It was a pretty quiet night, O Hickey on the Throat of All Theta. The Large-Jawed Woman would stagger awake about every half-hour, scarf down another bite of greasy pseudo-pork goodness and promptly fall back on the floor. I nibbled on a couple of the discarded styrofoam boxes, so the whole thing was a win-win. This morning she decided to try a sortie out of the house, which now requires elaborate preparations. In addition to draping a towel over the license plate on the car, the Large-Jawed Woman took a bunch of black sheets and twisted them around herself until only her eyes were visible. The first time she tried it she kind of tied up her arms so that she was basically hopping around until she could get it untangled, but with a lot of effort she managed to get a sort of flowing, Middle Eastern effect going. I don't think she saw me hop into the back seat before she drove off. Anyway, we went back to that glass store I reported about before. You know, the one where Minion Bronson is now assigned? And incidentally, Your Pulchritude, you may want to have a word with the Mighty Garden Rake about MB's technique. He is working in disguise as a fire hydrant a few feet away from the front door, and dogs keep relieving themselves of bodily fluids all over him. The Large-Jawed Woman swannned into the store, and I slipped in after her, partially blocked from the old man who runs it by her robes. He looked up and said, "Can I help you?" The Large-Jawed Woman said, "It's me, Jim." The old man started to laugh so hard I thought his ventricles would collapse. "What the hell are you supposed to be?" "They're AFTER me!" she said in a nettled tone of voice. "I can't go out without disguise! Forget about it. Can I borrow ten bucks?" "Nope," the old man said shortly. "Not one more dime." "But this time I am going to sue and WIN! I will have all the money in the world!!! I can pay you back!!!" "The last time you told me that it turned out you were suing yourself, Peep-Eye." He paused, and looked out the store window. "Is it my imagination, or did that fire hydrant just kick that dog?" "Five buck, then. Come on, five stinking buck." "Not a dime, sister." "Would you like to buy a carousel horse, then?" "No. I still have ten you gave me three years ago." "What about a towel from a restroom in a real Palace in Russia?" "I use those to polish the carousel horses," Jim said in a flat voice. "Now take a hike, Fatima. And make sure the iguana goes with you."

Thank you for your prompt response, O Hostess Cupcake of Theta! The situation is a little better. Early this morning the Large-Jawed Woman began screaming "I want money!! I want MONEY" at the top of her lungs. I had been sleeping in my usual position on the ceiling, having hooked my tail around the light fixture in order to hang upside down. I was so startled that I relaxed control and crashed to the floor, but since I landed on the mattress down there that the Large-Jawed Woman sleeps on, there was no real damage. Just then there was a knock at the door. Usually this means a delegation of local police officers, and I tend to retract behind the couch during the Large-Jawed Woman's meetings with them. I don't want them to believe her when she claims that she is being stalked by space aliens, because she is really, really convincing at it. I don't know why the police officers never offer to search the house, and they stopped writing anything down about two hundred visits ago. Now they usually just stand there making faces behind the Large-Jawed Woman's back and rotating their index fingers next to their ears. It's very droll-looking, Your Lemon-Scentedness, but I am not sure about the cultural significance of the gesture. The Large-Jawed Woman lurched to the door, crushing a few scattered cheesy snacks beneath her bare feet, and threw it open. Imagine my surprise, for who should be there by my old friend Bruce! He had festooned his upper lip with strands of black hair in an attempt to disguise himself, but of course I could tell by the bulging muscles beneath his tight tee shirt and the very tiny cargo shorts that it was Bruce! "Wheels on Meals, ma'am!" Bruce said brightly. The Large-Jawed Woman peered at him, and at the white paper bag he was carrying with one of her holiest symbols on it, the Golden Arches! "Uh . . . what?" "We deliver meals to cancer patients, and your name is on our list, ma'am." He looked down at a piece of paper in his other hand. "Ovarian, colon, breast, brain, lymphoma, carcinoma and testicular, right?" She was peering into the bag. "You forgot throat and jaw cancer. What the hell is that, a McRibb?" "Yes, ma'am." He turned the paper over. "Sorry, it was continued on the other side. Anyway, this is for you." She ripped the sack open, and a number of styrofoam containers fell to the floor. I perked up, as it had been awhile since I myself had ingested nourishment. The Large-Jawed Woman chomped down upon the McRibb, whatever that is, and promptly collapsed to the floor. Bruce grinned. "Bronson gave me some shit to put in the food, Little Buddy! She'll be out for a coupla hours. C'mere!" He wrapped his arms around me and tightly hugged me. "Been missing my little lizard something fierce!" I could easily tell the last part. Some time later, Bruce sighed in contentment and stretched his arms high over his head and yawned. I was perched gingerly on the chair in front of the computer. Very gingerly. "Bronson said to tell you that you're gonna have to stick it out here, Little Buddy." The Large-Jawed Woman gently snored. "He's moving on to some glass store on the other side of town, he said. He's kinda pissed off at you, he says. He got in a lot of trouble with some kind of Grand Garden Rake. So now I'm on the job, although I dunno what that means. I have to take the rig down to San Diego tomorrow, though, so you'll be on your own for a coupla days." "That's alright, Bruce." I looked down at the prone Large-Jawed Woman. "By my calculations, there is less than 2% natural material in the comestible she is eating. Is that really a wise food choice for a Terran with cancer?" "Probably not, no. So if she ever actually gets cancer, I s'pose we're gonna have to get some different stuff to bring in. Bronson just wanted to make sure it was something she would want to push into her piehole." After a few more minutes of personal conversation, Bruce took a very affectionate farewell. And I squeaked my own goodbyes. Since then I have crawled back behind the couch. The Large-Jawed Woman is out like a light. Your faithful minion, Illuminati

This is your faithful minion requesting immediate extraction, Oh Grand Hood Ornament of the Gods! The Large-Jawed Woman is about to blow, Your Immensity! And I don't mean that in the sense that it usually means with You Know Who! For the past three days she has been sitting in front of the computer playing a game the Terrans people from this quadrant of the global sphere refer to as "online poker". We had gone to our favorite dispensary of comestibles, the one that bears the numerical insignia seven and eleven in an attractive design, and while purchasing a sack of the cheesy fried snacks of the immortals, the Large-Jawed Woman somehow found herself in possession of the wallet of a Mr. Esteban de la Hoya Montego Martinez Blanco y Venezuela Rodriguez, who in his turn may have dropped it after his purchase of something called a 40. When we left the comestible dispensary it somehow was in her shoulder bag, and after the Large-Jawed Woman opened it she fished out a plastic card that the locals use to purchase goods, and I heard her say "Jackpot! Come to Momma!" And then we came back to our dwelling and she used the number to enter the poker game. But things haven't gone well at all, Grand Shovel! She has lost game after game of the "online poker", and each time she does, the Large-Jawed Woman screams about how she needs money, Supreme-Deity-damnit! And now she just keeps yelling at the computer screen about female dogs and pork-laden animals. I think she is losing her small spherical playing devices, O Beauty Mark of the Inner Asteroids. And I don't want to complain or anything, but Minion Bronson keeps hovering around and I think he is going to blow my cover. She now thinks that I am some sort of hallucination that only she can see. For some reason, she has taken to calling me "Harvey". However, Minion Bronson keeps peeking in the windows and making faces at me, and sooner or later the Large-Jawed Woman will see his reflection in the computer screen and the whole thing is going to take a significant turn for the worse. I thought that Minion Bronson had been recalled to the Mother Ship. And we've run out of cheesy snacks.

Greetings, Your Shake 'n' Bakeyness! It is I, your faithful minion and soon to be direct-to-video film star! We have finished shooting Forever Palmdale at last, and if I do say so myself, I think Mr. Spielburg may have discovered unknown talents within me, which is kind of coincidentally what Bruce used to say, too. There's talk of a sequel! The working title is Beyond Burbank --- Large Jawed Woman II, Electric Boogaloo! , but Mr. S. says we have to wait and see how we do against Smurfs 2 next weekend, but he's not worried. Anyway, on the last day of the shoot the Large Jawed Woman and Minion Bronson kind of got into a little bit of a food fight. Honestly, I don't mean to tattle on another minion, but it was really his fault. He tried to pry her hands off a donut, and he knows better than to get between the Large Jawed Woman and sugared comestibles. The next thing he knew, she had yanked him across the food cart and smashed his face into the onion dip. By the time that the grips were able to pull her off him, poor minion Bronson's face mask had slipped a little bit, so to protect his identity he stuck his head into the Frito bowl until it was covered with delicious corn treats, then took off running as fast as his multiple legs would carry him. Now that the movie is over, they've closed down the concession cart, so the Large Jawed Woman has returned to our latest hideout domestic residence. I'm a little worried about her. She's back to spending hours at the computer, talking to herself in different voices. I know, same old, same old, but she has also tacked a photograph of some bare-chested bald guy on horseback to the wall. She'll stare at it for hours, muttering things like "I'll be with you soon!" and "Oppress the gays for me, my love!" Any instructions? Your faithful minion, Illuminati

Greetings, O Bejeweled Truss of the Hosts of Horvath! It is I, your faithful minion and soon-to-be star in Stephen Spielburg's latest opus, Forever Palmdale: The Life and Adventures of the Large-Jawed Woman. Well, to tell the truth, perhaps "star" is an overstatement. I actually am only featured in one scene as a houseplant, but I am integral to the plot! The character based on the Large-Jawed Woman is just about to water me when she notices that a crystal meth fire has broken out in the kitchen, and she throws the water meant for me onto the fire! It's very exciting! And while I'm not making much money, Mr. Spielburg has been really good about keeping me supplied with those Styrofoam pellets you know I love. It's kind of hard on the poor old lady playing the Large-Jawed Woman, though. Some how the real Large-Jawed Woman found out about the picture, and Mr. Speilburg lets her come on set and watch just to shut her up. In the beginning she was upset because she wasn't playing herself, but Mr. Speilburg had to tell her that she just photographed too old to credibly play a 50 year old woman. As far as I can tell, the film is a sort of hommage (that's French, Your Spiffiness, you know, what they speak on our home planet where we come from!) to a movie about Margaret Thatcher where Merrill Streap played her as an old lady and they told it in flashbacks! I think the real problem with the Large-Jawed Woman was that whenever they started the camera rolling she did weird things. Like once she lit a small fire out of Mr. Spielburg's director's chair and started jumping over it and waving to people, once she took off all of her clothes and lay on the floor with her back arched, and there was a really unfortunate moment when we were filming outdoors on location next to a large rock. The crew is still talking about that! But it turns out that the reason the Large-Jawed Woman is following us around is because she doesn't feel safe at her house. Apparently something called a "process server" is making her life miserable. Of course, another reason is the meal cart. Mr. Spielburg is on kind of a limited budge with Forever Palmdale, so all there really is on the cart are snacks, but the Large-Jawed Woman manages to eat her weight in onion dip every day. It's kind of sad. At one point the guy manning cart asked her for a couple of bucks to kick into the general Snack Fund, and the Large-Jawed Woman just managed to say "I'm bankrupt, dude!" around a masticated lump of Fritos. Then she goes back to criticizing the actor playing her in the movie. I have to say, she really kind of looks like the Large-Jawed Woman after they pad her up a bit. I think she was on Terran Television awhile back. Minion Bronson introduced me to her (he's the guy manning the food cart. Is he still working for us?)Her name is Rosann something. Oops, I am needed on set. It turns out that there is a crystal-meth-sets-the-kitchen-on-fire scene in every flashback!

Part One. Wouldn't you kill for a Vegemite Sandwich? G'day, mates! Crikey! I'm coming to you today, Your Koala-ness, from a land down under! Let me explain. In my last transmission, I told you that we had headed out into the desert. The Large-Jawed Woman maintains a small camp there to which she retreats in times of stress, always assuming that you define stress as your landlord kicking you out. The failure of her offspring to provide the small pieces of papers that Terrans exchange in order to get food had left her in a quandary. While it is true that she has several months worth of delicious cheese snacks stockpiled in the abandoned missile silo we currently call home, I am not sure that she would be able to survive only upon those. So time is critical! The next day we went to Kinko's again so that the Large Jawed Woman could wait until someone using a computer left before his or her allotted time was up. In order to be inconspicuous, I was in a large, very old Dolce and Gabbana shopping bag that I quickly gnawed eye holes into the side so that I could see. First the Large Jawed Woman made her usual rounds, which include this very transmission site, Your Pulchritude, as well as a site that seems to be dedicated to her. She then did a search under her name, and this is where the trouble started. Apparently something that popped up on the screen disturbed the Large Jawed Woman. "Australia?!!?" She growled. "Who the four letter Terran word for coitus have I conned in Australia?" The next thing I knew she had hoisted the shopping bag and started out of the Kinko's. Unfortunately, the bag was old, and my weight caused the bottom to tear loose. I quickly covered by using my rear appendages to waddle alongside her, the rest of me covered by the paper bag. It would have looked unusual anywhere else, a woman accompanied by a walking Dolce and Gabbana shopping bag that is, but the staff at this Kinko's are so used to the behaviors of the Large Jawed Woman that none of them even batted an eye. Once we were in the car, she gunned the motor and we headed for LAX, the principal venue for flying transport vehicles. She screeched to a halt as close to a terminal as possible, grasped the handle of the bag, and we set off into the crowds, abandoning the car. The next thing I knew we were standing in line at TSA. Of course I had no idea how the Large Jawed Woman would handle the security personnel, but luck was with her. Just ahead of us was an older Terran. The guard stopped him. "You forgot to take off your belt, Mr. Gibson." "Did I, Sugar Tits?" "Excuse me?" "You're a Jew, aren't you?" "What?" "You people control everything!" By now the altercation had increased in volume to the extent that all of the other TSA guards were milling around Mr. Gibson, leaving one young woman alone at the head of the line. The Large Jawed Woman stalked past her. When the young guard attempted to stop her, the Large Jawed Woman passed her hand in front of her face. "Excuse me, ma'am, but I need to see your papers, passport and a license for the . . . for whatever that thing is," the guard said. "You don't need to see our papers. These are not the droids you've been looking for." "What the hell are you talking about, lady? I need to see your ---- oh, shit!" The young guard turned her head in time to see Mr. Gibson, now without pants, being chased around by a covey of TSA guards. "You two wait here." Our guard took off in hot pursuit of the pack. By this time Mr. Gibson had climbed to the roof of the Cinnabon and was screaming, "which one of you bitches want to have my baby?" The Large Jawed Woman yanked me out of the shopping bag. "Run for it, E.T.!" She said fiercely, and took off sprinting down the concourse. I followed as best I could, but at more of a waddle than a run. She skidded to a halt in front of the Qantas desk, and rapidly scanned the crowd of passengers waiting to embark. As soon as a mother stood up to take her young daughter to the Waste Elimination Area, the Large Jawed Woman grimaced at me, and we followed them into the chamber. Five minutes later we emerged. The Large Jawed Woman was now dressed in orange capri pants and a flowery top, and was wearing the other woman's hair, which happily could be removed in one piece, revealing a completely different color beneath it. I was wearing sparkly sandals that hurt my feet, and a Hello, Kitty top, really cute, if I do say so myself. And ten minutes later we were on the plane, off at last to Melbourne!

Happy Belated Mother's Day, O Breath Mint of the Seven Mouths of Arcturus! I had flowers sent to the test tube in which I was created and charged them to the expense account. I hope that was acceptable? Things have been hopping here. I am no longer disguised as One Hung Low, nor is the Large Jawed Woman attempting to pull off her identity as Oma Hanoi any longer. It turned out that potential landlords weren't really interested in renting property to someone with a mop on her head named "Hanoi", so she has reverted to her normal alias as she plots how to trick her way into a new rental facility. In the meantime, we are living in the back of the car. Actually, she is. I am sent into the trunk during the sleep period, and at several other times when the Large Jawed Woman is entertaining company. "Just enough to keep us in Cheetos," she always mutters before locking me away. The same thing happens each time. The entire car begins to rock for a few minutes, and I am shortly released to discover her behind the wheel, thumbing one dollar bills. On actual Mother's Day, the Large Jawed Woman was visited by several people. Most of them were imaginary, or at least I assumed they were because I could not see them despite the fact that the Large Jawed Woman conducted long, rambling conversations with several of them. One of them was a small child apparently born in Russia a few years ago, and another a toddler with two heads. Of course, on Theta it would be considered an honor to have a child with double the cranial capacity, but somehow the sight (visible only to her, of course) of this offspring did not seem to afford the Large Jawed Woman parental pleasure. There was a long meeting with her imaginary friend and his imaginary family, including his imaginary Russian daughter, during which the Large Jawed Woman did all of the voices. It got a little confusing and hard to follow, and by the time she was crouched on the hood of the car cursing at an imaginary person she called Bob, she had begun to attract attention from people passing the parked car. Suddenly she gunned the engine, and we sped off down the road until we reached a side street that led us to a small building that advertised itself as a provider of glass products. She cracked the driver's door and stepped out. "You stay in the car, ET," she said without turning her head. "Jim? Jim? Where the hell are you?" A wizened old man came out of the front door. "What the hell are you doing here?" he barked. "I told you no more money. Nada. There ain't nothing left!" "Yeah, even if I believed that was true, and I don't, that ain't why I'm here. Nicky said he left a package for me with you." The old man grunted. "Stay out here." He disappeared into the store, and the Large Jawed Woman settled her Daisy Dukes on the hood of the car, wincing a bit as her posterior came into contact with the hot metal. In a moment, the old man had returned. He thrust a small brown parcel into her hands. "See for yourself, it ain't been opened." The Large Jawed Woman began shredding the brown wrapping paper. "I hope to God there's money in here, that's all I can say." The old man hooted derisively. "Where the hell is the kid gonna get money?" "He has a damn job, doesn't he?" She tore open the small box, which was filled with those delicious styrofoam pellets. I almost sobbed aloud when she turned the box over and they fell out, scattering in the dust of the street. "What the hell?" Tiny square packets cascaded out of the box and covered her lap. It seemed like an assortment of something, because from where I sat I could read different writing on each packet: "Ribbed!" "Astroglide!" "Trojan", "Eureka!" and "Love Thrust!" For a moment I thought I had seen the "Love Thrust" packet before, perhaps on the dashboard of Bruce's truck, but before I could examine it more closely the Large Jawed Woman had kicked it, and all of the other small square packets, all over the street. "Damn it, what the hell am I supposed to do with these?" The old man crouched and began scooping them up. "I think that's kind of obvious, girl." He fished out a white envelope from beneath a heap of styrofoam pellets. "Here." She snatched it from his hand and tore it open. "Happy Mama's Day! These was all over the office at work today, and I knew'd as you could use them. Don't want you to be a mama, Mama! Ha ha ha!" The old man snickered as he leaned into the driver's window and dumped a handful of packets on the floorboard. "I guess if he worked at the supermarket, you'd be getting apples or pears or shit." He caught sight of me. "What the hell are you doing driving around with a damn iguana in the car?" Ignoring him, the Large Jawed Woman shoved him out of the way and spun out of the parking space in front of the glass shop. To be companionable, I hissed at the old man. And we drove off into the desert.