"Clarence, I do believe that your compass is totally inaccurate. The border patrol said that we're in Canada and not in southern Vermont as was to be planned. Hang your gully of a face in shame!" stated Winston.

"If you don't trust my instincts, we might as well cancel this whole worthless pilgrimage right now then. Besides, the coffee in the thermos is beginning to taste like some cheap excuse for toothpaste at a clearance sale at Walgreen's. Our week's supply of rations are gone because you decided to exchange them for a back issue of 3, 2, 1 Contact for your reading pleasure. So don't you start in about my inaccuracy. I know strictly where we're headed. Now, lead the way." mentioned Clarence.

"Just you wait Clarence, just you wait!"

Join us next decade as the adventures get even more ridiculous and pointless. Also see how the author can't write dialogue correctly if you didn't catch it this week. ta-ta for now.

brought to you by A.S.W.O.Y.T. A Stupid Waste Of Your Time.

Linoleum, lawn flamingos, pocket calendars. Heck, they're not too different after all if you get down to the very nook of things.

"I heard you were aiming at the pot over there."

"Yes. She told me not to do it, but I surmised it was for the best anyway."

Winston looked halfway over his shoe, and leaning there across the board, discovered a leaflet dropped by someone from the humane society. It read:

{WHOLESALE RETAILERS TAKE NOTE! WE HAVE COME UPON THE LAST DAYS OF ANIMAL KIND AND WILL SOON SUFFER FROM THE EFFECTS OF IMMORAL TESTING ON LABORATORY RATS}

The pamphlet continued on and on until Winston noticed, with a look of deference, that he could not quite exactly tell the difference between his own train of thought and the words printed right before him.

"Funny," he noted, "but I cannot tell which is which."

"What was that you said?" his first-mate asked.

"Oh, nothing. It was just a fleeting moment of weakness..." Winston seemed to be trifling with petty matters and was near the verge of intellectual suicide when his friend stopped him.

"What's her name?"

"Huh?"

"What's her name, man? This can't just be about silly verb-usage anymore. You've been talking aloud to the bunch of us and I'm beginning to question your sanity. (Not that sanity will do you any good.) Where did you start having problems like this--so bad that you needed to use me--or more poignantly, US--as an outlet?"

Winston winced like he had never winced before. The look was halfway between the time he had his first shot of whiskey and the second time he had his first shot of whiskey. A painful scowl of disdain and reproach etched itself in lines strewn across his furrowed brow. The man-boy had no recourse...

Afternoon was beating down on the weary travelers like a handkerchief doused in Sharkberry Kool-Aid. Mosquitoes were the worst calamity the party had seen in days, and Miles even gave a slight chuckle at the appearance of Winston's bitten left ear.

"All right mates, it seems that the weather won't get much cooler and there appears to be a sturdy oak over yonder, why don't we take a break for awhile and restring our banjos or refold our trousers to pass the time."

Clarence winced at Winston's remark. Sure it was perfectly logical and what better way to pass the time than to fold the clothes, but something didn't seem quite right in Winston's tone of voice. It was almost like a touch of sarcasm was apparent in the words. Clarence waltzed on over to his leader and questioned him with the most innocent and ready phrase he could conjure up.

"Sir, is it just me, or are you trying to fool us with your schoolboy charm and witty remarks. It's been nearly two days since you asked us to restring our banjos. Are you feeling all right?"

Meanwhile Miles and Nathu, the Nabisco representatives from Wyoming, were busy hunting using sharpened twisty-ties and venetian blind cords, needless to say, the prairie rabbits weren't the least bit scared at this ridiculous hunting style. One could almost hear the grass stalks laugh in unison over this pitiful attempt.

"Aye, Nathu, I see a nice fat bloke hopping over the rock to your left! Duck on my call, and I'll snare the hapless guzzard."

"Miles old boy, we haven't caught the days meal yet, I think it has something to do with our choice of weapon. Why don't we just use the winchester that..."

Nathu was cut off from his speech by a 'death glare' from Miles. Miles rambled on about how using rifles was for unintelligent lawyers and slobbish steamboat captains. He gestured for Nathu to follow him into the wilderness to hunt out a pack of wild chickadees he had spotted. The two pranced forth.

Meanwhile Clarence and Winston were folding their clothes into neat piles. Red and blues to the left, white and grays to the right. The bottle of Tide did wonders to the clothes in the nearby stream. One could almost think that they were washed professionally, but saying one such thing to these two souls would boast the ego level off the charts, and the adventure would turn into more turmoil than a rock in a pair of someone's undersized and uncomfortable jogging shoes, and the travelers certainly didn't need this.

With their neckties straightened, and their denim shirts hanging loose around the collar, the travelers walked into civilization for the first time in weeks, or was it months...it was hard to tell with the cheap excuse of a calendar from Hallmark they were using.

The city was unincorporated, in fact, it had no name. It wasn't too much of a surprise to everyone since just days earlier they traveled through the desert on a horse with no name. Heck, come to think of it, in the desert you can't remember your name, because there ain't no one there to give you a name...ba daaa daaaaa da da da...

"All right chaps. We need supplies and we need to shop smartly. Since none of us remembered our Sam's Club card, we're going to have to scout out the best bargains this city has to offer. Miles, Nathu...you two go buy a rare Turkish throw rug and a bottle of 2% milk, make sure it says 2% on the bottle too. Clarence, go make silly faces and obscene gestures at the elderly folk over yonder. In the meantime, I'll go dazzle the women at the local discotheque...Clarence, where's my paisley shirt!"

The party bit their tongue at Winston's remark. Whenever he donned the paisley shirt, circa 1984, he took on a completely different personality. Most of the time his alter ego - Mitch Jifferfin, would emerge. Mitch laughed like a sea lion and always boasted that he was a direct cousin of the Thompson Twins. The travelers tried to ignore this remark as much as possible, but there was something almost intriguing about his personality.

"Eh Nathu, do you think we'll actually find a rare Turkish rug in these parts of Connecticut?"

"Miles, you silly snozzer. This town is the central point of the import/export superhighway. There's bound to be something from Turkey in one of these dime stores, after all, this is Connecticut - 'Land of a thousand miracles and only twelve sandboxes.' Grow up Miles."

Clarence did as he was told and skittered on over to the elderly folk. What the old jiggers didn't know was that Clarence was a master of making faces. During his grade school years he would sneak up on little Beverly Dinters and scare the blazes out of her with his Barry Manilow impression. He knew the art of making faces very well...

"Excuse me young man, would you care for a Werther's Original?"

Clarence halted in his tracks. The voice sounded much like his grandmother's back in Bridgeport, Siam. He peered over to where the voice was coming from and the old lady held out that golden wrapper with the sweet butter toffee inside. Clarence couldn't resist...

The discotheque was in full swing and the patrons all showed their moves out on the dance floor. All was going along splendidly until "Hold Me Now" by the Thompson Twins started to play, and a shadowy figure strutted through the door, and into 80's history books forever...

Trailing off into the sunset in a panicked frenzy, Clarence started murmuring and chattering an old nursery rhyme he learned in graduate school. The word patterns didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense now though, alas, neither did his life at the moment. After the 6th cup of Aunt Burke's Cocoa at the last Inn, Clarence started to have strange hallucinations and retreated into a sort of state of euphoria. He lost the other members of the traveling party about three miles back when he dashed into the thickets after he thought he saw a Turkish steel drum band playing, although it just turned out to be...well...thickets. Embarrassed at his innocent mistake, yet perplexed at why the image even crossed his mind, he decided a nap was the best solution at the moment. Finding a sturdy oak to lean his back upon, Clarence drifted into slumberland.

It was during this sleep when the most zany of images were yet to come. Clarence dreamt he was fishing off the coast of Iowa while dancing to the familiar beats of John Tesh. The dream immediately shifted to a tranquil urban scene where he was playing hopscotch and laughing at the way he couldn't seem to draw a straight line on an etch-a-sketch. From there the dream's meaning finally took hold when he saw a ghastly image of himself at the tender age of 24. It was at this age when he was a well respected cabinet maker in the heart of Vermont, he held a sturdy business and his customers always commented on how unoriginal and ridiculous his creations were. During this particular dream though, he saw himself sawing a piece of cedar on a linoleum floor, something he'd never think of doing in his professional opinion, but it was the design on the floor which caught his eye, it was the most peculiar shape he'd ever seen, it almost looked like a...square, a perfectly round square.

Clarence awakened with a start. Sweat glistened on his forehead and haunting images kept taking places in his mind. Focusing on the elegantly dressed scarecrow in the distance, Clarence decided he'd go inspect it, anything would help get his mind off of those ghoulish dreams he had. While walking over to the scarecrow, he tripped seventeen times. Laughing like a Danish postal worker, Clarence decided he was the clumsiest man on earth at that moment, until, out of the corner of his eye, he caught glimpse of a man attempting to fly a kite with a 25 lb. barbell attached to it standing next to him. How peculiar indeed...

Being the naive Pisces that he was, Miles was the only one in the group without even a hint of emotion in his eyes. Staring at the sunset on a day like this only brought back ridiculous memories of years gone when he used to play croquet at his in-law's house on Sundays. Afterwards, the family would eat a nice dinner complete with garden fresh veggies and imitation lemonade from the nearby grocery store. Uncle Allen would later on humor the family with his famous impression of a saran wrap manufacturer on the assembly line...gosh, the memories...

"Miles, you industrial disease! We don't have time for flashbacks now. Quick, help Nathu with the preparations for camp. In the meantime, I'm going to pretend I'm helping out also, but in actuality I'll just be playing my hand-held video game I stole from that Oshkosh B'Gosh clad youngster in the last village. Now hop to it old boy!"

Winston always had a way with words. Disregarding that previous conversation as nothing more than friendly chatter, Miles shrugged and began to unroll the sleeping bags.

Meanwhile, Clarence was preoccupied with his own thoughts at the time. Just moments earlier he had demonstrated for the travelers an ancient Venezualan jive dance he had learned in the orient. Needless to say, the moves were puzzling and the lyrics to accompany the prance were even more zany, but he at least expected some sort of applause or recognition for his claim to fame. No one enjoyed it though, and Sid even was so bold as to flip Clarence off and call him a "Rhode Island amateur." Nevertheless, Clarence vowed from that moment on never to make a fool out of himself again. Somersaulting to his tent, he decided to retire for the night.

Busy with a number two pencil in hand, Nathu was the only artist out of the group. His stick figures and smudge spots earned him great success with the art contests back in his hometown. No one seemed to appreciate art out here in the wilderness though. Winston said being creative was for sissies, and Miles wouldn't even touch clay or plaster after that boating accident last Spring. Oh well, drawing seemed to pass the time for him, and it wouldn't be too long before he'd doze off anyway.

The newest addition to the bunch was a lad by the name of Sid Prycheck. He claimed to be a famous tugboat mechanic from a land called Honah-Lee, although Clarence knew differently, since just weeks earlier he had won an argument with Winston stating that Africa doesn't really exist and is actually just a myth. The party had spotted Sid in an abandoned treehouse in Ohio. He was sitting in a corner all to himself, and couldn't stop shivering due to the immense heat. Figuring one more traveler wouldn't be of any harm, the party decided to take Sid under their wing, and he seemed very grateful. Although deep inside his cold soul, Sid was a troubled and violent character. During his grammar school years, he would nonchalantly go up to the tetherball, and hit it counter-clockwise instead of the traditional clockwise way. His peers soon noticed he wasn't quite right in the head when they noticed Sid's watch was three minutes faster than the school's. A peculiar fellow indeed...