The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2023 Edition - Episode 11

 "Smush! Smush!" Mogey shouted, tumbling into the fo'c'sle and shaking the sturdy (yet strained) hammock in which his pal was ensconced. "The ol' salts' fables are true. The ol' peppers' too! There's a mermaid off our starboard bow!"

"What?" Smush exclaimed. "Help me up, will you?" 

After five minutes of collaborative effort, Mogey managed to help Smush extract himself from the hammock, and the pals emerged sweatily onto the foredeck.

"Where is she?" Smush whispered urgently. 

"Just over there - here, take this," Mogey said, handing Smush a harpoon and leaning on a second sea spear as he scanned the brilliant blue waters that surrounded them.

"What's this-- you want to eat the mermaid?" 

"Remember that ol' pepper we encountered back in Port St. Gunch? He claimed a filet of mermaid tastes like fine cheesecake, only fishier." 

"Aye," Smush agreed, "but how many times have I told you: You've got to think ahead out here on the high seas. You've got to play the long game. Now what if, instead of worrying about who's going to eat who, we convince the mermaid to join forces with us?"

"Ingenius!" Mogey replied. "She'd be able to catch more fish than we could ever eat. Plus there'd be a visit to her underwater castle, and the potential addition of a cuttlefish sidekick to our crew - you know I've always thought we needed a cuttlefish sidekick - count me in!"

"Good. Now where is our new shipmate? I still can't see her."

"Just there," Mogey said, pointing with his harpoon.

"That's..." Smush replied hesitantly "that's an old traffic cone covered in barnacles."

"Ah, so it is." Mogey looked crestfallen for a moment before something off the port side caught his eye. "Wait a moment, Smush. Wait just a moment! I believe I've spotted... yes I have! The floating marshmallow sandwich of legend. The ol' peppers have really done it this time!" 

Smush trudged back toward the fo'c'sle with the demeanor of a thoroughbred who just lost the steeplechase to two cheetahs in a horse costume. Ten nautical miles away, Mitch "Ol' Pepper" Bixby, a jalapeno farmer, local historian, and general ne'er-do-well, watched the proceedings through his spyglass and chuckled merrily. 

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2023 Edition - Episode 10

 The Map Room at Porkstew House contained all the treasures one would expect to find in a noble estate, plus many more: yellowing globes kissed by the glow of time and patience, weird old atlases that for some reason depicted sea monsters, and even - rumor had it - a treasure map that would guide its owner to the lost hoard of Cap'n Bugbeard the Fragrant. 

It was in search of this final prize that Mogey and Smush had visited their black sheep, Glumly, for a pair of dark woolen face masks (Glumly was quite the sneakthief himself), and snuck into Porkstew House under cover of night. With them they had brought Unctuous, a bloodhound who specialized in sniffing out treasure maps.

"What booty do you think will be in Cap'n Bugbeard's hoard?" Mogey whispered. 

"Shh!" Smush shushed. "We can talk about whether Bugbeard's treasure does or does not contain still-valid Discovery Zone prize tickets when we find the map, and not before."

"I think Unctuous may've caught the scent!" Mogey announced, chasing behind the snuffling hound. 

Their trusty tracker led the pals to a tall chest of drawers and slapped one of his long ears meatily into the third cabinet from the top. With the utmost care, Smush yanked the drawer open, flooding the Map Room with an odor so eye-wateringly potent that all three of the would-be burglars fell onto their backsides. Unctuous covered his nose with an antique navigation chart.

"That's Bugbeard's fragrance, all right!" Smush exclaimed. "Unctuous, my friend, you've done it again."

"Wait," Mogey cautioned, "where is it? The drawer is empty! Where's the treasure map?"

"Looking for this?" bleated a round, shadowy figure crouched in the catwalk above. The figure waved a discolored scrap of parchment at them.

"Glumly??" cried Mogey and Smush in unison.

"Correct you are!" their sheep replied, visibly fighting back nausea as he folded the parchment up. "And if this map is any indication, I can't wait to see how bad Bugbeard's treasure smells. See you at Discovery Zone, dunderheads!"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2023 Edition - Episode 9

 Smush climbed down from the hayloft where he'd enjoyed a modest 18-hour nap, bleary-eyed and beer-ly wide. He encountered Mogey in the corn crib, where his pal was laughing maniacally and wearing a stunning maroon cape.

"BWAHAHAHA," Mogey cackled.

"Oh no," Smush groaned. "It's happened again, hasn't it?"

"BWA-- I mean, what?" stammed Mogey.

"Some tiny amount of power has gone to your head. There was that incident when you began intentionally stalling at the front of the lunch rush line at Taco Lord, and don't even get me started on the 3rd-grade tae kwon do tournament you officiated.... What is it this time?"

Mogey hesitated for a moment, but then a broad and devilish smile crept across his face: The expression of a killer whale who's just noticed that a vessel hauling tartar sauce is taking on water.

"All right," Mogey said, "I'll tell you. But only because it's too late - I can no longer be stopped! I have in my possession," he continued, dramatically holding up a thick stack of cards, "enough certificates to take full control of the potato market in this entire region. And when you control the potatoes, guess what, my doubtful dude? You control it all. We're talking french fries, we're talking hash browns, we're talking mash, we're even talking... tater tots. Imagine what people will pay when they haven't eaten a tot for two weeks? Imagine what they'll do? BWAHAHA!"

"Mogey," Smush responded, snatching one of the coupons from Mogey's stack, "this is a 10-potatoes-for-10-dollars coupon from Piggly Wiggly. That's not even a very good deal. It also says 'limit: two per customer.'"

"BWAHAHAHA," was Mogey's only reply.

 

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2023 Edition - Episode 8

 Around the turn of the century - well, the turn of a century, anyway - a most curious phenomenon swept through Dense City. Almost overnight, for no apparent reason, every man, woman, and child in the metropolis began to wear comedicaly large hats 24 hours a day. There were formal hats (berets and sombreros, mostly), sleeping caps, driving bonnets, hats for bicycling, dining, and even specialized headdresses to be worn only while digging ditches. And each and every one of these lids spanned at least four feet in diameter.

Bruce Hatman, Dense City's foremost and only hatmaker, went from making leather-n-cabbage soup out of unsold flat caps one night to becoming the hottest purveyor in town the next. Lines in front of his shop - Hatman's Hats, Man - stretched for miles, and many desperate customers waited days for a chance to buy a Hatman original.

Luckily for Mogey and Smush, Bruce Hatman owed them a favor. He'd once accumulated a sizable debt playing Trouble for money (Smush was a savant with the Pop-o-Matic in the center of the board), but the pals had forgiven his liability in exchange for a pair of bucket hats. Now, of course, these buckets had gone out of fashion worse than moustaches on saints. 

"Mogey! Smush! Welcome, my friends," Hatman beckoned the pals, giving both of them a kiss on each cheek. He even lifted Mogey's jowls a bit to make sure his smooch landed. Adjusting a necklace made of gold, jewels, leopard fangs, rhino horns, and chunks of meteorite, he ushered them into Hatman's Hats, Man. "I've got something marvelous picked out for each of you. HIGGINS! CHOP CHOP!" 

A rather harried man in a tuxedo with a small flounder wriggling away in his breast pocket scurried forward holding two hat boxes the size of helipads. 

"Away with you, Higgins," Hatman muttered, shooing the tuxedoed man with a hand bearing at least seven different rings.

"Sir, I--"

"I SAID THAT WILL BE ALL, HIGGINS," howled Hatman. Higgins scurried back the way he had come, leaving the hat boxes behind. "As I was saying," Hatman continued, rolling his eyes, "I've found Hatman originals that will complement each of your, ahem, physiques beautifully. You first, Smush."

Hatman opened the first hat box to reveal an enormous sun hat made entirely out of tortilla chip. The pals gasped.

"And for you, Mogey, I wanted to do something extra special. I remember how much you like birds..."

"I actively despise birds," Mogey mumbled.

"...and so I wanted to capture your avian spirit," Hatman went on. "Behold!" He removed the second hat box's lid, unveiling a wide-brimmed straw boater hat with an extremely ugly and - it is not unfair to say - parsimonious-looking penguin mounted atop it. 

"What in heaven's name is that foul creature?" Mogey exclaimed.

"I think it's a crow?" Smush offered. "Some kind of swift-flying bird for sure."

"Enjoy the hats!" Hatman announced. "I've got to go fit the mayor for a new extra large bowler I've invented. I'm calling it," he whispered conspiratorially, "the 'big bowler.' Ta-ta!" 

"You know," said Mogey once Hatman disappeared, "I think I liked him better before this big hat craze. Back when he was just a man who loved high stakes Trouble and hat soup."

"I'm not so sure," said Smush, crunching an enormous bite from the brim of his hat. "I think he's got some good ideas."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush: 2023 Edition - Episode 7

 "I've been thinking," announced Smush one clammy Sunday morning, "that we should repave the drive."

"Capital idea," Mogey agreed. "What shall be our substrate of choice? Tarmacadam? Cement? Grass?"

"I've got something better than any of those in mind: Gravel."

"Gravel, you say? How peculiar. The biscuit kind or the mashed potatoes kind?"

"That's gravy," said Smush. "Gosh, Mogey, does everything come back to food with you?"

"What else is there?"

"For the love of blubber," Smush said, shaking his head. "Gravel is just a load of really small rocks. But I don't think we should use just any gravel. Not on our drive. For our drive, we're going to use fruity pebbles."

"But--"

"I know what you're worried about," Smush interrupted, "all that breakfast cereal will mean ants. And ants will mean anteaters. And we can't afford another aardvark war, not after how Aardvark War III decimated the local economy. But just think how lovely and crisp fruity pebbles will sound beneath the buggy's wheels. How delicious our drive will smell on a hot summer afternoon."

"But, Smush," Mogey said at last, "as delightful as that sounds, what about May Day? Toucan Sam will never bring us May Day presents if we decorate our drive with the products of his sworn enemies." 

"Bosh!" exclaimed Smush, plopping a case of fruity pebbles onto the table (of course, consulting with Mogey about repaving the drive had been a mere formality all along). "How many silly tales did your Pappy tell you? There's no such thing as--"

There Smush was interrupted by an ominous tapping at the kitchen window. Its source was a toucan beak: Curved, cruel, and clearly in pursuit of rampant vengeance.