ULTIMATE INVENTION: Harmonocle
This month the Bobsoldout.com Research Laboratory’s team of peanut-loving scientists had an eye on our classier readers, i.e., the ones with an eye on luxury:
Send your requests for new inventions to bob [at] bobsoldout.com, subject: ULTIMATE INVENTIONS. More Inventions can be found here.
JOHN FONTAINE PRESENTS… A NEW Excerpt from Cows, Cowards, Cowboys, and Vampires: The Rise of Count Cowcula
I sent out a few proofs of the second draft of my new book, Cows, Cowards, Cowboys, and Vampires: The Rise of Count Cowcula, and so far all responses have been positive. A noted pulp fiction writer even calls it “A meaty book you won’t be able to put down,” and I can imagine Flann O’Brien calling it “the pig’s whiskers.” Here’s another excerpt*:
Hot damn was it ever summer in the country and the heat was hitting Count Cowcula , hard, like a ton of bricks in a pizza oven. Private Intelligence Cow had just returned from intentionally building urban relationships, disguised as a stray cow, and had some very delicious news for the other moosquitoes.
“Hear me, bovampires,” he lowly declared. “There is an urban orphanage nearby, filled with defenseless children. Their tender hearts are filled with children’s blood!”
Count Cowcula immediately understood Private Intelligence Cow’s intentions, and announced, “We feed in the heat of tonight!”
***
Cayhill Orphanage Works was just shutting down for a good night’s rest. The sweet orphans were all tucked into their beds, and Gary and Melinda, primary caretakers, were winding down with bourbon, ice, and soda, in that order.
“I really enjoy our job,” Gary said. “We’re really, really good people.”
“It’s true,” said Melinda. “Now let’s make sweet virtuous love together.”
Gary barely had time to sexily consent before they were making love all over each other like hot syrup on hot pancakes, which is probably why neither thought to close the window. The same window that a certain band of moosquitoes would soon use to float through.
***
The last words Gary would ever utter were, “No, not you, too, stray cow from the petting zoo! I never should’ve believed you!”
*Earlier in the book I explain that bovampires cowmoonicate with each other through a series of vigorous grunts and stomping. The following bovampire dialogue should be considered a loose translation only.
Real Conversation About Horses
Friend: Dude, horses scratch themselves with their hind legs, like dogs?
Me: What?
Friend: I swear that’s what I just saw.
Me: Huh. Who knew.
Friend: He just did it again!
A very good layer
Nearly everything I read lately has some sort of chicken reference in it. This is from Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees, the story of an Italian baron who lived in the trees:
One day we heard that he was drinking fresh milk every morning; he had made friends with a goat, which would climb up the fork of an olive tree a foot or two from the ground; but it did not really climb up, it just put its two rear hoofs up, so that he could come down onto the fork with a pail and milk it. He had a similar arrangement with a chicken, a red Paduan, a very good layer. He had made it a secret nest in the hole of a trunk, and on alternate days he would find an egg, which he drank after making two holes in it with a pin.
JOHN FONTAINE PRESENTS… Fumes are getting to my head
The response to my letter about my dear Grandfather Grandpa has literally flooded my electronic mail’s inbox like gasoline floods a car’s engine. Where the gasoline is coming from, I don’t know, but I am sincerely afraid my computer machine is going to explode. So I’ll make this short because the mechanic can’t make it over until after 6 and I’m already craving my menthols. We’re already a month into the new year — out with the aughts and in with the 10s as they say — and my publisher is already telling me that Count Cowcula needs to be more believable or it won’t sell; I’m telling my publisher to be more specific about what, exactly, is so unbelievable about cow vampires, because if those little cow horns aren’t a mark of the beast then I don’t know what is; and I better be getting paid soon whether it goes to print or not because we have a contract and I’ve already spent most of the money they haven’t even given me yet.
These fumes are getting to my head. More anon.
jf, npfw
johnfontaine [at] bobsoldout.com
The Night I Dropped The Soap
The other night I was taking my nightly bucket shower, as per usual, and I was getting a good lather going with my new bar of soap when it launched right out of my hands and into the giant water basin. Luckily I grabbed the soap just as it was sinking out of view.
So, that was a close one. I almost lost a new bar of soap.
Later, the cat eats a baby
The cat is prowling — around, under, on top of, next to — a cabinet that is emitting thrashing noises. Curiosity gets the best of me, too, and I open the door, expecting something to scurry out. But it’s just a fish, flopping in a plastic bag.
Still, something about this situation strikes me as sinister.
Later, the cat eats a baby mouse.
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