The Golden Globe

"Can I go in and see him now?" Dodger was about to leap back into bed, but held out just long enough to hear the doctor's reply.

"Let the lad rest," said Wauk. "He ought to be out another hour or so, with the dose I gave him. Right now, why don't you take me down to the saloon and buy me a drink or three."

Damn drunk, Dodger thought as he heard the outside door open and close, and the sound of footsteps going down the stairs. Can't even dope me up properly. It's a good thing I'm still alive.

That bastard! Make my father cry, will you?

Dodger started poking around in cupboards and cabinets.

He quickly found a gallon stoneware jug labeled CORN LIQUOR. He pulled out the stopper and smelled it. Booze, all right. Okay, what have we got here?

He spent the next hour reading definitions in an old leather-bound book called Saunders's Comprehensive Medical Encyclopedia, publication date 1898, looking up the words he found printed on bottles and jars that lined the shelves and cabinets in the examining room. "Paregoric," he discovered, was camphorated tincture of opium. It smelled nasty, so he dumped some of it in the jug of corn liquor. "Calomel" was mercurous chloride. That sounded nasty; wasn't mercury poisonous? Into the bottle went a teaspoon of calomel. "Aunt Lydia's Pink Tonic" was said, by the label, to possess excellent emetic properties. After looking up "emetic," Dodger poured in a generous dose. "Nicotine" was a poisonous alkaloid, C10H14N2. In it went. A "sialogogue" was something that increased the flow of saliva. Why not? "Arecane" was a proprietary remedy and efficacious as a purgative. A "parturifacient" was used to speed up childbirth, while an "abortifacient" produced an abortion. Dodger wondered what a mixture of the two would do to a drunken doctor? "Formalin," "cryptomenorrheal," "Salvarsan," "arnicin," "myxorrheal," "leptuntic"...so many new words, so many definitions, so little time.

After a while he grew tired of reading, and felt a little hungry. In the next room, by the dentist chair, he found the remains of a Mexican lunch: chips and salsa and a cold taco. He took a bite of the taco, and in a moment was searching frantically for a drink of water. After he'd put out the fire in his mouth, he examined the bottle of Pancho's Habanero Hell (WARNING: Do not use near open flame!), then took it into the doctor's office and dumped half the bottle into the jug. He smeared a little sauce around the earpieces of the stethoscope.

He jammed in the cork and shook the jug vigorously, then opened it again and sniffed cautiously. It still smelled like booze.

For good measure, he pissed in the jug before going downstairs to join his father.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

From: First Latitudinarian Church of Celebrity Saints

Subject: November Audience Ratings

Category: Children's (age 2 to 12) periodical (weekly/fortnightly/monthly)

December 1 (King City Temple)

The November "Flack" numbers as compiled by the Trends Research Department of the Latitudinarian Church are as follows: