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Good morning everybody…and I mean that! It was a spectacular weekend here at The Compound…well, by Compound standards anyway.

Cousin Fred and I made it back here in time on Friday to kick off the Pathetic Order of the Jackrabbit – Original Charter (P.O.J.O.C.) celebration of…well, we aren’t sure. But it was a glorious celebration of whatever the hell. I’m still recovering.

I had a special surprise planned for the usual gathering of idiots. For those of you who are new to CCB – well, you should really go back and read all of the posts in the past – but, I’m feeling rather benevolent this morning so I will run down the list that is the “usual gathering of idiots.”

Let’s see, there’s: Jake the Snake – He’s a local Roto-Rooter technician who has made a fortune on a contract clearing drains for Cosmic City. He also just landed a position as a consultant with the City to devise storm water drainage schemes; Terry Two-Fingers – He’s made a living “charming” rattlesnakes over near Freedom. He holds the world speed record for killing, skinning, and cooking a rattlesnake – all while only having two fingers remaining; Crisco Carl – Carl has the misfortune of having been born with Irish eyebrows. Seriously, they’re completely unruly and are only tamed with a dab of Crisco, a trick he learned from his mother who used Crisco shortening on a Q-Tip to swab his ears as a kid; Next up is K-Y Kelly. Kelly is a former proctologist who lost his license to practice medicine when the hospital he was working for (over in Shattuck) realized he was totally blind in one eye and could barely see out of the other. He’s great to have around for emergency room stories, and; Last but not least, Harry the Hoarder. Harry is a world record holder himself for having the biggest collection of men’s magazines from 1940-1974. Local Boy Scouts have been known to knife one another to be the first to ring his doorbell during the annual Boy Scouts’ Paper Recycling Drive). 

Those are the Original Charter members who live here locally. We get together at least once a month to BBQ something that’s already dead and drink copious amounts of alcohol – hey, it’s what Pathetic Jackrabbits do! Oh, but we are a charitable organization. No, seriously. We have a widows and orphans fund that we use to pay for our monthly meetings so we can think of new ways to increase the bottom line of the widows and orphans fund. Plus, our monthly alcohol purchases make a significant impact to the Alcoholic Beverage Sales Tax revenues enjoyed by Cosmic County (they sent us a letter of appreciation last month).

We’re a magnanimous bunch, I’m telling you!

So, imagine everyone’s surprise when three of the VERY ORIGINAL Pathetic Jackrabbits showed up at The Compound Friday night for the meeting. They were in town for another big event, but took time out from the schmoozefest to join us for a gathering of P.O.J.O.C. Allow me to introduce: There was Jackie the Mad Jurist. He will soon appear on a revival of the 1960’s game show, “What’s My Line,” where a panel of D-list Hollywood “celebrities” will try to guess which of the three people before them is what he claims to be. If he can fool the panel, he wins a prize. He should be pretty good at the game since he has practice dodging people’s questions in malls and bars about why he looks so familiar to them. Jackie spends most of his time behind the bench issuing bench warrants for the likes of me, which is why I can never set foot in his county; Also making an appearance on Friday was Mick the Indemnifier. Mick has made a good living offering protection to people, who show their thanks by dropping sacks of cash onto the desk in his palatial office. Mick doesn’t drive himself, but has a drunken chauffer who unsteadily takes him everywhere he needs to go. The final Pathetic Jackrabbit who made an appearance Friday night was Steve the Solicitor. The dude has done very well over the years, but the thing that gets me…and I mean really gets me…is that over the decades since the founding of P.O.J.O.C., we’ve all changed. We’ve gotten older, fatter, and grayer. I mean when Terry Two-Fingers joined us, he had ten fingers. But, not Steve…the guy doesn’t change or seem to age. Not a wrinkle or ounce of flab. Weird, I’m telling you! I bet he sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber at night.

The real surprise came when Jackie the Mad Jurist showed up with a cousin of his…a guy I’ve not seen in 40 years. Normally, P.O.J.O.C. meetings are closed to outsiders, but Jackie the Mad Jurist insisted that his cousin stay since he would be the designated driver for those who were heading back to Cosmic City later that evening. We sat him over at the kiddie table with Cousin Fred.

The evening’s meal consisted of huge aged mastodon steaks that Steve the Solicitor brought with him from the city. The label on the packaging read Manny’s House of Weird Meat in Nichols Hills. I must say that was, without exception, the best mastodon I’ve ever had. Nicely done, Manny, nicely done.

All in all, it was a great evening…whisky was consumed, lies were told, feelings were hurt, tears were shed, but fortunately, this time anyway, there was no gunfire.

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