The Cupcake Elves Hate The Yogurt Gnomes

…it goes back decades.

Partly to restart my writing mojo and partly to update everyone who reads my annual DogCon/CatCon reports, here is what is going on at Casa Cross today.

After being on the loose for several weeks, Flash and Lulu are home. The police and FBI dropped them off last night. Harsh warnings were given. Fortunately, when they got up to Washington State, they found that Uncle Ferdie’s Trained Squirrel Review had relocated to Arizona.

(Lulu: The FBI people were pretty nice to me, especially Agent Mulder.)

(Flash: Man, that totally sucks!)

Flash is in lockdown in his apartment and Joe installed an obedience subroutine in Lulu, so she is behaving, if not contrite. Hell, I don’t even know if a cyborg dog CAN be contrite.

(Lulu: I’ll run my guilt subroutine, Daddy.)

Actually, F & L were never beyond our keeping track of them. Lulu has a built in GPS system and it seems Sasha installed a small tracker in Flash, too.

(Flash: The fuck??)

(Sasha: Yeah, I used a Brakellian micro anal probe while he was asleep.)


Abigail and Beatrice are enjoying their last few weeks of living here before they move off to Texas to be part of the All Goat Review in Critter City next year.

(Abby: I’ve been watching old Fred Astaire & Gene Kelly movies. Also, Busby Berkley, because DAMN!)

Speaking of Abby, she has downloaded the recorded antics (Lulu has built in cameras and somethingbytes of storage) of Flash & Lulu on their crime spree and is editing a gag reel. Flash is not amused.

(Sasha: OCTAbytes, Daddy! Jeez!)

(Flash: Fuck that shit! What about my violated rectum?)

Bea has been helping Sasha down in the DocCave. They’ve set up some sort of laboratory. Joe seems impressed with it, but I’m not allowed anywhere near it. Grace has stated that nothing dangerous or strange better come out of that lab.

(Bea: It’s for the best, Daddy.)

(Flash: YO! Victim of anal probing here!)

(Lulu: I can attempt removal, Flash)

(Flash: Ummm…no, sis, that’s ok.)

I’m told that the lab is to help Sasha with her new online courses from some place called Narbonic Labs. Apparently, she wanted to broaden out into biology & genetics.  Graces edict has been suitably strengthened.

(Sasha: Mom will change her tune when I revive the Dodo or the Tasmanian Tiger or the Passenger Pigeon or whatever.)

(Daisy: Oh yeah, nothing bad can come of this.)

(Abby: I’ll try to be prepared when the hordes of Utahraptors head toward Texas.)

(Sasha: You two are a freakin’ riot. NOT!)

So, there’s my update. As you can see, things are pretty normal around here.

(Flash: Except for my butt!)

One Fish, Two Fish, Jazz Fish, Blues Fish

…with liner notes by Things 1 & 2

The Doclopedia #1,090

The Alphabet: E is for…

Ear Monsters

On Scary Monster Earth, where the nightmares of kids become real and adults cannot see them, there is a class of monsters called “Ear Monsters”, because something about then has to do with ears.

Ear Eating Monsters will try to sneak up on a kid and grab his ears, which then come off painlessly. The monster eats the ears then while running off really fast. The kid now looks really strange and can’t wear a hat for shit.

The Long Eared Goobling Monster looks kind of like a giant rabbit made of dirt and stuff. They run on four legs, chasing kids and going “goooble, goooble”. They try to grab kids with their 6 foot long tentacle ears. Nobody knows what they do to kids if they catch them.

The Flying Earlaphant looks like some really gross version of Dumbo. It flies around using it’s humongous ears, looking for kids to grab and carry off. Probably, it eats the kid or maybe feeds it to baby Earlaphants.

Finally, there is the Hundred Eared Monster that is like a big human with no head, but a hundred ears all over it’s body. It shoots gross earwax out of the ears and if it hits you, you are a goner and you turn into an earwax zombie.


On 5 different Earth, the word “Eetoovazombulo” appeared on about 6 million places around the world at 2:47, GMT, on July 16th, 2004. Nobody knew how it happened or who did it or why it was written in green ink. It pretty much freaked the shit out of everyone and in a couple of days there were hundreds of theories, many of them totally nutty. The word faded after about a month and a year or so later, much of the hoopla had died down.

Then, on August 1, 2005, a strange feminine sounding voice came out of televisions and radios and computers everywhere saying “Eetoovazombulo” three times in a row. It did this every 15 minutes for the next 33 hours. This time, people went bugfuck crazy and there were riots and suicides and running around and the world economy crashed. It took nearly five years for things to get back to normal and even then if anybody said the word “Eat” too loudly, people would scream.

On October 15th, 2011, anybody looking at the full moon saw the word “Eetoovazombulo” suddenly appear across the lunar surface. You can’t even imaging how badly shit went after that.

Note from 2019: This edition of “The Alphabet” ends here, but resumes in January, 2014, after “Alt. Television. I have no idea why.

6 Old Men VS The Cows From Mars

…they kicked those bovine asses.

The Doclopedia #1,089

The Alphabet: D is for…

Doom Flowers

Coming out of New York, the Doom Flowers were one of the first all female punk rock bands in the United States. Using only the names of flowers to identify themselves, Lily (guitar, vocals), Rose (guitar, vocals), Violet (bass) & Poppy (drums) played hard edged punk with feminist lyrics. They toured North America twice and Europe once before they mysteriously vanished. Even now, 30 years later, nobody knows what became of them beyond what was said in their note left on the front door of ABC No Rio.

Hey everybody,

We are done with music. Won’t be back ever. Women, fight back!

Doom Flowers

The band left behind their three albums: “Doom Flowers Will Kill You”, “Be A Bitch” and “Doom Flowers Live”.

Dr. Spoone

Dr. Willard Spoone was born in Surrey, England, in 1926. His early life was so ordinary as to be boring, as was his years at university. But after he moved from England to Brazil, things got much more interesting.

While operating a clinic in the Amazon, Dr. Spoone noticed that the people from one village had amazing healing factors. Minor cuts healed almost overnight, broken bones healed perfectly in a week and few of the villagers ever got sick. When asked, the villagers could only say that it was from eating the fruit of a certain very old tree.

Naturally, Dr. Spoone got some of this fruit and ate it. He felt revitalized and collected even more, sure that he could increase the effects. After several days work, he had a highly concentrated liquid, which he drank. The effects were not what he expected.

Within seconds, he was gripped with a madness that caused him to run out into the jungle screaming. As he ran, he grew until he was 15 feet tall and barely human looking. His strength was great, even for his size and he destroyed a large swath of jungle, including the mysterious tree that the fruit had come from.

Eventually, the creature that had been Dr. Spoone made it to a city, where the police and military tried to kill him. Eventually, they used high voltage electricity to stun, but not kill him. He remained stunned for days, but then escaped and made his way to the sea, where he sank below the surface and could not be found.

After that, Dr. Spoone would pop up in different parts of the world, always in a mad rage and always impossible to kill. A few times, he has been stunned, but always comes around later, destroying his holding facility and escaping. Nothing used so far seems able to kill him, but if he ever turns up in a remote area, nuclear weapons might be used.

The Rare And Beautiful Red Spotted Giant Guinea Pig Of Potawango Island

… they’re the size of a cow

The Doclopedia #1,088

The Alphabet: C is for…

Cave Mouth

A Cave Mouth is a living creature that inhabits a cave, then forms into a false cave interior. It makes itself look inviting for animals or sentients to seek shelter in. Once an creature is inside it, it collapses around them and digestion starts. Unless one has access to some magical spell that will injure the Cave Mouth, escape is impossible and death is quick.

In their natural state, Cave Mouths are large gray blobs. The biggest can be the size of a house. Cave Blobs only digest living flesh & bones, so any cave they use is often a good source of items they couldn’t digest, including weapons & armor.


In the universe of Earth 101, the planet Mars has more than one huge canyon. In fact, it has 5 of them, the largest going down nearly 3 miles and extending more than halfway around the planet. For centuries, Mars has been known as the Scarred Planet. However, people who live on Mars call it Cliffworld.

The 3.5 million people living on Mars make their homes in the sides of these great canyon walls. This is made easy because most of the canyons of Mars are riddled with caves, some up to a half mile wide. The largest cliff city on Mars, New Chicago, has a population of 125,000 and occupies 13 interconnected caves. Most other cities run between 20,000 and 75,000 people.

Transportation between cities is done with airships, although some daring Martians like to travel in the large spidery robots knows as “cliff crawlers”. Such travel is not for the fainthearted.

The most flowing water on Mars is always found at the bottom of the great canyons and it is here that you’ll also find a breathable atmosphere. All of these canyon floors are Planetary Parks and are the first areas to be fully terraformed. The rest of the planet still has a century or so to go before terraforming is complete.

Bucky & Squint Rebuild A Transmission

…a 4 speed


The Doclopedia #1,087

The Alphabet: B is for…


It is an amazing fact that all across the multiverse, in every world that has pigs (or some fairly similar animal) there is bacon. Even in worlds where the pigs are sentient, there is bacon, but nobody discusses it much and they eat it in secret. There are even two versions of Earth where Bacon is worshiped as a god. In most worlds, it just tastes like something that gods would eat.

On several Magic Earths, bacon is used in spell casting or as a healing food. On a couple of these worlds, you can create Bacon Golems, which never last very long. A popular spell is Wall of Bacon, which stops both adventurers and monsters for as long as it takes to eat it.

Beer Of Wizardly Power

Oh, it looks like plain old ale, but if you are one of the Adept and you drink a couple of pints of it, you’ll soon be filled with magical power. Everyone else will just be filled with the need to go take a leak.

This amazing brew was first concocted in the Red Hills region of Valduria back in 1286. It seems that a brewmaster and a Wizard got drunk one night and hatched the idea to brew up a beer that would amp up the power of any Adept who drank it. It soon became very popular.

The secret to using Beer of Wizardly Power is to not drink too much. The result if 8 pints worth can be seen in the ruins of Glossingol’s Tower which was turned into marzipan along with a drunken Wizard Glossingol. We can also attribute the 300 acre Dancing Forest to a bit too much of the brew.

The Somber And Dramatic, But Also Pretty Damned Screwy, Story of Mostly Purple Patty And The Clones Of The Ramones

…featuring her pet beaver, Lucky Alphonse

The Doclopedia #1,086

The Alphabet: A is for…

Angus Arrowhead

Old Angus, he was a tough son of a bitch. Any other dwarf would have been killed six times over by the injuries Angus survived, including getting that Elven arrow to the head. Damned thing went about halfway through his skull but he just kept on fighting and must have killed a dozen of those pointy eared turds before he stopped to pull that arrow out. Threw a little healing salve on it and dove right back into the fray. After that, he was forever Angus Arrowhead, which was a hell of a lot better that Angus One Ear, Angus Half Buttock or Angus 8 Toes.


Good news tonight, folks! The Food and Drug Administration has approved AMBRO 4 for use on humans. Now we can keep the two legs docile and sterile at the same time. A spokesman for the President said that she was happy with this decision and urged the drug’s manufacturer, FelisRX, to ramp up production. A spokescat for FelisRX said that production should reach 500,000 doses a day by early Dogtober. Human Rights Activists said they were afraid that the drug might be used on free range humans that live in preserves. The Interior Department said this would not be done unless the wild humans “showed escalating signs of violence” or “started to breed at an undesirable rate”