The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: Quarantine Episode 33

"Extra! Extra! Read all - I doubt it!" Mogey shouted, bursting forth from his office/steam room with a wad of papers balled in his moist fists.

"Don't you mean, 'about it?'" Smush inquired.

"What?"

"You said 'read all - I doubt it.' Don't you mean 'read all about it' instead?"

"I don't make the old-timey newspaperman rules, my friend," Mogey replied. "I just abide by them."

"Arguing about this one is not how I'll be spending my Tuesday," Smush conceded. "How did the first edition of the Chubbo Evening Gazette turn out?"

"Read for yourself," said Mogey, thrusting the sweaty broadsheet into his pal's arms. Mogey had been working nonstop on the launch of the paper, scarcely even leaving his office for six-to-seven meals per day and limiting himself to a mere 90 minutes of America's Funniest Home Videos each night. 

Smush took an appraising look at the publication. He flipped through each page, scanning the content closely to get a true feel for what his friend had accomplished. At last he reached the final page and looked up.

"About 90 percent of the paper seems to be made up of coupons for a place called Stanley's Toilet Hut - what's that all about?" 

"I'm glad you picked up on that!" Mogey replied, blushing at the compliment. "You might think it's a business that sells toilets, right? Wrong! That's Stan's - he said I could call him Stan - that's Stan's genius: It's actually just a hut with a single toilet in it!"

"And people pay to use it?"

"Not if you have one of those coupons from the Chubbo Evening Gazette, you don't!"

 

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: Quarantine Episode 32

 "How's the rocket doing?" Mogey asked.

"Excellent," Smush replied, twirling the moustache he'd either grown or glued to his face (no one is quite sure which) especially for this endeavor. "It's warming up on the launch pad. Say, you need to get your spacesuit on - we launch in half an hour."

"My space suit is on," said Mogey. He gestured grandly to the baggy leisure suit that ensconced his butternut squash-esque physique. "It's got plenty of space to fill up on extraterrestrial snacks."

Smush looked at his pal like an elderly professor staring at a child bodybuilder who mistakenly listed him as his emergency contact. "You need to wear your real space suit!" he insisted. "There's literally no oxygen up there!"

Mogey would not be deterred. "I believe I heard some talk of green cheese...?" he inquired, displaying once again the additional volume his leisure suit afforded. "These crackers aren't going to eat themselves, and I'm darn sure not eating them without some moon fondue."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: Quarantine Episode 31

 Smush tapped his foot impatiently. Mogey was going to make them late again, and if there was one thing you didn't want to be late for, it was Mole-Rat McGinley's Barbed Wire Cage-o-Spikes Match Extravaganza. Rumor had it that Mole-Rat would seize latecomers from the audience and haul them into the ring to showcase his finishing move, the "Oh Heck Gnaw."

Smush could wait no longer: He burst through Mogey's door to find his pal huddled beneath the blankets, wearing an old-timey head bandage with a comically-large thermometer sticking out of his mouth.

"How many times must I tell you, Mogey? The thermometer doesn't make you feel any better!"

"Well it can't make me feel any worse," Mogey groaned. "I'm dying, I tell you. It's fox pox for sure."

"Let me guess," Smush inquired. "Dry tongue?"

"Yes," Mogey replied fearfully.

"Stomach ache?"

"The worst."

"Sore roof of your mouth?"

"It is!" Mogey exclaimed. "Oh no... I really do have fox pox, don't I?"

"Nope," Smush replied. "Those are the symptoms of mixing flamin' hot cheetos and vilepucker sour balls right before bed, and I believe I see an empty bag of each poking out from your covers?"

"No..." said Mogey, rolling over with a loud plasticky crackle.

"You're fine," Smush insisted. "Now come on: Let's go watch Mole-Rate McGinley suplex Fudgy Joe into oblivion. I heard this time they're going to be rasslin' on a dilapidated ladder that's perched on a table loaded with prickly succulents, which is in turn balanced above a rattlesnake-infested blackberry thicket."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: Quarantine Episode 30

 Mogey peered over his Reader's Digest and extra large bowl of cracklin' oat bran to check the clock. It was almost time. His muscles tensed for action.

"Today's the day, Mogey!" Smush announced as he barrelled down the stairs. Mogey leapt aside: Getting in Smush's way this morning would be tantamount to standing between a buffalo-sized goose and a big ol' helping of goose food. "They're in," Smush continued. "The fresh twix bars arrived this morning!"

"What is it with you and 'fresh' twix?" Mogey inquired.

"I wish I had time to explain it to you, my friend, but once you've tasted a vine-ripened twix that came off the boat that very morning, you realize those supermarket twix are literal garbage. I'm off to Chester Chester's before all that's left are bruised ones." 

"Be careful," Mogey urged his pal as Smush headed out the door. "It rained awful hard last night and there are puddles out there deeper than that poem you wrote for Miss Mary Molly MageeMcMuffin last Mardi Gras."

"Your fragrance enchants me: ambrosia divine / (the whipped cream dessert, not the mythical kind)," said Smush, quoting his own excellent work. "I thank you and I shall use caution."  

Smush did not use caution. In fact, he fell into three different puddles and some kind of mud slip 'n slide in his haste to reach Chester Chester's Confectionaratorium. But as he intoned (and subsequently jotted down for future inscription upon his tombstone and/or any memorial statues erected in his honor), "A fresh twix is a fresh twix, no matter how full of muddy water your trousers may be."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: Quarantine Episode 29

"This is important, Smush," said Mogey, and for perhaps the first time in his entire life, he had used the word 'important' accurately. That's because the time had come to draft a letter to R. Bellamy Plink, magnet magnate. 

Plink's team of tenacious barristers had caught Mogey and Smush reselling unlicensed magnets and threatened legal action unless the pals issued a satisfactory apology. 

"We send a good letter, we'll be sitting at the Bonksburgh Little League Pancake Breakfast before you know it," Mogey continued. "But we send a bad one and we can kiss every metal object we own goodbye. And I mean every metal object."

Smush clutched at his beloved MC Hammer necklace and sat down heavily, his plate armour pants making a loud clank against the chair. "You're going to write this life-changing letter with that?" he asked finally.

"What's wrong with my pencil? I love a good Dixon Ticonderoga."

"An occasion of this import calls for something... grander," Smush replied, flourishing an elaborate fountain pen.

"You mean like this?" Mogey asked, pulling an antique quill from the depths of his writing desk and thrusting it into his pal's face.

It went on like this for several hours, culminating in Smush attempting to pluck a feather from the tail of their very-much-awake -at-the-time friend, neighbor, and alarm clock: Rooster "The Rooster" Standish. By the end of the week, the pals had lost their refrigerator, their backup refrigerator, and every one of their fondue pots to the magnet magnate, as well as most of Smush's right pinkie to Rooster "The Rooster," but they had darn sure gained some perspective. 

"Life isn't all about owning literally anything made out of metal," Smush later said, "life is about food. Specifically pizza. And I'd like to see a magnet magnate try to take that away."