A Fairy Tale

Predator Press

[LOBO]

[Based on the responses to "Contact", we've decided to re-publish this story as it appeared in the November, 2004 installment of this blog. Enjoy!]

Once upon a time, in the sprawling wooded hills called Sprawling Wooded Hills, there was a quaint little hamlet called Towndaleburgville. This lovely little village was singular in that the people- peasant, pauper, knight, and baron alike- were all living very happily and contented in peaceful harmony. This was due largely in part to the glorious reign of the great King Artemis King. King King, while ruling his cheerful subjects in a fair and just manor, found much leisure time --as not much ever happened in Towndaleburgville-- and spent most of his time solving puzzles and playing games with the brighter of his regents.

One day his lovely daughter, the fair princess Phoebe King, was riding her horse to the outskirts of the land. She loved the beautiful countryside of Sprawling Wooded Hills, the smells of nature the friendly animals … but most of all, to view the sunset from a tall precipice at the southern part of the wood. She rode her beautiful white stallion she named “Beautiful White Stallion” to this place almost every evening when there were no royal affairs, balls, or cute knights hanging around.

But today from her secret perch with the dazzling view of the sunset, she saw something very odd: there was a tall, thick plume of smoke coming up from the wood below.

“Look there, Beautiful White Stallion!” she pointed, despite that most animals usually just look at your finger rather than whatever you are pointing at. “Why, we simply must go see what is going on down there!”

Beautiful White Stallion balked; the animal had just hauled them all the way up this damned precipice, as he did faithfully almost every evening. It’s not easy to remain a “beautiful white stallion” when some rich brat makes you go mountain climbing every day. And now the little tart wanted to go strolling into God-knows-what. It was probably just some urban renewal or another radio factory anyway. Completely forgetting himself in momentary exasperation, he dropped his head to the lush green grass and muttered in perfect English, “You bitch!”

Princess Phoebe was stunned. “Beautiful White Stallion!” she exclaimed with glee and surprise. “You can speak?”

Beautiful White Stallion looked about in a feigned confused innocence, as if to say What? Who? Me? I’m just a dumb-assed horse with a stupid name, remember? He knew that if she knew he could speak, suddenly he would have to conduct endless conversations about shopping, fashion and gossip. And it wouldn't stop there, either. Soon he's got a cellphone and she's calling him in the middle of the night; her hair in curlers and tissues between her toes as she polishes her nails, ruthlessly and with great prejudice destroying some fantastic sporting event on T.V. with endless drivel about some Duke's great ass. Beautiful White Stallion shuddered as he realized he had no fingers with which to hang up a cellphone with ... and he never did find a calling plan for minutes that he could comprehend anyway.

But ultimately, if she knew he could speak, he would feel compelled to tell the oblivious little strumpet what a profoundly boneheaded and stupid idea these reckless sojourns were! ... A young, beautiful, rich, airheaded princess wandering around unarmed and alone in strange lands.

But conversely, Beautiful White Stallion was an optimist; he hoped they would one day accidentally stumble across a bunch of axe-wielding savage cannibals or maybe a GREENPEACE member (just about any homicidal antisocial malcontented neurotic sociopath maniac would do really) who would finally "off" this harlot, forever ending his days of climbing that damned precipice.

“Oh,” Princess Phoebe replied disappointedly. “Oh well. Sorry. Off we go then.”

"Tramp!"

***

The closer they got to the pillar of smoke, the more it became apparent that this was no mere normal campfire. It was huge for one. And rather than normal smoke, the place reeked of sulfur, brimstone, and cheddar cheese. Princess Phoebe dismounted, hoping that by stroking Beautiful White Stallion’s nose and walking with him, it might have a certain calming effect --for indeed, the whole place gave her the heebie-jeebies. Soon the found a clearing, and right in the center, surrounded by blasted and scorched earth was a huge cavern mouth from which acrid smoke rolled and billowed into the sky.

“Stay here, my loyal Beautiful White Stallion” soothed the Princess. “I’ll get to the bottom of this!”

She came into the clearing cautiously, stopped about halfway, and called out in a friendly voice, “Halloo! Is anyone there?”

Beautiful White Stallion rolled his eyes and muttered aloud, “I don’t believe this s---!” but was cut off by the sharp stare from the Princess. Damn, he thought. I gotta be more careful! Beautiful White Stallion turned away, looked to the sky, and whinnied the most horse-like whinny he could muster as he pawed the ground absently with a front hoof.

Suddenly, the idea of a talking horse leapt from both of their minds: they heard what seemed to be a gigantic, thundering footsteps. Hauling itself from the cave with speed and grace that belied its enormous size, a huge dragon at least three hundred yards from tip to tail slithered from the cave’s mouth.

“Okay, that’s it,” stated Beautiful White Stallion flatly as he turned. Then bolting for the woods the princess heard him say, “I’m out of here!”

“Beautiful White Stallion!” the princess cried in terror.

“Screw this sister!” She heard his unfamiliar voice fading in the distance. “I quit!”

***

The princess turned slowly, shaking in sheer terror; she could feel the beast’s hot breath on her now. Inches from her, the dragon stopped, eyeing her carefully. The dragon closed its eyes, and putting his massive muzzle against her, inhaled deeply.

He was smelling her.

This seemed to go on forever, and Princess Phoebe closed her own eyes, unable to bear waiting for the behemoth to snatch her up in his huge jaws and devour her.

The dragon stopped suddenly and reared up on its hindquarters.

"This is it" she thought, prepared for the end. She would miss the final episode of Melrose Place. And she hoped her daddy would remember to cancel her subscription to Cosmopolitan …

“YOU DROPPED SOMETHING,” the dragon boomed in a voice that shook the ground.

Princess Phoebe opened one eye, and peeked at the monster. “ What?” she stammered. She frantically looked around on the ground. Nothing. Bewildered, she craned her neck to give the beast a nasty look. “Hey, are you going to eat me or not?”

“YOU DROPPED SOMETHING,” repeated the dragon.

“What!?” she demanded.

“MY JAW!”

The dragon chuckled merrily. “SORRY. I SAW THAT ON A T.V. SHOW LAST NIGHT AND THOUGHT IT WAS PRETTY FUNNY.”

Princess Phoebe scowled. Men, all alike. Even the ones that are reptiles on the outside.

“WHEW!” the dragon's massive head gracefully circled her for a closer inspection. “YOU’RE QUITE A DISH, PARDON THE PUN. NICE GAMS. AND I THINK I SMELL,” he sniffed her again, “ROYAL BLOOD TOO.”

Princess Phoebe poked him hard in the nose. The dragon flinched. “All right. Back off there buster!”

The dragon … smiled? “SERIOUSLY. IF I WAS A FEW HUNDRED YEARS YOUNGER,” he paused, “AND ANOTOMICALLY EQUIPT SO AS TO NOT BLOW YOU INTO A MILLION PIECES-- ”

This princess tilted her head, put one hand on her hip, and pointing scoldingly with her other exclaimed, “This is harassment you know!”

“SORRY.”

She looked around, feeling a little more comfortable having asserted herself and not having been ripped to shreds. “What are you doing here?”

“FEDERAL RELOCATION PROGRAM. I TESTIFIED AGAINST A WICKED QUEEN THAT BOOTLEGGED A LOT OF NAPSTER STUFF."

She wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. “Well you had better get those fires under control. I’m sure this is some kind of zoning violation.”

“THERE IS NO FIRE,” the said reassuringly. “I WAS MAKING A QUICHE, AND THINGS GOT A LITTLE CRAZY IN THE KITCHEN.” He paused thoughtfully. “WOULD YOU LIKE TO CHECK IT OUT?”

Walk right into a dragon’s den? she thought for a second.

“Sure!” she replied excitedly.

***

The dragon’s place was, although really warm inside, very posh. He was very proud of his lavish pad and gave her a grand tour, pulling out all the stops.

And he turned out to be very educated as far as dragons go. They talked about philosophy and world events. In the billiards room, they drank wine, shot pool and played darts. They played “Twister” and “Scrabble”- the dragon was amazing at Scrabble-- and Princess Phoebe even considered inviting him to the Annual National Scrabble Tournament that was taking place in Towndaleburgville the next day. They discussed baseball --he was a Sox fan, she was a Cubs-- and they compared Frank Thomas and Sammy Sosa’s RBI records.

They laughed, they cried. The got hammered.

Suddenly Princess Phoebe glanced at her watch. “It’s three-thirty in the morning!” she panicked. “My daddy’s going to kill me! I have to get home.”

The dragon spread his mighty wings. “WANT A RIDE?” he slurred.

“Really?”

“YES. THREE MINUTE FLIGHT, EIGHT HOUR WALK. YOU DECIDE. BESIDES, I COULDN’T LET YOU WALK HOME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT ALONE. YOU HEARD THE NARRATOR: YOU’RE HAMMERED.”

“Yes, but he said you’re hammered too,” she managed between violent hiccups.

“WHO’S GOING TO PULL ME OVER?”

***

It was a rather good thing that Princess Phoebe had passed out early in the trip. The dragon was so intoxicated he went the wrong way, and had to take her all the way around the world to get her to Towndaleburgville. When he arrived, he was so exhausted and drunk he slammed right into the castle, completely demolishing the South Wall. He set her down gently, staggered three steps to the left, crashed through the drawbridge helplessly, and passed out right there in the castle moat.

He woke the next morning to an angry Towndaleburgville mob branding all sorts of weapons. He tried to stand and flee, but he had been chained down. Dimly, he became aware of a rather bleary and haggard-looking Princess Phoebe arguing and pleading with the crowd. “He’s a good dragon I tell you!” She climbed up his muzzle. “Wake up!” Tell them you’re not going to be a bad dragon!”

He opened one eye all he could manage under the painful sun. “DOES ANYBODY HAVE A FEW THOUSAND ASPRIN?” he managed. His giant, bloodshot eye moved over the angry crowd as they silently pondered the question for a moment. He sighed. “I DIDN’T THINK SO.”

Another figure climbed onto his muzzle. The king. “My daughter tells me you play a great game of Scrabble.”

“UH HUH,” the poor dragon moaned.

“Good then,” the good King King nodded. “Today you will play in the tourney. If you win you are free, but have to donate the prize to Towndaleburgville for castle repairs.”

The dragon painfully creaked the eye open again. “AND IF I DON’T?”

“Then you’ll stay right there long enough for us to build the biggest guillotine ever.”

While the dragon slept it off a few more hours, the people arriving for the tourney just marveled at the magnificent specimen sleeping in the Towndaleburgville castle moat. But the real marveling came in when the dragon woke and began tourney play.

He kicked ass. It finally came down to the dragon and King King in the final round, and the dragon creamed him with a final score of seven hundred and twelve to one hundred and two. The good King King lived up to his bargain and set the dragon free, only after the dragon lived up to his, leaving all the prize money.

***

While his rule was usually good and just, there was just one little problem: King King was secretly a raging alcoholic, and a REAL bad loser. When he received word that Sir Blaine the Dragon Slayer had arrived (panting and frantic for having missed the Scrabble tourney) King King, surly from his humiliating defeat in front of all his subjects (and about a fifth of Jack Daniels), was hatching a plot. He ordered Princess Phoebe secretly locked in the dungeon, guarded with the explicit instructions that no Disney characters --animal or otherwise-- were allowed any access.

“Sir Blaine,” the king slurred as the famous knight entered his chambers. King King was totally bomblast by this point.

“Your Highness,” Sir Blaine replied. As he knelt before the king, his Magical, Lifetime-Warranted Dragon-Proof armor clanked noisily, making the King wince.

The King proceeded to tell the knight a fanciful tale of how the evil dragon destroyed the castle, cheated at the games, stole the prize money, and as a final act of evil had kidnapped his beautiful and marryable-aged daughter Princess Phoebe ...

Sir Blaine left King King’s chambers that night in a fit of fury. The vile beast! To rampage around town like that. To kidnap Princess Phoebe, a wonderful girl that could make any knight’s codpiece suddenly uncomfortable! And, perhaps most despicable of all, to cheat at Scrabble! The mere thought of this twisted vermin roaming the country and committing such crimes against humanity sent Sir Blaine into such a fury, he grabbed a pencil off of the King's vast desk and snapped it cleanly in twain. Eventually. Using his boot. "That abomination must pay with it's life!", he roared. He drew his magical sword, the mighty Sword of EXCLAIMER, (EXCLAIMER wasn’t particularly useful at slaying dragons per se, but wow could it chew one out… even as Sir Blaine drew the mighty weapon, it loosed a stream of dragon obscenities so vehement and odious, I dare not repeat them in this story!) and solemnly vowed revenge.

King King had commissioned Sir Blaine the princesses’ own noble steed Beautiful White Stallion to conduct the grizzly business of slaying the beast, and Sir Blaine stormed off to the stables.

But tonight was Beautiful White Stallion's "Euchre" game.

It was going to be a long night.

***

When King King awoke the next afternoon, he was immediately informed by one of his advisors what he had done. He ran down to the dungeon in tears, wading through the dead Disney characters [this can't be called a 'fairy tale' without an actual fairy, so there she is on the dungeon floor, riddled with silver arrows or something] and immediately freed Princess Phoebe ... all the while begging her forgiveness. When the princess found out about Sir Blaine and the plot to kill the dragon, she immediately remembered that Sir Blaine had a hot car and an extensive, lucrative portfolio of diversified stock options in Microsoft. Immediately, the two hastened to the site of the ill-fated battle.

***

“Dragon!” Sir Blaine bellowed at the mouth of the cave. Standing around him in a huge semi-circle was the whole village of Towndaleburgville, as well as every other neighboring town within a hundred miles, and they all tittered with nervous excitedness.

“Dragon!” he repeated. He had to yell now; EXCLAIMER was in full-blown Tourette’s mode now, screaming things about the dragon’s mother and so forth. It was somewhat irritating.

It wasn’t long before the dragon sauntered out, a weary, confused look upon his leathery reptilian face. “HOW DO YOU DO?” he asked with groggy politeness.

“Surrender the princess, and prepare to be slain!” cried Sir Blaine defiantly.

The dragon as well as the surrounding crowd, began looking at each other in complete confusion.

“WHAT?” the dragon finally asked.

“The good King King told me all about your exploits yesterday. About you destroying the castle, kidnapping the princess, and worst of all cheating at Scrabble you vile beast!”

The crowd erupted into a disappointed din, a rush of understanding leapt around them like lightning bolts.

“That drunken bastard told you what?” exclaimed one peasant.

“Ah jeez … there he goes again. King King getting all smashed and making trouble again,” replied a carpenter.

Sir Blaine looked around. “You mean it’s not true?”

“Ah, not a word, good knight,” said the village barkeep. "My kids are going to Stanford."

“He does this all the time,” yelled and exasperated smithy. “Blast!”

Sir Blaine glanced down at EXCLAIMER, still screaming obscenities at the bewildered dragon. “Oh do shut up!” growled the knight as he sheathed the weapon. He then craned his neck to look up at the towering dragon. He pulled the face shield back over his forehead so the beast could see his face and shrugged pathetically. “Sorry,” he said sincerely.

“THAT’S QUITE ALL RIGHT SIR,” boomed the dragon, extending a single claw. Sir Blaine too the huge digit in both hands and shook it effusively.

“You mean there isn’t going to be a battle now?” shouted the village leatherworker.

Disappointed murmurs rippled through the crowd … then suddenly they started booing, throwing things at the knight and dragon.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” started a chant.

Suddenly the king and the princess pulled into the clearing. The king raised his arms in the air to silence the crowd. “There will be no slaying today!” he commanded with authority (and really bad breath). The crowd quieted. “I actually have a better idea!”

***

The whole crowd, horses, wagons, everything, was lead by the dragon inside the cave. Everyone marveled at the steamy-hot yet palatial abode, and everyone was dazzled by the dragon’s splendid taste.

“Is that a Pioneer stereo?” someone piped.

“And Blaupunkt speakers, too!” wondered another aloud.

“A widescreen plasma T.V. and a satellite dish!”

Beautiful White Stallion, spared the "battle", still grumbled about the heat. “All this…but why couldn’t he get central air?”

The “oohs” and “ahhhs” continued all the way into the magnificent billiard room, so large everyone fit inside. The dragon moved to one side. Sir Blaine, sweating profusely in his armor, moved to the other. Princess Phoebe grabbed a box from the shelf, and proceeded to unfold the Scrabble board on the table between them.

Sir Blaine picked out seven tiles and set them up on the board, clumsily dropping several through his metal gloves. “Dragon,” he finally stated, “would you mind too terribly if I removed this stuff? It’s very clumsy for this … and it’s like wearing an oven in here!”

“NOT AT ALL,” replied the dragon politely as he daintily picked his own seven tiles.

Sir Blaine began the enormous task of removing all the metal gear. Princess Phoebe aided when she could. The onlookers were all now more or less seated across the vast billiards room floor, straining to get a view of the coming competition. Few noticed as Princess Phoebe removed Sir Blaine’s last metal legging, their eyes met a lingering moment. Fewer still noticed the shy smile she gave the noble knight when his codpiece creaked, or the faint tint of pink that crossed his face as she beamed back at him knowingly.

All noticed that, just as Sir Blaine leaned forward to whisper something in the princess’s ear, the dragon spread his mighty wings, reared up and struck out at Sir Blaine with the speed of lightning. Sir Blaine, with the exception of his two feet severed at the smoldering ankles, was gone. His chair was gone too.

Everyone froze, completely stunned … except the dragon. He broke the silence with a sickening crunching sound that made everyone’s hair stand on end. Princess Phoebe, splattered in blood, screamed.

“DRAGON SLAYER,” the dragon chuckled, chewing noisily. “THE MIGHTY BLAINE!” (He swallowed, with some effort.) “--KILLER OF MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS!” Laughing loudly now, with a macabre grin that showed almost all of his first three rows of bloodied teeth. “TWO DAYS WAS ALL IT TOOK,” he paused to belch, and one of Sir Blaine’s Scrabble tiles tumbled out. “WELL, BESIDES ALL THOSE YEARS OF PRACTICE AT THIS SILLY GAME!”

The stun was wearing off, giving way to sheer animal panic. The dragon tilted his head, and licked his lips, clearly relishing the sights and sounds of human terror.

***

From the point where the dragon ate the Princess and King, to the point when the dragon crushed the last three remaining human survivors against the cave wall with a single sweeping blow from his mighty tail was mere seconds.

Only Beautiful White Stallion remained. He was covered in blood, and badly in shock. They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally after six or seven choked attempts, Beautiful White Stallion managed a single word.

“Why?” he stammered.

The dragon gave an ominous pause. Then, saying nothing, he pointed a huge leathery wing at the table.

At his Scrabble tiles.

Shakily, Beautiful White Stallion walked over to them. “I… I can understand Sir Blaine… I mean your family and all … but why everyone?”

He looked at the dragon's tiles for a long moment, a confused and furrowed look on his face. They read “ACXCACA”. Looking up at the dragon, he fearfully shook his head to say I don’t understand. The dragon shook his head disgustedly. “STUPID HORSE!” he leaned in with that bloodied, horrible smile. “THE LETTERS.”

Beautiful White Stallion looked again. “ACXCACA”. It made no sense …

Suddenly, the dragon smacked himself in the forehead with a blood-soaked claw. “STUPID DRAGON. HORSES CAN’T READ!” He laughed a sickeningly good-natured laugh as he gingerly picked up his tiles. “I HAD THREE ‘A’S, THREE ‘C’S, AND ONE ‘X’. WHAT THE HELL WAS I SUPOSSED TO SPELL WITH THAT?”

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.

LOBO Unplugged

Predator Press

[LOBO]

By virtue of the fact that you are reading a blog, I’m going to assume you’re already sitting. This is good. You need to be.

What I’m about to tell you is going to come as quite a shock:


I’m not perfect.

I know, I know. You’re reeling. I’ll give you a second to let that sink in.

I’m single again.

[And before you dudes start getting any funny ideas, keep in mind: I love them both like crazy, but if neither of my ex-wives made me gay nothing will.]

At 33 27 years old, one becomes a bit seasoned -wiser, if you will- at the whole dating scene. The mileage has allowed me to hone my taste in women appreciate them individually. To respect them and listen in an effusive yet understanding manor. But perhaps most importantly, the maturity has taught me to look out for the "danger signs" of a potential screaming estrogen train wreck poised to inflict widespread suffering upon humanity with rancor considered legendary even in Hell.

So. Thusly seasoned, what exactly am I looking for in a woman? Well, currently I’m thinking a hot, rich, bi-polar Olympic gymnast currently slumming ... but a Hawaiian Tropic Model with drug and alcohol problems, anger issues and a collection of Smurf memorabilia would probably be great too.

Babes that are blind, deaf, mute, and/or have absolutely no understanding of the English language have a MAJOR advantage for longer-running relationship possibilities.

Brains are completely optional. And she should ALWAYS be considerate and return the toilet seat to the upright position when she's done using it (Jesus, is that so HARD!?).

The chick of my dreams would also be tolerant of a barely-noticeable minor obsessive/compulsive "quirk" I have: the tendency to scream seamless "angry-at-world" obscenities -sometimes for hours- at the top of my lungs in the middle of the night while sleeping … Experience in administration of massive Lithium doses and dart gun aptitude would be helpful. My renown team of psychotherapists believe that this is a result of a traumatic event that happened when I was an impressionable lad of 26 years old: I had fallen asleep poolside and a vast, merciless battalion of savage army ants ambushed me for my Mountain Dew. I fought valiantly, but was inevitably overpowered by the sheer number of the ferocious beasts (there was EASILY eleven or twelve of them). Forced into retreat and trapped -devoid of provisions and hope- I precariously balanced on the plastic pool chair for thirty-seven hours, while the massive bloodthirsty caffeine and sugar-juiced horde seethed below.

Finally I was rescued by 3 clever Girl Scouts using a garden hose. [*choke/sob*]

It was horrible!

(Hold me!)

In the words of Demetry Martin, “The downside of the internet is that it’s full of predators. The upside of the internet is that it’s full of prey." Still, I don’t meet and date women online. I figure I’m going to get some pissed Feminist chick or some creepy guy from Montana. But I do try to answer all of my emails, and suddenly maggie64@funkytown.net is complaining that we don’t get any “quality time” in email anymore and she wants her nudes back.

Look, don't e me and get pissed if I happen to want to try to evolve a friendly relationship before anything heavy; I have found over the years that some girls will just say ANYTHING to get into a guy's pants, and I'm not just some floozy you can just knock up and then kick to the curb like so much used up ... uh ... use-uppable kind of floozy stuff. Yeah. In fact, most likely you will have to buy me flowers or a car or something first before I will even consider 'putting out'.

I have been accused in the past of not being very romantic, and I don’t think that’s true at all. But I’m really not on board with the whole flowers thing. “Here! I killed something beautiful for you!” Kinda creepy. The best dates I've ever had were when we just got so lost in conversation that everything else just kind of evaporated into the background ... I didn't have to spend a DIME.

The ideal girl for me would delight in parading around my ex-girlfriends; you know, showing off what I'm squeezing NOW. And would spend weekends with me crank calling my exes that now live out-of-state. Man, now THAT’S what I call romantic.

Chicks are all about the image you keep up, and most guys my age start trying to start looking sophisticated and worldly. But because I once broke the space/time continuum by putting a photo of the inside of my pocket in my pocket, I can't mill about with those cats at The Leading Edge of the Center of the Universe anymore. "Club Hubba Hubba" is now my favorite haunt, at least when Sapphire is working ... she needs the money for all that dental reconstruction. And sometimes I go to "Nipples Italy" on Half-Price Lapdance Night.

“Like your job, love your wife” was an axiom I adopted very young. It seemed to make sense in pursuit of a healthy relationship, and it lays the groundwork for the foundation of the ideal family. But I do love my work, and it interferes in a lot of my relationships. You people in relationships are all "yakketty-yakketty" all damn day. I mean jeez you people just yakketty all damn day and you never stop and you get all in my brains with your "yakketty this" and "yakketty that" and you never stop and you just keep yakking and yakking and sometimes i just want to pick up a pickaxe and drive it through your yakketting head like i did in Ohio and but then i take my medication and think of baby bunnies like doctor says or i have to wear that awful jacket in the "soft room" again.

Um, what was the question again?

As far as hobbies go, I pretty much just crank call ex-girlfriends.

And my life’s ambition? Crank calling huge numbers of ex-girlfriends in a technologically superior space-age Jetsons car.

Sure I’m not without my faults. I think I could make a better “significant other” if I could find some way to be more sensitive to a woman’s needs. You know, stop sleeping around on them. Or well at LEAST never to forget the videotape of me cheating on top of the VCR during her Baby Shower again ... boy was my face red. That crazy shrew left bullet holes in EVERYTHING! (Complete whacko! ... who knew?).

I have also been considering penis reduction surgery. Everyone tells me "it's fine", but I'm very self-conscious about it ... and I'm developing lower back problems. And seriously, you only have to have it slammed in a car door once or twice for incentive (even though your hair looks pretty cool afterwards, I think you get the picture).

The Honest-to-God TRUTH of the matter is I'm really insufferably BORING, and completely HAPPY that way. And it's not my fault, either ... It's due to a rare congenital birth defect: I'm as lazy as a rug on Valiums. Having a personality, being stimulating ... my GOD what a hassle. You get a wild hair to make your life "interesting" and the next thing you know you're walking past the 'City Limits' sign at 2:17 am carrying nothing other than a caged, pissed-off possom and someone else's car keys.

And even as you marvel at the alien "Beyond Bitch" keychain in the moonlight, a gang of transvestite pink Yakuza screeches up in a taupe-colored Hummer. Then they all leap out of the bushes (just for effect), kick your ass into dogfood, give you a facial while burning incense and blaring Air Supply records at 78-speed, finally leaping back INTO the bushes and peeling off in the taupe-colored hummer during the chipmunk-like sounding chorus of "All Out of Love".

WITH the possum.

Well, screw it. I'll stick with "Insufferably Boring", thanks. Is there such a thing as “Excruciatingly Boring”? Put me down for that too.

I know what you’re thinking ladies: this stud isn’t going to be out to pasture for long. And I hear that pasty, pudgy poor guys are going to make a huge comeback soon … I might be able to get you in on the ground floor.

But keep in mind that I’m about to graduate from all my internet classes, and soon we will have to relocate as I am about to get my Doctorate in Pulmonary Medicine, Dentistry, Gynecology and Mixology from the University of Tijuana. The U.S. has apparently has these things called "Severe Restrictions" on where I'll be allowed to practice, so it's off to Arkansas ... and I've actually painted 'Arkansas or Bust' on the side of my van already -right under the Frazetta airbrush of that naked chick riding a panther. Skill in coordinating plaids, flannels, denims, and all clothing referred to as "duds" will be extremely useful. Please demonstrate general aptitude in your photos by wearing Daisy Dukes so I can check out your assets.

Then you meet mom and ZOOM!, the three of us take off to Vegas to get hitched.

Now that’s romantic.

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."