Barnacles first began to become "cool" when some cola executives decided to put a few barnacles on their cans of pop to attract that sailor market.
So anyhow, barnacles became all the rage. Kids got barnacles sewed to their faces and stuff. Dogs and cats went into the trash and were replaced with barnacles. Hollywood was swamped with the new Barnacle Crowd of actors, loved by movie goers and adored by the press. The big catch phrase became, "barnacle". Then, the movie we've all come to know as famous, "Barnacle", was released. It was a monstrous spectacle of Hollywood knowhow and special effects. It even launched a new effects corporation (much like Star Wars created ILM) called BarnF/X (pron. barneffex). The Barnacle subculture rose from their asphalt pits in the downtown core to invade the suburbs. Middle-class wives began to plant barnacles on their lawns, which grew into huge and intricate tapestries of hard, wet, underboat decay.
Only the pears were jealous. And they just plain fumed. Fortunately for the housewives, the teens and the cola executives (all of whom were now trapped twenty feet below the core of the Sun in a metal box, and at least half made of cardboard and also had their little gerbils sticking out of their foreheads whom they described as "cute, but inconvenient") the pears were powerless... as long as they remained pears.
Here's a brief excerpt from "The Lost Predictions of Nostradamus":
'Barnacles and Pears
Will one day become one
But until then
War and famine
Hell and hatred
Qeezecel and Kalrath
Will fight and fight'
It was 1997 when the one responsible for "BarnacleMania" emerged from his dark, underground soilpit. His name was Kik. Theorists speculate that "Qeezecel" is a play on the name Kik, but they have no clue how. One (named, oh, say, "Falho") did this: Qeezecel has a soft c in it. Assuming that this is a hard c, and adding "ick", one gets "kick". Since the original c was soft, kill it. Kik. He got really famous, got lots of babes and stuff. You should have seen his car, too. And all the beer. I mean, this guy.
So Kik started this whole BarnacleMania thang. He did it from within one of the big cola companies, as those named Kik are prone to do. [Feel free to nod knowingly.]
Meanwhile, in a small urban aparment, high, high above a small, independtly owned restuarant, lived a man named Kalrath (Nostradamus experts believe his name is a play on his "Kalrath" (see expert above)). He has very little to do with anything right now, except he may be the antichrist. Or Queezecel may be the antichrist. It's all very unclear right now, to both the reader and the world. Don't worry though, evil always loses.
Kalrath was a modest baker, baking modest pies in his modest shop. Little does he know his recipe for Apple Crumble pie is the only thing in the world that can fight the rapid spread of Barnaclism. But, do we want to fight Barnaclism? It's all very unclear, as we don't know who the antichrist is. We can consult Nostradamus, who in his briefest prediction says:
"I dunno."
The big decision then, is whether or not we should tell ol' Kalrath about what power his Apple Crumble contains. He could very well be the antichrist and then we would just be ruled by Apple Crumble instead of barnacles, and no doubt we'd be back in the middle of the sun and having those gerbils and everything. That's what antichrists DO, y'know. It says right in the handbook, "Get em to the middle of the sun, and put gerbils in their foreheads, heh." Who wrote the handbook? No one knows, except that it was undoubtedly someone mean.
So, Kalrath went on modestly baking, not knowing about the Apple Crumble's potential to free (or enslave) the world, and the barnacles and their minions continued to torture innocent consumers.
Meanwhile (author's note: I don't really wish to confront the ultimate confrontation between Barnacle and Apple Crumble, because I am just not creative enough to see the outcome from this point in the story, which we will probably never get to, so I will go off on a completely different and unrelated tangent, and hope to connect it back to the story later. Hey, it worked for Ghandi) a vampire was loose in the city. He swooped down on his helpless human prey, striking with the swiftness and speed of all the world's jaguars. Being a modern product of a technocapitalist culture, the vampire has a device which was a vacuum device connected to a small brush, which he used to clean up after himself. It was in his closet at his house. He ordered a pizza, but made the mistake of ordering human blood as a topping. He flew from the pizza place and the screaming counterboys laughing a hideous vampire laugh which was hidden by the groaning thunder. We briefly see his vampiric features with a flash of lightning, then he is off to seek more fun.
The vampire stopped in at a motel. It was raining and he was very wet, and this made him incredibly embarassed. The innkeeper stroked his hair gently, and then gave the vampire quite a spanking. They sat by the fireplace and talked about the old days, occasionally tossing an ear of corn into the fire - "for luck", they explained, with a wry chuckle. The vampire and the innkeeper were by now quite deeply in love and managed to produce 3 children. One of these children would later edit the Toronto Star's successful "Bridge" column, but would frequently throw in lies, and always toss an anti-Slavic angle on the game of Bridge.
Statistically speaking, I suppose you could say the entire Earth was covered with Barnacles by now. The End.