Sure Billy. At The Time It Seemed Totally Appropriate.

Disclaimer: This is just an exercise to improve my knowledge of the English language while revisiting basic understanding of singing parchments.

Leo Galilayo, a jar of mayo, Billy Ocean and the Last Journey to the center of Middle Earth.

What? Why do you need a subtitle?

Just like the day before and the day before that year we wrote about elsewhere, Leo and Billy debarked the Caribean Queen and started skipping the Queen's sails closing the salty gap between 12 wet feet to the shore. Frodo had a bad case of diarrhea so he couldn't join them on this adventure. Probably something to do with some rusty ring he picked up somewhere on a trip to Venezuela. And rust never slept back in the day.

A few weeks earlier. They asked Howard Jones to stand in for Bill in case he should decide to cash in on the overtime. It was a just to make sure thingy. He only worked part time (1/19th) since he had had this toothache since last fall. He was a bit of a hypochondriac and nobody wanted to hurt his feelings. Leo insisted to either shut up alltogether or just gargle songs, blinking their sore eyes rhytmically to "What is Love, Baby Don't Hurt Me, Don't Hurt Me, No More!" they all started waving hands to connect to both their own subconsciousness and the five cool indiguous folks living on Misty Mountains (the top part, the icy part! Cold!). But soon after that Georgia sent message there was imminent danger. Tina would then repolish the songs so Peter Hambleton could play William the Stone-troll and Cat Blanchett would just look real pretty so they figured they might as well just take a photograph with them. One less mouth to feed! But they all yelled something so rude I will not be mentioning it here.

Meanwhile Lord Celeborn or no, Burt... - Yeah that will do just fine - and Vincent-Price Orloff (a local roaster) were dancing the night away in the local pub. A couple of years ago he went completely insane because the night wouldn't go away and no matter how long he kept at it. Sure thing buddy. Sure you can. But now I have to write, quite compulsively I should write. Why thanks. So the party was headed for The Center of Middle Earth (the harder bit in the middle).

Howard (, yes. Jones indeed) was the first to arrive at the scene. A fully fledged feature directed by Saundra Bullack, ladyfriend of the tabloids brought her favourite intern Estelle Louderdale (not the fort). A last checkup to make sure the drill would get the job done and down he went. "Here goes nothiiiiiiiiiiii"... The last thing they heard, apart from an excerpt of his song Hide and Seek quickly fading out.

As they sat down waiting for Leo and Bill to sing their favourite Howard Jones tunes Saundra started dancing to the wind or someone broke wind. Either way it actually seemed totally appropriate at the time. And so it came to pass a fairly decent version of Hide and Seek could be heard. Twice. Just because they thought the chorus was the most underrated chorus ever sang back in the eighties. Since nothing can keep happening you could hear it reverberate throughout the valley, a very small one. Tiny really. Lots of stuff going down, indeed.

Flash back (roughly 3 hours and 89 seconds earlier) Saundra's watch read 03:45:23 or 03:45:54. Either way, she still had at least 6 more seconds before she finally would meet Leo Sawyer. Flash forward: Leo Lawyer was still bound to show up but unfortunately we only flashed forward mere minutes. And to make things even worse, he was late. He tried to cut himself some slack and went ahead adding some daylight savings tick tockers.

The Descent

"Cut me some slack, Saundra!". Leo was the first to slide down. Chewing away the first 2 miles took its toll but he was too eager to give in to what he thought to be merely a sequence of harmless symptons of temporary discomfort.

It took both Saundra, Jimmy Sturdy and Dell, a nice fisherman who handed out typewriters on the side, to hold him back. Dell arrived earlier, took the train instead of the old boat. He always had been the slightly more sensible one. He didn't need any fish that day, hence the rails. They went way back. Before they both skipped school (they were too bright anyway) they used to be twins, Leo and Dell. But they had this argument and went their separate ways for a little while.

Dell immediately noticed that look in Leo's eyes he had seen so many times before. He wasn't going to stop until he either reached the goal he had set for himself or collapse in the process. So he went like "Hey, Leo, remember... uhm... uhm..." trying to come up with something that would distract him and keep him busy for a couple of split seconds, Leo had such a short attention span he poured just about any drink in his neck (at best) and was basically constantly at risk of dehydration. Luckily there was Saundra who – alright we'll give you that much – got casted for all the wrong reasons. Her name was Saundra. Saundra Stereotype. She always took a box office with her in case she would be nominated. Alas, big time bummer.

3 bottles of maxed out sugar dairy later, waving and yelling at imaginary bearded leprechauns, Leo started digging himself a way through until he reached the next platform. Digging like a madman he could do with some hugs so they attached a few nonverbal cross-cultural communication tools, context and a piece of paper with joyous greetings written all over it. In seven hundred different languages because one never knows what to expect at the center of Middle Earth.

By now people had started to gather around the narrow shaft and at day even the most pious and distinguished Muslims lost self-control and started to hi five the locals and blew little kisses at confused Hindi citing the latest Bad Religion album. Just because they were happy. Some of the smoke smelled rather funny though. They all got a yogurt pepsi and a selfie of Leo who had been digging himself a way straight down to the first of the many caves they would examine before reaching the center. Although Leo's face covered a significant portion of the photograph – well, they did ask for a selfie – all of them were in awe when presented with the snap. Snap! Snap! Snap! Another 3 of them got sent up the shaft. He told them he had just found what looked like some ancient darts board and the stepbrother or janitor of the great grandfather of Burt Reynolds wearing worn out allstars. But... this meant he would have found a way out some time after the sexual revolution for dudes (ASRFD). Maybe he even spent some time at CBGB's. This was big. He hoped Saundra brought enough tapes. He was getting all excited about getting to hangout with Keith Reynolds for at least 6 months from now on. They ended up spending 3 of those watching Burt's performances, visibly lifting Keith's spirit to unknown hights. After a while it became obvious he was mixing in bits and pieces of Burt Lancaster's life because he found some very old issues of Vanity Fair (The Gardener editions). At some time the magazine featured eight consecutive interviews with Keith's great grandfather and Burt Lancaster and a dude called Ron (not sure where he came from at this point but I'm fine with that. I just figured Keith couldn't be obese since he had been living in that cave for quite some time.), a big fan (slightly obese) of Stephen Dong, a novelist whom they sent in to write Reynold's bio, whilst having a snack really fancied that like super big time.

Next thing we know – well, that is if you're following along and read on – Stephen pulls out his typewriter and starts hitting them keys like a maniac who had been trapped inside some badass horror movie for years. After he rubbed the advanced skincare Super Duo improved Hydration "It Really Works®" potion all over his face, a nice and thick layer, the consonanty keys actually literally caught fire! Alright... perhaps it was supposed to be proverbally...
They discussed the weather and the way the caves eroded overtime while he was residing there. He told us one day his allstars actually started to eroded because of the the way the water flowed under his soles. Luckily he brought another pair when he went on his merry way to The Center of Middle Earth, or in his case, unfortunately stuck between the first cave and the river Springtunes Barbara. Stuck between a rock and a splishy splashy place..

6 months flew by and before they parted ways, passing the dutchie one last time, they exchanged skincare potions. Keith sure got his potion's worth while Stephen got this smelly brownish muddy gel Keith hadn't been using for ages. "It's for the best, Stephen. Just play along. Don't jeopardise our mission now!" It really just seemed insignificant. A little hike they went for that Sunday or the Sunday happening right now coming soon to a theatre of the mind near me or you. But snow was belligerently precocious or your pal Vern Glockholstered had 8 strokes of bad luck and a bad case filled with flu resistance shots last winter. Something to take into account, and why did Beverly sing about high tide up on those wretched hills next week? You made her do it, remember? All you fanboys and girls!

Something inside Keith Reynolds found its way to the mind. Time had come for him to retire and what better place than the nearest convenient store? They had this old wooden chair on the patio he would be rocking come sunset and a beer. With the chair free beer came and went, obviously. Keith rocking the chair. Yes. He could easily picture him spending the rest of his natural life doing so. The deal went down and not at all surprisingly just a couple of parallel revisions of the syllabi away from the numbers the rocking chair passed on to the next in line. More numbers.

Inside the second cave things got even weirder. Vern Schroeder, who couldn't resist checking out the goods for himself, heard nothing but high pitched voices. Noisy samples or rightdown mind blowing rearrangements of already canned and temporary hits like "Keith Was a Dinosaur, Junior!" or "Think Small, Dig, Dick! Dig!" and "A hole! (The Cavity Song)". Carry Cat started spraying green lemonade on the ceiling and smiled mysteriously. "Wholy fuck! We're fucked." was the only thing going through Vern's mind (including the weird notation), and poor Vern, he imagined getting screwed in 20 different languages. Having been part of the Blue Oyster Ambiguity Rangers exchange student programme and Kelvin Kleyn got him into this mess. Instinctively his mind wandered off, he found himself back facing the back entrance of the vast Victorian mansion staring at his English teacher and mentor Knowledge Hummingway. Overtime he developed some sort of affection for the man in a way that felt like some sort of love sprung out of a profound inexplicable level of fascination, respect and something that seemingly surpassed compassion, maybe a term that not yet had been coined, very confusing and not very clear to him at that time. Later he would realise it actually was an abstraction of impressions.

"Hang on, let me slip into something more comfortable." Carry slowly tilted her head and as soon as the voices faded she took a deep breath and held it for a minute, just to dissolve into a million tiny particles floating around breaking through the surface of the green soda on the ceiling. Nobody noticed the tall slender acrobat performing a solo project which involved the use of specific flexible body parts. He was rocking around something that strongly resembled a clock when Dell finally noticed him. Dell once got strapped to that very thing when he tried to rock the pun away so many mean folks intended. Unlike some of the more fortunate ones D. had no choice but to rock the pun. At some point he even played eight gigs a byte! So while the tall guy was going for the whole 360 shaking his hips and shoulders rhytmically to Lilliput (that song by Wiggywack and Mildendo including Plips) going "Whoa oh, my boy Lilliput, you make my heart go giddyup. You set my clock on fire. You are my one desire. Whoa, my Lilliput! HARMONICA SOLO!". Carry told us he got castrated by Golbasto Momarem Evlame Gurdilo and his Mutty back in the 18th Century and she allowed him to do stupid stuff in the cave in return for a selfie made by the late Hale, Nathaniel reading the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn(. The early one already left for the land of the Do do). Roadie, the previous rocker she used to offer shelter, she explained, always brought this girl named Daisy, she almost drove me crazy and one day they tried to steal the entire tutti frutti stash. She told us she just had to turn them into bamboo. Whop Bab-a-lo-nia a-whop bamboo! And where the hell was Babylon anyway?

While she kept explaining what happened in the cave the past few decades the old rusty record player chimed in shuffling randomly between Runaway by The Eurytmix and Stevie "I wonder what's cooking in the nightclub" Sunny Shades Shannon and Ooh Ooh Hey, Hey. My, my. Ooh Baby, baby! Powder Nose! translated by Werner von Vleugeltootsies and his mum.

The Hungry Buddy Pest

In order to keep going, Carry would have to carry Anthonyms but Keydis was a large fellow. Anthonym had this congenital disadvantage. A built-in instruction set amplifier, configured to keep track of over nineteen syllabi every day unlike previous generations like Synonyms who had not been factory reset nor rewired. Quite spectacular at that time, you say? They all nodded. Ad Diction, Thehunny Attija and Homie Nemesis, "Present, ma'am!" All of them would later grow up to write all about lettuce and the effects of the hicks blossoms on far too serious people. And ersatz poultry flakes.

At the end of the long narrow hallway they noticed this giant silhouet growing gradually into a hatted man frantically waving hands. There was something very strange going on. Not only did their eyes trick them into recording 10 pairs of hands, an effect the mind-boggling speed at which the hands seemed to be waving at them, they almost froze when they noticed the fingers moving asynchronously, not at random but in a very specific order as if he was counting.

Collins, Collins and Phil used to do it all the time but this time they had to take care of the horses. Julia insisted. She put her foot down. But more about that in the British English dictionary. During their most recent trip to the Spanish-Danish part of Papua New Guinea Burt, Fanny and Jackson (the horses) had been discussing the secessionist revolt on Bougainville. You know the one. Sure you do. The one resulting in an eleventh-hour modification of the draft Constitution of Papua New Guinea to allow Bougainville and the other eighteen districts to have snacks during council meetups.

To demonstrate that, Fanny handed out plant fiber bars because they all used microbial fermentation near the bottom left part of their digestive system. The old cecum to break down the cellulose so to speak and write or listen closely. There was no regurgitating fiber bars and vomiting was not an option according to the Wiki folks so Jackson and his non-ruminant herbivore buddies decided to allow their cecum upset by the rapid changes in feed.

Since Phil and both Collinses went on their merry way to check out the weekly State of the Stable Address at the local branch of the Royal Knee-Breech Forudsaetninger Group and consequently had to drink large amounts of San Miguel Tradición they were too drunk to notice Fanny urgently needed to regurgitate.

Phil's pocket watch (a nice shiny copper one) read 3:00 and 3 arrows pointed at some other numbers, one of them going so fast he nearly fainted looking at the damn thing, not noticing Fanny's wild gesturing. While she told him about the fiber bars Collins prepared a certified gluten-free hearty meal for Burt since he was in a really bad shape. Meanwhile, while Jackson was having a smoke on the patio the Collinses petted him gently alongside the flanks. It gave him the shivers, I think I'm gonna prescribe him a mean case of winter fever. Yes. That will do just fine, does explain the shivers too. The advantage of getting to arrange the characters yourself is you get to decide what happens next. Yes. You. Next.

Something. Next thing. Next one we knew (me, both C's, Fan, Burt and the gang).—Hey! I got in! Found a way in—finally got to meet Randolph Trucker Pendleton IV. Boy... talk about yer real cool good times! We talked and talked and talked. And after that we wrote and wrote and wrote. And after that we telepathically conveyed instant messages and telepathically made each other frown and giggle while sending instant messages and telepathically sending each other more instant messages.

For a little while we found the missing piece of Psi. It's the sheep, also known as 3.0964788333 or Pepsi. Rand did his very best to round the floor to make sure the number would fit on our sleeves. 26 and 9 got real close. Close enough to result in 35 and that makes 8. But soon after that all those badly formulated sequences started to emerge. Bars, constants, variables, parentheses trying to reach number one. Mental? They said they were gonna fix Mike's brain, alleviate his suffering and his pain. But I bet that by the time they get near his head, he'll be long gone. Just one pepsi, and they wouldn't give it to him. F**kers. It doesn't matter, They'll probably get hit by a tsunami anyway.