For the past 3 months, the Art Department has been languishing in a Chinese prison camp.

It all started right after the last installment of the Times. It turned out that Shemp Johnson (CEO of Big JohnsonCO) was not particularly pleased with our portrayal of him. In fact he was quite livid over our editorial comment that he was "a meglomaniacal despot who would sell his own employees into slave labor if he thought he could make a profit."

Shemp called everyone from the art department into his office and demanded a formal apology. Chances were good at that point that we might escape with our skins until the the ever subtle Al Via chimed in with, "Come on Shemp, I thought all you fat guys were supposed to be really jolly!"

That night we found ourselves on a plane bound for Shanghai! Shemp had sold us to the People's Republic of China as Slave Labor. "It was really a good deal all around," explained the more jovial than usual Shemp. "I didn't so much sell the Art Department to the Chinese as LEASE them. I rented the whole staff to the Chinese for a limited 90 day contract with an option to buy. I get the same profit as I would with their sale outright, but I get to avoid paying the Capital Gains Tax. Sweet!"

The Chinese thought it was a good dea too. "Usually, the slave labor we get costs us an armand a leg, what with the cost of gruel and flea-infested blankets these day," reported Peoples Work Camp #28 Commandant Chew Y'ung-Fat. "But apparently Mr. Shemp has found a way to pay even less for forced labor. He was more than happy to share these and his own torture techniques with the rental agreement. This marks a great breakthrough in Sino-Big Johnson relations."

Even Curly Joe Pfeifer (President of Big JohnsonCo) had to go along with the decision. "When I found those guys had been sent to Asia to sweatit out under the brutal whip of an oppressive Communist regime, I felt sorta' bad. I mean, who's gonna' change my cat liter or drain my septic tanks on the weekend now? I mean, if I don't have those guys, I might have to hire someone...for MONEY!"

But as the weeks passed, Curly Joe would recover from whatever little grief he was suffering. In fact, he found himself hard pressed to remember the names or faces of any of the Art staff or why they had even been necessary in the first place.

		Al the Art Guy poses with a guard just minutes before mid-afternoon beating.

Up until about a week ago, it looked as though the Art department would be stuck in the far east digging salt mines, hauling toxic waste and bootlegging Backstreet Boys CDs forever. But good fortune was to smile on them in the most unlikely of forms: Trey D'Ambrosi. Trey is a guy who has worked at Big JohnsonCo for several years now...although no one is sure what he does. He mainly spends his days sitting in his office playing "3 penny soccer" and watching soap operas on handheld watchman TV. It is believed that he started working for us as part of a bet that Curly Joe lost. He'd been relatively harmless until last week.

Over the holidays, he'd gotten the strange notion that he was worth a damn and began to demand more responsibilities

		Trey , or "Hey You!" as he is known in the office.

in the company. Fearing this would mean finding some real work for Trey to do, the ownership panicked. Putting Trey in charge of anything more important than the Big JohnsonCo Silly Putty Recycling Project would be disasterous for the company...or even the planet. At their wits end Curly Joe and Shemp were about to give in when they realized that if they could put Trey in charge of something useless and non-productive, then the damage could be minimal. But what?

The answer was toiling away in China. The Art Department! Why not name Trey as the Art Department Director? Shemp was sure that even a monkey could do that job and no one would feel any adverse effects. (In fact, he'd done it before as part of an elaborate practical joke just a few years back and the chimp had turned out to be one our better employees.) The problem was how to get the Art department back.

As luck would have it, the 90 day lease on the Big JohnsonCo artists was coming up for renewal an Shemp simply reneged on the rest of the deal. The Art department found itself on a fishing trawler, sailing it's way back to the States. The Chinese lodged a few protests through the Dundalk branch of the Chinese Embassy. While they had no intentions of keeping the artists ("too smelly and lazy"), there had been plans on retaining them in

	Al the Art Guy: "I'm just happy to be back.... Now could you loosen my chains?"

the mines for another 5 years "mainly as a joke."
"We so enjoyed many hours of amusement laughing at the pitiful wails of Al Via the Art Guy," said Bal S'on Chin, the head guard at Peoples Work Camp #28. "It was plenty big fun."

Upon disembarking at the Baltimore Marine Terminal, Shemp clamped the artists back in their old Big JohnsonCo leg irons and marched them of to begin working under Trey immediately. When Al learned of this, he tried to escape back to the Chinese ship, but was quickly clubbed into submission to the general laughter of all concerned.

"All's well that ends with a good beating," quipped Curly Joe as he hauled Al's unconscious body across the terminal.