Not-So-Fast Food

Predator Press

[LOBO]


Mr. Insanity, our new fact-checker, was all Predator Press could afford thanks to all you readers' latent back subscription fees.

Ethan let me hold the $100 bill for a minute, and I kissed and hugged it tightly.

"Know what we can buy with that $100?" Ethan asked me.

"A present for 100 of our closest friends at Dollar General?" I suggested.

"No, try again," replied Ethan.

I guessed. "Two fifty-dollar hookers?"

Ethan winced.

"Fifty two-dollar hookers?" I was getting excited.

"Fact checker" he says, exhasperated.

Fiddle-fuckin-sticks.

***

So we go to Harvord, Stanford, ... hell all the Ivey-league colleges that end in "ord", but none of the prospective applicants were falling for the old "$100 bill-on-the-ground-tied-to-the-end-of-a-string" trick.

Except Mr. Insanity. He bent over and seized the thing, an holding it up to the sky, he proclaimed "HA! A STRING!" Well, that's what was going to happen, but fearing losing our string, Ethan hit 'im high and I hit him low. Soon, the 187-pound drooling, moaning, burlap-bagged bundle-o-joy was flying cargo-class home to Pianosa.

We forgot to cut air holes, but the kid's still pretty talented as far as we can tell. The main drawback is that every three or four days the kid whines for food nonstop like he was dyin or something. (You deadbeat readers should be ashamed of yourselves, as outlined in the class-action lawsuit subpoenas you will be receiving in the mail Monday.)

For example. Having eaten a leftover donut that was licked clean of icing by a dog four days ago, Mr. Insanity decides to do a story on Online Dating. He's only fourteen years old, and I'm wondering if this is some pre-pubescent curiosity manifesting ... or maybe just a side effect of eating a leftover donut that was licked clean of icing by a dog four days ago. Either way, I don't really think he's old enough for an adult story like that, you know? He's liable to freak out over his overactive adolescent hormones and make a completely humiliating public spectacle of himself, and be traumatized forever over it.

So here's what happened:

Glenda32, a self-proclaimed "Domestic Goddess Vixen With A Wild Side", turned out to be Glen64, a hairy unemployed pervert from Des Moines.

This really sucks because I can see Mr. Insanity through the IHOP window, apparently pre-occupied with reading the menu instead of watching for the subtle "OHMYFUCKINGGODABORT!!" signal we worked out. In a chauffeur’s outfit --completely oblivious to everything-- he's waiting by the door of the Volkswagen Rabbit I borrowed, to open the door classy-like for me and what was supposed to be a hot Russian blonde nubile circus contortionist, defecting from the Motherland or someplace. Then Mr. Insanity was to drop us off at Casa de LOBO, where I could properly woo her out of her scandalous lack of citizenship, military secrets, and finally, virtue.

So when "Glenda32" --in dire need of a shave-- walks in and spots me in my Tuxedo, multiple simultaneous and violent aneurisms prevent me from fleeing until it's far too late. "She" sits and crosses her nyloned, hairy legs Sharon Stone-style and say's in squeaky, supressed baritones "LOBO?"

"No", I say stammered quickly. "Uh, LOBO's waiting for you outside." I blurted, pointing through the window at the oblivious Mr Insanity.

"Hm", says Glenda32 wistfully, eyeing the pup like a steak.

"--And if his bitch ass don't get me $200 today," I said, thinking quickly "I'm sending him back to that Monastery in Rome once and for all."

"Glenda32" lets out a feminine gasp and gives me $200. I count it as she leaves. "Give him a Chicken McNugget every six hours or so. The kid's a damn fool for Chicken McNuggets."

As the screeching tires and screaming faded off into the distance, my blueberry pancakes arrive. If my buddy ever sees that Volkswagen Rabbit again, he'll probably want to burn it. But he's probably insured, and I didn't care much for the color anyway.

I smiled, warm and fuzzy, knowing that my efforts have made so many people so very happy today. Ethan gets a fact-checker, Glenda finds love, Mr. Insanity gets his story, My buddy gets a new car, and I get $200.

My pancakes were delightful.

Cosmic Background Explorer

Predator Press

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Cobe and I don't get along very well.

But we have some mutual business interests, so we extend a certain "professional courtesy" to our relationship, which is a euphemism for keeping a wide berth of each other.

I'm far too lazy to pick fights anymore. What do I do to stay in shape, you ask? I basically cling desperately to my skeleton as the Earth hurdles through the universe at blistering speeds.

I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

But today, Cobe is in charge ... the "regular guy" is out sick. And to be honest, I'm kinda impressed. Cobe has made good calls all day. Everything is going smooth, and for once we're way ahead of schedule. Inevitably, we get stuck in a car together. He's driving, and I'm in the passenger seat. At some point, he waves at somebody, and I reflexively look.

It's a carload of teenage girls.

Now Cobe has got twenty years on me ... I get the creeps. "Damn Cobe," I wondered aloud, "Got a thing for those low-mileage babes?"

He looks at me confused, and then notices the girls in the car next to us. "Oh Christ no!" he replies, suddenly realizing what I meant. "Steve made this light and just passed us." He points at the tail car in the next lane, and sure enough there's Steve.

Steve's wavin back, laughing.

Okay ... Cobe is vindicated, and I relax a little. But then Cobe says something that really throws up red flags. "Oh God don't even joke about that," he says, taut as a goddamn drum. "If my old lady even thought that I was screwing around she'd blow my head off!"

Okay, it's creepy again. I look at him and his eyes are fixed on the road ahead, suddenly a little pale. He's dead serious.

So I start musing. Cobe is a fairly successful guy that's been married for thirty years. Is the secret to a successful marriage deciding that, while divorce is not an option, murder is? Is honest, hardworkin Cobe just one "Do you think she's pretty?" from gettin his skull turned into some kind of macabe bird feeder? I started to feel bad for good 'ol honest, hardworkin Cobe.

But then, with a "captured audience", Cobe made me listen to country music.

For forty minutes.

An hour later I get home totally crushed over some girlfriend I never had, and a pickup truck I never owned. That night I found myself serving my guests Scoopable Fritos and french onion dip in a polished hubcap, weeping openly about the plight of Catherine Bach.

I had lost six full IQ points.

I checked.

Right after Hee Haw.

So to cheer myself back up, I'm and planning to leave Cobe messages on his wife's answering machine. Something like "Hey Cobe! You can't just up and leave me with these horndog chicks. And you still owe Jasmine fifty bucks!" Who knows? Maybe this will be the one crippling lost consumer the entire country music industry can't withstand: It could all spontaneously collapse --in a furious God-smiting tempest of rhinestones, bad footwear and Stetson cologne-- to a teeny morose singularity that can be banished from our grateful planet completely with some Simple Green and paper towels.

I'm doing a public service here.

But I walk in the house my roomie has got this internet story up about this guy in Florida that got a hand axe buried in his forehead by his wife for cheating. The woman hacked the guy into chunks, and then fed the chunks to a bunch of prizewinning chinchillas she was breeding.

Righteous and joyous mayhem oh so tantalizingly close ... my goddamn roomie is always online when I need to make a phone call! Is there no God?!?

So what the hell is a "chinchilla"? And can you buy them bulk?

Hi MOM!

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Well, my mom can't find Predator Press.

An English teacher at a major college --where hoits meet toits and discuss "Shakespeare" and "Interest Rates" and whatever-- she can't risk any personal email at work under penalty of death.

It's in the School Charter.

Curious about her little 150 lbs bundle 'o joy, she asked me to slip her a cleverly-disguised email containing a link to it.

I wrote:

Deer Teecher,

Here is wherefore the writing sample what I had wrote:

http://predatorpress.blogspot.com

Anyways, thanks for teachin me stuff and English and makin me write it real good now ... I will never fergit you wuz the best teacher that what gimmee my Litrinary Talent!

Your pal,

Sincerely,

Thanks,

PS: LAW SCHOOL IS AWESOME

Your Fourmer Student,

Chuck Norris

Pay-Per-VIEW?

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Okay, so the hot blonde that banged the lucky pup in Florida got caught. And to stay out of jail, the defense presented was "She's too pretty for prison".

This was initially treated as great news by me an Ethan ... heck, we're freakin gorgeous.

But then I started to think: If we aren't jailin hot chicks anymore, what happens to those hot women's prison films?

This is distressing. I don't want to rent "Cellblock 69" or something and havin it star Liza Minnelli and The Fantastic Moulah ... Jeez even the thought of that's enough to make a guy wanna switch teams.

Us beautiful people can't have our cake and eat it too. I suggest we take all the hot chicks and lock em up in the "stoney lonesome" for one last week with cameras everywhere. Paris Hilton, Lucy Liu, Porshe Derrasi, et cetera.

And as for the host, I'll even volunteer to "take one for the team".

I'll go from cell to cell with a Governor's Pardon and bark "Pamela Anderson! Tell me Newton's Second Law of Motion!"

And Pamela Anderson will answer, "The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors; in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector."

An I'll say, "I'm sorry, you must answer in the form of a question. As punishment, you are to be summarily sentenced to death by pillowfight!"

We could totally make this a Pay-Per-View.

Dog's Day

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Has anyone seen the commercial for the 'Doggie Stairs' product?

The thing is like a two foot tall set of carpeted stairs, so the little poodles and puppies -stricken with stubby lil legs by an unmerciful God- can get up on your bed and into your car, et cetera.

Given that one of the major selling points of this thing is not having to bend down to pick up your dog -and all the dogs in the commercial are between five and ten pounds- where would one find a consumer base that would shell out $40 and haul this thing around instead?

Mr. Insanity let me visit his trailer park to do some research. Clearly this is another instance that we could demonstrate the trademarked glorious and triumphant technologically-superior improvements for which Predator Press is world-renown: Humanity demands yet more of our artful manifestations, and once again we are drawn upon for our ingenius crafts of elegant scientific form and function.

Now the problem with trailer parks is that they tend to be a little cramped: very few people in these tightly-packed communities own poodles and puppies between five and ten pounds ... Our original concept of a Doggie Escalator was doomed to failure as all we could find in them were Pit Bulls and Dobermans.

But luckily, Mr. Insanity had a V-8 motor hanging by chain from a tree over his El Camino. And with all that extra horsepower, we developed the Doggie Centrifuge.

Equipped with the patented harness, you can launch a full-grown German Shepard into your bed from idling speed: at full choke this thing will put a pissed Saint Bernard safely into the fourth-story window of a PETA office building with surprising accuracy, even without with the optional scope ($400).

Think about it! If you have a friend in a neighboring trailer park that also has the Doggie Centrifuge you could just fire the happy pooch back and forth rather than taking those long tedious walks.

The Doggie Centrifuge is still being tested as we're having problems with the nitrous attachments, but we're expecting to be in full production by summer.

The expected retail price should be around $3,000-$4,000, and we are taking advance orders from anyone with a VISA.

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Derek B. recently inquired if "Beautiful White Stallion", the character in A Fairy Tale, was inspired by Eddie Murphy's character in Shrek II.

Actually, the oldest draft of A Fairy Tale I can find was written in 1999 --back in the day when our primitive ancestors were bloggin on Etch-A-Sketches-- two years before the original Shrek came out.

I'm still waitin for my check, Pixar ...

Jumpin Jack Trash

Predator Press

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Must've been a helluva Saturday night ... there's a waffle jammed in my CD changer.

It's not my fault! I was drunk. And hungry. The stereo --brandishing a slot and an electric cord-- seduced me with promises of perfectly-cooked, lightly browned fluffy waffles.

I don't know if the warranty covers this, but the waffle sounds amazing ...

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.