Category: Joe

*Free z’s only available for purchases of double mega ultra small sizes or longer.
**75% applies to the contents not the price

The angry fly mob, having sufficiently torched and tickled the buildings and people inhabiting the city, were in need of energy and thus went to one of the few remaining buildings, the local coffee shoppe*. Upon entry the flies were enraged to see that the lines were separated into a “real people and other non-tsetse flies only” line and a “dirt, garbage and perhaps tsetse flies, we guess, if we have to” line. The flies became even more angry to find their line actually lead to the exit. Surprisingly they were mostly okay to see that the tsetse fly seating area was actually just a trash receptacle with a sign saying “place trash and tsetse flies here” (this was mostly due to the flies liking to say word receptacle.) The mob was about ready to storm out and file a complaint with the better business burro, the business accountability donkey when suddenly the manager, who was desperate for customers of any kind, including tsetse flies, leaped out from behind the counter with some 75% off coupons** and begged them to stay (at least long enough to pay some money and hopefully short enough forget to pick up their orders). The fly mob could not be deterred by the man’s impassioned plea but the prospects of getting 75% off their order intrigued them so they decided to stay. Soon the flies were full of coffee and free of those cumbersome loot bags, bursting with sugar induced energy and caffeine caused jitters, ready to go forth and continue with the tickilling and torching of the land.

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The tunnel was dark and damp, in spite of the good lighting and adequate drainage. Joe attempted to travel down it without seeming too dark or damp but while still not being fully lit or dry as to not incur the wrath of either one of the battling forces in the tunnel. This attempt failed as it ended up with Joe being poorly lit and moist, which caused him to be mocked by the lighting and lack thereof and shunned by the damp and drainage. Fortunately for Joe the tunnel was much shorter than prior tunnels he had been in and only lasted to the end of this paragraph.
As Joe climbed up the ladder leading him out of the tunnel he was immediately approached by a man begging him for help. “You must help me” begged the man “This is so serious it must be communicated in multiple ways”. Joe having been begged by the man who begged him for help felt he must help him as he had begged for help and thus he allowed the begging man to continue his plea. “I am the manager of this fine coffee zombie refueling station and the most terrible thing has happened, a band of angry tsetse flies came in and if I don’t do something to appease them they will torch this place, or even worse, leave without buying anything!”
“The angry tsetse fly mob here?” Joe immediately leapt inside the nearby large novelty coffee mug in an attempt to hide from the fly mob, lest they tickle him to death (or a really bad sideache). Sadly the mug was full of novelty coffee which despite its many non-coffee properties it still was very hot causing Joe to leap back out faster than he got in, resulting in him colliding with his past self who was jumping into the mug. Fortunately for the integrity of the timeline the collision resulted in the incoming Joe to be throw into the mug while the outgoing Joe ended up slamming into the floor.
“While your reflexes are impressive they are un-needed. The fly mob is no longer here” reassured the manager “when I saw the mob enter I took my break early, thus placing me at break time to give me some extra time to think. Sadly my break is almost up and then I will be forced to go back to the time when the mob is here and I’ll still have nothing to stop them with.”
Joe reached into his knapsack to see if he had been given anything that could be used to help this man defend himself against a hoard of angry caffeine deprived tsetse flies. As Joe opened the knapsack the manager spotted a pack of 75% off coupon for the coffee shoppe and snatched them. He then dove into the employee break room only to emerge 30 minutes earlier to deal with the flies. Joe was about to leave when the manager’s break ended and he suddenly appeared.
“You must not leave without a reward, those coupons appeased the flies and lead to record sales. Here, have a cup of our best coffee, on the house!” at this the manager produced a small house in which he proceeded to pour coffee all over. He then handed the soggy mess to Joe and shooed him out the do to prevent dripping on the coffee stained floors.

*Actual patron’s number may vary, results not typical, ask your store owner if being a millionth customer is right for you, some assembly required.

Florg Stunt Cow 2 hurriedly set out to find the magic 8-ball of correct-but-mostly-useless-answers to ask it how to fix his name. Because he was pressed for time Florg Stunt Cow 2 started looking for the ball in the last place he looked, as one always finds things in the last place you look. Thus he quickly found it and proceeded to ask it the question of how to get his name fixed. Sadly the answer was most certainly mostly useless: “To fix your name you must find the man who was a thing”. Florg Stunt Cow 2 couldn’t understand what the answer even was trying to say, it just left more questions. How could a thing become a person? How would they be able to help? Things can’t do things. Why wasn’t that last one a question? Florg Stunt Cow 2 needed more help, and despite the strict “one vague answer per customer” policy Florg Stunt Cow 2 decided to ask “what is the name of the man who was a thing?” Surprisingly the magic 8-ball of correct-but-mostly-useless-answers responded with “There is one who calls him Fred”. Florg Stunt Cow 2 was surprised that there was an answer and that it seemed straight forward and rather helpful. Florg Stunt Cow 2 knew someone with a name that is probably Fred and thus he went off to find him, eager to get his name fixed a sandwich.

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Joe stumbled towards the city, still confused how a city on fire would help him get home, but with each step towards it the feeling that he must go this way increased. As he neared the city Joe saw the cause of the fires, a large mob of giant flies were buzzing about with feathers and torches, tickling and torching everything in sight. Suddenly Joe saw something absolutely terrifying, In front of the fly mob was a fly yelling frantically what must be orders to the others (Joe had never learned to speak tsetse fly, he had taken gerbil in high school instead). The idea that the fly mob had a leader did not terrify Joe, but this leader had a familiar giant blue afro, the very same afro that had previously plagued Joe until it finally was chased off by the random Joe. Joe was now sure that these flies were a great menace, anything lead by someone willingly wearing the evil afro most certainly was up to no good and needs to be stopped.
“Wait!” cired Cobbler to the mob of flies “Destroying this city is not the way to gain equality for tsetse flies! This will just cause more fear and dislike of the flies, and then nobody will ever buy our pickles again! We must work with people to show them that we are not a threat and that we are valuable and productive members of society. Resorting to barbaric mobs and angry attacks will only further antagonize the populous and keep us or our pickles from ever becoming accepted into society.” Cobbler’s plea despite its wise words and sound economical advice fell deaf on the fly mob and onto the rubble below, where the only person to hear it was Joe who mistook the impassioned plea for an angry call to arms. Joe knew he had no chance against the entire mob and thus he ducked into one of the few buildings that was still standing.
The room Joe had ducked into looked like a standard office, it had a nice front desk with assorted potted plants around to obscure view of the depressing rows of cubicles in the back. This office was unique in that everything was coated in chocolate, except the floor which seemed to have a layer of powered sugar in place of carpeting. Joe was slightly confused by this until he saw the sign:
Welcome to the Universe regional office (and the candy store)
Sugar free service available!
NO FLOWERS!
Upon seeing Joe, the receptionist (and the candy store worker) directed Joe to take a seat (and a free candy sample) and informed him that he would be seen shortly. This bewildered Joe even more than the candy coated chairs, didn’t the receptionist just see him? why can’t they see him now? and how would he become visible again? Joe most certainly didn’t feel invisible but perhaps invisibility isn’t something one can feel, and if Joe was invisible then he could sneak away from the angry fly mob and continue his quest to get home. Before Joe had a chance to get unstuck from the chair and leave, The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) walked in to see Joe, thus rendering him most certainly visible.
“Greetings brave hero and one millionth* customer!” cried The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) “Your decision or patronage to this place has earned you a most valuable reward, you will get to save the world from this horrible plague o’ flies that plagues the land so.”
“But I don’t want to do such a thing” whined Joe “that sounds like a time-consuming quest that will be full of problems difficulties, barriers, troubles, obstructions and travails! I’m not even sure what a travail is and I would rather not find out. I need to get home.”
“But you must be the one to save us all, all our other attempts to rid the land of these flies has failed, but surely you, the millionth customer, could save us. Besides you agreed to such an arrangement when you walked into this store” The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) said while directing Joe towards the sizable fine print next to the sign.
Joe was going to further protest but upon inspecting fine print of the sign it seemed it was surprisingly well worded and legally binding for such a most unusual establishment. Joe had had enough bad experiences with the law in this strange world to know that going against it would probably wind up with him losing a letter, limb or something alliteratively more unpleasant and it most certainly would involve that crazy anti-gravity lawyer Puddenhead. Thus Joe finally gave in and agreed to stop the hoards of radioactive tsetse flies that tickled people to death (or a really bad side ache) perhaps along the way he would happen across a way to escape the back side of the page once and for all. The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) gave Joe a knapsack filled with supplies (and valuable coupons) for his quest and showed him a tunnel he could use to exit the building undetected. Joe set off down the tunnel, feeling surprisingly excited about the prospects of this new adventure.

*Atomic number 280, despite it’s high number it is usually stable unless startled and then it will decay into other smaller emotions.

Having foolishly pressed the stop button on The Remote Of The Universe Joe shoved it into his pocket and continued on, completely unaware that he had in fact stopped the universe. Joe’s mind was occupied elsewhere, he was thinking about getting back home and how great and grand a non insane messed up world would be, one where you could tell a bad joke without threat of losing your status as a proper noun. As Joe wandered out of the lane that led to the passage that went to the alley with the man in a trench coat covering all but his ears he was suddenly struck with a thought, and then an idea. Soon Joe was being attacked by a wide variety of mental facilities, from impressions to feelings to deja vous. He turned and ran from these new unknown assailants only to fall into a massive plothole in the middle of the poorly maintained story sidewalk. Luckily for Joe, the holes were plentiful and deep enough to deter the attackers, as looking in all the holes for Joe would involve too much supervision for a neighborhood like this to handle.
The assailants gathered the rest of their thoughts and trudged back to the lane that led to the passage that went to the alley where the man with a trench coat covering all but his ears was. He would not be happy to hear that their mission to plant an idea in Joe’s head had been unsuccessful. Fortunately for them Joe had not seen any of them and thus they would have the element of surprise* should they be sent to attack again.
“You shall do no such thing!” cried the man in the trench coat “Your failure only confirms that you fail! You are no longer succeeding at succeeding but rather have failed to succeed yet succeeded to fail! I no longer think succeed is a real word and thus you will be doomed to fail, and thus I shall not send you out on another mission. Instead I will employ a more cunning plan, one that is sure to trick Joe into doing what must be done by the man known as Joe.” At this the man pulled out a small object that looked like the combination of a trinket with a MacGuffin and a bauble with a little bit of doodad thrown in. “This is a quest, a device that will carry its owner along a series of improbable and difficult tasks until the final goal is accomplished. As soon as Joe takes this quest he will be whisked along in my plot to remove the flies and allow me to take over the universe for myself!” At this the man threw the quest into the air towards the last known location of Joe.
Meanwhile Joe had been far too pre-occupied with getting out of the massive pothole to eavesdrop on the diabolical plotting. The hole he had hidden in had happened to be huge, so humongous that it had a hoard of H’s hovering around. Joe hopped up and harvested handfuls of H’s and heaped them high. He leaped heavenward and with the help of the hill of H’s he landed without harm outside the hole.
Now that Joe was free of the alliterative clutches of that pothole he could return on his mission to get home. Joe immediately set out in the one direction he was sure wasn’t home (Joe had learned that in a place like the back side of the page his first try would fail) and thus after he fought his way out of the pothole once again he was now ready to continue home, but before he could start something shiny caught his eye. It looked like a small knickknack crossed with a thingamajig with a little widget mixed in. This strange object had an unusual draw for Joe and he felt compelled to take it with him, after all it isn’t every day that you find an object that is so specifically vague. After acquiring the object Joe felt suddenly confused. He still wanted to get home, but for some reason he was suddenly sure that the only way to do such a thing would be to venture towards what looked like a city that had recently been set fire to. Joe was perplexed about this sudden turn in thought, although after thinking about it, it did seem odd for such a sudden and strong idea to suddenly jump into his head the moment he picked up that bizarre object. However Joe felt he must follow his gut on this matter and seeing as his gut and a few other internal organs had already started out towards the smoldering remains of the city Joe rushed to catch up.

*The non-green parts are the frame for the tapestry, not actual tapestry

(The Flies only had green thread to work with after all*)

*See Appendix ε to see the finished tapestry

Now that that strange stunt cow 2 had gone and taken most of his repeated words the rest of the generically named flies were free to finish their tapestry of fly history*. Fly Knitter 1 created the first part, showing the days before the flies were radioactive. There were images of flies lazily buzzing about, flies landing in coffee mugs for a swim subsequently followed by flies flying about wildly, flies tickling people with their little wings and then trying to avoid the inevitable fly swatter assault. Fly Weaver 3 took on the task of showing the series of events that lead to the flies becoming radioactive. It showed the squirrel Chernobyl who graciously shared his radioactivity to the flies making them bigger, stronger, and more glow-in-the-dark than ever thought possible. This then transitioned into flies discovering themselves to be indestructible which lead to them discovering a great pickle recipe. The chronicles of the pickle manufacturing empire rise and fall was done by Fly Baker 56 who had been conscripted into helping. The next section of the tapestry contained images depicting flies rediscovering the power of the tickle and their plans for taking over the world. The bottom of the tapestry was reserved for the flies final conquest and rule of the universe and at the very bottom it clearly stated that the flies were done with the following:

THE END

And now with the last of their yarn used up they had nothing better to do than begin their quest of world domination. The flies buzzed quickly out of their stronghold and started tickilling everyone in sight to death (or a really bad side ache), the wrath of the flies had come and no one could stand in their way without becoming their next victim.

The tsetse flies grew bored. They hadn’t had any ineffective hero’s come by for a visit in many weeks, and their diversionary research into tickilling had been finished resulting in nothing for them to do to occupy their time. The only thing they could think of doing was knitting themselves socks to be used in sock ball fights, but they were down to the last ball of yarn and it was a most undesirable color of green. As the flies milled about idly throwing sock balls at each other one of them came up with a great idea to ward off the boredom, they would use their last ball of yarn to knit a massive tapestry (it was a rather large ball) detailing the grand and majestic history of the giant radioactive tsetse flies, from their initial exposure to their subsequent oppression and hardships at the hand of the paranoid populous and the lack of retribution of such actions.
“Wait a second!” cried an angry fly, throwing down his knitting needles. “The flies have been oppressed too much! We must take a stand against this great injustice!”
“But what can we do?” responded another fly “we don’t even have names. If we were in a movie we would be listed at the end of the credits as Angry Fly 1 and Stunt Cow 2”
“Moooo!” retorted Angry Fly 1 “Just because my name sounds like a generic title doesn’t mean it is, I just happened to have a generic sounding name, in fact I think it’s..”
“Wait a second!” interrupted a rather annoyed Stunt Cow 2 “My name isn’t Stunt Cow 2, how come you get called by your real (albeit fake sounding) name and I get this terribly dumb fake one. My actual name is Florg Stunt Cow 2, not stunt cow 2, HEY!” at this Florg Stunt Cow 2 got rather annoyed at the editing correction of his speaking and decided to find the one responsible so he could make them pay brownies. Unfortunately Stunt Cow 2 had no idea where to look ingredients and thus would have to consult the magic 8-ball of correct-but-mostly-useless-answers go to the store. And thus with the decision apparently made stunt cow 2 set down his knitting needles and went off to fix his name the store.

*not to be confused with a Ted the unit of work.
**Stabbing is the fundamental cause of harm, all other sources of injury or death are a subset of stabbing.

With the search for a hero over it was just a matter of time until the entire world was destroyed. The tsetse flies had no one to stand in their way, and it would only be a matter of time before they decided they were not content to just tickle people to death! (or a really bad side ache) but that they wanted to rule the universe! (or the local neighborhood). With no constant stream of hero’s distracting them with cabbage and colors the flies would soon realize their immense power, being indestructible and all that, and use it to their advantage (as opposed to how they currently used it to their amusement). A full on war with the flies would result in devastating casualties. The flies had perfected the art of tickling people to death! (or a really bad side ache) which they called tickilling, which despite the name could not actually be used to cause the demise of a tick due to their incredibly surly nature. Mankind had spent literally a few hours trying to devise a way to defend against the tickill but to no avail, man would be powerless to stop the flies when they attacked.
Meanwhile in an entirely different location in both space and time, a Ted* was preparing his dinner. It was a simple meal, a little bit of chicken with a small roll and an assortment of steamed vegetables. However, despite it’s benign appearances the meal was hiding something devious, the vegetables contained a unusually high amount of cabbage, cabbage that happened to be very explosive. Unknowingly eating explosive vegetables carried the risk of tooth damage and exploding stomach syndrome.
Elsewhere more trouble was brewing. A large abandon warehouse was slowly filling with water. The sprinkler system had sprung a leak and started gushing water into the rooms. This warehouse had been used to store hazardous materials and thus was fairly well sealed, giving the water no place to go but up, and up it rose. As the water level increased the stress on the wall grew. Soon the force would be too much and the walls would give way sending a devastating wall of water through the city, washing it all out to sea leaving naught but soggy ruins in its wake.
In yet another poorly maintained and unsupervised part of town a man in a trench coat covering all but his ears had just acquired a lucky piece of oxygen. This was the final ingredient in his nefarious plot which would soon go into motion, which when completed would make him entirely immune to stabbing, and thus by extension invulnerable and immortal*. This power would be used gain complete control of the Universe (and the candy store) which he would then sell for massive profits only to repeat the process all over again. The constant cycle of new management and hostile takeovers would surely cause too much strain and the Universe (and the candy store) would implode. Despite the dangers the man planned to continue with the plan he had planned, as he had planned into the plan a plan for what to do if the plan did not go as planned. With all that planning behind him the man set out to carry out his nefarious scheme.

The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) was distraught, all the heroes so far had not only failed to stop the plague of tickle happy tsetse flies, but they also failed to increase sales at the candy store. The scourge of the flies had forced people into hiding, only to come out when in desperate need of supplies and despite their sugary flavor and great taste the treats at the candy store were not in high demand. It had gotten so bad that The Universe (and the candy store) was out of money in their budget to further fund the search for another hero to save The Universe (and the candy store). In fact money was tight all around, the only place with any spare cash was the well funded retirement account for The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner), a source most unacceptable.
News of the ended search spread like butter over bread, and after people sufficiently de-greased themselves they all responded with the same reaction, apathy. At least that’s the reaction averaged from the few people surveyed and extrapolated out. In retrospect it would have been better to survey more than 3 people and a chair and they should have been awake at the time, but those were the people randomly selected and shaping the selection to fit the preconceived notions of how the results should look is downright unscientific. The Ruler of The Universe (and the candy store owner) used this study to convince the populous that the will of the people was in fact to not find a new hero and that anyone who disagreed was obviously in the incorrect minority that composed of only them. This stance was easy to convince people of as due to the fly oppression people rarely had a chance to talk to other people and when one has a rare opportunity to talk to someone one does not was it on a boring topic like politics. With the populous convinced there was no demand for a hero, hoards of prospective heroes desiring to rid the land of the flies trudged back to their homes to accept the fate they apparently wanted.

*Happiness cannot be bought, but long term lease options are available

Fortunately for Gorloth the door to the tsetse flies’s stronghold had dried out since the last attempt to evict the flies and thus the knocking did in fact result in an audible sound. Sadly today was acoustic burger night and thus the flies heard the knock but thought it was coming from the basement. This resulted in a mass exodus flies to outside as they were scared of the creepy knocking sound from under them. The flies poured out of the house like ketchup from a glass bottle, which is to say not really at all until Gorloth looked right at the door, and then they surged over him like a tidal wave.
“Help!” cried Gorloth, who had a wave of sea green sailor hydrophobia wash over him “I’m drowning in flies and all the aquatic words that keep surfacing!”
The tsetse flies heard the cries for help and splashed over, however they were all under the influence of acoustic burgers and thus ended up randomly bobbing around the yard in search of the imperiled person. They darted back and forth, up and down but no matter where they looked they heard cries of help in a different direction. Suddenly one of the flies was struck with a brilliant plan, he started to listen where he wasn’t looking and sure enough that happened to be to source of the noise to which the fly went.
“Ahoy! What ails you multicolored sir?” queried the fly as he landed atop Gorloth’s inexplicable briefcase. “Are you in need of some assistance? Perhaps you would like a fresh acoustic burger, it was made with highest quality probably foods.”
Gorloth staggered to his feet, overcome by this fly’s generosity he knew he could no longer use these flies as a dumping ground for unwanted emotions. These flies were people too (for a loose definition of people) with their own feelings and emotions, using them as a way to dispose of unwanted emotions would be such a waste of these flies when they could be used as a source of desired emotions. If people were willing to pay top dollar to get rid of unwanted emotions just imagine what they would pay to be able to buy wanted emotions, such as contentment, generosity, excitement and happiness*.
Gorloth quickly whipped out his proposal presentation and made the necessary modifications to convince the flies that right now was an all time high for the price of positive emotions, and that by selling now they could buy back later for a fraction of the cost thus netting them copious amounts of money that they could use to relocate themselves to a much nicer neighborhood in parallel dimension perpendicular to this one. Unfortunately all the racket of papers shuffling and presentation rehearsing sounded like and oncoming train to the acoustically impaired flies and as flies hate trains that come on they fled back into their stronghold and locked the door leaving poor Gorloth stranded outside in the waning light with only his black fear of darkness to comfort him.

With the imprisonment of Aaron The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) was getting nervous, two heroes had failed to rid the land of the tsetse fly menace and it was soon time for annual performance reviews. The Ruler of the Universe (and the candy store owner) put all available resources (except the ones for the candy store) into finding a hero that would actually save the world and not just look good for the advertisements.
The new hero had to be brave, dedicated, strong and most of all have a catchy name, after all why bother getting the world saved if nobody can remember the name of the person who did the saving? Thus a catchy name committee was created to catch any characters with catchy names. Unfortunately the committee could only catch one catchyly named character before the word catchy was used enough times to render it a non-word and thus they had to go with Gorloth the Green, the mighty warrior from a place with a much less catchy name.
Despite the name, Gorloth was infact Green, Green with the envy of a thousand burning suns! But Gorloth was also Blue, Blue with the sadness of hundreds of happy children, and Red, Red with the fury of tiny little tweezers. Gorloth happened to be many colors with the emotions of many people and things, for Gorloth the Green was in the business of displaced emotion. He would adopt your emotion for a nominal fee and leave you free from the burdens of having to deal with it, resulting in the betterment of everyone (except that time he bought all the Golden happiness of all his neighbors).
Gorloth the Green had a simple plan to not only save the world from the tsetse fly threat but also substantially increase his business capacity. He would trick the flies into becoming partners in his business and then he could unload all the Brown laziness of beavers and Deep blue sleepiness of insomniacs onto the flies thus rendering them too tired and lethargic to continue their rein of terror.
Suddenly the Mauve paranoia of cacti coupled with the Silver greed of philanthropy overcame him. What if the flies were better than he was? What if they took all his business? What if they stole his customers right out from under him and shifted full-time to their new stolen jobs, thus simultaneously ending the rein of terror and taking the credit for it while gaining a monopoly in a high demand market!? This was too much thinking for Gorloth’s puce ignorance of scientists and thus he stopped and continued on his quest. Gorloth neared the flies’s stronghold and with the yellow fear of a warrior he knocked on the door.