Outshining the Stars

As you may or may not know, Think-A-Holic Lounge occupies no physical position in the space-time continuum. So, star maps and road maps are worthless if you're trying to find your way to this notorious watering hole for outcasts in the publishing underworld.

Flesh-and-blood humans can't physically make the trip here unless they go by wormhole. And then the wormhole invariably whisks them right back to where they came from the minute they land here. So, the Lounge doesn't rely on regular people for its clientele.

Regular Think-A-Holic Lounge Lizards are mainly disembodied spirits, alter egos, astral projections and the dreaming selves of flesh-and-blood humans. Plus biped, quadraped and legless creatures of every size, shape and color from intergalactic space. Even creatures who are nothing more than living energy masses scramble to Think-A-Holic Lounge when their workday is over or when they have time on their hands. And, like any regular business on any regular planet with regular flesh-and-blood customers and patrons, Think-A-Holic Lounge hits a slump in business every now and then.

The biggest slump in business for Think-A-Holic Lounge always occurs on Black Friday, the infamous "day of mob behavior" on planet Earth. That's our biggest slump here because more than half of our patrons are disenfranchised and lost souls from that backward and greedy planet. Shopping is their favorite past time, then eating, chin wagging, imbibing intoxicating beverages and fighting, mostly in that order. But, from Black Friday through the last January White Sale on Earth, half of our patrons' flesh-and-blood selves are too busy shopping to warm our bar stools.

So, the other day Angus McCloud, our resourceful big-ass head bartender, put up a new neon sign, right on top of the Lounge roof. After four hundred years as a ghost bartender it finally dawned on him that, if you offer free stuff (even if it's only peanuts, popcorn and pretzels), no Earthling can resist doing whatever it takes to be first in line.

Last week I bet Angus a Solar Sawbuck that he couldn't bring his "patron stats" back up to par before New Years Eve hits Earth. He laughed and raised me another Sawbuck and that made me add a Solar Fin on top of that to the wager. When we finally shook on that deal, I knew by the look in his beady little eyes that I was already being taken for about 13 Solar Quid. Hopefully, some royalties will get beamed into my bank account from that Neptune bookseller before I run out of think-a-hol money. To the best of my recollection, that's never happened before.