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Mickey Snaketail takes Nef's paramour, Slappy Goering, away in the Snaketail Blimp. Nef decides to track them down with the aid of Ervin, a voluble private detective. Out of the blue, Nef receives a postcard from "The City of Memphis." In the picture on the front she can see both Slappy and Mickey Snaketail, and on the back is the mysterious message: The Fool Is Hurt! Later Nef sees this same message on her computer screen during an odd exchange with Google blog search, and she knows the battle with Mickey is about to heat up. After she receives a birthday cake with "The Fool Is Hurt!" written in pink icing on the top, she calls in Ervin, who says that the "City of Memphis" is, in fact, Memphis, Egypt. Nef decides to go to Memphis (Egypt) with Ervin to rescue Slappy and confront Mickey Snaketail, and on the way to the Belverton airport they encounter the Reverend Skitch Borshin, who attempts to save Nef's soul as she and Ervin drive past. He fails in the soul-saving, but manages to thrust a number of tracts into her hands before she leaves. One of these tracts warns travelers to New York City to stay away from the junction of St. Mark's Place and Astor Place, as it is there that gays are forced to be married, and everyone is assumed to be gay — unless he or she is wearing cargo shorts and a Disney t-shirt, the official uniform of the heterosexual tourist. Once in Manhattan, their cab driver takes them to the junction of St. Mark's Place and Astor Place, accuses them of being sodomites, and forces them out of his cab. Moments later, this same cab driver — Cecil B. DeFlicka, also the assemblyman for Manhattan's Nth District — corners Nef in an alehouse and forces her into gay marriage with a lesbian waitress named Bunny. He escorts them to a basement honeymoon suite (a cellar, really) situated right next to the cellar of the legendary punk cafe CCAJ & OCTFAAG (Christmas Carols, Advertising Jingles, and Other Catchy Tunes for All-American Guys). Before they can consummate the marriage, however, Ervin bursts into the room with a souvenir battering ram and undoes the marriage with a gay marriage undoer — a raygun made by Apple (an iGun). As they scurry off, Ervin tells Nef that the Memphis they want is Memphis, Tennessee, not Memphis, Egypt, and that they are already late for their flight. On the flight to Memphis (Tennessee), Ervin sleeps in the seat next to Nef and she, restless, taps out on her laptop another episode of Perp & Vic: Men are Bastards Unit, the television program she occasionally writes for. In this episode of the drama, the two main characters — Detectives Parkdrive and Redhook — are at Planned Parenthood looking for victims of misogyny when they find Marty LaCram, a teenage boy who claims to have had sex with this twenty-something science teacher. This is book two of the LumpenBlog! Nef's episodes, in order, are: The case of the congressman's bustier Dudel Schneck, the Undead Apostle |