I's wondering if it's OK to be all dreamin' 'bout touchin' on a lady with a monkey head. Not a monkey lady, just a regular lady with a monkey head.

Love,
Someone You Don't Know Who At All

Dearest Unnamed Boy,

In the case that you are unaware, everyone seems to believe that he is a fully vested and qualified advice columnist. Even afore I had done more than tapped out the above greeting, unrequested advice was buffeting me.

"Maybe you should say, you know, like, 'Unnamed Person," my lab assistant, Rob, did opine. He then glanced over his shoulder, looking through the arched doorway to where young Trael sat upon the sofa of the lab's Recreation Room, watching his brother Jarwaun "kick the ass" in the Grand Theft of Autos, the Fourth. He continued, sotto voce "Because it is pretty clear that this," he expressed the airy quotes using his angular monkeypaws, "Someone You Don't Know Who At All is Tra . . . shit, are you transcribing every damn thing I am saying?"

I answered in the negatory, then dimmed the pressure-resistant monitor mounted within my tank, inked somewhat in the waters, and — for good measure — obscured the screen with one of my broad hunting tentacles. I began to continue advising, but Rob did continue to stand about the tank, looking squint-eyed into the swirling, inky fog of the waters, frownfull.

"Yo. Lord A. I can read exactly every damn word, man. What the fuck?" He did interject as I typed, scratching at his brow like a mentally deficient ape

"Hey! HEY! Stop narrating what I'm doing—" He held his paw away from his protruding brow.

He danced from foot to foot in his agitation, like a sorority girl desperate not to soil herself, but succumbing to the diuretic powers of her many, many beers.

Then he slumped, as limp and flaccid as a very small, impotent male member. He crossed of his arms. "Whatever, dude. I mean, what the fuck ever."

can you read this, with your optically imperfect eye, chimp-man?

"Yes." He intoned flatly. "You slimy prick."

That was entirely uncalled for.

His shoulders slumped further, "Whatever, Lord A. Just stop fucking with me." He held up his left hand for my inspection. "Do you see my left pinky?" I did not, and said as much, "Yeah: My left pinky is all invisible still." He tapped the glass with the non-pinky. This was unnerving. "That ain't all, either. You know what's it's like to get up in the AM, start taking a leak, look down, and see nothin' but dead air?"

Not being one to permit my testicles to loll about outside the protective shroud of my body, I knew not, and allowed that while it might be somewhat disconcerting, such an illusion was far from tragic.

He shook his head.

"How can a motherfucker with no goddamn empathy be a fucking advice column?"

I let the rhetorical question hang in the air until it dissipated.

"Whatever. We're getting off track, here, Lord A. Trael's fallen hard for that fucked up monkey-eyeball lady who made my nuts go see-through last week—" he spoke of the demi-being he inadvertently evoked while trying to execute the invisibility matrix outlined in The Key of Solomon the King "—and we need to get right down to the brass tacks and shit and let him down softly. He's a little young to be dating, and she's a fucking mind-flayer reject from, like, the D&D Fiend Folio Compendium dimension. Also, I figure she's old for him, right?"

He paused, squinted. "You typed all of that . . . you are typing all . . . Ah . . . hell." He pursed his lips. "Trael. Bro. Don't be a fool."

"I ain't bein' a fool!"

"Fuck," Rob shouted, spinning, "You can fuckin' hear us all the way over there? Are you a fuckin' bat?"

Trael stood in front of the sofa, staring at us. Jarwaun continued his casual murders, oblivious. "Y'all ain't talking quiet!" Trael shouted, his eyes a-glistening, "And maybe if you are tryin' to be all secrets, you shouldn't do it right in the middle of where everyone is sitting!" The boy pounded from the room. The elevator dinged, and he was gone.

"We fuckin' botched that shit."

"I BELIEVE I COULD HAVE ADVISED HIM WELL, GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY. BUT, AT THIS STAGE, I BELIEVE THAT THE CAT IS EFFECTIVELY UNSACKED."

"Yeah," Rob stared at the empty hallway which Trael had just vacated. "Why the fuck did you hire her, anyway."

Ah, Nota Bene, fine reader: we in the lab have endeavored to pursue a brochuring campaign and have brought in an outside hand— in this case, a hand most assuredly monkey-fied— to assist with the preparation of the material.

"SHE WAS THE MOST QUALIFIED APPLICANT."

Rob turned to look upon me, his honest quizicism stitching his brow.

"She's got that much graphic design expe—"

"NO."

"Then why—"

"YOU DID NOT SEE THE OTHER APPLICANTS, ROB."

"Good thing she wasn't here for all that drama," Jarwaun noted, not pausing in his armed mayhem. "Shit woulda been major awkward." His thumbs blazed across the control paddle, but his face remained impassive, his eyes distant as an opium dreamers, "Y'all probably best just to talk to her direct. Tray ain't gonna understand, anwyway. This is the fuckin' kittens all over again."

Although I know not of the Affair of the Kittens, I believe that, in its heart, Jarwaun's council is good and true. Nonetheless, I do not fondly look forward to tomorrow morning's intervention with Ysslena Almiras of the Miasmic Mists, especially as the brochures are not yet complete.

I Remain,
Your Giant Squid
Editor-in-Chief
PMjA