Dead men talking

Hi Sam Marly here.  Maybe you have inferred that we have a lot of truck with the dead here at The Inside Out Bodega and News Stop.  Well, I guess you are right, since we are a registered transit point along the main line of lost souls.  It's something that Texino set up in aid of moving his Zombie pals around without having to deal with the customs hassles that developed after the tragedy that no one talks about.  You know the one where we just sort of lost our civil rights over night, shortly after losing our voting rights over the course of a week or so.  Oh well what the... So yeah, if you go to our big back room (the one which doesn't seem possible but is, due to spatial distortion) you may run into any number of dead folk in transit.  I believe I have mentioned that my cousin, Reggae Bob, spends quite a bit of time in there, eating cheese sandwiches and giving out words of Island wisdom which sound suspiciously like the sayings of Popeye The Sailor. i.e. "I and I am what I and I am to be." sounds a lot like Popeye's " I am what I am" when you break it down.  Bob watches cartoons like every day is Saturday.  We have other regulars too.  Here's a shot of Ira Louvin of the "Louvin Bothers" goofing around in Hell.  Ira says that there is a highway through the earth that allows the dead, or anyone else who has the time, to visit places like Australia and China, or any place with caves really, without having to go by the highly dangerous means of air or sea travel. I should point out that the dead don't fly because pressurized cabins render them visible and therefore unwelcome.  As far as a sea cruise goes?  Well if the ship sinks, a dead person has little chance of being picked up from a piece of floating wreckage and a big chance of being buried at sea should he be discovered napping in a deck chair. (Literally dead to the world)  So all things considered "The Underworld Freeway is The Way!"   Now whether Ira is actually in Hell or just at a roadside attraction in the vicinity is not clear, however; given the pasteboard Devil and the fact Ira's sporting a clean white suit, I'd say he's at the Wall Drug/South of The Border  version of Hades.

  Please don't misunderstand.  We don't kid about death here and we don't ask a lot of obvious and embarrassing questions of our guests.  After all, my job is selling news papers, magazines and dangerous drugs to whoever travels across the  temporal zone to this alley and then negotiates his or her way toward the light at The Inside Out Side Bodega.  You might notice that I'm not mentioning your Aunt Harriet or Platoons of soldiers  and other obvious dead, but we just don't get a lot of those people.  Why?

Oh I guess their souls are not lost or otherwise in question and they just go and sit quietly like that bunch of people in the play "Our town"  I'm sure you read it or acted it out, so you get the idea.  No the dead folk who come by here, well they don't really want to be dead.  There is nothing for them to do in the great hear-after because they had too much exposure in the "there before" so they just keep going around to the old haunts, so to speak, and show up in joints like this one when the continuum is all out of whack and recharge for a day or so before heading out again on these tours of ghostly good will.   Te celebrated dead don't want too much really, they just want to be remembered for a decent amount of time.  It is just one of those insecurities that will come when your name gets tied to fame, plus there are no living agents for dead performers.  They come they go.  They have their own little "inside" jokes and they look pretty damn good, excepting Texino's Zombies who look like Zombies but they are clean and fairly well dressed.  Texino's into a lot of weird shit.  I don't even know where he is other than I heard he was going to Canada to aid the police in their inquiries.  Hey I got to go, Rush Limbaugh and Scooter Libby just showed up with a couple of "Twinks"  They're going to want poppers.  Like Sunday night in Baltimore is the best time to buy that kind of shit. (not)  Oh well, I got cases of that stuff over in the 4 1/2 dimension.  I'll have to get it myself.  The last time I sent Bob he found a case a silly string and tried to huff a can and got it all in his hair.  You may not even notice this, but Ziggy Marley of the Trench Town Marleys has been borrowing bob to do gigs and the people are too blissed out to get it. Speaking of which,  Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead has been snooping around buying up glandular extracts by the pound.  I guess he's going to try the same thing with Garcia.  Thing is Jerry never comes around.  Hell David Crosby comes around and he's not even dead.  Go figure.  Rush and Scooter are pissed off; can't get their limo to come down the alley.  Pretty much just Chevrolets can drive down here, or what ever else I want to let through.  Don't forget there is a Bodega going on outside.  It's a Texino thing.