Here We Go Again
Part Two

5. Dee Dee O'Caribou
Married October 12th, 1990 - Divorced August 29th, 1992

Following his despondent desert episode and his susequent harrowing experience with Hildy Volstagg, Ken took some time to take stock of his life. Realizing that he could simply fall no further, he vowed to change his circumstances and set out on a course of action that would forever alter his existence for the better. He embarked a series of journeys that he had always wanted to take including trips to the mountains of Tibet, where he would meet Lhak-pa Barking Squirrel, a disgraced monk living in a cave high above Tashilhunpo Monastery on Mt. Drolmari, who would teach Ken an assortment of physical and arcane arts that would be invaluable to his mental and spiritual development. In Egypt, on a dangerous archeology mission into the depths of a secret, underground pyramid protected by ancient killer robot-gods, he would come face to face with, and ultimately conquer, his fear of death itself. In Ireland, his new found lust for life would so profoundly influence Kevin Shields that he would dramatically alter the sound of My Bloody Valentine's Isn't Anything album, forever changing the course of indie music itself. By the end of 1989 he would be the feature writer for half a dozen high profile, international periodicals and his third novel, Dirge of the Deranged, would reach the top of the bestseller lists in 114 countries. The Ken Socrates World News Organization would be born and, even in it's infancy, would be a source of fear and awe for world's illuminati and general masses alike.

Ken Socrates was back.

It was during this personal renaissance that Ken would be reunited with the first real love of his life, Dee Dee O'Caribou. He and Dee Dee had been romantically involved while attending college at the University of Saskatchewan where Ken had been a Journalism major, minoring in drug abuse and rock music, and Dee Dee was a hockey player and Anthropology major. She was a fiery Western Canadian girl with an irrepressable sense of humor and an angelic voice that would often be on display at a local country and western saloon named Stubby's where, on amateur nights, she would take the stage and mesmerise the crowd of drunken, stinking cattle herders with her shining, innocent charm. As time went on, she became a sort of local celebrity and started getting paid for more regular appearances. Meanwhile, Ken was not even allowed back in Stubby's because of an incident where he attacked the mechanical bull with a baseball bat. Dee Dee soon began to receive offers for paying gigs all over Alberta and Saskatchewan and pondered leaving school to pursue a music career full time. Ken, upon graduation, realized that, regardless of the love they shared, his presence would only be a hindrance to his woman's dreams and mysteriously departed before dawn one cold, misty Canadian morning, leaving only a brief, tear stained note that Dee Dee has never, to this day, shared with the public. Ken, of course, would engage in a now legendary year long disappearance that has yet to be explained, eventually reappearing in London in 1975.

It would not be the last they would see of each other, of course. They would re- connect in the autumn of 1989 in Nashville, Tenessee. Ken, at the personal request of the family of Jerry Lee Lewis, had been called in to mediate a dispute between the embattled singer and his biographer, Nate Stabler, a former intern of Ken's who, un- beknownst to him, was attempting to follow his mentor's path as a music journalist and had gotten in over his head with the infamous rock hellraiser. Dee Dee, now an estab- lished country and western singer, was in town recording her eighth album, the future platinum seller Hayride To Heaven. In the end, it was Ken and Dee Dee, with her celestial voice, who were able to coax the irrational, enraged Lewis to release Stabler from the tool shed in which he'd been held hostage and abused by the unbalanced performer for three weeks.

Elated and aroused by the success of that partnership, the two fell once more into a whirlwind romance that would span the globe with its seemingly measureless passion. They were married in Memphis by Little Richard, by then an ordained Seventh-Day Adventist Minister and honeymooned on the road in Belize, Morocco, Southern France and Edinburgh. They spent nearly two years happily married, casually enjoying each other when their demanding careers allowed moments of blissful intimacy in exotic locations in every corner of the earth. In the end, their meetings became less and less frequent as Ken settled into the life of a travelling correspondent that was his calling with little more than an office and a little used apartment to call home. His true home was on the road, as was hers, and those roads simply did not intersect often enough. They were amicably divorced and remain very good friends to this day.

6. Lana Smythe-LaGrange
Married July 23rd, 1996 - Divorced January 9th, 1997

Lana Smythe-LaGrange was one of the most enigmatic, influencial women alive when Ken met her in the early spring of 1996. As many readers are aware, she had risen to the top of the New York art scene as the most talked about performance artist ever to come out of Soho. Her shows were legendary, full of animate, female rage and power as she railed against the establishment using a potent combination of scythe-like satire and shocking physical acts. The moon was her totem and to many she was heralded as a goddess, a figure of awe and inspiration for a new generation of dangerously empowered, man-hating women. Aware of the threat she posed to a male dominated heirarchy in America, yet unafraid, she had purchased a gigantic tract of land in the uptstate New York town of Big Moose and established a commune full of loyal, militant women like-minded in their beliefs.

It was into this den of warped hippies and bull dyke lesbians that Ken had been mandated to go. During a night of hard drinking and gambling with the editors of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, Ken had boasted that he alone was the one man who could find his way into such an exclusive community and walk out with a story that would not only blow the roof off of the entire situation but would be approved by Smythe-LaGrange herself. He was, as he explained, ever a friend to the women-folk. In the early morning hours of a chilly Sunday in May, Ken found himself with a pair of tin snips cutting a length of barbed wire in the little used, wooded southern sector of the encampment now known as Communa de Luna. Of course, he was almost immediately apprehended by the female bikers that had appointed themselves as grounds security and, after a vicious beating brought on by his insistent references to Oprah Winfrey, he was brought before Lana herself.

It was here that the ultimate test of the Socrates charm would come to pass. As Warner Dirigible wrote in his book, Ken Socrates: Man And A Half, it was a contest in name only as even the hardest and butchest of the group soon began to fall sway to Ken's mysterious, alluring charisma. By then end of that evening the entirety of Smythe-LaGrange's inner circle were seated around a fire in the Commune's main pavilion, drinking chardonnay and giggling like schoolgirls, each and every one flirting outrageously, competing for his attention. At the end of it, though, it was Lana who stood up, confident and irresistable as a modern day Cleopatra, and took Ken by the hand back to her tent where, surrounded by candle light and incense, she had her way with him. After three months of willing captivity and chemical experimentation, Ken announced in an uneven article published in Tractor Review, that the two would wed.

The ceremony was held in a wide forest clearing in the northern hills of the commune's property and was performed by Anga Starshadow, a Wiccan High Priestess. In attendance were such luminaries as Meryl Streep, Martina Navratilova and Patty Hearst. Music was provided by the Kim Deal-Tanya Donnely version of The Breeders. It was none of those guests, however, that would be the cause of the day's excitement. As the ceremony reached it's peak and the assembled throng were applauding the united couple, the trees around the clearing exploded into motion to the roar of an old UH-60 HELO Helicopter screaming into view above the tree tops. As the thing landed amidst the panicked crowd, a murdurously posessed Hildy Volstagg vaulted from the cockpit, assault rifle in hand, and darted toward the altar. Stunned, Ken moved to protect Lana but was thrown aside by his new wife as, snarling with rightgeous anger, she ran to intercept Hildy.

The two met in an epic clash of womanly fury. Eyewitnesses report that Lana was able to surprise and disarm Hildy with deceptively lethal close combat skills and a fierce hand to hand battle ensued. It lasted mere minutes but it was time enough for both women to have their clothing shredded and torn away, leaing them fighting naked atop the highest hilltop in the clearing. Hildy, the more experienced of the two, realized quickly that Lana's passionate devotion to Ken was an equal for her own combat experience and that the match would be a draw, lasting hours, giving local authorities ample time to arrive on scene. Cursing in some archaic voodoo tongue, she fled to her 'copter and took to the air, middle finger extended to all who cared to watch.

It was a short lived victory for Ken and Lana. The battle had left the bride emotionally and physically scarred and asking a lot of questions about her new husband's previous relationships. As much as he swore fidelity and blamed past marital failures on his previous partners, Lana found herself unable to trust that an incident like that would never occur again. Their marriage was brief and troubled and by the following midwinter they were separated. Ken returned once again to the enfolding arms of his one true lover, journalism, while Lana quickly disbanded her commune and sold her land before moving to Manhattan where she became the owner and publisher of Lucky Magazine, the leading source for American women for clothes, accessories, make-up, and home decorating ideas.

7. Hildy Volstagg-Socrates-Melmoth
Married December 31st, 1999 - Divorced January 1st, 2000

Following his break-up with Lana, Ken spent six months in Scotland on the much publicized Minotaur expedition that would ultimately uncover the sickening truth behind the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster and result in his fifth consecutive bestseller, Nessie And Me. He travelled the globe relentlessly producing one profound story after another as his writing skills reached truly masterful levels. He had reached "living legend" status in the industry and his name was chanted in ritualistic song by aboriginal tribes from the hidden passes of the Himalayas to untouched Australian Outback. Such adoration was an ill fit for a man so otherwise grounded in the gritty, backwater streets and alleys of the dangerous reality that was his chosen way of life. Few knew how heavily it weighed upon him and how he drifted further and further into the shadowy dreamworlds of altered reality accessible only to one who understood the rare chemical and spiritual freqencies in which they existed. He seemed possessed by a strange melancholia and one week before Christmas, 1998, in Quebec City, he vanished once again, leaving no trace of his whereabouts. A member of the paparazzi who had been tailing him said that his footprints in the new fallen snow simply ended abruptly as if he had somehow dematerialised into the ether.

As before, he remained missing for over one year.

Three days before New Year's Eve, 1999, there was a strange incident at Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. In the pre-dawn hours, every pidgeon that called the ancient plaza home suddenly flew from the safety of their homes amid the rafters and spires of the surrounding city and flocked to the center of the plaza, swirling in a massive tornado shape, a whirlwind of beating wings. Then, as quickly as they had assembled, they scattered into the air in a million directions, each and every one disappearing from the scene. When they were gone a man stood where the center of the vortex had been. From seemingly out of nowhere, Ken Socrates had returned. Somber, serious and unwilling to discuss his previous whereabouts he checked into a hotel in the city and prepared to observe the Millenium celebration that would ensue.

In the following days Venice would come alive with festivity. The streets were increasingly crowded with tourists and locals alike lost in joyous revelry. A brutal war between rival gondola gangs and their frequent battles in the canals could not detract from what would be a transcendental celebration. On New Year's Eve the entire city had become a vast carnivale of sorts with throngs of party-goers bedecked in their finest haute couture, many of them with finely detailed, bejewelled face masks. Amidst this dionysian conflagration, among the cat-faces and fairy wings, walked Ken Socrates, moving between revellers like a ghost, a notebook in one hand, mixed drink in the other. The world would never know what he was writing, however. Just after crossing the crowded Rialto Bridge he found himself pulled from the crowd by black-garbed ruffians to a waiting mini-sub that had risen beneath the bridge. His protests lost in the crowd noise, he was swiftly secreted to the sub's interior mere seconds before it once more vanished beneath the waters of the canal.

Underwater, within the sub, Ken once more found himself confronted by none other than Hildy Volstagg, garbed head to toe in a black patent leather submariner's uniform. She was piloting the sub and surrounded by a group of wild-eyed thugs dressed in dark, navy seal gear, weapons pointed at their new captive. Hildy was weeping, but whether from joy or angst or sheer manic dementia was not readily apparent. She proclaimed Ken her one and only true love despite what she described as an ill advised, brief marriage to now deceased Norwegian expatriate and guerilla artist, Fantomex Melmoth, whose mangled body had been found some six weeks earlier in the Jotunheimen mountain range, the victim of a suspicious snowmobile accident. She pointed out that one of the gentlemen pointing his automatic weapon at Ken was in fact, Gaynor Fundt, an uncle of Hildy's from Andalusia who happened to be both an ordained Lutheran Minister and part time mercenary. Beneath the chilly waters of the Venazian canals, seven minutes before the dawn of the new milennium, Ken and Hildy were wed for the third time, depsite Ken's vicious attempts to escape and his ceaseless hissing and spitting during the ceremony.

Then it all went wrong. The man piloting the sub while the vows were being taken removed his headgear with a triumphant screech to reveal the scarred visage of an aging Ken Tanaka, his face a mask of twisted hatred for the man who had soiled his honor those many years ago in Tokyo. He leaned on the controls, ramping the sub's speed up to maximum and steering it toward the submerged columns of an ancient Venezian hotel, all the while screaming incoherently about revenge and honor. The only clear words to come out of him, as the assembled throng tried in vain to wrestle control of the submersible from him were "banzai" and "kamikaze". Ken understood, with a grudging respect, that it was the man's last attempt to save face. As the vehicle crashed, all around them became a chaos of rushing water and screams.

In the darkness of those midnight waters, his consciousness flickering in and out, Ken would be unable to recall exactly how he was saved. There were figures in the water around him, he knew, sleek forms barely visible, darting here and there, one of them man-shaped. There would be the memory of a hint of gold and teal reflecting the moonlight from the surface above and strong hands guiding him toward the life-saving, cold winter air. There would be one other image as well, of a looming dark shape beneath the waves, amorphous and tentacled, clutching writhing human forms in it's grasp and dragging them swiftly out to the dark sea. Dazed but alive, he would find himself lying on a cobblestone walkway, wet and shivering, as fireworks exploded above him like dying stars signalling the passing of a millenium and the beginning of a new year.

The marriage was annulled by visiting, still-drunk Vatican authorities the following afternoon.

8. Adrienne Wainscotte
Married June 12th, 2003 - Divorced November 30th, 2003

Ken, after a period of travel, returned to the Boston offices of the Ken Socrates World News Organization only to discover that a coup of sorts had taken place in his absence. A junior partner at the law firm that represented the company in its countless lawsuits world wide, Higgins, Wartgarbler, Thwaake & Doobins, had taken the initiative to have Ken declared dead and maneuvered herself into a position of stewardship for the organization. Adrienne Wainscotte had been an up and coming power player in the New York legal scene who had moved her practice to Boston under the misapprehension that the town was overrun by attractive, young lawyers who looked like Dylan McDermott and James Spader. Harsh reality set in quickly as, night after night, she was relentlessy propositioned by drunken Irish cops and roofing carpenters in the local night spots and she vowed that she would find a way to leave her mark on the city one way or another. She rose quickly in her new firm and soon found herself fascinated by the intrigue and glamour that was Mr. Socrates' inter-national organization.

Thus, when Ken returned, she was reluctant to yeild the controlling power she had become so thouroughly addicted to in her time at the helm. Through deft legal wrangling she managed to have Ken held for psychiatric evaluation at Bridgewater State Mental Institution where it would be determined if he was mentally competent to return to a position of such importance within the corporation. This, of course, was an amazingly perceptive bit of strategy on Adrienne's part, knowing full well that Ken had never been menatlly competent enough to operate a cotton candy machine, much less manage a globally renowned news organization. The strategy may very well have worked, or at least tied up Ken in all manner of legal and psychiatric red tape for enough time for Wainscotte to find a way to put herself in permanent control of the company. If not for the intervention of one man.

Gorman Moloko.

Moloko had managed to free himself from some of the most horrendous jails and mental institutions that the world had to offer in his somewhat off-kilter, yet tireless crusade against global political injustice. He immediately organized a variety of protests outside the sanitorium and a 'round the clock candlelight vigil. Signs carried by die hard protesters read "Free Ken" and "Ken Ain't Retarded" and "Suck It". Gorman himself was there with a loudspeaker constantly shouting his passionate rebellious diatribe, a scathing indictment of the establishment which, oddly, never really referred to Ken at all but had frequent references to the cancellation of the BeastMaster television series.

It was enough, though. After three nights of unrelenting protest, glaring media coverage and the attempted suicide of seven of the facilities other inmates confused and frightened by the clamour, Ken was released. He confronted Wainscotte immediately. They met in the downtown offices of the organization that Ken had come to reclaim and she stood before him like a viper, sharp, lethal, devious. Her attempted coup had been ruthless, remorseless and deadly, crushing and humiliating all who had gotten in her way like an evil, monomaniacal tyrant bent on all encompassing conquest.

And, damn, if he didn't find that totally sexy.

Rumors have it that their passion was like a super nova that detonated on the very spot of their first meeting. The shades of the office were frenetically shut as the two locked themselves within, supposedly to discuss the transfer of power but the only thing heard by the uncomfortable bystanders would be animal growls, lunatic whooping and high pitched squealing. Furniture could be heard cracking and shattering, the office walls seemed to shudder and the windows chipped and split as various office items wee flung against them with abandon. When the two emerged thirty-six hours later, it was announced that an agreement had been reached to share the company's leadership equally. A frightening new power couple had been formed and the two quickly wed at a local town hall, sealing the pact and completing the creation of a monsterous two-headed beast.

Their partnership would be shaky from the start. Rumours like snakes slithered through the corporate undergrowth as longtime Socrates loyalists whispered that Ken had been had, that this was merely another grab for power by Wainscotte, this time using her womanly allure as her weapon, holding the somewhat weakened, easily distracted mind of the famed Rogue Journalist in thrall. It would not last, of course. As Adrienne's control tightened, Ken's natural anti-authoritarian instincts began to reawaken and he began to suspect that things were not quite as they should be. When Willie T. Sherman, in a desperate attempt to free Ken's mind from it's enslavement, produced some extremely embarrassing photos of Wainscotte in a hotel room in Portland, Maine with former Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton, the entire sickening facade came crashing downward. Humiliated, Wainscotte was forced to sign divorce papers that not only released Ken from her oppressive grasp, but returned control of the organization to him as well.

The weeks that followed were ones of joyous celebration. The Ken Socrates World News Organization had it's leader back and operations were returning to what meagerly passed as normal for them. During a celebratory night of drunken debauchery with Moloko, Sherman, Crispin Glover and other close friends, Ken swore numerous blood-oaths, passionate vows that he would never again put himself in such a precarious position as being beholden to a woman. He was done with marriage, an independant soul, the director of his own manly destiny, forever strong and free, like a lion, proud master of his domain. He would stand tall and stand alone. This, he swore.

All of which, hopefully, Ken will soon recall. The napkin on which these oaths were scribbled, which also reportedly contained Ken's bloody thumbprint, has seemingly been lost, a fact made even more tragic by the wild unreliability of the witnesses to said oaths, all of whom were recklessly inebriated at the time. As such, there remains no clear evidence to show Mr. Socrates of his stated intentions to remain unencumbered by matrimonial bonds. Thus, we offer the preceding tales to perhaps illustrate the various, compelling reasons that those oaths were originally made in the belief that such wisdom as can be gained will positively influence our intrepid leader's future endeavors.

We can only hope.

The End?