Thursday

About the Author

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Within a short period, I will be marrying a the most wonderful and beautiful woman I've ever met.

She has kids, so the acronym "MILF" definitely applies.

But by virtue of this, will I get promoted to "DILF"?


Tuesday

No One Falls for "Pull My Finger" Gags Anymore

Predator Press

[LOBO]

But if you tie a string to your finger, the comedy endures.


A Strange Sense of Porpoise

Predator Press

[LOBO]

WOW!

Predator Press has never been slammed with like 57 awards simultaneously before, and we would like to thank Debbie Dolphin and Joyce Hopewell.

We were slammed with one award simultaneously before, but the Marines running Toys for Tots are keeping lead strictly limited to their bullets this year: a reciprocal plug for China seems in poor taste.

That's so damn many awards, I got exhausted just moving my Dale Earnhardt commemorative plates off of the fireplace to make room for them!

Will you guys help me carry all of them to the car? And up to my apartment? On my new piano?

I always buy a piano when I win awards.

... Pleeeeease?


Monday

Pressing 50,000


Predator Press

LOBO

Every few thousand hits, I'm going to do a random screenshot of my playground. (Note that cool desktop pic: I stole that at Photos from Northern Norway.)

Thanks for reading!


Sunday

About the Author

Predator Press

This blog is a demanding and high-maintenance project already, and LadyTerri is always telling me, "You need to comment more. It will get more people involved."

First of all, I'm far too much a contrary blend of reckless carelessness and obsessive-compulsive psychotic tendencies for decent commenting; after stewing over what to say for an hour, I'll drop a little well thought-out intellectual gem on them like:


"Graet blog!"


--and completely overlook the spelling error. Then I'll break into a cold sweat: "That son-of-a-bitch's blog screwed me up!" I'll complain. "It didn't look like that in the preview!"

Then I imagine the entire internet looking at my comment, and laughing at what a dumbass I am.

That's a lot of people to have killed when you only four days off.


***


So I picked up a few comments of my own on my last post. Our friend Uri Kalish was kind enough to illustrate the definition of SEO: it's an acronym [anagram? angioplasty?] for "Search Engine Optimization".

Unfortunately, "Search Engine Optimization" is even twice as lame as I feared.

See, we figure Predator Press fans don't have any problems finding Predator Press, because one of the few prerequisites of being a Predator Press fan is actually finding Predator Press in the first place. We carefully planned for this actually: if too high of a percentage of your gray matter is tied up with respiration and lottery tickets, big words and sarcasm are only going to piss you off. And we don't have any liability insurance that covers someone poking their own eye out trying to 'bookmark' us.

Luckily, however, we've thought about them as well: by promising a few t-shirts to the more, eh, "militant" of our fans when we start merchandising, we've obviated the need for any SEO completely.

Look: every Predator Press fan knows to make Predator Press their homepage immediately, and even the dumbest ones have smart freinds that can make backups and capture cool images for their desktop. And those new smart Predator Press fans are the most valuable of all: they go to work an hour early, sneak around cubicle to cubicle and share the joy with their unwitting coworkers.

Don't -and I repeat DON'T- do that "cubicle trick" at the Defense Department anymore.

Those Defense Department guys are assholes.

And now I owe those pricks a lot of t-shirts.


***


So I'm looking at my new listing on Humor Blogs (I said I had a kickass blog: I never said anything about the continuity of the writing). And ours is one of the few without a banner.

I felt a strange pang of disloyalty. I mean just about everyone else has a banner, right? I like to think that I have a rather spectacular gift of knowing exactly how and when to collapse to peer pressure with style: it has been one of my finest qualities since junior high school.

So after thirty hours of no sleep --and when I say 30 hours, I mean 29.75 hours of trying to get my newly-pirated image editing software to work, and .25 hours of good and sound actual sheer creativity-- I had finished what I had regarded as a 160 X 40 pixel masterpiece.

Behold:




When LadyTerri saw that on Humor Blogs, she laughed her ass off. Which is cool. I mean, aside from someone having a fatal seizure and the cops finding a smouldering corpse staring at my cool new banner and us getting a "BLOG KILLS" plug on CNN, laughing at it is the second-best desired effect, right?

But it turns out she's laughing at the banner and not with it.

"That's it?" she guffaws. "These people spend a lot of time and money on banners. Those people are serious bloggers. And you throw five words in black and white up there?"

I was so pissed, I diverted the conversation to our upcoming wedding.

She must pay for this insolence.


***


We've both agreed on tattoos rather than wedding rings. I tend to work in industrial environments, and plus neither one of us take much stock in "conspicuous consumption" by virtue of gems and jewelry: her willingness to accept these explanations has saved me a bundle, and I am absolutely crazy about this woman.

"What are the tattoos going to say?" she asks.

That's actually something I hadn't thought of honestly. I thought we were just going to get bands. "I don't know. Our names?"

She says, "I'm just going to get [our new last name]."

"Okay," I says. "I'll just get [my current last name] too."

She frowns, "No. That's only your last name now."

"And that'll be only your last name then," I point out.

"Well, I just wanted to keep it simple," she says. "I've never had a tattoo before, and I've heard it hurts a lot."

"Well, we'll get really drunk," I reason, hoping to bluff into a decent position for negotiation.

"We could just get each other's first name," she offers.

"I suppose," I says. "But then the next thing you know, you're hanging around with dozens of other [My First Name]s, subverting swift religious persecution by trying to confuse God. And God doesn't take kindly to that kind of shameless manipulation."

"Oh please," she giggles.

"No, I'm serious," I says, taking her hands and looking her sincerely in the eyes. "Honey, I'm trying to save you from burning in the Lake of Fire for all Eternity!"

She bites her lip. "Okay. What will my tattoo say then?"

"I was thinking along the lines of 'Property of [My Name], the most handsomest and brilliant man in the world, and the only man I will ever love period ever again. Period. Keep Out. This Means You. Sincerely, [Her Name]. All Rights Reserved."

"You want me to get all that tattooed on my wedding finger," she glares incredulously.

"I haven't gotten to the bar code yet."


Friday

Ask LOBO

Predator Press

[LOBO]

People are always asking me, "LOBO, how come you don't have like 97 blogs?"

Well, I'm glad you asked me that.

My favorite neighbor, the Canadian Curmudgeon, has two great and well-written blogs. And from "across the pond" Lord Likely has about 12. No matter what your thoughts are on the butchery of our fine American language with that crazy accent, you have to salute the British for just sheer blogging industriousness; Lord Likely alone makes our discovery of England completely worthwhile. When's the last time you read a brilliant gem out of the Galapagos Islands? Hm?

But I'll be blog surfing in MyBloglog or blogcatalog and stumble onto some profile -invariably a weird, hairy dude with a scantily clad attractive woman icon- that has like 15 or twenty blogs, and the only thing they have in common is the disturbing desire to escape every one of them: the topics will range from something cute and fluffy like "My Intermittent Ponderings" to "How Spiders F--k".

And I'm cool with that. I mean who doesn't want to read an insightful scientific dissertation on how spiders f--k? How many legs can she get behind her head? I mean you have to click on that.

So now you're committed: Join? Not join? And then you start seeing the other stuff like "SEO Academy: Internet Marketing". Bloggers, I'm coming clean on this right now: nothing shuts my brain off faster than the word 'SEO'. It's mind numbing. I don't even know what the hell 'SEO' means, and I'm bored to death with it.

It has been long standing Predator Press policy to have people that visit but don't 'join' our neighborhood swiftly and quietly killed. But, for instance, MyBlogLog only lets you join 15 'neighborhoods' a day ... and it now I got like 18 more blogs to read by this prolific asshole! Man I was trying to relax and enjoy some web-surfing, and now you're making me make decisions.

Jerk.

So why don't I have 97 blogs? Because:

a) I don't have that kind of time,
b) I'm already complaining about stuff as fast as I can, and
c) I'm almost certain I've pointed out how lazy I am on this blog before, so back off.

Frankly, Predator Press is already beyond my control: it's a rampant and insatiable fusion-fueled juggernaut of a blog that chews up entire universes and spits out kittens. For fun. Another "Predator Press" would tear holes in the fabric of Space-Time, destabilize the "Blogosphere", and ultimately collapse the entire internet into a singular dense point that corrupts your computer cookies, downloads brownies and pizza instead, and ultimately skews your ebay feedback until you have to burn down your own home for the insurance money while fighting zombies dressed in a Speedo.

Would you really want more than one Predator Press?

I, for one, happen to like cookies.

And zombies are assholes.


Thursday

A Pilgram's Progress

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Aside from Halloween, Thanksgiving is simply one of the most darkly disturbing holidays ever ... and I've already dubbed this year "Cranksgiving 2007".

You know, I am thankful. I'm having one of my best years ever: I've got great friends, a fantastic job, and a big-assed television. Game over. I win, right? So why stick me in that viper pit of poultry pounding relatives?

Jesus. I sneak peeks around the room, and find my mind turning the same thought over and over: how the hell did I come out normal around these weirdoes?

Then I force my attention back to the football game on my big-assed television.

God I love that television.


***


Inevitably, my cozy, slothful splendor will be torn asunder: somebody forgot something at the store, and I've gotta face the cold to address an emergency cranberry deficit or something. I mean why do I have to suffer for someone else's pisspoor planning? History is absolutely littered with the arrow-riddled bodies of pilgrims toting last-minute yams and 12 packs of Coke ... even after fifty of sixty years, have we learned nothing?

Mom should be fired immediately. Hey, I'm sorry ... I understand that you were up all night poking and prodding a dead bird in the oven. But this is like the 20th Century already: we have frozen turkey dinners now. Six minutes in the microwave. Plastic sporks. Boom! On to the football.

It's called the Pilgrim's Progress, and Americas neverending quest for big-assed televisions and footbal is well-documented in all the history books. Embrace it. Learn from it. And never forget, lest ye be slain horribly by Indians too.

.. And please note that I'm not saying be mean to mom; I mean she is mom after all. Give her a decent reference. Set her up with one of them "Golden Parachutes" and a nice severance package to make sure she can afford COBRA for the duration while she seeks some other deserving nomadic tribe of needful pilgrims without microwave ovens. It wouldn't be so bad if done properly; I mean all she needs to do is hang out on the beach and wait for a boat, right?

Mom could use a tan.


***


And every family has one. The member -usually a brother- who has a new "significant other" every year. So every year you gotta mince about on eggshells to impress this new person you will never see again.

Last year, we took the new harlot aside and insisted that the entire family had been genetically blessed with a superfluous nipple that, until blessed with new progeny, we primarily use to feed the cats.

She was gone before the football even started.


***


Inescapably my mind will turn to our troops overseas. Each and every one of them is a million miles from home, friends, and family, blowin the crap out of stuff. This is the one day of the year I'm completely overtaken by jealousy of them.

And it's here that the sarcasm screeches to an abrupt and uncharacteristic halt ...

Even as I sit and write and bitch, there are people being shot at to defend me. Kids mostly. Undeniably, a quantifiable statistic of them will never see the land they are fighting for again ... and some will be so brutalized, they might wish they were part of that statistic.

I'm scared for them, and I don't understand our enemy at all; can't we all just get big televisions, and watch the Packers smear the Lions through a sated tryptophan haze?

Even just today?

Happy Thanksgiving to our troops; you are in our thoughts and prayers.

And I wish you come home safe.

... so I can complain about you next Thanksgiving.

:)


Internet Swag

Predator Press

[LOBO]

As we can plainly see, my Permukaan is scientifically
quantifiable as bigger than the average puny bebas.

But I do miss the hos.


Wednesday

Weather Proves Difficult to Blame on Grossman


Predator Press

[LOBO]

Rex Grossman has more talent in his little finger than most of you armchair wanna-bees, and you so-called Bears "fans" outta be ashamed of yourselves for sarcastic crap like this.

Seriously.

According to our supercomputer, the Chicago Bears kick the crap out of the Yankees in every single Superbowl simulation.

I'm betting everything.