FACILITY LEVEL-SLAPPERS ONLY

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock

Editors: Sarah Rendo/Robert J. Baumann

Cover: Rob Mitchell

Satchel Paige was the greatest pitcher that ever lived. He was famous for a number of pitches, including the bee ball, a pitch so fast it buzzed past a batter's ear like a thousand wax masters. What you might not know, probably because you've been drinking too much pop, is that in tribute to Paige (or in an awe-inspiring coincidence), a giant jumble of bumble bees continuously hovered around Paige's memorial in Forest Hills cemetery.

At first several visitors to Paige's grave got bumble bites all over their face, arms and noses and it seemed that all hope for peaceful visits to the grave of the great hurler were lost. That is, until one day when Elmer Fartz accidentally plopped a tiny honey and peanut butter sandwich on the ground. By the time Fartz stooped to rediscover his sandwich, dozens of bees were busily slurping honey off the bread. The bees ate to their great content and a hearty round of bee burps soon followed. Some even allowed Mr. Fartz to pet them and scratch them behind their tiny, yellow ears.

Word spread quickly and it appeared that the bee problem had finally bumbled over. That is until a visitor named Dolorous fell for the ultimate dupe: she accidentally bought a low grade honey substitute. The imitation honey stand had obviously escaped the dragnets of the local bureau of the sweetness police.  

Dolorous set the jar of honey with great respect in front of the grave and the bees began to slurp. At first all appeared well and their bee faces began to curl into smiles. But then their tiny bee lips sucked down that first bundle of fake honey molecules and they became furious. The bees assembled into a cloud in the shape of a yellow hammer.

The yellow hammer of bees smashed into Dolorous' beautiful leather purse, popping out the keys to her Crown Vic. The yellow hammer then transmorphed into two giant hands and slid the keys into the ignition.  Unless you are knee deep in circus peanuts you can guess what happened next: one big bee hand grabbed the wheel while the second pushed down on the gas and the sedan went speeding around the graveyard.

Dolorous' Crown Vic careened around the cemetery, narrowly avoiding trees and Paige's statute, until finally slamming into the side of the Battle of Westport's confederate soldier's memorial in the corner of the graveyard. The obelisk snapped in half like a fun-dip sugar stick.

As the tires continued to spin against the limestone, the bees dispersed into a thick cloud above the monument and released untold gallons of honey atop the stone structure. The honey drizzled with great thickness upon the faces and names of the fallen Robert E. Lee lovers. Dolorous watched as the great pouring of honey continued creating a sludge on the broken stone.

Over the next several days, the honey hardened and formed a golden husk over the stone. Before leaving, Dolorous left a tiny note on a baseball next to Satchel Paige's grave:

Woe to ye imitation honey jars and confederate ghosts alike.

Do not anger Satchel's bees.

Heed them or you will learn to fear their sweetness.

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock

Editors: Sarah Rendo/Robert J. Baumann

Cover: Rob Mitchell

Before Ernest Hemingway handed out cigarettes and candy to Italian troops in World War Uno, he worked as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star. It didn't matter if the story was about church farts or missing sewer lids – no street went unpaved by his narrative.

Soon thereafter, Hemingway took a trip to the Kansas City stockyards. The dust of the West Bottoms swirled with a whirlwind fueled by a thousand cow farts as Hemingway approached the corrals. Although it was like standing in the furnace of a great booty bomb factory, Hemingway followed his internal journalistic compass deep into the bowels of the stockyard.

Suddenly a gust of cow toots blew the cap off his grand noggin and sent it tumbling down a cattle shoot. Ernest hopped down from the corral and snatched his hat, hundreds of bulls racing closer and closer, their snorts and grunts ringing in his ears.

Maddeningly close to his person, young Ernie began to scream, "Help me! Anybody! I want to be a famous writer! I'm going to reinvent the form!"

Finally a one legged cattle hand named Elmer popped open a gate and the young writer leaped into the pen. Hemingway's chest heaved up and down. Elmer spit tobacco juice on the ground and said, "Stick to scribbling, ya bozo. Best stay clear of the running of the bulls. If their farts won't kill you, their hooves will."

No one knows if Hemingway's near trampling would inspire him to greatness. However, it has been said that on a slow news day, if you go to the stockyards and rub your ear against the old wooden planks of the corral, you can hear the sound of Ernest Hemingway screaming and it smells like a stampede of ghost butts.

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock

Editors: Sarah Rendo/Robert J. Baumann 

Cover: Rob Mitchell

George Washington Carver. America's greatest inventor. Tesla of the Midwest. Some call him the Peanut Butter Genie. Mr. Carver spent a summer learning stenography in the Union Telegraph Building.

The summer of 1885 changed his life and the face of sandwiches forever.

Young Carver was destined to cultivate great thought from the fields of his fertile mind––but even geniuses get hungry.

To prepare for vast mental surveys Carver would often make bread sandwiches. One day while preparing a largely lightweight limp bread sandwich, Carver wondered if the flavor of the bread would be enhanced by a companion.

And so Carver began a great experiment. First he sprinkled pepper on the bread, but it made the sandwiches far too peppery. Second he sprinkled salt on the bread but it made the sandwiches far too salty. Third, he sprinkled a handsome collection of beans between the slices of bread, but it tasted like a dry soup. Slightly depressed and filled to the gills with lackluster sandwiches, he drew the curtain and fell asleep at 7:30.

That night, according to numerous unknown documents, Carver dreamed of a tiny peanut man working very hard in a field. In the dream, a tiny peanut man with a straw hat tilled the soil, guiding a mule and planting tiny seeds along rows that stretched for acres. After mashing the dirt on top of the seeds the peanut man waited for twenty minutes under a tree. After twenty minutes the tiny peanut man discovered rows and rows of peanut plants peaking their green beaks out of the soil.

The baby peanut plants screamed like thirsty babies and the peanut man began to dig furiously in the earth. He quickly unearthed an ocean of tiny peanuts tossing them into a giant peanut bag. The peanuts said, Thank you, thank you, thank you, but with so many peanuts the peanut man didn't know what to do. He had never taken care of baby peanuts before.

Suddenly, to the horror of the peanut man, Elmer the Mule stepped on about 24 peanuts smashing them to bits. Seconds after the crunching an old farm turtle named Rascal began to lick the smashed peanuts off the ground. The other peanuts saw this and erupted in a chorus of, Eat me, eat me, eat me, we are the delicious ones!

The pencil of epiphany broke in the farmer's head and the farmer soon bashed all of the peanuts into a peanut butter paste and concealed their essence in jars.

When George Washington Carver woke up he knew the pencil of epiphany had broke in his head as well. Within a few decades peanut butter would become one of the most famous sandwich companions ever to be placed between bread cheeks.

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock

Editors: Sarah Rendo/Robert J. Baumann

Cover: Rob Mitchell

Everyone knows that Walt Disney started his first film studio in Kansas City. You'd be a stupid idiot not to. But what most people don't know is that Walt Disney left behind something behind in the Laughagram Studios.

Before leaving Kansas City for Hollywood, Walt Disney accidentally locked a tiny mouse in his desk drawer and not just any old mouse––Mickey Mouse.

The mouse that kept him company during all those restless days and sleepless nights in the studio; the lone candlelight to his genius. Disney fed Mickey Mouse with tiny crackers and ginger ale droplets. The most famous mouse in the history of famous mice left to nibble out his fortune––eternally.

No one knows if Mickey Mouse escaped the desk, but strange happenings have been reported ever since. The building that housed Laughagram Studios is now merely four lean walls of brick buttressed by metal supports, but there are rumors that if you walk the block at night you can hear the squeals of a dying mouse, squeals loud enough to make you lose your soup.

Sometimes the squeals are quiet like a secret Sunday afternoon turtle dump but they say the haunting squeals get louder with the release of Disney videos. They say that when Steamboat Willie came out you could hear the mice for days. They say it sounded like a choir of rodent banshees harmonizing at cheese practice.

But the most squealing of evenings is by far Walt Disney's birthday. It's louder than a thousand jumbo mice playing the violin in a music volcano. The only way to ease Mickey Mouse's eternal pain on that most haunted of nights is to sprinkle cheese on the sidewalk in front of the building. The ghost of Mickey Mouse does not partake of the cheese at daytime, but at night he feasts on whatever cheese litters the block. Provolone, American, Velveeta, Sharp, or plain old stinky catfish cheese––it doesn't matter: the ghost of Mickey Mouse isn't too picky.

If you listen very carefully you can hear Mickey Mouse saying, Thank you folks, for even the daintiest of imitation cheese crumbles.

Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock

Editors: Sarah Rendo/Robert J. Baumann

Cover: Rob Mitchell

These spine-tinglers are the outcome of years of research and a lifetime of speculation. It is my personal belief and professional opinion that they are the scariest stories in the history of the world.

Take heed-- these spine-tinglers are full of blood, sweat, tears, hotdogs, hamburgers, circus, horse pelts, rascals, extinct parakeets, Donnie Turtle, cemeteries, grave robbers, ghouls, ghosts, trains, guns, wranglers, bank robbers, mice, baseballs, piglets, architects, activist birders, troll goblins, feathers, boots, calendars, napkins, candles, shitheads, dog murderers, shovel thieves, toasting bread, beekeepers, corn chips, Donnie Turtle, peanut butter genies, betrayal, burritos of redemption, toots, turds, doo-doo boys, and all of the invisible words that you, dear reader, provide between the lines.

And so I ask, are you prepared to be mentally jostled? Do you like that stuff?

Good. Nay - Great! There’s plenty of it and it’s stacked on pallets eight feet tall and our storage facilities are equipped to ship them out from the spine-tingler warehouse pronto.

And spine-tinglers only come in three sizes: grande, muy grande and jumbo grande.

And like I said previously, in the earlier part of this statement, just a few seconds prior to the elusive present, I’ve hounded the earth flat hunting down the marbled slabs of tingle and chipping the spines down to the marrow of their horror I hope you like them, and I know that you’ll like them but if you don’t like them -- that’s okay -- you and your misery will soon be parted -- because these spine-tinglers have been constructed in a fashion akin to church farts, a taboo soon fading from the nostrils and ears but forever wedging themselves between heart and memory.