Jerxes

LOBO -Predator Press

"Mitch?"

"Aspergers."

"Carol?"

"Way Aspergers."

"Calvin?"

I think for a second.

"Aspergers," I conclude.

Gina pulls away her glasses in frustration. "So you've diagnosed everyone on my Christmas list with Aspergers?"

"Christmas? I thought you were making a roundup list for the C.D.C."

Heart of Gold Part II

LOBO -Predator Press

Click here for Heart of Gold Part I

"Listen," says the cop, uncuffing me.  "We are going to throw this ... thing ... into the Hadron Collider."

"Oh really," I says, rubbing my wrists.  "We're going to do exactly what I planned to do before you so rudely arrested me?"

"We don't have time to send this to a committee," he barks.  "But the backup I called will be here any second.  This scourge on humanity must be stopped."

"Well, duh!" I says, choosing my words carefully.  But as he scurries around the room looking for anything useful, I begin to reconsider.  This guy is an all-business professional.  And he's big, barrel chested, and "cuts a good jib." Natural heroic looks.  He will be on the cover of magazines.

-Real or not, America needs heroes like this.

"Open that hatch on the floor," he commands, yanking at some cables.

"This hatch is clearly labelled 'DO NOT OPEN HATCH.'" I point out.

"That is an access point to the 27 kilometer ring they race the particles in."

"Kilometers?" I says, swinging the hatch wide.  "This goes to Europe-?"

But the second my eyes fall on the inside of the ring, I am lost in its violent beauty.  Glowing reds, yellows, greens and blues, flying by at thousands of miles per hour.  Utterly dazzled, I find myself wanting to fall to my knees and weep.

This must be what God sees.

Suddenly, the cop smacks me on the back.

"-and that's the plan," he continues, furiously tying the cable around his waist.  "Now remember.  One tug means 'Throw me the backpack.'  Two tugs mean 'Pull me back, fast.'  And if I don't make it," he hesitates, "tell my wife and kids I love them.  I did this to protect them."

"What is your name?" I yell over the maelstrom.

"Officer Clint McMannanaugh!" he salutes.

He dove in.  And immediately, the coiled cable next to me started to swirl away.

The end of the cable disappeared into the hatch with a violent crack against the hatch edge.

"Hey!" I yell into the hatch.  "Shouldn't you have tied this to something?"

Nothing.

I stick my head in to listen closer, and see a small metal object whip by my head from behind.

"Officer McMannanaugh!" I yell.  "You've lost your badge!"

A shoe.  And then a human ear.

"I think you should tug the cable twice!"

The cable flew by.  His revolver clanged behind, firing randomly.

"God bless you Officer Clint McMannanaugh," I mutter.  Opening the backpack, I look at the vile contents, the moist evil pulsing.  "But enough blood has been spilled over Europe."

At that point, I could have just Fed-Exed the whole pulsing squishy mass of weirdness to someone else.  But who?  I thought.  I don't hate anyone else enough!

The sirens approached.

All I can do is put this fruitcake someplace where no other human will ever dare touch it.

Tires squealed in pain against concrete.

-I'll put it under another fruitcake.

Click here for Heart of Gold Part I

Heart of Gold

LOBO -Predator Press

Click here for Heart of Gold Part II

His moves are so well-practiced, the handcuffs are on me before I know it.

Blase yet clear, the cop explains. "You are under arrest for criminal trespassing."

"I object!" I says.

He rolls his eyes with the enthusiasm of a man who can tear his ACL rolling his eyes. "May I ask you why you were trying to break into the CERN Hadron Collider?"

"This time?"

"Yes sir."

"It came back," I says.

"Excuse me?"

"It came back!" I says. "Look in my shirt pocket."

He procures the paper, and unfolds it.

"This is a signed receipt of delivery from Fed-Ex."

"It snuck in.  I was acually expecting por -eh- art movies.  But it can't come in uninvited," I explain. "It's like a vampire."

"What can't come in?" he asks.

I nod my head to my backpack. "I already had it in 2006."

The cop's trepidation is palpable, and he opens it slowly. "Is it a head?"

"Worse."

Sweat drips from his forehead. "Is it a bomb?"

"You wish."

"Oh shit," the cop reals, shutting the backpack. "You got the fruitcake."

"Twice!" I point out.

He staggers a little, but regains composure like a pro. "Look. You signed for it. I get that it isn't fair you got it twice, ..." He gags for a second. "But it's yours now."

"Or is it?" I says. "If you arrest me, you have to take it as evidence. That makes it yours."

"That's a lie!" he sobs, tears welling.

"I was trying to destroy it by throwing it into the CERN Hadron Collider and banishing it to a parallel universe once and for all."

"Or cause a space-time disruption that wipes out all of Existence?"

I shrug.

"Either way."

Click here for Heart of Gold Part II

Xanadu

LOBO -Predator Press

While ruling out a torn cruciate ligament via MRI, Doctor Gudenstont found a bullet my ankle.  Getting it non-surgically reduced requires a series of lethal injections, so I'll be home for a few weeks.

Of the hundreds of screeners I haven't watched, I picked "Terminator:Genysis." Why I could not tell you.  But an hour in, I found myself seething in a blind rage.  I wanted to burn down the theater.  The fact I couldn't because I live here only redoubled my frustration.  After a ceremony to appease various gods, now I have to watch this steaming crap at a friends house, and then burn that place down.

Gina pulled up as I was returning the can of gasoline to the shed.

"If the bad terminators only need to kill Reece or Sarah Connor," I bark, "why do they spend the whole damn movie fighting with Arnold Schwarzenegger?"

"What? "asks Gina, still getting out of the car.  "Hey.  Is that gasoline?"

"Give me a hand with it," I says, wobbling clumsily on my cane.  "I have a bullet in my leg."

"You have a cyst in your ankle," she corrects.

"Everyone knows 'cyst' is a medical euphemism for 'bullet.'" I argue.  "They do that for insurance reasons."

"The oil change guy wanted to charge me forty dollars for windshield wipers," she says.  "Can you imagine?  This car isn't even a year old."

"Well ..."

"What?"

Having a bullet in your leg makes it hard to run serpentine.  I hesitate.  "I've been meaning to mention that.  Your windshield wipers are an eyesore.  The neighbors are talking.  This can't go on."

"That's ridiculous," she says.

"Is it?" I says.  "Every day you pull up with those droll windshield wipers, I have to go into damage control.  It's fine that you are making some hippie statement.  But don't think I don't suffer the consequences."

For some reason, I'm not allowed to have a shed key anymore.

Sin Limite

LOBO -Predator Press

At this point in my life (and my fantasy football season), I figure I need to make peace with God.

But which one?

On the face, the seventy two virgin thing sounds pretty cool right?  But are they legal and consenting? Heck ... are they even female?  And do the virgins disappear once you *ahem*, so I have to space them out? I live with two women now, and I can tell you shelf space for my shampoo is already precious real estate; there is a lot of zit cream and kissing potions.

Is there a second tier?

I would settle for 36 voracious cougars.

Hard "R"

LOBO -Predator Press

I'm not here to take a political stance.  When the election rolled around, it occurred to me I couldn't help pick out the living room furniture; I really have no business picking out your leaders.  But while perhaps less surprised at the outcome than most, a morbid fascination grew.  For better or worse, we are watching history unfold.

Domestically, I've never felt we are as far along race-wise as we think.  My company, around 300 people, is roughly 30% white, 20% Latino, 25% African American, et cetera.  Then we have subsets of gender, language, religion, politics, and interests.  They do tend to cluster in their own ethnicities, which suggests to me we are all experiencing the "culture" differently, and people sharing similar histories have a gravitational pull socially.  These ever-diminishing groups refine and sharpen their borders the deeper we get.  But I also think my company, were it 100% white male, would break down into similar cliques --so I have a problem with the message "we can all get along just fine ... if we all just think like white males."  It feels like tribal dick-wagging.

And speaking of tribal dick-wagging, the international policies are likely to shift dramatically as well.  That is what actually prompted this post.  You are reading a guy on his second cup of coffee, who, in order to go to work, must convince himself that a piano won't fall on him when he steps outside.  I must navigate a world full of bear attacks, dolphin rapes, bath salts, dolphins raping bears on bath salts, plagues, plaques, floods, locusts, and irresponsible uninsured piano movers -all under the all-seeing eye of Kelly Ripa- just to get to the punch clock.  But what about those guys fighting ISIS?  Somewhere, in the middle of a hellish desert battle (remember this isn’t attacking a dessert -you can’t just throw sprinkles on your tank and hope for the best. ISIS would hit you broadside with a strawberry in a second), our soldiers just got new bosses.  New plans.  If a single poorly-chosen manager can decimate a TGIF, what can this mean?

I, for one, won't stand for our selfless protectors overseas getting cold mozzarella sticks and soggy potato skins.

Eastworld

LOBO -Predator Press

"Are you guys tech support?"

Even through the rubber jumpsuit, the guy in charge visibly squirmed.  "Most customers don't contact us directly, as it ruins their immersion experience in the park."

Gesturing to Sapphire's lifeless body, I says "Well, what about that?"

"What happened?" he asked, fogging his plastic facemask.

"I told her her blue eyes were so stunning, they hit me with the cosmic force of suddenly being released from a sewage plant."  I shrug, frustrated.  "Why can't these things take compliments?"

The tech looked at his display.  "It looks like using 'stunning sewage release' is her reboot command password."

"Is she Microsoft?  I'm not doing this every day."

"Did you add any programs?"

I think for a second.  "I told her to download her 'Saucy' profile.  So she only wears one or two dresses at a time.  She is going to poke someones eye out at the Cotillion."

"Huh," says the tech, still examining his readouts.

"That's when she collapsed.  So, figuring it was a corrupted file, I tried to download it six more times."

The tech groaned.

"Then I got more imaginative," I says.  "Maybe the 'Saucy' profile needed a broader framework.  You know, something darker.  I mean you can't just ask a lady who wears three pairs of pajamas to sleep to just flip out and be a whore, right?  So I included the 'Evil' add-on pack."

"The one that includes Hitler, Josef Mengele, Nero, Caligula, Kelly Ripa and Ann Coulter?"

Even as I point to my nose, Sapphire groggily moans awake.  "Where am I?" she asks.

"Solved that problem," says the tech, gesturing hastily to the others.  "Our work here is done.  Let's go.  Now!"  Sapphire looked around curiously as they gathered their gear and fled.  As he left, the head technician looked back at me and saluted, "Enjoy your vacation, sir!"

I wave enthusiastically.

"Thank you!"

Doctor Gudenstont

LOBO -Predator Press

"Hi Doctor!" I feel impelled to wave. She is only three feet away, but through her enormous magnifying glass, her eyeball alone is the size of a football. "Is 'Gudenstont' French?" I ask.

Doctor Gudenstont, alternating blue footballs at me, appears not to hear the question. "Vee shall have to do many, many tests on you," she concludes. "Many very painful tests." Without taking her alternating eyes off of me, she presses a button on the nearby telephone.

"Nurse Garrison?"

"Yes," came the almost instant disembodied reply.

"I vill need lots of needles. A hammer, and a pair of pliers ..." Her gigantic pupil dilates. "And a bone saw," she adds.

"The burlap sack labelled 'LOBO'?"

"Ja."

"Thank you doctor. I have been waiting a long time for this. I'll be right in."

"Hey," I argue with the footballs and disembodied voice. "I am a sculpted, athletic Adonis, and I've put numerous decades of hard work into achieving this body. I'm not falling for whatever insurance insurance scam you are trying to pull here."

Suddenly, Doctor Gudenstont jumped through the window of her own 15th floor examination room! I ran to the shattered window, watching in disbelief as she plunged toward the pavement. Then, a para-sail popped out, and she floated to a nearby waiting helicopter.

"Haben Sie das erreicht, dafür Sie gekommen sind?" The pilot yelled.

"Nein!" Doctor Gudenstont replied.

And as I watched them escape, diminishing over the horizon, I knew my fate was sealed. The die had been cast.

-Doctor Gudenstont is pretty cute for a French chick.

The World is not Enough

LOBO -Predator Press

A Rising Tide Sinks All Boats

LOBO -Predator Press

"Why don't you want to be promoted?" asks the guy on duty.

"We've been doing this dance for years," I remind. "I am smart enough to know there are smarter people than me here, and there are more valuable people than me here. The problem is, they aren't always the same people."

His desk is amazing, so I linger. It is so organized, my OCD tingles.

-"Ethically, I can't do what you guys do." I confess.

A Good, Dead Hittite

LOBO -Predator Press

My therapist says volunteering time to teach orphans how to shoplift is a poor way to deal with the guilt of being a true, full-time vehement racist.

And based on my carefully-cultivated image, I'll bet you never would have guessed that I am racist. But there it is.

I hate Hittites.

I hate them with a purple, venomous passion.

See, the Hittite kingdom is conventionally divided into three periods: the Old Hittite Kingdom (ca. 1750-1500 BC), the Middle Hittite Kingdom (ca. 1500-1430 BC) and the New Hittite Kingdom (the Hittite Empire proper, ca. 1430-1180 BC).

-And I freakin hate all three of them.

I mean they are dead, right? How the fuck great can you be if you're dead? Hm? I can, say, go make a pot of coffee. Would you Hittites like a cup of coffee? No? Oh, you're dead you say?

Well, HA HA.

More coffee for me.

And no, I don't think organizing a protest is a good idea ... I'll go Dustbuster on your ass.

We all know intuitively that red is bad, right? Well, just look at this here satellite photo: see how bad these people are? I mean that is concentrated fucking evil, and they are crawling with it. I hope the Sumerians kick the crap out of them! Evil has never done anything to me personally, but I suspect in the wrong hands -like those Hittite rubes- evil would probably suck.

And yes, Indo-Hittites are pretty cool, but unfortunately everytime I see cuneiform, I just wanna puke 'cuz it reminds me of those lousy scumbag garden-variety Hittites. I'm nauseated I gotta breathe the same air they did! Blech. I can still taste Hittite crawling in it.

They oughta make anti-Hittite Febreeze.


Author's Note: This blog does not endorse the ill-treatment of the descendants of the noble Hittite, or represent the ideas or beliefs of the author.

No Hittites were harmed during the writing of this post.

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