affame_le_geant_canicular fyn gula puppertwinkle remembered one saturday afternoon in the summer of his youth when he was walking alone in the kitefield and he was surrounded by several different butterflies. they fluttered around him and the collection of pleurisy flowers, so many that he could not stop long enough to decide which one he wanted to look at first. and so, this is how he was with tripod the siamese-hater and the questions he had swirling about in the field of his mind. he had so many he was having trouble choosing the initial one. "jesus christ," the white cat said, and her obstinate stance defined the term impatience. "either ask me a fuckin' question or i'm crankin' myself off." she was a belligerant one when her m.o. was screwed with. "ok." puppertwinkle said, never one to intentionally rock someone's boat, "where did you come from?" "the workshop of kris kringle," tripod said, without a hint of satire or sarcasm. however, she fooled the naive little dog. "c'mon, seriously." he said, wagging his tail in attempt to enjoy the jibe. "i am serious, you little incredulous ass," tripod hissed. she lashed out at him with a paw extended the length of her angry muscle, but her claws were retracted. puppertwinkle ran a few feet away, his tail between his legs. "i was a gift for baeroun from boffden on christmas day, 2oo1." tripod said, swishing her tail resolutely. "get back here coward." "why are you so mean?" puppertwinkle asked, halfway under his breath, halfway aloud. he wished he would have kept it to himself. "why are you so afraid?" tripod said, matter of factly. she licked at her missing foot. puppertwinkle didn't answer, yet answered the question anyway with his silence. "how did you lose your back leg?" tripod said, imitating in sing-song fashion puppertwinkle's trembling voice. she laughed sardonically. puppertwinkle looked down with embarrassment. "proina hacked it off when i was rescuing you," she said, taking a very strange hop-scoot-stepwalk towards puppertwinkle. she looked like a shoe-in candidate for the island of misfit toys. woe to santa if he should pick her up. "now listen here, you scaredy dip-shit piece of taco meat." she said, moving to within inches of puppertwinkle's face. her breath smelled like electric heat. "i am your fuckin' link between this moment and the rest of your mission. this is your chance to find out everything you can. where's your fuckin' notebook? tape recorder? how are you going to remember what i tell you? you are careless. do you realize what this means to our worlds? if you do your job properly and get saumboo safely to dennis browne, it will mean the transformation of everything we have ever known. we will never have to accept life in the limits we now know. you take everything too fuckin' literal. you are way too sensitive." tripod's crank ran down and she came to an abrupt stop. her tongue stcking out in mid sentence. the little dog was greatly relieved. his soul was battered black and blue. but he knew what he had to do. off he went into the tiny house and returned to tripod with his journal, camera, and micro-casette recorder. he sat down with his head on his paws and thought about what the pissed off white cat had said about his mission. with tripod in need of cranking, puppertwinkle felt like he was suspended in timeless space. "history is immeasureable and the passage of time is nothing more than a repetition of human biolgical and organic acts," he thought to himself. "i am always failing, always repeating the same blunders over and over. i want to be a dog of riveting conversation. i want to fervently believe in something, in everything. i want insight more than intelligence. i want to give and receive unabashed affection. i want to be one who possesses intuitive empathy." and so he fell asleep and woke to the night sky. he looked up at the stars, sirius and procyon in the constellations canis major and canis minor. and with all the strength he had within himself, he howled long and deep. and when he was done, he wept until there was not one tear left in his body, soul, or spirit. it was then he was ready to continue his mission. he turned the key on tripod's back as far as it would go. 021031 what's it to you? who go blather from