My postulates are insufficiently large. I know not why. They are so easily overrun by herds of stampeding and trumpeting engrams. To make matters worse, a significant contingency of body thetans recently assumed residency within my nostrils. From this peculiar vantage, they endlessly strum out-of-tune ukuleles from dusk to dawn, making sleep impossible. My eyes now have large circles, just like an owl. But for some reason, I don't feel particularly wise. Some folks say that trouble comes in bunches. And to lend credence to this adage, just last night Prince Xenu landed his state-of-the-art extra-terrestrial hovercraft upon the roof of my domicile. He communicated his distress to me telepathically through the gold fillings of my teeth. Barbara, my good friend on the other side of the mountain in Salt Lake City would certainly be proud. Apparently Xenu requires some earth time to repair the warp and woof of his exponential fusion drive. This is OK, since the racket from his rooftop repair project pre-empts the horrendous din emanating from the aforementioned engrams and tone deaf body thetans.

But none of the above can even remotely compete with my latest source of unhappiness. Yes, the saga gets even stranger. This morning, around 9:30 I had a visitor from California. An unwanted visitor. Mike Rinder, that fallen and disgraced angel from RTC, still clad in his lawyerly charcoal gray suit, showed up at my doorstep with no notice. He banged repeatedly on my screen door (I sleep late nowadays because of the body thetan problem, and Xenu also kept me up very late as most attentive readers might figure) and then started shouting my name, liberally using slanderous epithets. This ploy eventually roused me from the dead. I dashed half-asleep to the front door and caught sight of an unhappy Rinder who gestured in a decidedly unfriendly manner through the screen door. His body language seemed bizarre and complicated. He then began to snarl a cacophony of Scientology gibberish, loudly enough to prompt my full panic mode.

I retreated backwards into the kitchen, thinking on my feet, as it were. I noticed the 6 lb Bluefish still resting on the counter that my neighbor had given me the previous week and also noticed a pair of green pruning gloves left behind by my estranged wife. I quickly put on the gloves and then snatched up the decaying fish. From the other room Rinder continued to screech torrents of abuse. Actually, it was becoming so repetitive that the threatening edge had begun to subside into a pathetic shrillness. I charged back into the foyer, quickly unlocked and nervously pushed the screen door outwards. The suddenness of movement caught Rinder unprepared as he toppled backwards, trying to maintain his balance. We faced one another in the front yard as I brandished my oily, decrepit weapon and raised it threateningly above my head, achieving what I imagined to be an appropriate sense of menace. Rinder warily noticed the fish, then stepped back and held his nose in a gesture of effete disgust. At that moment, with all my strength, I brought the full weight of the rotting Bluefish upon Rinder's head. He shrieked in terror. I then clobbered him several more times, bringing him to his knees and then began to slap him to and fro across the face with the horrid scaly fish tale.

During the fracas, the fish carcass, under considerable (and understandable) duress, had begun to disintegrate, leaving fish innards all about the yard, not to mention decorating the lawyerly charcoal suit of one Mike Rinder, former lawyer for RTC. Rinder kept attempting to compose himself by practicing his TR's, but it was by this time no use. And soon enough, taking account of the indignity of his plight, he began to wail in desperation.

Meanwhile, Prince Xenu still diligently at work on his starship, could not help but to notice the front yard melee from his rooftop perch. A gradual glint of recognition arose as he studied the beleaguered Rinder"s profile. Thanks to the miracle of reincarnation, Xenu recognized an old, but not so venerable adversary being besieged by a rotting fish, an adversary with whom Prince Xenu still had several serious scores to settle. Xenu then configured his raygun to the *MUTATE* setting and took careful aim at the distraught Rinder, now lying face down in the grass and sobbing inconsolably. As Xenu's right mandible gently squeezed the trigger, a seemingly benign, cone-shaped, purple haze enveloped Mike Rinder and suddenly transformed him into an oyster. Not a metaphorical oyster, but a literal one, just like they harvest from the Chesapeake Bay. Although some startled witnesses later claimed that they saw a large clam, more reliable testimony concluded that the oyster outcome had more credibility, that indeed, the oyster took precedence over the clam. However, it is not totally unreasonable to herald such claims as apostasy.

In my own distress and confusion, after witnessing the birth of the oyster (or clam), I sought mightily to make some sense out of it all. As my thoughts raced, the entire structure of the house began to gently pulsate, and Prince Xenu's hovercraft lifted from its perch and began its gradual and dignified upward ascent. This was veritably not an event ruined by splashy special effects favored by some Hollywood types.

Unfortunately the above series of misadventures had no impact upon the ukulele strumming body thetans who continued to plague my ears and torture my sinuses, not to mention the large engrams running amok like wild animals throughout the canyons of my weary cranium.

Yet maybe, when all is said and done, it is the consistent features of life that afford us the resolve to carry on.

See you on Teegeeack. May the solar winds always blow against your back.

ewsnead

-- "I was much happier in previous existences when I wrote plays, composed music, conquered nations, discovered continents, and developed cures for diseases." - Tom Cruise.

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