Q.: WHAT ARE THE browser requirements for this web site?
A.: PLEASE CLICK HERE for information on the optimum browser platforms and settings for viewing Heck.
Q.: WHY DO SOME of the links not work?
A.: THE MOST LIKELY reason is that you are using a Pop-Up Blocker, or that you have JavaScript turned off in your browser. Disable the Blocker, or set it to recognize this site, or turn on scripting in your browser. Please consult your software documentation for instructions; whadda I look like, some tech support flunky who works for free?
Q.: I TRIED THAT, and they still don’t work.
A.: THEN IT’S PROBABLY the web master’s fault. Let me know, and I’ll have him flogged.
Q.: WHEN ARE YOU going to finish the web site? A lot of the links seem to lead to nowhere.
A.: WHEN I DAMNED well feel like it. And it’s not nowhere, it’s purgatory.
A.: DEBBILBOY WAS BORN the son of a Bylorussian cavalry captain and a beautiful Gypsy woman. Unfortunately, he was born a goat. This so upset the mother that she disappeared as soon as the Holy Sisters let her leave the invalid bed. Debbilboy’s father, however, raised the young goat with love and care, often intervening to protect him from the taunts of the other children. Military duty sometimes prevented him from watching over his son, and in Debbilboy’s thirteenth year, his father, by then a Major, was killed fighting for the White Army.
DEBBIL BOY SOON MADE his way to Paris, where he fell in with a rough crowd of musicians, including one Honoré Impolis, who taught the young goat-man to play the violin. By the time of his sixteenth birthday, Debbilboy was the toast of Europe, playing all the major venues from Oslo to Madrid. He was about to embark for his American debut, when tragedy struck.
UNKNOWN TO DEBBIL BOY, Honoré was slowly being driven mad by syphilis, a decay intensified by his addiction to Absinthe. He had disappeared during a tour the previous spring, and had not been heard from since. On the night of 27 October, 1923, Honoré, his face ravaged by his disease almost beyond recognition, appeared at Debbilboy’s room at the Hôtel Europa in Venice, brandishing a large butcher knife. In the ensuing struggle, Debbilboy fatally wounded his friend.
HONORÉ CONTINUED TO STRUGGLE for life for many days afterward, and might have survived, had it not been for the wounds caused by Debbilboy’s horns when he butted his head against Honoré’s torso. Soon Debbilboy was on the run, fleeing from the authorities.
HISTORY HAS LEFT FEW traces of Debbilboy in the ensuing two decades. Rumours perpetually surfaced of his having been spotted here, having drinks with Mordechai Golinken at a Tel Aviv café; there, working at a blacksmith’s in Wallingford; here, leading a milliners’ expedition into the Gobi Desert; there, privately tutoring the heirs of a Balinese earwax fortune. None proved fruitful in locating the slippery goat, as he continued to stay one step ahead of the police.
ONLY AFTER THE END of WWII does Debbilboy re-emerge for good, as we know him today, under the name Sebastian Erasmus. The rest is history.
Q.: WHAT’S WITH THE “soul patch,” Debbilboy?
A.: IT’S NOT A soul patch, nor is it a goatee. It’s a BARBICHE, a.k.a. a barbula. Really.
Q.: WILL YOU MARRY me, Debbilboy?
A.: NO. WELL, MAYBE. Actually, no.
Q.: WHAT DOES DEBBILBOY look like?
A.: SUPRISINGLY HANDSOME, FOR a goat. A hat does a good job of hiding the horns. If you really want to see pictures of me, you’ll have to locate the Secret Lair, hidden on this web site. Now, get cracking!
Q.: OK, I FOUND the Secret Lair; in it, you describe Annie as your “ex-” girlfriend. Why “ex-”?
A.: ANNIE WAS TIRED of being merely the Debbil’s consort, and had ambitions of being Queen of the Damned. Being a typical male, I had reservations about “commitment,” so we agreed to disagree. We’re still friends.
A.: NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. There is no such thing as the Debbil. Mmbwahahahahaaa!
A.: PRINCE OF INSUFFICIENT Light, Beelzeboob, Father of Ambiguous Speech, Indifferently Hygienic Spirit, Your Eminence.
A.: YES.
“Don’t you know there is no devil/just God when he is drunk”—Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine.