Greegs & Ladders - By Zack Mitchell and Danny Mendlow

CHAPTER 7

  TV and Pets for Greegs

  You might be wondering what a Greeg did for entertainment when not fishing Quigg skeletons out of schmold reserves, mining for schmold, or taking in the guilty pleasures of a particularly skeezy Cover Bar while intoxicated on mass quantities of schmold. Television is popular with Greegs, but the only show is ‘watching schmold,’ as all Greeg televisions are merely hollowed out glass cubes filled with schmold. This does not stop them from wholeheartedly believing they are seeing something different when they change the channel (an act that is supposedly done telepathically). A typical Greeg conversation in front of the TV is as follows:

  “Turn on the TV.” (An act done by removing a blanket placed on top of a hollowed out glass cube filled with schmold).

  “What channel?”

  “5.”

  “Ok.”

  “Actually not channel 5. I've seen this episode of schmold before. Look at that familiar cluster of bubbles in the bottom left hand quadrant.”

  “But the schmold-guide says it’s brand new.”

  “It’s a re-run.”

  “I’ll put on channel 8 instead.”

  “Good choice. The sheen of schmold is brighter on channel 8.”

  “I don’t like it. Let’s watch channel 3.”

  “The schmold movement is too frenetic on channel 3.”

  “What channel do you want to watch then?”

  “Channel 8.”

  “But I don’t like channel 8!”

  These sorts of arguments are known to carry on for hours until someone solves the problem by smashing the television.

  A favourite household pet is a school of shimmer-fish. The fish are kept in tanks filled with, you guessed it, schmold. Viewing the fish is an impossible task, being that schmold is the antithesis of clear, but this problem is quickly averted when the fish die and float belly-up to the surface. The underbelly is what shimmers the most anyway, so a floating upside-down dead shimmer-fish is actually the most entertaining type of shimmer-fish a Greeg can own. If you were hosting a party you would be most embarrassed to learn your shimmer-fish had not died before the guests arrived.