Lady Higganbotham’s garden party, held in honor of Sir Milton Hogsheade, author of the much heralded and long-winded tetralogy about the Great War, was to be memorable not for the notable guests at the gathering or the tasty tea time treats, but for the effluvium and its familiar smell which sent the guests running in dishabille, hastily peeling off pieces of clothing and jumping into the babbling brook nearby, in an attempt to rid themselves of even the tiniest mote of skunk scent, only to exchange one horror for another when they emerged bearing the denizens of the cool waters dangling from bare body parts – besotted blood-sucking leeches.

The Flurbert Award-winning Melmac Tetralogy (consisting of Voyage to Melmac, Escape From Melmac, Return to Melmac, and Vacation on Melmac) tells the story of Captain Dash "Jody" Firepants, a devil-may-care space-drunkard in a perpetual state of deshabille, and his search through that unfashionable region of the galaxy known as the Minkowski Effluvium for an elusive mote of quintessence, the fabled elemental dust from which the universe was made--but no matter what flight path Firepants charts on his navicomputer, somehow he always winds up on the planet Melmac, partying with the hairy muppet-like creatures who call it home.