Read Zombie Spaceship Wasteland Online
Authors: Patton Oswalt
Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (19 page)
Volumes 2, 3, and 7 of a twelve-volume
Works
of Thackeray
Grandma Runfola:
I thought I remembered seeing on TV once that he only wrote three books. Oh well. Won’t it be fun hunting down the other books? It’ll be a mystery to solve, like that
Hunt for Red October
movie!
A lantern shaped like an owl
Grandma Runfola:
Do you remember the Frasers? They had the daughter who did gymnastics and the son who went to college and kept hugging other boys and now he’s a swimming coach? Well, they knew these people who were having an estate sale last summer so we all went out there—me and the two Fraser parents, not their kids. So we get there and it turns out the estate sale was the day before, and we’d driven all this way. We couldn’t believe it. So on the way back, driving back home, we see this antique shop, and it’s the most hodgepodge-looking place I think I ever saw. And we had to go in. And I got this lovely hourglass that on the one side it looks like an egg but the other side the glass is square, like a box. And Jeannie—that’s Mrs. Fraser—she bought a flag for a country; I think it was Iceland. And Mr. Fraser didn’t buy anything but he loved all of these old toy soldiers they had, only he said, “I don’t have the space to keep them anywhere.” But he sure loved them. And when we left it was raining and we weren’t too sure about going down the road we were on because it was getting muddy, so we stopped at a Hardee’s and when we were sitting down with our sandwiches I realized I’d left the hourglass back at the store. So we asked the Hardee’s if we could use their phone, since it was a local call, and they were so nice and we called and the man from the shop drove all the way down to the Hardee’s and gave me the hourglass. He was the nicest man and you could tell the people at the Hardee’s knew him and he must be popular, which is no surprise seeing how he treats his customers.
The owl I bought at a Rite Aid.
Grandma Runfola:
Your mother said to get you a Banana Republic gift certificate.
Well, yeah, Mom and Dad. You loved books and you made me love books and there are few better gifts.
The teachers who stood out—Mrs. Lincicome and Mr. Shaver and Mr. Wright and Mr. Richards (still!).
The writers who taught me, through their work, to take care of the word—Willa Cather and Joseph Conrad and Wallace Stevens and Jim Goad and Garret Keizer and most of all Harlan Ellison, who, as of this writing, dwells in the Lost Aztec Temple of Mars, high above the San Fernando Valley, a twisty nautilus shell of a house full of books and Ritz crackers and Jack Kirby’s fountain pen. I can’t believe Harlan’s been my friend, even for these few short years. It started with you in the seventh grade, like it probably did with a lot of people.
Everyone at Scribner—especially copyeditor Aja Pollock, who knew the correct spelling of “Yog-Sothoth.”
All my friends, every day and ongoing. I hang out with comedians—the best version of life you can live.
Graphic story on pp. 71–78 by Matthew Bernier
Illustrations on pp. 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 116–118 courtesy of Onsmith
Illustrations on pp. 170, 172–173 courtesy of David Lasky LIFE AND HOW TO LIVE IT (p. 17)
GREEN GROW THE RUSHES (p. 18) WENDELL GEE (p. 20)
By MIKE MILLS, WILLIAM T. BERRY, PETER LAWR
© 1985 NIGHT GARDEN MUSIC
All Rights on Behalf of NIGHT GARDEN MUSIC Administered by WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP.
All Rights Reserved
Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC PUBLISHING CO., INC.
ABOUT THE TYPE
The text of this book has been set in MT Pugmire Gothic. MT Pugmire is a nonflorid, pre-post-Brutalist “curl-type” vowel recessive, first used in the publication of Giselle Tanhauser’s memoir,
The Inkling Group and the Things They Put Inside of Me, Volume 2: Face Holes
.
MT Pugmire Gothic is a trademark of MarkoCorp, Feedlot Ltd., and/or its subsidiaries.
Printed and bound by Voluntary Convict Labor Press, Men’s Correctional Facility, Galax, Virginia.