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RMS Humbug and
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RMS Humbug and
RMS Humbug and RMS Tiny Invite You To Their Maiden Voyages!
On September 22, a day that looks, smells, and tastes like any other day – which, for that matter, it probably is – an “ordinary” person much like yourself (maybe even yourself?) finds in the back of their cupboard a five-year-old mayonnaise jar. The nutrition facts label reads as follows:
Vitamin B12 – 2%
Vitamin Z564 – 26%
You, random but lucky person, are invited to the maiden voyages of the RMS Tiny and the RMS Humbug, two cruise ships belonging to the Ridiculous Management of Seagoers (RMS) Company! Isn't that awesome? It starts on October 10, so you have lots of time to pack! Isn't that even awesomer! And it's completely FREE*! Please RSVP by October 5. Anyone who wishes to join after October 5th but before October 10 has a lot less chance of making it onto the ship on time. Anyone attempting to board the ship after October 10 will find that the ship has already left, and I am afraid that under no circumstances can we pick up latecomers.
Cheesiness – 41%
Corniness - 22%
Good Old Random Humour – 5555555555%
Logic - (-111%)
Vitamin A+ - 4.67%
The person squints to read the fine print (the finest print they've ever seen) at the bottom of the label:
*This may or may not include certain expenses, including but not limited to: food, accommodation, extreme trauma counselors, staff, my new billion-dollar fridge, etc. NOTE: Some of these expenses may seem entirely unrelated to the subject at hand, but let me assure you that, when viewed from a holistic point of view, they are all completely necessary.
-Your Future Captain,
The Ominous
ANOTHER NOTE: Any complaints, questions, forwarded expenses, or wishes to sue may all be sent to John F.Q. and CaptainRead of the Cricket Chatterbox!
ANOTHER NOTE: We here at RMS Co. believe that there are two possible reasons why the Titanic sank. One is that it had such a huge, grand name that the sea serpents got angry and told the iceburgers to “let 'em have it broadside!”. Of course, as you all know, iceburgers don't have very good aim, so instead of “having it broadside”, the Titanic was rammed from the front, causing the deaths of millions. The other is that everyone thought it was unsinkable, and so we all jinxed it and of course it just had to sink after that. This is why we have built the RMS Tiny and the RMS Humbug. The former ship will be completely unsinkable because of its unassuming name, and the latter will be a test to see if we were right. The RMS Humbug has been equipped with all the sorts of things that superstitious sailors think contribute to the angering of sea serpents and the sinking of ships, and it will probably be sunk almost immediately.
AND ANOTHER NOTE: When everyone has boarded the RMS Tiny (no one will want to go on the RMS Humbug, we are certain), their names will inexplicably appear in Pandora's Fedora, owned by your captain, The Ominous (that's me!). A “murderer” will be drawn out of it, and the game will begin! From then on, those whose names are drawn out of Pandora's Fedora will “disappear”, unfortunate “victims” to the will of the hat.
YET ANOTHER TEDIOUS NOTE: This was inspired by T.O.N.'s Ski Lodge Murder Mysteries(TM), and we here at RMS Co. sincerely hope that it is different enough to avoid any copyright issues. To be sure of this, there is a rather severe plot twist that we can't tell you a single thing about. We will not use the Ski Lodge, nor any of the characters from it, and we will attempt to use our own style of writing, no matter how much we may be unconsciously influenced into doing otherwise because of the sheer awesomeness of the Ski Lodge. "Days" will be written whenever possible during the busy schedule of The Ominous, and you can hope to expect from one to three of them per week. Everyone who signs up may post their view of the "day," but please wait until you've read whatever The Ominous has written before doing so, and because of the severe yet unknowable plot twist, your memories will be wiped once you die, so there are unfortunately no ghosts. If you really want to, dreams or hallucinations are allowed.
The person snorts dismissively. “Some silly, outdated advertisement or conspiracy meant to get more people to eat mayonnaise! Well, it certainly didn't work very well...” They think, staring at the uneaten mayonnaise jar for a few seconds, and then throwing it over their shoulder into a garbage can and inadvertently causing a snowstorm in Italy.
DINGALING! DINGALING! The phone rings. You pick it up, wrenching your gaze from the scattered tea leaves in front of you that had just produced the story above. “Hello?”
“Good evening. This is Super Mayonnaise Incorporated, business partner with RMS Co. We have been looking through our records, and it has come to our inattention that the five-year-old mayonnaise jar you just now allegedly threw over your shoulder was never sold, stolen, or even brought into existence in the first place. It does not exist, and neither does your house, no matter how real it may appear. Furthermore, you do not exist. We deny everything, and have lawsuits in place to make sure you do not claim otherwise. In fact, I am talking to thin air right now, because you do not exist. Neither does your telephone. Goodbye, thin air, and thank you for your co-operation.”
Before you can speak, the line goes dead. Now thoroughly mystified, you decide to thwart reason and pack your bags to wherever it was that the ships were supposed to leave from. Not that there had been a location mentioned anywhere in the story your tea leaves just told you, but you still think you have an idea of where to go. You hope.
submitted by The Ominous, age unknown, mysterious
(September 22, 2014 - 7:25 pm)
(September 22, 2014 - 7:25 pm)
Danie: *yells* EVERYBODY LISTEN UP! WE NEED TO FIND A ROOM THAT HAS A GIANT SPINNING WHEEL SO WE CAN FULLFILL OUR FUN!!! AND I THINK YOU GUYS KNOW WHAT I MEAN BY...
Squeak: *in a bored voice* you're gonna attach me to the wheel and throw pies at me.
MP: YEAH!
(October 19, 2014 - 11:55 am)
Awwwww yeah!
(October 19, 2014 - 6:22 pm)
I had to ask George for a wheelbarrow in order to carry around that annotated LOTR. I hadn't looked at the last page yet, but it was heavy enough to be about 3000 pages. He took a piece of paper from a table, took a wrench from his tool belt and immediately the paper began to fold itself into a vague kind of cart. "I hope that will suffice," he said, and plucked the volume from my strained arms as if the book were a feather and plopped it into the formerly-paper wheelbarrow. "Though I do warn you about getting violent books from that library. As you have seen with John F.Q.'s Edgar Allen Poe, creatures can occasionally emerge from the books they are written in."
As if to prove his point, the cover lifted just a little to show the ugly, twisted head of an orc.
(October 19, 2014 - 4:42 pm)
TOP TOP TOP TOP TOP TOP TOP TOP TOP TOP
(October 21, 2014 - 6:45 am)
top top top don't let this get below page one top top top
(October 22, 2014 - 5:22 pm)
Pot, pot pot pot pot pot pot po tpo tpo tpo potptot pot ptotpotpot
(October 23, 2014 - 2:13 pm)
~Curio~
Well, I wouldn't have thought this possible on the RMS Tiny, but I am bored. I finished the book I took from the library (The Cabinet of Curiosities, which was obviously interesting to me) about half an hour ago. I've been just sitting on this bed, wondering what there is to do here and, at the same time, not leaving for fear of getting lost in the Tiny's cavernous confines.
Finally, I can't take it anymore. I push myself off the bed, walk over to the door, and push it open. In the seventeen seconds I stand there, gaping, pondering the decision, I witness:
-Indigo K. dueling CaptainRead broadsword-on-curtain-rod
-Squeak being chased from Air's room into his own room by Danie and Fluffy
-John F.Q. quoting LOTR at the top of his lungs
-Amy L. asking BookWizard where the library is
-BookWizard asking Forrest where the library is
-Everinne, simply standing there with a bucket on her head, covered in ice cream
-Winter Firefly shouting "MOUNTAIN DEEEEW!!!" then collapsing in a dead faint
-MapleSyurp complaining to George the Handyman about the design of her room
-Masked Piester hurling coconut cream pies all over the place (and one cherry pie, judging by the stain on the wall over Madeline's door)
-apple-like objects I can't even begin to describe flying out of Bookbug's room
Needless to say, I decide to go and look for adventure. With all this crazy stuff happening already, it'll get even crazier with me there, right? As soon as I cross the threshold, I am hit with a pie, a quote from Gandalf, and a small fluffy bunny who wants to kill me. Prying Squishy off my leg with no small amount of pain and effort, I continue down the hall, getting hit with another pie and an apple-like object in the process. Several turns and yet another rogue pie later (this time MP didn't throw it, I have no idea where it came from), I come upon a very nondescript door. The only thing that is not nondescript about it is the fact that it is slightly open. Intrigued, I peer into the darkness, only to notice a pair of tiny, glowing eyes, a faint scuffling sound, and a nudge on the leg. I look down in surprise. Why, this can only be that familiar four-letter beast, a Captcha! I recognize this one as Gordon, but more pairs of tiny glowing eyes and four-letter murmurings attest to the location of the rest of the Captchas. They must have stowed away! I try to tempt them out, one by one: Bubbles, Mewmew, Nyan, Koda, Spammie, Cappie, Sir Captcha, Squishy (nothing like the adorable killer rabbit of the same name), but they all stay in the darkened room...except my own, Koda, who whisks out the door, whispers "kfog" in my ear, then scoots back into the darkness again. Spreading the fog around the door so I can find it again (hopefully), I make my way back to the hallway of rooms.
************
P.S. I am now calling my captcha Koda. It makes sense, since she said "koda" a while ago and a coda is the tail end of a piece of music.
P.P.S. I'm sorry to hear about the Ghost-O-Tron. Now that I think about it, I didn't remember to factor the Tiny's spatial claudications and moople-warp drive time skew into my calculations, so the forcefield would have been shaped like a doughnut anyway. But I'm glad the Mountain Dew button still works. Obviously, since Winter Firefly would never have been able to smuggle her own aboard.
(October 26, 2014 - 8:45 am)
Brookeira appeared and helped Everinne clean off, soon turning back into mP and attacking John F.Q as a LOTR quote off ensued.
(October 26, 2014 - 9:40 pm)
Actually I'm not obsessed with Mountain Dew,
That was-
*blue frost puff freezing everyone*
THE BLASTER-
Me! Me, me, me, me, me, ME!
*proof thingie*
Winter Firefly-
- Uhhhhh, her. Me. My alter ego!
Oh nd and Squshie, is MY pet, and the Killer Bunny belongs to Danie, and it's name is Snuggles.
(October 26, 2014 - 9:50 pm)
Oops! Double oops and sorry to you, Danie, and the Blaster! *chomp chomp* And Snuggles and Squshie! SOMEONE GET THE MAN-EATING FLUFFBALLS OFF ME!!!
(October 27, 2014 - 5:48 pm)
Squeak: HELP MEEEEEE! SNUGGLES IS CHASING MEEEE!
Danie: GET HIM, SNUGGLES! BITE HIM ON THE BU- *gasps* SQUEAK! YOU FOUND THE WHEEL OF SPINNING!
Squeak: man I'm dead. *tries to run*
Danie: DONT' LET HIM GET AWAY, SNUGGLES! Winter, you grab the wheel of spinning and drag it into my room.
Winter: Sir yes sir! *huffs and puffs* Gee, this thing is heavy.
Squeak: *gets bitten by Snuggles* NOOOOOOO! *faints*
Winter: Is snuggles bite... Deadly or somethin'?
Danie: Well, it makes him turn into a rainbow unicorn that has a urge to jump on the wheel of spinning.
MP: well, that makes our life easier.
(October 26, 2014 - 9:32 pm)
Oy, Ominous, can I get a turn in your days? MP gets all the stage time!!! Pleeease?
(changes to MP) What? It's his fault!
Please, Ommy, can I make an appearance?
(October 29, 2014 - 4:40 pm)
OMMY!!!!??? I have half a mind to make a machine to ppermanently put MP in charge, after you calling by that...that...nickname! However, it just so happens that I've already put you into day 2, so I'll just have to gve you another chance. But if you want that chance, you'd better not ask where the other half of my mind is at the moment!
(October 30, 2014 - 7:51 am)
Sorry for taking so long with the next day, everyone. *growls at mountainloads of schoolwork* I hope Day 2 is good enough to make up for the wait!
NOTE: I try my best to include everyone in each day, but it gets hard to keep track. If I haven't mentioned you two days in a row, say so and I will try to give you a biggish part in the next one.
Some are born great, some have greatness thrust into their hands by that random dude next door, and some aren't great at all. In fact, quite a large percent of the general population aren't great (in the usual sense of the word, which seems to have something to do with being famous and wealthy and useful to the expansion of the human race). I, however, being The Ominous, am not in the general population. Neither are my ships or my passengers. I'll leave you with that cryptic message to hurt your brain while you read RMS Tiny's account of the second day of her maiden voyage...
-The Ominous
Day 2, Ship's Log
6 am – Everyone aboard (except for George, who sleeps like a log. A friendly-looking and very sleepy log.) was awoken by a loud quacking noise. This turned out to be coming from a loud and disgruntled sheep who was wandering the corridors and wondering if any of the furniture tasted like grass. One particular sofa that has a habit of getting up and briskly jogging somewhere else whenever it feels like a change of scenery did, in fact, taste somewhat like the green stuff that grows from the ground, but that might just have been because the sofa was green. Apparently, the sheep had been forced from its usual place of residence by a horde of Captchas.
Those small, furry little creatures had been hiding all night in the sheep's home, and the sheep had finally decided to do something about it by going somewhere else. The only problem is that the sheep had no idea where somewhere else actually was.
The sheep first walked by Everinne's room, but Everinne was already awake, running around her room in circles being chased by a particularly nasty orc. The sheep poked her head in and quacked at the orc, which promptly disappeared. While Everinne stared in amazement at the sheep, a bunch of characters from Lord of The Rings snuck out of the book and down the hall.
"I have a cold." the sheep said, as if that was some sort of explanation, and she quacked again. There was no grass in Everinne's room, so the sheep wandered out again. Everinne raced after it and caught up with it just as it quacked an extremely loud quack outside the doors of Indigo's room, Forrest's room, and Brookeira's room, which were all beside each other. On the other side of the corridor were Danie's room, Winter Firefly's room, Squeak's room, and Captainread's room. I love making things fun for people by rearranging rooms in the night! Anyways, everyone in those rooms, and all the other rooms that I put a little farther down the hall, woke up.
John F.Q. ran out of his room, carrying a large box with the label "Pandora's Box. DO NOT OPEN." Seeing everyone gathered in the hallway in their pajamas rubbing their eyes, brushing their hair, and strumming a banjo, he promptly dumped the box in the nearest trash can, which happened to have a teleport to his room. Then he grinned, grabbed the banjo, and threw it at the ceiling, where it disloodged one of the icecream tubs that Glennis had fixed to the ceiling. The banjo and the icecream exploded in a fit of green powder and, predictably, splattered onto Forrest.
The sheep suddenly caught sight of Forrest's now bright green hair, and leapt at her, quacking wildly. After a brief scuffle, everyone was suddenly wearing bright purple and red polka-dotted tuxedos and straw hats, and the sheep had turned into a penguin. No longer hungry for Forrest's hair, which had apparently looked like grass, it waddled away to find some tuna, baaing rather subduedly.
Aldo peeked round the corner, and then came fully into view, wearing a silver-buttoned suit that reminded Indigo of Elvis Presley. He was carrying a platter of wafer-thin crepes, and he politely offered them to the CBers. "It seems that the Infinite Improbability Drive had a glitch, and it got confused when I rebooted it. You're lucky you aren't chesterfields, or penguins, like that poor sheep who woke you up!"
Everyone nodded wisely, and they all rushed to grab a crepe. Inside every crepe was a slice of lemon, and engraved on the slice of lemon were some words. Aldo cleared his throat. "These are my original fortune-lemony-crepes! There is a fortune on each lemon!" Everyone read their lemons:
John F.Q.'s said: "Cabbages, cabbages, cabbages, potatoes."
Maplesyrup's said: "Look up!" she looked up. Nothing happened. Maplesyrup turned over her lemon, and the other side read: "Haha! Made you look!"
Air's said: "Beware of bright red, and watch out for you head!" Air shrugged. "What does that mean?" He shrugged, and tossed it into the nearest trash can, which happened to have a teleport inside it...
Curio's said: "Curiouser and curiouser. Alice thought the Mad hatter needed a better bow-tie."
Magic's said: "You need a helicopter, don't you? Well, I'm afraid that Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error."
Bookbug's said: "Placing a bookmark in a book is like placing a dagger in a person. They can't wait for you to return and pull it back out." She shivered and hid the lemon in her pocket.
Everyone's lemon had something absolutely ridiculous on it, but I unfortunately don't have time to list them all here.
Suddenly, Glennis appeared with a duster, and rushed around the room, dusting everyone so hard that by the time she had rushed out of the room again, the purple and red polka-dotted tuxedos had been dusted off, and everyone was wearing their normal clothes. Apparently, Aldo's normal clothes are silver-buttoned suits that remind people of Elvis Presley.
11 am – Several hours after the sheep fiasco, George had finally woken up, and he was showing the CBers (well, most of the CBers. The others were in the kitchen helping Aldo and Glennis pry a fictional Gollum off a very shiny dishwasher. He was clinging to the dishwasher's handle and shrieking, "Gollum! Gollum! My precious! My only dishwasher! Gollum! Smeagol wantses clean dishes!"), well anyways, George was showing most of the CBers the Seven Wonders Of The RMS Tiny.
The first wonder was a life-size model of the Eiffel Tower made from cream pies. Squeak thought it was a good thing that Brookeira had locked up MP for the day.
The second wonder was a life-size model of a pyramid made from strawberry pies. Winter Firefly disagreed with Squeak, and wondered if she should take MP's place for the time being. She had never thrown a pie before, you know!
The third wonder was a life-size model of the Taj Mahal, made from blueberry-and-apple pies. Danie grabbed one of the pies and offered it to BookWizard before trying an experimental throw at Squeak. It missed and hit George, who was very angry for a few minutes.
The fourth wonder was an almost-life-size model of The Great Wall of China made from photographs of the earth from the moon, none of them showing the Great Wall of China. Winter firefly convinced Brookeira that she should have let MP take over, but now they had missed their chance for pie throwing.
The fifth wonder was a small empty closet, painted entirely white. It disappointed everyone, even George, who had expected it.
There is no sixth wonder. And the seventh wonder is a picture of a small tv stuck on top of the Eiffel Tower, which George said explained why there was no tv on the ship. That tv shown in the picture was dropped over my side by Glennis, who used to be very clumsy, and then the tv got stuck to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Everyone below the Eiffel Tower saw the tv fall, and since the tv at that time was playing a movie about whales, the screen was blue. "It's a sign! We must all buy Blu-Ray!" they all yelled, and they ran for the stores, trampling an innocent store-clerk who grew up to become a not-so-innocent lawyer who then sued The Ominous. The stores were all sold out when George went to buy a new tv, so that's that.
By the time George finished explaining all this, Gollum had been locked up in my basement (where there are many secret passageways, along with a whole lot of junk from the coat pockets of various people, including Shakespeare, who didn't have coat pockets), and they all had a "light" lunch. This lunch consisted of a huge bath-tub of peach icecream, a personal pie in the face from MP (who had managed to distract Brookeira for a moment) for everyone, and a giant cake that later turned out to have once been a life-size model of the London Eye, made from chocolate pies. Just a small meal!
End Of Ship's Log For Day 2
(October 30, 2014 - 8:06 am)
(Cleans pie off face and eats, satisfied.)
Pie said gimi! He wants pies!
(October 30, 2014 - 7:37 pm)