Expedition meteorologist Charles Abbot, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, came aboard with his automatic weather forecasting machine. He expected to calculate variations in solar radiation to determine if they occur in cycles, laying the foundations for predicting weather ten or twenty years ahead. Doctor Abbot passed away off the coast of Nigeria when his moustache became entangled in the machinery.

We will take this break in the action while the fleet lies in the doldrums to introduce some lesser members of the crew.

Suwanei Rivers started his life in a shed behind the adult movie studio in Montezuma, Colorado. Soon he was performing with feets of levitation that no one could endure. He built an orrery when he was 11 but nobody knew what it was. He sold out to Amazon for a billion dollars of undiluted stock and was thus able to pursue his enemies and pamper his friends.

He cashed in his gene bank and started again as a developing artist. This time around the levitation was taken more seriously. He made a handsome living at it until he was caught looking at girly pictures in the tidal flats of the Bay of Fundy. After spending 15 seasons at the South Pole for reasons that remain confidential he was seconded to the expedition, as I have directly from Panurge.

Entonnoir du Cul was also known as La Babouche, according to Erotica Verba, page 456. What else do we know about him? Precious little, except through the relations of his women, who were big in his life.

Both the one he met at the afterparty for Norman Mailer’s Sodden in Kenora, and the one who played the Queen of Sheba’s lady-in-waiting for Andy Warhol, they couldn’t either of them say enough good about the good old boy, particularly in his primary role as a mammal. But, as you know, every animal has its failings. Plants do too. Please contact your system administrator if you cannot understand this sentence. And the executor of your will.

She was borne with both the breasts of her mothers and the four worts of her fodders. They all looked in a the family bible for a trace of her brooders, yet in vein. Even in the beginning, well within hearing of the indian love call, she was chaste as the praying mantis in a hand of rummy.

’Tis the paradox of Zorba’s ass. Those who command resources always need more. It’s in everyone’s best interest, according to the first corollary, attested to by their lawyers and sworn in a court of law having jurisdiction in their bailiwick. The bootlickers are on winning side, but it’s the end of the line, according to those who execute the code.

All the advance thinkers agree on one thing, but they don’t know what it is.

Check out the true story of old mother Hubbard. You’ll be amazed, or my name’s not Heranimus Botch. It’s not at all what you would think. She didn’t go to the cupboard. Not under her own volition. The old dog did not dance a jig.  It tripped the light fantastic.

Remember to clear your gustation tubes after changing the oil or you’ll be spraying your mess mates with territorial markers.

They decoded this message as an order to embark upon a study of the human animal in all its disguises. They had but few specimens in the white, and many in the other, which may have coloured the results. So said  jolly Green Genes.

She, the woman we have been trying to follow, went to a frat party at the Chemical Brothers. All the other brotherhoods were spoken for. She came out of that one smelling like Gypsy Rosealeechee.

I bring for your birthday two ripe melons.

None could but acknowledge that it were a convenient conceit to pretend that the bell tolls for thee. She broke a heel as she fell.

I don’t know what felony or misdemeanour sent you to this here prison, but I plan to make your stay most forgettable. Right off the bast, would you like some juice? We’ve got cumquat sperm in alium ambergris from Moby Dick, procured at extreme personal risk by Mark O’Polo of the Great White Nort.

You’ve said a mouthfull already. Best to zip your lips.

The legend relates, that when Decius was still persecuting the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of 187 years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply materials for some rustic edifice: the light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the seven sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber, as they thought, of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger, and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth could no longer recognize the once familiar aspect of his native country, and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual enquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant.

Chandler Henry Blackstone, known to his compatriots as Freddy Barbarossa, was the crowned king of magicians. He  controlled spooks in he night, and was burned at the cross by a sinister crew of bandits, lashed by stout hempen cables.

That his last words were “Get that camel off my back” is a groundless assertion.

Blackstone’s father served the King in the capacity of sub-altern twice removed, and his son Grant inherited that position.

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