The Homunculus Flunks the Touring Test (ibid)

[ergo sum]

The Ihub Nine.

As if things in Boogerville weren't bad enough already with the ibox editor and the broken tractor and all. Along comes Mr Minimart threatening to sue the bandits for enabling bashers. Never before in the history of stupidity had the town of Boogerville seen anything like this. Suddenly there were spies hiding behind the cows, sneaking from tree to tree. People dressed up in rodeo costumes pretending to fit right in. Peter the Postman was followed everywhere he went. As soon as he would drop a letter in a mailbox another hand would take it out and read it over. It got so bad there was not a person in the whole town one could trust. Rumor had it that Sherif Matt was on the take and that Deputy Dave was seen driving a brand new Escalade.


Part of the confusion was caused by the fact that no one seemed to know how many Minimarts there actually were. Was it 1800? None? Or was there only the one Mr Minimart himself? Groups of people huddled over coffee cups in booths at Shelly's Greasy Spoon debated this issue endlessly. After which of course they would all be deleted. What had only yesterday been a town of mostly pasture and farm land suddenly had brand new Minimarts everywhere. Help wanted signs hung on every door front. The rooms at the Dew Drop Inn had at least 7 people in each of them. The RV park was filled. Many local people had pitched tents in their yards and were renting them out on the side. And yet, odd as it might seem over at Pigglie's Bank and Trust no one was making any deposits.

How this had all come about was just as mysterious as the ingredients in the Meatlof at Shelly's. It was claimed by some that a group of nine sorcerers held the whole town under a spell. People who believed in this theory spent all their time arguing that the spell had to be broken and when it was the TRUTH would be found. Some even went so far as to insist the nine were not really that good at spelling and the simple remedy was to catch their mistakes. Obviously these people were know as the Kvetchers.


Another group called themselves the quire. A spelling mistake that the Kvetchers couldn't help but ridicule. Theses people had as their leader the Preacher and as I am sure you can imagine he preached to the quire. The Preacher insisted that every minimart was as real as could be. He even bloodied his fist pounding on the door of one to make the point. A small splinter group of his followers referred to themselves as the bleeders. According to the sign hung on the storefront of the storefront church the sermon this week was "How the Seven Deadly sins became Nine and what you can do about it."