Because I Care

Predator Press

[LOBO]

One of my duties at work is to make spreadsheets.

Nobody ever told me who or what the spreadsheets are for, but I crank them out left and right.

They are accurate, colorful, and endless; in fact, my last spreadsheet outlined in excruciating detail how the numbers of spreadsheets produced have increased exponentially since my date of hire.

Louie is a big guy, to say the least. He’s got to be approaching 400 lbs. His job is to take the numbers from my spreadsheets and input them into a computer so all the information can be verified.

Louie hates me.

I knock on his door, and hear a grunt. And as it opens, the sounds of his labored breathing fills the room. “You’re car is being cancelled,” he begins without a greeting. Enshrined by candy bar wrappers, empty nachos polystyrene and Diet Pepsi cans, he says distractedly, “You’ve had a month now.”

“That’s too bad,” I says. I can tell by his voice he’s not done. “Why are you sweating?”

“Your stupid spreadsheets,” he says. The chair creaks under his girth as he leans back, and holds up the two fingers he uses to type. They look lean and muscular in stark contrast to the rest of his body. “The least you could do is do them in numeric order. The way you do them now, I have to delete and type the whole thing.”

“You mean you want me to put them in order so you can just delete the last digit and type in the new one?”

He nods, skull pivoting gracefully over rolls and rolls of neck.

“Sure Louie,” I says, already planning a spreadsheet outlining how many broken chairs come out of this department. “But why don’t you just cut and paste them?”

The impossibly fat eyebrows arch. “Huh,” he says. “That’s a pretty good idea. Between that and you doing them in numerical order, my life will be a hell of a lot easier.”

“Always happy to be of help, Louie,” I says cheerfully, excusing myself.

So for a month, I made spreadsheets using the letter “O” instead of zeroes, “Z” for “2”s, and even brazenly threw in “E” instead of “3” on special occasion.

It’s more than a little ironic that I was asked to deliver Louie's eulogy …

Hack

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I’ve been compiling a “best of” collection over at writing.com. I don’t think the pieces are really as good as the originals, as I’ve had to make them self-contained short story “adaptations” for readers who have never been to this site before. Still, the immediate feedback is good, and I like the specific “hit-by-post” breakdowns. While I can’t tell who is reading, I can tell what is being read; it’s like a cheap demographic study.

Well, you had better be sitting down. What I found out could just give you an aneurysm.

The internet is full of perverts.

It turns out that my fairly soft-core porn draws three times more hits than anything else. This lame porn is followed roughly equally by drug references and curse words.

I don’t know what I expected to find, but I’m pretty pleased with the demographic anyway.

Thanks for reading!

I love living in this day and age, and how inventive it all is. The Internet has once again given us instant satisfaction and gratification rather than that crappy other kind of satisfaction and gratification. As a kid, what did I have to play with? Basically it was either GI Joes or Stretch Armstrong. “Kung Fu Grip” gets old fast, and stabbing Stretch with a pencil will get you yelled at a lot, but subsequent new carpeting.

As a grown-up, maybe I'm still a little conflicted on the whole “Stretch Armstrong” thing, but I’m not on technology.

Bring on the toys, and please bring them on fast.

As a quasi, low-grade tech support goob where I work, I’m getting a crash course in a variety of tech toys lately, and I still need to pick my “weapon of choice” as far as mobile communication.

My cellphone.

I told them I think I want an iPhone.

I know I do more than my share ragging on Mac products, but while I prefer PC, I’m perfectly comfortable using a Mac as well; the bulk of computers at my college were Macs. The bulk of my hamburgers have been Macs. Those people are definitely onto something periodically, so I keep my eye out. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, after all.

That iPod phone looks slick. I even sold the idea to the purchasing department. In fact, I had them already ready to order them for themselves too until they saw the $500 sticker price. Then the tightwads started to backpedal. “Maybe when the price comes down,” or “Let’s let the technology prove itself first,” blah blah. How dare you become “reasonable” and “responsible” at a time like this? Just what are you calculatrons hiding?

Immediately, I’m suspicious.

After some convincing, I got Ethan to fire them all for conspiracy to embezzle iPhones. But now, corporate iPhone “approved”, there’s nobody in the office to help me with the paperwork to buy one.

What the fuck is happening to this country?

Well, I wasn’t particularly excited about getting a cellphone in the first place, and I’ve just created another six-month excuse to wait to get one.

I am the uncontested World Champion of Procrastination.

Don’t think so?

Just wait.

Catwalk

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Mounting pressure from work to “dress for success” has forced me to do some shopping.

Evidently, they want me in disguise as somebody ‘respectable’.

This is no small feat for a guy who has procrastinated buying shoes for six months; for years, I have blown into Wal-Mart and bought 32X32 “loose fit” Levis and three-packs of T-shirts, finishing my annual clothes shopping –without even trying anything on—in maybe four minutes and for about eight bucks. I don’t know anything about clothes and colors and whatever, and now I gotta learn how to dress like a grown-up virtually overnight.

It was clear I needed help.

A small squad of concerned friends enlisted, and I got dragged to the mall.

I got khakis, ties, cardigans, shoes, belts, aftershave, and dark socks. And of course I hadda “polarize”; we continued on to spiff coats, gloves, scarf, boots and so on.

And after $1,100, wanna know what I’m wearing to work tomorrow?

Wal-Mart and bought 32X32 “loose fit” Levis and a T-shirt.

Well, at least I got my fucking shoes.

Stainless Steel Rat

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Posting is going to get a little sketchy for a while; I’m getting ready for some company.

First of all, thanks to LadyTerri for not only plugging Predator Press yet once again, but for giving me a good laugh over what she used. It never ceases to amaze me the unexpected and screwball stuff that just gets seized upon from here, and sometimes I forget just how bizarre this page is myself. The furthered circulation of Best Squishes even made me blush.

Secondly, my unpopular decision to kill off “Mister Insanity” is final. And trust me, I mulled over it quite extensively.

The initial conception was to develop a character that represented each of the “Seven Deadly Sins”, and as a writing exercise, write for each independently. Eventually refined, we would have LOBO for Sloth, Phoebe for Vanity, Mr Insanity for Gluttony, et cetera.

But new readers just found this “multiple writer” format too confusing. Let’s not call it an outright artistic failure, but an opportunity for growth; perhaps, as my writing skill improves, I will achieve the talent necessary to pull off something that ambitious. At that point, I would certainly reassess my options.

But for now, Predator Press is slimming down to its original “fighting weight” of 162,457 metric tons.

(Cobe is a fat fuck.)

Pissing Off the Gods

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I have a great job. It pays good, and the hours and people are fantastic.

But wow it can be stressful sometimes ... particularly when my boss calls off. On these days, millions of dollars annually in clients --representing accounts-- live or die by my ability to do what I do well.

I'm not exaggerating.

I came home and dragged some pillows and a blanket to the couch, gratefully collapsing in an exhausted heap; here it was barely six o'clock on a Friday night, and I was curling up with the television remote, whipped.

For those of us that didn't know this, please be warned: television sucks on a Friday night. Completely frazzled, somehow I mindlessly ended up sputtering out on some show on The Travel Channel about famous American haunted houses. And they do an amazingly bad fifteen-minute piece on sightings of Pelé, the Goddess of the Hawaiian Islands.

Why was it amazingly bad?

Because I've seen Her.

Personally.

I used to laugh at people who told ghost stories, chalking it up to vivid imaginations coupled with normal unexplained phenomena. That's how humans have dealt with stuff we don't understand for as long as we've been able to not understand stuff; we make it "magic".

But for summer vacation during my angelic High School years, my mother invited me to come out and visit Oahu for a month, and I would come back to the mainland United States forever changed.


***

After being there a week or so the magnificent splendor of the place just kind of petered out, and rampant teenage angst took over once more. With maybe twenty days or so left, I don't need a full-blown romance either: I need to get laid.

I ended up accepting an invitation to a club from a girl I didn't particularly find attractive. But she was witty, intelligent and sweet, and I was so horny I could've fucked a plate of sheet steel; if something "magical" didn't happen soon, we could've had another Pearl Harbor.

As male, my sexual gratification upon occasion is an issue of national security.

I considered myself as doing my patriotic duty.

So she's over twenty-one and stops to buy a six-pack of Budweiser, and we share them at the top of Mount Tantalus. And what is it about having sex under all those stars while looking out over city lights that makes it so erotic? I suspect it has something to do with the naked chick on the hood of her car with her legs wrapped around me, but I'm not 100% on that. Don't quote me.

Having "finished up", we were soon preparing to leave. I didn't want open beer cans in the car, so I'm perplexed as she gets genuinely pissed at me for throwing one of them over the cliff side. And believe it or not, she throws the cans in her otherwise immaculate car, and we drive down the mountain.

Now, to drive up and down Mount Tantalus is no small matter. The severely winding road limits you to very slow crawl, and if I remember correctly, it's about an hour each way. By the time we get to the bottom I have to pee, and ask her to pull over in a nearby parking lot. Figuring I would find a dumpster or something and get rid of the beer cans too, I grab them up and crush them, and slip off behind what appeared to be an abandoned warehouse or something.

But in back, it opens into a larger area behind it. In front of me is a cage of "monkey bars" and series of dilapidated swing sets, amazingly overgrown with weeds.

This is a school.

Well, I have to pee anyways. I'm not proud ... but judging from the lack of upkeep, I'm figuring the kids are on summer vacation too. I don't see trash receptacles of any kind, but I figure I've broken line of sight with the chick anyways; rationally, I discard the beer cans in the grass and unzip my fly in a dark corner of the building.

In the corner, there is a window on each side, and slightly behind me.

And from one, I start hearing murmurs in a language I don't understand.

A little louder, I hear another from the other window.

I think the thing that really freaked me out about it was the fact that they weren't talking to each other.

They were talking to me.

Stopping in mid-stream, I zipped up and fled in terror.

After picking up the beer cans.


***

Now Oahu isn't really that big. It's maybe fifty square miles, and you can cover it pretty thoroughly after a few years. So I'm staggered when "local" Hawaiians, having lived there all their lives, have never heard of the school.

It was as if the land had swallowed up every miniscule piece and memory of my tenuous evidence.

No one had ever heard of the place.

But what was really worse than that were the nightmares. My mother will verify this. For the first time in my life, I was suffering from what I would guess are considered "night terrors"; I would wake out sweating and out of breath, with no memory of the dream whatsoever. And after a week of shattered sleep, this was taking its toll. Ten days, and I'm edgy and worn out, and growing increasingly concerned that this was something that wasn't ever going to go away at all.

But I do remember the last dream.

I'm sitting in the center of a clearing in a thick jungle that recedes away only to return and close off the sky above me. And without a sound, a naked woman nimbly approaches. She stops, waist deep in thick woods, and stares at me in quiet serenity.

I remember feeling very sorry, and pleading for forgiveness. At some point I realize that below the obscuring foliage, she doesn't have human legs.

Without spectacle or fanfare, she leaves as quietly as she came.

And I slept like a baby.


***

The night before my flight home, my mom set up a big farewell shindig and invited all the friends I made over the past month. Laughing and joking, I end up relaying this story at my mom's request. And to her chagrin, I also added the previously undisclosed details of the dream.

Everyone at the next table gets noticeably quiet.

I look over, and it's a group of native Hawaiians just staring daggers at me.

"Fucking haole," one says finally, insulted. "You come here on vacation, and you see Pelé?"

But it was only a dream.

Right?

Gainfully Unemployed

Predator Press

[Ethan]

LOBO talks about his “job” like it’s shrouded in secrecy.

Not that he knows it, but in truth he doesn’t do anything at all. He owns one percent of Hawley Enterprises, and because Babs and I are split down the center for control of the company, his one percent happens to be a controlling interest.

Complicating matters, Babs is hot.

It’s ironic; before I hired him, you couldn’t keep him out of here. Now, faced with the option of an honest day’s work, he tries hard to be on the opposite side of the Earth.

I guess I keep him on the payroll so he can afford to be as far from here as possible.

Monster

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Between the brief debacle of my slothful consciousness and full-time commitment to you o loyal reader, I suffer occasional interruptions.

I have to go to this really stuffy place several times a week and do stuff. But the coffee and bagels are free, and I get to run around the whole U.S. giving excruciatingly long PowerPoint speeches about essentially nothing whatsoever, stringing buzzwords like "corporate policy" and "opportunity" together in long sentences that meander aimlessly, only occasionally looping back together. Eventually, if I keep going, I'll stumble onto some random element that vaguely had something to do with what's on the screen and, appearing like it was on purpose, I'll look at my dazzled audience like I just pulled a rabbit out of my arse.

The longer I talk, the more I make.

As the smarter ones inevitably start to nod off, I snap my pointy stick enthusiastically on the part of the pie chart with the longest looking words on it, exclaiming, "--And by scaling back our labor cost four percent, we can cut the this out entirely!"

Pie charts are not entirely exciting unto themselves. Sometimes I’ll replace the projections with films of football games, drawing little "x"es and "o"s on the screen while some guy gets crushed trying to get a home run. One time I spun enthusiastic overtures for three hours for the fiscal unit of IBM using footage from “The Little Engine That Could”.

When there are no seminars, I send out unnecessary faxes with irrational demands to be forwarded to yet another fax machine, which forwards the data back to me. Armed with a small but effective battalion of hot secretaries, they stamp it “REJECTED”, and send it backwards through the cycle again where it is promptly copied, stamped, scanned, emailed, printed, copied again, and whatever can’t be faxed again is promptly filed away.

All this paperwork makes me look so busy, co-workers often comment on my industriousness … and then I deride them for their own personal lack of initiative and dedication, which has been the hallmark of my amazing and patriotic successes.

I had almost forgotten how much I love my job.

It’s good to be back.