Testicles and the Argonauts

Predator Press

[LOBO]

t was almost certainly Aboxades.

“Haw!” exclaimed the overly-audible voice -a voice you can hear easily over the din of the Market- from behind. “There’s his puny brother!”

Some approaching heavy footsteps –three men total, perhaps.

-Aboxades has himself an entourage today.

To the back of Testicles’ head, Aboxades guffawed. “Have you come, perhaps, to compete against him?”

Laughter.

Testicles sighed. He had indeed come to witness The Competition, and had a quiet comfortable spot under a shady tree with a spectacular view of The Games, the Argo –run ashore- as a backdrop.

But now he had hecklers.

“Fuck off, Aboxades,” Testicles replied without looking up, almost on mindless autopilot; living in the shadow of the mighty Hercules, his older brother, had made him hardened to such teasing. “My brother ain’t nothin special,” he breathed coolly.

“Oh and you are?” said Aboxades. With an armored man flanking each side, the Aboxades party was now fully blocking The Competition from view. “Your brother is going on a quest for the Golden Fleece.”

“Yeah, well if he wins.” Testicles chuckled at the irony. It was coincidentally Hercules' turn, and all fell silent as he casually flung a shield.

Several miles.

Striking a distant rock on the horizon.

“He won,” one of the guards observed.

“Meh,” shrugged Testicles. “I’ve seen better.”

Aboxades was aghast. “Better than that?”

Clearly both offended and wounded, Testicles noted Aboxades’ hero-worship. Rising to his feet, Testicles resolved himself to the improbability the men would simply leave.

“Well the way I see it,” said one of the guards, “while you fritter away under a shady tree, your brother is trying to save the kingdom.”

“My brother just won himself several months on a boat with no women and like fifty half-naked Greek guys. Fuck that. Call me crazy."  Gathering an apple, and orange and a banana, Testicles began to juggle his ill-fated lunch casually.

Suddenly, he had an idea.  "Are you noble men of the wagering sort?” Still juggling, Testicles nodded at a flock of wild sheep. “I’ll bet you fifty greenbacks I can lay three sheep in that herd before they bolt in alarm.”

“That’s impossible,” said Aboxades. “And I don’t want a bunch of angry letters from PETA.”

“You’re on!” said a guard.

“I’m in for a hundred!” said the other, already fishing through his armor for his coinpurse.

Aboxades scowled. “All right. I’m in too.”

Testicles unzipped his loincloth -still juggling- and the men all looked away in discomfort.

“What are you doing?” cried Aboxades.

“Winning our bet,” Testicles explained.  “Look, I understand that Hercules is a Hero and all. But Jesus … the guy is like nine feet tall. Most people run from my brother. I’m an Achilles man myself … “

Suddenly, in the distance, a sheep brayed.

“That’s amazing,” said Aboxades, forcing himself to look from between the fat, disarmingly-nimble fingers he used to shield his face.

"Well I can usually  juggle up to four pieces of fruit with no problem," Testicles explained. "But five is extremely difficult-"

"No, I mean the sheep thing."

"Oh, that." Testicles shrugged.  “Indeed Zeus has been very good to us.  But I don't think you fully apprciate the complexity of juggling five pieces of fruit simultaneously-”

"Hey!" cried a voice in the distance, from the middle of the herd.

“Whoops!” said, Testicles, flinching slightly. “Sorry Odysseus!”

Suddenly another faraway sheep brayed, and one of Aboxades' guards fainted dead away.

“Haha!” laughed Aboxades. “Do the black one!”

Predator Press Movie-Middle Reviews: Avatar

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Everything probably would have been fine if not for the Nader guy.

All through the line at the box office, that guy just went on and on about Ralph Nader. ‘Ralph Nader supports this,’ and ‘Ralph Nader opposes that.’

-And from the way his date feigned enthusiasm, I’m pretty sure she was ready to smack him too. She kept kissing the guy just to shut him up.

“Oh please,” I muttered as my ticket is bein torn. “Ralph Nader is a fucking populist. Voting for him is just throwin your vote away.”

We crossed the heavy double-doors into the darkened theater in the same small group. And as the ambient sounds diminished -as the room is designed to do- I distinctly heard the Nader guy whisper, “That guy is an asshole.”

“You’re an asshole,” I rasp quietly. “And a naïve asshole. America is a two-party system. Period. Now go fritter away the attention of some other country with your Lawn Party or whatever.”

“Fuck you hippie.”

“Nader tot!” I shrieked.

-The ‘shhhhhh!’s came from multiple directions, and almost on instict we scatter for seats.

Some previews started … but I got distracted tryin to figure out with more precision where Nader guy was sitting. He was about six rows up, and slightly to my left. Oh man, I’m thinking. Just let your stupid cellephone ring or something, and I’ll haul your stupid Communist ass right out of this stupid fucking movie and-

By the time Avatar started, I had completely lost my 3-D glasses.

Fuck.


***

Twenty minutes in, I had a splitting headache. So rather than watch the excruciating blurry images, I began to stare at the back of Nader guy’s stupid fucking head. He was an older guy, with well-manicured and gelled stupid hair, shaved just above his stupid collar. Pastel shirt -a stupid Polo shirt if I remember correctly.

After about an hour and a half, I began to relax a little and watch the movie.

Man the Smurfs in Avatar are fucking huge. Didn’t the guy who wrote this tripe do any research at all? I happen to know Smurfs are roughly three apples tall. Apples are, like, four inches or so right? These fucking things were at least five or six feet tall. Well that’s just plain lazy.

Lookit that stupid asshole with his stupid Nader hair warmin his stupid Nader thoughts.

I’m guessing the main Smurf in this story is Jokey Smurf, because everything is constantly blowing up. Jokey and Smurfette have some bizarre obsession over letting this poor crippled guy sleep, yadda yadda, more stuff blows up. They are probably alien Smurfs if you think about it.  You know, made gigantic by bein exposed to gamma rays and stuff.  Still, advanced civilization or no, Smurfette is the only female of all the Smurfs if I remember correctly … and it’s depressing me that she has all this free time. Maybe she’s a lesbian.  Now that I think of it, I don't think these guys even have any genetalia.  Nope.  I don’t remember seeing any ‘Predators,’ either, but Sigourney Weaver goes on and on and on about how to be nice to the aliens.  The humans -having finally found a long-sought alien species to have wars with- will have none of that 'peace' and 'love' hippie shit, and it's on bitches!  The humans finally shoot Sigourney to get her to shut the fuck up. Ironic.

How dare that Nader prick call me a hippie? I find myself thinking, starin at the back of Nader guy's stupid evil noggin in the pale bluish flashing lights.

All the Smurfs apparently live in this giant tree. Maybe that’s where the abnormally-large apples come in -like a crazy behemoth tree planted by Johnny Mnemonic-Appleseed or something. I don’t know for sure, because it was right about then I slammed my $15 tanker truck-sized Coca-Cola right into the back of the Nader guy’s fat, stupid, ugly head. It was spectacular.

“Nader is an Environmentalist!” I cried in exhilaration. “Save the environment?  The environment is trying to kill us all the time! Is he stupid?”

If you factor in the ticket, food, parking, and bail, I spent about $500 that night. You would think I would be left to enjoy the movie, right? But immediately after the Coca-Cola thing, there was ushers and lights, an ambulance and cops -virtually anything you could dream up that would make it impossible to follow a movie plot.

Still, Avatar‘s movie-middle garnered a healthy eighteen thumbs up. Despite the wanton Smurf inaccuracy -borderlining on outright historical butchery- when that Coke smacked the back of Nader guy’s head that shit exploded everywhere. People all over the theater were taking off their 3-D glasses and freaking out for a second.

Some applauded.

See that Ralph Nader?

Fuck you.

Spectacle

Predator Press

[LOBO]

On the subject of protests at funerals, I think there’s a bastardization of the First Amendment afoot.

So here’s a lil First Amendment quiz:

1) True or False: Anointed with Constitutional “Freedom of Speech,” I am entitled to push the college lecturer aside to elaborate on my own beliefs to the classroom.
 

2) True or False: The First Amendment ensures that I can interrupt a crowded movie premier; the theater lights should come on immediately at my request that I may offer an impassioned speech reflecting social woes.

If you answered "True" to either scenario, you’re either delusional, a complete asshole, or a health mix of both.

-But if you feel reasonable outrage at the idea of someone intruding on something you paid for, why should a funeral be exempt?

The 2010 Case Against Darwin

Predator Press

Bishop Eddie Long: 25,000 parish members of “New Birth” can’t be wrong, can they?

Jimi Heselden: This was either a murder, or Heselden is the nerd’s answer to James Dean.

All the crime scene investigators found near the melting custom Segway -all chrome and painted with skulls and bones- was a half-empty pitcher of rapidly-melting daiquiri, an empty sleeve of temporary tattoos, a smoldering WWI helmet with an iron cross on top, and a pair of scorched New Balance tennis shoes.

-I wonder how the Hoveround guy is gonna top that.

John Doe: This story is only a few paragraphs long -too short to preface- but far and away my favorite. This poor bastard is such a loser, even God couldn’t put him out of his misery.

Intelligent Life on Earth Found

"Don't get too excited" scientists warn, citing statistical improbability of finding more.

Predator Press

I'm Going to Need a Lot of Apples, Stat

Predator Press

[LOBO]

“Now class,” says the teacher. “Can anyone answer the question on the board?”

After an awkward silence, only I raised my hand.

“No,” I replied.

Internet Swag

Predator Press

[Found by Terri]

Predator Press Reviews Movies We Never Saw That Probably Weren’t All That Great Anyway: Driving Miss Daisy

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Look. Once a movie gets a certain age, if you haven’t seen it yet, you probably aren’t going to, right?

Concluding that just because we’ve never seen a particular movie don’t mean Predator Press readers should be deprived of us lecturing extensively about it, we have decided to start a series called “Predator Press Reviews Movies We Never Saw That Probably Weren’t Really That Great Anyway.”

-You are reading sort of a “test balloon.” A pilot, if you will.

Anywho, we‘re starting with Driving Miss Daisy. At first blush I hate every last image I can find on google. O holy Christ I can only imagine the Snooze-O-Meter score for these movie posters: I picture piles of potential movie-goers sleeping right smack under the box office -like the second those retinas process the image into the cerebral cortex, pow, they just drop like they hit a bug zapper.

Danny Glover appears to have slimmed down about 15 pounds or so for this movie, and apparently he’s spun off his Lethal Weapon character. My guess is maybe Murtaugh -finally fed up with Riggs’ antics- retires to be a cop [I'm guessing cop because of that cap] in some small town they couldn’t pay Mel Gibson enough to shoot a movie in. You know what? This movie is really fucking old, too -pre-CGI, 8-track tapes and textiles. Mel might not have even been born yet.

Unfortunately this town isn’t the “easygoing and relaxed” place Murtaugh was expecting, and soon he must arrest criminal mastermind and textile entrepreneur Daisy Werthan -who has been engaged in a lot of evil shit. Like a textile mafia or something.

But on the way to take her to prison, Murtaugh discovers Daisy is innocent -you know, the misunderstood hero with a heart of gold? Then Daisy rescues Muztaugh -her captor- during a seemingly-unrelated shootout featuring John Travolta.

Then there’s probably a good fifty minutes of soppy bullshit as Daisy and Mertaugh struggle against the titanic ebb of romantic tension developing between the two, hilarity ensues, yadda-yadda. But I’ll bet the freaky-wild sex scenes probably come in way too late to salvage this movie at all frankly. Then one of 'em probably dies, tragedy, tragedy, yadda-yadda-yadda ... and we get another fifty minutes of more soppy crap.

-I mean it won four Oscars and had fourteen additional nominations, so the sex scenes must have some redeeming qualities. But who besides Renal Failure wants to see Jessica Tandy naked that badly? That bony, pasty, wrinkled glazed butt, spanked pink, slammin up and down on ...

-Ah Christ. I think I'm havin an aneurism!

We here at Predator Press give Driving Miss Daisy a solid eighteen thumbs up because you can't go wrong when you mix prison, porn, and Dan Aykroyd.

We dinged it minus four Cannes Film Festival appearances for aneurism-related trauma, but this was all offset when we added ten bonus John Travolta Emmys, and an additional Golden Globe for every minute they splice in Lethal Weapon footage.

Maybe We Should Fuck Sharks

Predator Press

[LOBO]

For an animal that considers itself “sophisticated” and “evolved,” I think we look like a bunch of assholes.

I mean a sex drive is an instinct built-in to propagate any given species, right? But does the female aardvark require constant emotional reassurance? Does the male platypus hesitate to pounce on any beaver or duck it can? An holy crap don't get me started on monkfish. I don't know who or what they're doin it with, but somebody is fuckin 'em.

No, indeed -it seems the only critter that really needs a lot of lack of simplicity is the human male. But in a Cosmic sense, it's the human male job to shoot DNA at stuff ... and if we don't, we walk around with painful diamond cutter pointing at whoever we're talking to.

Males are about Diversity: if no willing vagina can be found, we start looking for alternatives. At some point, we don’t even need it to be a live organism … it could be a plate of sheet steel for instance. It flies in the face of even environmentalism ... What the hell are we supposed to do with all those bent and bloody girders that just don't "work" anymore?

The female, conversely, is in charge of Selection: she is programmed to perpetuate only the best genes. But is anyone comfortable with this decision in the hands of Kate Gosselin, Nicole Richie and Ann Coulter? Personally, I think those guys with the so-called “best genes” are total assholes anyway. And how many rap artists and Mel Gibsons do we really need?

For most of us, a 24/7 male libido is redundant, absurd, and -well, let's face it- probably dangerous. Couldn’t we just do spores or something? This is the same logic we use for cops: we hire them under the premise of protecting us, and what typically get is harangued, fined, detained, hassled, disrespected, and abused by them 99.99999999% of the time. And before you says “Oh but you sure love a cop when you need one,” let me also underline I love Chinese food too -once a year. You can’t fuck with me five hundred times, and then justify it all by one day doing what you were supposed to be doing all along.

Me an a cop can both lose an hour at the intersection I failed to come to a complete stop at -an intersection that hasn’t seen another vehicle since 1974- and then I can lose a day of work at court and $200 for the fine. On top of that, add what that cop and that court cost to all of us via local, county, state, and federal tax "contributions." But while this huge machine has been busy thwarting my cavalier and evil traffic device disregard, the streets are crawling with drugs and violent criminals they "don’t have the resources to fight?"

Really? No resources? We simply don't count all the hi tech police cars, cameras, guns, meter maids, ticket tablets, radar detectors, radios, computers, helicopters, prisons, uniforms, et cetera ... because the recent and rampant scourge of wanton 'stop sign anarchy' is taking up the whole goddamn budget? This is beyond stupid .... this is Fucking Stupid. And I -as a human being- am checking in as officially insulted: as far as I’m concerned, we’ve hired a criminal army with a bad attitude that spends most of their time harassing us, and is analogous to hiring an arsonist fire department. Where did my money go, asshole?

The ironic concept of cops arresting prostitutes could -quite possibly- make my head explode. What happened to our sacred capitalist “freedom” when cops get to wipe out their competition? We don’t even get to pick who will be fucking us?

As a species, we just don’t make any sense. Why do we just accept all this crap?

My money is on sharks.

A Contest of Wills

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I have concluded that if for some weird reason I should die, something has gone horribly wrong.

While difficult to imagine the concept of mortality and a chiseled phenomena such as myself in tandem, it must at some point come into consideration. Let’s face it: throughout history there is just a shit-ton of creative killing. One might even be forced to conclude that as a species we’re pretty fucking good at it.

Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, LOBO -the thought of future generations dealing with these tragic losses is just depressing. And you know some weird religious sect would pop up -doin crazy rituals and building pyramids an crap- in hopes that I would rise from the dead. Truth be told I hate acoustic guitar: this would be totally unacceptable. If I do rise from the dead, me an Jesus are takin out those weirdo hippies first.

And holy crap, there’s the whole "zombie" possibility. Plus if my formal burial tinfoil hat isn’t aligned properly, there’s the chance of being remotely controlled by intergalactic robot dinosaur overlords or something -to aid in their sinister invasion plans!

-If you think about it, it’s in all Humanity’s interest not to allow or cause my death.

Nevertheless, if it cannot be avoided, I have decided I do not want to be buried or cremated or any of that witchcraft hoodoo.

I want to be detonated.

Instead of just bein plain dead, why can’t we have a little fun? I’ll bet it would be cheaper than all that funeral crap, too. Just dig a 12” X 12” diagonal hole in the ground (to focus the blast trajectory), fill it with explosives, lay my mighty corpse across the top, an pow, launch me mortar-style at something. Not a lot of explosives, mind you: bout six sticks of dynamite should do it -I don’t want to be vaporized per se; I want nice big, healthy chunks to fall down on something poetic of your choosing.*

-We should have a contest!

Gimmie ideas -like having all the parts fall on a PETA meeting during the “Meat is Murder” preamble. How about a Lohan family reunion or a Palin Thanksgiving? Or a Tila Tequila concert?


*Like Adam Carolla, I also want at least one really enormous black woman in pumps throwin herself over my coffin, tearfully wailing through a veil "Why Lawd!? O Lawd why him? Take me instead, Lawd ... !"

Internet Swag

Predator Press