Dear Pen Pal 8

Dear Pen Pal,

If you have not yet done so this guy who pushes a shopping cart around Daiei said you should go for a walk around the Manoa campus. Unlike our school's it feels like a real college campus. It's quiet up there and it smells nice when you're out walking around. I thought that was strange because it must be hard to push the cart on that hilly terrain. But what do I know, I sleep in a bed while he has a browning American flag with a crazy illegible script written on the white stripes. Only thing is I'm pretty sure it rains a lot more on the UH campus. Which is fine if you're an amphibious lizard, but that guy is more like a house cat when it comes to getting wet. I don't understand why I have to beat myself up for being a colonist if the whole planet was colonized by aliens, he said.

He kind of looked around as if for listening devices and unmarked windowless white vans and then he contined, "It was totally bogus how Renfield sold out his dark master. Crazy my pink patootie, that sniveling buffoon did that on purpose. He thought he could escape Dracula if he were locked in an asylum. But no. The fool came to the end of his bag of powdered cheese snacks. Just as he deserved. I can't think of anything more distasteful, anything outside of pensioners ogling the young Russian blondes at a tennis match."

Booga booga.

Sincerely, &c.

Dear Pen Pal 7

Dear Pen Pal,

If you like cold cereal after a long night of sleeping, and who doesn't unless you're plagued with nightmares or apnea, I recommended you pick up a big bag of Western Family brand raisin bran at your local grocer. For five dollars you will get like twenty meals. That's extra money for pencils and erasers, Mr. Study. There are so many raisins in each bag it's as if their factory farms left extra fields of grapes out in the sun too long. If they were good grapes they'd be sold to wine makers but as it is since they suck they become the sugar coated raisins in a bag of bran flakes, i.e. raisin bran.

One of my favorite channels on cable television is the scrolling channel guide. On mainland American guide channels they always run commercials and other crap at the top half of the screen. It burns me up. But here they play aloha music and the scroll runs all the way up the screen and there ain't no blasted commercials. Hell I can sit in the kitchen and type away while listening to the scrolling guide channel happy as The Cure in rainy Hawaii.

Speaking of the rain, woo doggie. The sewer break has given the Ala Wai canal some floaties. Me, I like this weather as long as I'm not out in it. When I get wet, I get super powers. Witches melt and vampires sizzle if it's been blessed by a priest but I gain the ability to reverse the laws of gravity and inertia. Practically this means fanfare in the sack. I like the air temperature as well.

Sincerely,
Dude

Dear Pen Pal 6

Dear Penpal,

Last week was very slow and boring. I had two midterms on the same day. It was not very stressful. I put off studying until the night before the tests. I started studying for a dance class instead. Then the next day I looked over my notes as I ate a bowl of cold cereal. At school before class I met with friends to study some more but we just talked and goofed off. I took the tests I hadn't studied for much and they were pretty boring. That night and each night following I stayed inside and watched television. That was boring too but somewhat less so than the other stuff. I stay inside when it snows. Lately that's all it's been doing.

If you have a product you want to sell in Honolulu you should put it in a can of spam and then people will go crazy to buy it. T-shirts would work well. The outside of the spam can can say what the T-shirt says. Then someone will buy it and open the top and voila, it's a T-shirt with a cartoon character or some other cute thing saying something either nonsensical or almost marginally clever. I'm telling you, this is a money making opportunity. Think of everything that will fit in a spam can. M&Ms, bars of soap, small mammals, spare cables, yeast. You name it.

I heard from this homeless guy that famous American crooner Michael Bolton once paid seventy-five thousand dollars to have some spam sculpted out of spam.

Kind regards, &c.

Dear Pen Pal 5

Dear Penpal,

It has been a busy week. A friend visited me from the moon. He came here to stock up on chocolate covered macadamia nuts, which are hard to come by on the lunar surface. Have you been to the macadamia nut farm somewhere on the windward side? You can get free samples of nuts. They come in many flavors including but not limited to honey roasted, caramel coated, and spam. Yes, spam nuts.

Mainland Americans do not understand why people here love spam so much. No one eats spam where I'm from. For the most part, no one eats canned meat at all. Meat in a can? No. Soda, pop, coke, even juice, all these suggest canning. Fruits and vegetables, okay, if you're a midwestern homesteader during the depression. Everyone else should leave the spam alone before someone gets hurt or hurt feelings, which sting. No one eats spam on the moon either, in case you were wondering.

I was in an ABC store the other day and this woman said to me, "the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the early 1900s could have defeated the Prussian Empire of the late 1800s without breaking a sweat, if you don't account for technological advances in the intervening years." I told her she didn't know what she was talking about. The Prussians were nasty cusses for heaven's sake, everyone knows that. And how can you have an effective bloodthirsty empire made of people who speak two different languages? She started to argue but I cut her off. "Just ring up these nuts, okay?" I said placing my money on the counter.

Kindly, &c.

Dear Pen Pal 4

Dear Penpal,

That is very interesting that your friend does comics and it's even more interesting that the comics are X-rated. I wish him success.

It has been a busy week for me. I walked up and down Kalakaua and collected all the flyers that people hand out. Some are for restaurants, menus and coupons. Some are for gun clubs. For a fee they will give you a big freakin flamethrower and let you burn down a small grass thatch hut, all island lei style. Or you can get a submachine gun and spray ammunition all over the place like a bunch of cold and flu germs at the salad bar. I haven't used this service yet because I wanted to try a grenade launcher like the one Arnold Schwarzenegger used in his address to the California state congress last weekend, but the gun club said grenade launchers were illegal. Whatever. This is America, Jack.

There were some other flyers that had pictures of cute girls on them but unfortunately I couldn't read them because they were written in Korean. There was a phone number to call but something tells me if I do that it will cost a lot of money, and if I'm going to spend that much I may as well go to the gun club for puppy night.

Affectionately yours, &c.

Dear Pen Pal 3

Dear Penpal,

Felicitations from the dreary confines of a German prison. I have been here locked up for many days all stemming from a great misunderstanding. You see, I was at the airport selling flowers to old women in black shawls when a truck pulled up and a man wearing a billboard for the Waikiki gun club jumped out. He asked me whether I wanted to go shoot liberal-shaped targets at a secret range for true patriotic Americans. To get away from him I told him I was German which is kind of true although all I can say in the language is a curse word and a couple car brands. Well I guess that was the wrong thing to say because the next thing I knew I was in the back of a police ambulance surrounded by Germans wearing an excessive amount of leather for this ostensibly tropical climate. I tried to explain to them that I was not injured or sick. They insisted we were only going to the pub and that this was the quickest way to get there. You don't have to wait for the stoplights when you're in an ambulance.

The pub was kind of dirty and my allergies were kicking in so after several pints of German stout I asked my hosts how to get back to the airport. They were busy throwing darts at the pool table sponsored by Oprah's Book Club and that's when the cops came and we all got arrested. With good behavior I should be out by Hanukkah.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to Taiwan. I would like to say congratulations to your company on the contract and to please send me some American cigarettes.

Best regards, &c.

Dear Pen Pal 2

Dear Penpal,

Hello and nice to meet you. You can call me Dude. That's what the kids used to call me, the ones on my ice cream route. I was an ice cream truck driver for many years, too many to count and frankly most of it is a blur. I have a bad memory. I think it is from years of working in an asbestos plant. They insisted the asbestos was safe and that it would not harm our health. However that is what we in Ireland call a load of malarkey. In other words, a story, just like this letter.

So yes I'm making everything up. I don't think that matters though since the point of this pen pal exchange is to get better at English. Our respective teachers have decided on this assignment and we must listen to them and trust them implicitly for they are wise in the ways of the world. Like the famous American moral barometer, Oprah Winfrey. She has a billion dollars (US).

I hope you enjoy your stay in Hawaii. This is a good place because there aren't any snakes here.

Very truly yours, &c.

Decadent

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Ang Lee in Hollywood

Buster is a crash test dummy that has organs and these organs will explode all red and juicy upon significant impact, for instance the corner of a hundred year old office building breaking off and falling forty stories on them, that style. As a night custodian I had a key to the special effects garage. I needed Buster and I figured I'd be able to retrieve him after.

It was the day of my ex-wife's family reunion. They held it at Devou in northern Kentucky, a park known in the area for its scenic hillside view of downtown Cincinnati. Her relatives were all glad she finally divorced me, the moronic sows. I'd known and hated them all.

Near them I was crouched down in a thicket. With my job I was able to install Buster in the driver's seat and modify the car to be steered remotely. Her family was beside the cliff in their ugly polos and floppy-brimmed hats, the car pointed at them. It came to life and with a gutteral screech was off the pavement and on the grass.

They scattered like teenage girls from a locked bathroom with the lights out. I was delighted. In my hat and sunglasses Buster looked just like me. A button sounded the horn, which played the first few bars of Camptown Races. It turfed the Dolce Cabana holiday catering table and went straight off the cliff.

Inspiration throttled me. I'd leave Buster and his internal bleeding for the cops. I darted from the thicket, sprinting through the scene and grabbing a turkey leg standing straight up in a mud puddle. I tore into it with buffalo gusto as I cleared the field and bounded into the far trees. Behind me the screams renewed. They'd seen a ravenous ghost.

The Rainy Season

Late winter in the north Pacific means the rainy season. The islands are like seeds that must be cloud-covered and kept moist to sprout. This time of year gives the land the chance to hydrate before the strong summer sunlight imposes itself through the following November. Under the near constant gray, the ocean breezes that tickle the island pick up speed. For the residents their slatted windows on the opposite sides of homes and apartments are turned open, letting the wind sally through without impediment. The city bustles along, aware of the weather but unalert. The nights are a chilly 65. On the water the conditions have also cooled, and rare is the bare-chested surfer who stays out all day. But the waves are up, cresting at twenty five feet and rolling like an avalanche of giant steel drums spilled from the back of a semi.