THERE HAVE BEEN MANY TIMES THAT NORM NOWRECKI HAS BEEN CALLED ON TO
SAVE THE DENIZENS OF THE WRECK - NONE SO DIRE AS THIS CURRENT - BUT -
I WOULD ASK YOU TO HAVE FAITH AND READ THESE PAST NOTES THAT PROMISE A
NEW DAY - WE WILL TRIUMPH - AS HAVE WE ALWAYS.




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 Jummywood seeped through his troll
disguise to such a degree that it drowned out even the strident
sweetness of the Yoohoo.


Norm hoped that the trolls would take it to be a cheap body oil used
in an attempt to disguise the usual trollish lack of attention to
personal hygiene.


"Fudgepacker's in the back room."


Mouthed Pineywood, just above the din of The Defecators.


"How do we get in?"


Norm replied and turned to look at Piney.


He was shocked beyond measure at Piney's appearance.


Norm Nowrecki felt his gorge rise.


(Next Part - The Back Room.)


Norm Nowrecki - Part The Fourth.


SMEGMA (Supercilious Mendicants Encountered in Gaming Mall Abattoirs)
had the whole place wired. More to the point, they had Pineywood
wired. His color, usually that of a pale air-dried cherry, had gone
to the flat gray-green of a steamed poplar.


Norm began to take a light breath, in preparation to ask after
Pineywood's health, when Piney exploded with:


"He's back there! He's back there and he's made me sniff contact
adhesive until I told! I couldn't help it! Really!


This was far too many exclamation points for Norm and he backed
jerkingly away.


That was when Fudgepacker oozed into the room.


"I'm sure you've noticed the new troll attacks on the Wreck,
Nowrecki."


Fudgepacker spoke this in an oleagenous voice, at precisely one
quarter octave lower than Michael Jackson's, in an attempt to appear
human.


He was about four foot nine inches in height and nearly so much in
breadth - his hair hung in nauseatingly gelatinous curls to the
bottom-most level of his triple chins. His porcine eyes peered out in
dark gluttony through the bagged fat of their surrounds. The
inevitable and redundant black tee shirt showed the
whitish-cracked-salt-stained evidence of long unwashing which peeled
in scales from the armpits.


"I'm sure you've seen how we have driven off your best contributors,
how we have turned JOAT into T and how we have excoriated your best
loved member - Bay Area Dave."


Nowrecki sat on his smile, glad to know that Fudgepacker's
intelligence was less than what he'd feared.


The other trolls had formed behind him and were moving to back Norm
into one of the corners of the fetid clubhouse.


It was an angry scene. The troll mob went from a dull mutter to a
mindless shriek and pressed Norm back into the wall.


That is when the Motorola went off.


No one was more surprised than Fudgepacker, who thought that he only
had that number.


Seeing their fright, Nowrecki held the battered device up high and a
squeaking voice emanated from it, saying, "Tage Frid." "Tage Frid."


The trolls cowered - their will weakened before the sacred words.


"KlownHammer" said the squeaking voice.


Now it was Nowrecki's turn to be stunned.


The squeaker said again, "KlownHammer".


The trolls had gathered themselves again and made to rush at Norm.


There was a frenzy of motion. There was a glutinous cacophony of
sound.


Norm was knocked to the floor and, as his clothes were disarrayed, a
light showed forth from their folds. It was pure as a laser and as
the laser had enscribed it and it read, "Mea Mordeo". Norm grabbed
the handle and held it high in the room full of trolls.


"Mea mordeo", shouted Norm, as he held the KlownHammer high. "Mea
Mordeo" you shrieking sibilant speaking formica-loving suckwads."


The KlownHammer swung in vast arcs, bringing dismay and decimation to
the advancing trolls, their cries giving harsh sound to Munch's
painting. Its light, as the light from a thousand suns, burned into
the darkloving eyes of the trolls. They were driven back. They were
disheartened. Some of them died. Some of them swore to get jobs.
The killing was wide and it was awesome.


This was not a slaughter of blood but one composed of meaning and the
giving of order.


The order of the KlownHammer.


It was the order that drove off the trolls.


What then is a KlownHammer?


It is an instrument for instruction. It is an article of use in the
making of sense. It is something that must be used in a coherent
fashion, to the betterment of those it serves.


Sometimes it is used in the killing of trolls. Sometimes it is used
to nudge the miscreants.


Nowrecki stood - warmed by his exercise, his hand warmed by the
burning handle of the KlownHammer. He wondered at the retreat of the
trolls. But he was not fooled - he knew that they would be back.


Tom Watson
tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet
www.home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1
Tom Watson
tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet
www.home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1

"Tom Watson" told us some more tall tales...

Thing must be getting back to normal around here.

Colorful stories about Tom Watson's extended family are beginning to appear
again.

Lee Michaels wrote:
"Tom Watson" told us some more tall tales...

Thing must be getting back to normal around here.

Colorful stories about Tom Watson's extended family are beginning to appear
again.



Are we still getting daily listings of every person killed in Iraq?

--
Gerald Ross
Cochran, GA

Lord give me chastity - but not yet.
(Saint Augustine)

Ahhhh...memories.

Glad you have resurfaced the ship.

Tom Watson wrote:

Norm Nowrecki - Part The First.

"Gerald Ross" wrote in message
...
Lee Michaels wrote:
"Tom Watson" told us some more tall tales...

Thing must be getting back to normal around here.

Colorful stories about Tom Watson's extended family are beginning to
appear again.



Are we still getting daily listings of every person killed in Iraq?


I have not heard from stinky in a while, like other trolls he must have
found something else sparkly and was attracted to it.