Greetings. My name is Chow Non Phat.
Officially I am the Deputy Assistant Minister for Diet Control in the People’s Republic of China.
But I am also a Chinese spy, along with Paula Wong, a fellow agent — and — the love of my life.
Well, at least — We were Chinese spies. Now we’re unsure of our status.
And today Paula and I are right here in America, on the ground, biting the dust. I mean that literally because it looks like I am dying in America.
But not from the COVID-19 virus.
You see, Paula and I have been in isolation for quite some time. We are hiding out in the foothills of The Strange Uncharted Mountains, near my best friend Hector Klumpp’s hometown of Nibbling, Minnesota.
But we understand your suffering, with all the virus-induced “shelter at home” mandates. We are without fast-food too!
And my body is wasting away before my eyes. My lungs sometimes feel squeezed like I’ve got a boa constrictor wrapped around my chest.
Believe me, we didn’t see all this coming. But it came down after Paula and I, with both our government and yours, got into what you American’s might call ‘a bit of a pickle’.
“Lettuce crush Chow like a rotten tomato!”
A quote from Shih Tzu, who is our fellow Chinese agent and my archenemy, to the powers that be in our Chinese Intelligence Community.
Shih Tzu may get what he wants.
What’s at the top of our menu? Chow Non Phat and Paula Wong are public enemy meal combos #1 and #1.
Undercover Secret Service Agent Rusty Kole in an interview with FBI Agent Stale Kooper
It’s a crazy story.
And if you want to know how we ended up here in the first place, you can download the story for free from Scribd at this page on our web site:
Anyway, I know I said Paula and I were on the run, but that’s not exactly true. Paula can still run, but apparently my left brain went on strike, refusing to communicate with my right foot.
So,
Chow watched his toe
drop below
his foot in the snow.
Famous Poet Hector Klumpp
Paula aided my stumble into hiding after that.
But, that was only the beginning of my struggles, for about that time I also began to struggle with my breathing and swallowing. I couldn’t even enjoy your basic Classic American Hamburger anymore. This became my experience…
So, Hector Klumpp — even though he was still in prison — ketched up with his good friend, Clifford Bean, who mustard his strength and discretely squeezed me in to the famous Mayonnaise Clinic here in the frozen tundra of Minnesota, to see a neurologist. And after a series of appointments with him, he finally gave me a shocking diagnosis.
I have ALS disease.
We are stunned. And this video expresses my experience…
And the word is, it’s incurable.
I’m gonna’ die.
So this has been a very difficult time for me emotionally. I can see the train of death coming down the track….
Death is like the freight train in the future, heading towards us, closing the hours, second by second, between now and then. If we’re to live with any sense of satisfaction, we must engage life’s forces of antagonism before the train arrives.
Robert McKee, Story
I hate that train. It’s like a billboard hovering over my train station. It just won’t go away.
So you can imagine why a crazy song like this made me cry…
And because I am madly in love with Paula — this song expresses my dream…
This is all so crazy now.
And since one of my strangest ALS symptoms is called Pseudobulbar Affect…
Pseudobulbar affect (PBA) is a condition characterized by bouts of sudden, uncontrolled laughter or crying that occur in some people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). These outbursts often seem out of proportion or incongruent with the situation, and do not necessarily match how the person is actually feeling. They can be quite severe and can occur as often as several times a day.
…you can understand why that song also makes me laugh…
But watch out, because you may see tears rolling down the screen.
By the way, Paula found out that your Lou Gehrig guy had ALS too…
And Paula also showed me this moving video…
And, as we were trying to learn more about this shocking disease, we learned about someone else who also had it.
Chairman Mao.
Mao.
Wow.
So, Paula and I are in a difficult crucible now.
You see, I was sent here to America on a crazy assignment. And at the core was to explore this question:
Will the United States Survive Until 2025?
And Paula and I have experienced a series of epiphanies which have opened our eyes to a way of seeing a possible answer to that central question.
But a very important epiphany also came our way after my diagnosis with ALS disease.
We began to explore a way of seeing which we’re calling…
Risk Assessment
for the Afterlife
So, because of our shared pain and sorrow, we decided to also share our research with you.
And there is someone to whom we owe an enormous debt of gratitude–the great Robert McKee, the modern Aristotle of story.
He opened our eyes to a whole new way of seeing — through the lens of story.
And these two questions especially have our attention…
Which story are we in?
Who are we, here in the story?
And from this way of seeing flows the major dramatic question we are all wondering about in our own stories:
How will this
turn out?
So, my pALS, we hope this website will help you with that question.
And please, come back as often as you’d like. We’ll continue to revise and reshape it, hopefully keeping it fresh and current.
But if this site suddenly disappears, you can bet that Shih Tzu found us. Or Kooper and Kole caught up with us. Or, worst of all– it’s because the train of death finally came into my station.