Featuring delightful and entertaining interviews from Acclimated Spooks
Boyd McCloyd, CEO of Acclimated Spooks
Once again, we bring you a continuation of our interview with Boyd McCloyd from last week. To read the interview from the beginning, click here.
REGGIE: So, wait a minute…this doesn’t make sense! Why wouldn’t there be any information about what happened during those dates in the Almanacs?
BOYD: Well, that’s what I’m getting at, Reggie. Why aren’t there any entries? You say that you don’t want to talk about what happened with the Himalayan Outback Detective Agency. Can I ask you a different question, Reg?
REGGIE: Of course.
BOYD: Do you even remember what happened between you and Smelts to break up the agency?
REGGIE: Of course, I do.
BOYD: Do you?
REGGIE: Well…yes…I…think…
BOYD: You think or you know?
REGGIE: Well, I’ve never really thought about it, actually.
BOYD: Why?
REGGIE: Well, because it’s a touchy subject.
BOYD: But why is it a touchy subject?
REGGIE: I don’t know. It is. Something bad happened.
BOYD: What?
REGGIE: I don’t want to talk about it.
BOYD: See? What we’ve got on our hands is a mystery, my friend.
REGGIE: I really don’t see what the mystery is.
BOYD: They mystery is why you don’t remember what happened. Why doesn’t Mr. Ping have entries for these time periods? Why can’t you remember why you and Smelts ended up fighting for over twenty years?
REGGIE: Holy moly…You might be right.
TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!
Smelts' guide to the Strange & Unusual all around you...
Yo, gang…Smelts here with more Travel Tales to Heed! We’re still talkin’ about Ko Kood and such. You’re welcome to look at the previous entry here, if you want the whole story. Other than that, tough!
Anyways, Reg and I arrived on the island and camped out on the beach, which was all well and good. We weren’t there but an hour before the whispering started coming from the woods. Whispering, hearing voices, things like that…that’s old school, you see? A classic haunting is going on when you start hearing things like that. For your average bloke, it’s horrifying. For people like Reggie and I, it’s old hat and we mock it on a regular basis.
So we were there, all camped out and such, and before too long, in the moonlight of the bay, we start seeing the people coming out of the water. They were staggering and lurching their way up out of the tide, and though it was nighttime, I could see in the moonlight that they were covered in barnacles and seaweed.
Look, xombies are bad enough, but seafaring zombies are the worst of the worst, and I have zero interest in them, mainly because they stink. They smell of rot and tuna fish, and trust me, the two don’t mix. I would highly reocmmend avoiding this beach if you’re headed to Koh Kood any time soon.
Needless to say, a battle ensued, blah, blah, blah. Nothing you haven’t heard before. Look, I got a pie in the oven, so I gotta split…
with Aristotle Stuttermore, Prestidigitator Extraordinaire
The FONT OF KNOWLEDGE runs deep through the secret, mysterious VEINS of the UNCONSCIOUS and I am here to ILLUMINATE those dark passages of your BRAIN with my ORACULAR EXPLOITS OF WISDOM! ‘Tis I, ARISTOTLE STUTTERMORE, here to continue with my lessons in the world famous ARISTOTLE STUTTERMORE’S 52 WEEK COURSE for an HONORARY DOCTORATE in PRESTIDIGITORY ARTS AND SCIENCES, brought to you by PIGSPIT UNIVERSITY!
Today, LESSON #5: BRINGING IT BACK IN!
Again, students, I am instructing you on HOW to contact the UNKNOWN! In previous weeks, I have discussed your MANTRA, EYE-ROLLING, and the ever-popular MOANING! Once you have MASTERED these arts, you will be able to bring it back to your CENTER!
With the MANTRA and MOANING, you will have created quite a cacophony of sound, and in an ideal situation, your eye-rolling will precipitate physical movement, thus providing quite a show of VIBRATION and WONDER to open the doors to the inner reaches of your unconscious mind. Your protestations will have created a wall of SOUND and FURY, and it is at THIS moment that one should STOP!
You MUST freeze at the appropriate time and you will KNOW what the time is because you will FEEL IT! At this point, you should drop your head to your chest, roll your eyes back into your head, and grow calm, still, and serene, leaving the DOOR wide open for ENTRY and EXIT. Grow still and remain that way until your astral self is READY for EXPLORATION! More on that next week!
YOUR ASSIGNMENT: Again, create a video of yourself as you BRING IT ALL BACK HOME! Bonus points are awarded for those who incorporate all previous lessons into one video.
Relationship Advice with Carlotta, Queen of the Amazons
Greetings to those of weak will and fragile minds who need advice on love and relationships from Carlotta, Queen of the Amazons. Once again, Carlotta will guide you in affairs of the hears, so that your heart has not been torn asunder by the rabid dogs on the battlefield of love. Today’s letter comes from Laura of Middleton, Wyoming. She writes:
Carlotta,
I want to call this boy I like, Tom, but he is so popular and so good-looking that I am afraid that he will just laugh at me. What should I do?
Sincerely, Laura
Laura, since time immemorial, the attractive and manly members of the human male species have been popular amongst those of lesser physical gifts (and yes, Carlotta speaks of the fat and ugly ones here). Many, many times have those unfortunate, less genetically gifted souls pined for the “attractive” ones. Carlotta is here to tell you that this has been a mistake for many centuries.
What the general population does not understand is that those with genetic gift, or “good-looking” men, are growing less intelligent by the day. Let Carlotta explain the Amazonian theory of evolution to you.
Good-looking people do not have to try. All things are given to them because they are good-looking and those of lesser stature want to be their friend or companion. They do not have to hunt. Others hunt for them. They do not have to harvest crops. Others harvest for them. In short, they know not how to fend for themselves, as others do everything for them.
Thus, their job is to preen and strut for the general populace, providing an unattainable “ideal” for the lesser ones to work toward.
However, good-looking creatures only pair with other good-looking creatures, thus ensuring that the gene-pool is more and more limited each day. In short, good-looking people are becoming stupider because they only have relationships with other, good-looking, stupid people.
It is those of limited genetic stature that rule the planet. Observe life where you live. Where are those of good-looks? They become fewer by the day. Soon, there will be no good-looking people. Only average people with flaws and fat and pimples. And the world will be a better place for it.
In the end, you should approach this “Tom” fellow and say, “In order to ensure the survival of those with genetic gifts such as yourself, it would behoove you to engage in a romantic relationship with me.” If he agrees, I wish him eternal slavitude unto your every beck and call. If he does not agree, then I suggest you hit him in the face with something large, call him a fool and a simpleton, and then spit in his general direction, before finding someone more genetically compatible with you.
That is all.
Reggie's Weekly Column on the Gadgets of Acclimated Spooks...
Greetings, readers! We’re back! Today’s entry into our gadget-extraordinarimondo gadgeteria is a little device invented by Acclimated Spooks that I happen to carry with me quite often, and that is the Scrobbler. Mr. Ping, may he rest in peace, used to get quite tired of my constant complaining. “Reggie,” he would say, “You’re always going on and on about the banal conversations that people have. The other day, you were even whinging about the tone of the voice of the lady at the airline ticket counter!”
“You cant deny that she had an annoying voice, Confucius,” I said.
“Be that as it may…”
“Look,” I said. “if I could only just drown out 99% of the moronic prattling of every day people, I’d be a happy yeti.”
Well, this conversation, and I remember it well, produced the Scrobbler, which Mr. Ping gave me as a birthday present one year. Basically, it works like this: You record a sample of the conversation that’s annoying you and then voila! The Scrobbler sends out “counter” sound waves to drown out the sound of the conversation you can’t stand to hear. It’s easy. I carry it with me everywhere. At the airport, in the subway…heck, I’ve even used it on Smelts.
My very own Scrobbler. Cherished when near loud-mouths.
Now, a lot of you may say, “Hey, why don’t you just get noise-canceling headphones?” Keep in mind, people, that we’re talking about an invention from the 1940s. They didn’t have noise-cancelling headphones back then. In fact, where do you think noise-canceling headphones actually came from? Acclimated Spooks, my friends. Acclimated Spooks.
Featuring delightful and entertaining interviews from Acclimated Spooks
Boyd McCloyd, CEO of Acclimated Spooks
Once again, we bring you a continuation of our interview with Boyd McCloyd from last week. To read the interview from the beginning, click here.
BOYD: Which of Mr. Ping’s adventures interest me the most? That’s hard to say. He had so many.
REGGIE: Well, is there one that stands out?
BOYD: Sure. But that’s the thing with Mr. Ping’s adventures. They’re all there in the books, and as I’m reading them, I’m beginning to realize it’s not about one adventure. It’s about all of them. They’re connected, you see. And what I’m trying to do as I read through all of these almanacs, I’m trying to figure out the connection here, because I think Mr. Ping didn’t write about everything.
REGGIE: What do you mean? Of course he wrote about everything.
BOYD: No, he didn’t. Have you read these almanacs, Reggie?
REGGIE: Of course, I have.
BOYD: Well, what about volume 45?
REGGIE: What about it?
BOYD: Well, let me see… (Boyd gets out volume 45 and thumbs through it). What happened through October and November of the year this was written?
REGGIE: You tell me.
BOYD: There’s nothing there.
Smelts' guide to the Strange & Unusual all around you...
Hey, gang! Smelts here for another edition of “SUN, SURF, SAND, AND HORRIBLE THINGS TO MAKE YOU SCREAM!” We’re going to start our tour today in THAILAND, specifically, the lovely island of Ko Kood. Now, lots of folks go to Ko Kood for visits. It’s a lovely island that’s just far away and hard enough to get to that the tourists ain’t exactly crawlin’ all over the joint, which is good for me, because, as you may or may not have noticed, I am a talking crocodile that walks upright. The more tourists there are, the more I get stared at, so I like to go to different spots, you know?
That being said, the most beautiful beach on Ko Kood also happens to be totally and completely devoid of tourists. Why’s that? In this day and age, there’s very few stretches of beach as beautiful as this one that don’t have fourteen resorts crammed into every available space. So, what’s wrong with this beach?
Well,t he facts of the matter are that there was a resort here once, and there were a ton of tourists here, but somethin’ terrible happened to the place. You see, legend has it that this place is kinda cursed. Why? No Earthly idea. One thing you gotta understand about this planet is that sometimes, for no particular rhyme or reason, sometimes places are just BAD. And this little stretch of island is bad.
It started subtly. The first guest at this newly built resort up and disappeared. He was some hippie dude, vacationing in Thailand, and wandered into the thick, black jungle behind the resort and never came back.
Quite frankly, stuff like that happens all the time. So be it. It’s just that during the first three months of the opening of that resort, they managed to lose, on average, about one person per week. those aren’t very good statistics, and it wasn’t long before word was spreading about the German woman who fell and hit her head on the rocks, or the British guy who had shellfish poisoning, or those cute little kids who suffered a most gruesome fate involving that shark, that seaweed and the boat propeller (the less said about THAT one, the better).
Pretty soon, there wasn’t anyone who wanted to stay at the resort, let alone work at the resort. Six months later, they took it apart and left. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Naturally, Reggie and I did a bit of digging. But that’s a story for next week…See ya then!
with Aristotle Stuttermore, Prestidigitator Extraordinaire
Those with INQUISITIVE MINDS forever seek to sup at the TABLE of KNOWLEDGE! Thus, I welcome thy hearty soul, dear reader, for I am ARISTOTLE STUTTERMORE and I am here to help you ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE…Knowledge of the UNKNOWN…through my 52 week course, entitled ARISTOTLE STUTTERMORE’S 52 WEEK COURSE for an HONORARY DOCTORATE IN PRESTIDIGITORY ARTS & SCIENCES, offered to you by the KIND and BENEVOLENT institution of PIGSPIT UNIVERSITY. Last week, I instructed you in the techniques of EYE ROLLING, which leads into this week’s lesson:
LESSON #4: MOANING!
Once you have turned your MANTRA (Lesson #2) into nothing more than the sound of gibberish, and you have begun to ROLL your eyes into the back of your head, the NEXT STEP in your journey into the unknown is to master the under-appreciated art of MOANING!
By moaning, one will put one’s vocal cords at the perfect timbre, using the vibrations of your voice to open the portal into the OTHER REALM. Thus, shortly after you’ve begun rolling your eyes, it would behoove you to begin moaning. Start with a low, guttural moan, vibrating the center of your chest in an attempt to rattle loose your spectral self. Then, let the moan grow louder, until it fills the room with an otherworldly sound that will beckon the strange and mysterious creatures form other realms into your vision. Continue to moan until it just feels right.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT: Using Garageband for the Mac or a free program like Audacity for the PC, record your moan. Bonus points for the ghostly nature of your howls. Send it to aristotle.stuttermore@gmail.com
Relationship Advice with Carlotta, Queen of the Amazons
Carlotta here to shatter your myths and preconceptions about love and relationships. Many of you ask Carlotta, “Carlotta, how would you know so much about love? What makes you an expert? Have you ever been in love?” This is the time when I, Carlotta, must confess to you that, yes, Carlotta has been in love. Because of this, I am an expert. Any further information does not regard you in any way.
Moving on.
Today, a letter from Judy in British Columbia:
Carlotta,
What is your ideal first date?
Sincerely, Judy.
Judy,
Amazons do not date. They fight over weak men and then, those still conscious and with all fingers and toes take men home, discarding them when the time is right. However, Carlotta will try to imagine what a nice date might consist of.
Carlotta’s ideal first date is a wrestling match. This would be followed by a punching contest and the drinking of ale. Of course, Carlotta would be dressed in her finest golden armor and would carry her most important battle axe. Ideally, Carlotta would share stories regarding the things she has killed over the years. At the end of the evening, Carlotta would put an Amazon tattoo of love on the forehead of the man she has spent time with. If the poison from the tattoo ink does not kill this man, then Carlotta would ask for a second date.
That is all.
If you have a question for Carlotta, feel free to email her at carlotta.queen.of.the.amazons@gmail.com.
Reggie's Weekly Column on the Gadgets of Acclimated Spooks...
Acclimated Spooks, Light, & Power have, for many years, worked in the field of “fringe” science, which means we have always been on the cutting edge of technology. Our scientists around the world have always been experimenting with new and interesting gadgets and gizmos, and many of those advancements have gone on to make great impacts on the world (we don’t really like to brag, but do you really know who invented the television? We do…hint, hint…).
Yet just as we’ve unveiled many Earth-shattering products, there are many that have been invented that seem to serve little or no purpose. Not that these gizmos haven’t been amazing and not that many, many hours haven’t gone into them, it’s simply that once all the hard work has been accomplished, we soon discovered that, “Hey! We don’t really need this!”
Today, I shall tell you about one such invention. While researching ways to defeat Mr. Ping’s enemy (Sally the Alley Cat Burglar), Mr. Ping had a great need to trick the thief with a series of fake paintings that would cause her to steal the wrong painting. After trying several different methods, including hiring the world’s best reproduction masters and making moulds of actual paintings, one of our most esteemed colleagues, Dr. Mitchell Mitchell, invented a robot whose sole function is to make carbon copy recreations of famous paintings. By analyzing, x-raying, scanning, and various poking and prodding, Dr. Mitchell invented the “REMBRASSO 3000.”
The REMBRASSO 3000
To make a long story short, the Rembrasso 3000 worked and worked well. Sally the Alley Cat Burglar was caught, but then we had a dilemma…the Rembrasso 3000 was an extraordinary machine, capable of making reproductions that were as good, if not better, than the real ones, all the way down to the brush strokes and molecular composition of the paints. What were we to do with this fine machine? And if it got into the wrong hands, it would make these rare works of art not-so-rare works of art.
The bottom line is that the Rembrasso 3000 is sitting in a secure vault somewhere in the world…and there are a lot more gadgets just like it that Acclimated Spooks has had to keep out of the hands of the public. Which is really too bad, as I would LOVE to have a copy of Rembrandt’s The Abduction of Europa.
