Weapons of Mass Dysfunction

Predator Press

[LOBO]

What? Too soon?

Mukasey: Torture Authority Memo 'Mistake'

Predator Press

[LOBO]

As Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey was admitting that the now-famous document written by General Jay Bybee and endorsed by Alberto Gonzalez was a mistake, I thought, "well duh."

Wow. Memos are horrible and dangerous things.

WTG genius.

As you readers know, I already know better than to put anything really crazy in writing. So I'm suffering jetlag and airline-food indigestion only to learn once again I'm light years ahead of the government? When Ethan told me to go to Capitol Hill to cover the 'torture memo' story, I thought it would be a saucy sex scandal!

I got bored quickly. And God bless me Ethan, I even tried drafting a story about this guys' horrible tie ... but I was just powerless against the oppressive, excruciating blasé of listening to those old guys.

An irritated Secret Service guy nudged me rudely awake. Said I was snoring. I asked the guy if there was anyplace to get coffee, and he put his finger to his lips and 'shooshed' me.

No, I'm serious. The prick shooshed me!

He took a few minutes quietly explaining to me how I'm "supposed to be quiet," and "you can't get coffee during Capitol Hill proceedings," and how the porn I was browsing on my laptop was "offending the people behind me."

This guy must be just as bored as I am.

I decided to engage him in conversation. I tried to explain that the crunkly old white people here were pent up about porn because they had all the collective sexual attraction of a sardine stuffed the wrong way through a mallard. And that the secret to attracting these chicks is probably only wearing a decent magnet considering the bling on all the trophy wives in attendance.

And even as I was beaten and tased, I knew I was on my way to a Pulitzer ...

Frumpy Billionaire Interviewed on Larry King Live

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Were we really all that interested in the first place?

I would have gone with Danny Bonaduce.

About the Author

Predator Press

There were a few "happy accidents" that caused this blog.

The first was the actual inception.


***

I used to be an insurance company "claims processor". My job, it soon occurred, was to find ways to deny insurance claims.

In my third year, some of my 'clients' were dead.

I knew them by name; I was familiar with their families.

Like anyone else that suddenly discovers their previously unknown rather ghoulish occupation, I started doing the heroic thing: I started fucking off at work. I remember blowing through about sixty claims an hour for maybe a month, approving every last one.

I got bonuses for record productivity.

In my ample spare time, I wrote gag "Official Company Memorandum", and push-pinned them neatly onto the company bulletin boards. Then I evolved to fake cutout newspaper articles about coworkers getting abducted by aliens.

For some reason, the company fired me.

The guy I base "Ethan" on drove me home after I was kicked off the premises.

We became fast friends.

And it's that same guy that courageously posted first on our "brainchild", in an effort to keep me writing.


***

The second "Accident" was filling out an online dating questionnaire.

Predator Press already existed, but it felt constrained. At the time, it was a blog as blogs are generally defined. In many ways, "LOBO" owes his mere existence over just plain snarky angst.

I kinda blew through the dating site profile questions, mildly amused; they all required answers like "long walks on the beach" and "cuddling with puppies". Bored, I thought it would be funny to fill out the whole thing like I was too stupid to know when I was supposed to lie. And having committed to the fantasy fully, I saw that writing like an honest and articulate five-year-old can be just plain liberating.

Thusly, "LOBO", the Snarquis de Sade is born.

And the girl that answered the ad?

I'm marrying her soon.

:)

LOBO Fails Drivers License Renewal

Predator Press

This is the unfortunate consequence of neglecting
to promptly turn off your blinker.

Predator Press Whores First Ads Starting Monday

Predator Press

[LOBO]


I'm proud to announce that Predator Press has finally found a hard-working, decent American company with a fantastic product that is willing to frequently fist us lots of money for talking about it.

The contracts are being signed first thing Monday, and the HTML buttons and widgets that you people will need should be available shortly thereafter (assuming this fat advance check doesn't bounce).

While I can't profitably talk about it yet, I can say it's a top-secret new technology that makes your Windows 95 desktop look like Windows Vista at the paultry price of $19.99 a month.

To be honest, I haven't tried it yet. I started the installation process Wednesday, and it's still downloading. Plus I hadda do a few upgrades because it requires 975 megabytes of hard drive space and two gigs of ram. And a video card and a monitor with video ram. And a new motherboard.

... But they're telling me it's really slick, and the ads all have scantily-clad women in them.

Next Year In Review

Predator Press

[LOBO]

After years of resisting Western influences,
Al Qaeda will struggle with the concept of "Bring
Your Daughter to Work" Day this April.

New "Chick Magnet" Unveiled

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Behold.

Those NASCAR wusses said we shouldn't build it because it doesn't have brakes.

And NASA geeks said we couldn't build it, and the refrigerator in the background photo of the prototype was more aerodynamic.

But all we can hear over the 5,000,000 horsepower engine is soggy panties slapping against the floor.

Like the original, we haven't quite figured out how to make a full-scale mighty Chick Magnet V2.0 work yet.

But we can helicopter it in for $85,000 whenever you want to look cool.

Come to My Site, or I Will Kill You

Predator Press

[LOBO]

As a trained and licensed killing machine, I'm perfectly capable of waxing the four or five people left that stubbornly aren't reading Predator Press; if not for my fear of flying, I would've been in the Special Forces.

I once decapitated a guy with my bus transfer.

A Dark Matter

Predator Press

LOBO

Standing there almost at the top of Mauna Kea, I didn't know shit about astronomy or physics; I was a tourist with a telescope, shivering at the top of a mountain, gawking at the stars and planets.

I have found away to be cold even in Hawaii, I remember snarking to myself.

When my friends suggested I go to the lookout point, I figured it sounded cool. Pianosa is pretty damn flat; even if the space stuff didn't impress me, I would probably enjoy just the scenery.

But the problem is you don't drive up a mountain to see stars during the day. The journey was an excruciatingly long and boring climb into darkness, saturated with what often felt like forced conversation; by the time we got there I was feeling irritable.

And then I saw the Universe.

It stopped my heart.



***

Staring down at clouds with your feet on soil alone would have been enough. But the sky...

... I just cannot find the words.

There's a reason the Keck telescope was built there ... you can see the rings of Saturn with your naked eye. At my friend's behest, I stared at the celestial beauty through his $20 binoculars, utterly amazed. And in a strange confluence of fortune, Jupiter was in view as well; I hogged the magnifying lenses shamelessly while I watched the moons visibly circling gracefully around the magnificent giant.

"What's that dark spot?" I asked, watching a dark orb swinging toward the colorful, living surface.

"That's Jupiter's Eye. It's the largest and oldest storm in the solar system."

"No," I says. "I mean the one swinging around it."

And even as I said the words, the object swung behind the massive planet.

"It's a moon."

"Really?" I says. "I thought moons would have nice, tight circular courses. This one just kinda screamed in, and went behind it."

"Yeah, okay," says the guy, searching the spot with his own binoculars. "You're seein UFOs?" he guffawed.

"I didn't say it was a fucking flying saucer," I says, still peering through the lenses. "I asked what this thing is."

All of us ogled the sky for a while in silence.

"It's a moon," the guy repeats, packing his binoculars audibly into his belt minutes later. "Do you have any idea how large something would have to be, being visible behind Jupiter?

"Not at this-"

There it was again.

I stared at the arching spot for a precious second to assure myself it wasn't my imagination.

"There it is," I says.

I could hear him receding in the background. "Darting about is it?" he says sarcastically.

"No," I argue irrationally. "It just came around the other side."

I force myself to remove the binoculars, and finally face this asshole.

"Son," the rather unremarkable guy says loudly in the distance, slamming a car door that reads Keck Telescope Personnel. Lowering his electric window, he adds, "Jupiter is about 25,000 miles wide."

Disinterested, I return to the view. The thing creeps beyond Jupiter slower and slower, until seemingly to stop. And escaping Jupiter's ambient light, it was almost invisible already.

I figured we have about 167 days.

Give or take.



***

Six months later, I feel I have done what I can to warn everyone.

I have warned the "proper authorities" ... but no one will listen. SETI has blocked my calls.

I took up mathematics and science, and proved that -by virtue of the bending of surrounding light- a gravitational giant had been slung like a Frisbee from Jupiter at our solar system, at a speed of approximately 30 miles per second.

No one listened because my mortgage was foreclosing ... but I could not work.

And my wife was leaving me because she thought I was crazy.

And only now, now that a tiny dark stain is visible in the blue sky, do people peer at it curiously. It's the antithesis of a star; almost like a growing period, punctuating a gun-metal grey sky with violent green and blue lighting jumping and dancing for it.

Today it's unseasonably cool, windy and dark.

People will want to watch the spectacular show.

Many will be barbequing.

The Mattress Police

Predator Press

[LOBO]

This fellow blogger has written a book so brilliant, profound and utterly funny, I've only read three chapters and have already dispatched six assassins.

Diesel autographs them too.

Buy one quickly; they will exponentially increase in value by Friday.