About the Author

Predator Press

This blog is a demanding and high-maintenance project already, and LadyTerri is always telling me, "You need to comment more. It will get more people involved."

First of all, I'm far too much a contrary blend of reckless carelessness and obsessive-compulsive psychotic tendencies for decent commenting; after stewing over what to say for an hour, I'll drop a little well thought-out intellectual gem on them like:


"Graet blog!"

--and completely overlook the spelling error. Then I'll break into a cold sweat: "That son-of-a-bitch's blog screwed me up!" I'll complain. "It didn't look like that in the preview!"

Then I imagine the entire internet looking at my comment, and laughing at what a dumbass I am.

That's a lot of people to have killed when you only four days off.


***

So I picked up a few comments of my own on my last post. Our friend Uri Kalish was kind enough to illustrate the definition of SEO: it's an acronym [anagram? angioplasty?] for "Search Engine Optimization".

Unfortunately, "Search Engine Optimization" is even twice as lame as I feared.

See, we figure Predator Press fans don't have any problems finding Predator Press, because one of the few prerequisites of being a Predator Press fan is actually finding Predator Press in the first place. We carefully planned for this actually: if too high of a percentage of your gray matter is tied up with respiration and lottery tickets, big words and sarcasm are only going to piss you off. And we don't have any liability insurance that covers someone poking their own eye out trying to 'bookmark' us.

Luckily, however, we've thought about them as well: by promising a few t-shirts to the more, eh, "militant" of our fans when we start merchandising, we've obviated the need for any SEO completely.

Look: every Predator Press fan knows to make Predator Press their homepage immediately, and even the dumbest ones have smart freinds that can make backups and capture cool images for their desktop. And those new smart Predator Press fans are the most valuable of all: they go to work an hour early, sneak around cubicle to cubicle and share the joy with their unwitting coworkers.

Don't -and I repeat DON'T- do that "cubicle trick" at the Defense Department anymore.

Those Defense Department guys are assholes.

And now I owe those pricks a lot of t-shirts.


***

So I'm looking at my new listing on Humor Blogs (I said I had a kickass blog: I never said anything about the continuity of the writing). And ours is one of the few without a banner.

I felt a strange pang of disloyalty. I mean just about everyone else has a banner, right? I like to think that I have a rather spectacular gift of knowing exactly how and when to collapse to peer pressure with style: it has been one of my finest qualities since junior high school.

So after thirty hours of no sleep --and when I say 30 hours, I mean 29.75 hours of trying to get my newly-pirated image editing software to work, and .25 hours of good and sound actual sheer creativity-- I had finished what I had regarded as a 160 X 40 pixel masterpiece.

Behold:




When LadyTerri saw that on Humor Blogs, she laughed her ass off. Which is cool. I mean, aside from someone having a fatal seizure and the cops finding a smouldering corpse staring at my cool new banner and us getting a "BLOG KILLS" plug on CNN, laughing at it is the second-best desired effect, right?

But it turns out she's laughing at the banner and not with it.

"That's it?" she guffaws. "These people spend a lot of time and money on banners. Those people are serious bloggers. And you throw five words in black and white up there?"

I was so pissed, I diverted the conversation to our upcoming wedding.

She must pay for this insolence.


***

We've both agreed on tattoos rather than wedding rings. I tend to work in industrial environments, and plus neither one of us take much stock in "conspicuous consumption" by virtue of gems and jewelry: her willingness to accept these explanations has saved me a bundle, and I am absolutely crazy about this woman.

"What are the tattoos going to say?" she asks.

That's actually something I hadn't thought of honestly. I thought we were just going to get bands. "I don't know. Our names?"

She says, "I'm just going to get [our new last name]."

"Okay," I says. "I'll just get [my current last name] too."

She frowns, "No. That's only your last name now."

"And that'll be only your last name then," I point out.

"Well, I just wanted to keep it simple," she says. "I've never had a tattoo before, and I've heard it hurts a lot."

"Well, we'll get really drunk," I reason, hoping to bluff into a decent position for negotiation.

"We could just get each other's first name," she offers.

"I suppose," I says. "But then the next thing you know, you're hanging around with dozens of other [My First Name]s, subverting swift religious persecution by trying to confuse God. And God doesn't take kindly to that kind of shameless manipulation."

"Oh please," she giggles.

"No, I'm serious," I says, taking her hands and looking her sincerely in the eyes. "Honey, I'm trying to save you from burning in the Lake of Fire for all Eternity!"

She bites her lip. "Okay. What will my tattoo say then?"

"I was thinking along the lines of 'Property of [My Name], the most handsomest and brilliant man in the world, and the only man I will ever love period ever again. Period. Keep Out. This Means You. Sincerely, [Her Name]. All Rights Reserved."

"You want me to get all that tattooed on my wedding finger," she glares incredulously.

"I haven't gotten to the bar code yet."