Guns and Drugs

Predator Press

[LOBO]

As a good rule of thumb, if I'm not writing frequently I'm either:

a) sick as a dog
b) sick as a dog, or
c) sick as a dog.

Sure there's always the occasional rare exceptions -such as my amazing pro football career, the grueling astronaut training or the occasional zombie uprising- but in this case, it was mostly "B" with a little dash of "C".

So I spent most of the time staring slackjawed at the pretty colors changing on television. And completely at LadyTerri's mercy, I got a crash course in about 30 years of horror movies.

Gems like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence of the Lambs, and The Ring worked my addled psyche. Even my muddled dreams were terrifying: one in particular -about some crazy planet where people talked funny and hats were mandatory- had me so upset even LadyTerri's gradually increasing talent for dosing me with sedatives via dart gun failed.

But we cannot fault LadyTerri's mournfully terrible aim in this particular case entirely; my fevered horror was magnified exponentially by superhuman quantities of erythromycin, Alka-Seltzer, Nyquil, Contac, and the blood of a homeless wretch I felt helplessly impelled to bite repeatedly ... and were all followed by a nice fat codeine chaser.

I stole the car, locked the doors, and made for my escape laughing in triumph while slamming through the garage door at six miles per hour.

"Left!" I cried. "Left! We are almost free. Left damn you!"

Alas, my victory was to be short-lived: while my neighbor's vast and well-manicured LAWN OF FREEDOM lie merely inches ahead, I was halted abruptly and soundly by a cleverly-placed insurmountable six-inch curb.

The car's alarm went off.

And there was blackness.


***

The cop banged on the window with his flashlight.

"Sir," he said. "Please step out of the car."

"No!" I says, cracking the window slightly. I motion him closer to the door and put my lips to the gap whispering, "There's crazy people out there!"

"Sir," says the cop with vague disinterest. "If you don't come out, I'm going to have to break the window."

It was then I spotted his gun.

"WOW!" I says. "That's cool. Can I have one of those?"

"Well, probably yes thanks to the Republicans."

"What do I have to do?"

"Well first you have to get a FOID card."

"Do you have an extra one?"

"No. You have to apply for one."

"How long does that take?"

"About three days," he says. "Now-"

"And then I can shoot people?"

"No sir," he says.

"Well how long do I have to wait to do that?"

"Sir," he says exasperated. Winding back with the large flashlight, he prepares to break the window. "Please just open the door."

"Officer!" interrupts LadyTerri. "I have an extra key."

"Honey," I says. "I know it's hard to believe this right now, but I'm doing this for our own good. In fact, I'm doin' this for America. I'm doing this for Liberty. I'm doing this for Freedom!"

I punch the gas on the car.

"Ma'am," says the cop. "I don't think he realizes the car isn't running."

Thinking quickly, LadyTerri pretends she's jogging next to the car. Driving furiously, I suddenly notice her pulling up beside me.

"Jesus you run fast!" I smile. "By any chance, can you steer left?"

"Baby," she says. "Don't leave me without giving me a goodbye kiss!"

I roll down the window, pucker up and lean over.

... The dart caught me right in the neck.


You can win free sneakers by
correctly spelling "The Cult of Qelqoth".

Wide Open Spaces

Predator Press

[LOBO]

After returning the big sack of *plasma* television that never worked to Best Buy, the living room was in nightmarish disarray; I decided I needed to make it up to LadyTerri by replacing our woefully dated light switch panels.

... Now I'm considering adding on an extra bedroom.


The people that built our house were contracted by Lord Likely.

Idle Hands

Predator Press

[LOBO]

While trying to install my new *plasma* television, I was pleased to find I own a tool.

A tool commonly referred to as a “screwdriver”.

This "tool" -which I had previously mistaken for one of mom's fancy cooking utensils- is a steel rod with a four-sided pointed tip used to drive screws ... hence it’s designation: a flathead screwdriver.

Used properly, this item can be held by the silvery thin part and used to bash the screws in with the wider end, also known as the handle.

But this television is a piece of crap.


The picture ain't so good, but
Station Atomica comes in crystal clear.

Heavy Metal

Predator Press

[LOBO]

LOBOnian Rule of Law dictates that if mom cooks the dinner, someone else must wash the dishes.

And that’s all well and good, but “someone else”, upon occasion, ends up me.

Now how is this fair? When I cook, there’s two dishes: the macaroni and cheese pot, and the big spoon I use to launch “doses” at the kids. Sure there’s some paper towel follow-up on the wallpaper and linoleum ... but if you do it within 48 hours, all that comes off pretty easy.

But with her dishes, I’m scrubbing, arc welding, and calling in diesel-fueled construction and mining equipment ... scientists, physicists, geologists and chemists gotta get involved.

Jesus Christ woman, what the hell did you cook? I make cold cereal, and you are smelting battleships!?

It’s not fair.

Let's just buy new dishes.

My legal disputes are all handled by Julius Bloop.

TV Dinners

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I don't watch "Survivorman", so I didn't immediately recognize Les Stroud and his Science Channel camera crew.

Unbathed and naked -save for makeshift shoes made from palm fronds and duct tape- he started a fire blindfolded with wet sticks one-handed to boil the leeches he caught. Then, he stuffed six big red hot rocks up his arse to prevent toxic fluid loss from bloody diarrhea.

I don't know how long they were actually waiting in the drive-thru, but I sure hope that McDonalds gets it's act together.


Les would have been better off with some Gorilla Sushi.

Wizard of Wor

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I should probably preface this with the fact that I'm sick.

And before your mouse pointer goes soaring down to the "comments" thingy with your "I know!"s and "And how!"s, I don't mean that kind of sick. I mean like hay fever. 102 temperature. My skull feels like someone dropped a searing hot bowling ball in it, bolted it back shut, and then kicked it a few times to evenly swirl it all together.

I feel like crap. And not the good kind of crap -you know, the kind of crap that's all dolled up with crap sauce and a little sprig of crappy parsley? I mean crap crap. The Chinese food of crap: the crap that gets served in an unostentatious, blasé little cardboard box with sticks crap.

And on top of it all, Doctor Nyarlathotep took me out of service for the rest of the week.

I'm slightly irritable.

Remember when we were kids and the doctor took us out of school for a week? That meant an indefinite period of unlimited sleep, meals in bed, and unimaginable new high scores on Yar's Revenge and Galaga. Even the totally useless gesture of blowing into the cassette and jamming it roughly into the console to make it work provided a giddy sense of delightful anxiety.

But even the most rudimental of my motor skills seem fried. While sitting upright, I'm barely able to loll my exceedingly-heavy and Alka-Seltzer muddled braincase in any particular direction whatsoever, let alone seek amusement of any complexity.

Crap.

So now that the Universe has failed to amuse me even at the simplest and most fundamental level, I've moodily escalated from merely "irritable" to full-scale, "I want everybody dead! Now!"

I'm exaggerating of course. I don't want LadyTerri and the kids dead. And certainly not you.

Just mostly everybody else.

Mostly.

But alas, I'm helplessly daydreaming about all the stuff at my job that isn't getting done. And while the house is certainly loaded with the kids' modern and clearly superior video games I've never even tried, I'm distantly surfing the news through glazed eyes only halfway grasping daily new tragedy.

I don't 'idle' well. I am utterly unable to 'shut down'; my addled mind works in fits and starts ... like something will go terribly wrong if my attention lapses. So inevitably, I drift back to my word processor with nothing in mind whatsoever.

And this post manifests.

Curious.

I remember seemingly ages and eons of 'writer's block' ... and now it seems even my my own polluted biology can't shut me up.

So what is this 'writer's block' thing all about? It absolutely cripples young authors.

And why do I seem now so impervious?

As I've mentioned, my college English teacher singled me out in front of the class and read one of my badly-butchered paragraphs aloud. She underlined with great conviction how much she "resented having to deal with remedial students here at the college level".

That was a gift ... for as fate would play out, it is exactly this adversity that drives my pen today. Her venom made writing a simultaneously sweet and violently savage, selfish release.

Admittedly, writing is now my addiction.

My justice.

My revenge.

I don't need to be considered a good writer, and I enjoy every letter I type thanks to her.

From Hell's heart, I stab at thee.

If you would further indulge me a piece of advice for the aspiring new writer suffering from this 'writer's block' bullshit, I would grab them by the ears and scream, "It's all in your head dammit! You have plenty to say, just maybe not for this jaggoff critic you are trying to please! Now you fucking tell me!"

People like that "teacher" can be sadly conventional, stale, and frankly unforgivable murderers if you let them.

Sure, there's a lot to be said for the disciplines that formal training can give you. But you have to remember that there's a danger there: these people often want like-minded cookie cutter clones for "authors" ... an elite group of pompous asses whose opinions unilaterally agree on what is "art" and what is not.

I say screw that. Stop worrying about semicolons and proper deployment of your apostrophes. Find the 'voice' that communicates your thought; in time the rest will fall into place on it's own.

And speaking of 'thought', guard yours carefully. Test it frequently. Be open to potentially being wrong, and don't fault yourself too harshly when you are. I mean look at what you are up against for God's sake ... every news headline I've seen over the past few days isn't about the Myanmar disaster; it's about our irrelevant new election fodder -despite the fact that your local City Council Members and dog catchers have done more for your individual communities than these people ever could or would.

Want something "significant"?

Skip to page six.

Corn Hole

Predator Press

[LOBO]

The long and winding hitchhike home from Hollywood to beloved Pianosa has really inhibited my ability to blog.

For instance, last week a famous Disney entertainer created huge controversy when risqué, sexually charge photographs of her were released in spite of her widely-adolescent target audience.

I only caught the tail end of the story on the radio, but I immediately knew who the story was about ... and all I can say is it's about time that filthy whore was exposed for the tramp she really is.

I'm staring out the window, slackjawed at Kansas.

Utterly revolted.

What is with all these farms?

For the woeful few of you that haven't been reading Predator Press since inception, you should know that I regard the 'American Farmer' as the most lazy, worthless, ignoble and unpatriotic occupation known to humankind: all they do is hog immense amounts of land, obstruct much-needed superhighways and airports, provide an occasional vehicle for Pauly Shore movies, and grow the most gruesome looking flowers I've ever seen.

One merely has to glance at a "farm" in America to witness hideous evil and atrocity. I mean how much inbreeding has to take place before you get a dog that looks like this monstrosity?

Unspeakable perverted acts are being committed on millions of cows by farmers even as I write this.

Unlike It's a Funny Thing's author Don Lewis, I regard farming as an abomination: I buy my food straight from the grocery store exactly as God intended.


Crops grow better after a healthy dose of PULSAR FUSION.