Vocation, Vocation, Vocation

Predator Press

[LOBO]

“What can I do for you?” asks Mrs. Wahlberg.

“Well,” I says to the primly dressed woman. “My wife told me that if I have time to make Sporn, I have time to look for a job. So I saw your add in the paper saying these things would make me very wealthy. I’m totally in.”

Mrs. Walberg beams an unnaturally white smile as we enter the barn. “Do you have any experience with alpacas?”

“Alpacas are in my blood. My great grandfather ran an alpaca store, and my father lost the whole business in hand of poker. Despite the tragedy of it all, I’m third generation." I stick my thumbs through the belt loops of my jeans and add, "I'm a legacy if you think about it.”

Just inside the barn now, she stops and reaches for my hand and pats it softly in a gesture of comfort. “It must have broken your heart to lose all those dear animals at such a tender age.”

Alpacas are animals?

“Oh yeah,” I says looking sadly at the ground, thinking quickly. “We had it all. Alpaca merchandising, alpaca cages, alpaca um, food … you name it. And every Christmas dad would pick out the fattest alpaca of all, and serve him up open-pit with a balsamic glaze and-”

I feel her hand stop.

“You ate alpacas?” she asks coolly.

Oops.

“There was never any money for food at Christmas,” I begin slowly. “This was due to –ah- dad’s gambling problem. Yeah. It was either eat an alpaca or one of the kids, and the alpacas couldn’t vote.” I pretend to rub a tear from my eye. “Dad was a very sick man,” I sniff.

“How many alpacas do you want?”

“I need to make a lot of money quick. How many do you have?”

“Several hundred.”

“That’s probably a pretty good start,” I says. “Will they all fit in my car or will I have to make a few trips?”

Mrs. Wahlberg laughs. “Oh look,” she says, pointing behind me. “One of them is curious about you. Her name is Molly.”

When I turned to look, I saw a freakish creature so hideously deformed it could only be explained by God being really, really mad at it: it looked like the product of a deeply inbred dog raped by a meth-addled ostrich.

I'm pretty sure I screamed before I passed out.

Meh.

-I've had worse job interviews.

Predator Press Economic Proposal Rejected: Old, Poor Allowed to Remain in US (For Now)

Predator Press

Despite a bleak economic forecast, the United States Senate and Congress roundly rejected a proposal set forth by the world’s greatest website, Predator Press.

“We thought the United States was serious about rectifying its financial woes,” said a Predator Press staff member on condition of anonymity. “Welfare and Social Security are a major factor in America’s out-of-control deficit spending. Old and poor people are the primary recipients of Welfare and Social Security. The solution seems pretty obvious.”

The plan -to efficiently use trucks bringing illegal aliens into Arizona to deport old and poor people to Mexico on the way back- was defeated by a narrow margin.

When asked for reasons for the bill failing, our source cited wanton bipartisanship and an unwillingness to discuss the issue like mature, rational adults. “We asked really nicely -in fact we removed the language about stupid and ugly people entirely. Regardless of these huge compromises, those dumb fucks in Washington wouldn’t know good economic policy from a zit on their dorks.”

Christian Numbers Wane, Many Americans Now Skipping Islamic Mass Instead

Predator Press

[LOBO]

While seldom hesitant to give a blistering, blustery rant on the Republican Party, I’m a little leery of going into the torture issue with too much venom.

See, what all the talking heads retrospectively criticizing the Bush Administration on this issue aren’t saying is really important: hindsight-addled commentary like “torture is wrong,” and “torture doesn’t always work” –while true- are disingenuous distortions of what really happened here.

I think at some level we all know torture is wrong –we, as a country, even signed treaties against it decades ago. But how would you have responded to that policy on September 12, 2001? I don’t know about you, but I was pretty upset … I’m not sure I would have cared about it’s “effectiveness” on any Al Qaeda we might have been able to get our hands on at the time.

So instead of calling it “torture,” I’m regarding it as a small measure of revenge for being part of the machine that brutally massacred almost 3,000 non-military Americans.

I’m actually more comfortable with that.

The Astronaut Whisperer

Predator Press

[LOBO]

After being struck by a landing space shuttle, air traffic controller Dirk Elway’s life is completely transformed: sunken into the bleak menthol fog of Nyquil and Altoids addiction, even his goldfish have run away.

Similarly one of the surviving astronauts on board that very same space shuttle goes crazy, buys a box of Depends, and rides across the country –ultimately killing everyone in Twentynine Palms California with a rake.

On a hunch, Clint Eastwood –a world-renown Astronaut Whisperer- gambles that Dirk and The Astronaut’s macabre killing spree are somehow linked; armed with nothing but a 32 oz jar of Tang and a walkie-talkie Clint makes contact, culling the rogue Astronaut and reuniting him with ailing Dirk … but soon thereafter Dirk is mysteriously killed by an overdose of rake to the back of the skull.

Can Clint teach The Astronaut to laugh and love again? Will The Astronaut once again claim his coveted spot in the London Symphony Orchestra? And how can The Astonaut's lowly new job of testing 747 engines by tossing live seagulls into them let him rise once again to his once-lofty astronaut status? Only time and a ragtag group of Baptist church choir enthusiasts led by Whoopi Goldberg can tell.

We here at Predator Press give The Astronaut Whisperer, like, ten big thumbs up: this is the surprisingly engaging tale of an astronaut beset by tragedy and a love for gardening, and Clint's dogged and relentless efforts to repair his broken and battered spirit.

Scheduled for release this summer, it’s an uplifting, fun and romantic little film that’s a must-see for the whole family.

Nicolas Cage is not in this movie.

There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

-as retold by Predator Press

[LOBO]

Humpty Dumpty knocked on the outside of the massive shoe.

No answer.

He knocked again. Louder.

"Who is it?" she cried from deep within.

"It’s the Humpster, baby" Humpty grinned into the peephole.

"Come on in. The door isn't locked."

He opens the door a few inches.

"You busy?" he calls into the seemingly-cavernous shoe.

"No," she grunts. "I’ll be there in a second."

"Damn girl," jokes Humpty. "You ain’t havin another baby, are you?"

There’s an awkward silence.

"Aw, congratulations!" says Humpty. He grabs some towels, and heads over to the kitchen to boil water.

Man this crazy ol lady sure does love to get her 'freak' on, he thinks smiling to himself. Shoe or no shoe, this girl knows what to do.

He fires the burner, and fills the pot with water smiling to himself, "Well, you know what they say about women with big hands and big feet."

"What?"

But Humpty, struggling for his asthma breather, didn’t hear her. The sight of the boiling pot of water had triggered a panic attack; all he could hear was the voice of his mother saying "That’s what happened to your father. One minute he was driving a forklift at a macaroni factory, and the next-" she pauses for effect, "Poached!"

"Hey are you alright?" asks the old woman. Now dressed in a sweatsuit, she alertly helps Humpty fumble his breather to his mouth. "What’s wrong?" she asks.

"Poached!" his mother echoed in his head.

"I’m sorry," he chokes, tears streaming. "Every time I see boiling water, I just want to grab a Bushmaster AR-15 and kill everyone I can find."

"Well I do loves a man with an eye for safety," she whispers. "I like Armalites ... don’t get me wrong. But they just don’t have the Viper range safety device that Bushmans do." She throws his arm over her shoulder. "Humpty, have you met my kids?"

Humpty leans away from the kitchen counter, testing his weak and wobbly legs. "Probably not all of them ma’am."

With her arms still around him, she helped him stand. Perhaps it was the proximity or the moment of utter vulnerability –maybe it was merely the smell of her perfume- but Humpty decided if ever there was a moment to tell her how he feels, this is it.

"Baby," he says, staggering to look into her eyes. "We’ve known each other for a long time. How come we never, eh, 'hooked up'?"

"Oh, Humpty," she blushes. "I’m very flattered, but you’re an egg. What would my friends say if I started dating an egg?"

Humpty, pride mortally wounded, looked away to hide the tears. Despite his aching heart, Humpty fought to reply. "You know," he sobbed. "We have our differences. But I have yearned for you for years now. I know your favorite band, favorite color, favorite flower … Damn it I love you."

The woman, shocked, stared in disbelief.

"And I don’t care that you’re an old woman that lives in a shoe," Humpty continued, grabbing her shoulders forcibly. "Can’t you see that discrimination is tearing us apart!?"

The woman’s pupils narrow.

"Get your filthy egg-hands off of me!" she screams.

"But baby-"

She dives for her cellphone, "How dare you!?"

"But I was only trying to-"

"Hello?" she barks into the phone. "Is this all the King’s men? A filthy egg is attacking me!”

Humpty lunges for her phone, and wrests it away from her. "God damn it woman, all the king's men will be trying to kill me now!"

Suddenly, Humpty realizes he has a .45 caliber pistol pointed into his temple.

The woman growls. "You make a sound before the cops get here, and I’ll blow your yolk all over the goddamned insole."

"Jezebel!" cries Humpty, lashing out.

Eyes bulging she chokes, "You damn ... dirty ... egg!" and falls limp in his arms moments later.

"Oh my god," cries Humpty as police sirens wail in the distance. "She’s dead!"

And even as the galloping sound of all the king’s horses become deafening, he calls out into into the sky, "Oh sweet Jesus! what have I done!?!"

Taking Up Space

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I can only describe it as analogous to being shot from a gun.

There is nothing, not even the sense of movement.

First the whites, then the blues. And at that point, as if only now drifting into ranges of the human ear, a high-pitched sound gradually increases in the distance. It lowers steadily. A dissonant roar, now a thousand voices.

Some are conversations.

Greens.

Reds.

I can gradually pick out comments, see glimpses of faces in the violent, spinning storm. I try to speak, but by the time I do they are long gone.

My perceptions fight to right themselves in the gale, but I am slammed hard.

It is the Earth.

From a vertical horizon a snaking aperture reaches me, and I vaguely realize it is my own arm. Using it I leverage myself on my back, thus allowing the Sun to sear mercilessly into my aching skull. Crying out soundlessly, palms now flat to the ground, I can make out the hot, rough concrete.

It burns.

I sit up in confusion, squinting at my lap, my torso. I am bloodied, and unmistakably smell perfume and what I assume to be my own drying vomit.

Comically large heads circle overhead, blotting out the sky.

“Jesus mister,” cries a towering boy. “Are you alright?”

I’m not sure he is real. And when I open my mouth to speak I realize I’m not breathing. Wobbling to and fro, I heave my chest in effort to force my lungs to work.

See what's left of all you've known
through tearful mists of blood and bone;
fearful, hear them beg for death
through broken teeth and borrowed breath-

My lungs explode to life as if I had been undersea for hours, and I agonizingly choke the scorching oxygen in. My own heartbeat -absence previously unnoticed- thundered rhythmic and mighty in my ears.

“I'm fine,” I wheeze almost laughing. "Why do you ask?"

The Misery Machine

-Rorschach

Predator Press

In a bathrobe and slippers, she rubbed her temples. Little House on the Prairie still seemed blaringly loud, and once again she thought of looking for the remote control for the television.

-And once again, the thought was drowned out in the thick fog of her fever.

A nasty cold would be bad enough. But if this was her dreaded shellfish allergy too, she was going to be here for several more days waiting for the swelling to subside regardless. An accidental glance in the mirror earlier certainly seemed to make this case, and reduced her to tears; she looked bug-eyed and simultaneously pasty and pink. Her hands, bloated and almost useless, felt like overly-large mitts with no tactile sense whatsoever. So when the phone rang, despite being within her immediate grasp, she was almost unable to answer until the fourth ring -a fraction of a second more, and it would have gone to voicemail.

“Hello?” she snuffled. Somewhat rattled back to reality, she began collecting the numerous scattered crumpled tissues surrounding her into an organized pile.

“Doctor Alex Smith?”

She puzzled at the somewhat familiar voice.

“Yes.”

“The Doctor Smith that graduated from Stanford in 2004 with a doctorate in psychology? And currently works at Bertram Asylum?”

She paused. Something in the furthest reaches of her mind was sounding an alarm, but the efficacy was lost in the wake of muddled malaise.

“Yes,” she replied, almost on autopilot. A sense of dread seemed to fill her almost instantly.

“Hi!” said the enthusiastic voice over the phone. “It‘s LOBO.”

“Lobo-”

“LOBO,” the disembodied voice corrects.

“LOBO, how did you get this number?”

“I‘m sorry but it‘s very important. I got your number off of your Facebook profile.”

Doctor Smith bit at the inside of her lip, but her teeth could get no purchase against the smooth, swollen surface. “I haven’t had a Facebook profile in years,” she denied flatly.

“I‘m looking right at it,” countered LOBO. “Your last update was in 2001. You were complaining about being overwhelmed with schoolwork.”

“How did you find it? There must be thousands of ‘Alex Smiths’ on Facebook.”

“There‘s 409,204,” LOBO points out with some pride. “But remember roughly half of those are males. After that, about a third are black. With some deduction I got it down to around 60,000-”

“You said it was an emergency.”

“I said it was important,” LOBO clarifies.

“What do you want?”

“I was wondering if you would give me a blurb for my book jacket. A doctor would give me some cred.”

Her head throbbed. “But I’m your therapist.”

“Well you‘re still a doctor, right? I don‘t think it matters.”

Doubling over forward in cramp, phone still absently pressed to her ear, Doctor Smith’s eyes slowly came to focus on what she soon realized was the television remote control: it was half-hidden under her chair on the floor, obviously knocked there by her gargantuan, bloated feet. Fumbling, she clicked the ’Off’ button for the television and somehow sank even further into the easy chair, lost in swirling thought. Where did, despite her typically vigilant precautions, she ingest shellfish? A carelessly washed dish at a restaurant?

“Hello?”

“Uh,” she began, sort of rebooting the conversation. Insightfully she decided not to discourage LOBO’s new project. What harm could he do hammering away at a book for a few years?

“What’s the book about?” she croaked.

“It‘s an exposé on the sordid, secret life of Paul Revere.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. Remember recently how Sarah Palin made those weird remarks about Revere at the Old North Church?”

“No.”

“I‘ve got the quote right here,” LOBO explains, audibly shuffling through some papers. “And I quote: ‘He ... warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure -as he’s riding his horse through town- to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free ...’”

“Yeah, okay. I remember now.”

“Well on the face it sounded like nonsense and babble. But then I got to thinking maybe, as a Governor, she is privy to information we aren‘t. Like maybe there was more to this story than anyone was letting on to the, you know, the plebs.”

“The plebs?”

“Yeah. The, eh, plebeians. You know, you people. What I found out was nothing short of stunning.”

“About Paul Revere.”

“Yes. See most people don't know lighthouse duty was a punishment, and Paul Revere wasn't supposed to be on it that night. Julio -the married owner of an underpants factory- got it for giving his wife the crabs he caught while fornicating with a high-maintenance coke whore named Romiette. And witchcraft.”

“Uh huh,” Doctor Smith snuffled absently.

“But one night during a drill, Julio accidentally lit three lanterns and freaked everyone out -three either meant land and sea, or British invasion by means of a quasi-dimensional wormhole. Long story short, Julio made a fortune selling underpants the next morning. So he got a good lawyer, and bought so much cocaine that he, Romiette, and the crabs lived happily ever after.”

Wondering if she had any Tylenol, out of simple polite reflex Doctor Smith found herself saying the exact opposite of what she was thinking.

“Go on.”

“Next in line for lighthouse duty was Paul Revere, who was booked on a public urination charge. Revere -with little else to do in the lighthouse- would go on to make history despite wishing to Christ he was Julio instead: he invented a much-needed exotic line of chamber pots the lighthouse guards could hose out and sell for contraband, with the intention of seducing a coke whore of his own.”

“I see.”

“But Revere was freakishly hideous -so ugly, even when masturbating he had to fake orgasms. No matter how much coke he could get, the coke whores would have nothing to do with him -and the mere handful of skanky meth freaks he acquired only fueled his jealousy and stole his Brillo pads. Worse, the enterprising guards had invested all the venture capital from his chamber pots, quit their jobs, and became overnight millionaires by founding a toilet company that endures to this day. And once every year, they thoughtfully sent Revere and the new lighthouse guards a thank you note, accompanied by a thick stack of pictures of their coke whores in bikinis posing over foreign cars and lounging on tropical beaches. This biography explores Revere's deep, irrational hatred for people that had essentially done nothing to him at all. I call it ‘Romiette and Julio.’”

“And I suppose you already have a publisher?” Doctor Smith asked facetiously.

“Jack Jones," said LOBO, perceptibly smug.

“The Jack Jones?” The doctor was floored. “Jack Jones of Vanguard Publishing? ”

“Yep.”

Incredulous. “You know Jack Jones.”

“Well I will if he's on Facebook.”