This week, like most, I begin my newsletter with a peek into The Mooj Mailbag.  Following that I will probably share with you my latest adventures on the road in the Travels with Mooj section.  After that? Who knows.  Think not that The Mooj is being lazy when he stiffs you, yet gain, with a newsletter containing little wisdom.  Instead, look forward to the days when The Mooj will put together another informative newsletter like I did in the old days.  Until then:

Dear Mooj,

I know you have asked us not to send in anymore Skyline Chili stories but I simply must share this one with you.  (I hope you will forgive my imposition but once you’ve read my story you will see why I wanted to share it with you.)  You see Mooj I was born an orphan.  I had no family and was passed from foster home to a foster home until I grew up.  Finally, at the age of 18 the state released me from foster care and I was sent to live in a homeless shelter.  There I met many derelicts and became introduced to a life of crime.  Within months I was in prison doing hard time for hard crimes.  After my release I decided to become a serial killer and then proceeded to commit countless gruesome acts of carnage.  I literally became a killing machine with no conscience.  Before I knew it I was back in prison and sitting on Death Row.  Instead of feeling remorse for my crimes I intensified my savageness and killed off most of the other Death Row inmates.  Because the line to the electric chair shortened with each killing my time of reckoning came sooner than expected.  And now, tonight, at exactly midnight I shall meet my maker.  As is customary in these circumstances I have been asked by the warden to choose a last meal.  Because I have been reading so much about Skyline Chili in your newsletter I decided to have that as my last meal.  In fact, I’m getting the “5-Way, inverted.”  The warden said he would also try to fly in some Tastykakes for dessert.  I simply can’t wait!

Your #1 Fan (until midnight),
A. Savage,
Death Row

The Mooj regrets your upcoming electrocution and hopes that you can find harmony wherever it is that you are going in your afterlife.  (If I were you I wouldn’t worry too much about bringing "winter clothing" if you get my drift.)  This is absolutely the last Skyline Chili letter the Mooj will allow into his humble newsletter.  (And don’t try to slip in any Gold Star Chili stories either—the Mooj is way ahead of you clever Cincinnatians out there.)



Mooj, Doug Redhand here again.  I’m not sure exactly who this fellow J. Edgar Gayson is but let me tell you—he must be one bad muthafkr.  I sent one of my new guys over to talk to someone who supposedly knew of an ex FBI man that had just made a huge deposit in a Swiss bank.  Since the guy I was sending was an ex FBI man himself I figured he would have better luck than I would.  My guy asked the wrong person the wrong question and was sent back to me in a shoe box.  (What was left of him anyway.)  I was also called late last night on my secret phone line and told to “butt out” if I knew what was good for me.  If I were you I’d just forget about this Gayson fellow and let him keep all your money.  He is definitely not someone you should be messing around with.

The Mooj appreciates your advice.  I have already decided to move on and forget about my fortune.  I was sorry to hear about your friend.  I only hope that Gayson had enough mercy not to bore him to tears before killing him.  As far as I’m concerned Gayson can keep all my money as long as I never have to sit and listen to his mindless babbling ever again.   Oh, and another thing: never end a sentence with a preposition.



Mr. Mooj,

Perhaps I can clear up some confusion concerning the great 1977 Ponsitron Roller Rink fire.  My name is Vic Taylor and I am a charter subscriber to The Mooj Weekly Standard and current president of The Mooj Memory Bank.  I checked my notes and found that you mentioned in your August 18, 1997 newsletter that you once had a dear friend named Mahatmas Ghondu, who lived in Boca Raton, Florida back in the late 1970s.  You also mentioned this dear friend was always getting into trouble with the law and that he had once committed a terrible act of arson, which you confessed to so that he wouldn’t have to go back to jail.  You then mentioned being very upset that this friend let you serve the entire 18-month sentence for him without once coming to visit you in jail.  Perhaps you thought he burned down the roller rink and confessed to the crime (without first making sure that he was actually the one that did it)?  That sounds like something you would do.

Vic Taylor,
Uniontown, PA

Now it’s all coming back to me.  I was in a terrible state of mind back then—Elvis had just died and The Graceland Estate had just laid me off.  I read about the Boca Raton fire in the Memphis newspapers and thought that somehow Mahatmas was involved.  I left Memphis that night and drove straight to the Boca Raton police station and confessed to the crime so that my dear friend Mahatmas wouldn’t be charged.  During my trial the owner of the roller skating rink—that Holden Caufield fellow—stood before the crowded courtroom and orated for hours on end about what a menace to society I was.  He swore up and down that I had threatened to kill him on numerous occasions.  He even told the jury that I threatened to burn down his beloved roller rink unless he let me sleep with his wife (which he claimed he could not do for religious reasons).  The jury gasped in horror [with tears running down their cheeks] as he cited example after example of how mean and vile I was and how I went out of my way to ruin his reputation and cause general mayhem in the community at large.  (That’s where, I guess, that nature boy story originated.)  He was so convincing that even I began to believe his stories.  Dozens of character witnesses were brought up to testify against me, including my good friend Mahatmas, who told the jury that he actually saw me light the match which started the tragic fire!  I wasn’t even allowed to testify on my own behalf because my public defender had me quickly declared mentally incompetent.  It took the jury less than five minutes to reach their verdict and I was quickly ushered away and locked up for 18 long months.  Not once did my good friend Mahatmas (who I believed to be the real culprit) come to visit me in jail.  When I was finally set free I had nothing but bitterness in my heart and I swore that I would never return to Boca Raton again.  I have not seen or spoken to Mahatmas in over twenty years.  Maybe I was wrong about him; maybe he wasn’t the real arsonist and it really was that Caufield guy.  Mahatmas if you are reading this, I forgive you.



Mooj,

Fear not!  I am hot on the trial of that black hearted devil J. Edgar Gayson!  I used my superhuman powers to track him all the way to Switzerland, where tonight I shall strike him down and punish him for his treachery.  He was actually very easy to find.  I only had to ask about a dozen or so people here in Switzerland about him and I quickly found someone who actually knew who he is.  This very nice man has even offered to show me his hideout tonight.  He's going to meet me at an abandoned warehouse at midnight and take me there.  I will report back to you as soon as I have punished Gayson and recovered your stolen money.

The Scarlet Avenger,
On a Secret Mission in Switzerland.

Oh oh.  Sounds like The Scarlet Avenger is about to walk into a nasty trap.  The Mooj requests that in the future all minions please leave Gayson alone.



Hey Mooj,

You know what the coolest thing about being a Hare Krishna is?  I can always get a ride to the airport whenever I need one!

Taj Rommel (former driver of the Mooj Freedom Bus #2)
Hare Krishna Temple, Culver City, CA.

The Mooj is happy for you (even if you did abandon me in the middle of nowhere you hippie freak!).



Mooj,

Beware!  I did a little checking into the “so-called” murder of Blind Lemon Washington.  Your friend J.J. Bigsby (a.k.a., Howlin’ Mooj) fed you a line of crap when he said that he had killed Blind Lemon Washington in self-defense (when Blind Lemon Washington caught him sneaking out of his wife’s bedroom window).  Here are some facts about Blind Lemon Washington that I got off his web site:
 

1. Blind Lemon Washington lived in Helena, Arkansas, not Mississippi
2. Blind Lemon Washington was not married, nor was he currently involved with anyone at the time
3. Blind Lemon Washington did not own a gun; in fact, he was a loyal member of the Rosie O’Donnell Fan Club
4. Blind Lemon Washington was not actually blind; he just had really bad eyesight
5. Blind Lemon Washington drove a green Hyundai, not a big black Cadillac

 
Last week I flew out to Clarksdale, Mississippi to do some digging on my own and here’s what I learned about the murder: According to the Coahoma County Sheriff, Howlin’ Mooj and Blind Lemon Washington were seen together on the night of the murder.  In fact, they were both performing at a juke joint near Johnson’s Holler.  Supposedly they both began hitting on the same woman between sets and a fight broke out.  Since most of the witnesses I talked to were drunk at the time of the murder I couldn’t really collaborate any of their eyewitness accounts to figure out exactly how the murder took place.  However, forensic evidence found at the scene proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was Howlin’ Mooj who committed the murder.  (Also, somebody videotaped the whole thing.)  To confirm my suspicions I broke into the Coahoma County Morgue and examined the remains of Blind Lemon Washington.  Just as I thought the body was covered with guitar string tuning machine peg indentations.  I took a plaster cast of one of the imprints and found that it was made by a ’52 Telecaster.  I will publish an expose on this murder in the University of Maryland Alumni Journal.  I hope this information proves useful to you.  Let me know if you need anything else.

Your Pal,
Jeff W.
College Park, MD.

The Mooj thanks you for your scoop.  I should point out to my readers that Jeff W. is correct when he claims that Bigsby (a.k.a., the fake Mooj) is an evil person; the real Mooj (me) is now very leery of him.  You can read all about my latest adventures with the fake Mooj below in the Travels with Mooj section.



Hey Mooj,

We really want to read the rest of that guy’s letter (you know the one from the guy who stumbled into the naughty girls summer camp and got caught peeping into a cabin window).  Don’t be such a prude!

The Bagley Sisters
St. Marys, PA.

Time and time again the Mooj reminds his readers that this is a family oriented newsletter.  The remainder of that particular letter was omitted because it contained descriptions of acts so bizarre that even The Mooj found them offensive.  Let me just state for the record what those naughty girls did to that poor “peeping Tom” was a crime against humanity.  That poor boy was probably both physically and emotional scared for the rest of his life.  (And why that idiot returned night after night to that naughty girl’s camp to get caught peeking in their windows again and again is a mystery to me.  You would have thought that he would have learned his lesson the first time!)



El Mujo,

Mis besos son dulces como la tequilla. Mis rasgones son amargos como la lluvia. Cuando satisfago a mi novia ella me da la carne.

Jose D.
El Paso, TX

Ah yes, our favorite Spaniard from El Paso, Texas has graced us once again with one of his deep thoughts.  Since I don’t speak Spanish I can only guess that: 1) Jose has shared with us something, yet again, brilliant or 2) Jose has shared with us something, yet again, pointless.  My psychic senses can’t break it down any farther than that.



Professor Mooj:

I respectfully request your forgiveness.  I know that you frown on your protégés critiquing your work but I found an error in one of your technical papers entitled Too Much Hot Plasma Going On.  You incorrectly derived the external boundary of the computational domain used in your confinement model.  Since your model uses a fully recycling material wall, coupling of radial flux density for ions and neutrals at the wall, coupling of the radial heat flux at the wall with local plasma and neutral densities and temperatures through the heat transmission coefficients should set the boundary conditions for the plasma, neutral density, and energy equations at the wall. You, however, neglected to account for local landau damping at the dielectric interface, which therefore renders all your assumptions invalid.  This error is propagated throughout the remainder of your argument and, thus, the inner boundary of the computational domain (i.e., the core interface) of the input power and plasma density, which depends on specifying the boundary conditions for the plasma energy in your density equation, is totally incorrect.  The only reason you were able to reproduce your theoretical results experimentally was that the boundary conditions for the neutral density equation at the core interface is always zero.  Note that this set of boundary conditions automatically provides zero plasma flux through the core interface in a steady state no matter what you do.  Normally I wouldn’t bother you with something so trivial but since I am minoring in confined plasma kinetics at Duke University I thought you would welcome my humble feedback.  I again ask for your forgiveness if I’m being too forward.  When can I come and hang out with you like your other protégé Lance Worthy?  I promise to behave myself.

With Utmost Respect,
Trent Handjoy (Mooj protégé #2),
Durham, NC

Listen kid how many times do I have to tell you not to critique the wisdom of your mentor!  You’re just a 13-year-old pipsqueak who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow!  Get with the program kid or I’ll dump you as a protégé.
 

Soon I began to regret my decision to send Lance Worthy away because the fake Mooj started to really give me the creeps.  Every time I looked at him he seemed to be staring at me—almost as if he was plotting some ghastly thing to do to me.  Even my new dog friend seemed to sense that there was something peculiar about the fake Mooj and kept his distance.  (The dog and fake Mooj were continually growling at each other.)  But as each day passed and the fake Mooj still hadn’t killed me I grew more comfortable with the situation; finally, I could care less that the fake Mooj was always leering at me with his beady little eyes.

October 6th was a special day for me.  My bones were finally healed and I could finally free myself from that dreadful full body cast!  Using his Rambo knife the fake Mooj cut me out and I was finally free of my bandages.  Never in my life was I happier to rid myself of anything as I was to get out of that blasted oil-soaked cocoon.  This glee continued until nightfall, then the temperatures dropped down below 40F and I began to freeze.

Since the fake Mooj was an ex navy SEAL he was heavily trained in survival skills.  These skills proved invaluable when it came to tracking and hunting the wild beasts of the Oklahoma Plains.  (The fake Mooj called these wild animals buffaloes; they looked more like cows to me.)  After our first successful hunt we built a huge fire and feasted on our prey.  After stuffing ourselves into a near coma we fashioned caveman suits out of the animal’s hide to cover ourselves and protect us from the coming winter.  Like the great Indians who roamed these very plains before us a century ago, we lived completely off the land and in peace with our surroundings.  Before we knew it we had walked nearly 100 miles across the barren wastelands of eastern Oklahoma and had not seen or spoken to another living person.

And then finally we heard the roar of distant automobiles.  Far off in the distance we spotted a tiny ribbon of highway and proceeded to head toward it.  The fake Mooj decided that our best bet was to get to the highway and “borrow” a car to continue our journey west into the mountains.  He assured me that once we were in the mountains that no one would ever find us again.  (He then laughed a weird little laugh and added under his breath, “or at least not find you again, you greasy bastard.”)  I began to suspect that the fake Mooj was up to something.

It was almost midnight when we reached the highway.  A sign indicated that a town was a few miles up the road and so I suggested that we walk to that town and use the money I had left [from Mr. Fussie] to buy a car.  But the fake Mooj only sneered at me and said that “only sissies buy cars—real men steal them and then murder the family from which they steal them from.”  I was alarmed—I began to suspect that the fake Mooj was still a cold-blooded murderer and not the humble and holy person that I thought he had become.  I knew then and there that I had to escape from that monster as soon as possible.  I pretended to agree with his plan so that he wouldn’t suspect that I was secretly plotting to abandon him.  Even my dog friend sensed that the fake Mooj was up to no good and told me so.  Amazingly, my super psychic senses had by then become so sensitive that I was actually able to read the dog’s mind.  And, even more amazing, was the fact that the dog, who must have been psychic himself, could read mine!  We were then able to communicate with each other telepathically without the fake Mooj hearing us.

As we walked along the desolate highway toward the lights of the nearby town the dog and I discussed our plan.  We both agreed that we had to ditch the fake Mooj as soon as possible before he tried to kill one of us.  But, at the same time, we also knew we had an obligation to society to save those that the fake Mooj was obviously intent on doing harm to when he stole a car.  My dog friend then suggested that we run off as soon as we got to town and inform the local police about the fake Mooj.  Hell, the dog even figured that we could collect some kind of reward since he was already wanted for a murder in Mississippi.  I agreed and then we both felt better about the situation.

It was dawn by the time we reached the outskirts of the sleepy little town.  The first thing the fake Mooj did was pull out his Rambo knife and start to sharpen it.  Innocent people were now in danger and the dog and I knew that we had to act fast to save them.  What did we do?  Find out next week.