Mark Thompson wondered absently whether or not the man was actually going to shoot him. The man was about seven feet tall, with a huge forked beard which quivered maniacally as he walked. His eyebrows were coated with teflon, and reflected the sunlight that struck them right back at Mark. He wore three turbans and a huge, multi-faced earring which by first approximation was a particularly bad replica of the Parthenon. The man's name was Ivan Laserlobes. He was the husband of Ocean Fernmatrix, an aspiring model from Corpus Christi. She was a rather beautiful woman and was responsible in a rather direct fashion for what was passing at this moment through Mark's brain, namely, that Laserlobes was going to shoot him with the PX-J-92 Autodeath Projector. Mark did not want to be shot with the PX-J-92 Autodeath Projector, but, realistically, after what he had done, in rather direct fashion, to Ocean Fernmatrix, Mark could really expect nothing less than that he was now going to be shot with the PX-J-92 Autodeath Projector.
Mark waxed nostalgic, remembering long ago when he had been in the middle of a thirteen square mile asphalt parking lot with a girl named Molly Halfyolk. The event was notable for Mark because he and Molly had made love the day before, and also because it took three years before the scars on his butt from making love on 300 degree pavement actually healed. The day was also notable because a planeload of Mexican terrorists had crashed but two miles away and had found Mark the next day. As events turned out, Molly was slain, but Mark managed to convince the terrorists that he was a satan-worshipper from Los Angeles, so they gave him a fake passport and sent him on his way.
These fond memories could do little to save him from the PX-J-92 Autodeath Projector, but Mark thought about them anyway. Laserlobes was trying to get some point across at the moment, so Mark began to pay attention.

"Zoo yoi mekke mekke passporken frum dar thal thal!!!" As he said this, his teflon eyebrows deflected the sun onto a single point on the pavement and melted a three-inch hole there. Mark could not understand a word Laserlobes was saying, due to the man's three beards and perhaps also the fact that he seemed to be so angry that he was speaking in a language that was largely being invented as it was spoken.
Mark was nonplussed, and wanted to avoid having a three-inch hole melted in him, so, in the interests of not having anything else obvious to do, he began to hurl insults at Ivan.
Laserlobes grew hysterical, waving the Autodeath Projector about, pounding his chest, and tugging on all three beards. Finally he launched into a lengthy and completely incomprehensible tirade. This was the last straw. Mark casually unholstered his Walther PPK and shot the man in the face. Laserlobes fell to the ground face first, unconscious, and, from the look of the brain-like matter on the ground around him, dead. Mark put away the PPK and silently venerated the name James Bond. He then stalked off to find his car.

Three days later it became apparent that the huge, eagerly anticipated sixteen way condom and hedge fertilizer merger would not in fact be pulled off. Fifty-three top level executives committed suicide. One was so upset that he forgot to load the gun with which he was trying to terminate himself, and spent three days laying in the middle of his livingroom floor before a well-known psychotherapist managed to convince him that he was alive, whereupon the terribly sad and somewhat deranged former executive clubbed the pyschotherapist to death with a small potted plant. He then jumped from the window of a twelve story building. His fall was arrested, however, by the initial test of the Yolk Industries K-9000 Gravity Eradicator Device. The GED had been stolen three days earlier by a shady, sneaky thief named Rufus. Not surprisingly, it had been the theft of the K-9000 which had caused the condom/hedge fertilizer deal to fall through, and when the deranged former high level executive was brought to a gentle halt three inches above the ground, he instictively knew this, even though no announcement about the theft of the k-9000, nor even of its very existence, had ever been made. In fact, only two people had even known about the device's existence, and they had both died a week ago in a freak nine-way train accident.
At this time, as deranged high-level businessman Horson B. Buddycloud stepped from the air to the ground, Mark Thompson happened to be entering a small, deserted shack in the middle of New York City. It was here that the K-9000 device had been hidden, and it was here that that arch-fiend was operating the device, even as Mark wandered into the shack. Mark shot Rufus in the back of the head with his PPK, and said a quick oath to Ian Fleming, Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, George Lazenby, Pierce Brosnan, James Bond, and, most importantly, Q. In fact it is important to note that this oath was actually quite lengthy, and cannot in the wildest ramblings of even the most demented mind be considered anything even remotely resemblant to "quick." IN fact, 35 central American governments rose and feel during the time it took Mark to complete this oath. It is not therefore surprising that Horson B. Buddycloud had the time to accidentally stumble upon the shack and mistake it, in the midst of his derangedness, for a cucumber rental office. He flopped down to take a nap.

He awakened to find himself in the passenger seat of a bright, bright orange Lotus Turbo Esprit, hurtling down the interstate at just over two-hundred miles per hour, with sixteen police cars from four states in pursuit.
"I need your earlobes," said Mark, in a conversational tone of voice. He was driving with his left and and reading a brand new hardback copy of the unabridged version of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables with his right. Horson took this in with a three-quarters deranged look in his eye.
"Where are we going?"
"A place where we can get those lobes off ya without any permanent damage. We'll be there in about half an hour."
"Oh." Horson closed his eyes and fell instantly asleep, where he dreamed of a horribly complex and frighteningly graphic love scene between two beetles and a tricycle.
Soon they had arrived at the base of Dr Buck's mountain. A door opened and the Lotus sped through it. The door closed. Sixteen police cars smacked against it. Two days later, a combination funeral/spare-parts auction was held there.

Dr Buck was a wizened old man with huge eyes and a tiny goatee. He liked to listen to his own dub versions of old Aretha Franklin songs. He also liked to talk about donkeys and men who have more than one wife. He was also into medieval zen mythology and a weird awful stew worshipping cult called the Neo-Spoonbiters. "Heya, Marcus!"
"Hi Dr Buck, I need this guy's earlobes. Can ya help me out?"
Dr Buck grabbed Horson by the arm and carefully examined his ears with scrutiny. Horson fell asleep midway through this process and dreamt that his wife had just told him about a huge merger between IBM and Penthouse magazine. Something about pictures of nude diskettes…
"Ahhhhhh, yes," said Dr Buck, flexing his fingers meditatively. He grabbed Horson by the ears and tugged hard, ripping them right from Horson's head. "Here," he said, handing the bloody ears to Mark.
"Thanks a mil," replied Mark, pocketing the ears and turning for the door.
"Hey, what about my payment?"
"Oh. It's out front. You'll like it. It's called the K-9000."
"Okay. Bye." Dr Buck turned, dragging Horson's unconscious body to a storage room.

The ears had been traded in for a brand new racing boat. Mark loved racing and he loved boats, but he usually did not enjoy racing in boats. This boat, however, was different. He quickly discovered that with its molecule-thick titanium-alloy noserod, he could slice any craft he came across into two pieces. Mostly, the pieces sank, but there were the odd few that would stay afloat for a time.
Mark was out in San Francisco Bay, cruising at about 300 miles per hour, when the joy of noserod slicing ended abruptly. Spotted by a police seaplane, a netful of anvils was dumped onto Mark's boat.
"Aw hell," said Mark, as he hurtled forward at two hundred and ninety six miles per hour, sans boat. "Darn!!!"

Mark sat alone on the hood of his car, a jug of root beer in one hand, les Miserables in the other. The boat was gone, having not survived the anvils, but Mark was happy. Two days ago, he had met a girl named Betty who was friendly and attractive and going to meet him in ten minutes. He sipped reflectively at his root beer. Life wasn't all boats and ears, he decided.

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