Richard Simmons emerges from the ninth level of Dante's Inferno, wearing what appears to be a zebra-print windbreaker and pink hotpants. His eyes glow like those of your grandmother's robotic Walgreens-brand Santa. Richard Simmons is leading his army of malevolent six-inch Republican mimes from the flames. As he whirls around and says "Little Debbie voted for Bush," you awaken in a cold sweat.

To take your mind off your horrible nightmare, you stare out the window at your backyard. Your garden gnomes are bathing placidly in the glow of a full moon. You have over 100 of those adorable little fellows, carefully aranged amongst a smattering of tasteful plaster toadstools. Your gnomes are your pride and joy, as you have no social life. Every week you buy a new garden gnome and lovingly arrange him amongst his fellow "sun babies."

Suddenly, your eyes wander over to the next door neighbor's back yard, and you let out a gasp: your neighbors appear to have a gathering of garden gnomes too. Thinking they are trying to outdo you, you sneak outside to peer over their fence and get a closer look. What you see makes you choke in fear: they are indeed garden gnomes, but not of the ordinary variety. Each of the gnomes has a drastically altertered apparence. One gnome has a second head, haphazardly glued onto his neck. Another has little glow-in-the-dark horns and a pitchfork. A third gnome has false eyelashes, a unibrow, and crudely drawn tattoos. a sign around his neck says "Dingles: wrinkled rodent-like dweller of the stinkberry tree." Yet another is holding a small basket filled with barbie doll heads. To complete this ghastly, freakish display is a handpainted sign which reads: Little Norm's Demented Gnome Garden. A series of squeals, like those of an oompa-loompa who has had his first taste of freedom, emerge from your throat.

You want to settle what you are sure is a twisted misunderstanding, but then you remember you neighbors are a couple of professional mimes (who do vote Republican, according to their campaign signs, which would explain your nightmare earlier...). These mimes never talk, from what you can tell, and they always wear their mime costumes. Whenever you see them, they are communicating in those creepy, exagerated gesticulations and contorting their leering faces. Once they "mowed" their entire lawn with imaginary mowers, and sometimes they stand still on their front lawns for hours, unflinching even when young hooligans throw beer cans at them. Often they invite their bizarre mime friends over and do mime dancing to no music. it soon becomes evident that whenever you add another gnome, so do they. When you write them with your concerns, they respond in imaginary ink. So my question is how do you deal? Murdering the mimes is not an option - although they won't scream...

Five years before you met Fry, he was living a life of hell, exsasperated by a string of humiliating odd jobs in the entertainment industry, none of which he will put on his resume. First, he was the "50's biker dude" whom exercise guru Richard Simmons makes eyes at in his "Sweatin' to the Oldies" video. This was followed by a short gig as a backup singer for the short lived Yanni, Micheal Bolton, Kenny G: the Masterful Trio Tour, which was cut short when, after a night of drunken revelry, Yanni and Kenny videotaped Micheal Bolton (who called himelf Mikie B.) moonwalking and pronouncing his love for male nurses. Following the Majestic Trio tour, Fry took a job as a personal masseuse to the cast of Full House.

You met him at his last gig, in which he portrayed Jesus in a commercial for an Arabic car ( "a heavenly ride"). At that time Fry was haunted by terrible visions of Bob Saget and the Simmonater every night. But you helped him rise up from his traumatic past, and find a stable job as a lobster trainer for seafood restaraunt ads. Also, he hosts a community access TV show called "Who's That Dolly?" in which he identifies guests' dolls and their market values.

Soon you are deeply in love and want to marry Fry. However, there is a bizarre stipulation: in order to marry him (and in your family marriage is a must, due to the fact that your father is a devoutely religious Elvis impersonator at a Vegas chapel), you must accept the conditions proposed by Fry's Texan great-aunt Wandetta May. Namely, these conditions are that the three of you go out on the town together every Saturday, with you wearing the outfit she pickes out for you, and basically agreeing with everything she has to say. The outfit she pickes out for you is as follows: A white, pilly sweatshirt with hot pink fringe and screen-printed pastel kittens, a giant goldtone medallion, leopard-patterened spandex stirrup pants (so shiny you can see a distorted reflection of your face in them), white nursemate shoes, a stonewashed jean purse, rainbow leg warmers, and a huge banana clip. She says this is how everyone dresses in Texas, but you sense that she is lying. Fry puts up with this because his aunt raised him, and did not abandon him like the rest of the family did when they found out that he worked for Richard Simmons. And his aunt humiliates him too: inevetaibly, when the three of you go out to dinner and the waiter asks to take your order, she proudly announces "My nephew here massaged the pale, naked torso of Bob Saget."

Wendetta Faye is not deliberately cruel, only horrifyingly out of touch. Fry promises you - and he is always true to his word - that after the year is over the two of you will live in Hawaii, where his aunt cannot visit (she is afraid to travel by air or sea). But you don't know if you can stick it out. Whenever you go out with Wanetta Mae and Fry, you always seem to run into a co-worker or friend who give you very odd looks, especially when Wandetta says "Just imagine, the very same hands that massaged the kinks out of Joey Gladstone's buttocks are working magic on your friend/employee/daughter." When, upon seeing you in your hideous outfit, your small nephew hits you with a baseball bat in self-defense, you are deeply troubled. So the situation is: can you deal with a year of absolute torture to be with the only lobster-training man you'll ever love?

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