The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 596

Mogey and Smush had planned their most epic heist to a T. Supplies had been gathered, blueprints had been analyzed, and the two pals were now tucked away in Baron Mookalverg's attic, biding their time to steal the Baron's most famous bag of candy bears from his sweets safe.

"Ok, Mogey, let's go over this one more time," Smush said. "You'll creep downstairs to the second floor drawing room, at which point I'll detonate the C4 you plastered around the Baron's sweets safe. Then you swipe the candy bears and I'll cover you with my slingshot as you sneak out through the back yard. We'll rendezvous at the water tower at 0800."

"I don't know, Smush - why don't we just ask Baron Mookalverg for the bag of candy bears?"

"Ask? Are you mad? Why would you suggest such a confounded idea?"

"I'm just not so sure this plan is going to work," Mogey replied. "For one thing, I don't even know what C4 is. Is it some kind of gun? I just plastered glow-in-the-dark play-doh around the sweets safe to help us find it if the lights go out."

"Mogey," Smush said, "you have got to be the worst heist partner in the business. This is the seventh time we've tried to steal Baron Mookalverg's prize candy bears and you've yet to contribute anything to the mission besides play-doh and these bandanas you made us wear."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 595

Mogey was hanging out with his pal Smush one day, kicking a soccer ball around inside a giant's footprint, when an idea came to him.

"Did you ever notice that soccer balls and volleyballs are basically the same thing?" he asked, kicking the ball into the imprint of the giant's pinky toe, where it lodged sturdily. "Those fellows in the sporting goods industry must be dum-dum-dimmy-dumbs."

"Or are they geniuses?" Smush replied. "Just think: By selling a 'different' ball for the two sports, they sell twice as many!"

"I stand by my statement."

"The dum-dum-dimmy dumbs thing?"

"Yes," said Mogey. "I maintain that they would sell three times as much with a unified ball, since that also opens the door to create the hybrid sport of voccerball! Imagine seeing the tallest, slenderest athletes in the world spike voccerballs with their feet... oh yes, it would be a sight to behold."

"So voccerball brings gangliness, some sort of net, and headers to the table?" Smush asked. "What about fake injuries... can you give me fake injuries?"

"That I can."

"I'm in," Smush whispered excitedly. "This voccerball is officially your best idea since cheese cookies."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 594

Mogey and Smush huddled together for warmth as they sat high in the ancient beech tree, watching their traps. They were trying to catch the Chirruping Domp, a creature so rare that only one of them had ever lived, and even that one had but a single leg.

"The key to catching a Chirruping Domp," Smush whispered knowledgeably, "is to attract it using the scent of its mate. That's why I baited my trap with a single goose feather that I rubbed with rose petals every night for a month."

"But the Chirruping Domp hasn't got a mate," Mogey said. "Only one of them has ever lived."

"True, but it doesn't know that. And a goose feather is the closest thing there is to a Chirruping Domp feather."

Despite his confidence, the pals watched Smush's trap for hours without success. Just as they were about to give up, they heard a loud springing sound and the unmistakeable squawk of a trapped Chirruping Domp coming, not from Smush's trap, but from the trap Mogey had established.

"You've done it!" Smush exclaimed. "You've trapped the Chirruping Domp, Mogey! What in the world did you use for bait?"

"A churro dipped in peanut butter," Mogey replied. "But good luck with that feather thing."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 593

"Smush, Smush! I've got to ask you something!" Mogey hollered, running into the barn at such a clip that he scared Giacomo, Smush's favorite llama, into a sneezing fit. And for those who have never seen a llama sneeze, just know that it is not a pretty picture.

"Yes, Mogey? What is it?" said Smush, who was milking the cows. Mogey took so long catching his breath that Smush milked four additional cows while his pal was bent over, wheezing.

"Some gents at the factory told me that I was smoking my pipe all wrong!" Mogey said finally. "They said I didn't put the right stuff in there - what do you pack into the bowl of your pipe?"

"Pipe tobacco."

"Ugh - that's what they were smoking too! How do you do it, Smushster? That tobacco is disgusting."

"Well, what do you smoke out of your pipe?"

"I don't smoke anything!" Mogey exclaimed. "I just cram a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie into it and inhale the scent."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 592

"30 seconds more," said the official, glancing down at his watch.

"Come on, Mogey, old buddy, you can do it!" Smush whispered. He and the world records official stood over Mogey's bed, watching his pal snooze peacefully.

"20 seconds...."

Smush gritted his teeth and willed his friend to stay asleep.

"10 seconds..." the official counted. "Annnnnnd, time!"

Smush waited a few more moments, just in case, then shook Mogey awake, grabbing him up in a violent bear hug.

"You did it, Mogey! I knew you could!"

"Wha--?" Mogey asked groggily.

"You just set the world record for longest time asleep!" Smush exclaimed. "It'll be in all the papers tomorrow."

"That's interesting," Mogey replied, yawning mightily. "I suppose that's enough for today, isn't it?"

"I suppose..." Smush said.

"Good," Mogey answered. "Because I could sure use a nap."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 591

After Mogey and Smush were caught, tried, and convicted for grand hot dog larceny, they were forced to join a work crew as part of the stern sentence handed out by the Honorable Francis Ball-Park (an heir to a hot dog fortune, though he claimed it did not affect his ruling). The work crew set to digging ditches behind the mayor's house that would carry the mayor's spittoon juice far away from the city center.

After nary an hour of shoveling, Mogey's hands were raw and sore. He could barely hold his shovel any longer, leg alone dig it into the the earth, but the overseer was relentless, cracking a whip and shouting obscenities in Mogey's general direction.

"I don't think I can go on!" Mogey whispered to his pal. "My hands feel like balls of fire with fat little fingers sticking out of them."

"Your hands just need to toughen up," Smush replied. "You've never shoveled a day in your life. You need calluses, like me!"

"But how did you get those? You've never shoveled a day in your life either."

"They're detachable. I got Uncle Ernesto to smuggle me a set of stick-on calluses."

"Oy! Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-stupid!" the overseer shouted with another crack of his whip. "Get a move on! These spittoon juice ditches aren't going to dig themselves."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 590

Smush was reading the funny pages of the So Totally Super Serious Financial Economic Times one morning when Mogey appeared, wearing a leather vest, a red cape, and scuba diving goggles.

"Today is the day," Mogey announced.

"Yes?"

"Today is the day I ride Mister Lumpernoodle's waterwheel... all the way around."

"All the way?" Smush gasped. "But that's impossible! The physics alone...."

"I can do it," Mogey promised. "But I need your help."

Half an hour later Mogey and Smush were hanging out sketchily near Mister Lumpernoodle's grist mill. When it seemed that no one was watching, Mogey ran to the waterwheel and hopped into one of the buckets while Smush hurried over to the sluice gate.

"Now!" Mogey shouted, donning his goggles and looking supremely dorky. Smush opened the sluice full tilt, sending a sizable wave rushing toward the waterwheel. The wheel spun at tremendous speed, carrying Mogey up and around then dunking him down into the stream and finally flinging him high into the air.

"What are you boys doing out here?" Mister Lumpernoodle hollered as Mogey landed with a thud not five feet in front of him. Mister Lumpernoodle cocked his shotgun. "You got that darn wheel moving so fast that it ground all my corn into a powder so fine that it'll only be fit for sprinkling under my arms. I'll smell like corn from now til eternity! Corney, they'll call me, Corney the Corn-pone Corndog."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 589

"Mogey, I think it's time we got a new clock," Smush said one morning as the two pals sat in the shadows of their behemoth old grandfather clock.

"Why would we do that?" Mogey asked.

"For starters, because this clock only goes to 11. But also because it hasn't ticked a tock in years."

"I don't see the problem."

"Don't you ever get sick of being late to things all the time?" Smush said.

"Not at all," Mogey replied, "and if we get rid of this clock I'll lose the perfect excuse. Everyone will be all 'why are you three hours late to the funeral?' and instead of saying I have a wonderful old clock at home that I can't bring myself to replace, I'll have to just admit I'm lazy. No one will save me a plate of potato salad if I say that! And there is nothing tastier than funeral potato salad. Nothing."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 588

Mogey and Smush were journeying along the rocky coastline of Brabashadur when they came upon a building the likes of which they'd never seen before.

"Say, Smush," Mogey began, "what do you suppose they built that for? It's too tall and skinny to be much of a house, but there's no cropland around here, so it can't be a silo either."

"Not to mention the fact that it's windowless all the way up until those enormous windows at the top. Someone's shining a light up there so bright that you must be able to see it for miles. I haven't the foggiest idea what it could be."

"Let's ask this marmoset," Mogey suggested, gesturing to a passerby. "They're usually the knowledgeable sort. Excuse me, goodly marmoset? What is the purpose of yonder building?"

"I'm actually just a very hairy man," the passerby replied. "And that there's what we call a lighthouse."

"Pardon me, marmoset," Smush interrupted angrily, "but I believe my friend asked you what the purpose of that house is, not how much it weighs."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 587

One sunny afternoon, Mogey and Smush strode out to the watermelon patch, only to find a chubby puppy staring wonderingly at their watermelons.

"Ahoy there," Smush said. "Can we help you with something?"

"Gee whiz, mister," the puppy said. "But that watermelon there, the second one on the left, is the biggest, bestest watermelon I ever laid eyes on."

"The biggest and bestest ever?" Mogey asked, his voice all atremble. "But where do you come from?"

"Cat Tuft Bluff," the puppy replied.

"Cat Tuft Bluff?" Mogey exclaimed. "Cat Tuft Bluff? They have the greatest watermelons in the world in Cat Tuft Bluff! Smush, do you realize what this means? We're a shoe in to win the watermelon contest at the County Fair this year."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," the puppy interjected.

"Why is that?" Smush asked.

"I'm a puppy. My eyes only opened, like, forty-five minutes ago and I came straight here. Supposedly you guys have some really slow, really delicious chickens hanging around somewhere?"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 586

"Smush, I have a question," Mogey said as the two pals brought the eleventh - and final - slop bucket of the day out to their famously obese hogs.

"Oh Nelly," Smush replied with a sigh.

"I've always wondered: Why do we have that windmill on top of the barn? It looks nice and all, but does it serve any real purpose?"

"Silly Mogey," Smush said, "where do you think all our flour comes from?"

"I always thought it came from wheat," Mogey answered.

"It's made from wheat, but the windmill grinds the wheat up into flour with those two enormous stoney looking things in the barn."

"Well, that answers my next question as well."

"You were going to ask what the stones were for?" Smush queried.

"No, I was going to ask whether you always had to sound like a know-it-all, or just some of the time."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 585

"Why is it," Mogey asked on a crisp fall day when he and Smush were picking nectarines, "that librarians always seem to wear glasses?"

"Haven't you seen how tiny the print is in those books they read?" Smush replied. Mogey thought about this carefully.

"Nope," he said finally.

"Good point," Smush rejoined. "Neither have I."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 584

Mogey and Smush huddled together inside their reinforced oaken barrel as it floated inexorably toward Hugeness Falls. No one had ever successfully made it over Hugeness Falls in a barrel, but then, no one had ever attempted to go over Hugeness Falls in a barrel.

"Say Mogey," Smush said. "Quick question: Why are we doing this?"

"You mean why are we about to go over an impossibly high waterfall in a barrel?" Mogey asked.

"Indeed."

"Isn't it obvious?" Mogey said. "There's a cafe at the bottom of Hugeness Falls that makes the best root beer floats. I figured this would be the quickest way down there."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 583

"When's the last time you scraped the frost off the chicken coop?" Smush asked Mogey one cold morning.

"Can't say I've done that since Thursday last," Mogey replied absentmindedly.

"What?" Smush exclaimed. "But you know full well that if the frost gets too thick, that chicken coop turns into a mighty frost monster with chickens for a heart and chickens for a liver."

"Darn it!" Mogey said. "I knew I'd been forgetting something."

The two pals threw on their overcoats and rushed out to the chicken coop, where they breathed a momentary sigh of relief. There was a hefty layer of frost on the windward side, but it didn't appear that a frost monster had formed yet. At that moment however, an enormous snowy head with a bulbous nose and gloomy eyes rose from the coop.

"Hullo," the frost monster said slowly, "I wuz just wundering if yew might gave me a sput of chiken feed?"

"AGGGHHHH! Frost monster!" Mogey shouted as the two pals turned tail and ran for the hills.

"Oh," the frost monster rejoined sadly, "I guess naught."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 582

A wily old fox named Frankie O'Xylophone broke into Mogey and Smush's hen house more than a dozen times before they finally caught him. Mogey and Smush knew they would have to use any means necessary to find out how Frankie had been sneaking in if they were to keep their eggs safe in the future.

"Alright, O'Xylophone," Smush said. "Spill the beans. How do you do it? A loose floorboard?"

"No," Frankie replied. He was manacled to a spinny chair beneath a hot white light. "I usually just walk in through the front door."

"Nonsense!" Smush cried. "Only an imbecile would believe such a story. Is it the roof you come through?"

"Seriously, I just waltz right in through the front door," Frankie repeated, swishing his bright red tail. "It's not like you have it guarded or anything."

"I can see we'll need to resort to more desperate measures. Mogey, fetch my whips!"

"Yes, sir," Mogey responded. He began to scurry away but then abruptly changed directions and scurried back. "Just to be clear, you want your licorice whips, correct?"

"Of course," Smush said. "And be sure to bring the black ones. We're going for the kind of heavy-duty torture red licorice just can't provide."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 581

"Leopold!" Smush announced suddenly one afternoon as he and Mogey were sippin' on some eggnog.

"Leopold?" Mogey asked.

"Leopold," Smush confirmed.

"L-L-Leopold," Mogey muttered, as if the name felt funny in his mouth.

"Leopooooooooooooooooold," Smush sang.

For several moments there was silence except for the omnipresent rumbling of their respective tumblies.

"Are you quite sure?" Mogey asked finally.

"Of course I'm sure," Smush replied. "The troll who lives beneath Blubberburp Bridge is named Leopold. Either that or Carlos - you know I get all those Russian names confused."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 580

"Mogey," Smush said as he squeezed the last drops of pig milk from the udder of his prize milking pig, Wolfgang, "it's high time we had a vacation. What say we take a journey over the Fangtooth Mountains to Loskiland?"

"Meh," Mogey replied, "I'm not a big fan of Loskiland. The laws are just too strict in that country."

"How so?" Smush inquired as he gave Wolfgang a pat on the head and sent her on her way.

"Did you know you can't even steal in Loskiland?"

"Mogey, you can't steal here either."

"Well not from your loved ones, no, but in Loskiland you can't even steal from complete strangers," Mogey said. "I mean, the nerve of those Loskilanders. Honestly."

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 579

"I think it's finally time," Mogey said one day, "for me to get a haircut."

"Thank heavens," Smush replied, breathing a sigh of relief. "Waist-length dreadlocks really do not suit you."

"What style do you think I should go with?"

"Well, a mullet has always done you proud in the past...."

"True, a mullet is a good fit with my personality," Mogey acknowledged, "but I want something more professional this time around. I'm debating between a mohawk and a head-manchu. That's like a fu-manchu on top of--"

"I know what a head-manchu is," Smush muttered before chugging three quarters of a glass of buttermilk. "Do I look like a child to you?"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 578

Mogey and Smush had been farmsitting Farmer Bananagram's expansive lands and barns for over a week. Smush had been hesitant about the responsibilities at first, but Mogey had insisted and eventually won him over. "It'll be the easiest $300 we ever made," he had said. "It's the dog days of summer: There's scarcely anything to be done on a farm this time of year."

Finally the last day of their duty rolled around, and the pals woke up late.

"Maybe we should do a bit of work today, just for show" Mogey said as he stumbled blearily upon Smush in Farmer Bananagram's well stocked pantry. "I did tell the farmer we would harvest 1,000 acres of stinkbarley before he came back, but that shouldn't take long."

"What?" Smush demanded, nearly dropping a jar of stewed tomatoes.

"Oh, wait a moment," Mogey said, pulling a crumpled sheet of paper from his overalls pocket, "that's not right."

"Phew, you gave me quite a scare there. Farmer Bananagram is known to be pretty liberal with his riding crop when his temper is up."

"Yes, it's hectares, not acres," Mogey replied. "1,000 hectares of stinkbarley. We could do that by, when? 2:30 this afternoon? A hectare is about half a stalk of barley, right?"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 577

"Okie-dokie," Mogey announced, lugging a heavy carpet bag down the stairs with a bump-bump-bump. "I'm all packed and ready to go! When do we leave?"

"Leave?" Smush asked. "For where?"

"The Isle of Paradise, where the ladies all know your name and the lily pads are made of pancakes."

"I'm not going to the Isle of Paradise," Smush replied. "Are you going to the Isle of Paradise?"

"I thought you said you knew a guy who had two free tickets to the Isle of Paradise aboard the steamship Zanzibarian Fool," Mogey said, trying not to sound too crestfallen.

"Nope, I never said that."

"Oh. It was just a classic Mogey and Smush miscommunication, I guess," said Mogey. And he sadly dragged his carpet bag upstairs to unpack a half gallon of sunblock, a plastic sandcastle mold, a pair of scratch-and-sniff books, and three pounds of knockwurst.

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 576

One day, Mogey and Smush decided to settle it once and for all: Which one of them could hold his breath the longest? The debate over which of them had the more legendary lung capacity had been so hotly contested over the years that it had resulted in two eye gougings, seven permanently scarring Indian sunburns, and, memorably, a night spent in jail on charges of inciting a one-man riot.

The referee for the epic breath-holding contest was Mogey's and Smush's mutual friend Tortoise Richard, and he started it in the usual way (by slapping his tail against the back of his shell). What followed were thirty of the quietest seconds of Mogey's and Smush's lifetimes.

"Hold it!" Mogey burst out suddenly, less than a minute in. "He's cheating, ref! He's not holding his breath at all, he's just puffing his cheeks out!"

"That's a lie!" Smush retorted. "And anyway, you've been cheating too. I've seen you sneak at least three sips of slurpee over the course of this contest."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"It's a physical impossibility to hold you breath and drink a slurpee at the same time. Even the most childish child knows that."

"We'll have to get a judges ruling on this," Mogey said. "Tortoise Richard? Hey, where'd he go?"

But Tortoise Richard couldn't hear Mogey, for he had discovered a pail of cabbages outside a nearby Burger King that required his immediate attention.

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 575

"Smush! Smush!" Mogey exclaimed, charging into his pal's study in a state that can only be described as a kerfuffle. "I think I've got it: The next great invention for all mankind!"

"Go on," Smush replied, spinning his chair around in a slightly evil manner.

"I call it it 'the roly-poly,'" Mogey said. "It's a circular device that you could attach to a heavy object, allowing you to move the object with only a tiny fraction of the force it would take to drag it."

"That sounds like a wheel."

"A what now?"

"A wheel," Smush repeated. "We've got four of them on our wagon."

"Don't tell me someone beat me to the punch!" Mogey cried. "It was that Willard Otterbottom, wasn't it?"

"What are you talking about, Mogey? Wheels have existed for thousands of years."

"Curse you, Otterbottom," Mogey muttered. "Always looking at my notebooks. One of these days I'll see that you receive the harshest punishment the patent office has to offer. Yes, it shall be mandatory ostracism from your inventor peer group for you!"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 574

"Do you think anything at Patty's will require a sharp knife to eat?" Mogey asked Smush as the two pals scrambled about the house, getting ready for their favorite dinner of the year: 2-for-1 Night at Patty's Pantry & All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.

"I don't think so," Smush replied. "Why do you ask?"

"I want to make sure I bring the right tools for the job, don't I?"

"Hold on," Smush persisted. "You're bringing your own utensils to Patty's Pantry now? Why?"

"Well the utensils they give you are just so small," Mogey said, hefting an enormous fork and spoon intended for serving salads. "The only way to get your money's worth is to bring a real man's silverware. You don't think I'll need a spork as well, do you?"

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 573

"Aaaaghhhh!" Mogey screamed as he scrambled up the cellar stairs.

"What is it this time?" Smush said, lowering his spectacles in the most dastardly manner possible.

"There's a monstrous monster in the basement! He's out to butter our ears and eat us with rye toast!"

"Calm down, lad, calm down. We'll go down to the cellar together and I'll show you there's no monster."

Mogey and Smush descended the creaky stairs together (Mogey much more tentatively than Smush). They rounded the stacks of salt pork barrels and walked past the rows of pickled goods of all kinds.

"There!" Mogey whispered sharply, pointing at the opposite wall. "See him?"

"My goodness, Mogey, you might actually be right this time!" Smush replied. The figure - a shadow in the candlelight - took up most of the wall. It was a four-legged beast whose cruel snout seemed to be sniffing the air to pick up their scents. A razor-sharp horn atop its head looked powerful enough to gore a full-grown blue whale. Mogey and Smush clutched each other in mortal terror.

Just as they were about to scream like little girls and run for cover, Mogey and Smush's prize pig Buttercup trotted out from the shadows, a party hat from her birthday celebration the night before still strapped to her head.

The Abbreviated Adventures of Mogey & Smush Volume 572

One evening, Mogey and Smush were returning home from La Fiesta di Hombre Murcielago when they encountered a bear standing in the middle of the road.

"Who goes there?" said the bear. "Give me all the honey you've got."

"Whoa!" Mogey exclaimed. "A talking bear!"

"Yes, yes," the bear replied, "it's very unusual, I know. Just give me the honey, will you?"

"Can you do any accents?" Smush asked.

"For goodness sakes!" the bear cried. "If I do an accent will you please, please give me your honey?"

"Sure," Smush replied. The bear then delivered the soliloquy from Hamlet in a perfect Austrian accent, complete with menacing scowl.

"Now where's my honey?" he demanded.

"We haven't got any," Mogey answered. "But I do have some leftover Thai lettuce wraps around here somewhere if you'd like those."