The Feckless Guide to Reality As We KNow It

By Cheese mcCarthy

Foreword:

As many of you are aware, the last instalment of Terence Gunboat’s, insightful Talking Têtes column concluded with a list of demands delivered to our publication by Karpal Marik, the surviving leader of The Feckless Hand. Chief amongst these demands was the delivery of world famous podcaster and asker of questions, Toe Mogan, in recompense for the murder of Jarvis Lautrec—erstwhile co-leader of the infamous crime syndicate.

As our editors took great pains to explain to Marik in a subsequent meeting, our publication was in no position to acquiesce to this request for the following reasons: 1) We had no idea where Toe Mogan was at that moment in time—contemporary reports placed him in Barcelona, attempting to eat Gaudi's salamander sculpture at Park Güell with a pair of chopsticks, though we had also received conflicting information placing him in Papua New Guinea, communing with Mount Wilhelm in the Black Speech of Mordor 2) Even if we did know where he was, we wouldn't go near that freakish ginger-nut with a ten-foot harpoon and 3) Just who do you think you're delivering demands to anyway, little man?

After some back and forth—and much waving of whimsically named firearms and multidimensional appendages—it was agreed that The Feckless Hand would forgo this last demand in favour of being paid a handsome fee for a travel guide, to be written at the Hand's discretion.

It is under these auspices that we find ourselves in the enviable position of having recruited the services of Cheese McCarthy, lay-member of The Feckless Hand, professional hitman and amateur zoetrope operator, to write for us a travel guide the likes of which has never been seen before…