The Virtue of the Lie

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I can't say enough about lying.

No, I'm serious. I regard lying as a necessary and virtuous act --nay, a 'Moral Imperative' for you Kant freaks. If you can't lie, try telling the truth about a potential parallel universe.

Lying it's really fun when creatively done, and done well to precisely the right people.

My people are the Student Loan people. "When are you going to pay up?" Blah, blah, nag, nag.

What about me and my needs, you jerks? Sure I haven't been in school for fifteen years ... quit being so goddamned impatient about it. Look, I've only collected two of the five Devo hats so far. And until I have all five, nobody gets nothin.

I tried letting them down easy, writing "Deceased" on their envelopes and having them mailed back. Might give 'em a kinda nice fuzzy sense of "justice". I even made 'em look blood-soaked for full effect.

Then Big Brother steps in. Turns out according to whatever corrupt government is running things right now, ketchup is easily detectable in a DNA test, and 'Mail Fraud' and so forth are 'Federal Offenses punishable by prison'.

Lousy screws. Jesus I'm glad I'm dead.

***

But the telephone is off-limits. Well, more accurately, I regard it as "Open Season": by violating the sanctity if my hard-earned personal space (consisting of four walls, three Playboys and one telephone), I consider it a rude invasion to get unsolicited calls of any nature.

My friends want me to make a CD on how I handle these calls. Hey, I live in poverty and don't have a whole lot to amuse myself; if you're calling me you've just become a new plug-in surround-sound amusement center Geo-Pet playthingy in a world commonly refered to as the debauched, seething cesspool of my deranged mind.

You've worked hard for this.

You've earned it.

And God I swear ... if they weren't creditors actually wanting me to pay my bills, I would hire these people to call me all the time.

When you get a telemarketer, let them suck you in on the speech. In roughly the first sixty seconds a telemarketer is desperately trying to gauge if a sale is possible here. Just "play ball" and it won't take long at all. Let them make the pitch, and tell them you want everything. Subscriptions for friends. Gifts. Order like tons of these products. When it comes time to pay, tell 'em you've got a VISA. But when it becomes time to tell them the VISA number, start reciting random single numbers uninterruptedly ... for however long it takes them to hang up.

There's one calling list you are no longer on.

Creditors are pretty slick because they already know some things about you. But this really only makes them more vulnerable: you can layer up some really magnificent lies when the foundation is blended nicely with a good dose of the truth.

Remember, these are honest, hard-working people that deserve nothing less than the full spectrum of your creative effort.

I usually answer the phone as "Dale, the former roommate."

Credit Agency: "Mr. Curr?"
Me: "No, this is Dale Chrisopherson, his former roommate."
Credit Agency: "Do you know where I can find Mr. Curr?"
Me: "No. He got my girlfriend and Auntie Eloise pregnant, stole my wallet and car keys a few days ago and has evidently skipped town."
Credit Agency: I ... uh ... see."
Me: "Do you want the number for the police? They're lookin for him too. He was so pissed when he left he punched a clown and broke his 'lectronic nose. Then he kicked a bunch of puppies. Completely ruined my nieces' birthday party."
Credit Agency: "... Um"
Me: "Well I would certainly like to find him before the cops do. I'd like to kick him in the nuts until his guts rupture. Maybe stuff his fucking arm into a garbage disposal 'an listen to him howl. [pause] ... Wanna work together and find this son-of-a-bitch?"

[This is most often followed by a dial tone.]

Silent Night, Holy Crap

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Come to think of it, I guess I've always been a complete bastard.

I blame everybody else, and simultaneously forgive them.

There. I feel better. Don't you?

I remember Christmas one year. We were spectacularly poor ... I often got the crap beat out of me for having to wear thrift shop clothing. There's nothing like making your debut in a big city public school, dressed to the nines in ill-fitting plaid pants, a button-up green shirt and white dress shoes. And no cufflinks! To pull off that look, you've either got to be really cool or really durable: Always leaning to the practical side, I chose the latter.

I had been particularly bad this year, starting to skip school, et cetera. Back then we had Truant Officers roamin the streets, and I was on a first name basis with my local guy. Invariably --after a grand chase-- he'd take me by the ear and return me to that kiddie prison of sadistic glandular freaks, drug and firearm deals, atomic wedgie-dishing ... where I would be safe from all the evils of the world.

Anyways, I was informed that --as far as Christmas was concerned-- Santa "had my number" this year: as the virtual poster boy for 'naughty', I was essentially going to get screwed.

"Everybody tells their kid that," I thought. "Every kid's gotta get something for Christmas. You know, like a retainer!"

By December 23rd, I positively beamed with wholesome goodness and a youthful, zesty exuberance. And despite this mammoth effort, Santa's rat never changed his story or revealed his or her identity. At one point I was virtually certain it was the guy that ran the arcade. Maybe he was feeding encrypted info to the Ice Cream guy ...

... and so it goes.

***

On Christmas Eve, Mom was pretty adamant that Santa was still pissed, and at this point, I'm essentially panicked. Whoever this squealer was, he wasn't changing his story for anything short of curing cancer, and I had busted my microscope during a narrow GI Joe death ray escape months ago. ["No, Mr Joe. I expect you to die!"] And while burnin stuff down is always fun, lumps of coal aren't really the best medium for it. This was the day and age of napalm thank you.

I paced in my room, my massive soon-to-be-unfulfilled Christmas list ran through my mind like those glowing numbers on the Stock Exchange. No aircraft carrier. No F-16s. Probably not even some lousy weapons-grade plutonium.

Nothing.

I went back downstairs to get a last forlorn look at the Christmas tree. It was really pretty, and the colored lights danced playfully along the walls. Why I could swear there was more lights than you could count. One for every curse word Dad uttered as he dragged the box of 'em out of the garage attic, hauled them in, located and fixed the busted bulbs, all the way up to when he had to drag the ladder in to put that star on top.

And scattered around the bottom of the tree, there was already presents.

"To Mom from Dad".

"To Dad from Mom"

It was a beautiful thing. While there was nothing for me there, I stood gazing at the spectacular demonstration of love expressed between my loving parents.

I teared up. For it was in that one shining moment that I understood the true spirit of Christmas.

While Santa might not be coming to give me presents, he would be coming here tonight.

For them.

***

My mind raced as I padded upstairs. What kind of fight could one expect from the fat man? Was he even fat? Santa obviously had a vast intelligence network ... could the rotund, happy and good-natured image be entirely composed of a propaganda campaign? What if he's all slimmed down from a Mrs Claus-mandated diet of lowfat proteins and carbs? I pictured a Rambo-like Santa running on a Nordic Track, Glock in each hand, picking off pictures of people on his "naughty" list.

From my closet, I dug out my armor and weapons: my football helmet, pads, cup, and a nice aluminum baseball bat.

"You don't come on my turf and mess with the bull," I growled. "You'll get the horns."

Then, arching my body impossibly over the presents, I nestled myself comfortably behind the tree.

And I waited.

***

Now, I'll bet the Emergency Room sees a lot more of this on Christmas morning than they are really willing to admit.

My mom got up early and --in her bathrobe and big fuzzie-bunnie slippers-- made coffee. In a rare moment of quiet solitude, she wandered by the tree to admire it. The big cup of coffee cupped in both hands, head slightly cocked ... in my mind's eye I can almost see her angelic wistful face admiring the splendid culmination of all my dad's cursing. Spotting a fallen ornament, she gracefully leans down to pick it up and re-hang it.

I woke up to the rustling sound of activity nearby. Bleary, I listened through the helmet. No, I definitely heard something. I opened my eyes cautiously, and spotted movement.

It was time.

I tensed up and sprung out like a cat, screaming.

Now, my mom, previously enjoying a quiet solemn Christmasy moment, probably reacted pretty normally to a screaming midget in a football uniform --wildly waving a baseball bat-- bursting out of her Christmas tree dragging huge, macabre tangles of Christmas lights and tinsel.

She screamed.

Dad, hearing us both screaming, came tearing out of bed and rushing downstairs. Now, do you know how many times this man has yelled at me about running up and down the stairs? Sure enough, he missed a stair and crashed noisily to the ground, breaking his leg.

Mom looks at dad and screams. I scream. Mom looks at me again, screams, and then faints --cutting herself on the broken ornament and requiring four stitches. I see blood and I faint.

... And so on.

***

The paramedics and police, alerted immediately by the neighbors, got on the scene in minutes.

I woke running a fever. Seems Santa not only has a sense of humor, but he possesses biological weapons and is more than willing to use 'em. Must have injected me while I was asleep.

Next year, fat man.

Next year.

Black Dog

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I’m not going to give you a lot of scientific equations and reference materials to buttress this, but I think you’ll find at least some of this plausible enough to follow along.

“Black Dog” is a trucker’s term.

You see, at some point when deprived of sleep --no matter how jazzed up you are on caffeine and cocaine, whatever—the human body starts to generate whatever goo it does that makes you dream. I don’t know why … I’ll leave that to the people getting paid to figure out that stuff.

The problem is that, eventually, you don’t necessarily have to be asleep for this stuff to kick in.

The “Black Dog” is a fairly common hallucination, hence it’s name. This “phenomena” is not limited to truckers either; stories about a black dog darting across the road have bent a lot of fucking flesh and steel over the years.

My buddy, a wizened old vet of the trucking game, once told me that “everybody has a black dog all his own”. He was exasperated with me. He pointed out stories of deer, owls, hitchhikers, ad nauseam. I was trying to explain to him that I was following a car at night during a storm at a fairly safe distance when the car driver opened his window and a puppy fell out. In the roughly four last seconds of it's life, it skidded spinning to a halt, big furry paws already sticking to the asphalt. It staggered woundedly into the middle of the road, peering at the car it occupied merely moments before, racing away.

On a wet road, I was driving a vehicle in excess of 70,000 pounds and seven stories long at about forty-five miles an hour behind it.

Fluffy went bye-bye. FOOM! Straight to Fluffy Heaven.

Thomas, incredulous, insisted that that was my Black Dog.


***

Now, I’m old friends with sleep depravation. I daresay my first “Black Dog” was when I was about sixteen. I’m not bragging, not proud, but the was a time when I was dating to girls at the same time and they weren’t aware of each other. Virtually all the time I had out of their sight was when I was at work or sleeping.

So I did what any fine-blooded American male pup does in that circumstance: I gave up the sleep part.

I carried this on for ten days.

And I swear to God Almighty, had you seen these two and been sixteen, you would have too.

Well, suffice to say, on the tenth day I had an overwhelming sensation I can only liken to a hummingbird … and it permeated everything. The distant static buzz that separated me from whatever the hell reality was at the time drowned out everything; it was like living in the constant state of leaving a “Who” concert. Even when I killed those two broads an stuffed 'em in a garbage disposal, all I can remember was this buzzing ....

[Ha! I just wanted to make sure you were still paying attention; the only thing in danger of dyin was the rabbit, and I'm not really even sure what that means.]

What really happened was that, while lounging on my couch and watching the television, I "dreamed" my buddy my Tim was on the couch next to me asking for guitar lessons. “How do you make the guitar whistle?” he would inquire. I could see him, faded Ozzy T-Shirt and too-too new jeans (before they came "pre-washed"), smiling with his confused teeth. I guessed he meant the harmonics, and I would play them.

I slept for about twelve hours in a chair with my guitar in hand.

And when I woke, I got a phone call telling me that Tim was dead. An industrial accident at the Les Paul factory left him fatally impaled by a Floyd-Rose tremolo bar ... Even today in that factory, late at night, you could still hear him --with hooks for hands-- butchering "Stairway to Heaven" through the halls ...


But seriously folks.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, it wasn't really stormy at all. It was pretty damn humid.

And come to think of it, it wasn't that dark either; a full moon gave it a kinda Tim Burton-esque effect.

[*ahem*]

I had driven for about seven hours straight to get to a job interview. I hadn't really expected the trip to be done in one shot really, but I was taking these over-the-counter speeders called "Yellow Jackets". To this day, I think they're pretty much like ingesting a tea bag. In fact, when you burp on the stuff you would swear you tasted tea.

One of the side effects of "Yellow Jackets" is appetite suppression, so you don't stop to eat. Thus, you don't need to stop for a piss. Or anything. You just get where you're going, spray the body parts and playground toys off of your radiator, and feverishly grind your teeth until those fucking worm people stop poking you and you can finally sleep.

My job interview isn't scheduled until 10:00 in the morning, and it's about 2:30 --over seven hours early-- when I find the place. [Can't really relax until all the bases are covered. The worm people are real pricks about this stuff.]

I'm admittedly very tired, looking for a motel. But most of all I'm starving.

There's nothing in this town. It's not small, either. But it's 2:45 in the morning: gang-raped, crack-dealing tumbleweeds are blowin by lookin for trouble. I took the main road on the map completely east, and then eventually doubled back over to the west. Hell, at that point a goddamned Shell station stocked with microwaveable burritos would've been fine.

It's foggy. I've been in a few bands and we've used smoke machines, but this is the first time in nature I've seen a fog rolling at about eighteen inches off of the road.

So I'm now about six miles out from the town, resigned to no meal and sleeping in my car. Disappointing already. The job I'm interviewing for is for a warehouse supervisor, and I need to be sharp --well rested, and devoid of any distractions. These jobs involve a lot. If you're lucky you get to hire your own team. Pull gems out of loam. Shape them. Inspire them. Go to bars with them. Hold their heads while they puke, and get them home safely. With a good interview, offers of $30,000 a year are pretty standard issue for this sort of thing.

But for $30,000 you're also expected to be able to take that same poor jerkoff --tryin to feed his family-- and eviscerate and fire him when he or she gets to the point when the company numbers don't jive.

I don't eviscerate and fire for anything less than $32,750 a year.

For $35,000, I'll tape a "Kick Me" sign on 'em.

Can't really see the road very well anymore, and it's time to surrender. Head back. I'll set my battery-powered alarm for five hours and sleep in the car in the parking lot of the place. And maybe I'll wake up early enough in the morning to ruthlessly decimate the burrito population --like, well, whatever the burrito's natural enemy is. On Yellow Jackets-- before the interview.

Keep in mind that at this point I can't really see the road more than a few feet in front of the car, and I'm going about fifteen miles per hour on a main street that has disintegrated into rural, flat country. For all I know, I could have ditches on either side of the road.

Strangely, it's almost bright; lit indirectly by a full moon, everything seems to pulse with it's own opaque, innate luminescence. The landscape is a giant, flat span of cotton with an occasional stubborn tree stabbing defiantly through the near-flawless white blanket. And in the distance, the equally pale grey sky bleeds together with the ground to an obscure, bone-colored backdrop.

Enveloped completely in this white universe, it feels somehow simultaneously claustrophobic and lonely.

An intersection sign appears on a surreal, desolate landscape. A road. It takes a half a mile to find it, but I do.

Now, I pass the right hand turn slightly and back into it, making ready to hook the left back to town. My headlights sweep over the other side of the road and I absently notice it's a graveyard.

Now I swear to you that nothing here --the night time, no people, fog, full moon, graveyard-- is clicking on any conscious level. I look to my left to check for traffic.

Nothing.

I look to my right.

Of course, nothing.

The little boy in the passenger seat clutched his heavy backpack in his lap. He was in jeans, a light blue T-Shirt and a denim-style baseball cap. Smelled like Bounce fabric softener. He looked up towards me --strangely not at me. "Mister, you got any candy?"

I looked to the left again --I'm a pretty cautious driver, really. No better circumstances for an accident than fog 'an ...

I froze.

There's something in your brain that switches on in these circumstances. And I mean on ... you've heard the old adage about the hair on the back of your neck sticking up. When your brain screams "Nope! Not happening!", every faintest peach-fuzz little wanna-be hair follicle --starting from your tailbone and shooting electrically to the top of your head-- does too.

There was nobody in my car but me.

I think.

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 ...

Sports Update

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Crap! I'm the sports reporter?

Look. Sports are boring ... except maybe mud wrestling. My commentaries are more in the order of renting revolvers at Kareoke bars: if even alcohol won't make those missed harmonies non-offensive to the ear, a blazing hail of hot lead will usually do the trick.

Can't we jazz sports up a bit? First, we gotta smear those maniacs climbing over and smashing women and children to catch the foul balls at baseball games. Whats a baseball cost anyway? Baseball would be greatly improved by using an explosive ball that detonates when it goes out of the field. Plus this whole "running the bases" thing is a real snoozer. We should dig pits between the bases and fill them with flaming pits of starving, pissed alligators swimming in sulfuric acid, and make the players swing over 'em Pitfall style. And it's like nine guys on the field versus this one guy batting ... lets even it up a little: rather than dropping the bats, have 'em take it with them so you can "tune up" the guys trying to tag you out.

Golf really needs work. I'm thinking make the players bungee down a cliff or something to tee off.

NASCAR could use some spicing up too. Make the drivers pick up psycho hitchhikers or something. Have the odd-numbered cars go the opposite direction on the track. How about having a random drawing and making them drive one of the spectators cars? [I could really get behind a driver that sputtered over the finish line of the Daytona 500 in a Chevette!] Maybe the drivers do those 24 hour races after a eating a dozen White Castle cheeseburgers. Or make them do it with their wives and kids in tow: between her making him stop for directions and the whole "are we there yet" thing going on every lap, that 23rd hour would be a fiery bloodbath.

Football would be more fun if you put like 100 guys for each team on the field at the same time and gave everyone in the audience that wears fan-based face paint a sniper rifle. Throw in some land mines, and you've got yourself a real show.

Hockey could be a lot more efficient too. Make the players take heroic doses of whiskey and PCP, throw the stupid puck away and let 'em beat each other into a fine paste.

There are so many things in life we do all the time that would make much more interesting athletic events worthy of a 60 million dollar five-year contract. Like shopping on Christmas Eve ... c'mon guys; some of those little old ladies take three or four elbows before you can wrench that Power Ranger doll from the clutches of the greedy little crone. Try to get a Whopper from Burger King --with cheese but without mayo-- completely devoid of any steroid use. Try to wrap your head around a standard-issue cellphone calling plan ...

Marshmallow

Predator Press
[LOBO]

Admit it ... the first thing that rang through our little minds was, "Was it a Democrat?"

Look, he's the Vice President of the United States for Chrissake ... aren't even the quail screened by the Secret Service in this kind of situation? Isn't there a Secret Service guy out there with a sniper rifle to take out the quail in case the VP misses?

Predator Press has the exclusive story.

Cheney came to the hunt in the Winter Camouflage Ensemble, sporting all the accessories from the M-16 all the way down to the sparkly Nucular [sic] Football.

Whittington showed up wearing the same outfit.

Words were exchanged, pine cones were thrown.

"Boom!" Harry cried. "Pine cones are grenades!"

Cheney balked. "Not until you tag the grill! You are out of bounds until you tag the grill!"

Alarmed into action by the use of grills and pine cone grenades, the quail sprung a retreat which prompted the secret service into action: gunfire inevitably erupted followed by surface-to-air missile launching which accidentally took out the Predator Press News Chopper [That's my story to the insurance company, and I'm sticking to it].

When we arrived on the scene the bus driver refused to continue on and gave us a hard time about giving us transfers. The forest was already ablaze: a smoky molten mass of hot lead, screaming quail and roasted marshmallows. Whittington reportedly "objected" to all bullets fired, but the Supreme court had already ruled that guns were fun and Whittington was basically a jerk anyways.

Then Tom Delay, covered in bush, camouflage and war paint climbed out of a pool of mud. He had several envelopes stuck on the tip of his bayonet. "Dick!" he cried. "Look! I got two gas bills, pizza coupons, and I think I won the Irish Sweepstakes!"

"I said we were hunting quail you moron," growled Cheney.

Tom, Dick and Harry all declined comment. Well, Harry would, but all we could make out was "OWEEEOWEEEOWEEEEE ...!" The President, however, was jubilant. "When Dick finds out Harry is only suffering from woundification, there's gonna be Hell to pay" Bush chuckled. He then whispered, "I told Cheney that Whittington was on the wiretap case."

Unfortunately, none of this sits well in the quail community; their homeland utterly destroyed. Even more unfortunate is the fact that none of us speaks quail, but we'll imagine what the quails would tell us in our effort to bring you the absolute journalistic Truth of the matter.

"America was our friend," the Quail Leader would squawk. "When they came in they said all they wanted was to crush all those evil deer. And maybe take out a lawyer or two. Now they are gone! Look at what they have done!"

The White House, seeking to choose a military leader with some experience in these sensitive political matters, has deployed a "peacekeeping" force: the entire Twelfth Armored Brigade under the leadership of one Colonel Sanders.

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning," declared the wily Colonel. "Smells like ... extra crispy."

Real Estate for the "Ambition Impaired"

Predator Press

[LOBO]

My mom just told me about a couple that retired in Maui and sold their business for 3.2 million dollars.

It's not really the amount of money that shocks me; I've lived in Hawaii and vacationed on Maui. Assuming the shop is in Lahaina, I completely believe the figures.

But what really interests me is where do you go to retire from Lahaina, Maui?

At some point this guy looked at his wife and said "Honey, I'm sick and tired of this fast-paced big city lifestyle. Let's take it easy from here on out and move to [dot dot dot]"

So where the hell do you go from there? Basking in my world-reknown slothful and indolent life, this sounds like my kind of place!

I could be mayor.

I could be king!

[*Whew* I'm getting winded from all this typing.]

Blacktop

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I drove a truck for a while. OTR ... that's where you don't come home but for a few days once a month.

I was stranded --snowbound-- less than 500 yards from my destination. Missed my appointment to unload as the whole town shut down.

I outran that storm for 200 miles. It caught me just as I entered the city.

I slept under twenty-seven inches of snow.

When I woke, the sun shown over a dry desert. The salt that stained my windshield was impossibly gone; I had a crystal-clear view of an immaculate blacktop highway, with bright crisp yellow lines freshly painted.

Confused, I got up and stretched. Scratching, yawning, rubbing my eyes, I walked back down the long hall.

There were doors on the left and right, but at the end of the hall was a bubbling hot tub. It appeared to be in a very large room. Without a conscious thought, I continued on.

As I advance, the center of the room is exposed revealing a magnificent round bed, silvery satin sheets, and a staggeringly beautiful woman nestled tightly twain. Familiar. Responds favorably to touch.

But the look on her face --so peaceful, so sound; soft breaths-- doesn't allow me to disturb her. I walk back to the "cab" of the truck and start off.

Every element of the Arizonian desert converges on the highway, which vanishes far off over the horizon. The light gets redder --like Mars-- and I get these little hallucinations of women. Naked women. The further I go, the more erotic ... left and right I see temptresses.

The sky darkens with every mile ... a hideous blood red, and you can see the waves of heat in the air. Especially over the laboring diesel engine. The tires are melting black ooze into the black highway ...

And I think, "Let's go!"

LOBO the IMMORTAL

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Chest pains and only 35 years old!

Gadz how depressing.

Luckily, I'm far too lazy for an all-out heart attack.

My heart is barely capable of issuing trade tariffs and -at worst- an oxygen embargo which will kill that tiny prick too. Nonetheless my heart remains very passive-aggressive. A sneaky lil bastard. It's been pissed ever since Ethan got that defibulator and started bringing it to my parties.

Chicks dig it, but when my eyebrows start to get singed I make Ethan stop ... I would classify that as a reckless Fire Code violation.

Sure I could rely on doctors and science an all kids of other voodoo hocus-pocus nonsense ... might as well wave a dead chicken over me.

But I have Faith.

[Plus, all I had was a can of Campbell's chicken soup ... this didn't do the trick.]

So I took it straight to The Man Himself.

I faked sneezing all day today, and racked up 104 "Bless You"s. Then, I ate angel food cake 'til the sparks shooting out of the crack under the bathroom door set the carpet on fire.

Now I'm not glowing and remain completely unable to turn anything into alcoholic beverages ... can't heal the poor, pull quarters out of your ear, et cetera. But the people that can do that kind of thing tend to get screwed: historically speaking, we haven't been very nice to them.

Chest pain is gone; I'm quitting here.

The International Star Registry

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Let me get this straight.

For a few bucks, you can name your own star?

Does this mean that in 2090 we are going to be fiercely embroiled in a galactic war against creatures from 'Steve Loves Amanda XXXOOOXXX'?

First of all, how would you write catchy graffiti like, "Take that, creatures from Steve Loves Amanda XXXOOOXXX!!!" on the bombs? And you know how military spending goes: every single one of those "X"s and "O"s will be like a billion dollars.

Let's leave the naming space stuff to guys like Steve Hawking. One look at the guy, and you know he's a big Dungeon and Dragons head: we'll have cool places to have wars with like The Great Ogre Vortex and The Giant Leech galaxies.

Well, if everyone else is going to get a star, here's the name of mine:

LAST CHANCE FOR GAS. PERIOD.

I like the idea of some lost space jerk desperately looking through some equally spacey Encylopedia Bricktabula for whatever the Hell "GAS" is.

Matt Drudge

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Matt, our self-proclaimed truth-seeking valiant knight of the "Free-Press", has just spent ten minutes assailing the Space Program for collecting comet dust in pursuit of ... uh ... The Truth?

Just when did these frenetic little faux-intellectual ferrets become listened to by the mainstream?

... Oops ... after checking the shows timeslot and ratings, I withdraw the question.

I'm not going to argue that our Space Program funding shouldn't reflect on whatever current state of affairs our country finds itself in --shit all these wars alone probably cost our government like fifty or sixty bucks a month. But giving up the study of Astronomy would be analogous to giving up on Biology.

Further, giving all these mad scientists something to do besides making bigger and better bombs is a good thing. Tell those geeks to put a remote-controlled solid gold life-sized Barbie Corvette on Alpha Centauri ...

... for Science ....