Chameleon, Part II

Continuing with this little story, it was another Friday night at Think-A-Holic Lounge and the busiest night for predatory biped lizards in this part of the cosmos, next to Saturday night.

I sat at a table in a dark corner instead of at the bar where I usually sit and that's because of Chameleon, the new barmaid with the veil covering her face. You don't get service from a barmaid when you sit at the bar. You have to look at Angus McCloud's ugly spook face all night long and that gets a little old after a while. But I didn't see Chameleon anywhere and I craned and strained my neck like a goose, looking all around the Lounge for her. Then I heard her voice. But it seemed to be attached to someone else (see pic).

When this Chameleon look-alike approached me I started to peel off Solar Bucks like I was husking corn and handed them to her, even before I ordered a drink. Just the very idea of being waited on by a woman who looked like a nun made me feel guilty. Guilty enough to expunge my guilt with money, just like they teach you from day one on planet Earth.

But this isn't Earth, I said to myself as I gently laid a Solar Sawbuck on her tray, on top of the three Solar Dollars and the one Solar Fin that I'd already laid there. I'd never felt this guilty about anything in my entire life before and all I did was just sit down. After I ordered a double shot of think-a-hol and a schooner of bubbly chaser, I secretly hoped I'd have enough money left over to pay for the drinks when they arrived.

After Chameleon left, I muttered a few choice words to myself about Angus, the big-ass head bartender who'd hired this shapeshifter called Chameleon. I was almost certain, at this point, that she was splitting her tips with him and that the worst of it was yet to come.

To be continued...

Chameleon

I rarely sit at a table at Think-A-Holic Lounge but ever since the Lounge hired a new barmaid last week (see pic), my butt hasn't touched a bar stool there. No one knows anything about her or where she comes from and Angus McCloud, the Lounge's big-ass head bartender (and the ghost of a dead Scottish poet) won't divulge any information about her, except her name. Chameleon. That's what he calls her. And that means Angus is not only the guy who hired her, he's also the one who's dating her.

I've always been a good tipper, even a big tipper, but one look at those alluring, mysterious eyes and folding money starts to slip between my fingers. Especially when those eyes look back, or pretend to look back. The fact that all you can see of Chameleon are her eyes makes our lounge lizard brains work overtime just trying to imagine what the rest of her is like.

I gotta hand it to ol' Angus, he sure knows a money maker when he sees one. I wonder how long we regulars at Think-A-Holic Lounge will last before our tip money is all dried up and we have to go back to work to earn more. It doesn't matter. That's just fine with me.

What else do I have to do with my disposable Solar Dollars, Fins and Sawbucks? Still, one thing bothers me and I'm sure it bothers the other regulars, especially the tried-and-true lounge lizards who make Think-A-Holic Lounge their home away from home. Why is she called Chameleon?

To be continued...

The Worm Has Turned

Think-A-Holic Lounge, as you well know, occupies no space in the physical universe because it has no position in the space-time continuum. None of us regulars at the Lounge has a clue as to what the hell that actually means but it doesn't matter to us because most of us are think-a-holics anyway and think-a-holics never worry about anything.

The Earthling tendency to worry and fret and obsess over anything and everything is a great karmic magnet that causes things and events to transpire on that planet that will actually be worth worrying about. Like all the computer viruses and worms that have recently been unleashed upon that planet because of the self-fulfilling prophecy of worry that Earthlings drag around all day long, day in and day out. Just like a big monkey on their backs that feeds on the banana of their fear, if you will. One of those monkeys is pictured here. He has no name because he's been given every name in the book by Earthlings who fear anything and everything, especially if someone else fears it first. Monkey see, monkey do, it seems, is Earth's biggest cottage industry.

The odd thing about this particular monkey is that he was once a common, everyday computer virus who morphed into an infamous computer worm after he started getting a lot of press. But this particular robotic worm was not created by a basement-dwelling, twenty-something, hermit nerd in America who has debilitating authority issues or by an anti-American Third World terrorist who makes his or her living scamming the elderly in the USA fly-over via email. No, this worm was invented by every fearful Earthling whose own guilt about one thing or another opened the door for a karmic penance they felt they had coming to them.

But when Earthling fear breathed life into this particular worm bot, it soon developed a mind of its own. Now it appears just about anywhere in cyberspace as this harmless-looking imp and it's even infected this portion of non-space with it's clever, ambivalent presence. Every time you click on the creepy little worm he takes you somewhere you've never been before. Quite often, it's somewhere you'd rather not be or else someplace you'd never think of visiting in a million years. Either one, or sometimes both.

Here, at Think-A-Holic Lounge, we've kind of taken a liking to him. We're not sure why. There have been scarier worms floating around the cosmos. We think this particular worm has turned over a new leaf. And I guess that must be the reason we think-a-holics just let him come and go as he pleases.

Beam Bot

Now that the Super Bowl and the U.S. Presidential Election are both done deals, things have quieted down a little at Think-A-Holic Lounge. There aren't nearly as many fights in the parking lot now and only a handful of unruly patrons are being tossed out the front door each weekend by Bouncing Bobbi, the Lounge's new female bouncer. But the Lounge's big-ass head bartender, Angus McCloud, is always on the lookout for new kinds of trouble.

This afternoon Angus introduced me and a couple other think-a-holics to the latest security bot hired by the management of Think-A-Holic Lounge. It was designed to put down violent patrons before they have a chance to inflict any bodily harm on anyone or do any serious damage. Angus calls this machine Beam Bot (see pic) because it can "taser" a troublemaker from fifty feet away with an invisible particle beam that renders temporary unconsciousness. Beam Bot is supposed to "taser the perp" and then catch him or her before they fall to the ground and hurt themselves. Unh, hunh.

When we asked Angus if this Beam Bot thing was legal, he reminded us that Think-A-Holic Lounge occupies no space in the physical universe and, therefore, it has no actual position in the space-time continuum. I guess he was trying to tell us that this is the new frontier and therefore, lawlessness was permitted. Yeah, right. Especially when all you have to do is grease someone's palm. When I asked him if he was expecting trouble or looking for trouble, the big ol' Scottish ghost just shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm just doing my job," he told us with his thumb poised over the "ON" button on Beam Bot's remote.

"What's that big rocket on his back for?" one of the regulars asked.

"Damned if I know," replied Angus. Then he turned on the bot.

I should have expected what happened next. Beam Bot came to life with an ominous, whirring sound, scanned everyone in the parking lot with his particle beam gun, and then returned to me and held his beam snout steadily on me. Sweat trickled down my face and I felt like running. But I knew better.

"Now, about that bar tab of yours, Jonco," said Angus, still aiming the remote at his brand-new bot toy. Everybody howled with laughter as if Angus had delivered the most comical line they'd ever heard. I wasn't laughing.

"Funny," I snorted and went inside to order up a double shot of think-a-hol and a single bubbly chaser from the relief bartender.

I chuckled to myself after I tossed down the think-a-hol because I knew that it was only a joke. Still, looking out for trouble is one thing but looking for trouble is quite another and almost always a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, hell, if I had a nifty toy like Beam Bot to play with, I'd probably be just as eager as Angus was for the next barroom brawl.

Super Bowl Saturday

Broadcasts of the American Super Bowl from planet Earth rarely reach Think-A-Holic Lounge and it's a damn good thing. Biped rhinos from the planet Testos hate any kind of game played with balls and one or two Testosterones always show up at the Lounge the day before the Super Bowl just to taunt us. Around here we call these creatures "Angroids" because they're always angry about some damn thing or other. We call this particular Angroid Gonuts.

Angus McCloud, the big-ass head bartender at Think-A-Holic Lounge tried to get Gonuts into the spirit of the Super Bowl yesterday by tossing him a souvenir football signed by Terry Bradshaw during Earth's "Golden Age of Football". This is what the stupid Angroid did with it. The entire Lounge was absolutely mortified by this incredibly hostile gesture.

After that, Angus made a vow never to toss any biped rhino his coveted baseball signed by Roger Maris in 1961. We all agreed that that would be an even stupider idea than letting a biped rhino bounce his Billy Jean King autographed tennis ball from the infamous Billy Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs match-up in 1973. Angus had actually considered doing this during a rare Wimbledon TV broadcast received accidentally at the Lounge.

To make a long Super Bowl story short, I personally patched up Angus' violated and deflated Terry Bradshaw football, bought him a double shot of think-a-hol, and then six of us regular Lounge Lizards tossed the nasty Angroid Gonuts out on his ear. Banning Testosterones from Think-A-Holic Lounge altogether will no doubt be the next order of business when the dust finally settles.