The Ever-Loving Virgin Prince
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Tales From Oregon
Having travelled a bit in my time, seeing places both average and strange, two places currently stick out in my mind. One, Republitron 874, strange automaton colony of space sector 2354, where bills are passed with collective hive-mind efficiency, business booms, profits maximised, and the native moss-people, the Algores, often called “the Green”, go largely ignored as existing, left to live unnoticed in their ever-shrinking swampland homes. The other, of course, is the state of Oregon.
Oregon, where everyone hates Californians despite the fact that during the gold-rush, the people of Oregon stole half of California’s gold. Oregon, where there’s no sales tax and the people at the gas stations pump your gas for you. Oregon, where it’s officially illegal to shoot bigfoot, a still tree-covered land, a cryptozoologist’s wet dream. Oregon, one of the last holdouts of the small, two-screen theatre, the ones built with class and style, their own subtle charms, so unlike the massive, blocky, soulless megaplexes that seem to dominate the landscape these days. Oregon, where everyone dresses the same, in grey shirts, blue pants, and bright yellow construction helmets. Oregon, where there’s always headlines in the paper about another robot attack.
The last time I was in Oregon I was just passing through really. The Lusty Lascivian and I had decided to take a holiday of sorts, a road trip to investigate some of the people and stories we’d read about in The Weekly World News. We were travelling in a low-key fashion, opting to take Hondabot for transport as opposed to the Virgincycle. Bobo the Virgin Chimp had been left at home in his cage in the Fortress of Fortitude. I had no need for him to draw attention to us on this trip as he so often did with his feces-flinging antics. Armed with a brand-new director’s cut Criterion Collection Trading Places dvd, a cd of Britney Spears’ latest pop hits, and a large bag of monkey-chow, I left Bobo largely in his own capable hands, with my neighbor Bob checking on him once a day and also making sure that my Nethertubbies were still safely locked away in their cryo-prisons.
It was as the Lascivian and I were driving along the coast of Oregon that I noticed whales swimming out in the water near the beach. “Tally ho! Adventure lies before us!” I cried as I spun the car around and sped into the parking area along the beach. As my fingers left the emergency brake I sprung from the vehicle quickly, climbing over and leaping from the opened car door as opposed to walking around it. Like a meth-amphetamine charged lemming I sped down towards the water, the soles of my mystical Vice-shoes barely touching the world beneath me as I ran over dirt and weeds, down to the beach, and then up Battle Rock, a large rock formation leading out into the water, a famous landmark from whence colonists soundly thrashed the British fleet during the revolutionary war.
Without a pause I reached the edge of Battle Rock and leapt from it, gliding through the air and landing on the back of a whale swimming just off the edge of it. I latched on and held tight, lost in the splendor of bare-back whale riding. The beast thrashed and bucked, but could not free itself of my grip, and the Lascivian watched intrigued. Following my lead, he too ran down the hill to the beach and up Battle Rock, but his timing was off, and he dove head-first, trapping his melon in the large aquatic mammal’s blowhole.
So caught up was I in the sport of whale riding, I almost didn’t notice the Lascivian’s body protruding from the back of another large whale, his kicking legs flailing like a pair of loose antlers. Seeing my lecherous ally in trouble, I steered my whale towards his and leapt from it’s back, landing on the other whale. I could barely hear his muffled screams as I grabbed hold of his ankles and began pulling at him with all my might. His screams had turned so high-pitched, I had no doubt he must have been seriously disrupting the sonar of all the whales in a 3 mile radius. With a massive snort, the struggling whale brought it’s mouth above water, sucking in a large gasp of air and letting it loose through it’s blowhole, sending through a high-pressure blast of air, water, and whale mucus, dislodging the Lascivian, and sending us both flying into the side of Battle Rock.
How surprised was I, when rather than splattering against the side of the rock, we found ourselves passing through it, landing, apparently, in a cave hidden by some form of advanced hologram. Inside Battle Rock was a ship embedded into it, no doubt millions of years prior. As we stared at the seamless metal sides of the ship exposed within the cave, a rider-less bicycle rolled up to us, it’s bell chiming. With the sound of a beer can crumpling, it transformed into a painfully thin robot with a bicycle basket for a mouth and handlebar tassels hanging from the sides of it’s head.
“Oh dear!” the robot cried, “You seem to have found my home. I am Huffy, leader of the Posibots, sworn defender of the fleshlings against my vile foes, the nefarious Drunkticon and his troop of evil Negatrons.”
“By Jonas Grumby’s overemphasised girth! Where the heck did you come from?” I asked the robot that largely resembled a pole with legs.
“Millions of your Earth-years ago, my people were involved in a massive civil war on the planet Technotron. Seeking a new energy source to help us fight of the evil Negatrons, my crew of Posibots and I set out into space, but the evil Drunkticon followed us and attacked us, sending us all crashing to the Earth where we laid dormant until 1973 when we were reawakened and assumed Earth-forms.”
“Yeah, cool man. You mind if I turn on the lights?” the Lusty Lascivian asked as he pressed down a large red button on the side of the ship.
“NO, don’t touch that! That’s the homing beacon!” the robot screamed.
Suddenly crashing through the cave ceiling came a beat-up old armchair with torn leather on it. With the sound of old bones creaking and joints popping, it transformed into a much larger robot with what appeared a large pot-belly, fiber-optic stubble, and a pair of metallic y-fronts and sleeveless t-shirt.
“At last, I’ve found you Huffy!” the bigger robot screamed, “Now prepare to meet your doom at the hands of Drunkticon! Negatrons, attack!”
The large robot pulled a bunch of capsules out of his pocket and sprayed them with water, they grew into large, roughly man-shaped sponges.
“Not this time Drunkticon!” the skinny robot proclaimed, pulling out a bunch of crudely painted cardboard cut-outs, “Posibots, assemble!”
“Oh Christ, this is lame” the Lusty Lascivian muttered, “let’s get out of here.”
“So wait, there’s only two of them?” I asked as we crawled out of the cave.
We made it back to the car, stinking of drying whale mucus. We were anxious to leave but I knew there was something I had to do first.
“Hondabot! Transform!” I yelled, the car transforming around me into a massive suit of battle armor. I fired two missiles into the side of Battle Rock, causing the entrance to the cave to collapse and hopefully sealing them in there forever, where no one would ever have to be pissed off by their lameness ever again. Then, it was back to the road for me and the Lusty Lascivian.
Oregon, where everyone hates Californians despite the fact that during the gold-rush, the people of Oregon stole half of California’s gold. Oregon, where there’s no sales tax and the people at the gas stations pump your gas for you. Oregon, where it’s officially illegal to shoot bigfoot, a still tree-covered land, a cryptozoologist’s wet dream. Oregon, one of the last holdouts of the small, two-screen theatre, the ones built with class and style, their own subtle charms, so unlike the massive, blocky, soulless megaplexes that seem to dominate the landscape these days. Oregon, where everyone dresses the same, in grey shirts, blue pants, and bright yellow construction helmets. Oregon, where there’s always headlines in the paper about another robot attack.
The last time I was in Oregon I was just passing through really. The Lusty Lascivian and I had decided to take a holiday of sorts, a road trip to investigate some of the people and stories we’d read about in The Weekly World News. We were travelling in a low-key fashion, opting to take Hondabot for transport as opposed to the Virgincycle. Bobo the Virgin Chimp had been left at home in his cage in the Fortress of Fortitude. I had no need for him to draw attention to us on this trip as he so often did with his feces-flinging antics. Armed with a brand-new director’s cut Criterion Collection Trading Places dvd, a cd of Britney Spears’ latest pop hits, and a large bag of monkey-chow, I left Bobo largely in his own capable hands, with my neighbor Bob checking on him once a day and also making sure that my Nethertubbies were still safely locked away in their cryo-prisons.
It was as the Lascivian and I were driving along the coast of Oregon that I noticed whales swimming out in the water near the beach. “Tally ho! Adventure lies before us!” I cried as I spun the car around and sped into the parking area along the beach. As my fingers left the emergency brake I sprung from the vehicle quickly, climbing over and leaping from the opened car door as opposed to walking around it. Like a meth-amphetamine charged lemming I sped down towards the water, the soles of my mystical Vice-shoes barely touching the world beneath me as I ran over dirt and weeds, down to the beach, and then up Battle Rock, a large rock formation leading out into the water, a famous landmark from whence colonists soundly thrashed the British fleet during the revolutionary war.
Without a pause I reached the edge of Battle Rock and leapt from it, gliding through the air and landing on the back of a whale swimming just off the edge of it. I latched on and held tight, lost in the splendor of bare-back whale riding. The beast thrashed and bucked, but could not free itself of my grip, and the Lascivian watched intrigued. Following my lead, he too ran down the hill to the beach and up Battle Rock, but his timing was off, and he dove head-first, trapping his melon in the large aquatic mammal’s blowhole.
So caught up was I in the sport of whale riding, I almost didn’t notice the Lascivian’s body protruding from the back of another large whale, his kicking legs flailing like a pair of loose antlers. Seeing my lecherous ally in trouble, I steered my whale towards his and leapt from it’s back, landing on the other whale. I could barely hear his muffled screams as I grabbed hold of his ankles and began pulling at him with all my might. His screams had turned so high-pitched, I had no doubt he must have been seriously disrupting the sonar of all the whales in a 3 mile radius. With a massive snort, the struggling whale brought it’s mouth above water, sucking in a large gasp of air and letting it loose through it’s blowhole, sending through a high-pressure blast of air, water, and whale mucus, dislodging the Lascivian, and sending us both flying into the side of Battle Rock.
How surprised was I, when rather than splattering against the side of the rock, we found ourselves passing through it, landing, apparently, in a cave hidden by some form of advanced hologram. Inside Battle Rock was a ship embedded into it, no doubt millions of years prior. As we stared at the seamless metal sides of the ship exposed within the cave, a rider-less bicycle rolled up to us, it’s bell chiming. With the sound of a beer can crumpling, it transformed into a painfully thin robot with a bicycle basket for a mouth and handlebar tassels hanging from the sides of it’s head.
“Oh dear!” the robot cried, “You seem to have found my home. I am Huffy, leader of the Posibots, sworn defender of the fleshlings against my vile foes, the nefarious Drunkticon and his troop of evil Negatrons.”
“By Jonas Grumby’s overemphasised girth! Where the heck did you come from?” I asked the robot that largely resembled a pole with legs.
“Millions of your Earth-years ago, my people were involved in a massive civil war on the planet Technotron. Seeking a new energy source to help us fight of the evil Negatrons, my crew of Posibots and I set out into space, but the evil Drunkticon followed us and attacked us, sending us all crashing to the Earth where we laid dormant until 1973 when we were reawakened and assumed Earth-forms.”
“Yeah, cool man. You mind if I turn on the lights?” the Lusty Lascivian asked as he pressed down a large red button on the side of the ship.
“NO, don’t touch that! That’s the homing beacon!” the robot screamed.
Suddenly crashing through the cave ceiling came a beat-up old armchair with torn leather on it. With the sound of old bones creaking and joints popping, it transformed into a much larger robot with what appeared a large pot-belly, fiber-optic stubble, and a pair of metallic y-fronts and sleeveless t-shirt.
“At last, I’ve found you Huffy!” the bigger robot screamed, “Now prepare to meet your doom at the hands of Drunkticon! Negatrons, attack!”
The large robot pulled a bunch of capsules out of his pocket and sprayed them with water, they grew into large, roughly man-shaped sponges.
“Not this time Drunkticon!” the skinny robot proclaimed, pulling out a bunch of crudely painted cardboard cut-outs, “Posibots, assemble!”
“Oh Christ, this is lame” the Lusty Lascivian muttered, “let’s get out of here.”
“So wait, there’s only two of them?” I asked as we crawled out of the cave.
We made it back to the car, stinking of drying whale mucus. We were anxious to leave but I knew there was something I had to do first.
“Hondabot! Transform!” I yelled, the car transforming around me into a massive suit of battle armor. I fired two missiles into the side of Battle Rock, causing the entrance to the cave to collapse and hopefully sealing them in there forever, where no one would ever have to be pissed off by their lameness ever again. Then, it was back to the road for me and the Lusty Lascivian.
