There's somebody standing in the corner of my room. He looks like a nice enough fellow, but the last time I saw a stranger in that general location, I was dragged through the back of my closet into a magical world where the whimsy was spread so thick, I developed psychic diabetes.

This time, my uninvited guest seems to be wearing one of those hard hats with the drink holders on either side, and the tube that mixes the two. It has a logo on it, but I can't quite make it out. The room is too dark.

The figure slowly approaches me, and as my eyes adjust slightly to the darkness, I see that he's actually not a human, but a gnome. A four-foot tall gnome. He's definitely a he, because his beard is white and full. He's wearing the aforementioned hat, as well as a trench coat. I think he's trying to disguise himself. Too bad that other than the clothes, he looks exactly like the garden-variety (pun intended) garden gnomes that populate the neighborhood landscaping. Only he's huge--huge for a gnome.

"What do you want, gnome?" I ask him curtly. I find the best way to deal with these kinds of things is head-on and directly. Sometimes our non-human friends don't get the subtle nuances of the English language. Strangely, they seem to fare better in French. Not sure why...

Anyway, he tells me that he needs my help. "I heard about the job you did with Candyland, especially the bits about withstanding the whimsy, and I thou