.

Updated June 22, 2007

 Sweet slop sacks! Ralph and Socks are back with a new feature-in-progress. 
 Long has our desk runneth over with literary delight, but never before 
 has it been soiled with the sweet stench of poetry. The time is now; 
 presenting  "Cavemanpoems", a continuing feature.

 Bodaciously,
        

 
April 21, 2005



        
Happy New Year!

 A hearty hello from yours truly and my good friend Ralph, and warm,
 succulent wishes this new year. I should hope all you Ralphnsockseters
 have had a better start to 2k5 than yours truly and my partner in passion.
 It seems we have fallen into a bit of a feud, but to tide our dear fans
 over, I have posted the ongoing saga here!

 Meanwhile, keep your eyelids shaved for new episodes in the continuing
 saga The Brothsea of Bovus, below! What mystery surrounds the whimsical 
 jackass? What cruel fate awaits the gluttonous Broth Man in his cruel, 
 stinky cavern? Will Darlene the fair ever escape the mysterious folds 
 of earth that now surround her? Read on!

 With hugs,
        

 
December 10, 2004



        
Welcome, Ralphnsocksters!




 Ralph and I have been hard at work over the past few months, serving up 
 more literary classics of the future for all you folks. Our latest gem
 is a work in progress entitled "The Brothsea of Bovus". We invite you to  
 laugh, weep, vomit and scream along with us as we whisk you away on a 
 magical literary journey before your eyes. Remember that our door is 
 always open. Write to us at ralphnsocks@gmail.com. We  look forward 
 to your inquiries and praise. 

 With love,
        

Praise for Ralph & Socks

 "Like subtle but menacing 13th level Rangers/Rogues, Ralph n' Socks deftly 
 weave amongst the briar patches of literary hackdom with nary a snag, 
 viciously thrusting their daggers of comedy between our trembling ribs, 
 assaulting us with gleeful sneak attacks of joy. There's no two ways about 
 it, Ralph n' Socks are a natural 20."

     - Sting

 "The mid-to-late nineties, now widely regarded by historians as the "Age of 
 the Boob", were a time when the pen was all too often discarded in favor of 
 the jambox, the scalpel, and the clarinet. Prose was abandoned for grooving;
 narratives were discarded for coronary artery bypass grafts; the written 
 word sacrificed for the sake of the polka. It was not without irony that
 amidst this sea of emotionless, harmonic surgery was forged the great 
 literary duo of our time: Socks Clinton and Ralph Nader."

     - Alistair Cooke


 "Like all great warrior-poets, Ralph n' Socks brought to the neo-literary
 milieu a sense of perverse justice equal parts honor, strength, heroine and
 revenge (my chef tells me there was also a hint of disaster...or tabasco) so
 juicily cutting edge that it made things "neo" instead of just regular. Plus
 they're both Scottish. Champions of both prose and verse, they brought us, 
 the struggling peons, to their mighty table and supped with us on elegant
 china bowls filled with their horrifically decadent word slop of legend."

     - Margaret Thatcher







        
The Brothsea of Bovus


 The thick, erotic scent of beef bouillon cubes exploded from the steel clad 
 kitchenette in an irresistibly sexy mushroom cloud of passion. Deep within 
 his Texas compound, the recondite Broth Man labored away, his pores oozing 
 tangy perspiration of the most unpleasant variety.


 From the inky black deeps of his subterranean pantry a corroded iron 
 bell let out its shrieking scathing peal. A jagged grin spread across Broth 
 Man's gravy-stained cheeks, the generous deposits of lard spread hither 
 and yon across his thighs and buttocks quivering in anticipation. 

 "Seasoning!" he cried lustily, cradling his tureen to his fat-mottled 
 bosoms like a doting mother. "The Brothsea must be seasoned!"

 Heaving himself across the room to the doorway, Broth Man began the long 
 descent in the humid, boggy depths of his pantry, where the great Brothsea 
 of Bovus awaited him. "Yes, yes!" he cried wringing his arthritic hands 
 violently, "Seasoning season it is! I shall strip and jazzercise amidst 
 the urine-warm waves of the Brothsea, whilst the brackish sweat of my 
 father's father pours from mine pits, mine crack and mine genitals to 
 enspicen it with a glorious brine!"


 Above ground, the spring dew glistened in beads on deep, green fern fronds 
 in the first bright rays of dawn. Darlene was skipping rope in the morning 
 breeze, her rich auburn locks dangling buoyantly in her wake.  

 "Hum-hum-hum", she sang. "Ho-ho-hum! Dum-ho-rum! Roig-zoigy-jaw-jae-mae!"  

 And somewhere, a crudely forged key turned purposefully inside a rusty, 
 ornate lock, and centuries of dormant horror were wrested rudely awake, 
 setting out anew in the pursuit of stinky, fat evil.

 Darlene, unaware of these developments, skipped and sang on. "Dum-ho-rum!"


 Bristling with foul, bejeweled horns of evil; studded with teeth and 
 raw patches of leathery flesh; streaked with blood, bile and pooh, the 
 fell beast Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae crept from his cavernous mountain pen, 
 stopping for a moment to swallow and digest the crude key, stopping for 
 a moment more to admire the ornate, but rusty, scroll work of the lock. 
 
 Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae shook a thousand years sleep from his hundred 
 faces--each one more terrifying than the last—and belched forth a foul 
 wind across the echoing, naked mountains. 

 "Master!" it croaked to the empty void of Northern Vermont "I must find 
 she who has awoken me! Darlene she is! My Master Darlene! South I go, 
 to Texas, for I hunger for broth and destruction with a dash of devilry!"


 The Brothsea rages in torrents betwixt the gluttonous Broth Man's 
 grizzled limbs, like a tsunami of ruinous bile released upon the diseased 
 and moldy trunks of great lard sequoias. Greasy stalactites jut hellward 
 at the darling pink beret of the nauseating Broth Man, now focusing his 
 attention at the Jane Fonda hologram directly opposite him in the stench-
 filled cavern.
 
 The dark chef's eyes widen with gripping, sweaty anticipation. His toothy 
 maul releases a shriek of orgasmic pleasure as Jane begins today's 
 jazzercise lesson and cool jazz fills the Brothsea Cavern like sebum in 
 the swelled tip of a greasy teenage whitehead. At once, the thick 
 cellulite of gargantuan buttocks twists to the beat, casting lard against 
 lard in an incomprehensibly savage war with no clear victor.  The sagging 
 flesh of outstretched underarms sways in the rancid breeze like soiled 
 linens on a Sicilian clothesline. Drooping jowls shake vigorously 
 from wide-open jaws. And everywhere, rancid sodium chloride rains into 
 the churning depths below, enspicening Bovus with feculent Brothsweat.
 
 Darlene is chasing a rusty, ornate butterfly above ground. She is 
 somewhere near Amarillo. The butterfly disappears into a small cave and 
 Darlene follows with twenty feet of ample curls billowing, as always, 
 behind her.
 
 The retired blacksmith, Clive Sargento, 98, is living in Hot Springs, 
 Arkansas, and is being sponged in a hot bath by unattractive orderlies, 
 thinking fondly of days gone by.


 "It is time for song," laments Clive in his mournful drawl, "It 
 is time for sadness and leaden doom to descend. Sing to me of days past
 my rigidly-muscled and mustachioed nursemaids! For your hulking shoulders 
 and pitiable breasts sadden me, and only in the dancing twitch of your 
 girlish lip-coiffures may I find comfort!"

    "A sping break dancer Clive one was,
     With knees so jaunty keen!
     And fair we were back then--petite!
     Before Clive spliced our genes!

     But now we're mannish! Rough and tough!
     With arms like rippling seas!
     Whilst poor old Clive has naught but grief
     And rickets in his knees!"

 Clive shrieks in pain as the crustacean sponges of his broad-backed
 tormentors knead ever more feverishly into his leprous flesh, ravaging 
 his bald scrotum, while the blistering water yanks tight the once 
 limpid, hair-dappled flesh of his reddening nipples. He reaches 
 for what appears to be a vomit pail astern of the great scallop-
 shell tub. From it he pours a voluminous dosage of thick, viscous 
 snot--brown and riddled with yellowing chunks of condensced fat and 
 the stringy, gristled leavings of bovine flesh--into the piping 
 water. He sniffs eagerly, his spacious nostrils flapping exuberantly. 
 Broth Concentrate! Straight from Bovus and his dear compatriot Broth-Man.

 The newly fragranced bathwater causes such an immediate and alarming 
 relaxation that a lordly bubble of flatulence bursts angrily from Clive's 
 well-traveled anus, marinading the rancid lard-slick suds with its 
 extravagently miasmic fetor before erupting from the waves like a
 sweetly rotting Poseidon, poisoning the troposphere to the dismay of
 all. Clive briefly loses consciousness. He is saved from drowning in
 his own briny stink-stew only thanks to the harshly androgynous 
 voices of his hateful chorus of Herculean Harpies and their ever 
 envigoured sponge scouring of his fragile flesh.

    "But Clive you've one more number left
     You've one more jig to dance!
     For ere you rest one beast must die
     So go and fetch yon pants!"

 At this note the scouring reaches such a hum that Clive calls out with
 the pain of it, gas erupting from his every orifice whilst the Harpies
 drone on. Across the room, much to Clive's horror, an old iron key--crudely 
 forged to perfectly match another hammered on his anvil and left far 
 away North--disappears in vapor of mist. Clive's bloodless lips, driven 
 by fear and disgust, silently mouth one word...or at least one fairly 
 lengthy hyphenated name: "Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae!"

 In the Green Mountains of New England the Beast with a Hundred Faces looks 
 to the sky. Southward the fraying clouds glow orange in the sunset, 
 trailing off like ribbon-tied curls, ample and swift, flowing in the wind 
 toward Texas.

 Ah, to gaze upon the terrible spectacle of Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae in 
 transit! To witness his heavily fortified matrix of ever-more-hideous 
 faces, floating wildly, like fields of sorghum on a blustery upstate 
 wind! Southward he scrambles, effortlessly biting into gull, flea, moth, 
 pigeon, squirrel, rat, human, possum, and any other readily available 
 creature, which digested remnants sink, defeated, into his colossal, 
 slug-like torso, leaving a devastating trail of molten bile in his wake. 
 Past Albany, Poughkeepsie, and Hackensack he goes, defecating great 
 boulders of furious, steaming refuse upon the New Jersey Turnpike, 
 ruefully upsetting the Eastern Seaboard’s lifeline of commerce.

 Darlene journeys on. The cave is dark but for the shimmering glints of 
 the distant sun reflecting on the oxidized wings of the rusty, ornate 
 butterfly. Onward. Bats tangle themselves helplessly in her beautiful 
 mane as the light dims to blackness. Onward still, following the audible 
 flaps of the curious insect wings. At length, Darlene begins to question 
 her decision to follow aloud. “Something is surely amiss!” 

 The butterfly speaks. “Fear not maiden, for I, Rusty, am at your service. 
 You have followed me thus far without consequence, have you not? But to 
 enspicen the deal, may I present the whimsical jackass, Rufus Tinwhistle?”

 At once, two great azure spheres burst forth from the void, followed by 
 the illuminated rhinestone saddle and phosphorescent pelt of His 
 Whimsicalness, Mr. Tinwhistle. “Good day, my dear!” proclaims the 
 darling, handsome jackass. Darlene mounts him, screaming in girlish 
 delight. Onward once more.

 Without respite, the unearthly juggernaut Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae paces 
 himself with a passionate vigilance into the Blue Ridge Mountains, 
 following the olfactory clarion call of Bovus as the night falls once 
 again upon a soiled and festering landscape.

 In the gamy cavern of Bovus, Broth-man heaves one final scream of pleasure 
 before collapsing to his generous buttocks. Only his head--glittering 
 eyes a-prance and feminine beret a-perch--now breaks the waves of the 
 Mighty Brothsea as he surrenders the remainder of his myriad enspicening 
 agents to the lardaceous deeps. Jane remains holographically frozen in 
 her final farewell until next time.

 Or does she?

 Before Broth-man's horrified eyes, Jane begins to morph, changing and 
 mutating into the most horrific vision Brothman has yet seen in his 
 lengthy years. Before him now stands a most unsettling Beast, and Broth-man 
 knows him well. Marvel-dog he is called. The ancient keeper of Roig-Zoigy-
 Jaw-Jae-Mae, and heir to the throne of that long dead scourge Trixie the 
 man-faced dog, known only to Broth-man in legend.

 In his mounting terror Broth-man regretfully lapses in his heretofore 
 iron-clad bladder control, and the brothsea is mournfully enspicened 
 anew, most unpleasantly.

 Marvel-dog grins as an enormous globule descends from his flappy 
 dog-lips, hangs by a thread, then disappears from sight. "Broth-man, 
 my old friend! You are in quite a STEW!" A broth-shriek rings out as 
 the punnard Marvel-Dog yaps dramatically. "Yes. Shriek, my friend. 
 Shriek. It will do no good."

 "You...you're dead! Clive's proud and handsome cock bested yours in 
 that Tijuanan basement and you were banished by the ancient astral 
 rules of the Holy Cockfight (see Appendix A)! Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae was locked 
 away forever!"

 "Wrong, my gargantuan nemesis. I have returned, and that fool of a lass, 
 Darlene, has unleashed the beast once more! Even now he approaches. If 
 you don't believe me, listen to the SkyFox traffic report. They'll tell 
 you."

 "Darlene? I don't understand! Surely you don't mean..."

 "I certainly do. The very same. Not even the Jackass Tinwhistle can save 
 you now, Broth-man, though try he may! You and Bovus shall be despicened 
 forever!"  (see Appendix B)

 In Hot Springs Clive dons his most trusty codpiece and makes for the 
 door, cursing angrily as he stubs his toe on his nursemaid's soloflex.

 As the holograph of the pitiably infirm Broth-man, shivering with 
 terror and urinating uncontrollably into his already horrific slop-sea
 recedes from sight, Marvel-Dog determines that a vigorous rectal-
 sniffing is called for. As he hungrily inhales the sweet ambrosia musk 
 of his dog sphincter, he reflects on the regrettable situation with his 
 El Salvadoran Manor. Such splendid secret hideouts are not easily arranged 
 in the thick steaming jungles of El Salvador. And yet Marvel-Dog had 
 prevailed, making the most of his banishment to the ever unstable (both 
 politically AND intestinally) nation of El Salvador. The careful recruitment 
 of out of work nursemaids, hulking and noble in stature, had paid off 
 spectacularly, resulting in an Marvel-home this Marvel-Dog could be 
 proud of.

 Angry with himself for this mental lapse, Marvel-dog abandons the nearly 
 nauseating, nearly mouth-watering odor of jalapeno, wet flatulence and 
 cilantro wafting from his anus. Above his fireplace the neon portrait of 
 his holiness, the Messianic flounder, blurs in an evershifting ooze of 
 melting colors. "Lord Flounder," Marvel-dog intones, "It is for you that 
 I do this. Your most unworthy servant Broth-man could never understand. 
 He is an infidel, more concerned with the brininess of his broth than with 
 producing a mighty cock to compete in the Tijuanan ring of unspeakable acts. 
 He cannot understand our communion. Our bond manifested in the hundred 
 heckling faces of Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae. His broth must be despicened 
 forever in your name. His dedication to bovinity is a mockery. With your 
 help, Lord, with your oozing, enthralling help, we shall prevail over this 
 heathen broth-worshipper! It is the beast with a hundred faces that I must
 find. The beast, and his new master...

 Darlene's muscular nostrils flare wide in the dank subterranean air. 
 Salt, greasy bovine salt permeates every molecule of the heavy air and
 clings in the bushy tangle of her nasal hairs like angry dolphins thrashing 
 violently in a tuna net. And like the gleeful fisherman hauling in this 
 mammalian delight, she can palpably feel the anger of this gristly oxygen, 
 the unrest rippling through each atom.

 Lost in prayer, Marvel-Dog is impervious to the thick crimson ooze seeping 
 between the cracks of his living room door. Minutes pass, leaving the canine 
 ankle-deep in ooze but still entranced in Flounder-worship. And with the 
 tolling of a wee bell, the door explodes from its robust iron hinges, 
 shocking him into consciousness and revealing a deep scarlet aura 
 hidden behind an icy wall of holy mist. 

 For a moment all is silent. Then: the mysterious figure steps into the 
 dimly-lit, fart-rich air of the chamber. Marvel-Dog gasps in horror and 
 jubilation. 

 Tall, spindly and purposeful, the cloaked form raises unnaturally long 
 arm-tubes, which stretch out hideously from one wall to another but reveal 
 neither sign nor scent of flesh beneath. Radiant, desultory streams of blood 
 jet blindly in every direction from within its curiously unsoiled white 
 robes...

 A Druid Knight of the Sacred Order!

 “By Order of the Flounder, thou art summoned to Texas, young Marvel-Dog!” 
 screams an inhuman voice from within the robes. “Thy penance is complete.” 

 Marvel-Dog reaches for a small, dark cage and marches purposefully behind 
 the Druid, his coat now heavily sodden from a constant barrage of blood 
 geysers.

 And so it is, amidst the roily evils of this turbid age, that the lives of 
 the Followers of the Messianic Flounder once again converge:

 ...

 Screams of anguish erupt from the gargantuan pock-marked lips of a Broth-
 Man in despair: “O Broth, my Broth, sweet, sweet Broth! How I have failed 
 thee!” 

 And gentle tears roll across bulbous cheeks as Broth-Man slides inch-by-
 flabby-inch into the raging currents of Bovus.

 ...

 Her lungs ballooning with ever-more-potent brine-scent, Darlene grows 
 woozy in the precious saddle of the most charming jackass ever wrought from 
 the smithy-crotch of a healthy jennet. Rufus Tinwhistle’s sweet traveling 
 song echoes through the dank and salty catacombs:  

Oh a dandy jackass, that is I, so clever and so charming;
I get my jollies trotting and it’s true I’m quite disarming!
Fancy dances, tons have I, some dainty and some burly;
In time I’ll share each one with thee, to cheer you when you’re surly!

Rufy-Rufus, that’s my name! A dandy dandy jackass!
A Tinny-Tinny-Tin-Whistle to play when thou art lonely!
A singy-sangy song I sing! A singy-song to cheer thee!  
With dainty puffs of flatulence cascading out behind me!

 ...
 
 A veritable ark of land-and-sea flesh now matted to his cruel, labyrinthine 
 wall of god-awful proboscises, the walking freak show Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae 
 stumbles through Texas during a sea of maddeningly lucid waking dreams in 
 which he runs ever faster toward the seductive, flowing mane of his 
 tantalizing mistress, but comes nary an inch nearer.

...

 And Clive Sargento sprints past Texarkana in a bodysuit of holy armor-- 
 the full regalia of a ChoFoMeFloWhEyO Templar of the Holy Blacksmith Clan. 
 His polished white codpiece captures the full glory of the sun and thrusts 
 it forward towards the raging Brothsea; his lips part in screams of ancient 
 incantation; his leather-clad nursemaids trot muscularly behind him in 
 formation; and as dusk approaches, their baritone yodels pierce the cool 
 wind with curses of bloodlust and the promise of looming vengeance...


 In a direct affront to Bovusites everywhere, there are those who, if polled, 
 would NOT select a large, greasy, holographically enabled, and 
 overwhelmingly pungent subterranean grotto housing an unfathomable
 body of Bovine Broth regularly bathed in by a flatulent, overweight and 
 largely incontinent chef as the single most pivotal location on, or under, 
 the face of the planet. Of course this is alarming to Bovusites in the know 
 everywhere. It is agreed upon by THOSE SAME Bovusites in the know that 
 these people should be approached with a healthy disdain tinged with 
 equal parts pity and outright rage. The next step is to coldly ask them 
 when the last time they supped on the salty divinity of beef-broth infused 
 delicacies was. When they reply, as they inevitably will, that just last 
 night they had a splendid French dip with au jus, or perhaps a nice 
 mongolian beef from the take out place down the street, the Bovusite is 
 to laugh contemptuously, and then follow up with a secondary question 
 concerning Tijuana and whether or not the non-believer in question 
 understands just how utterly important the battling of telekinetically 
 controlled cocks is in the governance of their very lives right down to
 the smallest most minute detail. This should be followed by a hasty 
 departure. 

 The bright side, though, is that these very same dotards might be slightly 
 more likely to instead select, as the most pivotal spot on, or under, the 
 planet, any place that happens to be getting eaten by an enormous
 bejeweled monster with a hundred faces. This can at least be seen as a 
 step in the right direction, as those two places happen to be drawing
 nearer and nearer to each other with each passing moment.

 In the road ahead, there stands a figure. Clive squints, for there is a 
 glare. It appears, to his jaundiced eyes, to be originating from the 
 crotchal region of this slim figure...could it be?? He inches forward, all 
 the while the jangle of buckles and creak of leather follows after, 
 accompanied by mannish belches and girlish giggles. Although this figure 
 tickles the raw terror in Clive's lower intestine like a loving tapeworm, 
 Clive dares not turn back now. All he will find should he do so are the 
 cruel sponges and square jaws of his determinedly nefarious and 
 salacious keepers. The mere memory of their rippling pectorals perched 
 upon by prepubescent breast-buds is enough to turn the terror-tickle into 
 an outright, and highly lascivious, grope. 

 Clive swallows. Now that he's closer, he can see that streams of dark, 
 globulent liquid are spurting disconcertingly from all about this stranger's 
 corpus. A smell, nay a noxious malodor suffuses his every pore--vaguely 
 alkaline, with a hint of decay and tequila-flavored sweat. He stops short, 
 for now the figure regarding him squints in the light of Clive's own 
 spectacularly reflective groinwear, narrowing the spray emitting from his 
 eyes and sending the foul fluid further and more accurately in Clive's 
 direction. It splatters upon his gleaming codpiece, blocking out the glare 
 like a wisely drawn curtain made of woven, psychedelic blood. That smells 
 bad.

 "My Lord Druid!"

 "Yes, Sargento, your Lord. ChoFoMeFloWhEyO calls. It is time."

 "But-but, my lord, who challenges?"

 "The Flounder, in his infinite wisdom, has lifted an age-old ban. Roig-
 Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae is unleashed, but so, too, is his summoner."

 "Marvel-Dog." Veins of rage stand out across Clive's face like blood-filled 
 sausages answering a harshly given call to arms.

 "Yes. He is come, and he challenges. To Texas we go. So come, 
 blacksmith, and bring yonder nursemaids, trophies of glories past, for
 ere the sun rises, a new lord they might claim." 

 Clive, remembering the many washroom indignities, the spongular 
 torments wreaked upon him from the hapless hairs atop his had to the
 harried heels of his feet and every chafed chin, savaged scrotum and
 blistered buttock between, considers this. A well-placed geyser
 splatters noisomely across the bridge of his nose, ending his reverie.
 "Voluntary submission! Such disgraces and cowardly thoughts are
 unbecoming of a member of the Holy Blacksmith Clan! Come, where is
 your ass?"

 "Quivering alarmedly just below my back."

 "No, fool! Your JACKass. Where is Tinwhistle?"

 With a start, Clive realizes that he knows not. At the same moment, a
 juvenile and largely malformed turd bursts fitfully and prematurely in
 a cloud of diarrheal mist from his increasingly infirm rectum.

 "Rufus..."

 The wracking sobs of Brothman disappear in a glurbling bubble of
 silence as his mouth slips below the cresting waves of Bovus. The
 bacterial playground of his gingivitic gums rejoices in this new 
 festering universe of delight. He closes his eyes, preparing for his
 final, peaceful trip into the dark, mysterious congealed deeps of the
 Brothsea. From Broth we come, and to Broth we shall return. Just as
 the sickening gravy slips lovinging up his nostrils, the holograph 
 flickers to life.
 
 "Brothman? Brothman! What are you DOING? NEVER does the head 
 go into the sea! Didn't we teach you that? It's not fit for enspicening!"

 Brothmom! 

 Brothman shoots out of Bovus like salty vomit from the stomach of 
 an over-indulgent brothshark. "Brothmom! Um...what are you doing?"

 "Well, Brothman, ChoFoMeFloWhEyO stopped by earlier, and a vicious
 mess he made of the place. It seems there's going to be a little get
 together tonight! It's been so LONG since we've had a little party at
 Bovus. Isn't it just magnificent? Well?"

 Once again Brothman forgets to control his many bodily functions. The
 daily enspicening, having started off so promisingly, has taken a 
 drastic turn for the worse. "Well...er...yes, I suppose..."

 "What do you mean, you "suppose"? Brothman! Have you done 
 ANYTHING? Is the place ready? It looks like a mess! Get that gristle 
 mopped off the shoreline, skim the lardy solids off the surface and 
 make that Brothsea gleam! It's a battle for the future of Bovinity, for 
 Bovus' sake! Tidy up a bit!"

...

 As night falls on earth, the great caverns below Texas are teeming. 
 Brothman weeps neck-deep in Brothfroth while the Pansexual Druid 
 Decorating Committee places tinsel and ornaments upon previously 
 cobwebbed rafters. Brothmom heaves her gooey, dripping tendrils 
 up to the great limestone precipice for a panoramic view of nostril-
 wilting Bovus. At length, a miniature ChoFoMeFloWhEyO druid  named 
 Chessy appears, presses an unholy bagpipe under its hood and sounds 
 out the hope-crushing Cockfight Dirge which signals the arrival of the 
 fighting party. 

 "Praise the Flounder!" Screeches DaMonty, Chessy's creepy  pansexual 
 colleague, "In accordance with the ancient astral rules of the Holy 
 Cockfight, please welcome to Bovus... legendary blacksmith-cockmaster 
 Clive Sargento!" 

 A deafening roar rocks Bovus, for its stadium seating is now filled
 with thousands of drunken druidian cockfighting hooligans. In struts 
 Clive solemnly with armor aglisten and nursemaids in tow. 

 As the great Brothsea opens before him, Clive kneels and extends a
 calloused hand to the trembling, sweaty Brothman. "Rise, old friend; 
 for thine pores are oozing, thy Broth is enspicened and we fight for 
 the glory of Bovus this night!"

(To Be Continued!!)


Appendix A:
The Six Ancient Astral Rules of the Holy Cockfight

 1. The Holy Cockfight shall be ordained solely by the blessing of a Druid 
 Knight of the sacred order of ChoFoMeFloWhEyO: Chosen Followers of the 
 Messianic Flounder Whose Eyes Ooze (with the Technicolor Blood of the 
 Ancients). Ye shall know these gentlemen by their perfect white robes and 
 their myriad projectile blood geysers.

 2. Each entrant must be a devout follower of Chofomeflowheyo, and shall 
 present his cock to the Druid Knight for a blood baptism to the Neil Diamond 
 song of his choice.

 3. Each entrant shall possess by the art of Chofomeflowheyo Telekinesis the 
 muscle and sinews of his chosen cock, attacking his opponent's possessed cock 
 with a furious vigor.

 4. The cocks shall quarrel to the death.
 
 5. The surviving cock shall morph into a whimsical creature of his master's 
 choice, possessing the ethereal powers of St. Horace the Flatulent. His 
 master shall be granted the lifelong services of a dozen princely nursemaids.

 6. The master of the losing cock shall be banished to El Salvador. Any 
 and all fell beasts in his possession shall be locked away in a manner to 
 be determined by the winning cock master.


Appendix B:
The Prequel

 Many moons prior to our squalid age the Broth Man and Marvel-dog roamed 
 the hallowed greens of New Haven together like twin brothers begotten 
 from some titanic mother of unfathomable homeliness. With a twinkle in 
 their step and a sparkle in their eye, the two beret-clad comrades-in-
 arms laughed, wept, theorized, hypothesized, philosophized and syllogized, 
 uniformly cursing the reproachful transgressions of the ancients. In 
 concert they shared wild-eyed plans for a utopian age that was all but 
 palpable but seemed to rest just out of reach.

 And upon graduation from Yale it was with steadfast sanguineness and 
 robust vainglory that this brotherhood of misfits established the New 
 England Cockfighting Underground, a front for the insidious institute of 
 sorcery that attracted such stalwart visionaries as Clive Sargento and 
 Opal "Fat Pants" De Milo, whose lovechild Darlene was baptized with Broth 
 deep within the Bovusite Temple of Burlington in the Ninth Year of the 
 Age of the Underground.

 But as all great things again to dust must crumble, so was the fraternity 
 ultimately crushed beneath the weight of its own passionate denizens. 
 For over time, as Broth-man sunk ever deeper into lustful Broth-worship, 
 his compatriot Marvel-dog sought to quell his own spiritual hunger at 
 the Forbidden Altar of Bestial Necromancy. It was Marvel-dog whose 
 clerical proficiency in due course summoned that ancient beastly spectre 
 Roig-Zoigy-Jaw-Jae-Mae from his unholy slumber, whose chosen gateway to 
 our temporal plane was manifested somewhere between the spleen and pancreas 
 of poor Opal, sucking her broken body into the terrible void from whence 
 he came. Young Darlene, who was with her mother at the hour of her 
 de-dimensionization, galloped screaming into the night, vowing never to 
 return to the cursed soil of New England.

 And so it was that Clive Sargento, following untold hours of Holy Broth-
 induced meditation and several helpings of that introspective therapy 
 known only the Hallowed Blacksmith Clan, was obliged to challenge Marvel-
 dog's might in that most-feared-of-all-venues: the Tijuana Cock Ring.




 
        
The Ballad of Horace and Trixie


 Horace was his name. He arrived one evening on an unmanned rickshaw as 
 the townspeople were walking home from work. 


 As he rolled haughtily through the town, a most pungent odor wafted from
 betwixt Horace's naked toes, filling the night air, not to mention the 
 moist nostrils of the citizenry. 

 "FISHMONGER!" they cried lustily, their gleaming eyes turned heavenward, 
 "THE FISHMONGER IS HERE!" 


 And as the dew-infested bud of the daisy so patiently reveals its pollen-
 encrusted stamen of infinite joy, so too did the immeasurably small 
 follicles deep within Horace's toes burst forth, giving birth to wee 
 tadpoles which, before the townspeople's eyes, grew into middle-aged frog- 
 steeds and donned the rickshaw harness with great speed. And with much 
 pomp, the frog-steeds raised to their lips their perfect white trumpets,
 blaring forth a dazzling fanfare of everlasting beauty.

  
 Oafish grins of delight spread cheek to cheek across the faces of the 
 ignorant farmers and their illiterate children as Horace, now swathed in 
 a great gleaming cape by his butler, Frogmorton, rose to his majestic 
 fullness of height, and placing a great brass bullhorn to his trembling 
 lips cried: "A Rodeo! A Rodeo my children's children! Where Horace, the
 mightiest wrangler in the Urals will do battle with the most nefarious of 
 Mother Nature's evildoers! Come one, come all!" 

 
 "One fish for all who renounceth land meat!" bellowed Horace's fat face, 
 and once again, the feeble-minded citizenry erupted in confused joy. 

 "Oh, mighty Horace! Praise His name!" screeched the abyssmally uneducated
 villagers. "Show us the way, Grandfather!" 

 "This way, assholes! Tauraloo! Tauraloo!" Frogmorton chortled into the 
 great bullhorn. And at once, a crystal scepter appeared in his greasy 
 fist, and he led them down the filthy road towards the town stables, as 
 the Frog-steeds lifted Horace and his fanciful rickshaw into the air on  
 winged, webbed feet.
 
 And for each sheep, cow, and piglet murdered, each muttonloin, beefsteak 
 and porkchop discarded along the way, the heavens parted, and one perfect,
 fresh flounder descended towards Earth. Also, the enchanted bowtie of
 Frogmorton dazzled all who dared lay eyes upon it. 


 And so the fish rained heavy and Frogmorton's hearty chortles danced on 
 the air, causing a great happiness to to fill the otherwise completely 
 empty heads of the peasantry. But beneath the banner of such a strident
 warmonger as Horace, such things cannot last... 

 All at once a great darkness overcame the procession, casting a pall over 
 even Fair Frogmorton's festively magic neckwear. The pungently delectable 
 odor of soggy fur broke over the helpless fools and their charismatically
 insane leader like great, stinky tidal waves over helpless, incredibly 
 stupid rocks.
 
 A tremulous cry went up: "Trixie! Trixie is come! The Great Man-Faced Dog-
 Beast is upon us! All is lost! ALL IS LOST!" A frantic madness overcame 
 the exceptionally dim-witted, droolingly moronic dotards of the citizenry,
 sending them into a panic--stripping, urinating and lashing out with their
 fish like so many naked, peeing, fish-wielding cattle, hopelessly waiting 
 for merciful slaughter. 

 For there in the road stood mighty Trixie, beast of legend, dog with the 
 face of a man. Even proud Horace felt his chapped anus clench in horror at 
 the sound of each terrible dogfart that ripped from Trixie's bowels like a 
 furious gale, stinking of vengeance and polish sausage. 

 "Who here has dared renounceth Land-meat?" Trixie gowled between curiously
 human lips, shiny with sweet dog spittle. "SPEAK NOW!" 


 Porcelain screams were etched into faces and crickets were chirping in the
 spacious craniums of the catatonic, iron-rich peasants. With thick 
 eyebrows raised, Trixie turned to the hemorrhoidal fishmonger, whose face 
 now drooped bashfully to his unsavory, sagging breasts. The frog-steeds 
 looked on nervously.

 "What say you, Horace?" chortled the decadent, flatulent man-dog. Once 
 again, his muscular sphincter flexed, and a fresh, thick fog rolled through 
 the populace. For a moment, all was silent, and time slowed to a monotonous
 crawl.

 Many hours went by as a single ray of light patiently appeared on the 
 rolling moors. The clouds had spread once more.

 Years later, those whose synapses had not yet ceased to fire recalled with
 provincial zeal that it had fallen from the heavens like a bolshoi 
 ballerina.
 
 The Great Albino Flounder, its infared eyes bleeding in a technicolor 
 rainbow, hovered thrashing above their heads, drenching the hills in rich,
 pungent entrails of an unknown origin. And from under his dainty parasol, 
 a shellshocked Frogmorton screamed frantically into his blood-soaked 
 bullhorn: "The Final Battle has begun!"


 At the lusty call of Horace's apallingly entrail-smattered captain-of-arms, 
 a great howl erupted from Trixie's maw, mingling unpleasantly with the 
 flatulent roars of his mighty bowels. And on came his hordes, answering his
 beckons. 

 Perhaps from the very bones of the earth itself reared Trixie's massive 
 army, land meats of all kinds, thrust from the ground like shoots of corn,
 sending a tremor of fear through Horace and his unsupported bosoms. 
 Hamhocks arose from the turbid soil, weilding axes and maces, alongside the 
 craftier kielbasas with their short swords and knives. And here! a strip of
 bacon winging overhead screaming its symphony of doom! and there! a full 
 rack of lamb wheeling great constructs and war machines of infinite terror.
 And LO! all who looked upon this rising swell of protein-enriched troops 
 shook with fear, but rage also.

 Behind Horace, Frogmorton turned to his own horde, sending a rush of 
 jollity through his bowtie, dazzling the neanderthal peons of the 
 citizenry. In response, white kunckles tightened their clutch on slippery
 fishtails, toothless mouths blurted incomprehensible, but nevertheless 
 agressive, inanities, and many, many bowels and bladders were evacuated 
 into already heavily soiled slacks.

 "ONWARD MY MORONIC GRANDCHILDREN!" Cried Horace, finding his courage amidst 
 a sea of infirm flesh and painfully cracked anus, "Onward to great victory! 
 For the Flounder is above us! and rains its chum upon our heads! and the 
 sea comes! THE SEA COMES!"

 And surely enough, around the leg-warmer clad ankles of the citizenry, 
 water was gathering, and a great roar, a roar equalling the might of 
 Trixie's sphincter, a roar of angry water and unfocused idiocy was coursing
 through the soil. Deep, deep, but closer still and coming on quickly... 


 The musical chime of heavy steel colliding with hollow cranium rang out 
 over the hillocks as the meaty foot soldiers recited 4th century French
 poetry.  But the heart-warming, meat-loving melodies acquired a sorrowful
 twinge as the colossal, flounder-shaped tsunami rose far into the
 stratosphere, draping Trixie's fleshy minions in shadow. 

 Though a healthy half of the townsdunces had been mercilously slaughtered 
 by the armed land-meats, a wide and sinister grin now stretched across the
 snot-stained lips of mighty Horace. And tossing his waste-encrusted briefs
 into the air, he called out to one and all, "Oh Land Meats! May the scales 
 of justice surround your flaky new flesh! For the Sea Meats have risen 
 this day, and the Great Meat Jihad that decends upon us shall spill for 
 the last time the blood of the fallen ones, cow to squirrel, well-done to
 rare! Death to Trixie! DEATH to the legg'ed! The dining table of victory 
 shall be chock full-o-plankton this night!"
 
 And with that, the menacing wave decended, and tender land flesh was 
 eviscerated by the piercing tail of the ray, the sharp and crafty barnacle, 
 and the gnashing jaws of the irate barracuda.  

 Frogmorton, donning a new effeminate pink-and-yellow sash, approached the
 frantic Trixie with renewed agility, and taunted him laughingly with his
 mesmerizing bowtie at length. And much to the shock of his hordes, his 
 man-dog eyelids soon grew heavy, and he drifted out of consciousness with
 Earth-shattering flatulence which bubbled towards the surface of the 
 tumultuous Jihad-sea in a pea green air pocket, murdering each and every 
 wayward Sea Meat in its path. 

 EPILOGUE

 Amongst the meatfolk it is said that the silence of death is the silence 
 of a coffin. Rosewood. Or metal and plastic. Formaldehyde or Freon. It is
 thick, heavy, impenetrable and dense. It echoes and it is cold. Lowering
 across all, it cast an embracing stillness over the glowing garmentry of
 fallen Frogmorton, felled by flatulence--the Last and Greatest casualty 
 of Trixie's mighty methane arsenal. Creeping deftly, it calmed the
 warmongering anus of Trixie, smoothing the viscous puddles of saliva
 collecting where his mighty mandibles met the Earth, where his princely 
 man-dog head finally fell--everywhere, the silence.

 Silence follows victory. Silence follows defeat. The Landmeats had fallen 
 to their seafaring lords. But the silence did not whisper such things. 
 Mingling in the rotting earth were the waters of the sea the red blood of 
 the flesh. Lying still where they had fallen, the landmeats remained soggy 
 and unappetizing.

 Horace heaved himself up from where he had faltered, screaming terrified 
 at the riotous tumult of the battle's end. His thick torso tottered on 
 spindly, vericose riddled legs. His mouth agape, his tears ready, for Fair 
 Frogmorton, girlish and bold, lay at his feet--broken and beautiful.

 He turned, his attention drawn by the familiar incoherence of one of him 
 many iron-deficient followers. There, standing in a heap of human waste, 
 stood a slack-jawed serf, his meager attention held taught by the still
 pristine flounder he held in his booger-encrusted fingers. Horace, amazed,
 hitched up his man-bosoms and sat gingerly on a fallen log, the soggy bark
 nurturing and cradling his now naked and ravaged buttocks, as the flounder
 began to speak:

 "A Great Battle. A Great Victory. But to the Freezer we all must go! And to
 the Freezer we all shall! Sirloin and Sushi! Steak and Sturgeon! Lambchop 
 and Lobster, all! Death take all meats and make us her own! A Great Battle. 
 A Great Victory. But to the Freezer we all must go!"

 And as Horace looked skyward, he saw his beloved flounder retreating, 
 swimming for the sky as the Tsunami drained back into the Earth. And all
 Meats, land and sea alike, took to the air, heading fast for the Freezer 
 and the Cauldron, singing a song of lament as they leapt from grasping 
 fingers and emerged from the battle-torn mud.  
 
 And Silence fell. Heavy and vast. Waiting and lonely it came to every head.
 Peasants wept and Horace shook as the night came on, meatless and cold.

 THE END