Well I don't see what's so dangerous about bringing my Adopt-a-Ghost bestie to school! She just rides in my pocket. Like this. See? She won't hurt you. She just curls herself around my neck when I go to sleep and then I don't know what she does. Whatever it is all little ghosties do at night. Wherever it is they go.

Isn't that right, you little snookums you? Is that what you do? Awwww. Just look at her.

Cute things to do with your Adopt-a-Ghost:

1) Let it look at itself in the mirror. But don't leave it unattended because it will try and go inside and it's really hard to get it to come back out.

2) Invite friends over to your room but don't tell them you have one. They'll get really freaked out from things moving around in your room but then you can tell them why and it's funny.

3) Ask it questions with a Ouija board. Like, what its name is and how did it die. I don't know why but it will never give you the same answer twice! Then, try asking it riddles that don't have an answer, and they'll all make sense. If you think about it.

But don't play with your Adopt-a-Ghost too much because if you tire it out it gets cranky and you don't want that.

Part of why I wanted to get an Adopt-a-Ghost in the first place was to help ghosts that had been separated from their families. But now we find out that, had we read the box, we would know that they're some kind of... synthetic ghosts? Or clone ghosts, grown in a laboratory?

But they're still just so darn cute!!!! I just love my little snookums don't I? Awwww you roll over on your back because you just know I'm going to scratch your belly now don't you? Awwww.....

Seriously, I don't care where this ghost came from and if it's an authentic ghost being sold as a commodity or a manufactured ghost cooked up in a lab, it has feelings! It can experience pleasure! Just look at it! And if you neglect it, then it's sad. It's just as real as you or me.

I'm going to take my Adopt-a-Ghost to the Adopt-a-Ghost factory and learn about it and embrace it as part of who we are.

So we made it to the Adopt-a-Ghost factory. It took a week to get here because it's in Hamistagan and we took the bus because it was all I could afford without asking my mom for more money and I couldn't really let her know I was ditching school to come here. She didn't want me to get an Adopt-a-Ghost in the first place.

There was a sign at the bus station that said "NO GHOSTS" but you could tell just by looking at all the other people on the bus that they had ghosts too. They all had kind of a haunted look.

Am I going to look like that when I get old and haunted?

Cruising down the highway through the desert at night, after everybody fell asleep, those ghosts would come out and have a ghost soiree. Or that's what they call it in the book I have about ghost care. The bus driver was some kind of shaman though because he'd shake a rattle every so often to keep them from getting too wound up.

And there was a big smelly guy in the seat right behind the bus driver. Looked like a toad. Looked like he could gobble those ghosts right up if he wanted to. I bet he was some kind of Ghost Marshall or something.

Anyway, I didn't really sleep that great on the bus and I have enough money for a room at the Hotel 6. We'll spend the night and be at the factory for their first tour in the morning, which is at 10 am.

The Adopt-a-Ghost factory was clean. All the visitors on the tour had to wear clean suits and masks and booties, and we rode golf carts through various disinfection chambers.

My little snookums was in my pocket as usual, and sneezed when we went through the chambers. It was soooo cute!

After a lot of boring history of ectoplasmic cloning stuff, we finally got to the "big show."

It was horrifying.

Do you know what a leg of shawarma looks like? Or if you're getting gyros? That big piece of meat on a stick and they shave the pieces off?

That was at the center of the Adopt-a-Ghost factory. A three-story lab-grown hunk of spirit consciousness, bruised and oozing, and they were shaving little pieces off with a diamond-mind laser. Little robots scooted around at the foot of it scooping up the little pieces and putting them on a conveyor belt. Little Adopt-a-Ghosts.

"MAMA!!!!" little snookums cried.