Now We're Gettin' Somewhere...

For Chapter I, go here.

Chapter II
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As I waited, I scoped out the steady stream of people who passed by me on their way to the reception desk.  After a short conversation, the receptionist would stamp something on the backs of their hands and then point them to one of the elevators that lined both sides of the lobby.  They all seemed to be clients of some sort, and all of them looked kinda nervous and tense as they talked with the receptionist.  A lot of them were rubbing up against the corners of the desk like they had an itch that they couldn't scratch.  As they chatted, I kept noticing the receptionist giving me the evil eye over the shoulders of the clients.  I felt in my bra for my roscoe, relieved that it hadn't fallen out while I was scraping the gum off of my shoe.  Even so, things were still looking a little hinky, so I kept one hand on the blade I had stashed in a garter under my skirt. And so I waited and I waited.  Eventually I dozed off.

I was jolted awake by the sound of a gong coming from the far end of the room behind the receptionist.  All heads in the room swiveled around in the direction of the sound, so I stood up and tried to see what all the hubbub was about.  There was another elevator door all by itself in the far wall.  It was larger than all of the others and had gold doors and expensive gold scrollwork surrounding it. My keen powers of observation told me that this was the VIP elevator.

As I watched, the doors slid open and some kind of procession started moving slowly out into the room.  There were four big palookas dressed in not much more than leather thongs carrying a fancy looking gold chair on poles. Standing on either side of the chair were two more guys dressed like the other guys, but they were waving big feather fans around.  Sitting in the chair was a real classy looking dame wearing a crown.  She was dressed in a shiny gold set of threads with a slit up one side that showed off a set of slinky gams that put mine to shame.  She obviously had never been shot in her knees like I had though.  Still, I was more than a little jealous.

I was shaken out of my trance when a stapler bounced off of the side of my head, knocking my fedora sideways.  I turned and looked in the direction that it came from, and caught sight of the receptionist, who was furiously waving me over with an impatient look on her face.  Rubbing the growing lump on the side of my head, I walked over to the desk.

That's Headmistress Ally.  She's the Big Cheese around here and she came all the way down from her penthouse just to see you, so make sure you show her the proper respect, you dolt!

I sized up the situation and then headed over to where the boys had set down the chair.  I walked up to the chair and held out my hand to the still seated Headmistress.

Hello Ally, I'm Gir....

*CRACK!*

OWWW!  Motherfu....

*CRACK!*

I felt an excruciating pain in the backs of my knees that hurt almost as bad as it did when I used to get shot there by my boss.  I crashed to the floor into a kneeling position.  Turning my head to see what had just happened, I saw the receptionist standing there, brandishing a stiff cane, like she was about to give me another kiss with it.

I said proper respect, you idiot!

She didn't have to tell me twice, so I tried again, this time from the kneeling position.

Hello Headmistress Ally.  My name is Girl Friday and I...

I know who you are and I know why you're here, so let's say we dispense with any of the trivial stuff and get down to brass tacks, shall we?

But of course, Headmistress, thank you for taking the time to come all the way down to speak with me.

Well, I was just heading out for lunch with my boys anyway, so it was really not much of an inconvenience.

I became aware of an unfamiliar sound from behind me and noticed that the receptionist was slowly tapping the cane against the side of her leg.  It looked like she was getting ready to paste me again, so I turned my attention back to Ms Ally while keeping the receptionist in my line of sight at the same time.

So, Girl Friday, my staff informs me that you're here to inquire about the possibility of being retained as an investigator.  I've been told that you're a real dick.  We don't often see female dicks here in Paradise, so I'm inclined to offer you the chance to check into a small but rather aggravating situation for me, even if you did break my favorite moose head.

Beads of perspiration formed on my forehead.  I'd completely forgotten about the moose head.


It seems that someone with an axe to grind has alerted the Dirty Language Division of the FCC to the fact that one of my Empresses has been using the F-word rather frequently on her radio program.  I can't risk having my FCC license pulled, so I'd like you to find out who the whistle-blower is, and why they decided to cause me this unnecessary headache.  Once you find the snitch, I'll take it from there.

Headmistress Ally, I'm not clear on something... you mentioned the F- word. What do......

You know!  The F-word! Fuck!  Do you live under a rock or something? Fuck fuck fucking fuckity fuck!  Is that clear enough for you?

Geez, why is she getting so irritated?

Oh, OK, I think I get the picture now.

After a few seconds, she continued...

You've obviously met Miss Christine, my Security Chief and Good Manners Coach, and I'm going to turn you over to her and have her take you upstairs to meet with Empress Constance, the radio host that I mentioned earlier.  She'll give you any information you might need to help you track down the offending party.

OK boys, I'm getting kinda peckish here and the lunch special down at the Paradise Shrimp Palace doesn't last all afternoon you know. Good luck, Friday, you'll be well compensated if your investigation is successful.

With that, her bearers picked her chair back up and headed for the front door. A couple of the bearers must've been new though, because they miscalculated a little on the height of the door opening, causing Ms Ally to bump her noodle on the door frame, knocking off her crown in the process.

Goddammit!  Pick that up you jerks!  Shit, why is it so hard to get good bearers these days?

Before I could even react to that, I was roughly snatched up by my shoulders and into a standing position by Miss Christine..

OK you dick, let's go see Empress Constance, and don't try any funny stuff in the elevator or I'm gonna have to hurt you.

Super!  I've got a goose egg on my bean and a pair of ugly purple stripes across the backs of my knees, and I hadn't even got out of the lobby yet.  Now I'm no weak sister, but I decided then and there that if I wanted to get paid, I'd better play along.  Next thing I knew,  Miss Christine was giving me the bums rush over to one of the other elevators and when the doors opened, she shoved me inside and stepped in behind me.  I sat on the floor to ease the throbbing in my knees and kept my hand on my blade during the uneasy trip up to the 13th floor and my meeting with Empress Constance....

(to be continued)

Girl Friday  



 

Sure Hope Business Picks Up Soon...

or this chickie dick is gonna be tossed out on the street on her little keister.  Yes, Girl Friday here.  Long time no see.

Chapter I

The only investigation I have open right now is the BillyBear disappearance, but the leads in that case dried up long ago, and the client who was looking for him lammed out of town in a big hurry a few months back.  So here I am with no visible means of support.  I'm talking lettuce, you lugs, so can the wisecracks about my bra and cheaters, OK?

So I've been out every day beating the bushes looking for clients who can actually pay me.  I get at least 20 or 30 calls a day from prospective clients who want my services.  None of them are willing to pay, and most of them want something that's not even connected to my PI business.  I've had to get restraining orders put on at least half of them, and the coppers are gettin' kinda tired of seeing my mug down at the station, always making them fill out complaint forms.  For some reason, I don't think they take me very seriously down there, and they'd rather not be bothered.

Some of my best investigative work so far has been related to the activities of  the Mistresses and clients over at the LDW Building, so I thought I'd wander over that way and snoop around a little.  Maybe there's some business to be had if I'm lucky.   It's been a few years since I was over in that part of town, but I figured that I could still find the place with no problems.  So I stuffed my roscoe in my bra, grabbed a couple of pairs of bracelets just in case, and locked up the office.  Once out on the street, I hiked up my skirt at the first cab that came by, and flashed my gams at the driver.  Just like in the old days, the cab screeches to a halt right in front of me.  Even I was impressed. This girl has still got it!  I guess all of the scars from being shot in my knees by my old boss Tracer have faded enough where they're not noticed.  I gotta say, with a decent pair of pantyhose, my getaway sticks are still looking pretty good, if I do say so myself.

This driver must not have been around back in the days when Tracer and I were regularly stiffing them with Monopoly money, and so he didn't threaten me or insist on getting paid up front.  When I told him to take me over to the LDW Building, he looked at me like I was some kinda rube and told me there was no place in Paradise going by that name.  I told him to head over to the address anyway.  Once we got in the general vicinity, I told him to stop and tossed a photocopied sawbuck at him.  One trick I've learned is to distract the driver by letting my skirt ride up and spreading my gams a little while I'm getting out so he doesn't notice that the spinach is bogus. Tracer could NEVER pull that one off.  I climbed out of the hack to have a look around.

I was standing in front of a big building that looked familiar, but it didn't have the same LDW Building sign on it that I remembered.  Instead, there was a big glowing neon sign spelling out EE in huge letters, with Enchantrix Empire, Ltd. in smaller letters underneath.  I seemed to recall that when I last visited LDW's chatroom, I'd overheard some people calling some of the Mistresses by the name Empress, so I figured that this just might be the same place.  It looked like they'd added quite a few new floors to the building, and since it still didn't look quite right, I walked across the street, stood back in the shadows and lit up a gasper so I could watch the entrance for awhile.

About a half a pack of smokes later and a few wads of chewed gum stuck to my heels, the traffic going in and out of the main door was pretty much as I remembered it. Lots of guys with big bulges in the front of their pants that didn't look like heaters, and plenty of tomatoes in frilly outfits with a little hint of 5 o'clock shadow under their makeup.  I noticed bulges on some of them too.  I also saw some real lookers going around to a separate door on the side of the building, and I assumed by the looks of them that they were the Mistresses and Empresses. I was pretty convinced by then that I'd come to the right place, so I stubbed out the fag on my sole, where it promptly got stuck in a smashed wad of gum.  It was stuck pretty good, and I hoped it would get scuffed off before I had to talk to anybody, because the filter was visibly sticking out on the side of the shoe.

I took a deep breath and walked across the street to the entrance, trying to scrape the gum off my shoe with every step.  As I approached the door, a security guard stepped out and I noticed him looking at me with one eyebrow raised.  

"You OK Miss?  That's a pretty bad limp.  Did you hurt your leg or something or are you just a spaz?"
   
 I was about to pull my roscoe and put an end to that conversation right then and there when I realized that I needed him to let me into the building. I was just glad that he wasn't the same goon I had to drill in both knees the last time I was at LDW to grill that Miss Tara dame.

 "No, my foot's just asleep, that's all.  I'm here to talk to somebody about lining up some investigative work.  Who do I need to speak with about that?". 

I flashed my ID card in his face to show him that I really am a dick, flicking the tip of his nose with it in the process. Gawd I really love when I do that!

He opened the door for me and showed me into a big ornate lobby with expensive leather chairs and couches.  

"Take a seat and wait here Miss, and I'll go get somebody for you."  

I watched him walk across the lobby to a huge carved wooden desk and start talking to a very pretty but powerfully built receptionist.  As they talked, they both kept sneaking furtive little glances over in my direction.  I started to get a little nervous when I saw her get on the horn with somebody, but figured I was "in for a penny, in for a pound", and so I smoothed my skirt over my pins and waited.

(to be continued)

Girl Friday  

  

Bitchass Worries Too Much Sometimes

I'm really thankful that I still have a job and a place to live, but seeing that I'm a totally insecure bitchass, I worry about it all going away, leaving me to live on only my unemployment income.  Even though I don't have any indication of that happening in the near future, I still like to plan ahead.  If worst comes to worst, and I ever need a place to live, I'm hoping that one of the wonderful and compassionate Mistresses here will be nice enough to take me in.  I'd only need a very small amount of closet space for my stuff..... and me.  ;)

Oh... did I tell you I worry too much?


little bitchass

Fiddlesticks

I'm new to this town, and on one of my "get acquainted" walks through the downtown area, I happened to notice a small shop with a sign in the window that said "Fiddlesticks - We Do Violins".  Under that was some artwork of a violin with a bandaid over it.

That got me to thinking.  I have an old violin that's been handed down through the family for at least 4 generations, and I've been wanting to learn how to play it. I was sure that it needed some adjustments as well as some new strings and some new horsehair on the bow, so the next weekend I brought it by the shop, took it out of it's case, and gingerly laid it on the counter.

The guy behind the counter was friendly enough, and he told me that yes, they would give it a good going over for me.  All they wanted was a $100 deposit.  I thought that was reasonable, and so I paid the guy and asked him how soon they might get around to it.

He said, "Oh, you can stay.  I'm not busy and I can take care of it right now for you."

I hadn't noticed while I was digging the $100 out of my purse that he had one hand behind his back, and that he had put on some safety goggles.

"Why do you need safety gog........."

Before I could react, he brings out a huge Gallagher-style wooden mallet from behind his back and swings it over his head and....

::SMASH!::

I'm still picking toothpicks out of my hair.....

CREEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAKKKKKK....

Boy do those hinges need some lube... I haven't opened this door in about 4 years, and barely was able to turn the key in the lock! A couple of days of soaking the lock in WD40 did the trick though. Kinda reminded me of what happened one time with my "other" lock after not opening it for a long time, but I digress....

 It's been many moons since I've written an entry into this blog, and I won't bother to go into the reasons for stopping. There were at least a handful, and any readers can probably piece things together if they want.

I was reminiscing a little a few weeks ago, and decided I'd like to come back in here and read some of the old stuff that I so enjoyed writing at the time. Finding and getting back into the blog turned into a bit of a challenge though, since I'd lost even the most important thing, the URL for the blog, and the exact syntax I'd used for the title. There have been a few too many crashed hard drives since I was last here, and I had also lost my log-in information. After a lot of trial and error, mostly error, I was finally able to get back in. Once back into the blog, I found that it had been linked to my old email account, which was deactivated by Yahoo a few years back. So I ended up having to create a new email account and link it up.

After that, I had to wade through an encyclopedia of unmoderated comments that had come in since I was last here. Almost all of them were spam, but there were a couple of nasty comments from a few people who were basically calling me an out of touch with reality asshole for how I was playing in my interactions with my LDW Mistress. Those all disappeared along with the spam with some deft use of the "delete" key! POOF! Fresh start!

Then, it was time to finally get down to the business of reading the old posts! I had a few in particular that I wanted to read, but after I had read them, I went back to the earliest posts and started to read them all. What a trip! It was almost like opening up a time capsule for me! A million memories started to come back to me that I'd forgotten over the past few years. There's a ton of entries related to my adventures as a pet of Ms Grace, and also the fiction stories that I'd written, some of which were written in collaboration with a really great writer, BillyBear, who's blog is one of the few still open and linked on my sidebar. Unfortunately, he stopped writing shortly before I did. Anybody who reads my blog should also read his, as a lot of our storylines are linked together.

 I don't consider myself to be a great bloggist, but I have to say that I really enjoyed reading the posts and also the comments. Some are really good, if I do say so myself!  I found myself laughing out loud at some passages, especially in BillyBear's stories, sometimes to the point where I'd finally stop laughing and then a second later I'd burst out laughing again. I remember laughing uncontrollably over those very same passages at the time they were written.  Those sure were some good times back then....

Anyway, this post is getting too long already, and there's still so much to say! That will have to come later. My main goal was to get the blog updated and available for reading, but I've also been getting the itch to do some writing again. I'm not sure how that will all work out, but this has been a good start. Hopefully, I'll see you all again soon!

In Memory Of A Friend

In case any of you readers don't know by now, Miss Tara from the LDW Group passed away on November 29, 2009. The details of her passing are on Little Giselle's blog, and I won't repeat them here. There is also a follow-up post by Giselle that really illustrates the type of person that Miss Tara was. I hope you will all go and read Giselle's posts.

When I heard the news, I was totally stunned. Stunned by the passing of a person whom I've never even met in person. People seem to come and go so quickly in Miss Tara's profession, but this was a real shock to me. This is at least the 4th time I've sat down to write something appropriate, but the words have just seemed to escape me. I can't let it go another day without writing something, and please bear with me while I try to express a few things.

Like it says in the title of this post, Miss Tara was a friend. She might've been a long distance friend, an online friend if you will, but a friend nonetheless. She even surprised me by sending me a few birthday cards in the mail, with really thoughtful and sweet messages handwritten on each. She was totally special, and I doubt that there ever was or ever will be another person quite like her. I'll never forget that unique voice, her unbridled laughter on her radio show when something struck her as funny. She was also a talented writer, and on more than one occasion she pointed me to some of her written work that I feel very privileged to have been allowed to read. I hope that Ms Ally can find a way to keep Miss Tara's blog open somewhere where people can read it and remember her. She deserves at least that much.

My first recollection of Miss Tara was from one of my early visits to the chatroom at LDW. I didn't know her from Adam, and only a few seconds after entering the chatroom, she says "Jem! You're so outrageous!" I wasn't sure what I did that was so outrageous, and was trying to figure it out, when she said it again. Then a light clicked on in my head and I realized that it was a quote fron the old Jem cartoon. It was also my first exposure to Miss Tara's vast storehouse of pop culture trivia.

We became close chatroom friends after that, and after quite a while I was even directed to call her on the phone by Ms Grace. I was pretty nervous on the call, and I think Miss Tara may have been a little nervous as well. I didn't want to mess up any mental image of me that she might've had, and maybe she felt a little of that too. We did have a great call, but most of my interaction with her was in the chatroom and blogs. That's where I realized what a great roleplayer she was.

Miss Tara had a radio show for a while, and whenever I was able to get home from work early enough, I tried to make it into chat. She always gave me a great big welcome when I would come into the room, and we would always end up dancing to The Cootie Song, which she'd play especially for me. I'd had to change my avatar because my old one wasn't available on the new chat client, and the one I picked happened to look like an alien bug to Miss Tara. So from then on, I was Jembug or Buglet, depending on her mood that day. One of her favorite phrases was "Don't come near me with those cuh-reepie feelers!" I sooooo loved hearing her laugh during those radio shows.

Even without radio, we used to have hilarious nights in the chatroom whenever Miss Tara was there. A lot of the times that Billybear and I were in there, we would try and liven it up (disrupt?) to the point where it teetered on the brink of anarchy. I'll always remember those nights, which would invariably result in Billybear and/or me being spanked by Miss Tara (as only Miss Tara could) and sent to stand with our noses against the wall until we were allowed to come back. It didn't take much instigation by Ace or Lucky or Giselle to get us spanked either.

She had a wonderful knack for balancing on the fine line of being professional and not offending the other clients, while at the same time jumping right into whatever insanity we had brewed up that night. A great example of that would be her participation in the first chatroom appearance of Tracer Bullet Billy and Girl Friday. That night bordered on mayhem, but was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen or been a part of in the chatroom. I often wonder what a first time visitor to the chatroom might've thought if he showed up in the middle of one of those.

She was an avid reader of our blogs, and she jumped wholeheartedly into whatever crazy storylines we would write her into. She loved the haiku and whatever else we did. Her comments were a source of validation for my writing, because I respected her writing skills so much. If you haven't yet, I invite you to read back through the archives of this blog and Billybear's blog, especially under the Tracer Bullet Billy labels, and see what I'm talking about. Don't forget to read her comments! I was happy that Miss Tara agreed to guest write on one of the last Girl Friday posts before she passed as well. It was the first time I had tried it and she eagerly participated. I emailed Miss Tara with a list of questions for her interview with Girl Friday, and I cut and pasted her responses into the story. It worked out really well, and I'm happy now that I have Miss Tara in her own words as a part of my story. Except for one comment on a later post, that was the last time Miss Tara was able to participate. I'm not sure if I'll continue with those storylines or not, because since Billybear moved on, Miss Tara had been the only other real inspiration I had for writing them. I may possibly continue them as a tribute in the future, but I will definitely be retiring the Zorak character and any references to my bugness in the chatroom.

I guess I've said most of what I wanted to say, but I'm sure that in the future I'll wish I said more. I didn't want this post to depress anyone, rather I wanted it to be a celebration of Miss Tara's uniqueness. I really wish she was still here, but I hope that where she is now, she's able to sit out in that chaise lounge and read in the sun, but she'll never get another sunburn.

Miss Tara, you were a wonderful friend and I can only look forward to seeing you on the other side someday. If there's anything that I can feel good about, it's that I was somehow able to keep you laughing either in the chatroom or in the blogs. I hope to hear that laughter again someday! You are sorely missed.

And so for one last time....

your buglet..... ::touches you with my cuh-reepie feelers::

Now She Tells Me

Boy am I steamed. How steamed am I? I'm so steamed I'm ready to pump some lead at somebody.

If you've been following this mess of a missing persons case that I'm working on, you know about the close call I had over on Giantess Island the other day. That's when I almost became a spot in the sand when Big Gretchen decided to play toss the boulder with me.

Well, by pure luck, I was able to lam out of there just in time, with the help of my client who just happened to be in the neighborhood in his chopper. Things got a little hairy there for awhile, but hey, that's the way it is in the investigation business.

But what really got me all steamed up was something I read after I got safely back to the office. My so-called pal, Little Bitchass, came across a blog post, and if she had just taken a few seconds to clue me in on it, I wouldn't have even gone to Giantess Island and risked my life in the first place. The blog post I'm talking about was in BillyBear's blog. Yes, the same guy I've been running around looking for for the past couple of months. Did she tell me though? No. She was too busy skating around on a lamebrained North Pole cruise with some skid rogue by the name of Nanook. You think she could be bothered to tell her best friend something that could possibly have saved that same best friend the 6 years of life that got scared off of me on that island? No... of course not. When she finally got around to telling me about it yesterday, I was about ready to show her what a 45 slug in each kneecap feels like.

I guess I just needed to blow off some steam there. I feel a little better now, but this new development in BillyBear's blog has me kind of bamboozled. I can't make much sense out of it. The whole TV thing is as clear as mud. How can that even work? How did he get a color test pattern on that old black and white TV? Any shamus worth his salt knows that the test pattern should have an Indian head on it. And what was all that mumbo-jumbo he was spouting? I read through his spiel a couple of times, and I'm more confused than ever. I'll keep at it though. A good dick never goes soft on a case, and I'm not going to be the first.

I'll keep you all informed as I try to get this whole thing unraveled. Maybe another transmission will come through in the meantime that'll help clear things up. Now where did I leave that bottle?

Girl Friday

Back In Business

Hi. Girl Friday here. Just got my internet connection back. I'd been without it since that client who was paying me to find BillyBear skipped town and my weekly checks stopped coming in. I'd been holed up in the office here for weeks. I was afraid if I left, the landlord was going to padlock the door and keep all my stuff. If you think I'm gonna risk losing 31 pairs of handcuffs, you're jingle-brained.

Well, the client walks in out of the blue last week and dumps a suitcase full of C-notes on my desk. He said he had to dust out for a few months and lay low. Something about a couple of goons tailing him to try and put the grab on some recipe of his. He's got the recipe in a safe place now, so I'm back in business. First thing I did was to buy some new rags. Something classy to go with this hat.

So I got out the file on BillyBear, blew the dust off of it, and planned my next move. Here's what happened.

When I last saw Miss Tara, she fingered that big dame Giantess Gretchen as somebody who might know something about BillyBear's whereabouts. I had to really think long and hard about heading out to that island she lives on, because I remembered that time Little Bitchass got conned into flying out there and got herself into a jam with Big Gretchen. Well I'm no rube, and I decided then and there that if I was going out to that island, I wasn't gonna be a patsy and fly. I was smart. I decided I'd take a sea cruise.

I showed up on the dock at dawn the next morning. I found out that the cruise ship was really a rusty old tramp steamer. And no wisecracks about the tramp thing or I'll start squirting lead. As I started up the gangplank, I caught my heel in a knothole and dropped my suitcase into the water. I watched as it sank like a stone. The ship was ready to sail and I didn't have time to go back to the office and pack more clothes, so I had to make do with only what I had in my purse. Luckily I still had my roscoe tucked away between my cheaters and a blade on my thigh under a garter.

We pulled away from the dock and set a course for Giantess Island. Captain Morgan seemed confident that we'd find the island with no problem, and he showed me a well worn map showing it's location. The trip was pretty uneventful, but the crew made me nervous, and I kept my hand on my knife for most of the trip. Every time I'd walk past a couple of them, they'd look at my gams and rub their whiskers and mutter stuff that I couldn't quite hear to each other. I don't know what kind of movies these guys grew up watching, but they all had scary sounding names like Barnacle Bob, and Cutthroat Charlie. I was sure glad when the fog lifted one morning, and there, off our starboard bow, lay the unmistakable shape of Giantess Island. OK, I confess I had never seen Giantess Island before, and wouldn't know the shape of it if it bit me in the ass, but the big sign with blinking lights that said "Welcome To Giantess Island" pretty much convinced me that we had arrived.

I asked First Mate Black Dog how soon he could have the dingy lowered so I could go ashore and have a look around. Something I said must've struck him as pretty funny, because he started to laugh really hard. So hard in fact that he started coughing up some kind of brown fluid and making odd wheezing sounds. I was distracted by his display and never heard two of the crew come up behind me until I felt them giving me the bums rush and tossing me over the side. As I surfaced and gulped in a lungful of air, I remembered Bitchass's tale of mutant sharks. Terrified, I swam for shore with the sounds of insane laughter and wheezing echoing across the water.

I finally reached the beach and turned to watch the ship steaming away from the island. I wasn't too worried, because I figured that they just wanted to be a safe distance away in case the Giantess started to toss boulders in their direction, but at the same time, I began to think that I had probably bought a round trip ticket for nothing. I busied myself with wringing out my clothes, and had just finished when I heard a noise behind me and the next thing I knew, out went the lights.

As I slowly came to my senses, I became aware of a familiar smell. Tracer had shown me a group of dope addicts smoking Jujus once, and the smell was unmistakable. When my vision began to clear up, I realized that I was lying inside of a bamboo cage, and a guy was sitting just outside in a cloud of marijuana smoke. I instantly snapped to full alertness and realized that this was the guy who Bitchass wrote about... Giantess Gretchen's Toadie.... the infamous Pothead! He never made a sound. His eyes were half closed, but I could see his pupils moving and I knew that he was watching me. I did the best thing I could think of, and narrowed my eyes and gazed back at him. This eventually made him uncomfortable and he got up and silently shuffled off into the jungle overgrowth, leaving me alone. I took stock of my situation, and it didn't look good. The cage was sturdily built and I didn't see any way to open it. A thought came to me and I jammed my hand into my bra... good.... I still had my roscoe. Gretchen's toadie must've been too high to remember to frisk me.

I felt along my thigh and recognized the bulge of my knife. I slipped it out from under my garter and began to intently saw away at one of the pieces of bamboo. I never finished. A booming voice rang out from above, and when I looked up from my escape attempt, I saw a huge, shapely ankle in a red, strappy sandal just outside the cage. I looked to the other side of the cage and saw an almost identical ankle and sandal. Giantess Gretchen! The next thing I knew, the cage was lifted up into the air until it was level with a beautiful face framed by long, blonde hair. She looked at me quizzically, as if she had been expecting to see somebody else.

"Well little person, I've never seen you around here before. What brings you to my island and why should I not toss you to the sharks?"

'Your Majesty, my name is Girl Friday. I'm a private investigator, and I was hoping you might be able to help me locate somebody."

She raised one beautifully shaped eyebrow and hissed,

"Who sent you here?"

"Well, Your Hugeness, I was given your name by Miss Tara over at the LDW Building. She said she knew you and that you might know what happened to BillyBear."

"Ahhh yes.... Tara.... I know her well.... world renowned in the art of spanking... she has sent me many a yummy snack. What can you do for me in return for not tenderizing you on the hamster wheel and making a tasty lunch out of you?"

At that, I became alarmed and went into survival mode... my mind went blank and all I could think of was Bitchass...

"Your Giantessness, I know that you enjoy a glass of fresh pineapple juice every few hours, and I happen to know somebody who is very good at juicing giant pineapples. As a matter of fact, you used to have her as your personal pineapple juicer some time ago until she escaped the island."

The Giantess appeared a bit irritated when I brought up the fact that Bitchass had escaped, and her eyes narrowed and she started squeezing the cage tighter and tighter until the bamboo began to make cracking noises.

"Oh yes... that one... she did squeeze a mean pineapple... If you can get her back here for me, I'll tell you what I know about where BillyBear went. And whyever would you want to know that? He's a legendary pervert."

I felt bad about dropping dime on one of my best friends, but I needed to find out where BillyBear went for my client, because if I didn't, he might try to get that suitcase full of lettuce back, and I already spent a couple of large ones for some new office furniture. Besides, I knew that Bitchass was tough, and that she'd be able to get herself out of any jam she got into with Big Gretchen... After all, she did it before.

"OK Your Largeness, I'll deliver Little Bitchass to you. Now, what can you tell me about BillyBear?"

"If I tell you, you'd better come though for me on Pineapple Girl or I'll come looking for you and stomp you into a pancake."

"Yes, I understand."

"OK then, it's a deal. Now that that's done, I'll tell you what I know. BillyBear was here on the island over a year ago. He made a great airplane. He had a very aerodynamic shape and I was able to toss him way out beyond the shark reef. I haven't seen him or heard from him since."

"But Miss Gretchen, that doesn't help me. You said you'd tell me where he was."

"I said nothing of the sort. I told you I'd tell you what I knew. That's all I know. A deal is a deal. Now pay up!"

"But Your Hugeness, I can't deliver Bitchass to you if I don't find out where BillyBear is. The deal is off."

This seemed to enrage Big Gretchen, and she cracked open the bamboo and yanked me out of the cage and jammed me in between her giant bazoombas.

"Let's see how you like the hamster wheel, my little midday snack..."

As she stomped towards a fenced-in compound, I saw what looked to be a giant, bamboo hamster wheel with a candle under it, and recognized it from Bitchass's account of her visit to the island. Just as we were approaching the wheel, Big Gretchen tripped over Pothead, who had conveniently passed out on the ground right in front of her. She pitched forward and landed with a thud, the impact popping me out from between her mammoth mammaries and shooting me halfways to the beach. Before she could react, I was up and running for my life. As I struggled in the deep sand in my heels, I heard Giantess Gretchen's booming voice, and large boulders started landing on either side of me. I looked back and saw her striding towards me, eating up the distance between us with alarming speed.

Just as I was about to give up hope, I noticed a second deafening sound. The sand around me was blowing all around, and a rope ladder dropped from the sky right beside me. With nothing left but my survival instinct, I reached for the ladder and held it in a deathgrip and was lifted up and away from the hail of boulders. I slowly and carefully climbed the ladder and was pulled inside of the helicopter by a pair of arms. I looked up and saw.... my client?

"Well that wasn't very smart, Friday. I can't get any return on my investment if you go and get turned into lunch, now can I?"

I wanted to paste him in the kisser for that crack, but then I remembered that I was a professional, and that he was a client. It helped to remember that suitcase full of dough too. I just smiled weakly and sagged back into the seat and drifted off to sleep.

So that's how it happened. I guess this latest outing didn't turn out any better than the ones before. I'm still no closer to finding BillyBear than I was when I started. This sure is a tough nut to crack. But don't worry, I'll find him...

Girl Friday


::Friday pours a double shot of Old Bushmills, lights up a gasper, kicks off her shoes and puts her feet up on the desk, and gets back to studying the BillyBear case file.::

This About Says It All...

Rachel posted this today in the Houston TG group, and I hope she doesn't mind that I'm reprinting it. Being that I'm a transplant to the Great State of Texas myself, this little story really made me chuckle. OK, maybe I even guffawed just a little!

l.b.a.


Dear Diary,

Just moved to Texas! Now this is a state that knows how to live!! Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. It is beautiful. I've finally found my home. I love it here.

June 14th: Really heating up. Got to 100 today. Not a problem. Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this. I'm turning into a sun worshipper.

June 30th: Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.

July 10th: The temperature hasn't been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least, it's kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.

July 15th: Fell asleep by the community pool. Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body. Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect the ol' sun in a climate like this.

July 20th: I missed Lomita (my cat) sneaking into the car when I left this morning. By the time I got to the hot car at noon, Lomita had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag, then popped like a water balloon. The car now smells like Kibbles and Sh**. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat. Good ol' Mr. Sun strikes again.

July 25th: The wind sucks. It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!! And it's hot as hell. The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.

July 30th: Been sleeping outside on the patio for 3 nights now, $225,000 house and I can't even go inside. Lomita is the lucky one. Why did I ever come here?

Aug. 4th: Its 115 degrees. Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today. It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85. I hate this stupid state.

Aug. 8th: If another wisenheimer cracks, 'Hot enough for you today?' I'm going to strangle him. Dang heat. By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!!

Aug. 9th: Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts, and when I sat on the seats in the car, I thought my butt was on fire. My skin melted to the seat. I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and butt . . . Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried butt, and baked cat.

Aug 10th: The weather report might as well be a dang recording. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. It's been too hot to do anything for 2 dang months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. Doesn't it ever rain in this state? Water rationing will be next, so my $1700 worth of cactus will just dry up and blow over. Even the cactus can't live in this heat.

Aug. 14th: Welcome to HELL! Temperature got to 115 today. Cactus are dead. Forgot to crack the window and blew the damn windshield out of the car. The installer came to fix it and guess what he asked me??? "Hot enough for you today?" My sister had to spend $1,500 to bail me out of jail. Freaking Texas. What kind of a sick demented idiot would want to live here?? Will write later to let you know how the trial goes.

Be Afraid... Be Very Afraid...

I just wanted to make a little public service announcement here. Hopefully this will prevent what happened to me from happening to all of you as well.

I try to catch a few minutes of The Weather Channel in the mornings before I head off to work, and last week I tuned in just in time to see the new program called "Wake Up With Al". With "Al" being Al Roker, the weatherman on The Today Show. Now, I've never been a big fan of Al's humor, but sometimes I have to admit, he amuses me with his silliness. And I totally respect the shit outta the guy for the hard time he gave Speidi in that famous interview. I'm going to digress here for just a second to editorialize that I absolutely hate how the Today Show and other morning "news" shows have abandoned hard news reporting and have largely resorted to "fluff programming" and use a good portion of precious airtime to promote other upcoming NBC programming. If I want to see fluff, I'll watch primetime network TV. At least whatever primetime is left after all the stupid reality shows have taken up all the best timeslots. That being said, in this day and age, it's not a bad idea to have a laugh now and then, even though I have absolutely no sense of humor that you know of. Enter Al.

So, I was watching Al on his first day on the Weather Channel, and they have this alarm clock giveaway going on. I decided that hey, I need a new alarm clock, so I found an old picture I had of some snow in Texas, and sent it in. Now, I thought that a clock was gonna be given away every week, and so I was surprised to see a FedEx Special Delivery at my front door that very afternoon. Apparently they liked the picture. I guess it never dawned on them that this is July, and a July snowstorm in Texas is a pretty rare occurrence. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I unpacked the clock and set it up on my nightstand. This was where it all started to go bad.

It was still pretty dark the next morning when the alarm clock woke me up. It was a pleasant sound, not the bone jarring sound that I was expecting. Actually, you'd think that is a good thing, but not for me. I NEED the bone jarring sound to wake me up. Anyway, I punched the snooze button and decided to lie there for a few minutes to see how long it let me snooze before it went off again. I was drifting in that half-asleep stage when I became aware of this strange sound. It sounded sorta like....

SNORING???

I rolled over onto my side and saw a bulky shape on the other side of the bed. It was too big to be wadded up blankets. The snoring sound appeared to be coming from under the blanket, and being half asleep, I did something that I wouldn't have done if I was wide awake. I pulled the blanket back and...

AL!!! Freaking Al Roker is snoring away in my freaking bed!

My screaming woke him up, and he jumped up and out of the bed. In the dim light, I saw that Al sleeps in the nude just like I do, and when he saw me, we BOTH started screaming. I grabbed the closest thing I could find, which was a ballet boot, and whacked him over the head with it. That seemed to surprise him, and while he was gathering his thoughts and fumbling for his glasses, I bolted for the bathroom and locked myself in.

"Your name is Little Bitchass, right? You were the winner of the alarm clock. I'm sorry if I startled you, but this is how the deal works. We don't give a new clock away every week, the winner gets the clock for a week and then it goes to the next winner. When you set the clock, you get to wake up with me for a whole week."

He went on to explain that the clock was a sophisticated transceiver, which teleports him to the alarm clock's location. Once I had set it, it locked in to my location, and Voila! You have Al the next morning.

"But I don't want to wake up with you in my bed! Go away! One attention whore in this house is enough!"

"But the week isn't up yet..."

"I don't care! Get your naked ass out of my house and take that stupid clock with you!"

"But you agreed to the conditions by sending in the weather picture."

"I've got a ballet boot in here, and you'd better be gone when I open this door. I'm gonna count to 10."

"I haven't brushed my teeth yet. I can't interview you without brushing my teeth first."

"You're not fucking interviewing me! I'm serious, get the fuck out of my bedroom!"

I started to count, and as I did, I heard noises of things being moved around, which I figured was the sound of him putting his clothes on and unplugging the clock so he could leave. Finally, I heard a door slam and it got quiet. I waited a few minutes and cautiously opened the door and stuck my head out. Al was gone. I looked over towards the nightstand, and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the alarm clock was gone too.

I realized that I needed to get dressed, so I went to the closet to get something to wear. I opened the closet door.

"FUCKING AL! You bastard!"

There I was, still naked, and Al is standing inside the closet shoving a microphone in my face! He's got some guy crammed in behind him with a video camera with lights on it. He starts filming me and the lights are super bright and blinding me. I screamed and ran for the bathroom again, this time grabbing my antique samurai sword on the way. Al and the camera guy followed me to the door but I was able to slam it and get it locked.

"Al, I'm serious as a heart attack, you'd better get the fuck out of my house. I'm not doing this for a whole week!"

I heard Al chuckling softly outside the door, and then I started hearing the sounds of drawers opening and closing and clothes hangers being moved around.

"Al, you perve! Get the hell out of my underwear drawer! I swear to God, if you don't get the fuck out, there's gonna be hell to pay! Don't make me come out there!"

The noises outside the bathroom continued for what seemed like hours. Eventually they stopped. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and so I gathered up my courage, threw the door open, and leaped out into the bedroom. I didn't see anybody around and I was starting to calm down when I saw the camera guys shoes sticking out below the window curtains.

Something inside of me snapped, and I screamed and went for the camera guy. One swipe of the sword brought down the curtain, and the second swipe sent his head rolling across the room. I started to laugh like a maniac and went looking for Al."

"Oh Alllllll.... come out come out wherever you are...."

Al was either gone or he had found a really good hiding place. I went though the whole house looking for him, but no luck. I finally gave up and figured that he had split. I went back to my bedroom and that's when I noticed the alarm clock and the soles of his feet sticking out from under my bed.

"AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!"

I let out the most blood curdling scream that you could imagine, and reached down and grabbed his ankle. With superhuman strength, I yanked him out from under the bed.

"Say your prayers, AL... Your ass is my meat!"

Before he could even make a move, I stabbed him in both ass cheeks with the sword, and then started to dance around him, swinging the sword every whichway, while yelling and screaming at the top of my lungs. I think Al got the picture at this point, and made a beeline for the front door. As he was just clearing the doorway, I threw a 100mph alarm clock that bounced off of the back of his head and knocked him for a loop. He did a perfect forward flip, picked up the alarm clock, and hit the ground running, all in one motion. You'd be surprised at how agile the guy is since he lost all that weight. He ran down the street and that was the last that I saw of him.

Until the next morning. He was back doing his show like nothing had happened.

I guess the moral of my story is to be very careful. Read all of the fine print before you agree to any contracts, even if they are with a jolly TV weatherman. If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Until next time,

little bitchass

Incognito At The LDW Club

Hi everybody. It's me again. Girl Friday. Sorry I'm late. I just got back to the office. I had to get my mom to bail me out of the slammer. Yep, the bulls collared me for something that happened on my factfinding mission over at the LDW Club. I'll explain later, but at least I feel a little better about the whole experience because I was able to palm the set of bracelets they used on me and get them into my purse without them noticing. A good dick can never have too many handcuffs.

Back to business. The LDW Club. I went there to try and get some leads for the investigation I'm working on. You know the kinda joint I'm talking about. Smoke filled bar with a private chatroom in the back behind the secret door type of place. I was already in a foul mood when I got there. I had to hike my skirt up for 3 taxis before one would stop. I must be slipping. Maybe I need to start wearing some darker nylons to hide the scars on my knees better. To make matters worse, the cabbie all of a sudden remembered a previous trip Tracer and I made in his cab. That's the time Tracer stiffed him for the fare, and so he red-lighted me out of his hack on my keister. I had to hoof it the last 6 blocks to the club.

I arrived at the club, and there was some big dumb palooka blocking the door. Probably the bouncer from the looks of him. I had just started to walk past him when he stopped me by grabbing my boobs with both hands. At least this time my cheaters didn't pop out because I finally remembered to sew the velcro strips onto them. They stayed stuck in my bra pretty good. I slapped the goon across the kisser as hard as I could. Well, he just laughed like some kind of goofball and said, "I guess you're OK Miss", and stepped out of the way and let me pass. I composed myself and went inside to see if I could find that Miss Tara dame.

Once inside, I had to let my eyes get used to the smoky dimness before I could give the place a good look-see. There was loud music playing on a jukebox in the corner. The joint had been remodeled since the last time Tracer and I were there, and nothing looked familiar. As I scanned the room, I saw a bunch of people up at the bar, some sitting, some standing. I noticed that just about every guy had his hand in his pants, and the girls all seemed to be rubbing up against the guys. My keen powers of observation kicked in and I noticed that most of the girls looked like they could've used a shave, but I figured that it was just the dim lighting playing tricks with my eyes. I also noticed that a lot of the girls had their hands up their own dresses too.

Just as the real explanation hit me, I spied a movement at the back of the room. I just happened to be looking in the right direction when one of the customers pulled an antler on the stuffed moosehead, and a big hunk of wall slid open and he walked through. While the panel was open, I caught sight of some people dancing and sitting around in the next room. I made a beeline for the door, but it slid closed just before I got to it.

I yanked on the moose's antler, but it was the wrong one, and it broke off with a loud snap. Luckily the music was loud, and nobody seemed to notice what happened. I had to think quickly. Like lightning, I took the gum out of my mouth and stuck the antler back on the moosehead, but it only held for about 2 seconds before it fell off again. Trying to look as innocent as possible, I nudged it behind a big potted plant with my foot. Then I pulled down on the other antler. The panel slid open and I slipped through the opening and into the chatroom.

I lit a gasper and looked around. The chatroom wasn't smoky like the room with the bar had been, and it was lit by some pink lamps and furnished with couches and chairs scattered all over the place. Thinking that this was probably one of those new non-smoking chatrooms, I quickly stubbed out the butt on my shoe. It's a good thing smokes are cheap.

There was a dancefloor in the center of the room, and a small stage against the opposite wall. I headed for a vacant seat in the darkest corner of the room, where I could sit virtually unseen while I got a slant on the situation. There was some chippy doing a standup comedy routine on the stage, making jokes about finally having a chance to do some makeover or something. Funny, but she seemed to have a little 5 o'clock shadow too.

There were other people sitting around on the couches, with a few snappily dressed ladies mixed in that I knew to be Mistresses. Tracer and I had met a few of them on our earlier visits. That Miss Tara dame was a Mistress too, but she wasn't anywhere to be seen.

I tried to tune in on some of the background conversation around me, and whenever I was able to pick up a few words here and a few sentences there, it was always something about somebody only having a couple of inches or less of something. I couldn't get all of it, but while I was trying to make sense of what they were saying, a door over by the stage swung open, and Miss Tara stepped into the room.

In the pink light, I could see that she was wearing a pair of snug fitting leather pants that really showed off her shape, with a soft pastel blouse and a pair of black boots with stiletto heels. I started to lose my concentration for a second, but quickly snapped back to the job at hand. I was working for a client, and needed to have all of my wits about me. I decided to discretely approach her.

I had worn a pair of 5 inch heels for the occasion, so I could fit in with the rest of the crowd, and when I stood up I kinda lost my balance a little and knocked over the big floorlamp that was next to me. It fell over, hitting the floor with a loud crash and sparks flew everywhere. So much for being discrete. I nonchalantly made my way over to Miss Tara trying to act like nothing had happened.

"Hello Miss Tara, it's been a long time since we've actually chatted in the flesh. I must say you're looking very well. How have you been? I was hoping you might be able to help me with my latest investigation into BillyBear's disappearance. Do you think you could? You remember who I'm talking about, right? And where did you buy those amazing boots? If I had a pair of those, I'd be able to flag down a taxi in one try!"

A voice in my head chimed in, "Calm down, Friday.... take a breath... relax... remember what they taught you in PI school... "Don't ask all of your questions at once... wait until she answers the first one, you sap!"

::Deep breath::

::Deep breath::

I was snapped out of my deep breathing exercise by the sound of Miss Tara's sultry voice.

"Hello Friday. It's good to see you again. My condolences on your dead boss. He was a real dick you know. Now, what is it that you'd like to know?"

"Well, for starters, I know that BillyBear had a lot of aliases. Are you familiar with any of those? It would be helpful for me to know them all."

"Hmm Billy's alias. There are so many! The fuzzball is such a warped.. I mean, multifaceted personality, he NEEDS those names. Lets see, BillyPrincess, BillyProphet, MostHolyBilly, the Perverted Elf, the Legendary Pervert, the Legendary Dom aka MasterBilly, BillyHulk, Angsty Teenaged Goth Billy, wolverBilly (shing shing) Billybunny and many more. Whew!"

"You mentioned that one of his aliases was 'The Perverted Elf". Was he actually a pervert?"

"As for Billy being a perverted Elf, not only was he a pervert, he was a Legendary Pervert. Why, Billy held the Order of the MELON! He admitted to Canine Curiousity, after being molested by a doggie while Thorazined in the bushes, not to mention Princess's dog while Billy hid in her bed, pretending to be a stuffed animal. Hell, he has an insatiable WOOKIE! I can state that Billy, as proven by his own blog, is an incredible pervert."

"You mean Princess' dog did BillyBear too? With the doggie strap-on? Wait til I tell Bitchass about this one!" ::stifles a giggle::

"OK, where was I? Oh... ummm... yes... BillyBear used to do some strange experiments in that big lab over by the river. You can see it from the upper windows of the LDW Club. Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary over that way?"

"Out of the ordinary? At the Not so Secret Lab? Well, let's see, there was the bombing and the rebuilding based on those extort... I mean, donated funds from that nice Cookie Maven, Mr. Ace. There were always rumors of kitten abuse and robots and... well, anything. But lately, there have been people all over the place at night. They claim to see lights in the skies, like, UFOs or something, and to tell the truth, I don't think they all can be crackpots. I haven't seen the lights myself, but I'm not some wookie worshipping geek, either."

I began to panic as I frantically searched my near term memory to see if I might've pulled a Tracer and accidently called her a wookie worshipping geek, I didn't recall doing it, but if I did, I'd find out soon enough.

"I certainly didn't mean to imply that you worshipped wookies, but to be fair, it was proven in the last census that almost 90% of the people here in Paradise are crackpots. ::Nervous glance at the door:: But nonetheless, this thing about the lights in the sky could be important. I'll keep an eye peeled for any hinky activity over there."

Regaining my composure, I pressed on...

"I understand that BillyBear was working on something in the lab called a Transmorgifier, and that those experiments had some unpredictable results. Do you think that machine could be linked to those lights or maybe even to his disappearance?"

"Oh lawsie, the Transmorgifier! Do you know, that is how he BECAME BillyBear? He was feeling sort of weak, if I recall, much put upon, and wanted to feel all big and tough. So, he pictured a big strong Grizzly, the sort of sharp toothed, killer clawed brute that every chat denizen would fear and perhaps he'd impress his fair Princess. Instead...he turned into a four foot tall festively plump little blue waddling Care Bear. And, while he wasn't fearsome, he was totally adorable. Ms Grace would snuggle him on her lap and everything. I think the cuteness ate away at him until he started carrying Implements of Incredible Ingenuity. That led to shaving and spankings and the Tazer of Terrible Tenderness. But I digress...the Transmorgifier was never anything but trouble. All he ever used it for was to cause trouble, further his own aims and do wierd experimental shit. One of his personalities is a furry blue Mad Scientist, I swear!"

"Wierd experiments huh? Hmmmmm... I wonder... ::scribbles feverishly in my notebook:: Earlier you mentioned kitten abuse. It's a known fact that BillyBear had a little kitten named Mittens that used to accompany him everywhere. Do you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of said kitten?"

"Don't get me started on Mittens. I tried to help that poor little thing many times. Billy was never quite right, you understand. He always had imaginary animals to abuse, I remember poor Paulie the platypus, the things that Billybear did to him as a child, even before that crushing Incident at DisneyWorld...never heard from Paulie again after that, just as well that Billy had been Put Someplace. But then, as an adult, there was mittens who suffered enormously and imaginarily at his paws. I stole her several times, pampered and loved her, but in a very clever disguise as BillyPotter, the boy who jizzed, that dratted bear realized that even a mistress couldn't separate him from his own imaginary cat. There's no way he thought of that himself. When I find out who led BillyPotter onto THAT thought, I'll be administering some serious spankweed. Anywho, it did come in handy when I needed inside information from the Lab. Mittens was always willing to do a pal a favor, and I made sure there was fresh tuna or salmon in the bargain. If ol Blue greedy guts didn't find it and hog it up first. Plus, Mittens could communicate with Robo Mittens, the Mad Scientist's faithful mechanical Igor, and sometimes we could head off the most lame brained schemes. Not often. Okay, never. But at least we knew they were going to happen. What was sweet is the way Mittens bonded with that nice bimbo boobed Jemmie's bird, Vash the Destroyer. Even Billybear kept a picture of them on his blog. I worry about poor little Mittens..."

"I have it on good authority that you've conversed with Billybear on a fairly regular basis, and that you actually were shot by him on one or more occasions. How did you feel about that?"

"I have actually spent a lot of time talking with Billybear, not as much time as I would have liked, but a lot. And as much as I give him a hard time, I like the perverted fuzzball. He's smart, he's funny, he can be very sweet and I miss him. I realized the other night of whom he reminds me, I've wondered this a lot. If you read Robert Heinlein, he narrates in first person in several of his books. The lead character is usually confident, self deprecating, smart and funny. Billy reminds of Zeb from Number of the Beast and Richard from The Cat that Walks through Walls, in some ways. But then, there is the instigator. The knee gnawing, mittens kicking MISS TARA SHOOTING side of the Billy! There have been times when the festively plump schemer has been more annoying than a fat blue mosquito in my ear! The time he turned himself into that little green fucker BillyHulk and wrecked everything in sight! When he was a teenaged angsty Goth Wolverbilly with shing shing claws and a whiny attitude, he got Ms Grace and I high and GLUED my hands to my favourite jeans! Do you know how many times I had to listen to the chicken dance? Where IS that little BillyBastard? I'll wring his non existent... that's right, and lately he's been telling everyone that I'm a vampire. Because I'm naturally pale and a night owl... he slandered me over and over in that tabloid rag of his, The Occasional Assassin until I brought in a little serious legal power known as Wolfram and Hart! That will fix him! Unless of course, I shave his ass and beat his butt Baboon red first!"

"Oh yes... Wolfram and Hart... My mom told me about them. Famous songwriting team from way back in the sixties. Wonder how long ago they went legit? They must be some pretty old geezers by now. Err... ummm.. back to business... In your conversations with BillyBear, did he ever mention any places that he liked to visit? You know, like a favorite vacation spot or something?"

"You know, Billy does travel a bit. He talks about going to the North Pole to free his enslaved people, backs bent in labor, working night and day for the Claus. The Perverted Elf feels their pain, but then he would get distracted by pixies or panties or a call to his Princess, or a nap, or a snack, or kicking mittens, or maybe a vision or a shiny penny lying on the sidewalk. You know, he's busy. He tends to like the tropics, and he has friends on Giantess Island, you know. If he could get past the mutant sharks, he's got Pothead, who is a favourite of Giantess Gretchen and is allowed to grow her mutant weed. Pothead would know all the good hiding places if Billy had to lay low from the Man, or from Giantess Gretchen if he pissed her off again. She tends to blow hot and cold when it comes to Billybear. He once convinced her that your nice galpal Jem was evil! Poor Jem suffered for Billy's lies that day, but I think GG eventually figured it out and stomped Billy into a fur rug. You might want to head out there, Giantess Island would be a great place for one more freaky perv to escape."

"Hmmmmmm.... Giantess Gretchen you say? ::sweat beads up on my forehead as I scribble furiously:: OK then, one thing that has always puzzled me... what was his favorite color?"

"Huh???"

I could clearly see from her reaction that my questions were beginning to get stupid. Was I losing my edge? I wondered if I might be getting distracted by the Mistresses in the room. Or had the mere thought of having another close encounter with Giantess Gretchen rattled me? After all, it was on my first case with Tracer, looking for that very Giantess, that I was shot in my knee for the first time. I decided to wrap things up and head back to the office to go over my notes.

"Well I guess that's the crop. Thanks for your time, Miss Tara, there's a lot of new angles here for me to chew on, and if you think of anything else you want to spill, here's my card. You can reach me on the blower if anything comes up"

And with that, the interview was over, and I headed for the secret panel. I couldn't see any mooseheads on this side of the wall, or any other kind of antlered heads for that matter, and so I just stood there with a moronic look on my face, trying to figure out how I was gonna get back out to the other room. I became aware of some scattered laughter aimed in my direction, and as if on cue, everybody in the room clapped twice in unison, and the wall slid open to let me out. Don't you just hate it when everybody else knows something that you don't?

I thought I was in the clear, but just as I was heading through the opening, I slipped in something wet on the floor, and I fell hard, with my ass landing right in a puddle of some kind of slimy goo. With as much dignity as I could muster, which admittedly wasn't much, I headed for the street. But as I walked past the grinning bouncer at the door, he reached out and grabbed my caboose and squeezed.

Well, I had just about as much fun as I could take from that bozo in one night. In one smooth motion, I wheeled around, reached into my bra, pulled out my roscoe and drilled him in both knees. I made two great shots. Dead center on both caps. The silly grin vanished, and he started rolling around on the floor like somebody had shot him. I stood around a little too long though, soaking up the satisfaction, and the coppers were on me before I could breeze out of there.

You were wondering how I got pinched? That's how.


(to be continued)

Girl Friday

If You Think This Is Easy...

Hey all you mugs. Girl Friday here. It's been a long couple of weeks here in Paradise. So far, the missing persons investigation hasn't gone quite like I planned it. I figured that finding the missing BillyBear would be duck soup, but it sure hasn't turned out that way. Even without Tracer's dead ass holding me back, I'm still not much farther along than when I started, and my client is starting to get a bad case of ants in the pants. He's a nice enough guy, but geez, does he have to call me every hour on the hour to find out where the investigation stands? He called me right in the middle of shaving my gams a few nights ago, and the phone scared me so bad I gave myself one hell of a nick. Well, at least it was on my knee, so what's another scar there, more or less?

The funny thing about this investigation is how everybody in town has clammed up tighter than Tracer's wallet. Seems like everybody knows I'm out asking questions, and I've had more doors slammed in my face in the last few weeks than Carter has pills. People see me coming and their windowshades go down faster than Goth Girl's panties. I've got a hunch that there's more here than meets the eye, and these people all seem to know something that I don't.

I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that there is power and influence at work here, even though I can't figure out how anybody would want to hide BillyBear's whereabouts. I mean c'mon... he was a perverted elf. If it was me, I'd always want him in plain sight, not sneaking around somewhere where I couldn't see him. But anyway, back to the power and influence thing. I got rousted by the bulls when I was working late at the office the other night. They roughed me up pretty good and tore the office apart looking for something, but I outsmarted them. I was expecting their visit, so I had hidden all my investigation notes in the drawer next to my perfume. I knew they wouldn't be able to keep that drawer open long enough to search through it. They threatened to haul me off to the caboose, but it was all a lot of hot air. They didn't have anything on me and I knew it. I told them that whatever dingus they were looking for, I didn't have it, and if they weren't gonna arrest me, they could just scram out and talk to my mouthpiece.

So now, I'm off to give the third degr..... errrr.. interview that Miss Tara dame. She was always a good source of information in my cases with Tracer, and she was even nice enough to give me a pair of expensive nylons and a bottle of fancy perfume for Christmas once. I could never understand how Tracer was able to get her so riled up all the time. She seems nice enough to me, and has a great set of pins to boot. She was also one of the last people to hear from BillyBear, so I'm gonna jam my roscoe in my bra and hightail it over to the LDW Club. I'll try to blend into the woodwork until she shows up. Wish me luck!

Gotta go... time is money in the P.I. business...

::Hikes my skirt up and whistles::

Hey taxi!


(to be continued)

Girl Friday

Finally Friday's First Flight

Hello everybody. It's me again, Girl Friday.

Today was "The Big Day"... graduation day over at Sears... You're now looking at a genuine certified PI. If you don't know what a PI is, it stands for Private Investigator. Yep, I finished the night course, passed this big multiple choice test, and today I'm a real gumshoe. I got this framed diploma with an actual ribbon on it to hang on the wall and an ID card with an official looking gold star on it. The ID card is in this imitation leather wallet that I can flip open in peoples faces just like Tracer used to do. I used to love watching him do that. Especially when he'd catch the tip of their noses with it. He did that on purpose you know! He was so film noir!

I've been getting the old office spruced up for a couple of weeks now, and that hasn't been an easy job. It's been closed up ever since Tracer abandoned it and took off for Thailand to search for Ace. As usual, when he left he stiffed me a months pay, and I didn't hear anything more from him until I got a letter from Bangkok asking me to wire him some more money. I wrote back and told him the only wiring I'd be doing would be to wire his balls to an electric socket. After that, I didn't hear from the dick for months, and then finally I got word that Tracer had bitten the big burrito and went on to that great wanking closet in the sky. No matter how much of a dick he was, and how many times he shot me, I still learned a lot from that jerk. In between all the pain, we had a lot of good times together, even if I didn't think so at the time. I'll might even miss the cheap bastard someday.

Anyway, that's when I decided that I needed to either find a real job, or to get my act together and open up my own agency. After all, even though Tracer's name was painted on the door, I was the one who kept the business on track in spite of his best efforts to bankrupt us. I don't mean to brag, but everybody knows it was me who was the brains behind the outfit, and he was darned lucky I didn't quit that night in the LDW Chatroom, when he shot me in the knee the first time.

Even though Tracer was a deadbeat and cheapskate, I was still a little bit nervous about going out on my own without him. Then I came to my senses and realized that not only can I do this, but my knees would have a better than average chance that they wouldn't end up with more bullet holes in them. Not to mention not having to replace so many pairs of pantyhose.

So, I've been cleaning out the cobwebs and scraping that disgusting burrito residue off the walls of the bathroom, getting ready to open up shop as soon as I finished the PI course. I even cleaned out Tracer's old wanking closet, but I haven't decided what I want to do with that room yet. Besides, I need to wait until that wierd smell in there goes away.

So what's the hurry? Well, I have my first case! I couldn't officially announce it until I had my certification, but now that that's official, I can let the cat out of the bag.

The job I've been hired for is your standard missing persons case. I'm not allowed to tell you who's paying me, but I can spill the beans on who it is I'm looking for. That way, if anybody knows where this person is, you can contact me and maybe save me a lot of legwork, which in my case is usually very hard on my pantyhose.

See, I've been hired to find Billybear. Yep. Billybear of Billybear Labs has turned up missing. His Lab has been locked up tight for months now, and a certain unidentified party is pretty darned anxious to find him. Anxious enough to pay me a pretty solid advance on my expenses, and way more than I ever saw in those puny little paychecks from Tracer. I've got a couple of good leads already, and a few people in mind to interrogate, so I'm pretty sure he won't be too hard to find.

Well, I think I'll lock up now and catch a cab home for some much needed shuteye. It's been a long day and I'll be getting up with the chickens tomorrow so I can head back into the office and get started on the case. And I almost forgot, Ive gotta think of a really classy name for the agency, so I can have it painted on the glass just like that loser Spade across the hall has.

I'll keep you all posted.

Girl Friday

Has It Really Been Since Thanksgiving?

Geesh... I guess it has, so maybe I'd better post something. I don't have any idea what to write about, so maybe I'll start by writing about writing. How appropriate!

First let me explain a few things to any of you who might be interested. If you're not interested, then look away until I tell you to look again. See, Bitchass has been away. Not away like going somewhere on a vacation, but more like all my energy to write went away and I came down with the worst case of writers block you can imagine. For the last couple of years, it had come fairly easy. Then a couple of things happened that took the wind out of my sails, and my writing went into a funk. It became harder and harder to even sit down and expend the energy.

This is how the process used to work for me. I'd have a vague idea for a story in my head, and I'd sit down at the keyboard and try to become whatever character I was writing about. My recurring characters were easiest, because each time I wrote about them it fleshed out the character more and more and made it a lot easier to become them. New characters are the hardest, but eventually they come around and develop their personalities. The hardest part for me was keeping the characters personalities separate. If I'm not careful they tend to start blending together.

If I was really inspired and into the character, the story would flow out right from the start. But most times it was more difficult for me. I would struggle for a while to get into the flow, going back countless times to rewrite certain parts, but eventually it would come, and the rest of the story would seem to write itself. If you've read much of my stuff, you've probably noticed that I have a much harder time stopping a story once it gets going.

One of the things that made writing easier was corroborating with a small group of others in this blogspace whose writing I really admire. I think my writing improved by leaps and bounds once I began to feel pushed to get better by reading stuff by quality storytellers like Billybear, Miss Tara, Lucky, and Ace, to name just a few. I don't mean to leave anyone out, but these were the people who were most involved on a day to day basis. To this day, I am totally awed by how Billybear can make a complicated storyline come together so effortlessly. I wish it came that easy for me, but I could never do what he does. And there were times that I laughed so hard at what he wrote that I about peed my panties.

I can't put my finger on exactly when I became completely blocked, but it was sometime after Lucky detonated the 10 pounds of C4 under his blog. I don't blame him because I knew his reasons for doing it, and by that time I had lost most of my inspiration for writing anyway. I tried to keep going by forcing stories out, but that usually shows in the finished product and the Emporer soon has no clothes.

I had a good opportunity to write some true life posts when Hurricane Ike and a few other storms visited the area. I thought the Ike stories turned out pretty well, but after the storms went away, so it seems did my writing.

So anyway, I'm hoping that shining the light of day on my writers block will turn things around and get me writing again. Maybe it will, and maybe it won't. I can't say for sure. I feel especially bad for disappointing my regular readers, and Miss Tara certainly deserves to read something new instead of having to depend on the old archives for a chuckle or two. Although, I confess that I too read the archives from time to time when I need a laugh. It's a damn shame that the Real World has interfered, but since Miss Tara, Billybear and Ace have been posting the occasional post, maybe there's hope that they will get going again too. Maybe even Lucky might find a way to resurrect his blog from the ashes. We can always hope.

Well that's about it for tonight. Anybody who looked away because they weren't interested can look back now.

Hopfully it won't be so long between posts this time!

little bitchass

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

Be sure to eat and drink too much and then crash out on the couch snoring so loudly that the neighbors complain! Then go eat some more pie!

little bitchass

Ike... Has Left The Building... Part III Of The Series...

It was sometime after 10AM when I woke up enough to get off of the couch and take a look outside. The wind was still blowing, but not nearly as hard or as sustained as it was when I had last fallen asleep, and so I figured it was safe to go outside. I put on my old tennies because I figured they were gonna get wet, and ventured out the front door.

The first thing I saw when I scanned the front yard was leaves and small branches everywhere. Then I noticed a rather large branch had broken off of my tree and was laying in the shrubbery. That's when I remembered my car in the driveway. I walked out to the front of the garage, not even wanting to look, but when I did, there were no other large branches down, just a bunch of little ones, and there were leaves all over the sides of the car like they had been glued on. But to my relief, there was not a scratch on it.

As I looked around, I noticed much more damage to the neighbors house on my right and also across the street. There were huge branches that had broken off of the trees, any one of which would have caved the roof of my car in. Everybody in my subdivision has 6 foot wooden privacy fences, and it looked like everybody had lost huge sections out of theirs. The wierd thing is that both of my side fences that run from back to front are decrepit old things that lean and you can knock a board off of them if you bump into them, but neither of them had a single piece missing. My neighbor wasn't so lucky. The fence he had was almost new, I mean it still looked like brand new wood, and most of it was lying on the ground with big broken sections in it.

I thought I'd better look at my own property, and so I stepped back and looked at the roof, not knowing what I was gonna see. But the roof looked OK, and so I started around the house to check out the back. As I walked, I noticed pieces of shingles lying on the ground, and so I looked up a second time, but still didn't see where they might've come from. My neighbors houses didn't look like they had lost any either.

As I rounded the corner to the back yard, I was expecting to see my chimney blown down at least. But there it stood on the corner of the roof, with it's chimney cap still on and not even leaning. I scanned the back side of the roof. That's when I saw where the shingles had come from. A couple of rows of shingles had blown off right below the ridge, from the right end of the roof to about 2/3 of the way across. I know thats gonna cost me, but still, it's not nearly as bad as I was expecting.

The back yard was covered in leaves and little branches, but my two trees were still standing, pretty much intact. Then I noticed the little steel shed where I keep my lawnmower and garden stuff. The neighbor directly behind me had about a 30 foot bald cypress tree, and it had broken off and fallen right onto the top of my little shed, with all the branches covering it like it was in a little green grotto. I went over and opened the door to see how badly the roof was crushed, but there was no damage at all. I looked behind the building and found that the fence across the back of my yard was holding the tree a few inches above the roof of the shed. Talk about close calls!

The only other significant damage I saw was that a huge branch had snapped off of their tree, but it had fallen in a direction away from my house, and it was big enough to where it could've done some damage to my roof if it had fallen on it. I went back into the house took stock of a few more things.

The electricity was still off, obviously, but I was surprised to see that I still had water running at full pressure, and I still had gas. They were both great signs, because it meant that not only could I take showers and flush the toilet, but the showers wouldn't be cold ones and I could cook things on my gas range. Having the power off was not a good thing, but at least with water and gas, the house might get uncomfortably warm, and the refrigerator wouldn't keep the food cold, but the house was livable and I could survive in it until the power came back. I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee. Instant coffee never tasted so good.

I sat on the couch and drank my coffee while I listened to the radio. The news wasn't too good, especially for Gaveston and the areas. Galveston was hit really hard, but the Bolivar Peninsula and a little area called Crystal Beach were almost wiped clean, according to the newspeople. A lot of the residents who defied the evacuation order still haven't been located, and a news item just today theorized that a good number of them had been simply washed out to sea, and they will probably never be found.

Electricity was out all over a wide area, with the power company estimating the number of customers without power at about 2.25 million. The forecast for getting power back was pretty grim, anywhere up to a month, with some of the hardest hit areas maybe taking longer. That was a scary thought, and I wasn't looking forward to living without air conditioning, lights, or refrigeration for anywhere near that long. The news stories all morning were sobering, but through it all, Vash kept it light by singing away cheerily in his cage. I don't think he likes storms very much, seeing as how I had found him as a baby after he had gotten blown out of his nest, and he was probably just happy that the storm had passed.

I won't go into a lot of detail on the stuff that has been going on around Houston, because it's all been reported on the news, but there are a few other things I wanted to touch on. Trying to sleep on Saturday night was horrible, because even though I had opened all the windows, there wasn't any breeze outside and it was as steamy as a jungle on the equator. I'd drop off to sleep for an hour or so, and then would wake up sweating. I'd get up, go into the bathroom, towel down and then lay back on the bed and try to go back to sleep. This process repeated itself over and over until morning.

The hardest thing to find in the days after the storm were ice, water, and gasoline. I had stocked up on bottled water and had almost a full tank of gas, but I needed ice in the worst way. The fridge kept things cool for about a day, but I had to start looking for some to put in my coolers. On Sunday morning I listened to the radio to hear the locations that supposedly had ice, but by the time I would get to them, it would be gone. I wasted almost half a tank of gas just driving around looking for ice. I gave up and figured to get an early start the next day.

I got lucky again, and on Sunday night, a cool front came into the area, and sleeping was a lot more comfortable. I even had to get a light blanket and cover up by the time morning rolled around. It has stayed on the cool side at night ever since.

The next morning, when I got to the Krogers, they had a line in front of the ice machine, and I found out that people were waiting until it spit out some bags of ice, and then the line would wait for more to be made. A guy guarding the machine told me it took 30 minutes to make the ice, and so I mentally counted up how long it would be before I got any ice. It was way too long to wait, but I had nothing else to do, and it was better than driving around and wasting my precious gasoline looking for it. And so I resigned myself to wait.

At that point, something that I consider a small miracle happened. As I stood back near the end of the line, a guy walked in from outside and asked if we were all waiting for ice. I figured he was a customer and told him yes, and also how long he was probably going to have to wait. But he wasn't a customer... He said, "I have some ice out in my truck, and its free, so if you want some come out and get it".

He didn't have to ask me twice! I whirled the shopping cart around and followed him out to the parking lot with about 5 of my fellow back of the liners. He led us over to his pickup truck, and in the back were 2 huge coolers with bags of block ice in them. He gave me four 10 pound blocks, and away I went to get my precious cargo home. It was an odd feeling as I wheeled the cart across the lot. I was actually a bit worried that somebody might be desperate enough for ice to mug me for mine. But I got my ice home and into the coolers without any bloodshed.

All of the food in my fridge and freezer was thawed by this time, and so I had to throw out almost all of it. Two full trashbags worth... While the fridge was empty, I spent a couple of hours giving it a good cleaning, and this is the cleanest that thing has been in probably 5 years.

On Tuesday morning I went out to the Krogers for more ice, and this time they had a pallet full of cube ice sitting there. I had to pay about $3.50 for a 40 pound bag, and I got 2 of them, which almost didn't all fit into the coolers. $3.50 a bag for frozen water was a bit steep, but considering how hard it was to get, I probably would've paid $10 a bag.

After dropping off my ice, I went out to try and do some shopping. But first I had to try and find some gas for the car. Most stations I drove past had bags on the gas nozzles. Some stations were out of gas, while others had gas in the tanks, but didn't have the electricity to work the pumps. The few stations that were operating had lines of cars a block long waiting to get in. I figured I could wait another day and maybe more stations would be getting their power back. And so I stopped into the Krogers again and picked up a few things and then went back home to do some yard cleanup.

Later that afternoon, while I was cleaning up branches, I saw my porch light go back on! Holy shit! The power was back on! I worked for a little longer while I made sure the power was gonna stay on. About 10 minutes later, just as I was about to go back inside and start turning things back on, I heard the now familiar sound of power lines shorting out a couple of times, and my porch light went back out. Shit!!!!

About an hour later, I saw 2 big power company trucks down the block in the direction that the arccing sound had come from. A crew took a bunck of poles and other tools and went into a back yard, and within a half hour, the power was back on again. I waited to make sure it was gonna stay on, and when I was pretty sure it was, I started turning things back on. Lights came on... then I plugged the fridge in... that was good, so I plugged the TVs, the stereo, and the puter back in. Everything was working so far. Holding my breath, I turned the switch on the thermostat to "Cool". The air conditioning kicked on and within a minute, there was cool air coming out of the registers! Then I checked my cable, but it was still out, and so I tried doing a refresh on it, and after about 15 minutes of playing with it, I noticed the cable box resetting itself, and my picture was back. I went to the puter and did a renew and reset, and my Internet connection came back up. Bitchass was back in business!

About that time, my boss called me and said that the power and server were both back up at work, and so everybody was supposed to come back in the next day. On my way into work on Wednesday, I turned around and stopped at a gas station when I saw that the owner was taking the bags off of the pump nozzles as I was going by. He must've either just gotten the tanks filled or he just got his power back on. Whatever the reason, I didn't much care. I only had to wait for one car in front of me, and then I got my gas and left.

And so, all in all, I made out better than most. I have to file an insurance claim for my roof, but at least I have a roof to sleep under. As I write this, there's still over a million people without power in the Houston area, and a lot of families still have members missing. As good as it feels to have my air conditioning and other conveniences back, there are others who are still suffering out there. It's a really really sad situation. My heart goes out to everyone who's worse off than me, and I hope that they all get relief soon.

Well, I'm tired, so that's all for tonight...

And y'all better hope there's not gonna be any more hurricanes this year or you're gonna have to sit through another long story!

Later!

little bitchass