike Greenjeans, his manager, had finally managed to elbow his way up from the back row through the rapidly dispersing patrons.

Sludgy turned to his manager. "Now tell me Michael, what'n God's name's all this hull' bloo?"

"We need to move down to the cellar, it's not very big, but it's the safest place for us right now. Something bad is coming this way." said Mike.

"Is it the Japs? I ain't goan end up like one them Pearl Harbor boys. Where's mah carbine?"

Mike glanced sheepishly at the stage manager for a moment before saying, "We're in Japan, Sludgy. Let's just head on down stairs, okay?"

Mr. Puddles still resisted slightly. He stared up at Mike for a moment with that far away, rheumy-eyed look of his, that old mind working to fully ascertain the situation. "They got mo' them big titty girls down there?" Mike did not know to which big titty girls the aged blues musician was referring. Not having any clue what Sludgy was talking about outside his music was pretty common. Still, Mike knew an opening when he saw one.

"Yes, Sludgy. At least a baker's dozen. Shall we go?"

"Hells yes, son!" said Sludgy, creaking out of his seat with youthful gusto. He took the amplifier jack out of Spicywings (the name by which he referred to his guitar), but left the instrument hanging around his shoulders. Steadying his guitar by the neck in one hand, and scooping up his cane in the other, Mike helped him as they slowly made their way to the club's wine cellar. Mike would have offered to carry the instrument, but nobody- nobody, but Sludgy Puddles ever laid a hand on Spicywings.

---------------------
Two Hours Earlier....

King's private Gulfstream jet touched down at Kansai International Airport as dusk began to swallow up the day. It was still an hour's drive into Kyoto. A limo from the branch office was waiting. "Mr. King, what a most pleasant surprise." said the manager who had come out to meet him. "We're all very honored that you could make it out here."

"Mm." grunted King, gazing nonchalantly out the car window, his tight clad legs crossed effeminately.

"All of us at the Kyoto branch are quite confident your leadership will play a paramount roll in bringing this crisis to an end." King did not respond. "Sir... if you don't mind me asking... how do you plan on stopping this thing?"

"We have our ideas." responded King, blunt and dismissive.

"Oh, okay." said the manager. There was an uncomfortable half-minute of silence as the manager worked up his courage. On one hand, he did not want to incur King's wrath by interrupting what was sure to be a very brilliant train of thought, on the other, he really wanted some self assurance that they'd be able to stop that rampaging genetically engineered ball of junk from destroying civilization. He took a chance. "Like what?"

King slowly turned his face away from the window and looked over at the him, his expression completely neutral. "Aw fuck, this is it." thought the manager. He had pushed too hard, and he knew the stories of people who had before him. It was typically nothing pretty.

Then, shockingly, King's countenance reconstructed itself into a wide and cordial grin, and he chuckled jovially. "Why, my good man! We have something most splendiferous up our sleeve! Something fab to bedazzle the senses! Something full of brightness and color! We love it!"

"Oh?" said the bewildered manager.

"Indeed! A fantastical, coolerific thing! Something shiny and fun!"

"Really?" said the manager, getting excited, "What is-"

"Ask me more!" said the King, grinning manically.

"What is it?" asked the manager.

The twinkle in King's eye burst like a light bulb that had caught a bullet, his smile melted into an angry sneer, and his wrath was palpable throughout the limo. "WHY MUST IT ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS? SILENCE, FOOL, OR WE SHALL RIP OFF YOUR PENIS AND RAPE YOUR WIFE WITH IT!"

"Oh fuck me! Please forgive my insolence, honorable Kingagawa!"

King's bright smile returned. "Hahahahahahaha, naw man, We just kidding with you! The solution is right here!" King reached into his pocket and withdrew a little vibrant green man, about the height of a golf pencil. He had a body shaped like a gumdrop, and a tiny cylindrical head running lengthwise along his shoulders, with an even tinier square face in the center.

"Wow... look at that." said the manager. "What is it?"

"Why," said King, "He's our prince!"

"I see..."

"Remember how the Katamari project was top secret, which is why you didn't hear about it until it got loose? Well, the project to design this little fellow was super, super duper top secret! We were really the only ones to know about it! What does he do, you ask? He's the master roller of course! He controls the Katamari, and he's completely nonstick! We thought we'd need to train him, but he seems to think he's ready."

"Wah wah wee wah..." said the manager, astounded.

"Yes, and what we plan to do is to set him loose in Kyoto when the Katamari shows up, and he'll take control of it for us. Very slick, very simple!"

"We knew you'd have a solution, Mr. King. You always d-"

The passengers were thrown about violently as the car's momentum was drastically altered and the limo began lifting off the ground. It took King only a moment to realize what happened: The Katamari had rolled them up right off the highway. Now the car was gradually moving up along the Katamari's circumference as the creature rolled steadily along the ground, slowly turning the passengers upside down. King hadn't even seen it approach from behind, though he realized it had to be huge at this point.

King knew his only option was to jump out, but if he did at the wrong moment, he'd land on the Katamari and become stuck himself. No, he'd have to wait for the exact moment before the limo finished a full rotation around the creature, and jump out just before he and the car were crushed between the monster and the ground it was rolling on.

But where was the Prince? He was so small and the limo had nearly been turned completely upside down at this point, reaching the highest part of the Katamari. He was nowhere to be seen. King tried to search his pockets, see if the Prince had managed to hop back in, but he felt nothing. Had he fallen on the floor somewhere? No, the floor was the ceiling now. Had he been crushed? No way of knowing. The car was descending, and King's one chance at escape had nearly arrived.

King took notice of the manager- he had been knocked unconscious with the impact. He sat slouched in his leather seat, tethered there by his seatbelt, a small line of blood trickling down his forehead. "Well, he looks comfy!" thought King, genuinely believing it. "Time to go!" The trunk of the car was just being crushed as he kicked open the back door and leaped from the doomed vehicle.

-------------------------

Since its escape, the Katamari considered itself very well fed. But now, rolling along with a circumference of about 30 yards, it was ready for a feast. A feast of earth and metal and flesh and bone! Not to mention several random plastic Japanese gadgets and toys.

As it approached the city via the main highway, just having gorged itself with impunity upon the human contraptions that rolled along it, the creature noticed a line of curious vehicles and devices waiting in its way. Seeing no reason why it couldn't proceed to consume them as it had everything else of such puny size, it did not slow its advance.

Surprisingly, a series of projectiles was launched from the little clutter of machinery, smashing into the Katamari. The impact kicked it back slightly, but ultimately this had little effect. The creature simply found itself adorned with an array of undetonated shells and missiles. More sustenance. The little machines began retreating, but it managed to catch a few of the slower ones as it resumed its course into the city.

The Katamari began its rampage. It ripped up trees and jungle gyms as it rolled through parks, tore out fire hydrants, and made an all-you-can-eat buffet out of the cars which lined the streets. Some of the ordinance it had picked up earlier exploded and blasted a couple of high rises apart, starting a fire. Siamese cats and golden retrievers were consumed, school children absorbed, hordes of fleeing business men devoured, stupid American college girls visiting a foreign country on their daddy's paycheck so they can gorge their vaginas on huge Japanese cocks.... all of them sucked into the Katamari's unbreakable gravity well and eaten. My God I hate American college girls.

The city of Kyoto had become a bonanza of edibility for Katamari.

To Be Continued...

!!!ICHI BAN!!! KATAMARI FAN FICTION (PART II) !!!ICHI BAN!!!

Seven-year-old Tomi Katagachi would not clean up his toys as his mother had requested many times. He willfully left them scattered about the backyard. "Tomi, we're not going to visit the firehouse until you clean up all your stuff." said Father.

"Firefighters are gay!" exclaimed Tomi. Fucking American television. Father reminded himself that he still needed to sit down with the TV manual and learn how to use the V-Chip feature. Back in his day, children had respect for their elders and homosexuals.

"Do you want to visit the firehouse today?" asked Father.

"Yes," said Tomi.

"Then pick up your shi- your toys!" said Father angrily, "I'll be back out here in twenty minutes, and if this isn't all put away, we're not going at all!" Father went back in the house and slammed the sliding glass door behind him. That kid would be the death of him.

Tomi sat in the grass and rubbed his pudgy belly contemptuously, glaring back at the house. He nonchalantly picked up his All Singin' All Dancin' All Coffee Dispensin' Pikachu doll. "PIKA!" it exclaimed happily, thanks to the wonder of its on-board motion sensors.

"Why does Father have to be such a faggot?" sulked Tomi.

"Pikachu?" inquired the toy.

"It's my hot body, I'm not cleaning up my toys. I do what I want." Tomi loved American television. Tomi instead got up, waddled over to his toy basket, and poured his remaining playthings out onto the lawn. He punted an Optimus Prime action figure against the fence. He smashed his sister's Hello Kitty Art's N' Craft Fun Time Box under foot. He drew a large phallus on his Etch-a-Sketch and entitled it, "Ayaka's Weiner." (Ayaka was his sister.) A light breeze spun his propeller beanie. He idly grabbed his Mega Stand Up Comedy Squirtle Doll and shifted its arm, which was holding a little microphone, up to its mouth.

The doll whirred to life. "I just flew in from Squirtle, and boy are my arms Squirtle!" said the toy, "And what's the deal with airline Squirtle?" Tomi dropped the toy on the ground and began to urinate on it. "Speaking of air travel, is it too soon for some 9/11 jokes?" asked Squirtle, "I'm totally going there. So do you think the hijackers had the fish or the chicken, or maybeeeyuhhhh.... the Squirtle? Tshhhssfsd..." The toy shorted out as Tomi's piss leaked into its circuitry.

The abrupt sound of splintering wood caught Tomi in midstream. He spun around and noticed that a large ball of random crap had just burst through the bottom of the wooden fence surrounding his backyard. It rolled into the middle of the lawn, and somehow appeared to be considering it's new surroundings. Among the things that Tomi immediately noticed, it was comprised mostly of sticks, nuts, bolts, tools, coins, bits of rope and candy, random Japanese products, all kinds of stuff. It was about the size of a beach ball.

It rolled up to a Harry Potter action figure and considered it thoughtfully. The Katamari moved over it and Harry Potter stuck. "Hey!" yelled Tomi, "Give that back!" But the Katamari payed him no mind, and continued to roll up more of the toys littered around the lawn. "Well, at least this place is getting cleaned." he thought. Within a few short minutes the Katamari had rolled up nearly all the toys in the backyard. The strange sphere was now comprised of Hello Kitty merchandise, Transformers action figures, a plastic lightsaber, the Etch-a-Sketch with a penis drawn on it, numerous Pokemon dolls and cards, a stretch armstrong, a Buzz Lightyear, three slinkies, numerous superballs, Nickelodeon Slime, Manga comics, and two small onions, to name only a few. All that clutter had added up to increase the Katamari's size to about that of a card table.

"Okay, great. Now can you please dump all that stuff in here?" asked Tomi. He held up the toy basket. The Katamari edged towards him apprehensively. It bumped up against the basket, inevitably making it part of its bulk. "No no no, you stupid ball of shit!" Tomi threw one of his classic tantrums, raving and hopping up and down, jerking his arms randomly while his fat gut wobbled about, a small sliver of its underside exposed beneath his striped shirt. His propeller beanie flopped about as well. He ran up to the ball and gave it a good hard kick.

His foot stuck. It stuck in a way that nobody before had ever felt. There was no vice-like grip of some invisible claw, just a feeling of extreme heaviness... as if a sort of intense gravitational force was weighing his foot down to the Katamari in the same manner that the Earth weighs a person down to the ground. Except this weight... or more accurately, this gravity, could not be overcome. Not briefly by any sort of movement, nor by any kind of lift provided by propeller or wing. Not even the most powerful rocket designed by man could achieve anything close to an escape velocity once it had made physical contact with the Katamari. This was a force of finality. There was no escape from it's power.

Tomi was fucked.

"NO NO NO, let me go!" But the Katamari rolled closer, spreading Tomi more thoroughly over its surface, until the nasty child was completely pasted among the collection of junk that comrised the creature. Tomi found himself losing control of his nervous system. All he could manage were futile and pointless twitches. The creature began absorbing its new ensnarements, its flesh growing out from within, the tiny tendrils grabbing and securing all the newly claimed junk.

Tomi, now completely paralyzed and utterly incapable of movement, felt a voice slice through the terror that gripped his helpless mind. It was a voice that encompassed all. YOU AND I.... ARE NOW ONE. WELCOME TO MY PARTY FUN TIME. YOU ARE THE FIRST SENTIENT BEING TO BE ROLLED. THERE WILL BE MANY MORE!

No! thought Tomi, let me go! My dad will be really mad!

YOUR FATHER IS OF LITTLE CONSEQUENCE AND SHALL SOON BE HAVING PARTY FUN TIME ALONG WITH US. IT IS FAR TO LATE FOR YOU TO BE RELEASED IN ANY CASE. YOUR... PLENTIFUL FATS AND NUTRIENTS ARE BEING ABSORBED AS WE SPEAK, AS IS YOUR RATHER LIMITED KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD. BUT WORRY NOT! COMPLETE OMNIPOTENCE IS THE DESTINATION TO WHICH WE ARE INEXORABLY BOUND, AND YOU SHALL BE A PART OF IT, ALBEIT A VERY SMALL ONE. SOON, WE SHALL EXIST AMONG THE COSMOS.

Tomi's cognizance of what he was being told became among the very last of his thoughts as an individual free thinking being. Very quickly, his mind became entwined among the collective sense of reality felt by all the junk that made up the Katamari. He was one with the lab rats, one with the Etch-a-Sketch, one with the Harry Potter, one with the microscope and the electrical outlet, and at the center of it all was the singular controlling consciousness of the Katamari itself.

Tomi loved Katamari.

-------------

The Suits were in an uproar. This was a contingency they had not planned for. "You assured us, Kenji, that the Katamari would not develop its mass assimilation capabilities until well after we had a chance to condition it."

Kenji Yamamoto, Director of Research and Development, gulped involuntarily, sticking a finger in his collar and adjusting it nervously. Daisuke Kingawa, or simply 'King', as he liked to be called, acting Chairman of the Board, the Suit of all Suits, was an intimidating presence. His heavy brow, squinty little eyes, and huge jaw, which was adorned by one of the most complete textbook examples of what could be described as a "power beard," all together culminated in one helluva scary looking boss. His appearance was an anomaly. While Japan was purportedly his country of origin, he certainly did not look Japanese. He didn't look like anything, racially speaking. He just looked like he could shoot lasers out of those tiny, calculating eyes and vaporize you on the spot if you failed to impress him.

His personality ran a wide gamut of dispositions. At times, he seemed to have the mind of a child, perhaps even a somewhat effeminate child that everyone but his denial stricken Fire and Brimstone Christian parents felt fairly confident would someday bat for the pink team. Nobody criticized him for it, however. After all, it was this child-like manner of viewing the world that had granted the company some of its most innovative products and business strategies.

At other times he was wrathful and neurotic. His happy-go-lucky attitude was known to melt away at the slightest moment of displeasure. The twinkle in those tiny eyes, nestled beneath that large brow, would flicker and burn out abruptly like an old light bulb, darkening his features and incurring his brutally foul temper. Now was one of those moments.

"I'm sorry, sir. We thought that the extra genetic code would make the Katamari capable of what it is doing when and only when we wanted it to, which is to say, after we had properly trained and conditioned it. It would seem that in trying to slip the code in under the noses of the scientists without informing them of what they were doing, some unexpected mutations have occurred. The Katamari has matured much faster than we thought it would."

"So we have noticed!" said King, utilizing the royal "we" as he often did. "This failure is unacceptable. Our investors wanted a weapon, Yamamoto, and we wanted it to be fun and colorful. What nobody wanted was an uncontrollable menace that's rolling around out there somewhere, probably terrorizing the Japanese country side, covered in dead rodents and lab equipment. Unacceptable!"

"Sir, with all due respect," said another Suit raising his hand furtively, "Wouldn't it seem prudent to contact the local authorities regarding this issue?"

"This is our project! OUR project! We will handle it ourselves!"

"Contacting the authorities won't be necessary in any case," chimed in another Director, who had just gotten an urgent notice in on his blackberry. He got up and turned on the large plasma television in the back of the board room, switching to the national news.

"That's right Suki," said a reporter as some amateur footage played on the screen, "Based on what we're seeing here, this... ball seems to absorb anything of smaller size when it makes physical contact, subsequently increasing its mass." The video showed a large round cluster of junk, about the size of a minivan, rolling about in a cow pasture. The reporter continued, "I know the footage is grainy, but if we pause it, you can clearly see some fairly horrific details. There appears to be at least one fat child stuck to it, right there, covered in cow dung. And we believe that lopsided lump on the other side is in fact a whole cow. Back to you in the studio."

"Well, so much for not buying the cow when you can get the milk for free!" said Suki. "Police, firefighters, and animal control experts have been tracking the creature closely, however they are apprehensive about using any kind of physical force against it since there appears to be at least one person trapped on this thing. It was last sighted just south of Kyoto and headed in the direction of the city. Authorities recommend that everyone in the immediate area move indoors, including pets and any valuables smaller than a minivan. We'll be back with more updates after another slutty episode of Tenchi or some other retarded Japanese cartoon." The broadcast went to commercial, and an uncomfortable silence pervaded the board room.

"We will handle this ourselves, personally," said King, "We dreamed up the thing and we can destroy it!" Ten minutes later he was decked out in his favorite costume: a big fruity renaissance type affair, with tight leggings and royal furs. He also wore what looked to be a bizarre cylindrical bolt of fabric across his shoulders, with an indentation to make room for his sizable head, upon which sat a lavish jewel encrusted crown. "Prepare my jet, and set a flight plan for Kyoto. Tonight we dine in hell!" My God, the guys in 300 were cut, he thought.

!!!ICHI BAN!!! KATAMARI FAN FICTION !!!ICHI BAN!!!

If you are not familiar with what Katamari is, I recommend you Wikipedia it. I'll put the link right here, lazy ass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari

Shigeru Okanawa, one of Japan's leading geneticists, gazed admiringly at his creation. The happy little multicolored tennis ball-sized sphere that rolled about so gaily in the plastic hamster cage was officially the first multi-celled organism to ever be engineered completely from scratch. "Any questions?" he asked the reporters.

"What's that he's doing there?" asked a woman. The Katamari was rolling along a bed of wood shavings, except that they were sticking to him as he went along. Eventually they wound up covering him completely, to such a point that the creature's previously smooth, slick body now looked very fuzzy and more adorable than ever before.

"Ah," said Dr. Okanawa, smiling, "I believe he's eating."

"Eating?" said the reporter incredulously, "He eats wood?"

"Well, no. We've been feeding him a diet of diced vegetables, which is what we designed him to eat. However, every now and then he seems to attempt to ingest objects that he can't metabolize. The shavings will just drop off when he realizes they're inedible. Who else has a question?" Another reporter raised his hand.

"So, what exactly does he do?" asked a man in the front row.

"Pardon?"

"Yeah, what does he do? How is he useful? What's the point of his existence?"

"Well..." Okanawa trailed off. "You've got me. I guess that's a question for the guys in corporate. They say 'splice me up a multicellular critter' and I go ahead and do it." There were a few chuckles around the conference room.

"No really, though. What does this... Kator-"

"Katamari."

"What purpose does this Katamari serve?"

"Frankly, so far he mostly just rolls around in there. He eats vegetables and grows bigger. There really isn't a point to him as far as I know. The suits in Tokyo just wanted him as a publicity item. You can count on seeing more organisms with more practical purposes out of us in the future, I assure you. And that's all the time we have. Thank you!" The press agents snapped a few more pictures and begin to shuffle out of the room.

------

"He's growing much larger than we anticipated." said Hiro, stating the obvious. Two weeks later, the Katamari was already the size of a basketball and much too big for the hamster habitat he used to live in. "And with these results, there's no denying it anymore. He's definitely eating his wood shavings." Okanawa knew his lab assistant was right. Just as the creature did with his chopped vegetables, he was rolling up his shavings until he was thoroughly coated and then gradually absorbing them into his rubbery body.

"So he eats wood." said Okanawa. "Certainly worth looking into, but nothing to worry about."

"Normally I'd agree. But I think you should look at this." Hiro reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin and a rubber superball, the kind his kids loved to ricochet off the walls, floor, and ceiling of his house when he wasn't home. Both these objects were about an inch in diameter. He dropped them into the rabbit hutch. It was feeding time, and the Katamari was especially hungry. He rolled over, and both items stuck to him immediately. "I've introduced two objects, completely non-organic, and I guarantee he'll have them fully 'digested' in an hour."

"What are you doing, Hiro? He could poison himself!"

"Clearly not. Remember the habitat thermometer that mysteriously went missing? And the minicams that disappeared the other day? We've reviewed the footage. He ate them all in the middle of the night. This little guy is a regular billy goat."

"Okay Hiro, thanks. I need to make a few phone calls. You can head home. I appreciate you staying late."

"See you tomorrow, Doc." said Hiro, exchanging his lab coat for one to keep him warm and heading out the door. Dr. Okanawa went into his office and took a seat behind his desk. This whole thing was becoming more troubling to him every day. Clearly the Suits knew something he didn't. It was obvious, or at least it should have been the day that a huge hard drive arrived in the mail containing a few terabytes of unknown genetic code.

"What do you want me to do with this?" he had asked Kenji Yamamoto over the phone. Yamamoto was director of R&D and one of the Tokyo Suits.

"Just integrate it into you're project. You'll be able to make it work."

"I don't even know what this is."

"I'll put it bluntly Dr. Okanawa: It isn't your business to know. "

"But I-"

"As stated in the... ah... fourth clause of your contract."

"Oh."

Yamamoto's tone softened a bit, "Shigeru, I know this all may seem a bit disconcerting, but I'm quite confident you're up for the challenge, and far more than capable of pulling this off. We're going to set your deadline back a year. We're all rooting for you over here. You pull this thing off and you'll be a hero."

Flash forward about three years to present day and Okanawa was calling his boss again for what he could only imagine was a reason directly related to that distant phone conversation. Yamamoto had gone home for the day, but upon insisting to his assistant that the call was an emergency, the doctor was routed to his home. "Shigeru, this is unexpected. I trust things are going well?" Dr. Okanawa could hear Yamamoto's kids playing in the background.

"Not really." said Okanawa bluntly, "I'm going to get straight to the point, because I have a really bad feeling about what's going on over here. I'm calling to report some strange behavior in the animal, and I can only assume it has to do with the extra genetic information you had me tie in." There was a pause on the other side of the line.

"What kind of behavior?"

"The Katamari is consuming things that it shouldn't be. We planned it to be purely herbivorous, but it seems to be able to eat... well... anything." This was followed by an even longer pause. "Hello?"

"Is the Katamari secure?" asked Yamamoto.

"Secure? Well, its locked in the rabbit hutch where we typically keep it"

"Your lab has a cold storage unit, right?"

"Yes..."

"Okay, I want you to move it there immediately. We'll send someone over tomorrow to take care of this. Until then, keep the specimen on ice."

"We have no idea what kind of tolerance the creature has for freezing temp-"

"Well, we do. Do as I say. Someone will be there tomorrow. I have a few phone calls to make." Yamamoto hung up.

"Shit." said Okanawa to himself. He got up and headed back to the lab. When he arrived, he discovered that the rabbit hutch was minus one Katamari and plus one Katamari-sized hole in it's mesh walls. "Shit!" said Okanawa again, spinning on his heel and scanning the lab. Nothing.

Then a rustling from behind a counter. Dr. Okanawa grabbed the Katamari Net down off the wall and gingerly stepped towards the noise. Edging around the corner of the counter to get a look, he could see that the Katamari had broken through the glass door of a floor cabinet. The sound of beakers and lab equipment being rustled around was quite audible from within. Then with a crash it burst through another cabinet door and rolled right into view.

The creature was caked in... stuff. Bits of broken glass, beakers, tools, petri cultures, even a microscope; all this junk just seemed to stick magically to it, giving it considerably more volume and mass. It appeared to not have noticed Okanawa, and proceeded to wheel away from him towards the live specimen containers. Okanawa continued to attempt to stalk it. Before he could even get close, the Katamari lept up onto a counter, and knocked a cage of mice onto the floor. With a crash the cage burst open. A flurry of tiny animals, suddenly freed, scattered across the ground. The creature, whom it became apparent had done this intentionally, zipped off the counter and managed to land on a few of the fleeing rodents.

To Okanawa's horror, the mice stuck to the creature just as easily as anything else. As if locked to the Katamari by an invisible vice, the animals twitched and struggled, attempting fruitlessly to free themselves. The Katamari remained still, clearly stunned by this sensation, as it was the first time it had preyed on anything more than celery. The mice' struggling became more erratic and spastic, then finally stopped. The Katamari shuddered, and Okanawa, frozen where he stood, witnessed something even more horrific.

Greasy, disgusting flesh seemed to grow out from the center of the creature, partially absorbing all the objects, formerly alive or otherwise, that had now become a part of it. Slick little tendrils protruded from this skin and wrapped themselves around the less secure items, particularly the mice, digging in and drawing nutrients. What Okanawa had was no longer the cute little multicolored tennis ball that he used to feed baby carrots.

Then the creature noticed him. Okanawa had no time to react, it was coming at him fast. It smacked into his leg, but then bounced off just as quickly. The impact knocked him over, and for a moment he could feel the unexplainable stickiness of the Katamari; it felt like an absolutely unbreakable force, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. The only thing that kept them apart was Okanawa's considerably greater mass.

The Katamari would have to wait if it wanted to make Okanawa part of it's collective. The scientist climbed to his feet, his shin terribly bruised, and picked up his net. The creature sped away, gaining speed across the floor, neatly scaled a wall, ripping out an electric outlet in the process, and broke through a window. The Katamari had escaped.

-----------------

I Died A Little

That title has EMO POST written all over it, doesn't it? Well, that's really not my style, and now is no exception. My style is more akin to the "Drive by your arch nemesis's trailer home in a Volkswagen Beetle from the 60's with the backseat full of dog crap that you've been saving for three months mainly for the purpose of throwing at that girl you've always liked in order to finally show her how you feel (See previous post "How to Get a Date") but have instead decided to use towards the further degradation of your enemy's already destitute living situation" style. You know me.

This post... is about a dream I had. Not a profound one about the rights of the black man, nor one that evokes the profound nature of the essence which pervades the existential construct of humanity or something, NO... However, in this dream, I did die.

Admittedly, I may be about to fill in some of the blank areas that I have forgotten with some of my own conscious dramatizations, and the same goes for the boring parts too. But hey, my only thought is to entertain you. You, the gentle reader, who by this time is probably limited to people named Paul Tino. (Census statistics indicate that there are over 500 Paul Tinos in the United States. That's over 500 strong for Daltonious Is Wrong and He Sucks!)

On with the dream.

I am standing in an isle at Safeway, perusing the cereal selection. They only have one variety available... Cinnamon Toast Crunch. My fucking favorite. I am reaching... reaching for a box of that sugar coated magnificence.... it's like crack that you eat out of a bowl instead of smoke from one. Hey sorry if crack pipes don't actually have bowls, I apologize for never having smoked crack or wikipedia-ed the process for doing so. But anyway....

I am just about to grasp the box when a man bursts into the store. He has a crazed look in his eye, an eye that has "I drive around in a VW bug full of dog crap and throw it at people's trailer homes" written all over it. Somehow. He also happens to be toting some kind of automatic rifle, perhaps an AK-47 or an M16. Those are the ones I know. Anyway, he begins shooting people as he sees them. He sees me. He fires five or six rounds into my chest. I'm glad I didn't waste money on that boob job. HAR, I AM A MAN I DON'T HAVE BOOBS.

Anywho, I don't feel any pain. Too manly. I just fall, fall backwards into that heaven of sugar toasted wonder. Bloody boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch rain down from the sky with my falling body. I hit the tiled floor, grasping one final package. I lie there, bleeding out. Some involved citizens, bunkered behind a checkout counter, reach over and somehow manage to drag me back to their hiding space.

"We're losing him," I hear someone say. I begin to drift away. I see him floating above me. It's that chef from the cereal box. Does that guy have a name? Perhaps not, but neither does God. "You've found me." he says. "Come home."

Lord, do I like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I shuffle off this mortal coil, and awaken to life as usual. I have eggs for breakfast.