Dénouement

Yeah, I survived my last Mars broadcast. Thanks to my being high on sucrose and having an almost brand-new pair of Size-10 Nike's on that I'd swiped from a napping bum the day before. I was so grateful for those speedy, snazzy, get-away sneaks that I decided to return them.

I found the ex-Wall-Street stockbroker in the same spot, in a corridor beneath the biggest Mars pyramid in the Cydonia ruins, still dozing in his stocking feet. When he woke up and saw me tying a double knot in his left shoelace, he laid a single, lame haymaker in my direction before he collapsed. He must have burned up a whole day's worth of algae-and-mushroom grazing with that one punch. As I calmly reinstalled his footwear, he found the strength to lay a few chosen words on me.

He said I looked like the love child of Charlie McCarthy and Groucho Marx. The stupid jerk. As if two guys could have a love child (the number one asshole thing for anybody to say) and number two, hardly anybody in 2009 remembers Groucho Marx or knows that Charlie McCarthy was the top-hatted, bespectacled dummy that sat on ventriloquist Edgar McCarthy's knee way back in the 1930s.

So, I told him to shitcan that attitude as I snapped off a stalactite that fit my hand like a glove and watched him trip and fall down as he ran down the dark-ass cave, thinking I'd fried a synapse and needed to do some quick bloodletting as therapy. But I let him get clean away because the stalactite club was basically just a knee-jerk reaction. All I really wanted was the lemon sour ball that fell out of his pocket when he got up. Still in its own wrapper, too.

I know I shouldn't have been provoked by such a thing but I was highly insulted by this fellow Earthling's stupid remark. I mean, think about it, this former-speculator bum was suggesting that I was a cross between a mindless, wooden blockhead and an overindulged, over-opinionated, celluloid prankster from the 1930s, with heavy eyebrows, nerdy glasses and a big, black mustache. Hmm. Yeah, well, at least I don't have to have somebody work my mouth and eyes for me and my mustache isn't just black shoe polish. So, stupid or not, this guy was saying that I was not only outdated, but dumb and geeky-looking, and that insulted me and hurt my feelings. So, naturally, I reached for a stalactite.

Hmm. OK. Well, he may have a point or two about my looks. But at least I write and deliver all my own, original material. And, as far as any Mars Broadcast #3 airing in the foreseeable future, I always tick-a-lock on any loose lips about that (including mine) and then spring the broadcast on everyone's asses when they're least expecting it. Otherwise, I'd have been Reptilian food a long time ago.