This is is riddled with typos, but I thought I would preserve its integrity.

If anyone prepares any of this stuff, please take photos or make a video.

The boys sent me a tape of some prime Chook-era material while I was in Africa. I want to thank them, because it really helped me get through my time there. From my mosquito-infested bed, I listened to the tapes on a cheap walkman with cheap African batteries and imagined myself being back home with the crew, staying up until 5am to make these “creations.” As my 10-year anniversary of shipping off to Africa is coming up soon, I recently digitized, edited and segmented the whole first tape.

There are 3 basic sections: Chook Radio Drama, Larry Sings the Hits, and Mike’s Improv. I’ll post lengths and some comments for the good ones, so you know what you’re getting into.

Chook Radio Drama

Larry and Jim at Home, 11:45
Larry and Lester Break into Orange Julius, 2:37
Larry and Jim visit DC, 11:18
History Lesson from Larry Snow, 2:21 Has some Clinton-era commentary. Trippy to think of how long ago that was.
The Story of Curtis Rufus as read by Mr. Snow, 1:41
At the Office, 0:48
Chook Origins: Larry Snow, 0:42
Please Hold, 2:34 This one is a must-listen.
Making Calls, 3:08 And, you probably want to avoid this one.
Chook News Reel, 5:39 A bunch of Chook radio news broadcasts, chronicling events of the company and of Larry Snow’s misadventures.

There’s also a track of Joe and Mike cold-calling certain media and entertainment organizations as Chook employees to try to make business deals with them. I left that off the site because of possible legality issues, but anyone who wants that can get it from me directly.

Larry Sings the Hits

I’m a Lonely Man, 1:41
Shake Yer Rump, 0:39
Pennywhistle of Doom, 0:26
Beem Doodah Beem Doodah Hoombah Heem, 1:29
Steady Truckin’, 0:39
Mr. Nutcracker, 0:22 This is one of my faves.

Mike’s Improv

No Fudgies, 0:45
It’s a Party, 1:58
Canada, 2:28
Pennywhistle Rap, 0:54
Goblins Eating Noblins, 0:29
Mike Deedlee, 4:11 Random noises from Mike. Tim has a cameo at 3:00.

I was going through the Chook page and I found Cliff Woodman’s bio.

My name is Cliff Woodman. My current occupation is as a web designer and technology coordinator for Chook Industries. I also do a lot of web design and graphic design on the side. I graduated from University of Maryland, College Park in 1991. I met up with Larry Snow in the mid 90’s, and he offered me a job with his new company. As I was bored of my job at the time, a computer programming job, I decided to take a chance. It turned out to be one of the best moves I had ever taken.

My interests include reading science fiction, especially old school science fiction. My favorite author is A.E. van Vogt. I also enjoy watching a good anime every now and again. Other hobbies of mine include playing guitar and drawing. I do enjoy a few computer games, mainly the old classics. My all-time favorite game is Wasteland.

I am currently unmarried and live with my dog, Herbert von Wilhelm.

This was published in the original MindLab.

Omni is TRUTH

“Ding Dong” probably sounds different to every ear. Maybe to Harry’s ear it sounds like, “Dear, Deer” and maybe to Sally Mae’s ear, “Doo, Doo”. Pigeons probably all hear the same “Ding, Dong” sound though, cause pigeons only have brains the size of raisins. I read that in Omni.

Here follows the sixth and final piece of the Vort Conspiracy saga I wrote back in the day. Unfortunately a bit on the short side compared to the previous pieces. In theory there would have been more, but from my recollection at this point I’d pretty much used up every scene, character, and detail I’d wanted to include when I originally started out writing the thing.

If one was supposing things that might have happened, then I might have thought up some additional details that seemed interesting enough to include eventually, had I thought about it long enough. But other thoughts came first and no related ideas seemed to be beating a path to my door as they had with these first chapters.

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Monkeys.

Everybody loves ‘em, no one can stand ‘em. In some cultures they are associated with of wisdom, acclaimed as blessings of the gods or gods made flesh. In other areas, let’s say your average Starbucks, calling someone a monkey is tantamount to S/H.

Monkeys are many things to many people. Are they cute clingy human analogues or harbingers of terrible disease? Do you see them as maliciously threatening or pleasantly mischievous? It is impossible to tell for the attitudes of a monkey are as mercurial as a breath of air but each emotion as elegantly simple and understandable as those of a young child.

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Then one night, many years later, the Grand Oyabun had another dream. This dream began as the first and the Oyabun passed effortlessly over the great Red Stone walled garden. But after his seventh pass he noticed that one of the small, colored paving stones of the garden upon which he had affixed his sigil, was tied to the back of a great lion which roamed the savanna outside the walls. The Grand Oyabun’s stomach felt a bit uneasy. How could the paving stone have gotten over the Red Stone wall?

Sigil atop stone: Stone atop lion: Lion atop ground: Ground atop Li serpent.

The Grand Oyabun saw the world of his dream in an epiphany for one moment. In this moment he felt the Chook below tilt away from him. In this moment his conscious mind balked. The lion was beyond his grasp. His mind could not open wide enough to comprehend it. He reached out to grasp it, but the lion bounded away from him.

The Grand Oyabun hastened after the lion but the beast fled. Down the writhing back of the great Li serpent the lion raced, but even as the Oyabun felt he might grasp it’s tail, the lion whipped around plunging into the grinning mouth of the Li serpent, and was gone from his sight.

When the Grand Oyabun awoke the dream troubled him for a long time. The longer he sat in reflection upon the portent of the dream, the more it seemed to him that the lion had not been fleeing him, but only hurrying toward it’s destination blind to the pursuit of the dreamer. It was this that troubled him most. The grin of the Li serpent remained with him for days.

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In the seventh year of the dragon since the coming of Chung Hort into Chook (by the Nigi Rigian calendar) the Grand Oyabun of Edo in The Floating Land had a vision, in this vision he saw himself seated in the sky along with the great Li serpent and the Prime minister of The Floating Land and while the Li serpent gazed eternally at the heavens and writhed in that great infinite way it was purported to by the temple priests of Nath, and the Prime Minister seemed to take great interest in his own Buddha-like belly, the Grand Oyabun of Edo (and indeed of all The Floating Land) found his own gaze sweeping out toward the Eastern horizon where a brilliant ruby gleamed in the light of the rising sun.

As he swept closer to the magnificent jewel it grew in size until The Oyabun found himself gliding high above a newly plowed field surrounded by an iridescent wall of Red Stone. And the dimensions of the wall were ten kilometers and ten kilometers and one kilometer, a square. And the width of the wall was .25 kilometer. Neither was there any gate in the wall so that none might enter and none might exit or invade the garden. Except the Oyabun who flew high above.

The Oyabun reached into the bag at his waist and pulling forth a handful of grain began to sew the garden as he passed overhead. And as he threw the last grain into the garden he began to drift away to the east and it seemed he would never see the fruit of his sewing, but even as the garden fell away beyond the western horizon it emerged shining again at the edge of the eastern horizon. And as it came into sight The Oyabun could see that his garden had indeed born fruit in great multitude, fields of rice and millet grew within, orchards of pears, apples, and mangos had sprung up over night. In the lands near by grazed animals of the savannas in numbers beyond count, plump for the taking.

In his dream the Oyabun passed over the garden seven times and tasted the bounty of it’s harvest growing more rich and savory each pass.

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In contrast to the gods (or the artsy gods of Chook at least) who do things in big strides, painting the universe in sweeping strokes; the mortals (or at least the more interesting mortals) of Chook work in ever more intricate and conspiratorial ways. Chung Hort is the prime example of this, a character whose ultimate starkness is like a bold Magnum Marker tag over the Monet-like watercolor canvas of these vague deities. He is the archetypal mortal. The standard by which all beings can be judged mortal or divine in this place, depending on how closely they resemble him (even if they only resemble him in principal).

Assuredly it is known that mortals lived in this place before Chung Hort’s arrival. Chook has always been there, but his entrance into this twilight land gives a sort of definition it could never have had before, even as a floodlight in the forest at night takes away the gray areas making all washed out light and darkest shadow. The shadows cast by Chung are nothing so important as good and evil, for in part Chung may encompass both of these spheres, but his is the grander role of dividing the finite from the sublime.

Into this sunset landscape enter one sunset warrior: Umika Dyson.

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Back between 1999 and 2001, while Chook Industries was still in full swing, I started writing a story based in the Chook universe. CHOOK, for those who don’t know, is an acronym for “Chung Hort Offed On the King”. I seem to recall one or two Chook stories Mike wrote prior to my publication of the Vort Conspiracy, apparently those revolved around the eponymously acronized main character and his colleague “The Toe”, though unfortunately I can’t seem to locate a copy of those at the moment. The Chook RPG also tied in to the Chook world mythos.

I’d posted the stories up on an old geocities webpage I started in college, but then managed to forget the link (this was back in the day when geocities pages were actually named after cities and subdivided into neighborhoods). For years it looked like those stories were lost to the sands of time, but within the last year I salvaged the hard drive from the ancient, moldering computer in my closet, and behold: There were the files!

Looking back at this story I find it interest to note how my writing style seems to have changed in the intervening years. For one thing I think I use more commas now and generally try to break thoughts into smaller sentences. Also my spelling seems to have improved, maybe just due to improvements in word processor spellchecking applications.

Unfortunately this work is still somewhat incomplete. For one thing the web pages contained secret messages, encoded using a sequence of letters throughout the text that were highlighted in a different color from the rest of the text. But since the website is gone and I have only RTF files to work from, those messages are no longer available. Probably no big loss though. I think they were all something to the extent of “Drink your Ovaltine”.

Also, I stopped writing at some point and never got past part 6 of the story. At this late date I’m not really sure how I was going to proceed from there. Readers are free to make up their own ending if they so choose, or wallow in the ambiguity of not knowing.

The story follows. Hope you enjoy.

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