INTRODUCTION

Bird Watching is a wonderful hobby that can provide hours of enjoyment. It's also a great way to get outside and explore nature. What better way to wile away the interminable days than by strolling through the sun-dappled woods, not knowing what exotic bird may be around the next bend, just waiting to be sighted! It's not like you have anything better to do, and you don't have to worry about birds telling you how fat those pleated pants make you look.

The avid watcher will discover, by gazing at these graceful creatures, a natural beauty unsurpassed in any of humanity's grandest achievements. The Mona Lisa, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and even your mother, all pale in comparison to the colorful plumage of the Blackburnian Warbler. Your mother especially pales in comparison, primarily because the Warbler doesn't smell like cat pee.

MIGRATION PATTERNS

Depending on where you are in North American, you will view different birds during different seasons. For instance, only an idiot would expect to see Red Breasted Sapsuckers in Southern California during the winter—only a big dumb idiot. I'm talking to you.

I bet you think birds are pretty dumb, don't you? You're way smarter than a bird, huh? Well then do this for me: Close your eyes and spin around in a circle. Okay stop, but keep your eyes closed. Now tell me, what direction is South?

You don't fucking know.

MATING

Many birds attract a mate using bright plumage and elaborate mating dances. It is usually the male who must go through these trials to entice the female. Once two birds are paired, they may stay together for life, or they may part and reproduce with multiple partners. However most birds are monogamous, since it increases the chance of survival for their chics. The Dusky Capped Nighthatch has a bigger dick than you.

BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA

Common Peafowl
When you see this bird, you'll think, "Oh look, it's a peacock." It's not a peacock, it's a peafowl. Please, please don't say "Look at the pretty peacock!" out loud, or you will embarrass me as well as yourself and we'll have to leave the party early with everyone watching and wondering what we're arguing about.

You probably thought I would use this "peacock" discussion as an opportunity to mock your tiny cock, but I'm bigger than that . . . too bad you aren't.

Crimson Collared Grosbeak
This large finch has especially beautiful coloring. It's body is a blood red which extends down its back into a deep brown-red. The rich gradation looks like the last light of sunset when a Hunter's moon is overhead. It's head and wings are black like the night. Frankly, you don't deserve to see one of these.

American Woodcock
This tiny cock is less than two inches long and spends most of its time rooting in filthy underbrush. That's all I'm going to say about that, but I will now turn my eyes on you and arch my eyebrows significantly.

Spotted Dove
This is my favorite bird, and if you have a problem with that you can go fuck yourself.

Gray Catbird
The Gray Catbird's habitat is low, dense vegetation or vine tangles at the edges of forests, marshes, and streams. Suburban landscapes contain good habitat for this species. Which is fortunate, since suburban landscapes are crowding and destroying the natural habitats of so many other birds. But don't let that stop you from buying a second SUV, or paving your backyard.

Lesser Prairie Chicken
Hey, the picture of this bird looks a lot like you. You heard me.

I ransacked A.A. Milne's house over the weekend. I had been meaning to do it for a while, but I've been busy (reading!). Also, his house is in England, which is a pain in the ass to get to. Anyway, I finally did it, and boy was it worth it!

For those of you who don't know anything, A.A. Milne is the author of the beloved Winnie the Pooh series of children's books. I've long heard whispers about a lost Pooh story hidden somewhere at Cotchford Farm, his country home in Hartfield, East Sussex. Milne's last words were "The Pooh . . . I hid it. Terrible story . . . must never find it. Hid it here . . . It's in the . . . the . . . uggghhh." And then he died.

His family searched all over Cotchford Farm, but couldn't find the Lost Pooh of Terror (as it became known). They assumed that he was rambling nonsensically, and soon put the matter out of their minds as they began spending all the money he left them in his will.

Various (lesser) Literary Adventurers have ransacked Cotchford without success. But I knew something they did not: "uggghhh" was the name of Milne's pet collie! It had died when he was a young lad. He loved it so much that he had it stuffed and slept with it every night, which drove his wife nuts. When not in his bed Uggghhh sat above the fireplace. Visitors remarked that his lifeless black eyes seemed to follow them around the room.

Long story short I broke in, found the collie, stuck my hand in his mouth and pulled out the Lost Pooh of Terror, which I have reprinted here for your edification. Enjoy!

– – –

Pooh's Rumbly, and What Came Thereof
a Winnie the Pooh Adventure
by A.A. Milne

One day Winnie the Pooh was walking through the Hundred Acre Woods, when he got a rumbly in his tumbly. "I need to eat something sweet, like honey!" Pooh said. So he toddled over to his friend Piglet's house, where he knew honey could always be found.

"Hello Piglet!" Pooh said as he opened the door to Piglet's house.

Piglet didn't hear Pooh come in, because he was busy lifting weights. He was working up quite a sweat, and breathing heavy. Pooh had never seen Piglet with his shirt off before, and was surprised at how well-defined his chest muscles were. Little beads of sweat bounced off his biceps with every pump of his forearm. Finally he looked over and saw Pooh.

"Oh, hello Pooh. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in. What can I do for you?"

"I just got a rumbly, down here" he said pointing to his tummy, "And I was wondering if you had anything sweet for me?"

"Something sweet . . . like honey?"

"Yes, oh yes! Do you have some?"

"I certainly do." Piglet put the weights down--his muscles moved like taught ropes beneath his skin--and walked into the kitchen.There was a big jar of honey on the shelf. Piglet picked it up, and turning to face Pooh, poured the jar of honey all over himself. "Oops! I spilled the honey." He locked eyes. "Do you still want it?"

Pooh shuffled his feet. "No, no I don't think I do. It's probably all sweaty now. And sweaty honey tastes salty. Thank you anyway Piglet!" And with that Pooh walked out of Piglet's house.

Silly old bear!

I was having lunch earlier this week with a powerful literary agent whose name I'm not at liberty to divulge (although it starts with an M, ends with a Y, and rhymes with "sneezy"). We were enjoying mojitos and dungeoness crab claw frittatas while we talked about literary stuff. I admitted to her that I didn't know what I was going to write about in this week's column, and her eyes lit up. She slid a book across the table towards me and winked. "Why don't you talk about this one? Its a great book, we're publishing it in the Fall. Why don't you tell all your readers what a great book it is?"

I opened the book, and there was a $100 bill nestled inside. I looked across the table, and the powerful literary agent winked at me again as she chewed a big mouthful of crab claw frittata.

I had never been so insulted.

I stood up, drained my mojito, drained her mojito, and then slapped the frittata right out of her mouth. I stormed out of Sizzler without even grabbing a mint.

Allow me to take this moment to send a message to all you powerful literary agents: I CANNOT BE BOUGHT SO CHEAPLY! My recommendation is worth way more than a hundred bucks and a free dinner at Sizzler!

To demonstrate Literary Adventure's influence over the bookselling market, and encourage publishers to bribe me more lavishly, I am now going to give positive reviews to the bottom three books on the New York Times Worstseller List. I guarantee that because of this, by next week they will have climbed to the TOP three books on the New York Times Bestseller List.


The Bottom Three Books on the New York Times Worst-Seller List (Soon to be the top three books on the bestseller list):


Ways I Have Toasted my Bread: A Memoir in Seven Volumes
by Michael Kandinski

At seven volumes of six hundred pages each, this set is a real shelf-buster. However the extended format allows Kandinski to really stretch out and explore his subject in depth. Each handsome, leather-bound volume covers one day, and reading the entire set gives you a complete overview of how he ate his toast that week. The full-page engraved chapter openers are particularly handsome.

My only real criticism is that the author prepared his toast exactly the same every day (two slices of wheat, toasted 1 minute and 20 seconds, orange marmalade) SPOILER WARNING: except for Wednesday, when he murdered his parents and spread the jellied remnants of their pulverized brains on the toast.

- - -

I Married an Optometrist
by Elizabeth Burns

This is the sequel to the underrated I Made Out With An Optometrist. Forget everything you THINK you know about optometry, this book is going to blow your preconceptions out of the water--assuming your preconceptions are of the aquatic variety. And for your sake I hope they're not, because if they are, this book is going to BLOW THEM OUT OF THE WATER.

Think optometrists are just normal people like the rest of us? WRONG! That's what Elizabeth Burns thought too--until she married one. She is swiftly drawn into a swirling iris of danger and magic when she discovers her husband is Grand Oculator of an Underworld Optometry Secret Society, full of grey-eyed shamans and colorblind priestesses. They are building a Lasik laser large enough to zap the globe and make everyone myopic. Can the lazy-eyed child with the talking meibomian corneal cyst save her? This book is not intended for young or sensitive readers: it contains intense scenes of corneal abrasion and some pink eye.

Elizabeth Burns has also announced the next and final book in her trilogy of 'tometry: I Divorced an Optometrist and Married a Podiatrist.

- - -

ITCHY: My Battle with Poison Oak
Buzz Polinski

ITCHY chronicles a retired cemetery caretaker's brave battle with Poison Oak. It unblinkingly captures even the most upsetting moments of his inspirational struggle: Dealing with baffled doctors who dont know if it's poison ivy or pigweed rash, running out of caladryl lotion, and trying not to itch it even though it itches SO BAD.

This book will break your heart, then patch your heart up and nurse you back to health. Just when you're on your feet again though, it will unexpectedly push you down a flight of stairs, savagely breaking your heart once more. The book will proclaim haughtily that it never loved you in the first place, and then walk right out the front door, leaving you crying in a crumpled heap on the first floor landing, unable to move.

As your blood seeps into the white shag of the staircase, you'll watch the Autumn wind tickle the leaves on the oak tree outside the open door (the same tree you climbed as a child), and reflect that to everything there is a season. The Byrds cover of the American folksong "Turn! Turn! Turn!" will run through your head, and you'll die weakly humming its melody.

Arthur Golden's debut novel Memoirs of a Geisha was recently made into a film by Sony Pictures. The book presents the fictional confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geishas.

Western readers were enthralled by the strange, foreign tapestry which the memoirs wove. Demure housewives liked it because they got to read about prostitution--but classy, quaint, old-timey prostitution filled with lots of sacred rituals and tea ceremonies. This wasn't really prostitution, because, well this was in Japan, and the women wore white face powder and put their hair in buns and wore little silk kimonos.

So where is America's Memoirs of a Geisha?

Is it Jenna Jameson's autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star? No. Geishas are different than porn stars or hookers. Geishas don't stand in front of boarded up businesses at three in the morning and yell things at you as you drive past with the doors locked. Geishas stand in the corner with their head bowed until you ask for more green tea, then pad over quietly on their little wooden sandals. Hell, they even bow to you! They're equal parts servant and sexual objects, and spend more time entertaining visitors at teahouses than doing the dirty horizontal mambo.

Could this country duplicate such a combination of class and ass?

I wracked my mind for an answer and finally realized that I wanted some Jalapeno Poppers. I called up a friend and he dragged me to Hooters. I have never been to a Hooters before because I hate bad, tacky restaurants, and haven't associated breasts with food since I was an infant.

Once inside though, my defenses were quickly breached.

Like a gorilla from the mist, our waitress emerged from the clouds of menthol cigarettes from the smoking section . Her tight white tube top hugged her bulging twin peaks. Her little orange running shorts shimmered like a sun dappled pond filled with magical goldfish who talk in the tongues of men. She also wore weird flesh-colored stockings, which almost ruined the experience.

I was spellbound by the arcane rituals she followed in the ancient water pouring ceremony which followed. She decanted the water from my left hand side, using her right hand. There were exactly 25 ice cubes in the glass. A slice of lemon was placed at precisely 3 oclock on the rim of the glass with her left hand. She then retreated two steps, gave a shallow bow, and asked if I was ready to order. I was speechless. I finally said no, and she retreated to the kitchen.

It was then I realized that Hooters waitresses were the spiritual heirs to the Geisha.

I now knew what I had to do.

First I had to find a Hooters waitress and become personally acquainted with her. Then I had to find out if she kept a diary. Then I had to sneak a peek at it long enough to read the entire thing and transcribe relevant sections. And then if there was time left over, I had to give her bodacious boobies a quick squeeze to see if they were ripe.

A daunting task. Luckily I was able to pull off the entire daredevil stunt in one whirlwind weekend. I bumped into a chic with humungo gazangas in the produce section of Whole Foods the very next day and asked her out on a date. At the time I didnt even know she worked at Hooters! Serendipity. (Thank you lucky Gaelic wishing stone!)

Her name was Carmel, and let me tell you, she was just as sweet and sticky as her namesake.

We had a dinner date that night at Chilis, where I primed her with enough Daquaries to swamp a rowboat. She babbled drunkenly that she was a freshman at UPENN, worked at the Cherry Hill Hooters, liked horses, and liked to have fun. I asked her if she enjoyed reading, and she rolled her eyes and said, "Uh, hellooo! I said I like to have fun!"

When we retired to her charming dorm room, I began slyly probing for information on whether she kept a diary, where said diary might be located, and the price of her virginity. She actually leapt up and brought her diary over to me! She was completely shitfaced. She stumbled on her way back to the beanbag chairs, smacked her head on the bottom bunk bed and passed out. As the diary fell from her salsa stained hands and hit the floor, its heart-shaped lock sprung open. Serendipity squared! (Thank you mummified Egyptian monkey paw!)

After lifting her shirt up to make sure she didn't have any abdominal bruises, I left with the diary.

What I found inside was shocking. Reprinted here are excerpts from Carmel's diary that show what love, life, and the elusive quest for happiness is like for these women:

- - -

7/1/06
Tommy iz such a jerk. I hate him sooo much. Sometimes I wish he wuz dead! Sometimes I wish I wuz dead. Sometimes I wish I wuz pregnant with his baby. Sometimes I wish I wuz a bird, and could fly far away. If I was a bird and had his baby it would come out of an egg!

- - -

7/10/06
I heard Sheila talking to Jane at work 2day and she said that she was going to the beach this weekend with Tommy. She was wearing big hoop earrings that make her look like a total whore (cuz she is!), and I grabbed one and ripped it right out of her ear. She screamed and bled all over a five wing flappertizer and I did not give a shit.

Then I went and found Tommy at school, and wuz going to yell at him 2 and maybe kick him in the nutz, but then he turned around and he was crying and I fell in love with him all over again and I luv him soooo much!

- - -

7/14/06
At Hooterz today one of my teacher's (Mr. Mentzl) came in and sat at one of my tables. He is totally old and gross, and he stares at me in class. He said he liked me shirt and then he totally stared at my boobs! Yuck! He asked what wuz good on the menu and I said i don't know I never eat the shit here, it's all fried. But what I really wanted to yell was Stop looking at my Boobs! But I wanted to get a good tip so I told him to try the Hallapeno Poppers they're okay.

Afterwords I went in the back and told Holly what happened because she knows him too because she had him for Biology and she was like OH MY GOD NO WAY! But way, he totally did.

- - -

7/20/06
Tommy walked by in the hall today and grabbed my boob and made a honking sound. I told him to stop, but really I wanted to tell him to keep going. But there were people watching.

- - -

8/1/06
I hope Tommy gets attacked by a big angry dog and it bites his nutz off. And I hope all his dumb friends DIE in a car crash.

Tommy came to the restarant tonite to visit me. He was there with his buddies and they got a booth. He asked if he could get some free chicken fingers and I said well I don't know I'll try. Then Mike (his big dumb friend who's got a Hummer. I hope it explodes in flames and flies of a cliff and he gets burned alive) he asked if he could get a Beaver Burger, and I said I don't think that's on the menu, and they all started laughing at me. And then his other friend (the ugly fat one) asked if he could get some Poontang Poppers, and I said we don't have any of them. They started laughing at me again, and I thought maybe there was ketchup on my shirt, so I said Is there something on my shirt? And they said Yeah a big pair of Sweater Muffins, and I got angry and walked away and I don't know what they were laughing about but I bet they thought they were pretty funny.

I locked myself in the girls room and cried.

I came out and went back to the kitchen to get ice from the walk in freezer to put under my eyes, and Tommy was making out with Sheila on top of the frozen french fries and he totally had his tongue way down her throat! And she iz such a skank! I punched her in the face and he said he loved me but I don't believe him.

I wish I wuz the bird on the Hooter's sign. I think it's an eagle. I wish I wuz a bird and could fly away.

Dear Literary Adventure,

My baby bears a striking resemblance to you. Ever had a few too many drinks at the Elbow Room bar and grill in Gary, Indiana?

Sincerely,
You Know Who, you son of a bitch


Dear Reader,

First of all, I don't know who you are and have never been to Indiana. Secondly, I don't like what you're insinuating. And third, you can't prove a damn thing. I will say however that your baby is lucky he looks like me, and not you, because you were the ugliest piece of trailer trash ass I ever had.

- - -

Dear Literary Adventure,

What is the best book in the world?

Sincerely,
Carl Ostendorper, Portland, Oregon


Dear Carl,

A lot of people say the best book in the world has yet to be written. They think it will be written in the year 3000, and will be a space romance involving Princess Stardust of Saturn and a rough-and-tumble hoverboard racer named Dirk Comet. It will be called Moonlust! and will be penned by Isaac Asimov clone number 8.

These people are nerds.

The truth is that the best book in the world is the one you carry inside your heart. Unfortunately you'll never be able to read it without opening your chest cavity and pulling it out. I know what you're thinking, and no, it can't be read using an x-ray machine. I know what you're thinking now and yes, life is a joke, and only God thinks it's funny.

- - -

Dear Literary Adventure,

What is the most wack-ass adventure you've ever been on?

You rule!
Jon Tudor, New York, NY


Dear Jon,

I don't answer letters from people who use words like "wack-ass."

- - -

Dear Literary Adventure,

My five-year old son hates to read. All he wants to do is watch television all day! When I turn the television off he throws a fit, and screams until his face turns blue! Last week he screamed so long that he ruptured a vocal chord and blood started pouring out of his mouth.

How can I get him interested in reading, and away from the darn television?

Thanks,
Nancy Snyder, Austin Texas


Dear Nancy,

If you want to snatch your son from the flickering, cathode ray claws of the television, you must first banish fear, compassion, and all other emotions from your heart. Otherwise the television will exploit your human weaknesses and destroy you.

Here is how to get your son to stop watching television. Crush 15mg of valium and put it into his morning applesauce. (If your child doesn't eat applesauce, he should. Sprinkling a little brown sugar on top makes it extra delicious.) If he's the size of an average five-year old, this will leave him limp as a rag doll and make it easy to tape him to the chair he's sitting in. Use sturdy tape.

Wheel him right in front of the television, so his empty little forehead is resting on the screen. Fasten his eyelids open using small bulldog clips, then tape his head to the television screen so he can't turn away.

When he regains consciousness, turn on the TV, blow a party favor in his ear, and yell "Surprise! It's TV day!" Except TV day is going to last for a week. Make him watch one episode of Antiques Roadshow over and over again for the entire week. Give him liquid food through an IV. Cover the windows with sheets so he can't distinguish day from night. Do NOT supply a bed pan or urinal, because if you coddle children they will walk all over you.

At the end of the week, un-tape his head, pick the television up, and smash him in the face with it. Then put a book in his hands, and watch his little bloodshot eyes light up with joy!

Lauren Weisberger's Chic Lit novel the Devil Wears Prada was a huge hit in 2003 and stayed on the New York Times best seller list for six months. The novel is a dramatization of her own experiences as an assistant at Vogue, toiling under its infamously evil editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour. The anecdotes she relates are unbelievably shocking, yet ring with an air of authenticity.

However, there's one thing that is glaringly unrealistic about the novel . . . there is no way in hell the Devil actually wears Prada. I know it's a cute title, but its absurd and throws into question the accuracy of everything else in the book. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Lauren Weisbergers "semi-autobiographical novel" was actually written by a 48 year-old nudist bachelor who's never left Pittsburgh.

This begs the question: What brand of clothing does the devil prefer? (Or does he wear homespun, like Gandhi?) Being raised Catholic I first asked my priest. He didn't know. He didn't care. And he didn't think that the Vatican had any special committees working to find out. Thanks a lot, father.

Sadly, once again Literary Adventure is left to do the work that this country's churches are afraid to do, like warning our children about the insidious sin of masturbation. I'm only going to say it one more time kids: If you masturbate, you will go blind, and then you won't be able to read anymore. Now go play . . . but not with yourself!

I suspect that what the devil actually wears is so evil, it can't be conceived in earthly terms. Something like a trench coat made from raven wings (still flapping), pants of eternally burning flame, rattlesnake necktie, and hip waders made from the supple skin of virgins. Or maybe just a simple red jumpsuit--hey it's comfortable, it matches everything else in hell, who does he have to dress up for?

In an attempt to figure out what the devil actually DOES wear, which is definitely NOT Prada, I have compiled a list of the ten most evil people ever to walk the face of the earth (this list does not include Thanos, destroyer of worlds) and their respective fashion preferences.

1. Hitler- Hitler definitely leaned towards the military look with his closet. Lots of olive. High black boots. Medals. A simple but bold dash of red on the armband. Equally at home sashaying into Poland or France, this makes a strong statement that says "We will take back the Rhineland. The Third Reich is no fad."

2. Charles Manson- Too busy murdering people to worry about what to wear for Helter Skelter? Simply carve a deep X between your eyes with a kitchen knife and accent it with a wild, piercing stare. Goes great with a blood-spattered t-shirt or buckskins.

3. Count Chocula- Like the arctic hare or speckled moth, the Count dresses for camouflage. His chocolate brown cloak, hair, skin, and shirt blend in perfectly with his natural habitat, a bowl of chocolaty cereal. There he lies in wait, like an alligator, for an unsuspecting child to lift a spoonful close enough that the Count can leap out, latch onto his neck, and drain him like a bloody juice box.

4. John Wayne Gacy- Clownsuit, clownsuit, clownsuit!

5. Your mom- She wears awful, awful capri slacks, even in winter, and they do not flatter her big butt. The leopard print pair is the ugliest. Sorry, your mom is an evil bitch.

6. Rasputin, the evil monk- Long, greasy black hair. Long, greasy black beard. Dirty black robes. An ensemble like this murmurs hypnotically "I'm so busy being evil, I don't have time to wash, or be more creative. All that will remain as my legacy will be a crappy, bottom-shelf vodka."

7. Stalin- Another proponent of Military Chic. The big, Mario and Luigi handlebar mustache is a cute touch that makes you wonder "Where's the little organ grinder monkey?" The little monkey was eaten by starving Ukranian peasants during the famine of 1932, because the Soviets confiscated all their grain. That's where the monkey went.

8. The Wolfman - Fur is only murder when it's applied in overkill like this! I actually like the fur ski mask and gloves. But combined with the fur shirt and shoes, it's just too much.

9. Skeletor- One of these things doesn't help convey an appearance of evil menace. See if you can pick out which one it is. a) Frightening skull for a face b) Ram's skull staff c) Crossed bones steel chest plate d) Skin tight blue body leotard with lavender hood.

10. Fred Astaire- Isn't evil at all, but I'd like to take this opportunity to suggest that more evildoers dress like him. I love the way he wears his pleated dress pants so high, slicks his hair back, and prances around light as a feather in his thin soled little wingtips. Hooray!


SPECIAL BONUS EVIL FASHIONISTA!

11. Slim Goodbody- If you don't know who this is, go do a google image search. Slim will visit you in your nightmares every night for the rest of your life.

As most of you doubtless know already, Mickey Spillane passed away this week.

For those of you sissies who don't know who Mickey Spillane is because you're too busy reading Salman Rushdie, Spillane is one of the greatest authors you could ever be punched in your weasely little face by.

His stories weren't nuanced character studies. His hard-boiled protagonists had names like Hammer and Tiger Mann. His prose was a tad hammy; he once compared a woman's tongue to a hungry vole. Did you know Spillane's wife was a model, and posed nude on the cover of one of his books? Suck on that, Salman!

I didn't know Mickey Spillane very well personally, but I did visit him nearly every weekend at his South Carolina shore home, and of course I was godfather to two of his children.

During long walks on the beach after dinner, he would complain that there was a side to Mickey Spillane that the public would never accept. A softer side. Most people didn't recognize it as a "softer side" because it was still hard as steel--whereas his harder side was stronger than titanium, and couldn't be pierced by any device known to man.

I remember one September evening we were walking Murrells Inlet's chilly shore and came upon a sandpiper with a sprained wing. I expected Mickey to step on its "dirty, scrawny, little bird shit neck" as Mike Hammer did to a pigeon in Kiss Me Deadly. Instead, Mickey picked it up and cradled it in his arms like a baby. Then he sang this song to it:

Little bird, little bird,
Don't you cry,
Papa's gonna fix your wing
And help you fly.

We went back to the house where he made a bed for it out of a shoebox, and fashioned a splint for its wing. Over the course of the next few weeks he hand fed it chicken soup with an eye-dropper and slept on the floor next to it, eventually nursing it back to health. For the rest of its life the bird would follow Mickey on the beach, and sometimes even into town on a leash, where it enjoyed watching Mickey rough up any no good bum that was dumb enough to cross him.

Mickey didn't like to fish, but he loved to machine gun sharks. He had an old, diesel tug we would take far out to sea. We'd throw a couple pounds of ground chuck in the water to attract them, and then just shoot the living shit out of the "snarly toothed little beady-eyed no good bastards" as Mickey called them. One time Mickey reached into the water and tried to punch a fifteen-foot mako in the face, and it bit his pinky finger off. That was Mick for you!

No, I didn't know Mickey Spillane very well, but I suppose I knew him as well as any man could.

A lot of celebrities (Sean Penn) have been complaining that Literary Adventure has plenty of thrills, chills, and great, crackerjack writing, but lacks enough educational content (as though how to make a tiger trap using only a Little Golden Book isn't educational).

Just to shut Sean Penn up I'm instituting a new, recurring feature of Literary Adventure called "The History of . . . " wherein I will show you the genesis of some of the more notable books in the literary canon.

We will begin this week with the history of the beloved children's book series, The Berenstain Bears.


In Yellowstone Park in 1962, a young child left unattended and smothered in honey was eaten by a black bear.

This child was Bobby Berenstain, three-year old son of Stan and Jan Berenstain. The tragedy prompted the husband/wife team to write their first Berenstain Bears book, a pamphlet entitled "Why all Bears Should be Slaughtered." The pamphlet was based on a spoken word rant of Jan Berenstain's, unofficially called "Untitled: Oh God! AAAAAHHH!," which she delivered spontaneously on finding the bear finishing up the last of her yummy, chubby little honey-coated kid snack. Adorned with police photos, the pamphlet was a moderate success among park rangers, and prompted a follow-up book, entitled "A Bear Ate my Baby."

A string of books followed, flowing from Jan's manically scribbling pen: "I Told You to Stay in the Car," "Give Me my Baby Back, Mr. Grizzly," and "I'm Going to Eat Your Cubs and See How you Like It." These early books are notable for being written in all caps, without periods.

As anger gave way to crushing despair, subsequent books slowly eased from vitriolic streams of gibberish to more tender reflections on life. Since their only child was gone and Jan was unable to make love because she was now pretty much dead inside, they fashioned a fictitious family for themselves in their books and (get this) made themselves all BEARS! They even lived in a place called BEAR CITY! Can you believe that? Talk about crazy!

At first glance such a choice seems a little nutzy, but there are numerous historical precedents. Early civilizations often worshipped the predators which hunted them, in an effort to appease them. The Native Americans respected the bear and sought to become one themselves through religious ceremonies.

Jan and Stan had been humbled by the Great Bear, and sought to become one with it. In their home they took to walking around nude on all fours, and Jan stopped shaving her legs. They were eventually shot by the police when they started trying to eat other peoples' babies themselves.

After the deaths of Jan and Stan at the hands of the Park Service, the intellectual property and name of the Berenstain Bears was sold to Dr. Seuss, who sold it to Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the remainder of the series under the pseudonym Dan and Jan Berenstain (putting the man's name first--typical), sometimes collaborating with Mario Puzo, most notably on "The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies."

Day 5:

Page 664: I awake on the shore of page 664. Behind me, stretching unbroken to the horizon, lays the mammoth paragraph which nearly claimed my life. But how did I get here?

In the midst of the sea of words a large sea tortoise floats, waving his flipper at me. He must have towed me to safety! I salute the brave terrapin and set off with new resolve, knowing that providence has handed me a mandate.

Page 725: New words, never before seen by man, scurry amongst the underbrush all around me. I try to catalog as many as I can: bulbouslyish-like, portitudity, gwibberrrrrr, fnoob. Though I'm unable to ascertain their meanings, I can tell you that a fnoob will snatch a ham sandwich right out of your hand if you don't keep your eye on it, and that a gwibberrrrrr is good pan seared with butter and saffron on a bed of baby spinach.

Page unknown: I made a grave error today. I took a nap without laying down a bookmark. When I awoke, I had lost my place. It took me the rest of the day to find it again, after re-reading plenty of pages that weren't interesting the first time around.

Day 6:

Page 800: I am now deeper than any man has read before. The air is very thin here, and I find myself tiring easily.

Page 890: Living so deep within the book, words here have evolved very differently from those at the surface. Many of them are translucent and have luminescent organs, eerily similar to the deep-sea aliens in James Cameron's blockbuster, The Abyss. This merely buttresses my theory that James Cameron is the mouthpiece for the creator of the universe.

Page 925: Something is approaching on the horizon. It's outline is dim, is it a mirage? No! It's an International House of Pancakes with an attached War and Peace giftstore!

The prices at the gift store are outrageous; this is what happens without the healthy competition of a free market. I had to pay $20 for a War and Peace t-shirt. I just had to get it though, because it's really funny. It says on it, "Warren Peace? Never heard of him." If I live through this, I'll kick myself if I haven't gotten a souvenir.

Page 1000: It is no myth. I am standing on the threshold of the fabled 150 blank pages written of in War and Peace lore. Tolstoy peered deep into himself, and envisioned a wasteland so absolute, so empty, that it could not be expressed by words. Either that or I've finally gone blind from peering at the tiny font this book is written in.

Page 1075: Smack in the middle of the wasteland, I find a lone word: PERSPICACITY.

Page 1150: At the edge of the wasteland I come upon three doors. I somehow know that I can only choose one, and how well I choose will decide the outcome of my journey.

I pick the middle door.

Inside is a dusty mirror. Inside the mirror, my mirror-self. He is grotesque. He has little bony-girl legs with gawky doorknob knees and a scrawny chicken neck. His knuckles are hairy. His teeth are gappy. There is a mad, feverish gleam in his pornographer's eyes.

He looks just like me.

He lunges out of the mirror and wraps his filthy fingers around my neck. Though he barely has the strength of a fourth grader, I'm unable to fight him off. I have only one recourse.

I pull my mental self back into my physical body. I come to in my high backed Windsor chair, covered in cobwebs, the mammoth book open and glowing in my lap. A strong wind--a vortex--tears at my smoking jacket, threatening to suck me back into the pages. My pipe is sucked out of my mouth and disappears into the book.

With every last bit of my strength, I close the book and hurl it into the fireplace. This accomplishes little, since the fireplace is never lit (Im allergic to smoke). I quickly take the book outside with a pair of tongs and burn it on my hibachi, where it explodes in a noxious tower of blue flame which all my neighbors complain about the next day.

Epilogue:

What did I learn from my journey? Did I learn anything about myself? Did I learn anything about the tragic comedy known as the human race? No. All I learned is that War and Peace is a dog from hell, and that bitch will finish you if you don't finish it first.

"But you didn't finish the book," I can hear some of you smarty-pants in the back row saying.

I'm sorry, but that is the end of this week's adventure.

War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy began writing War and Peace, his epic story of Russian Society during the Napoleonic era, in 1863 and finished it 6 years later, in 1869. Today, many people spend as long just trying to read its table of contents.

At 1456 pages, War and Peace is far from the longest book in the world (that distinction belongs to the fully-illustrated Uncle Wally's Big Book of Dirty Jokes), but it is long AND boring, with no pictures whatsoever. The last person to supposedly read War and Peace in its entirety was in fact, Leo Tolstoy, and even that is in doubt.

Many skeptics note that War and Peace was originally written in Russian, yet now exists in an English translation. They ask where this translation could have come from unless someone read the entire book. They might just as well ask how baby sparrows learn to fly, or why balloons fall up. Such things simply are. You can shut these naysayers up real quick by asking if THEY have ever read the book, at which point they will stare down at their shoes and mumble incomprehensibly.

In 1935, as part of the New Deal, Roosevelt constructed a team composed of one-hundred and fifty unemployed novelists, poets, vaudevillians, and one actual Russian to read War and Peace. Each person was in charge of exploring approximately ten pages, and then summarizing to the rest of the group what they learned, to try to form a complete picture of the book. Here is a transcript from one of their meetings:

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Uh, well it was hard to say really, what was going on. There was a lonely boy, and he was in Russia of course . . .

Buster Keaton: (makes a funny face and falls out of his chair)

(laughter from the group)

Jilly the Ventriloquist: I actually fell asleep two pages into my section. Before that they were walking in the snow, talking about stuff. I think my dummy, Woody, read the rest though.

Woody: Who you callin' a dummy?

(more laughter)

It was this team which wrote the historical "War and Peace with the Boring Parts cut out," which has been the basis for every subsequent book report, critical review, flip book, and computer-animated musical film adaptation.

The first 200 pages of the epic novel are widely read, but around page 220, readership drops off sharply, and comes to almost a complete halt by 643 (see graph). Despite the many attempted expeditions into the interior of War and Peace, few have pierced its deep, dark center, or glimpsed the fabled 150 blank pages said to lie near its core. Indeed, more is known about the surface of the moon than about page 1028 (if it does in fact exist) of War and Peace.

I resolved to see how far I myself could journey into the impenetrable depths of War and Peace.

Reprinted here are excerpts from my journal which I kept during the journey.


Day 1:

I pulled a hamstring just lifting the book off the shelf. You use different muscles lifting books than you do in everyday life, and I just wasn't ready for it. Problem numero uno. The native guides took this as a bad omen and fled. I must carry on . . . alone.

Page 10: I decided it's not cheating to skip the copyright page and table of contents. I plunge right into the beginning of chapter one.

Page 12: I am immediately immersed in a world strange and incomprehensible. My compass spins madly; my sextant turns red hot and melts into a puddle of molten brass.

I leave a trail of breadcrumbs and tie a spool of twine around my waist, should I need to find my way out again.

Page 150: Ive set up camp for the night under a dangling participle. Reading going smoothly so far. I tripped over a 16-letter word and opened a small cut on my forehead, but other than that I'm doing fine. We'll see what happens when I hit the first landmark, page 220.

Day 2:

Page 220: I hit 220 at first light and discovered what has discouraged so many readers before me: a sheer wall of prepositions three pages thick.

I decided to cut my losses and go back. However I turned around to find that voles (or ferrets, its hard to tell from the tracks) had eaten my bread crumbs. My twine is gone as well, and was doubtless untied in the night by mischievous faeries.

There is no turning back now. I must press on.

Day 3:

Page 378: I have befriended a small arctic hare and taught him to walk on a leash. I've named him Leo. He's a capital fellow! We hold long discussions about Nietzsche. I hope I'm able to bring him home to show the chaps at the whist club.

Page 379: Hunger has set in, and I had to eat Leo.

Day 4, or maybe 4,000:

Page 654: I'm lost inside what can only be described as the Literary Bermuda Triangle: a paragraph ten pages long. Without any paragraph breaks, I've lost my sense of direction. I find it increasingly difficult to keep my eye on the folios, and I fear I may be reading in circles.

Page 653: Yes, I'm reading in circles.

Page 654: Hey great, I'm finally back here again.

Page who cares, I'm going to die: I should've asked Debbie to dance, and now I'll never get the chance. I've wasted my life.

Page ???: Legs . . . weary. Vision . . . growing dim. The sea of words is rising higher around me. I surrender to their cold embrace and sink. Darkness washes over me . . .

Mother, is that you? I seem to see your face . . .


TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Tune in next week for part two, the thrilling conclusion.