Farewell Sweet Symmetry

The Cantaloupe

Welcome one and all to the Cantaloupe edition eighty-something. Not that it means anything, but I have to open this somehow don't I? 85% of you will say that it's very true. I don't exactly know about the other 15%, but those 15% are my favorite people in the whole world. So try and be one of them.Either way, summer is winding down and oxygen is depleted (as all the world's schoolchildren collectively gasp). Poor poor children. Why doesn't anyone ever think of the children? Or at least act like the children? What I'm saying (as always it's hard to tell) is that I need to get you another issue before school begins and the leaves begin to crush us under their weight.

The Kingdom Arises BEEfore my Eyes

Lately (and by lately I mean today) there has been a revolution of sorts in my house. Yes, it was a couple of days, maybe months, in the making. However it was today that it happened.
Let's start the story a couple of months back. Every once in a while I would see a bee crawling around downstairs. Nothing serious, in fact quite humorous. You see, none of the bees that would crawl around the basement could fly. They were all cripples. Sometimes I'd let them wander around and they'd simply die. Other times I would press the matter a little bit.
Nothing was that much out of the order until I got back from Manitoba on Monday. You see Tuesday I heard a bee flying. Odd, I thought, bees don't fly! Well okay, they do, but the ones in our basement don't fly. Well I saw a bee and I said, "here's the culprit", but then I heard buzzing. There was two bees! Overall it didn't take too long to rid my basement of the fuzzy critters. One whack with "Chicken Soup for the Soul" would do that. Problem solved, or was it?On Wednesday there was another bee on the stairs. This time I lovingly cared for the bee and let him loose to the elements of the outside world where some other creature could kill it. Later that day I found three dead bees around the house. Strange, that's a lot of bees. I don't usually find a stash of bees around the house. Do you? Does your mother keep a stash of bees in her room without any knowledge from someone else?

Father: (looking around closet, finds something) What are these? Bees?
Mother: No, honey, those are simply caterpillars.
Father: Well, they look awfully beeish for caterpillars.
Mother: Dear, that's silly. Haven't you ever heard of Bee caterpillars? They look an awful lot like a common bee.
Father: I get it, I'm not good enough for you! (starts crying)
Mother: All right, I admit it. The bees keep better company than you. You never brush your teeth and your hair smells like catfood.
Father: That's because you knocked my teeth out and put catfood in my shampoo.
Mother: Okay, I just like the bees better than you.

That was a reinactment of what it could be like. Then Thursday, aka today happened. Within the first ten minutes of me waking up I discovered five perfectly live bees in the basement. And unlike any of their predessecors, all of these could fly. After dealing mercifully with one bee and quite unmercifully with three others I found out there were still three bees left. Seven bees! That's unheard of! I bet many beehives don't even have that many bees! In Africa they might, but not here.
What I'm trying to get at here is there is a pattern. 2, 4, 7, 11, 16... Don't you see? I think I should get out while I still have the chance! It's a hostile takeover it is. I'm like the natives and the bees are like the European settlers. After a brief and bloody battle they will confine me to certain areas in the basement while they hoard the rest. I'll have to wade knee-deep through hoards of bees to get to the washroom. Eventually me and the bees will become bestest of friends and together we'll have wiener roasts and AA meetings and the whole shebang. Then one day I'll come home with a big can of bee spray. Yeah, that'll show them for taking over my basement. Until then, though, the bees rule. All hail the Bee Overlords!

Bees To the Question

Sometimes readers can make my life a lot easier. Especially if they send me stories. Look here is one now.

"Trevor you'll never believe this but the strangest thing happened to me. I'm still not working because my leg isn't healed so I was just sitting around, but then when I looked at the mail I got all these bills to pay. So I had to drive to the bank and transfer some money. I was making my way over having fun with the windows down and my new Thrice CD playing loud when I got quite the scare!
What I thought was a green light fell down to the pavement and then got up and started coming right at me! It looked like a pair of light sabres flashing back and forth!
I had no choice but to slam on my brakes and frantically look behind me and DRAT IT ALL there was a vehicle right behind me. I was trapped! The lights stopped right in front of my car and with greater clarity I saw that it was a pair of pants! Pants! Whose neon pants could these be? Those pants must be psychic because right away they declared, "I am my own pants!"
Talking pants didn't really surprise me at this point because hey, these things just fell out of a traffic light and ran up to my car. So I said, "Get in the car." They started to protest so I interrupted with, "Don't give me that, you know who you are." They thought for a moment and then conceded with, "The answer is yes, it isn't that far." Well I was worried a little bit, I had been trying to intimidate those pants with my quick authority grab but then they had to be all cryptic like that. What wasn't that far?
So the pants hopped in, and that's when I realized that these could only be girls' pants. At least intended for girls if you know what I mean...
But the temptation was overwhelming. I thought up a plan and I thought it up quick. I took those pants for a ride they would never forget.
I got those pants dizzy out of its mind. Then I stopped, and with blind emotion I grabbed them and hopped out of my car. I flung off my sandals with reckless abandon and didn't even bother taking off my shorts. I just wrenched those pants on. I got held up with bad leg though. The bandage was too big. These were tight pants and they couldn't handle the extra mass. It was then that I heard all the laughing. I whirled around only to be face to face with the most beautiful girl I have ever smelled in my life.
She smiled and said, "Those are my pants. I'm sorry, I use them to trap guys sometimes. I'm just so shy-" Well I don't know what she'd been about to say but as soon as I heard 'trap' my mind whipped itself into creative self-preservation. I dove straight into her head first. We collapsed into a whirlwind of flailing pants because those green glowing fabric wonders had gotten their bearings again and they were none too happy about my aggressive advancements.
I'll never get the savagry out of my mind no matter how hard I try. Those pants took one look at my leg and ripped the bandage right off with its zipper. I cried out in pain but I had no strength. The pants were about to commence with a full scale amputation when the girl snatched them to her chest and crying she ran away!
I lay there gasping for breath, my leg shooting fire, and wondered how paying bills could ever have come to this."
-Nolan A., Calgary

If anyone can top this as an answer to a question of the something, I promise this: I will buy you ice cream. Or something. That's a darned good answer. But I did get another answer.

"Well..First, I Would Ask It How It Was, You Know, Strike Up Some Good Conversation. Then I Would Ask What Conditioner It Used That Made That Beautiful Glowing Green Color And Where I Could Find Some. Then Maybe We'd Churn Some Butter Together....."
-Allison P., Calgary

These two answers have something in common: Both times the glowing green pants are girls pants. Talking about conditioner? Churning butter? Talking at all? Clearly girly activities. There must be something about radioactive pants and females that go together. I suppose just like many mysteries of the female species, I'll have to stay off topics I don't know. I don't know why girls have radioactive glowing green pants and I suppose I don't need to know. Over six months of dating a girl helps you nothing I must say. Actually no wait, it does.

Next week's question
"Why is it that glowing green talking pants are always girl's pants?"

Underneath the Bee Conspiracy

Football season is either in full swing or right around the corner (depending on whether you follow the CFL or NFL). So for those of you who know absolutely NOTHING about football, here's a primer. The game is about taking a this oblong sort of round object (a ball) and having possesion of that object past a line on the opposite side of the field.
That out of way, I apparantly am going to be involved in some sort of "fantasy" team. I got suckered into it. Of course I then proceded to design my own logo for my team which is called "Rock and Roll on an Ostrich". So I will show you that logo. At the end.

Final words

Before I leave you, I will continue to plug my own work rather than the work of others. If you want to read back issues of the Cantaloupe, you can read most of them at http://thecantaloupe.blogspot.com. As well, a new site that has been started to clear up some inaccuricies in world history, read it here. You can go there and read what me and my friend Dan have done throughout the ages and why things are the way they are now. Thank you. Goodnight.

Trevor YVR Plett

(The following logo contains an ostrich with a rock and roll playing penguin riding it. As well, they are on a football field. Not the game called "football" in England, but the one in North America. Yeah, that one.)