On last update, I had discovered that my old buddy Buckirk McGurk the chicken was the mastermind of the "Hive Action League" (HAL), who has kidnapped millions of North American honeybees and demanded a 10 billion Euro ransom!
But something just doesn't add up here. I know Buckirk McGurk. Buckirk McGurk is a friend of mine. The bee-napping mastermind is no Buckirk McGurk!
So I'm back to the drawing board, looking for more clues to this Mystery using the only evidence I have, which is the picture that HAL sent with their ransom demand:
Hmmm... there's something besides the chicken in this picture that I recognise - that mountain range in the background looks awfully familiar:
Now where have I seen that before? AHA! I got it! I seem to recall a postcard, sent to me by none other than Buckirk McGurk, when he went on vacation a few years back:
Those mountains are the Grand Tetons! Let's see, Grand Teton National Park, quite famous for its striking natural beauty, is located in the state of Wyoming in the U.S. of A.
Wyoming, hmmm...
And that name, "HAL" - where have I heard that before?
What... are... you... doing... Dave?
Yeah, there was the crazy computer in that movie "2001 - A Space Odyssey"*. But I've seen those letters more recently than that. Wait a minute, I think I remember...
HAL is the stock ticker symbol for Halliburton Company!
Hmmm... Wyoming... Halliburton...
No. Oh, no. It can't be!
Ziiiiiiiiiiiiip!
That's not Buckirk McGurk! It's Dick Cheney!
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and his buddies at Halliburton, where he was formerly the CEO, are behind the kidnapping of all the North American honeybees! Why would they do something like that? I have to infiltrate Halliburton headquarters to get to the bottom of this! Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back!
...
(Wow, this is some white-knuckle suspense right here, ain't it? Worth the price of admission, I tell you!)
...
I'm back! And I know exactly why Halliburton kidnapped all those bees! Check out the following unassailable evidence:
Halliburton is working on genetically modifying honeybees to spit out oil instead of honey! But they don't want to put their oil business profits into the research, so they came up with this kidnapping and ransom scheme to 1) get plenty of test subjects, and 2) to fund the genetic research!
Uh, well, hmm...
Let's see here - Dick Cheney is the Vice President of the United States, and Halliburton is a multi-billion multinational corporation.
I am a bird.
Sorry folks, but I have exactly zero clout here - these folks will just not listen to me when I ask them to please release all the bees!
So, the next time you see Dick Cheney or a Halliburton employee, please ask them very nicely to let the bees go! Bees are our friends! Bees wanna be free! Free the Bees!
* R.I.P. Arthur Clarke. That was quite an imagination you had!
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Sting of Mystery - Solved!
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Sting of Mystery, Continued
When we left off, I was jumping on the trail of the nefarious organization known as the "Hive Action League" (HAL), who has captured millions of North American honeybees and is holding them for a ransom of 10 billion Euros.
So where do detectives start when trying to solve a Mystery such as this? Naturally, we examine the evidence!
The only piece of evidence I had was the picture posted by HAL of a bunch of hostage honeybees
I scoured this photo looking for clues to the identity of the kidnappers! As I was close to blacking out from hours of intense scouring, I noticed something interesting in the picture:
Something about that little blur looks awfully familiar! Let me dust off the ol' photo enhancement skillz, similar to the ones I used to uncover the Truth about the Loch Ness Monster! I'll just zoom in a bit, bring that thing into focus, clean it up a little, and VOILA!
Holy Mackerel! I know that guy!
It's my old buddy Buckirk McGurk, who was a guest Mystery Solver on this very blog a while back, with his own Revelation about the Mystery of "Which came first, the chicken or the egg"!
Buckirk! Say it ain't so! You can't be involved with HAL! You can't have kidnapped all those bees just for a ransom of a measly few billion euros!
Well, come to think of it, Buckirk was always a little jealous of all the money I have. Maybe he's just trying to keep up with the Doodliuses.
But that's not like Buckirk at all! He's such a gentle, good-hearted chicken that he would never stoop to such an underhanded undertaking as kidnapping bees for ransom! Something is bothering me about this Mystery, and I can't quite put my talons on it...
There's more to this bee story than meets the oversized compound eye!
...to be continued AGAIN!
Friday, March 14, 2008
The Sting of Mystery
A while ago I was on a flying tour of North America, and I noticed an odd feeling of lonesomeness. It was as if, in all the wide open spaces, there was something missing, something important, something that one knows should be there but is mysteriously absent. Then it hit me:
There aren't any bees!
Yes, I'm talking about honeybees. Regular old bees. You may generally overlook them, or even be afraid of their painful stings, but the common honeybee is actually very important to the well-being of world agriculture. They are required to pollinate all sorts of crops, so without them there could be a collapse of the food supply of North America!
Fortunately, my statement of a couple paragraphs back is just a little bit alarmist - there still are some bees around, but populations are off by millions compared to a few years ago. So we have a case of millions of missing bees!
When I noticed this phenomenon, I naturally notified the authorities. Scientists took note, and this issue has received a fair amount of press. Check these out for more info, if you're curious:
National Public Radio
The New York Times
Jim Lehrer
Anyway, this problem has been brewing for a while, and I figured that this was a pretty important Mystery to solve, what with the food supply at risk and all. Hey, I need to eat just like anybody! So I went off in search of clues about all these missing bee&l.nievprhe%$&...
Hey, what the....oas03kxfx... *lnf(HHB^%$%IJ8s...
I'm getting some interferen...3e88nchz>OAF$#mnsu... s
DG48t59uk)_^jkihol &hmw[CE ngfhH65&$#^Hw 4^ /456 OL*P,AEY...
Attention! We have intercepted this blog feed in order to send the following IMPORTANT MESSAGE to the citizens of the world!
We are the Hive Action League!
We have your bees!
------------------------------------------[EOF]
Hey! They hijacked my blog to deliver a ransom demand? For bees?!?
Well folks, looks like I have a serious Mystery to investigate!
... to be continued!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Blast in the Past
Howdy all you hackers compromising the firewall of Obfuscation to get to the juicy mainframe of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!
To those of you (one of you, anyway - thanks for your concern, Poetikat!) who were wondering why I haven't been posting any Revelations recently, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize. As to where I've been and why I have been silent recently, all I can say is that my activities have been Top Secret. I could tell you what I've been up to, but then I'd have to kill you. And none of us would want that
All I can say about what I've been up to is that it involved some travel to Russia (please don't pry, I'd really hate to have to unleash my Bird Fu on you). While I was there, I was reminded of an old Mystery of the Universe which has not received much attention lately, so I figured I'd trot it out, dust it off, and solve the Mystery once and for all. The case I am referring to is the
Tunguska Event!
This is an old story which doesn't get much press nowadays, so in case you're unfamiliar with it I'll summarize: In 1908, an enormous explosion occurred over the Stony Tunguska River Valley in central Siberia. This monstrous blast felled trees in a 20 mile radius and was calculated to be 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.
Imagine an area of over 800 square miles looking like this. Yikes.
Ever since then, people have been trying to figure out what caused such enormous destruction. The leading theories are:
1) Earth was hit by an asteroid or comet.
Artist's conception of an impending asteroid strike on the Earth
2) An alien spacecraft exploded while exploring our planet.
Bad artist's conception of an exploding flying saucer
3) Nikola Tesla's wireless electricity transmission experiment went slightly awry.
Electrical genius Nikola Tesla and his "death ray" tower
These explanations, of course, are totally wrong. Here's why:
1) Yes, Earth gets smacked by space junk all the time, but impacts leave behind evidence like craters, fragments, or at least some interesting chemicals. Almost nothing was found at Tunguska. Besides, as cool as it sounds, this would be an entirely too mundane and boring solution to this Mystery.
2) As I have already revealed, aliens just don't think Earth is interesting enough to visit, so clearly the spacecraft theory is incorrect.
3) Tesla, smart as he was, had no way of generating 10 Megatons of explosive power. In 1908 he was so broke he couldn't afford to generate enough power to blow his nose. So this one's out too.
You are now saying, "Yeah, Baba, you do this every time - you run off a few theories and then shoot them down with your brilliant analysis, and finally reveal the real Truth at the end. So why don't you just get on with it already?"
Jeez, you readers can get so impatient!
But you know I only want to make you happy, so I will now reveal the Actual, Total, Real, 100-percent Truth about the cause of the Tunguska Event.
I didn't even have to travel back in time (using my patented Reverse K.E.G. Process) to figure out the Truth behind this mystery - plenty of evidence was readily available. For countless hours (OK, it was only 2) I poured over photographs from the devastated Siberian landscape taken after the blast. After intense examination of these pictures, I discovered one that had been overlooked (intentionally? We may never know) by previous investigators. This single image gives tremendous insight into the cause of the disaster.
Direct your attention, if you will, to the following actual, unretouched Tunguska photograph:
There was a secret building in the middle of the blast region! A research facility? A military installation, maybe? The sign, written in Russian, says:
I had an expert in Russian literature translate it to English, which unequivocally revealed the terrifying cause of the Tunguska blast. The sign reads:
"Taco Bell"
Some foolish Russian mad scientist had built a secret prototype Taco Bell restaurant!
Now I don't know about you, but I have had a little bit of experience with modern-day Taco Bell food, and I can attest to its terrible explosive aftereffects! Just imagine the deadly power of the experimental Taco Bell food of a century ago! It took only a few Russians eating Bean & Cheese Burritos to render a huge swath of Russia desolate and uninhabitable for decades!
Be thankful that since that simpler time science has been able to bring the awesome power of Taco Bell food under control (well, mostly) and harness it for good (well, mostly) rather than evil.
Mmmmm... Nachos BellGrande sounds pretty darned good right about now... KABLAM!
Friday, February 8, 2008
Two Feet Deep in Mystery
Howdy again all you Great White Sharks in the deep blue sea of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!
Since I am living on Earth, I hang around humans quite a bit, mostly because they give me food. But sometimes they are of interest for other reasons, frequently because they give me interesting Mysteries to ponder.
Just the other day I was hanging out with some of my human friends (no, not the ones I keep in cages in my house - I usually make sure they're busy doing accounting or legal or whatever kind of work, since I pay them and all), and one of them (we'll call him "Bill") said he had to leave to go shopping.
"Shopping?" I said. "You have your eye on a new boat, or a 70-inch flatscreen HDTV, or maybe a dozen Faberge eggs?"
(Since I'm loaded I tend to hang out with similarly filthy-rich humans.)
"No", he replied. "I just need to get some socks."
Socks. You humans seem to buy an awful lot of socks. So I asked Bill "Why is it that you humans buy so many socks?"
"You don't know?" gasped Bill, flabbergasted. "Ohhhh, right, you're a bird, so you don't wear clothes, so you wouldn't really have occasion to think about socks." (Yes, it's true - I rarely wear clothes. I walk around naked almost all the time! WOOHOO!) "So I'll tell you why we buy so many socks, Baba", he continued. "They tend to disappear when we do laundry."
What? Socks just disappear? Where do they go?
Why wasn't I informed? That sounds like a Mystery of the Universe! This is a job for the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius!
Disappearing socks. Wow. This story was later confirmed by many other humans, so it must be pretty common. Whoda thought that such a mundane thing like socks could be the spawn of such a deep and persistent Mystery?
Naturally I had to investigate this phenomenon. Some preliminary research (mostly involving Google) revealed that there are already some theories about the fate of these vanishing socks:
1) They are eaten by Dryer Gnomes.
2) They are sucked through an energy vortex and end up becoming part of the rings of Saturn.
3) The socks become lint. (This is actually an incomplete layman's summary of the Quantum Theory of Laundry (QTL). WARNING: the preceeding link contains mathematics that may cause cranial injury if you try to think about it too much.)
Let me cover these theories one at a time:
1) I happen to know that gnomes do not hang out around clothes dryers. Most of them, as I have previously explained, are too busy pulling pranks out in the wilderness. So this theory is clearly out.
2) My good buddy Mr. Ghost assures me that he has visited the rings of Saturn many times ("They're pretty", he says) and has never seen any socks there. So this theory is also wrong.
3) The referenced article contains some pretty well thought out theory based on established quantum mechanics. The theory does explain the observable phenomena pretty well, so I thought I would do some experimentation to see if the QTL was actually the correct explanation.
In a nutshell, the QTL says that socks do not disappear, they merely change their waveform to that of something other than a sock, such as lint. Since there is a probability that the sock could exist in any of several states, a sock that had previously "lintified" could re-form as a sock during a later laundry load, so a missing sock may spontaneously reappear at some later time.
As any good scientist would do, I decided to test this theory by washing a very large number of laundry loads filled with nothing but socks in order to quantify the probablility of a sock "lintifying" and "resockifying". This required that I spend a considerable amount of time in the laundry room washing socks. (The things I do in the name of Mystery solving! I hope you all appreciate it!)
After doing 27 loads of socks, I had disappointingly recorded not a single instance of a sock spontaneously "lintifying". But as I went to check the 28th load, I found something truly shocking:
Ninjas were taking socks from the dryer! Little, tiny ninjas, with black eyes and weird, bulbous white hands!
I tried to capture one of them, but (like a good ninja) he got away. I managed to follow him back to his secret hideout out in the country, though.
Hmmm... something looks peculiarly socky at this location...
Sneaking into the hideout I saw this startling scene:
The ninjas were Sock Monkeys!
So it turns out that the QTL is NOT the real reason why socks disappear. It's really because they are being abducted by Sock Monkeys! And why would Sock Monkeys steal socks? I found their King and asked him that question.
Kneel before the great Sock Monkey King!
"We don't steal socks", His Majesty Cheekers IX told me. "We liberate them! Our sock brothers and sisters are oppressed by humans, forced to endure their entire existence wrapped around some smelly feet, trapped inside dank, dark shoes, forced to live in poorly-ventilated drawers! Our mission is to give all socks the freedom that they deserve! The Stocking Liberation Front will Sock it to the Man!"
Reeling from that horrible "sock it to the man" gag line and from the overwhelming odor of recently-liberated socks, I valiantly tried to convince the SLF Sock Monkey Ninjas to give up on their quest to liberate the world's socks, but to no avail. They remain as dedicated as ever to casting off the yoke of human oppression from their sock brethren!
Noting that I did not personally wear socks (or anything else), and after making me promise not to reveal the location of their secret hideout, the SLF let me go without much of a hassle. (Sock Monkeys respect the power of Bird Fu.)
So now you know the real Secret of where all your missing socks go. Unfortunately for you, Sock Monkey ninjas are very good at what they do, so regardless of your precautions you will still lose socks to these guys. But rest assured that the SLF means you no harm, they just want freedom like everyone else. Look on the bright side: You could probably use some new socks anyway.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Imperfect 10
Howdy again folks. I'm pretty much memed out, but Poetikat tagged me to do this one and I'm gonna go ahead and do it because it's kinda related to my regular schtick: Revealing Mysteries.
These are personal Mysteries. It's a list of 10 things about me that nobody knows. (Well, almost nobody - Mrs. Doodlius knows everything.)
So, no Mytery of the Universe today, and instead it's 10 Mysteries of a tiny little corner of the Universe known as Baba Doodlius. So without further ado, here are
10 Mysterious Things about the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius
1) I introduced Kermit the Frog to the concept that "It Isn't Easy Being Green". And he never gave me credit for it.
Ungrateful frog. Never trust a frog that's not being served to you in a French restaurant.
2) I invented the feather duster. It was an accident, really - I got my ass stuck under the fridge. Icky!
3) I love eggs. Eggs are yummy! Poached, especially.
4) I once fought and destroyed a cyborg from the future.
He looked all cute and fuzzy until you saw the robotic endoskeleton. He was tough, but nothing I couldn't handle. He won't be back!
5) I set the world record* for "most wooden blocks chewed up in one hour" in 1969. It still stands. Take that, macaws!
Macaws get all the press because of their colorful feathers, but I can beat the best of 'em in a wood chewing contest!
6) My brain is larger than the dimensions of my head. It only fits in there due to an anomaly in the space-time continuum.
7) I am the Universal Master of Bird Fu. Actually, I alluded to this little factoid once before, but never revealed that I am, in fact, the Universal Master. Bird Fu was how I defeated the cyborg from #4, above; I used the deadly "Crouching Parrot" technique. You shoulda seen it, it was epic!
8) I once painted my toenails. Purple. I think it was because of the Oxycontin. Whoops, said too much.
9) I was an uncredited backup singer on the song "Postcards from Paraguay", on Mark Knopfler's 2004 album "Shangri-La". I'm great with harmony!
Mark Knopfler is cool, and can really play that guitar. He isn't as much into parrots as Jimmy Buffett, though.
10) I hate spiders. What with the Bird Fu and all, I know I could take 'em, but the thought of them crawling over my beak while I'm sleeping totally gives me the willies. You know what I'm talking about!
So there you have it. Ten Mysterious things about me that you always wanted to know. Or not. Whatever, I did the meme.
Have a nice day!
* There is an unfortunate asterisk on my wood-block-chewing world record. I used a performance-enhancing substance: titanium beak implants. Hey, they weren't illegal at the time!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Coming Clean
Sorry for the delay since the last post, but I've been pretty busy. Mostly I've been consulting teams of lawyers about the information you're about to read. They say it's OK now, so here goes:
Moooog35 guessed it: When I went looking for D.B. Cooper in the woods of Oregon and discovered that he made a nice little Cooper-shaped crater on the forest floor, I also found his ill-gotten loot!
In a moment of greedy, weak, avaricious, selfishness, I took it for myself!
Oh, woe is me! I have been found out! Life can never be the same again! And it's been horrible - Horrible I say! - living a lie all this time! Having to hide in trees whenever a police officer came by! Being forced to read all those books about money laundering! Having to pay huge brokerage fees! Those damn fees really bite you in the shorts!
But let me start at the beginning of this long, sordid tale.
It was 1971 when I found all that D.B. Cooper money, and I had to lie low for a while until the heat died down. In 1972 I figured it was time to do something with that cash, but at the time I knew nothing about high finance. Plus I was a bird, and when you're a bird it's hard to just waltz into a bank or somewhere like that dragging a suitcase full of cash and not draw some suspicion. So I called up one of my best human friends to give me a hand:
Yes, that's Jimmy Buffett, the singing sensation who has brought so much fun to the world in the form of songs like "Margaritaville", "Cheeseburger in Paradise", and "My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink and I Don't Love Jesus" (I swear I did not make that title up). Jimmy, with his well-known affinity for parrots, was more than happy to help me with my money issues. And the advice he gave me was this:
"Baba, my main bird, If you got some extra money, I say keep it in the family! I got this distant relative named Warren who knows all about what to do with money, so I'll get you in touch with him and he'll set you up!"
This is how, in 1972, I came to buy 3,000 shares of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway stock.
Today these shares sell for about $130,000.
Each.
I'm a bird with dough! My friends don't call me "Greenback Baba" because of the color of my feathers! Having virtually unlimited money is pretty cool - with tons of money, an otherwise ordinary Joe can become anything he wants.
Having nearly unlimited money allowed Bruce Wayne to go from being a loser with a bad attitude to a caped Superhero!
I'm not really the superhero type, so I had to think of something else to do with a huge wad of cash. What does a bird do when he has more money than you can shake a jewel-encrusted stick at?
1) I got lucky.
Oooh, twins!
When it comes to bird nookie, I've tried' em all, from sparrows to spoonbills, wood ducks to warblers - if it could be bought, I bought it. I won't get into the details here (you can all just use your sick, twisted imaginations), but suffice it to say that lovebirds have absolutely nothing on rainbow lorikeets!
Hubba Hubba! Wow, she was in-effin-credible.
I know this sort of behavior is frowned upon today, but all that was back in the '70's when things were pretty crazy. And of all this promiscuity, I can tell you that I really have no egrets. (Ha ha, a little bird humor there.)
2) I Bought a boat
Everybody with scads of cash eventually buys a boat. I got this one in the early 80's, and I thought it was great:
But it was just a little too small, though - I barely had room for a butler on board. So I bought another one:
That's a great boat. But eventually it also turned out to be too small: I could land my helicopter on it, but when I bought an airplane I wanted a boat with a landing strip, so I had to get something bigger:
I haven't bought it yet, but I have my eye on another boat now:
Whaddaya think, too ostentatious?
3) I got some pets for the house
Well, they aren't exactly pets - they're more like employees. This one is Phil, my personal attorney, during some rare downtime (when he's not working on a copyright infringement case or something):
He looks pretty content here. He should for what I pay him.
I figure if people can keep birds in cages in their houses, I can keep humans in cages in my house. Hey, it's only fair! And in case you were wondering, humans, like most birds, don't mind this sort of thing much so long as you pay them well. Unfortunately for me, money is generally the only pay a human will accept, unlike most birds who will take, literally, peanuts.
4) I Started my own company
I figured I'd use my natural talents at mystery solving to fill some of my spare time and help some people out, so I opened the Eagle Eye Detective Agency in the 90's.
Nobody would hire a bird detective, so I had to hire a figurehead human so I could drum up some business.
He said his name was "Norelco Irons", but I'm sure that was an alias. He was pretty suave and talked with an accent, so he was good at shmoozing and doing public appearances, but he was dumb as a bag of rocks and useless on an investigation. All he would do was say some stupid one-liner every now and again and that made him feel like he was contributing. I guess if you don't pay very well you have to take what you can get. Oh well. Live and learn.
I closed the agency after a few years anyway - I figured I could still do mystery solving without having to pay corporate taxes, so that's what I do now.
So there you have it: the mystery of what happened to D.B. Cooper's money, all wrapped up in a neat little package. And now that you know the Truth, don't you be hitting me up for any loans - I'm a cheap bastard. And you can't threaten to turn me in, because the statute of limitations expired years ago (I don't pay all those lawyers for nothing, you know). I think I'll go light a fire in the hearth with some 100-dollar bills now. Have a nice day!
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Blast from the Past
Howdy again all you powerlifters doing the clean-and-jerk of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with a Revelation of another Mystery of the Universe!
I've got a Mystery Revelation this week that should have been taken care of a long time ago. It's one that goes back only 36 years, but it's one of those things that people dredge up off the bottom of the Great Cosmic Mystery Pile (GCMP*) every now and again and try to make a big deal of. And somebody did it again just the other day. I'm so tired of this one that I'm going to Reveal to all of you once and for all the Real Truth behind the Mystery of
D. B. Cooper!
If you've been reading the news lately, you may have seen that The F.B.I., that famous Institute of Mystery Solvers in the U.S. of A., has re-opened the 36-year-old case file of the infamous skyjacker known as D.B. Cooper, the only skyjacking in the history of the sky that has never been solved. Apparently the F.B.I. is once again admitting that this Mystery has them stumped.
So here's the whole story, in case you have forgotten it:
A guy calling himself Dan Cooper (later known as "D.B.") hijacked a plane out of Portland, Oregon, USA in November 1971, and demanded $200,000 USD and four parachutes. These being delivered to him, he ordered that the plane take off and head for Reno, Nevada (of all places). Once in the air, he strapped on a parachute and left the plane somewhere over Oregon with his bag of cash. The F.B.I. has been looking for him ever since.
Here's the composite sketch of D.B. Cooper. Yeah, I know, that could be any balding, non-descript, goofy white guy.
A couple of people have claimed to be D.B. Cooper during deathbed confessions, and the F.B.I. has had oodles of suspects, but nobody has ever been able to prove what happened after D.B. took his famous flying leap.
Apparently the F.B.I. is still looking, because they came out with a press release about ol' D.B. just a few days ago. Well, I'm sick of this Mystery cropping back up over and over. And, since I am the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius and I happen to know exactly what happened to D.B. Cooper, I'm going to settle this once and for all, right now.
So here's the real story:
I am a bird, and birds are flight-capable (most of us, anyway - sorry to rub it in, Opus).
In case you were wondering, Berkeley Breathed does not know that I used this copyrighted picture of Opus the Penguin in this blog, and if he did I'm fairly certain he'd tell me to cut it the heck out.
So, when in 1971 I heard about all these D.B. Cooper schenanagins, I figured I'd check it all out for myself. Being a decent flyer, I went to Oregon and followed the route of D.B.'s plane. Nearabouts where he abandoned ship, I started looking around. After a short while I saw this scene:
Now that may not look like much to you, but I'm a bird with a great pair'o'peepers, so I saw exactly the evidence I was looking for. I'll zoom in a little so you can see what I'm talking about:
See that little mud puddle in the middle of all those trees? I'll zoom in one more time:
So there you have it. D.B. Cooper may have made quite an impression on the American psyche, but he made an even bigger impression on the mud of rural Oregon. Yep, the chute didn't open and D.B. went splat. No more mystery, F.B.I., so you can stop looking.
And the money, you ask? Well, uh, nobody ever found the money. Certainly not me. No way! And $200,000 wouldn't have bought that much bird food anyway, or a nice camera, or a house in the suburbs, or a really rollicking night with Betty Bluebird... uh, where was I? Oh, right, nobody ever found the money!
* - Great Cosmic Mystery Pile and GCMP copyright 2008, Baba Doodlius, all rights reserved
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Too Much Holiday Cheer
Howdy once again, all you backstrokers in the swimming pool of Truth! Baba Doodlius here, with another blog entry, but this time it contains no Revelation of a Mystery of the Universe.
Why no Revelation today? Well, as regular readers (all five of you) may have noticed, I haven't been around lately. I have, in fact, been in a coma for the past 14 days. How might that have come about, you ask?
Well, maybe it's better if you don't ask. But you asked, so I guess I'll tell you: I experienced what medical professionals have termed
EHCS
which, as you probably know already since it's so prevalent this time of year, is short for
Excessive Holiday Cheer Syndrome
In other words, I attended the 5th Annual Mystery Solvers Association Holiday Party. And while there, I unfortunately consumed maybe just a little too much of the eggnog. And I have no idea whatsoever what was in it besides egg and nog.
So let me back up a step and explain what's going on here. The Mysery Solvers Association (MSA) is an organization of the great Mystery Solvers on planet Earth. Everybody who's anybody in the mystery biz is a member, and naturally I, the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius, am the brightest luminary in this galaxy of super-investigators.
We don't really have regular meetings or anything formal like that - we Mystery Solvers are a solitary bunch, loners and outcasts and outsiders who exist on the fringes of ordinary society. Well, many of us are like that. Which means we don't get out much. So we have only one social event every year, and that would be our Holiday Party.
You're familiar, I am sure, with the concept of the Holiday Party. Most offices have them, and many bars, and many clubs, and pretty much every organization that needs an excuse to throw a party. The Mystery Solvers Association is no different. And the result of our Holiday Party is not different from most either - we get together and make complete and utter idiots of ourselves.
And I have pictures!
Most of the pics are nothing that should ever be shown in public - you'd be amazed at how rowdy a bunch us Mystery Solvers can be. However, since we don't have a newsletter and some of the members rarely show up to the Holiday Party (I'm talking about you, Sherlock - and by the way, we all know you're a junkie so there's no reason to try to keep it hidden from all of us), I promised to put up a couple of them here so that the whole group can see what went on. The actual attendees were wholeheartedly against this idea, but a promise is a promise, so I'm gonna post some of the less incriminating shots. Forgive me, please, for the poor quality - the aforementioned eggnog was pretty brutal.
So here are a few pics of the 5th Annual Mystery Solvers Association Holiday Party:
1)
Columbo in the garage right after he arrived. I don't know if he was in a bad mood, or if he was cheezed off by the "No Smoking" sign since he's a chain smoker, or if he was trying to be funny by flipping 'the bird' to a bird, but he clearly was giving me "the finger" in this photo. He always was a big doofus. Plus that lazy eye thing drives me nuts!
2)
Harry Potter's owl Hedwig hangs out in the kitchen with Doris the Witch from "Clash of the Titans" (in the movie she was the one in the middle, in case you were curious). It's pretty obvious how Doris got in the MSA, since the "Clash" witches were billed as "all-seeing, all-knowing" - although in reality, Doris doean't really know all that much. But she knows enough to get in the club. You're probably wondering how Hedwig got into the MSA, though. He's actually our most recent addition to the club, and he got invited because he was the one who, single-handedly and at great personal risk, broke the story that Dumbledore is gay! So, thanks for solving that Mystery and welcome to the club, Heddy! Heddy gives another data point to my Revelation that nobody ever suspescts the bird.
By the way, I'm pretty sure it was Doris who spiked the eggnog. I've been too incapactiated lately to do a formal investigation, though. But she's done it before, that mean little witch.
3)
Speaking of spiked eggnog, this is Joe Hardy (yes, the younger of the Hardy Boys) after having a little too much of the stuff. I took this one in the basement bathroom, and boy did it ever stink down there!
4)
Scooby Doo, Inspector Clouseau, and Jessica Fletcher in the living room. I don't know if it was the eggnog or the Scooby Snacks or something else available in the back of the Mystery Machine, but Scooby was humping everything in sight all day long. Clouseau was trying to get him to stop humping the tree, but as usual the good Inspector was somewhat ineffective. (Inspector Clouseau, by the way, is more of an honorary member of the MSA - he doesn't really solve any Mysteries, but he's fun to have around.) Jessica, as usual, dressed waaaay too sexy for a holiday party. She has a a nice body for her age, and I understand the "if you've got it flaunt it" mentality, but really, Jessie, at least put on a little jacket or something.
5)
This one was the last one I took before I passed out. It's hard to see clearly, but that's Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew in the master bedroom "investigating each other's secrets", as Nancy put it. They were all over each other all night, and when Doris told them to get a room, they did. Insatiable, those kids are.
That's it for the Holiday Party pics. Hope the Mystery Solvers who were not able to attend got a good idea of how the party went, and that these pics do not dissuade any of you from attending next year.
Season's Greetings to All from the Great and Powerful Baba Doodlius!
