A Short Visit

LOBO -Predator Press

Holding the doorknob, I glance at Gina.

"It's a spider," I says.

"What?" asks Gina.

Cracking the door, I wince in the sunlight. Down on the welcome mat, there's a lizard.

"I'm in disguise as a lizard," it explains.

I stare.

"We've met before," it continues. "I'm the ghost of an armadillo you ran over in 2002."

I keep staring.

"But I was actually a textile worker killed during the Industrial Revolution," it points out. "Reincarnated as an armadillo. Understand?"

"You're the spider ghost of a textile worker reincarnated as an armadillo, and in disguise as a lizard," I repeat.

From behind, Gina sighs. "Does this happen every time you eat a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish?

Confused, my eyebrows furrow as I turn back to her slightly.

"Does what happen?"

Virtually Unrepentant

LOBO -Predator Press

Poring over my psychiatrist bills, I happened spot a new diagnosis. Now trust me, I have a lot of diagnoses. The fact that I spotted this one at all is probably due to my OCD.

But this one is a learning disability.

"Disease Synonyms:

•Basic learning problem in writing
•Developmental academic disorder
•Developmental disorder in expressive writing
•Developmental disorder, expressive writing
•Developmental expressive writing disorder
•Difficulty solving problems
•Difficulty writing
•Disturbance of cognitive learning
•Impaired ability to learn new material
•Information conversion problem
•Learning difficulties
•Slow learner"

I apparently have a "Disorder of Written Expression?"

Okay, let's forget that I graduated college. With Honors. Academic Dean's List. And that I make my bones doing business correspondence on a densely-crowded travel schedule. And that I run a webpage. Shit. I mean I know I don't write as frequently anymore, but that is tied more to travel fatigue, lack of inspiration, and general depression over a divorce. Did this hack quack mistake my shitty handwriting and charming sarcasm for a legit learning disorder? Or am I really sick, like a late onset kind of thing? I have been drug and alcohol free since February, and am even [mostly] vegetarian so I can accumulate enough Karma to be the biggest, bestest douchebag ever.

Why now?

I would have bought a reading disorder, seriously. If you put three simple, clear and unrelated traffic signs close together, I can't make any sense out of any of them. And I haven't finished a novel for pleasure in over five years. I can read a news story on the internet, but I confess the only "pleasure" reading I do anymore are electronic schematics. At work, given the choice between associated titles and SKU numbers, I have been going with the numbers for years. My den is an over-budget and uncompleted collection of projects: computers and cables and unassembled IKEA furniture, waiting to prop up and network the incomplete dreams I work so hard for.

It is a sacred place I hope is never finished.

It is a beautiful disaster.

Ask LOBO: Dating Edition

LOBO -Predator Press

Millions and millions of readers are always asking me every day, "LOBO, you've been married three times. Clearly you are amazing at relationships. Can you give me some dating tips?" My first impulse is to refuse -I'm currently on track for at least six marriages. Why would I dispense such potentially dangerous wisdom?

Well why not? I'm a sucker for logic.

#1) ALWAYS WEAR PANTS. I can't stress this enough. No matter what you've seen on the internet, not wearing pants should be saved for the fifth or sixth date.

#2) MAKE HER PAY. You need to be sure she isn't some kind of beady-eyed phsycho moocher. Beady-eyed psycho moochers are virtually unemployable.

#3) GET IN FRONT OF YOUR ASHLEY MADISON ACCOUNT LEAK. Distort your past with rumors like "That guy Jullian Assange kicked my puppy."

#4) SHAVE. When able, impress her with how fast you can swim.

#5) FILL CAR TRUNK WITH FIRST AID SUPPLIES. Women like security. How better to demonstrate you are fully prepared for the zombie apocalypse?

#6) PRETEND YOU HAVE FEELINGS. Women can be as mysterious and complex as they are wonderful, and "Feelings" seem to be at the very top of their interests. Someday one of us should really get to the bottom of it all.

#7) DON'T DATE RONDA ROUSEY. Sure, she's hot. But nothing spoils romance like ruptured kidneys, torn ligaments and spinal injuries.

#8) SERIOUSLY DON'T DATE RONDA ROUSEY. The human pelvis can only be rebuilt so many times.

#9) BE PREPARED TO DEAL WITH SOMEONE PAINFULLY OBLIVIOUS OF STAR WARS TRIVIA. If she don't know who TK421 is, the bitch might throw out your Bossk action figure. But on the upside, sound of drying vagina might stop for a few days.

#10) THE SEX ISN'T FANTASTIC -YOU ARE JUST FINALLY HAVING SEX.  Over a long enough timeline, gear up for changing the cat litter and trying to remember where you hid the porn.

Scorpion Kick

LOBO -Predator Press

Got some [really] bad advice a few years ago, and lost my anonymity by merging Facebook and Google.  Now, despite this being a fictional blog, everyone started superimposing their shit on what I write.  Co-workers I just met insist stories I wrote years before are based on them.  As a consequence of an errant Google search, a girl, concluding I must be the only "lobo" on the internet, asked me who "lobowife" was.

WTF?

It's really hard to create in circumstances like that.  It has accelerated divorces, caused issues at work, and really eroded my sense of humor in general.  I feel like I enjoyed a great, unrestrained run, and now I find myself burning calories making more and more explanations.  What was once a fun and cathartic adventure has me all too often comforting unnecessarily bruised egos.  Complicating matters is, yes, some scenarios are inspired by real life.  But what writer does not draw from experience?  With the anonymity removed, no matter how hard I cloud things, people will be able to "connect the dots."  Anchored at least partially in reality by yours truly, the accusations and allegations will never end.

This comes up now because I am sinking some major coin into my podcast project.  I just ordered microphones and the soundboard, and a suitable computer to run it.  The expensive software is daunting.  Thinking forward, it will only get worse: at some point I will need a formal studio built for the live feeds.  Hours of phone calls about the commercial applications and legalese that yield more questions than answers ... this is much more difficult than I ever guessed.

And I'm not complaining.  Seriously, I really enjoy it.  I haven't felt this engaged in something in over a decade.  But last night, poring over technical manuals, it occurred to me I was making all the same mistakes again.  If this thing succeeds, people will respond to the energy -and the wrong people will -at best inadvertently- work to fuck it up.  I've spent decades learning to accept and deal with my own faults and eccentricities, but nothing can prepare me to deal with everyone else's.

So I think I'm starting over.  A new blog, a podcast independent of my beloved Predator Press, a new nom de plume and "persona" altogether.  They can, after all, always be unified in the future, but I don't really see why they ever would at this point.

I'm excited at the idea of a 'reboot.'

Ghosts

LOBO -Predator Press

Work, travel, and life in general have really limited my ability to write this year. Many immolated themselves. Many jumped from tall buildings. Many immolated themselves, then jumped from tall buildings. But fear not, o loyal reader! Your beloved Alabaster Battlemaster has not been idle!

Piece by piece, recording studio equipment has been arriving back home, and the plan is to make Predator Press -at least in part- a podcast. This should include audio and visual components, and Skype interviews with our -and by "our" I mean "my"- favorite internet personalities.

If you still insist on immolating yourselves and/or jumping off of tall buildings in the meantime, please be tidy about it. This isn't all about you you know.

 Show some goddamn consideration.

WTF Ever Happened to Quicksand?

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Once again, at no small expense to you, we here at Predator Press have set out to settle an age-old question burning in everyone’s mind: What ever happened to quicksand?

You remember ... one could barely get through a half an hour of television without some poor slob stumbling upon his buddy's pith helmet laying mysteriously on the ground. Then he or she goes to pick it up, and the horror ensues.

-It’s quicksand!

I remember being taught about quicksand by no less than three teachers during the brief debacle of my education. They all conflicted with each other too. “Don’t struggle,” one said. “Lay flat and roll out,” said another.

Clearly even then this enigmatic sedentary evil was barely understood. Of course this was the heart of Chicago, where they taught us to curl up in a hallway in case of aerial bombings and hide under our desks during nuclear blasts.  It's safe to say if graffiti didn't stick to it, we Chicagoans didn't know shit about it.

So after years of jumping over suspicious looking sidewalk squares, it occurred that inner city quicksand may well have evolved a cracked appearance -perhaps even a Hopscotch pattern as camouflage! And tedious "research" revealed absolutely no cases of Chicago quicksand attacks, thus proving conclusively the deadly hunting prowess of this formidable and fearsome predator: no one had yet survived an encounter with it to tell the tale.

-I haven't slept in years.

Unfortunately, the Predator Press scienticians really let us all down this time. All they did was gorge Dominoes pizza, play World of Warcraft, and work on their Facebook profiles until SPAM beguiled them into downloading crippling computer viruses via porn.  Obviously the Great Mystery of Quicksand is beyond the feeble understanding of even the greatest minds of our time.

Still, we here at Predator Press remain hopeful that perhaps one day Humanity will learn to communicate with quicksand, the most misunderstood, secretive, and voracious of Nature’s killers.

But we recommend you all wear big, buoyant hats in the meantime.

Just in case.

DARKNESS!!!

LOBO -Predator Press

Mutt

LOBO -Predator Press

"Of course I'm Celebrating Saint Patrick's Day," says Cindy.  "I'm Irish.  Don't you care about heritage?"

"Pthbtt," I says.  "If any our 'heritages' were worth a shit, our ancestors wouldn't have come to America in the first place."

Knox

LOBO -Predator Press

First I need to apologize to Stephanie Barr, who actually commented on the post "Sisyphus" --a post I promptly deleted. Long story short, about ten days ago I heard from my dad for the first time in a decade, and by osmosis got some contact from other lost relatives and siblings.

I've sort of inferred dad's health is in decline, but I'm not sure anybody was aware of the fact that dad found me. What ensued became quickly toxic, as I was accused of conveniently showing up by people already dividing his estate. Worse, most of this was spilling out on my Facebook account. I keep my "real" life off of Facebook. I consider Facebook and Twitter more of a playground. Worse than even that? Remember how I said it had been a decade? My mom helped me track these people down that time, and what I found was a viper pit. Don't get me wrong, family is family, but they all just stopped answering communication efforts ten years ago. See, I'm dad's only kid from a different mom. By not picking sides in the frequent feuds, inevitably, I became my own side.

I guess I thought dad's new pack would mellow with age, but it's full-on Game of Thrones shit at the moment. So this time I preemptively purged everybody. For posterity, I would like to leave two final thoughts for them:

#1) Congratulations!

If you all had not foiled my diabolical plan, a year from now I would be driving a Fisker at 35 miles per hour wearing goggles, scarf, and driving gloves, and smoking a cigarette with a filter like four feet long sticking out the window because fuck oncoming traffic.

#2) Thanks For My Sense Of Humor, Dad

-Michael

TurtleGate

LOBO -Predator Press

"Moriarty didn't commit suicide, you moron" Rachel explains.  "Morry is a tortoise.  Tortises live on land."

"Well you're certainly not making me feel any better about this whole fiasco," I says, pushing on Morry's chest rhythmically.  "This is a consequence of God's spurious equivocation when it comes to Creation."

"You're blaming God for drowning Morry?"

"I mean it's not like we see fish walking around downtown," I says, slamming my fist into the inverted carapace.  "I figured this would be a major upgrade for him."

Morry suddenly hacks, and ... starts breathing.

"Whew," I exclaim, wiping my forehead.  "We were really close to you giving him mouth-to-mouth."

"What's with the sunken hamster wheel?"

"It's called a spa, Rachel.  Jesus Christ.  Maybe you should think before you open your mouth sometimes."

"And the underwater radio?"

"Who doesn't like music?"

"And the mozzarella sticks?"

"Stop making me repeat myself.  Can't you see I'm under a lot of stress right now?"

Rachel stares into my eyes.  "Why are your pupils so dilated?  Did you eat those McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches that sat out unrefrigerated on the counter all night?"

"Maybe," I reply evasively.  "Or maybe Morry was committing suicide.  How else do you explain this suicide note?"

"That's the gas bill," she says.

Suddenly I'm stricken with paranoia.  "Well, we have to clean all this up before the cops get here.  They're going to have a lot of questions."

"How about you just lie down for a bit?"

"I still have half a sandwich left," I explain.  "Do we have any gasoline?"

The Shart Begins

LOBO -Predator Press

"Why does Bruce Wayne keep all this cool Batman memorabilia down in this cave?" I ask.  "Won't it get moldy or something?"

Stephanie Barr, at the Batputer, rolls her eyes.  Pulling up BatGoogle, she has Banksy's BatWikipedia profile in seconds.  "Why," she counters, "Are you so ardent about finding this artist?"

"Bruce Wayne made me a cool costume," I says.  "It makes me look like I have pectorals."

Nose-to-nose with an amazing Batsuit, I whistle involuntarily.

"Man this Wayne guy must be the shit at Comic Con."