Academix

Predator Press

[LOBO]

It occurs to me how hard I worked to pass my college biology classes, and how promptly I forgot all that largely useless data.

Chicago has a pretty limited ecology. Unless you want to be a doctor or a vet, Chicago biology classes should consist of dogs, cats, and rats. Some bugs. And maybe extra credit for fish.

The same goes for algebra. I ultimately would grow to like algebra, and was pretty good at it. But far as a practical? Again, not a single post-college application to date.

Zero.

Why don't colleges offer classes on fishing and hunting? That seems infinitely more important than solving for "x."

I'm Going to Need a Lot of Apples, Stat

Predator Press

[LOBO]

“Now class,” says the teacher. “Can anyone answer the question on the board?”

After an awkward silence, only I raised my hand.

“No,” I replied.

A Mind is a Terrible Thing

Predator Press

[LOBO]

For all of you who were wondering, my High School Reunion went fine.

Well 'fine' if you include the fact I accidentally let it slip I thought Missus Abbernapple was a "volatile and soulless hippopotamus-toed unfuckable bloated life-sucking hairy totalitarian lizard-bitch, that should die right there in those worn-thin and stinky pastel faux-lesbian flip-flops."

I swear to God I thought Missus Abbernapple was a faux-lesbian! The ACLU is pissed.

So please subscribe to Predator Press at Kindle.

-My bail is currently set at $20,000.

In a Nutshell

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Being a smoldering highly-desired ripped physical specimen such as myself has drawbacks, and people tend to assume I’m, you know, all brawn and no brains.

I can hardly fault them: an Adonis-like physique such as mine might suggest I spend far more time in the gym than “cracking the books.” This misconception has plagued me my entire life, and all throughout the 80's and 90’s I’ve had to beat up Billy Zabka, like, fifty times.

Well I’m tired of beating up Billy Zabka. And at this point I’m unable to guarantee Bily Zabka’s safety the next time he screws with me in the locker room -or tries to mess up my wife Terri’s mind with his twisted macho crap. (Do you hear me Billy Zabka? If I hear one more cheap knockoff of Kenny Loggins' “Danger Zone,” you’re a dead man.)

So I need some intellectual “credentials” to prove I’m not just Terri’s hot, chiseled boy-toy dripping with manliness -and that’s why I’ve just enrolled for my online triple degree in Criminal Justice, Pulmonary Surgery and Psychiatry.

“Honey,” I argued. “It’s for us.”

“Us?” she demanded.

“Well excuse me. I think $1,100 of your hard-earned money is well worth our continued marital bliss.”

“But these things are rip offs!” she screamed.

“This one isn’t. I specifically asked the woman on the phone if it was a rip off. She said it wasn't."

As her eyes roll, I snort.

"Jesus Christ, I didn't order a Nordic Track."

How I Got Back on the Board of Education

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Being back in the Principle’s office, I believe, makes my edginess warranted.

My fifteen years of adolescent “education” were absolutely riddled with paddlings.

-They don’t do it anymore, but I still make the association.

For a few moments I fall behind the gentleman as we walk to Screechy’s classroom, and I find myself staring at the back of his head and thinking I could take this guy.

“This is the classroom,” he says, swinging the door wide.

What followed was an assault of color and information that reminded me of that mushroom pizza I had in Amsterdam: there wasn’t a square inch of that place that wasn’t both visually stuffed with information and somehow delicious in appearance like candy.

This room could make me insane.

“He’s a good student,” the Principle says. “He just-“

OMG they’ve got 'HOP on Pop‎.'

“-and upon occasion we’ve noticed-“

I LOVE 'HOP on Pop!'

“Sir?” says the Principle.

“I said this room is terrifying,” I repeat.

I think.

“How so?”

“Well,” I begin. “The alphabet pictures over the chalk board. They show pictures of animals. A-Aardvark, B-Brontosaurus, C-Cat, D-Dog…”

“And this is a problem?”

“S is a stethoscope. Until ‘S’, we have all animals.” I shake my head. “You people will be the first to ditch me when my son asks for a pet stethoscope. How could you be so heartless?”

“We’re trying to tell you,” Principle Estevez continues, “that your son is exhibiting narcissistic delusions of grandeur, aggression and slightly paranoid antisocial behaviors.”

“That comes from his mother,” I explain. “Are you guys serving donuts? You guys dragged me in here at 8:30 in the morning and don’t have coffee and donuts? Seriously?”

"Sir, we-"

"I should totally kick your ass."

Glop (or “How to Save Yourself $50,000”)

Predator Press

[LOBO]

“Okay,” says Terri. “We have three kids, no silverware, a crock pot and $26 with which to eat on for three days. What did you come up with?”

“Well," I says, "Since none of you mincing pansies are brave enough for the candy corn, I hadda go with glop."

-See, this is why Terri wisely chose me as a mate: I have an innate unwavering natural gift for making her kids shut up happy.

We shall eat glop, and the glop shall be Good.

-So sayith the Board.

“What the heck is glop?” asks Shiftless.

Complainy sighs, “Tonight we dine in Hell.”

“Glop,” I says, “Is what I ate through college. It stands for Get Lots On Plate. You go to a grocery store and just wing it. Rice, chicken, a can of corn ... maybe peas. Add some soy sauce and poof. Glop.”

“Mine has splinters in it,” says Terri.

“That’s because I didn’t have a knife,” I explain. “I hadda cut it with the edge of a two-by-four. But it’s tenderized and fully-cooked. Perfectly sanitary.”

Shiftless pulls the spoon from the pot, and it looks like a turkey leg of sticky rice with peas stuck all over it.

With a despondent scowl, he bangs the fork loudly against the pot’s edge in vain effort to break the surprisingly impact-resistant glop free.

“Man," he says. "Fuck college.”

WTF

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Well, Joshua slipped from my clutches despite my dazzling display of mathematical prowess.

Of course I'm distressed; I definitely had that little shit deeply pegged as one of them commie pinko metric-system algebra lovers, just seething with potential; I figured that kid'd toss over his own mother for a Tickle Me Elmo.

And now, on top of it all, it turns out that this whole "getting an audit" is a bad thing.

I blame Mr Insanity.

This week sucks already.

TREASON

Predator Press

[LOBO]

"Alright," I says to the kid. "How much homework do you have to do every day?"

Joshua pauses for a second, confused.

He holds up ten stubby little fingers.

"Okay," I acknowledge. "About an hour. You get on your bus at like 7:20 every morning, and leave on one at 3:10. And get home at, like, 3:25. Am I correct?"

Joshua squirms.

"Well buddy, that's about (x3)(4)=(X-6) more than the average adult commits to their careers, and then bitches about how they have no time." I walk behind Joshua, and put my arm over his shoulder. "But I've got good news too. I'm making you President of Student Council. And your first act as President will be to announce that school is done at noon, and that homework is illegal under penalty of death. Would you like that? All you and your motivated constituents have to do is swear a dark allegiance to me. No big deal."

"I like to color!" he giggles shyly.

"This isn't supposed to be a negotiation, you little shit ... "

Re-Tardy

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I was leafing through the paper --feigning interest in Rumsfeld's resignation so I didn't have to actually talk to anybody-when I found out I was elected District 57's Superintendent of Schools.

I don't even know where District 57 is, and I'm apparently late for work.


***

I burst into the Principal's office pretending to have an agenda and know what I'm doing, and being really pissed off about it. And this bitch dressed like a penguin yanks the cigarette out of my mouth!

"There's no smoking in here," the wrinkly old bat growls, squishing my non-generic and expensive smoldering joy under her thick, flat arches.

I point to the nearest nine year old, and he flips me a Kool.

"Bullshit," I says, lighting up.

Contact

Predator Press

[LOBO]

The days following the "Upstart" debacle were pretty crazy. I had to submit the sixteen page final essay for one, and it was already about six semesters overdue. The problem was that it was a paper based on activities in the student organizations, and invariably I somehow kept getting re-elected.

This college had a strange, quirky electoral process that inexplicably elected it's media people too. Not the reporters and so forth, but the Chairperson -me, at the moment- and this person was responsible for hiring a "Board of Directors". And The Board collectively hired the reporters, and so on. Very bureaucratic and boring. But the real trick was that the Chairperson was also a voting member of the Student Senate. As far as power and influence could go in the academic setting, I suppose I was doing pretty well.

Now as I mentioned, it was only days after the "circus", and it also happened to be Finals Week. The last finals week too, prior to graduation. And in true form, I had procrastinated virtually all of my really tough "core" classes until now.

So I'm studying for four hardcore finals which were all taking place over the next two days. Plus, I'm in the Honors Society and needed at least all "B"s to maintain that distinction. Plus I'm in the Senate, so I gotta write and give speeches. Plus I'm managing the school video program, newspaper, magazine, and radio programs. Plus I had to hand over all this crap to the newly-elected incoming administration, and get them prepared to take over. (Having never taken a single journalist class --let alone management and record-keeping training-- my desk was eight inches deep in paperwork.) Oh, and I also had a regular job as well.

I'm not trying to exaggerate: I was surrounded with a lot of very talented people, and a lot of this stuff was running on auto-pilot. But I had, in fact, achieved complete critical mass.

My entire day was carefully spelled out: meetings, meetings, meetings, punctuated violently by an Algebra exam I was having a lot of trouble with. But I had studied hard, and was pretty confident with the "B" --maybe even an "A" if I got through the sleep-deprived fog well enough. I got on campus that morning with my head swimming in numbers and letters. Don't Walk signs read "D" times "O" times "N" ... in regard to the test, I was In The Zone so to speak, and as well-prepared as I would ever be.

I got to the floor of my office about fifteen minutes before my battery of meetings was to begin, and was surprised to find it bustling with activity. We had scheduled all publications to have finished a few weeks earlier so the students could actually study this week. Even the final newspaper was already in the can: we planned to publish a quasi "Year in Review/Best Of" issue that required simple layout retooling. With the exception of maybe the layout editors, this whole floor should have been a ghost town.

I tried to sneak into my office, but Esther spotted me. Grabbing a pile of mail, she followed. And another woman I'd never met followed her.

They found me sitting, elbows on piles of paperwork on my desk, rubbing my eyes and temples alternately. I hadn't slept in days, and couldn't remember the last time I ate. It was then I first noticed a bunch of flowers, trays of homemade-looking pastries and dishes, colorful fruit baskets and so forth, sprawled randomly across the desk.

I glanced up at Esther, indicating the packages. "What's all this?" I asked.

"I don't know." She says, tossing the mail in front of me. "I'm not your fucking secretary."

So I look at the new pile of mail. "Okay, then. What's this Princess?"

Now Esther is my Comptroller -whatever the Hell that is- and presumably going to carry on under the incoming administration. She's talented, she's tough, she's brilliant, and she's fully-augmented with these great big awesome accounting-whiz number-crunching boobs. "It's mail on that stupid Upstart thing."

"Is it good or bad?"

She pauses for a second. "Well, I guess it's about fifty-fifty."

I leaned back in my chair. "Perfect."

"How the fuck am I supposed to run a creditable newspaper when the Board Chairman is constantly in it?" She demanded.

"Look, you said yourself the mail was fifty-fifty. I've effectively cancelled it all out."

And the poor girl just stared at me like I was a moron. "I'm going to try to get Melody to publish these you know."

I shrugged. "It's your call. Really. I'm graduating. Do your worst."

Esther visibly softened up a little as she left. She was definitely pissed -and perhaps justly so- but she wasn't really that mean-spirited. And the bottom line was that in a year I had tripled our circulation. The whole damn Student Organization -Senate, Media, everything was reorganized and re-vitalized. They went from zero participation to having to turn away people. It was a hard-fought year fraught with legendary silliness for sure, but I felt I was leaving the whole thing a lot better off than it was when I got it.

I looked to the other woman who had remained silent during the confrontation, stood and smiled, offering my hand. "Hi, I'm David. Can I help you?"

"Pleased to meet you," she replied. "I'm Dana."

There was an awkward silence.

"Your ten o'clock," she added.

I nodded.

Another awkward silence. She sighed. "I'm the incumbent Student Media Board Chair. I'm relieving you after this semester."

***
I don't know how I imagined this moment before. I think I was leaning towards either burning the whole building down or maybe distracting The Incumbent momentarily as I threw the keys and bolted for the door.

But it turned out that I genuinely liked Dana. She was a sharp firebrand redhead, and already looking for trouble. We spent about three hours on a cursory tour, discussing the operational nuts and bolts of the organization: office locations, where the files are, keys, et cetera.

Finally she has to go to class, and I get a quiet moment.

I slip into my office and turn off the lights so no one thinks I'm there. It's a great trick, because right behind my desk is a huge picture window that offers plenty of light anyway.

I notice that one of the packages is obviously a tray of brownies, and my stomach growls. Like I said earlier, who knows when I ate last.

Suddenly I notice I'm hungry.

All the packages have "Congrats!" and "Thank You!" on them, and the "From" parts are either hand-scrawled names or printed company logos I don't recognize. I wolfed down some brownies as I examined them. One package was a bowl of mushrooms, and I thought. Gee, I really shouldn't fill up on just brownies, and began popping mushrooms like M&Ms.

And speaking of M&Ms, behold! Here's a whole bowl of them. Odd that they're all purple. But I get M&Ms that are accidentally printed with Es, Ws, and 3s all the time. Maybe it's a contest or something.

I didn't even suspect the white powder that was obviously a poorly-manufactured fragrance of some kind. But when I saw the colorful basket full of arranged hypodermic needles, I began to suspect that there was something afoot.

So I tested the hypo on the six-foot cactus that had suddenly sprung up in my office.

No effect on the cactus.

This puzzled me.

And that's how I met Sapphire.

***

"LOBO" says the guy.

"What?" I yawned, a little disoriented.

"The Robot Dinosaur Overlord has commanded your presence."

"Now?"

"Yes. Behold! You are now aboard a legendary warship feared throughout the universe --fully equipped with charged ion galactic detonators-- flying at approximately eleven times the speed of light. Cubed."

"That sounds pretty fast. Do you guys name your ships too?"

"Yes. We call her Daisy Mae."

"Does she have a gift shop?" I asked.

"Promenade Deck."   ***

Well, call me crazy, but wearing the sneakers, jeans and rumpled T-Shirt of a college student probably isn't the best way to dress when meeting The Robot Dinosaur Overlord. At the gift shop, I found a kewl leather outfit and a cape. I almost bought one of those cute little perpetual motion machines as a souvenier, but the cashier warned me that the civilization that honored the warrantee on it had been extinct for millions of years.

So now I'm all decked, and we're speeding towards The Leading Edge of the Center of the Universe: secret lair of the Space Dinosaur Overlord. We intercept the mother ship, and I'm escorted into a vast, dark room, and left alone in silence.

Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, the room explodes into fiery life.

"MAXIMILLAIN HECTORUS DEXALLIUM!" a booming voice demanded over the giant screen. By the firelight slipping through it's huge jaws, I saw the impossibly gigantic lizard-like form coiled in the center of a vast room.

A dragon. A goddamn bona-fide football-field length, fire-breathing, leathery-winged dragon.

"MAXIMILLAIN HECTORUS DEXALLIUM!" it repeated as the camera closed. "YOU HAVE BEEN FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON AGAINST THE GALACTIC DINOSAUR EMPIRE, AND ARE HEREBY SENTENCED TO DEATH BY FIRE."

"Maximillian who?" I asked.

"MAXIMILLAIN HECTORUS DEXALLIUM!" he roared. Then he paused. "YOU ARE MAXIMILLAIN HECTORUS DEXALLIUM, AREN'T YOU?"

"Never heard of him."

"GODDAMN IT ERIC!" he roared over his shoulder. "WOULD YOU PLEASE DOUBLE CHECK MY ITINERARRY BEFORE YOU GIVE IT TO ME?"

"Sorry there Big-O," a disembodied voice replied in the background. "Eric is on maternity leave ... his ol lady laid like six thousand eggs last night. I'm actually the guy in charge of brimstone."

The dragon looked at me, shrugging and completely exasperated. "OKAY. SO WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?"

"I'm LOBO sir."

The background voice piped up again. "Say's here LOBO is your two o'clock."

The dragon exhaled into the sky, rolling his eyes. "ALRIGHT EVERYBODY ... TURN THE LIGHTS ON. AND MAKE SURE THE ACID BATH IS READY FOR MY TWO FIFTEEN."

I shielded my eyes from the sudden lighting.

"I'M HERE TO INFORM YOU THAT, REGARDING THE GALACTIC DINOSAUR EMPIRE, YOU ARE BEING RELIEVED OF YOUR DUTIES.

"You're relieving me of my duties?" I asked, puzzled. "I'm actually pretty good at relieving myself of my duties." I pause.  "What duties did I have, anyway?"

The dragon grimaced. "LOOK SON," the dragon put his claw around my shoulders as we walked, "AFTER THE GREAT STEVE LOVES AMANDA WARS ENDED, I'VE BEEN PRESSURED BY ALL THOSE HIPPIE, LIBERAL-MINDED VEGETARIAN BRONTOSAURS ABOUT DOWNSIZING OUR MILITARY." He sighed. "YOUR SERVICES ARE NO LONGER REQUIRED."

"But just what exactly were my services to the Galactic Dinosaur Emp--?"

"WE'VE ELIMINATED YOUR POSITION." the dragon interrupted.

"So I'm being fired?"

"LOOK, THE FACT IS THAT THE CREATIONISTS ARE EXCEEDING OUR WILDEST EXPECTATIONS. WHILE YOU HAVE BEEN EXEMPLARY AND LOYAL MAKING CONTRIBUTIONS VITAL TO THE GLORIOUS EMPIRE, WE'RE CHANGING HORSES."

"Hey!" I replied dejected, staring at my boots. "I don't know who these 'Creationists' are, but I'm sure once you tell me what my duties are, I can--"

"IT'S OVER SON," replied the dragon, shaking his enormous head. "BUT WE DO CONSIDER YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS EXEMPLARY, AS I SAID. I AM HERE TO REWARD YOU FOR YOUR SERVICES."

"With fire, right?"

"NO. ACTUALLY IT'S A WATCH." he paused chuckling. "JUST KIDDING. IT'S IN HERE."


***
The beautiful woman lie motionless on the center of the room. I was dazzled.

The dragon put on a lab coat as he explained. "WE HAVE STUDIED THE PEA BRAINS AND FEEBLE DNA OF HUMANS QUITE EXTENSIVELY, AND HAVE DECIDED TO SPARE YOUR POOR BACKWATER CIVILIZATION FOR NOW; A BIG FULL-SCALE EXPENSIVE INVASION DOESN'T SEEM WARRANTED ON A CIVILIZATION THAT HAS ONLY RECENTLY DISCOVERED RUDIMENTARY SCRABBLE. BUT WE HAVE DESIGNED THE LAMBDA-CLASS R1000." He threw a switch, and the woman opened her eyes. "THIS ONE IS PROGRAMMED TO MATCH YOUR EXACT PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE AND PHYSICAL TASTES. HER DESIGNATION IS SAPPHIRE.

Sapphire sat up, blinking. She looked at me and smiled. "Have I told you how handsome you are lately LOBO?" She inquired.

I looked at the dragon, eyebrows furrowed.

The dragon sighed as he unfolded the instructions, and read them through a big thick magnifying glass the size of a bus.

"'CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR RECENT INVENTION OF THE LAMBDA-CLASS R1000. SHE IS ATTRACTIVE, OBEDIENT, INTELLIGENT AND HARD WORKING, AND WILL CATER TO YOUR EVERY WHIM BY PREFORMING ANY AND ALL ACTS YOU DESIRE.'"

The dragon paused. "WE'VE EVEN GOT A JINGLE ALREADY". He swung his paws as he danced a little, singing tunelessly "NEVER AGES, GAINS WEIGHT OR MEN-STRU-ATES ..."

"Well, what if I want kids?"

Tracing the instructions with a massive claw, the dragon skimmed the paragraphs. "LET'S SEE ... 'COMPLETELY INDESTRUCTABLE' ... 'STATE-OF-THE-ARTS LETHAL DEFENSIVE SYSTEMS' ... YADDA YADDA YADDA ... OH HERE IT IS. 'THE LAMBDA-CLASS R1000 IS FULLY CAPABLE OF BEARING AND RAISING CHILDREN, AND IN FACT HAS AN IMPROVED GESTATION PERIOD OF ONLY THREE MONTHS, AS WILL HER OFFSPRING.'"

I began counting on my fingers, but Sapphire interrupted. "David, at full capacity within thirty-four years our brood will have multiplied with the human race exponentially: roughly 27.8% of the Earth's population would be our progeny."

I whistled. "But that's like a lot of kids that all have to be put through college. And Christ Thanksgiving would be a nightmare. What if I don't want kids?"

The dragon peered down through the glass. "SAYS HERE THERE'S A SWITCH."

"This is crazy." I said. "What if she gets pissed off and tries to gooify me or something?"

Sapphire giggled, twirling a lock of my hair in her fingers. "My programming will not allow me to be angry with you, sexy."

"Well, while I'm impressed with your visual clarity, what if I leave the toilet seat up?"

"Then the toilet seat in exactly where you prefer it, as reflected in my programming," she whispered into my ear.

"Okay," I replied, thinking hard. "What if I come home late, drunk and surly after a confrontation with your mother over how she hoped you would marry some suave, rich space entrepreneur robot doctor instead?"

"Then I would do the dishes while reciting any of the complete works of Louis L'Amour that I have memorized for your amusement, you hot stud."

I continued to be impressed by her visual acuity --and she definitely had the right breasts for reading Louis L'Amour books-- but that was a trick question. "I don't wash dishes, I just buy new ones."

"I guess we could just get our freak on."

"Let's hit it" I said.

***
You know, I am The Man.

Fifteen minutes in space, and I'm sporting a cool new leather outfit, speeding back to Earth with a hot, scantily clad robot space chick giving me a massage, and poised for complete and total global domination. By sex.

Gimmee my props.

But then Sapphire piped in. "David I need to tell you about my upkeep."

"Jesus Christ! Nag, nag, nag! Can't we just enjoy a nice quiet moment without you complaining about something?"

"Every six years you need to change my AAA battery--"

"Hold it right there, sister. You never told me you were going to be so needy. I haven't changed. You've changed. I'm just not ready for this kind of commitment!"

"But LOBO .."

"Shhh!" I put a finger over her lips. "Baby look, we're just too different. I'm sorry. I love you, but I'm not in love with you. It's not you, it's me. I just can't deal with your relentless mother anymore. I think we should both start seeing other species." I turned to the crew on the bridge. "About face. Turn this bucket around ... we have to take 'Little Miss Needy' here back to the mother ship."

The crew of the Daisy Mae looked at each other in confusion. "Uh, Sir," one finally piped. "Nobody has ever asked us to do that before. We're supposed to sit hear and look busy pushing buttons. This ship is on auto pilot."

Then I noticed Sapphire was crying.

"Honey, I imagine this to be an intensely painful experience for you. And I'm a really sensitive, sensitive guy." I took her hand. "That's what makes jettisoning you out of the airlock such a painful thing to do."


***
FOOM! Sapphire shot into the void. Then, suddenly, the ship lurched. Hard.

"What's going on?" I demanded.

"Sir!" a crew guy replied. "We've figured out how to disengage the auto-pilot and turn around!"

"Good" I replied, pressed against the wall from the inertia. "Then we can drop off Sapphire back on the Mother Sh--"

Sapphire clanged noisily off of the ship's nose, and then was sucked violently into the starboard engine.

"Um," I replied. "Just forget it."

***
I woke up in my office.

Because my pants were on fire.

Somehow, a photograph of the inside of my pocket was inserted into my pocket, and it smoldered painfully. I procured it, and stomped it out on the floor.

It was ten at night.

And while I had completely missed the algebra exam, I would soon discover that I had accidentally wandered in on a Calculus class and got an A+ doing their entire exam on the blackboard in fourteen seconds.

Without pants.

Pictures of it would be in the school paper.

But I stood in the darkness of the quiet abandoned campus looking out my enormous picture window. Wistfully gazing out at the beautiful cloudless sky, the stars glowed their infinite presence like gems. And one fell, burning a silent blue arc across the sky.

And I remember thinking one thing:

Sapphire.

Magic

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I can’t explain it. Sit here and make words. Make stories. No problem.

I can make all kinds of software sing and hum to creations in my head. I can make and play music, but can’t read a note. There’s just this infused trust in all the machines that are the tools of my craft. Electricity, electronics, fussy processing programs … At my fingertips, they dance my idiotic nonsense to life.

But I look at a hammer, and I’m just mystified. I’m in complete awe of the screwdriver. While I hack this garbage on magical toys, those “simple” and "crude" objects create epochs. With them, entire civilizations are housed and fed.

It’s very humbling.

Nothing, ultimately, makes any sense to me.


***

There is a certain healthiness to it, I would argue. Once you stop trying to make “sense” out of everything, your playground expands. It’s not that I don’t care about all the minutia, I just don’t want to know too much about it. Getting too close to the ballet tends to ruin the illusion for me. Tell the magician to keep his yap shut about how the tricks are done. You seemingly never hear Hendrix talking about Arpeggios, Joplin about Baritones.

When I was roughly about five, I was given an assignment at school to draw a picture of “What I Did This Summer”. I drew a picture of me and my dad carrying boards up the runway to a rocket ship, and boldly proclaimed that me an’ Dad went to Mars in the spaceship we built. We fought a big robot space dinosaur, saved a civilization of little green men from becoming grizzly appetizers, and got home before Mom's macaroni and cheese got cold.

The teacher sat me in the corner, and made me an ill-fitting custom dunce cap. She put masking tape over my mouth. And at the end of the day she sent home humiliated --Evil Knievel lunchbox in tow-- with an eviscerating note pinned to my yellow sweater outlining my devilish behavior in excruciating detail.

I'll never forget the impact. Here's this mean-spirited venomous little middle-aged gutless shrew paying her mortgage stompin on imaginations, completely devoid of any motivation other than making other good little cookie-cutter "honest" citizens such as herself.

I promptly scuttled my Presidential aspirations --as well as the bloated education, welfare and humanitarian budgets implied-- and swore a dark allegiance to our future space dinosaur overlords.


***
Today I look at children’s artwork and see such a clear window to their souls, and wonder how and how long until the surgical steel of soulless adult derision amputates this unwanted quality.

... and I feel so sorry for them ...

Soul

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I got some emails on "Silent Night, Holy Crap". Among my favorite comments was the one from my old philosophy teacher who wrote "I can't believe you are that morally corrupt. It is my firm belief that you, Mr. Curr, are completely devoid of any soul whatsoever."

Now, I went to that school for two and a half years. Where the heck was he then?

I guess I'm shocked that he's shocked.

***

Right around my fourth semester, I got elected Vice President of the Student Senate. And again, I parlayed the experience into earning some credits for it ... at the end of my "term" I had to produce a sixteen page essay on "What I learned in Student Government". And I'm no genius obviously; even after thirty thousand dollars of education I still can't spell. But I can plot out a pie-chart timeline in Excel of how long one million dollars would keep me in Lotto tickets and hookers until I had to go back to work, so I guess it's not a total loss.

My college wasn't really that different than any other I've heard of. You've got your usual cast of faculty like this guy: repentant bluejean hippies stuffing impressionable minds with self-indulgent liberal happity horse shit while simultaneously backing tuition increases, personal raises, free speech being limited to "free speech zones", ad nauseam.

The hypocrisy intrigued me.

One of my first proposals was for funding "Upstart": a newly-created Campus Club for anarchists, whereas I, the founding member, would reside as Chairman.

When I submitted the draft Constitution, Charter, and necessary paperwork for this new "club", the college administration absolutely freaked. We heard arguments of all kinds. This was before September 11, but still there were accusations of bomb plots and all kinds of paranoia: The Unabomber's Manifesto was still fresh in the press.

But as far as Upstart was concerned, nothing was further from the truth. The concept was that of a discussion group where people could weigh the merits [or lack thereof] of government styles as they applied to current events in an academic setting. Like a think tank of uncensored viewpoints. Uncensored viewpoints that unvaryingly found themselves generated on tropical island resorts crawling with scantily-clad women and Lotto tickets.

Swear to God the college fought me for two full years on this one. The Administration hired consultants and lawyers. They devoted hundreds --if not thousands-- of man-hours to the obstruction of my "anarchist club". Whenever the Constitution and Charter of Upstart hit the Senate floor, there were faculty, admin and various other suits everywhere. And eventually, reporters as well.

They could stall, but only for so long. If the campus was going to sponsor any clubs at all, there was ultimately no legitimate reason to oppose an "anarchist's club". Inevitably they shifted the argument to "Maybe we shouldn't sponsor any clubs at all." Now all the other clubs are backing my not-yet-ratified constitution.

Two years of this, and all the college's efforts culminated into a single distressing conclusion: they trapped themselves, and simply couldn't make a good move anymore. The harder they fought, the more press would show up. The press showing up accelerated the drama. The drama accelerated the attention. In the end, it was a circus.

We had a Senate meeting at two in the afternoon, and everyone had argued to the point of exhaustion. I was so confident of final ratification, I called the first official "Upstart" meeting to Official Order that same day at four o'clock.

I issued press releases.

Four hundred students were there, eager to take their place in academic history. Faculty and Administration also attended, sharpening their claws in wait of some hint of civil disobedience.

After calling the meeting to order, the first order of business I proposed was to revoke and dissolve "Upstart's" newly-signed Constitution and Charter. Everyone was stunned, but I'm proud to say that the vote passed by the narrow margin of 6 to 5.

In the hallway, I was stopped by an exasperated reporter with a gigantic microphone. "Mr. Curr, why did you self-destruct your own club after fighting so hard to get it acknowledged by the college?"

"Well," I replied, blinded by camera lighting "It's an anarchist club. I called a meeting and all these people showed up. It was obviously rife with treacherous conformity, and polluted with insidious ideals that would ultimately only counter the cause."

I got an "A" on my essay.

I, Continaut

Predator Press

[LOBO]

One of the greatest gags of nature and nurture ever played is the fact that I have been given just not quite enough talent to do most of the things I enjoy. Years of bands, countless hours of painting and sketching, hundreds of thousands of pages of science and philosophy ... indeed I have been a grotesque failure in spectacular multitude of platforms. The music was admittedly terrible, the art even worse. The clear critical thinking required of the sciences was always blurred in the pursuit of survival, the maintenance of ego and the shameless hunt for the content of the highest-cut skirts available.

But it was fun from time to time.

When I lived in Hawaii --roughly ten years ago-- I had a heyday of sorts. There was this broken down two-story building on Pauahi Avenue. While it was technically downtown, the neighborhood was rather dubious ... it bordered a strip-club peppered drug marketplace riddled with the worst humankind could possibly offer "paradise". This, incidentally, is the seedy side of Hawaii you don't see on postcards --in fact, you don't see it anywhere. Newspapers don't talk about it. Muggings and robberies and homicides [Oh My!] somehow never grace the television. Hawaii also had the worst homeless problem I've ever seen; mentally ill people, hygiene long since abandoned, wander freely in the mild weather to point and whistle into an empty sky, barking obscenities at unseen demons and occasionally spitting on the screaming pastel shirts of the unwary passer-by.

So in the evening, this particular building shut down quite completely; all the barbers and beauticians, photographers and souvenir stores, restaurants and tailors all locked up there tiny, crammed little shops and the place was left in hopes that the predatory denizens would once again just overlook the place --aside from the usual urinations and sleepers.

Tommy and I met by complete chance. I was struggling in my early semesters of college, enjoying the derision of a fierce feminist English teacher named Joan. Joan made it perfectly clear early on that I was not only "the worst writer she had ever had the misfortune of teaching", but I was also "so debauched and crude that [my] sanity borders on the deranged, completely devoid of even rudimentary literary skills taught in most fundamental junior high schools". She vocally --vehemently-- resented having to work with students such as myself as it was "virtually all remedial, and [we] had no business being in college".

So I need credits, and this bitch is really putting the spurs to me. I need something easy to balance the semesters workload.

It turned out I could pick up a few elective credits going through an apprenticeship program, and one that was offered was that of a jeweler. I figured, correctly, that I would spend a few months sweeping a jewelry repair store, taking out the garbage, et cetera.

Tommy, however, turned out to be something much more influential. He was most certainly a gifted jeweler, but this was completely eclipsed by his ability to play the drums. He was awesome. I had been playing guitar for years and we hit it off famously. Soon I was hanging around with him and his friends David and Reed --other custom jewelers who also worked in the same building.

The place was empty all night long. Within a month or so we had rented one of the vacant offices and shattered the still of the Hawaiian night, boozing and playing impossibly loud and awful music until dawn. He was a professional musician, and before long I was rubbing elbows with a myriad of musical talents. Of course Tommy eventually wanted to turn the rental office into a real recording studio, so a few of us ponyied up a modest investment to bring his brainchild "Split Second Productions" to it's fruition.

My role in this was pretty straightforward: I would pull in business whenever possible, monitor the bands, clean up and put away equipment when the allotted time was over and so forth. In return, I got "A"s for the semester and free access to the studio and equipment myself.

Reed was one of the most enigmatic characters I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Truthfully, I don't know if "Reed" was his first name or last. Six foot two and one hundred and seventy pounds soaking wet, he was a gangly kind of eccentric genius who painted in his free time and joked and pranked us incessantly. To pay the rent he made miniature gold tennis rackets and baseballs and sports-related bangles of all sorts. There wasn't always a market for the stuff, but when there was a market, the profit was huge.

Reed's "office" was on the second floor, and like the others, was crammed with tools, workbenches, display cases and so forth. We all suspected that he slept there because he was never absent ... there was no evidence of a bed or anything; the only obvious amenities consisted of a tiny little refrigerator full of whatever you feed a mad scientist like that. We would be rehearsing for some critically serious gig or recording, and right in the middle of the thundering bass and screaming guitars he would just burst into the studio with a trombone or a French horn from storage and start blowing crazy misshapen notes that would make us burst into hysteric laughter. He was just a naturally funny, brilliant guy

On the walls of his shop Reed hung his paintings ... paintings that never failed to mystify me. I loved them, and I would often mill about and admire them; the ranged from landscapes to nudes to surreal, and I would spot something clever and new in them every time I looked. During the ensuing months I tried to work up the courage to offer to buy one, but he was just so eccentric I could never figure out how to breach the subject. How much should I offer? Would he be insulted? Would he part with them at all?

And then one day Reed was gone.

We never saw him again. Poof. Curiously left his office completely intact as if it was waiting for him to return; rare metals, half finished projects, tools, everything was visible through the window in the door of his shop.

We waited.

After a week or so we found out he had been evicted. None of us knew exactly why, but theories sprang up like brushfires. The landlord found out he was living there. He was late on the rent. Whatever. Nothing ever got any confirmation.

One day after classes I wandered up to Tommy's office to do my usual cleaning, and realized that the landlord had hired a crew to dismantle Reed's office in order to prepare it for rental. The workbenches, the tools, the furniture ... all had been removed. Sheets were hung and paint buckets, rollers, industrial-sized brushes were strewn throughout a newly-painted powder-green room. Paint and plaster chips randomly covered the floor like shrapnel.

And in the corner, in a waist-high haphazard stack, a pile of bent and torn canvases lie, punched through with footprints and powder-green splashes ...

Portfolia

Predator Press

[LOBO]

When people find out that I lived in Hawaii for something like seven years, inevitably the next question I get is "Well what the heck are you doing here?" Very tedious. But don't ask me when it's negative five degrees outside and I'm chipping at a block of ice that might happen to have my car in it. Or when I'm waddling Michelin Man-like, overly-laden with twenty pounds of winter gear, terrified that I might slip and a squall of snow covers me up until Spring. Or even when the repair guy grins like a vampire at a Wes Craven movie as he tears out my lengthy bill after fixing my furnace.

Throwing gasoline on this whole issue is my beloved mother, who still lives in Hawaii. "What the heck are you doing there?"

Very tedious.

But she sweetens the pot. She's got a nice live-aboard yacht I can live on for free. Her boyfriend runs a salvage business out there, and offers me a job ... one that pays about twice what I make here.

To illustrate the whole mess I've made of things, I'm going to have to be the first to break rank with my respected colleagues and offer some personal details. But don't start loading yer shotguns, gassing up your Humvees and polishing your mortars labeled "LOBO" just yet because I'm not going to make this easy on you jerks.

Hawaii was simultaneously beautiful, comfortably temperate, excruciatingly dull, small, opulent, expensive, and frankly not much fun overall. Don't get me wrong; I went through the whole beachy-keen surf punk phase for a while. The water is crystal clear and hued with blue undertones. And I mean BLUE ... not that creepy grey/green opaque thing the Atlantic has got going on. I guess all the sediment stays down because of all the coral formations and so forth.

But after a while I realized that this crystal-clear water makes for great visibility for the hungry superintelligent giant squid on the go. I have it on good authority that the Hawaiian waters are widely regarded as fast-food drive-up windows in the superintelligent giant squid community. It's a classic right out of the Superintelligent Giant Squid Playbook.

Landlocked on a tiny island surrounded by deadly predators. On property and bills so huge I got to the point that I found them laughable. In a community that has little but contempt for young white males mooching and trying to shoot their DNA all over the damn place. Clutched in a combination of mortal fear and mind-numbing tedium, I fled to the last bastion of idiots that would actually still have a washed-out chemically enhanced loser freak such as myself. Besides Scientology.

I went to college.

So skip ahead two years.

Graduation.

I discovered, quite by accident, that I like the academics. Ever since elementary school, school was all about "stand up, sit down, shut up, kiss The Ring" kinda stuff. But this was college; a learning institution. College was less concerned about the whole discipline thing, and seemed much more a magnificent forum for the free exchange of ideas --radical and otherwise. It was almost revered by myself as a holy sanctum.

So I did the stuff you do when in a holy sanctum: I chased lithe beautiful nubile rich girls hell bent on effecting Earth-shattering liberal hippie-type ideals and really pissing off their parents. I posed nude in the school paper. I overthrew the student government in one semester, and then in the next became the Editor-In-Chief of the school newspaper to leverage the coupe [and also warn others of the superintelligent giant squids lurking about].

You know, learning.

So I always liked this one magazine based in New York, and began to send them writing samples. I would make a 'hard' copy, plus send them the stories on floppies formatted on IBM and Macintosh. And every single one of the damn things would come back unopened, with a form letter saying "Your shit most likely sucks, so we didn't bother".

I had about two thousand bucks saved up, plus another three thousand on the way (I was getting published quite a bit at the time). I didn't even go to the Graduation ceremony. Swear to Honest-to-God Truth I took my final exams, dropped my #2 pencil and was on a plane back to the "mainland" states within two hours.

I pit-stopped here in Pianosa, Illinois on my way to New York. It was an opportunity for the rest of my money to catch up with me before I bolted for "The Big Apple" for good, but it was also a post-college breather with the added benefit of seeing a side of my family I hadn't seen in over twenty years.

The money didn't arrive for months. And by the time it did, my original two thousand had dwindled down to close to nothing. Of the twelve boxes I had sent from Hawaii, three of them were in Pianosa waiting for me ... the train had wrecked, burning virtually all my belongings. No clothes. No books. No software archives. No portfolio. Oddly enough, when that last three grand finally materialized I was already working for an insurance company trying to reconstruct all the claims that they lost in the same train crash.

It was then that I started breaking out in frying pan dents in my skull. Turns out I got married. Ill-fated as it was, it probably saved my life. Years later the deranged, hideously brutal cowardly act of an insane man named Osama Bin Laden wiped out the main office of that magazine, reducing the place to ashes and rubble and simultaneously taking out over four thousand innocent people drinking their lattes and trying to feed their families.

On September 11th, oddly enough, I was working for an explosives company. They called a special meeting about the security that night. Now, amongst my usual duties I loaded and drove a truck that carried blasting caps, boosters ... all kinds of really loud and fun toys. This required going to these remote locations at, like, 3am called magazines, where they store the stuff. In the dead of night, with no security, you could spend an hour or two with a flashlight grabbing complex combinations of blasting stuff, charge delays, 55-pound boxes of stuff that'll put a rhino on mars etc. And at this "Special Meeting", I was informed that if there was any sort of confrontation, hijack attempt, whatever, that we were just to surrender the material without incident or challenge.

Shocked really isn't the word for it. I kept thinking that this was the 'company line' that they had to say to cover some legallistic codicil in some liability defense. I kept thinking "Just let them have it? That's fucking insane!"

Remember the level of paranoia on that day. We knew we were attacked, we weren't certain by who. And more importantly, we weren't even certain the attack was even over. Frightened to death, I was stuck: "Keeping America rolling" seemed the best thing I could do as but a lowly patriot and citizen .. but "in the event of an event" I had to detonate all these materials on the spot, literally vaporizing myself and everything else within a few hundred feet, leaving an empty smoldering crater and a shitload of questions.

Well, let that be a lesson to all you little leaguers ... no matter where you are, no matter what you do, there's a superintelligent giant squid waiting to launch a tentacle out of the bathroom sink and drag you into a PVC oblivion.