In brief, Mooserider Julie is the sassy second cousin of Mooserider Jenny. A resident of the Fairly Fruited Plain, (also pictured below in Figure 4), Julie prefers riding the Louisiana Swamp Moose whenever one is available, but often the only ones that can be found are sickly slumped beasts full of large patches of missing fur. But that doesn't faze Julie: as she herself wrote, "Young and healthy or crippled and creaky, these animals have a lot of character. And riding them is exciting– it ain't nothin [sic] like being on a boring horse."
Besides mooseriding, Julie enjoys completing household chores, exploring junkyards, fishing, and listening to the music of Primus. But those qualities alone do not fully explain why she is deserving of the title of Sawblade Software Mascot.
Julie got her start with Sawblade Software as our janitor and repair woman. To this day she works at our converted cargo vessel facility, but lately circumstances have called for dozens of long-term mooseriding expeditions.
Of note is the adventure Julie embarked upon last year at this time. It all started innocently enough: shortly after giving up her three pack-a-day smoking habit, Julie's Eskimo pal Bob approached her with a gift of ten cartons of imported Canadian cigarettes. Realizing that the premium smokes would be wasted, Eskimo Bob offered Julie another guilty pleasure: several diamond-shaped purple pills that he claimed would provide just enough of a distraction to prevent the allure of nicotine from reentering her mind. The pills didn't look all that great to Julie, but the warm-hearted mooserider couldn't bring herself to say no to a guy who drove his snowmobile eight hundred miles into hostile Canadian territory, risking life and limb, all to find the perfect cancer sticks.
Figure 1: Mooserider Julie
In a somewhat altered state of consciousness, Julie began noticing cute brown teddy bears floating through the sky, each spewing a thick dusty fuzz (see Figure 2). It quickly became clear that something terrible was happening. The bears were not floating by harmlessly: they were releasing the dreaded Dirty Southern SillyFuzz, a dangerous hallucinogenic compound capable of turning tree-hugging hippies into deranged lumberjacks that would want nothing more than to clear cut the Fairly Fruited Plain and construct a parking lot large enough to accommodate an extraterrestrial landing craft- such as the one belonging to the Excrement Queen from the Purple Planet.
Eskimo Bob filled in the logical gaps, explaining that the nefarious Scandanuvian Puffer Imps had contacted the Excrement Queen and ordered her to deliver several metric tons of her most pungent manure, so that they could better fertilize their filthy Arctic Cabbage.
Having learned that the Excrement Queen often exhibited rather unusual sexual preferences and was once again in search of a wife, Eskimo Bob suggested to Mooserider Julie a course of action that he was convinced would thwart the Puffer Imps' plot: simply don a wedding gown, seduce the Excrement Queen, get hitched, and go on a honeymoon far, far away from the intended location of the Puffer Imps' Arctic Cabbage fields.
Figure 2: Dirty Southern Sillyfuzz Emission
We can certainly speculate as to why the Excrement Queen decided to approach the Earth not in a traditional flying craft, but rather on a tall French sailing ship (dubbed Les Roues de L'Excrément) that had been retrofitted with the drivetrain of an armored personnel carrier (see Figure 3). Likewise, we can assume with assuredness the outcome of the fifty-foot alien beast's arranged romantic encounter with Mooserider Julie (though neither one of them has said a word about the affair.) More elucidation may be in order here: Eskimo Bob gave Julie one last cigarette prior to her departure, and with a wink, told her to "save it for after the you-know-what." Very telling is that fact that, when the onetime nicotine addict returned, the cigarette was still in her pocket, having never been lit.
Julie did provide us with one interesting bit of information (though in retrospect, it seems obvious.) Since the hippies that suffered the effects of the Dirty Southern Sillyfuzz had not constructed the requested parking lot prior to the Excrement Queen's arrival, she had to touch down over the ocean, and the force of the plunge released enough manure to soil the entire coastline of the Fairly Fruited Plain. The Queen's inability to swim nearly resulted in her drowning; tragically, she went without oxygen for so long that she survives today in a near vegetative state (thus adding weight to our assertion that her subsequent encounter with Julie was mostly uneventful.)
Figure 3: The Excrement Queen From The Purple Planet
Figure 4: The Fairly Fruited Plain (and surrounding lands)
Seeing that their precious manure delivery had now thoroughly engulfed the once sparkling white beaches of the Fairly Fruited Plain, the Scandanuvian Puffer Imps were forced to reformulate their plans: Arctic Cabbage fields would now line the coast, and luckily, the vast interior stretches of the Fairly Fruited Plain would remain untainted. Julie's priorities necessarily changed at that point; since the highly respected but occasionally misguided Shoreline Preservation Council of Concerned Scientists had taken up the challenge of addressing the manure spill, the condition of the coastline seemed destined to improve– and almost as quickly as it had been saved, the Fairly Fruited Plain again became a crucial component of the Puffer Imps' revolutionary agricultural scheme.
It is understood that with the future of the Fairly Fruited Plain hanging in the balance, Mooserider Julie was forced to either negotiate with the scientists, or, in spite of their good intentions, slaughter them outright. Whatever happened, Julie has chosen not to comment. (In situations like this, we always fear the worst but try our best to think happy thoughts.)
Sometimes, when we're all sitting around a campfire reminiscing about lost love and debating pointless topics like the merits of forgotten Super Nintendo peripherals, Julie downs a few beers and divulges some fresh details about last year's life-changing escapade. But the facts come out sounding so bizarre and disjointed that most of the time we end up with more new questions than answers.
Indeed, life would often be easier without Mooserider Julie, but God forbid she embark on one of her mooseriding expeditions and never return; I'm certain that this organization would crumble without her friendly, nurturing presence. Still, I figure that even if we experience the best case scenario, in a year from now we'll be even more lost and confused than we are today.
©2013 Sawblade Software