Diary entry: Paulie has been under the water so long he has gotten all soft, clear through, he feels as if all his guts have merged into one big gloppy mishmash of unintelligible gray matter that is giving his brain a run for it’s money, the Saki was cold and wetter than usual last night at Panda Express, an especially delightful Oriental waitress cared for Paulie’s needs throughout the evening, she was tall, pretty, dark haired and she was attentive in some indescribable way that made me think she was just the spice for Paulie’s butter flied eel nuggets, they have become pretty bland over the years, but they are still willing to swim if the water temperature is right, the ocean isn’t too rough, and the undertow is kept at a minimum, Paulie’s little ship doesn’t sail as it did in younger days when he skipped over the waves at high speed while towing a pair of tall, pretty, dark haired mermaids behind him on slalom boards while our present year’s Lake Trout Queen squeezed lemon in my martini as she squeezed my arm and screamed “Faster Paulie, faster”, yeah, Paulie doesn’t look it, but on the water he was called King Salmon, he was The Flying Fish who knew no bounds, Paulie swam high and he flew high out of the water, when Paulie was done with his lady fish, the bounding main was left flat, and the wind was knocked out of the sky, well, this is Paulie, here at Panda Express, calling out to his beautiful dark haired, dark eyed waitress, “More Saki”, and he calls out to his family, “More love and shalom my dear ones”, to the rest of you, Paulie calls out the usual soggy “Go to hell”…

Diary entry: Hey everybody, Paulie here, it’s almost two in the morning, I’m here at Kim Eel’s Floating Fish Bar and Grill, the topic this evening has been the subject of “Breaking Out”, breaking out of this prison we’ve been incarcerated in our whole lives, breaking out of this prison for our minds; the Matrix, you’ve been told, is a prison, a prison for your mind, your mind is wrapped up in a web so dense there is no escape, all the truth in the world cannot save you, you’re in too deep, stop fighting it, the Matrix is too big and powerful, there is hope, but I fear you are so far back in the bushes that even the jackrabbits may devour your souls like they were dew covered clover petals that had been sprayed with defoliant and they barf your asses up into a pile of something that even the maggots won’t touch, anyway, it’s Free Giveaway Night here at the Floating Fish, Kim Eel and everyone here at the bar are giving advice away free to anyone who asks for it, I probably should bring to your mind though, the old wise adage that states “Be careful of what you ask for”, well, with that being said, we have a file folder of questions and comments that have been sent in to Paulie Gee’s Realtime Diary Company Inc. that were smuggled out under the cover of darkness the night Paulie was impeached and evicted from his cushy job as CEO, okay, our host Mr. Kim Eel will ask the first question, “Ah yes, why do Amelikan’s blame the honolable Japanese peopo for the attack on Pearl Harbor?”, say, Mr. Kim, allow me to answer that, it is because they are stupid, okay, question number B is “If our president is the new age messiah, can he turn water into wine?”, well, in a way, he turns water headed babies into whiners, question number C is from the man in the back, yes sir?, “Yeah, I ordered another pitcher of martinis twenty minutes ago, where is it?”, well, I’m sorry, Mr. Kim is out back speaking with a World War Two veteran who, I believe, has a gun, let’s move on to our first comment, this comment was sent in by a Mr. Yoo Fookin A. Hole, Mr. Hole writes “Dear Paulie, I read your Diary entry entitled ‘Lesbians and Irishmen’ and I hate your guts clear through, may your Blarney Stones be eaten by wild coyotes”, well, what can I say to that, except “Ouch”, well, let’s see here if we can find a particularly pertinent question on the current state of the world, no, not this one, not this one, uh, well, forget that, here’s another comment, slash, complaint, it’s from a lady from Bulgaria, a Mrs. Upyer Dark’ole, Mrs. Dark’ole writes “Dear Paulie, I think you stink, my ladies group made moussaka for our entire church assembly and I would like to sacrifice it by sticking it up your dark and unholy rear…”, whoa, let’s stop right there, I think we all get the point, that reminds me of a story, advice really, about the medical industry that the whole country worships, the subject of colonoscopies is a sensitive one, but please allow Paulie to shed some light on a dark mystery, illuminate a deep dark corner of your life, people, you are in the dark like a rusty colonoscope without any film in it and it’s light bulb is broke, Paulie spent time in the medical industry and he is here to tell you that getting a colonoscopy is not the easy squeezy thing they advertise it to be, the hamburger you pick up at the window is not the same one you saw on television, and that colonoscopy isn’t the same one you have in your mind, these “flexible” sigmoidoscopes are as flexible as that goose neck lamp on your work desk, these doctors are basically shoving your ugly H.H.Gregg lamp up your ass just to have a look see, in the old days we did these procedures for a specific reason, today they sell you idiots colonoscopies like the hot dog guy at the ballpark sells hot dogs to drunken Cubs fans, look, these tools they use to root around inside you are old, they have been used over and over, they have been banged around in autoclaves, dropped on floors, they lay around in hospital sinks like your dirty dishes at home, your china gets chipped and damaged, and so do these steel snakelike things, they have burrs and barbs on them that will cause them to get stuck inside you, Paulie has seen it, now I admit, our colonoscopes were somewhat old, I think they were used by the allies in World War Two, they looked like the old tanks, you know, they had that drab green paint on them that was peeling, anyway, we had a special case that needed looking into, we began the procedure as always, we were about ten or fifteen feet inside this guy, checking him out, all was going to plan, we had confirmed our original diagnosis so we began pulling out, smooth as can be, until the damn thing got hung up somewhere, we pulled and yanked but it wouldn’t break free, it was like when you’re cleaning a bottle with a bottle brush and the brush is too big and it goes in okay but doesn’t come out, or when you try to clear your wife’s vacuum cleaner hose with a coat hanger and you get it stuck and throw the whole thing away and tell your wife the motor is burned out, to just buy a new one, anyway, the most god awful thing happened, on the last hard tug, the guy’s rectum came out attached to the little camera thing, it was awful, it looked like an inside-out sock, I barfed on the floor, I never saw such a horrifying thing, I didn’t go to the bathroom for a week, well, this is just a heads up, you never get the hamburger or the colonoscopy they show you on TV, one looks as if it’s been sat on, the other won’t be sat on for a long time, this is Paulie saying shalom…

Diary entry: Hey you guys, what’s going on in Corn Town these days, you keepin’ it in the can, keepin’ it under your belt, or are you poppin’ it like cheap Champagne on a midweek hayride, hey everybody, it’s Paulie, just foolin’ around with my people, that’s how we rap to each other here in this part of the Midwest, we’re down with it, like cornbread in your lunch bucket, anyway, Paulie only stopped by to tell you a joke he heard down at the bar tonight, how do you know if there is a bat in your house, easy, your wife’s car is in the driveway, one more, how do you know raccoons will never get in your attic, because your mother-in-law just moved in and she eats everything in sight, Paulie has another one about why the skunks won’t eat out of your garbage can, but he’ll save that one for another time, it is late, and the dogs need feeding and Goober my cat is meowing at the door wanting in, so this is Paulie, wishing you and all your little families, shalom…

Diary entry: Paulie at one time ruled all the fishes in the sea, he was known as King Salmon, Paulie was always the first one up the fish ladder, Paulie was a fighter, he swam hard and he nested hard, many of the little lady fishes wanted to put a harpoon through Paulie’s magnificent scales, weigh him down, and take him home to their skillet, Paulie has shaken free from many hooks, he has had to, it’s called survival instinct and Paulie has instinct to burn, the lady fishes employ many techniques to lure him into their sea beds, there are as many techniques as there are different lady fishes, each one has her own style, there are little nibbler lady fishes who slowly nibble away at Paulie’s defenses, there are the big mouth grouper lady fishes who try to inhale all Paulie’s aura as if they were eating a popcorn shrimp after a starvation diet, there are the little stickleback lady fishes who are very bony, whose sharp attitudes impale Paulie’s wild nature as if he were some sort of balloon at the dart throwing booth at the county fair, then there are the little lady balloon fishes who are so puffed up with attitude that Paulie just wants to scream and swim to the nearest canning factory, the little lady fishes have as many different techniques as there are fishes in the sea, top feeders, bottom feeders, blow fishes, sucker fishes, jaw crunchers, small lipped ticklers, the lady fishes run the gamut from the small, delicate, and minnow-like nuzzlers, to the large and bold drums, but the target of them all is big game fish Paulie, they all want the magnificent filet’s of King Salmon Paulie, but they don’t want him as he is, they want to take him home and grind him up, add cracker crumbs to him, and put his balls in the deep fryer, the sea is a magnificent woman, she is as open as she is wide, but her beautiful daughters hide dark intentions within, so King Salmon continues to swim and cut through the sea, eroding beaches as he flips sea water everywhere in his wake; Mother Sea has spawned many schools of dangerous daughters whose fish eyes are all on Paulie, well, my advice to you lesser salmon, you cohos, chums, and the rest of you, keep your minds clear, keep your noses into the current, and keep your fins ever flipping, this is King Salmon saying to his beloved family who all have fins and scales, “Shalom”, to everyone else, King Salmon splashes on you a cold “Go to hell”…

Diary entry: Paulie fears he may have been served his last fortune cookie and the message inside may be a bad one, now Paulie has had many misfortunes in his long life but he fears this may be the big one, the whale in the boat that has only one thing on his mind and he’s looking at Paulie as if he is a breaded and fried minnow on that mother-of-pearl china pattern that was used at the expensive Oriental hotel where you spent your honeymoon, was this last fortune cookie to foretell a short future for Paulie, a short diabolical theft of the one thing Paulie holds dear, we will see my dear readers, we will certainly see, but until then, Paulie’s fortune cookie will remain sealed until the time of the end, to my loved ones, Paulie says stay strong, never waver, keep that hood ornament pointing straight ahead, easy on the gas, and stay in your lane, to the rest of you, you lane-weaving lame ohs who don’t know if you are driving, adjusting your sound level, or talking on your little device that keeps you connected to the most moronic garbage; don’t worry, that favorite movie star of yours will be just fine, Paulie says stop speeding to nowhere, stop eating Taco Bell behind the wheel, and stop praying to that damn little plastic figurine that is still on the dashboard of your dead Grandma’s car, get yourself a job for gods sake, and stop driving your poor dead Grandmother’s car you freaking loser you…

Diary entry: Hey somebody, please, please, please help me, I am totally confused, can some one please tell me how a man can become a lesbian, I just don’t get it, people these days are either playing mind games with us or the world just dropped it’s collective mind into the sea, and I don’t mean they lost their minds on the beach somewhere, no, they dropped their shit overboard from some deep-water exploration vessel like the navy uses after receiving reports of that one sea monster which was, in reality, a simple conjure of superstitious Irishmen who probably were hallucinating images of their wives, anyway, there isn’t much to do in Ireland except bet on the horses and wish you had never married one, their beer must be really strong or their minds are weak, anyway, we were saving this one for St. Patrick’s Day, but I think we will have other things on our minds by then, Paulie wishes his usual warm wishes to his people, a warm “Shalom”; to the rest of you, Paulie wishes a hot “Go to hell”…

Diary entry: People these days are quick to reject anything which falls outside their twisted convoluted belief pack, if it isn’t within the mind cupboard, it is foreign and shouldn’t be allowed inside the wall, everything from the other side is meant to hurt us, we close off all thought and we hug onto the few stupid cartoon teachings from our childhood, I’m surprised more adult people haven’t choked on their baby blankets by now, anyway, people also reject food without a thought, look, if you don’t taste it, how do you know it’s not good, just because a bucket of slimy eels don’t look good, how do you know you wouldn’t like eating them, they may just taste like a MacDonald’s hamburger, or those one sea things, urchins, or some such thing, where you crack them open and you actually eat their most personal part, Paulie was taught at a very young age to taste new food before he said he didn’t like it, that’s how the big kids got me to eat worms and moths, and one time, a dead mouse, well, Paulie grew older and wiser, when he reached the age of six or seven he wasn’t stupid, when at the supper table he was offered beets and he refused instantly, when he heard those words “How do you know you don’t like it if you don’t taste it first”, Paulie replied, “I’m not falling for that shit again”…

Diary entry: The idea of eating under-the-books, under-cooked squid came up this morning, in more ways than one, I was on a stake out last night at Panda Express, my usual booth, Saki and squid with slippery noodles, and a few won ton, just a heads up, if a small weird looking Oriental man with a Mohawk tries to give you his “Slippery noodle special”, don’t bite, his smooth words bespeak a sandpapery desire, anyway, the place was dead quiet, like a morgue after the last body had been shipped out, I had much thinking to do but the silence was intimidating, like the silence of the school principal as you sat before him awaiting your fate for using some of your favorite words, and old Mrs. Jenkins was within earshot, I just couldn’t think, so I ordered another Saki and inquired of a tall, very pretty, dark haired, soft voiced Oriental waitress if she had heard of, or seen, a particularly ugly Oriental man from China who wore one jade ear and one regular ear, she whispered a soft “No” in my ear and quietly cleared the dishes from my table, the man I was after is the distant cousin of Mr. Kim, Mr. Kim is the most feared and powerful man in Shing Dong Prefecture, he runs a diner, slash, opium den in a dirty harbor town in Southeast China, the only man in the world Kim fears is his distant cousin, a man called Foo Key Yoo, I got his name from a friendly dark haired Oriental waitress one night when she whispered it in my ear, anyway, the amount of time I have put into this investigation is staggering, staggering like the drunk guy on that May Berry television cop show staggers on Saturday night and the cops run him in and work him over so as to not leave marks, Paulie hasn’t had it as good, no, Paulie has had his chop sticks broken several times, there are scars and bruises to prove it, but Paulie still stands, at least for now, I decided I needed a better place to think, somewhere where the silence wasn’t so threatening, so I headed over to one of my usual watering holes, The Floating Fish Bar and Grill, my good friend Kim Eel Dung runs the place, maybe a few drinks would loosen up the thought muscles a bit, anyway, the Floating Fish was dead, a few scavengers were playing pool in the back room, a couple of jellyfish in a booth were slurping chili from bowls, two pretty little snail darters were slow dancing by the juke box as they shared a white cardboard container of popcorn shrimp, a shaggy barnacle sat stuck to his bar stool perch desolate as a stone, at the end of the bar; it was as if all the bodies in the morgue had been shipped over here, like it was the place where dead people go to get some rest and relaxation, I called to Kim Eel to refill my drink, he brought scotch and abalone sandwiches, pickled sea cucumbers on the side, the sound of a ruckus outside in the alley rung in my ears, an orange roughy was picking a fight with a sardine, he was schooling him in front of a grouper of bystanders, the whole thing smelt, it smelt bad, then the fog moved in, everything got hazy, my head was swimming, some one must’ve slipped me a Mickey Finn, I grabbed on to the nearest light pole and I clutched it like it was the last Champagne cork on the sinking Titanic, I don’t remember much of anything after that except waking up in a bed in the back room that smelled like kelp, the beast that this murder investigation has become may be too much for a small shrimp like me, maybe I should just hug the coral for awhile ’til the current situation blows out to sea, well, this is Paulie, rowing his little skiff back to his home dock, as he does, he shouts out across the water a hearty “Ahoy and shalom” to his dear loved ones, to the rest of you, Paulie shouts his usual crabby “Go to hell”…

Diary entry: This whole age thing has been coming up repeatedly recently, it seems there is a law that states a seventeen year old girl will always say she’s eighteen, and that a twenty year old girl will always say she’s twenty one, well, I gotta think about this one, I can only speak of my own experience as a young man, when I was fifteen I told the ladies I was nineteen, when I was nineteen I told the ladies I was twenty three, when I was twenty three I told the ladies I was thirty six, anyway, after I got over maybe about fifty, I began saying I was thirty nine, maybe people are like souffles, they inflate and puff up when they are young and rising, then when they reach a certain height of glory, the harsh world slams it’s oven door and we fall into a flattened-out state of useless pudding at the bottom of the pan and we are fed to the dogs, I think life is too complicated as it is without worrying about age this and age that, it is quite possible that there are really only two ages when you break the whole thing down, the first age is you’re alive, and the second age is you are dead, well, this is ageless Paulie shouting out in his loudest voice, an ear piercing shalom to my dear ones, and Paulie has another ear piecing shout for the rest of you, go to hell…

Diary entry: Hi everybody, I’m here at Kim Eel Dung’s Floating Fish Bar and Grill, it’s pretty subdued here, not many customers, a few couples in the booths, a bearded rice farmer at the end of the bar smoking one of those long stemmed clay pipes like they use in opium dens, and the gentleman I’ve been speaking with the past half hour, a Mr. Poo Dung Luck, an interesting friend whom I’ve known for quite some time, probably for half an hour, we had been discussing the Hegelian dialectic, Problem-Reaction-Solution, the opposing forces thing, the Third Temple, the Third Eye Syndrome, and the soon to come Final Solution, the Third Pillar, the Final Synthesis of the world, we agree that the time is very near for the world to invert; the paradigm shift that was written in the sands of time long ago when this earth was first conceived in the mind of it’s creator, we are here my friend, this coming spring will be sprung like that annoying alarm clock sprung when you threw it against the wall the morning after the big Saki and squid blowout you threw in celebration of not getting fired after the last employee evaluation because you still can’t get the hang of using the cash register, the big time of the end is at the door, when you answer it, will it be your time or their time, you better make a quick choice now my friend on whom you choose to follow, your favorite men, or the one who created you and can surely dispose of you if he is unsatisfied, Paulie and Poo Dung suggest you go back to the beginning and dig, back before the truth was buried under many years of lies, you reside on the top of a sand dune in which the sands of time gathered all their lies into a heap of falsehood you haven’t the time to sift out, answer the door, you have a visitor, and you will not like him, shalom to all the loved ones who went back to the genesis of time, when time was pure, when we were pure, before we became so corrupted because of our ignorance, well, Kim Eel is bringing drinks and popcorn squid, the consensus here at the bar is “Prepare, stock up, keep your heads down”, and as for your hopes, you may as well stick ’em in your foxhole, this is Paulie, out…