Sher2 said:
This stuff is music to my ears, Mem. Keep it coming!
Ah, yes, I can see it now. The townhouse is dark, the phonelines unlit, the computer screens belonging to PA's crack editing team (all two of 'em) faded to black. Below, in the bright circles of paddy wagon headlamps, we can hear the sounds of stuggles and imprecations as the Stooges are bundled inside the city vehicles by beefy centurians of the Frederick PD, on their way to their ignominous, and predicted, ends.
The paddy wagon doors then shut, the engines are started and the gears are engaged. A moment later, the wagons are gone. Complete silence reigns...or does it?
Venturing once more inside the deserted townhouse, stumbling past the (now very small) piles of manuscripts littering the hallway and staircases, making our way deepr into the dark, we hear...something.
And more, we smell something.
A moment of olfactory processing, and then we have it. The smell is indeed a burning Camel cigarette, and the sound, yes, the sound is that of a disjointed muttering.
As we follow our nose, and that sound, we find ourselves at last before a janitor's closet. Steeling our nerve, we slowly open the door.
And there, crammed in among the damp string mopheads, the empty Pledge cans, and the large drum of (heavily used) pixie vomit dust known and loved by elementary school children for decades, we find...Shemp.
He is mindlessly cursing as he visciously draws another deep drag on his rapidly-dwindling Camel butt. As we bend low to his rag-draped form, a form that is crouched beneath a rusty metal shelf holding less than a dozen rolls of industrial-grade Z toilet paper and a nearly full Roach Motel, we listen.
And this is what we hear: "Stipid b**tards I'm better'n 'em all they wouldn't listen to me oh no not THEM they're too good to listen to their old pal HB well I'll tell ya I don't need THEM and I don't need YOU and I freakin' don't need ANYBODY because I'm bigger than any of 'em will ever be ANY of 'em heh heh that deal of mine is so freakin' sweet and I'm gonna be so freakin' BIG and that freakin' DINER lady and that freakin' SCHOOLTEACHER and all the rest of 'em well they can all bend low and kiss my hairy..."
In pity and compassion, we gently close the door on this, the last remaining member of that enity once known as PublishAmerica.
Illegtami Non Carborundum Est
John