creepy and hatboy – dance of the disco demons

creepy and hatboy - heroes for a couching world.

my fingers are blunt. i never noticed that before.
my borg implants, are they analogue?
i’ve been sitting here, on the couch, trying to come to terms with the fact that i slaughter vegetables for their protein. i don’t think i can eat tofu any more.
the cries of helpless kidney beans, led to their place of dismemberment, fills me with revulsion. beans have feelings. they have souls. why should so many die for so little protein?
my coke bottles are empty.
someone should go down to the shop for more.
i yell for hatboy, but he’s trying to chat up our fish.
“fins,” he keeps saying. “oh, the shiny golden fins. they’re so . . .”
i give up listening.
something has to happen, i tell the crack in the wall.
and soon. before that crack suddenly explodes and hordes of leprechauns rampage into the world to retrieve their pots of gold from our coffee bin.
we’ll be in trouble then, i tell the wall.
it’s a nice wall.
tomorrow, i’m going to paint it screechingly purple, with bright green stripes.

sunday

my super-sidekick stood in front of me. i balanced the glittery glove in one hand, and shook my head. my mask was heavy and my neck sometimes wobbled under the weight, but my cape was pretty damned impressive. “so, young moonwalker,” i said. “it seems your sewing has much improved.”
hatboy scowled at me. “there’s no way you can convert me to the dark side of disco, darth creepy, so abandon your foolish quest before you make more of a fool of yourself.”
“you forget, boy, that i have your glittery glove.”
“i can take it from you anytime i want to, and you know it.”
“brave words indeed. barry white will be impressed with your spirit. come, we should move to the floor, where we shall see who is the master now.”

facing the dark side

hatboy’s glittery glove sat in the centre of the shiny floor. above us, a mirror-ball shattered the light into spikey pieces. hatboy’s flares cast giant shadows across the wall, and my fluffy shirt seemed to suck the light into its void.
“go ahead,” i told him. “take up your glove, and with it strike me down. thus your journey to the disco side will be complete.”
“i will not strike you down, darth creepy, for i am at peace with the world. notice my humble hand-holdy. you cannot turn me to the dark disco, for i know the secrets of much-choc-milk-drinky. i have studied the tantric arts, and have been taught by the sage masters of many places of sacred cheapy-eaty, and i’ve even thought of getting a combi van. blue, if you must know, so i can paint dolphins on the doors, and have whalesong tuned to the radio, sending waves of mega-karma into the world which will doubtless bring the dark disco into a new era of weakness such as it has never seen before. my training is nearly complete, darth. soon you will be as nothing before my noodleburgers of wrath.”
“such threats are meaningless, young moonwalker, for the dark disco is eternal, and much more powerful than the feeble jazzy whalesong of many humpback fishies. you know, deep in your soul, that the mambo is the true power. give in, hatboy moonwalker. give in to the mambo.”
“i care nothing for the mambo anymore.”
“without the mambo, you are weak. look at you, snivelling in the corner like a ragamuffin in the winter street! you have not the power to be a true mambo master.”
“don’t say that! if it weren’t for rap, i could’ve been a true master of the mambo!”
“ah, so there is spirit in you yet. come, take your glittery glove.”
“your dastardly ploys won’t work on me, darth.”
i reached up and began spinning the mirror-ball. spikes of light stabbed at his eyes and he used his hands to protect his face from their glare. i knew i almost had him cracked. beneath my mask, i smiled in triumph. “go on, moonwalker. take your glittery glove. you know you want to.”
“no! stop it!”
“the glove, boy . . .”
which was when hatboy got a bit of light into his eye, and something snapped in his highly-trained brain of much-disco-power-knowy.
his glove flew from the ground to his hand like a jedi’s lightsaber, and he pulled it over his wrists with a howl.
then he began to mambo. it was a furious mambo, a mambo such that the universe had never seen before.
i tried to keep up, doing my own mambo. it’s true, my pelvic thrusts were legendary throughout the quadrant. true also, that my booty-shake was renowed across the land. but he was fast! almost too fast!
it was then that i reached into my fluffy shirt and revealed my gold-glittery mc-hammer pants of fearsome disco bad. still mamboing to the rhythm, i pulled my glittery pants over my flares, and felt the dark disco doom pour into my blistered feet of too-much-disco-shakey. my old master spoke in my head, “use the moonwalk, creepy. the moonwalk!”
and i did.

hatboy’s glittery glove

hatboy noticed the gold-glittery pants and the moonwalk. he clenched his fists. a new determination swept his expression clean from his face. “no!” he screamed. “those glittery pants of much moonwalk-doey won’t save you, darth creepy! not this time!”
and he began to do what could only be described as a moroccan shuffle.
i countered his shuffle with a samba.
but he struck back with a vicious go-go which left me reeling. i stumbled backward, and lost my footing. i fell to the floor, my glittery pants ripping right up the left cheek. my shiny black helmet spun from my face and skittered away, landing somewhere among the ancient collection of discodance2000 magazines.
i tried to catch my breath, but my super-sidekick moonwalked right up to me, and stabbed a finger at my chest. “you are beaten, darth creepy! admit it! your disco is inferior. i, hatboy moonwalker, am the master now.”
“this cannot be! i cannot fail!”
“yes! your powers are weak, old man. now, you will admit your failure, and proclaim me master, or, i’ll do . . . this!”
and he began whirling and spinning, his boots tap-tap-tapping across the shiny floor. my horrified eyes caught him sliding across the waxed boards on his knees, the glittery mirror-ball of light lost in meaningless motion as my super-sidekick roared his triumph over the horrendous tunes of barry white.
i was skankified beyond all reason.
it was over. i had lost, and, glittery pants or no glittery pants, hatboy was bad.
all i could do was scream into the sudden smug silence which erupted amid his call for free drinks, “new steps! new steps! oh, dear coke god, not new steps!”

the stir crazy super-sidekick’s folly

in dreams, the only thing which is tangible is the colour blue.
i roped it around my neck and danced along the fizzled edge, admiring the way it hung down my shoulders and licked my feet. pockets of blue ran down my skin like wet paint, leaving delicious lines which sizzled and burned.
my borg implants ruptured on my skin. they too were blue.
one of them ripped itself from my temple and skittered down to the floor where it ran about in circles like a headless chicken.
i offered it some blue.
it drank, the greedy little thing.
hatboy tapped me on the shoulder. “excuse me, but dude, where’s the car?”
“we don’t have a car.”
“sure we do. i was driving it just a minute ago. i parked it, too. around a small green planetoid.”
“well, what did it look like?”
“small, green, and planetoidy, i guess.”
“no, the car.”
“oh. big, red, and car-like.”
“good choice.”
“i thought so.”
i looked at my shoes. they were dribbling. the laces were jelly snakes. red ones. “nice day for an hallucination.”
“that’s what i thought,” hatboy said, sinking into the blue.
and somewhere above the drifting sunset, seven of nine’s cold blue voice sifted the sand. “quit wriggling about.”
i giggled.
“creepy of nine, your implants seem to be malfunctioning. we are attempting to correct the error.”
then, chewing up the blue, her pale borg face came and ruined the sunset.

aah, tremendous normality

“creepy! i did the mambo!”
“what skanky horror is this?”
“i did the mambo!”
“oh, dear coke god, so did i!”
“there were mirrorballs, and you wore flares!”
“so did you!”
“and fluffy shirts!”
“and glitter gloves!”
“this could prove fatal.”
“you could be right. what shall we do?”
“well, first we must make certain we haven’t been infected with some dastardly alien virus which forces us to appreciate and develop a greater respect for the mambo and other similar disturbing forms of expression.”
“agreed. how do we do that?”
“well, we do the mambo, i guess.”
“are you insane?”
“maybe.”
“well, then you do the mambo.”
“no. you go first.”
“but you wore the glove.”
“and you had the mc hammer pants.”
“ah, but you won the mambo!”
“damn you and your powers of much argument-winny.”
“i have powers of much argument-winny?”
“the fact amazes me, too.”
“well, your critical analysis of my power-possessy aside, let’s see if you’re infected by mambo.”
“i can’t.”
“why not?”
“i don’t know. my legs won’t move.”
“mine neither.”
“that’s probably a good thing. you weren’t very good at the mambo.”
“i wouldn’t boast of your powers of much mambo-dancy if i were you.”
“you’re right! oh, what will become of us now?”
“i think we’ll just have to take life one day at a time, and hope the dark allure of the mambo never creeps up on us again. maybe we could join a support group.”
“i can’t believe i wore a glittery glove.”
“it’s not that which scares me. what scares me is the thought of where the hell these discodance2000 magazines came from.”
“i was using them to line the holo- uh, my project with.”
“your project?”
“yes. i’ll tell you all about it later. when i can get out of these flares.”
“i think i need a shower. i don’t think i’m ever going to wash myself clean of this mambo business.”
“maybe seven can do something to our memories.”
“what? after what she did to our implants, we’d be lucky if we could remember the alamo!”
“then there’s no other alternative. we’re going to have to do the unthinkable in an effort to rid ourselves of our experiences.”
“my coke god, we can’t do that!”
“but we must! we have no other choice!”
“no! there must be something else!”
“nope. i’ve thought about it, and it’s the only thing which can save us now.”
“but a whole week of macguyver reruns?”
“and much choc-licorice goodness.”
“coke?”
“goes without saying.”
“we’ll need strawberry and cream confectionary in order to survive. and i’d suggest a complete course of anti-commercial jelly beans before we begin the treatment.”
“you’re the doctor, creepy. but don’t you think we’d also need choc-malt balls of much nice-tasty?”
“a fine idea, captain hatboy. make it so. now, we’ll also require a complete supply of salty treats. think you can get barbecue?”
“salt and vinegar may be all i can find.”
“hmm. i’m a doctor, not a salt and vinegar freak. we may have to improvise. can the chicken be altered to barbecue with an inverted flavour sachet?”
“it might be possible.”
“get onto it.”
“aye aye, doc.”
“well? what are you waiting for? break out the coke rations, we’ve got macguyvers to watch!”

macguyver in control

“it’s better than the one about the truckie and his monkey,” hatboy told her.
“i wouldn’t go that far,” i said.
seven didn’t look convinced.
i offered her a can of coke. she took it and quietly assimilated its black gold goodness.
“this . . . macguyver character is irrelevent,” she said.
i offered her a slice of much pizza-goodness. she took it and assimilated it without expression, leaving only the dry crusts behind.
“he can make stuff out of a bicycle pump,” hatboy told her.
seven frowned. “what stuff?”
“oh, weapons. lockpicks. y’know? stuff?”
“we do not require lockpicks or stuff made out of bicycle pumps,” seven said.
“but you never know when you’re going to be trapped in a basement, just ten seconds from being exploded into tiny fragments of your former self, and the only tool at your disposal is a common, if ordinary, bicycle pump. and a red one at that!”
“i pity the poor person who locks seven in a basement,” i said.
she assimilated another slice of pizza in agreement.
“we have to do this, seven,” hatboy said. “we must purge ourselves of the mambo your defective implants infected us with.”
“the error has been corrected. there is no further need of this couch ritual.”
i considered both sides of their argument. seven was right, macguyver was an exceedingly pointless show, but hatboy also had a point. we must purge the mambo, and purge it we would.
“seven, macguyver once assimilated twenty-two solar systems in an effort to counter a bad guy’s dastardly attempt to unassimilate the president of a third world country, who was also macguyver’s old uni buddy.”
hatboy stared at me.
“twenty-two? well,” seven sat back in the couch between us. “why didn’t you say?”
“hatboy never approved of that episode. we don’t have it on tape, but we might have the one where he assimilates much techno-gadgetry from the russians of doom.”
“well, hurry up!” she told hatboy, pointing at the video tape mountain. “we must witness the escapades of this macguyver person!”
he was still staring at me. “i can’t believe you turned macguyver into a borg superhero!”
“quit your rumbling,” i said. “shove in a tape of much-watchy goodness, and let’s couch.”

Tags: creepy and hatboy, dance steps, mambo, seven of nine, star trek, star wars