1. Tom Watson
Jan 23 2004, 11:07 pm show options

Newsgroups: rec.woodworking
From: Tom Watson - Find messages by this
author
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 23:05:26 -0500
Local: Fri, Jan 23 2004 11:05 pm
Subject: Norm Nowrecki - TheTale To This Point (Including Part Four)
Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original
| Report Abuse

Norm Nowrecki - Part The First.


Norm Nowrecki had been sitting at his desk for six months, waiting for
the latest James Krenov book to be published that would give meaning
and purpose to his life, when his cell phone peeped out a tinny
version of the NYW theme, signaling an incoming call. This came as
quite a shock to Norm, as he had not paid his cell phone bill for
three months, having spent all his money on a particularly attractive
investment in Jatoba, well it wasn't - look, we'll come back to that.


Norm peeled the much duct taped Motorola from his belt, banged it
reflexively on the desktop and spoke,


"Norm Nowrecki, Troll Tracker."


The line was full of weird clicks and unintelligible disembodied
voices, added to the electronic howling of distant modem handshakes,
it seemed as though dozens of crossed lines were feeding into his
ancient Motorola. A wheezing sepulcharal presence spoke above the
racket,


"SMEGMA."


The line went dead.


Horrified, Norm punched in *69.


Nothing, nada, zippo. The unfunded Motorola was mute.


Could it be true? Was his old nemesis again up to its vile tricks?


SMEGMA (Silly Morons Engaged in Generating Malicious Assaults) was
thought to have been disbanded after Norm's last attack on their
headquarters, where Norm had captured their leader (Fetus Fudgepacker)
and subjected him to his patented Mobius Looped PowerPoint
Presentation of Hoadley's, Identifying Wood, with a background track
of a MIDI version of TOH bumper music. Norm thought of it as, "The
Cure."


"Fudgepacker must have escaped"


Breathed Norm to the fetid, uncomprehending air of his office.


Norm looked at the frosted glass of his office door and read the
inscription, "rekcarT llorT - ikcerwoN mroN", which made him chortle
as he thought of Firesign Theatre, which made him guffaw as he...


"Get a grip. You've got a case."


It's probably time to deal with the Jatoba Incident.


Norm had two passions, computers and wooddorking. He'd found his
calling in the marriage of the two during the great Crossposting
Doggie Doo Troll War, in which he had succeeded in neutering the
Doggies and in cancel ling all of the accounts that the Trolls had
posted from. He'd been well compensated for his efforts by grateful
members of the afflicted groups and his lifestyle had blossomed to the
point where he could afford a girlfriend, every other Friday night,
for about a half an hour. Life was good.


Then he'd had that tremendous success in bringing Fetus Fudgepacker to
bay, actually to Ebay, where Norm dangled the indescribable carrot
that became the ineluctable trap. Norm had offered for auction the
unmunged email addresses of those on the group that Fudgepacker
considered to be his particular prey. Norm was able to increase his
time with his intermittent girlfriend to forty five minutes, based on
the resolution of that case. Life was better than good.


One night shortly after, while Norm was wandering the docks in an
attempt to catch the scent of the forbidden South American Hardwoods,
that he knew to be nestled in the shipping containers of certain flag
of convenience vessels, he came upon a small man wearing a large coat.


"Brazilian Cherry, Honduran Mahogany, Jatoba.", hawked the
little man in the large coat.


"Did you say, Jatoba?", growled Norm, backing the little man
against a dock post.


The little man was flapping his coat open and closed, like a fishing
bird drying his feathers, like a rooster greeting the dawn, like
a...well, he mostly looked like a somewhat hesitant flasher.


"What's this about Jatoba?", barked Norm to the little
flashing man.


"Check it out.", smarmed the little flashing man, as he opened
his coat to reveal a collection of wood samples, sewn into his coat
lining, that would have held, in a more sober culture, a transient's
display of offshore Rolex knockoffs.


"Jatoba, in the bole, kiln dried, all FAS."


Norm's head was spinning.


"How much?"


"A dollar two ninety eight a board foot."


Norm broke out in a sweat, knowing that he had only enough money to
pay for his cell phone and the 56K line that fed his business. He
lifted the little flashing man four inches off of the ground and,
breathing the remains of his sardine poor boy sandwich into the little
flashing man's face, said,


"I want all of it."


That transaction had sealed Norm's fate. He lost his access to his
intermittent girlfriend. His Motorola was numbed into silence. He
was able to keep up his troll tracking business only by tapping into
the phone line of the office next door to his. He'd hit bottom. Norm
was a wood junky.


The heavy breather who'd pronounced the word, "SMEGMA" into his
heretofore dead Motorola, held out the only promise of redemption. He
was on the case.


In his excitement and in the anticipaaaaation of the hunt, Norm had a
double epiphany - it was Fudgepacker - it was always Fudgepacker - the
voice on the phone - the little flashing man...


"Aaarrrrgggghhhhhh."


Norm fired up his trusty 133mhz beige nonamebox, engaged his balky
winmodem...


The chase was on.


(to be continued)


Norm Nowrecki - Part The Second.


Norm Nowrecki was mortally ****ed.


Fudgepacker had played him like a two dollar banjo and that jangling
metaphor had induced a cognitive and musical dissonance unlike
anything he had ever experienced before. He hummed the NYW theme as
loud as he could, in an attempt to drown out the Dueling Banjos that
had screwed itself in his mind like the worst worm that had ever been
let loose.


"I have to focus!"


SMEGMA (Subsentient Maniacs Encouraging Gibbering Mindless Arguments)
had many haunts. Norm's 133 was downloading the postings to
alt.usenet.kooks, a known SMEGMA hangout. Fudgepacker was undoubtedly
using an alias but Norm knew his style. Fetus Fudgepacker had a very
limited vocabulary that was all too well known to Norm and so, he set
up filters to trap all postings using the obscene expressions most
favored by Fetus. Once the qualified postings were directed into
Norm's looneybin, he would parse each one in an attempt to catch
Fudgepacker's noxious scent.


Norm walked over to one of the many Jatoba piles that crowded his tiny
office. This particular one had been arranged into a rough simulacrum
of a couch. With a Janka side hardness of 2820 pounds at six percent
moisture content, the Jatoba couch was hardly a place to rest one's
head, although the natural germicide contained in the wood was a
definite plus in an office such as Norms'.


"Where is Fudgepacker hiding?"


He'd already gone through all the postings on the newsgroups most
frequented by trolls; alt.troll, alt.flame, alt.sexuality.confused -
no sign of Fetus or SMEGMA. It was no wonder that he was feeling
disoriented. He contemplated Nietzsche's quote, which had become a
mantra to all troll trackers:


"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby
become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss
gazes also into you."


The cheesy winmodem smelled like fried halitosis - the download was
complete.


Norm was running IP numbers through the Sam Spade tools when his
Motorola chirped out the NYW theme. Could this be Fudgepacker calling
to taunt him? He banged the Motorola on the Jatoba pile that served
as his desk, hard enough to pop the outer layer of duct tape - he held
the Motorola to his ear as a voice whispered.


"Tage Frid."


"Tage Frid" was the password used by his friends. Like the biblical
"shibboleth", it could not be properly pronounced by their enemies,the
trolls.


"Momma's Basement. Midnight."


The line went hollow with silence.


Momma's Basement was a troll club on the Southside. Norm had been
there before when tracking down other trolls. The trolls gathered
there and celebrated their iconoclastic individuality by dressing all
in the same clothing. Black on black on black. The place looked like
a convention of pimply-faced, cross-dressing, Roy Orbison
impersonators but the music was by the house band The Defecators, who
had made their mark by spot welding their guitars into a B flat cord
that was played over and over in accompaniment to the hoarsely shouted
lyrics of ******'s Melody.


The place stank of Yoohoo and the remains of half consumed Twinkies.


He hated this part of the job.


Norm gathered up his troll disguise and headed for the door.


(next time - "Momma's Basement".)


Norm Nowrecki - Part The Third.


The monkey cage at the Zoo smelled like this on some summer nights,
when the wind was wrong and the damp was rising. The light was greasy
and the carpet squished out a vile protest against his footsteps.


Norm Nowrecki had only been inside Momma's Basement for five minutes
and already he felt like he had a mouthful of dead flies.


The Defecators, the house band, pounded out their relentless one cord
backup to the insanely cackled lyrics of Louie Louie, without benefit
of melody or modulation.


The trolls had disported themselves about the Yoohoo bar in poses
intended to show their disinclination to appear as normal human
beings. Baggy black pants hung in such a way as to present their pale
pimpled flesh, arrayed in a display of derriere décolletage that might
have honorably been called 'plumber's cleavage' in people who had
jobs. The unremitting blackness of their attire served to set off the
grave-mocking palor of their countenances.


Nowrecki held a small block of cedar to his face and inhaled deeply to
keep from gagging.


The carefully studied androgyny of the troll's costumes did nothing to
hide the fact that this was a troll bar devoid of female inhabitants,
as was always the case with troll bars.


A sickening sweetness overwhelmed the cedar as a voice whispered wetly
into Norm's ear.


"Tage Frid."


The password! Norm dared not turn around but knew there was a friend
over his shoulder.


"Tage Frid."


Norm breathed back in a dead fly exhalation.


It was 'PineyWood' from the Wreck. No doubt about that, as the
redolent reminder of sanded ...

Tom Watson - WoodDorker

tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/