Predator Press
[LOBO]
Before I do a post on Mark A. Rayner's newest and seminal work -the one starring me- I should probably explain where I've been for the past month.
See, every once in a while the Earth tries to kill me. But the problem is that I'm on Earth, and the Earth is dumb and has pisspoor aim. World War II, Chernobyl, Paris Hilton, September 11, Katrina, … the list of the Earth's inept, bungled efforts to murder me is virtually endless.
But this time the Earth tried something uncharacteristically clever. A month ago, watching Thursday Night Football peacefully from my basement apartment, I heard commotion upstairs. Assuming the couple living above were in a particularly virulent argument, I did what every hero does: I turned the television up to drown it out.
When the door –out of my field of vision- got kicked in, I was annoyed. When four flashlight beams swirled in, I was confused. When the SWAT team captain's boot was suddenly on my neck, I was indignant. “I am the Senior LOBOian Ambassador to the United States! A national treasure. My blog readers will not stand for this! Your badges will be shoved up your asses so far they'll be mistaken as dental work-!”
Clearly they weren't Predator Press readers. When I came to, the bleeding had slowed considerably. Handcuffed to a chair, I wondered furiously why you people hadn't rescued me yet -it was, after all, one measly SWAT team. Some of them weren't even carrying automatic weapons, preferring shotguns instead. Have all the millions and millions Predator Press readers gone soft?
I would not learn until later the Earth was way ahead of us this time. She had distracted you all with a rather diabolic diversion: Superstorm Sandy. Now I love you readers. Seriously. But when a natural disaster occurs, nobody stops to think that maybe it's an elaborate plot to kill LOBO? That's the oldest trick in the book! You people better start thinking these things through.
So I was brought in for questioning. Supposedly, roughly ten pounds of marijuana and twenty guns were found on the premises -all of which I was completely oblivious. I had a separate entrance to the house, through the garage to my basement apartment. I didn't have keys to the upstairs. Utterly unhelpful, they released me to walk twenty two miles home in the freezing cold to a totally trashed apartment. Phil II, obviously rattled by the search and seizure, hissed as I assessed the situation.
The place was sacked. All “recording devices” were confiscated.
This unfortunately included my computers and cellphone.
I had no access to my fantasy football team.
-I had no access to porn!
And things got somehow got worse. I wasn't on the lease, so Phil II and I were technically trespassing. While I desperately searched for an apartment, the homeowner was essentially looting the place of valuable televisions and electronics, and would change the locks while I was at work. So for three weeks I would randomly come “home” locked out. But I had an ID reflecting my address, so the locksmiths would just let me right back in at $75 a pop. The next day I would have to spring Phil II out of the Humane Society at $40 a pop. And indeed I had a visceral joy perplexing the landlord with continued access, and how the evil cat, farmed away, would mysteriously return despite their effort.
I am building a new city now.
Thursday
Saturday
Anchor Management
Predator Press
[LOBO]
"You're not going to drown in the river," says Alex, in another attempt to coax me into the boat. "It's only five feet deep."
"I know that," I says. "But I'm only ten inches thick."
Wednesday
Tuesday
The Showtunes Must Go On
[LOBO]
Slightly bleary, President Barack Obama pads to the breakfast table in his bathrobe, a series of newspapers -with stories already highlighted for his attention- crooked under his arm. The rest of the family out of town, the large empty table only seems to underline the eerie quiet.
Obama presses a discrete button built into his chair, an aide allows himself in.
“Good morning sir,” says the aide.
“I guess that depends on what you have to say,” Obama smiles, eyes still skimming his newspapers. “What’s on my agenda today?”
Obama presses a discrete button built into his chair, an aide allows himself in.
“Good morning sir,” says the aide.
“I guess that depends on what you have to say,” Obama smiles, eyes still skimming his newspapers. “What’s on my agenda today?”
Obama groans. “Jesus. You people might as well have those pre-printed on your stationary.”
“There has been some movement in the Middle East Peace Process.”
“Yeah," Obama guffaws. "Whatever.”
“Kim Jong Un is here requesting an audience.”
“I don’t understand a word that guy says. He’s, like, French or something.” Obama yawns deeply. “What would you do?”
“As President?”
“Yes.”
“With my wife and kids out of town? I would probably just surf porn I suppose.”
“Can’t,” says Obama. “My wife found the line item in the budget I pay for it out of.”
"Ouch,” the aide winces.“Let’s back up. What about that ‘gays in the military’ thing?"
“People of,” the aide coughs, “’alternate lifestyles’ are feeling persecuted out of serving in the armed forces.”
“Wait. These people want to enlist? They’re aware of the dress code, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well what’s the problem? Don’t we have enemies that need a good smacking around?"
“Not really.”
“How about one that should be patronized condescendingly during an ambush makeover?
“Kim Jong Un maybe?”
“Word," laughs Obama. Fist-bumping ensues. "He wouldn’t understand a damn thing they said. It would be hilarious. But in all seriousness, we can’t, under any circumstances, allow homosexuals to get killed in war.”
“Why is that, sir?”
“Too valuable. You know what happens to an America without gays?”
“No.”
“Pittsburgh.”
“Really?”
“I’m serious. We had a whole Top Secret study done. We would have full saturation in six months if we're lucky. And anyone alive a year later better damn well like Coors Light, playing pool, and NASCAR.”
“No, homosexuals can’t be allowed to get in the military, period. They're a national resource.” Obama scratched his chin, pondering aloud. “And we can’t ask them about their sexuality directly anymore-"
“Wait. Can I ask you some questions about that ‘Pittsburgh’ thing-?"
Obama snaps his fingers. “I got it,” he says with authority. “During boot camp, there’s a mandatory twenty-four hour David Hasselhoff marathon. And all the recruits get nothing but water and Cheetos."
“I’m not following you,” the aide squirmed.
“Then discharge everyone with glowing orange genitals.”
“Ah. Medical reasons.”
"So to keep gays out of the military, you want to make up a disease -'Bioluminescent-Affected Mammallian Disorder'-"
"Uh-huh. 'BLAMD.' Perfect."
"That has no other symptoms or cure?"
"Uh-huh. 'BLAMD.' Perfect."
"That has no other symptoms or cure?"
"Excellent."
"-To save America from becoming Pittsburgh."
"It's genius," Obama smiled. “Now get me Rick Astley on the phone! Stat.”
Sunday
Femmolition
Predator Press
[LOBO]
I remember Mom looking down at me and smiling.
“You can be anything you want to be,” she explained. “You can be a musician, an astronaut, a scientist … anything.” Winding in the strained peas on the yellow plastic spoon she soothed, “The only thing you can’t be is a failure.”
And she was right.
-I should have been a musician, astronaut, or scientist.
Saturday
I Ate WHAT?
A ‘meat and potatoes’ guy myself, not a lot of foreign cuisine sneaks across my rather discriminating palette. But every once in a while there is a lapse in my security -otherwise airtight, I assure- and I feel I owe it to you O loyal reader, to complain about it in great, anguished, and excruciating detail.
While how we got the Grape Nuts cereal remains a mystery, I strongly suspect Terri: we’ve been married six years now, and I’m virtually positive it isn’t the first time poisoning me would have crossed her mind.
It has the texture you would guess human brains mixed with tiny skull fragments might feel like. And how do Grape Nuts taste? For a toxic gash in the fabric of culinary history, it's surprisingly not very subtle or apologetic: imagine eating pulverized mulch, soil and tree bark dogs have peed on for years. Mix that with a generous sprinkling of rabbit turds, and eating it out of a corrugated box with only a spade and a rake. Okay, are you picturing that? Now imagine eating only the box. Grape Nuts -utterly bereft of grapes or nuts, I should add- should be called ‘Rape Guts.’
Worse, it makes your poop unsinkable, unflushable battleship girders that circle around the whirlpool defiantly, bending the laws of physics and thermodynamics at will -some are so brazen, they swim against the Coreolis Effect! The larger ones exert a gravitational pull over the smaller ones, and they are drawn together -often into skirmishes for control of the tiny blue sea; the clanging and shrieking metal-on-metal sounds become extremely audible as armadas collide in angry, bobbing counter-orbits, and people are soon banging on the bathroom door. “LOBO are you okay?” and ”Where the hell are all those sparks coming from?”-I would warn them to run for their lives, but I’m far too embarrassed. In fact I'm sorry but if weeds start growing out of my ass, we’re all going to die and that’s that.
Grape Nuts scores impressively, however, in practical secondary applications. It makes a great spackle for instance. The stucco patterns one can achieve are fantastic. Has a tree in your neighborhood recently been felled by a storm? A box of Grape Nuts, some water and fertilizer, and you can just stick that sucker right back on the stump.
Another high-scoring secondary feature is how it elevates the art of farting: it’s analogous to going from mere garden-variety ma an pa sticks of dynamite to military shaped charges. Terri had some friends over from work, and I didn’t even have to enter the room: from the top of the stairs, I cut a 'Silent But Deadly' [SBD] that felt like I passed a hot light bulb.
As you can guess, hilarity ensues. I think they heard the palpable thump as it detonated on the living room floor below ... and what followed was ten seconds of erie silence, four minutes or so of shrill mayhem (choking, weeping, and the opening of windows and doors and such), and then five minutes of watery-eyed fingerpointing.The next time Terri makes me go to church, I’m gonna choke down a whole box of this crap.
***
There is some good news on the foreign food front. We ate at a place called “Panda Express” the other day. Who knew panda was so delicious? Judging from the number of customers, I'll bet they were serving up four or five pandas a day! This is Entrepreneurialism at it's finest. And what better way to raise awareness of the plight of the mighty panda, nearly extinct, than to remind Americans how mouth-wateringly good they are when nuggettized and in a honey glaze -just like you would get them in Nature?
And they're only extinct because they won't have sex, right? How nappy must those panda bitches and hos be if a male panda -born in a zoo and never had no sex before- don't want to toss 'em good an proper on top of the plastic habitat that looks like a rock? Maybe the male panda is looking for something a little more upscale and refined, sensitive to his needs -like a panda in a cheerleader outfit. Would it kill her to wear a cheerleader outfit every once in a while?
Maybe he’s a gay panda. Or what if he's got, like a racist sex-fetish and wants a grizzly -or a polar- bear? Hm? Are the female pandas, like, real fat, or otherwise stricken with infirmities? Try not reminding him of Oreo cookies or Loa Tzu; maybe this bear is just such a hard-core fucking nihilist, he’s trying to end the species. This planet is a dump if you think about it.
Anyway, I can’t say enough about Panda Express, nor their fine work and noble commitment to save the lazy and otherwise worthless panda.
-And maybe they have a card I can get stamped for a free panda in the future!
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