Wednesday

Internet Swag

Predator Press

Her Anxiety

William Butler Yeats

Earth in beauty dressed
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter at the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.

Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh.
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie.

Thursday

Here. Have a Migraine.

Predator Press

@SnarquisdeSade

Just like all the other greatest minds of our time, I have pondered the enigma of "Dark Matter."  But unlike those other dumbasses, I figured it out during a rerun of "Happy Days."  It was during the episode where The Fonz entered a demolition derby, and Pinky Tuscadero was nearly killed.  (I'm not going to elaborate here on my research methods as the science would bore you to tears.  Suffice to say, fuck the Mallachi Brothers.)

If the universe is expanding at the speed of light, suppose one side (point "A") watches the opposite side (point "B") race away faster than the speed of light.

So if matter and time and energy are all interrelated, maybe we are watching ancient photons escape faster than it can be witnessed in a "linear" sense, and taking on the illusion of physical properties such as mass and time.

So kiss my ass Stephen Hawking.

-You pussy.

Sunday

The Savage Beast

Predator Press

@SnarquisdeSade

With my lawyer arriving at 2:00pm, it's with some reluctance I concede it's time to get up; even as the coffee pot gurgles, my mind struggles to find traction between the dreamworlds and reality. Good sleep is a casualty of years of hard living, and the leading edge of consciousness is always the worst.

The rarefied event of entertaining a guest has me self-conscious of the condition of my apartment; the toilet seat is up, and I correct this. Books, in widely different states of completion, are scattered about the floor, as if a small library received the full ire of an illiterate mortar team. Overnight, Phil II scattered a pile of documents -bills mostly. And were it not for the basket of neatly folded laundry, I would probably be doubting the existence of Washington Street entirely by now.

The Laundromat I went to yesterday wasn't on Google. I had learned about it from a friend, and it was considerably closer to home than the one I typically use. Shockingly blighted, the glass doors were cracked in vast spiderweb patterns. The signs were faded with age. Behind the old woman who seemed to be agelessly crocheting, the wall was covered with dusty and yellowed John Wayne memorabilia. A bulbous and antiquated tube television played seemingly endless black and white episodes of I Love Lucy. And on a bulletin board, in stark and bright white contrast, a crude brochure advertising the legal services of Thelonious Reebok Oswald Esq, PhD stood out, replete with tear-off vertical tabs at the bottom, like a skull missing teeth.

I have one of those teeth in my pocket.

The two stage act of doing laundry, as we all know, takes about an hour and a half. And once the drying stage was underway, I found myself restless. With forty-five minutes to kill, I decided to explore Washington Street. It was quaint; general stores, shoe shops, things one might associate with a receding Americana. Music I only vaguely recognized, some kind of mix of blues and jazz, thumped from across the street, subdued by nondescript walls. I wandered over to find a small sports bar. It's at this moment, as I recall, my first suspicions seethe to the surface: the laundromat, the close-by bar, the cozy and oddly functional neighborhood … it all just seemed too familiar, too convenient. And -almost playing to my rising intuition- an apartment building with a “For Rent” sign was well within view once I looked for it.


Upon entry, the dark and smoky bar required my vision to adjust. The first things to come into focus were the large flatscreen televisions, all replaying flaming car crashes from the Daytona 500. Taking the stool closest from the door I ordered a Miller Lite, discretely observing the small yet talkative crowd, while simultaneously attempting to identify the strangely familiar music.

There were perhaps six other bar patrons.

-And they all reminded me of dead people I have known. Joe was there. Billy Taylor -aged twice what Fate allowed him- was there …

It was eerily like being among old friends.

A loud knock at the door interrupts my ponderings of yesterday. I open the door to find Thelonious Reebok Oswald, Esq, Phd, standing before me. He is a black man in dreadlocks, roughly five feet tall, and wearing reflective, round sunglasses. As I mentioned I don't have many guests, and quickly blurted the first thing that came to mind in order to make him feel welcome.

“Word up, Homie!” I said enthusiastically, extending my hand in what I expected to be a complicated handshake.

Theloious Reebok Oswald, Esq, PhD just just kind of froze for a beat, with a simple gaze galvanizing me as perhaps the whitest man on Earth.

“You Michael Wolfe?” he asked finally, grinning in gold.

“Yes,” I reply. “Please come in.”

He enters, looking around in mild distaste. “My name is Thelonious Reebok Oswald, Esquire. Widely renown in legal circles as 'TRO.' And it has come to my attention that you have had a recent issue with the pigs.”

“Indeed,” I reply. “But first let me thank you for making a house call. I tried to find your office, but ...”

“Yeah,” he dismisses me, raising his hand. “I used your retainer to get the van an oil change.”

“Good thinking. I love that suit by the way. Is that Armani?”

“It's FUBU,” he shakes his head. “Says so right on the hoodie. So who the fuck we gonna sue?”

I take a deep breath. “I paid for these streets. And I won't be told when and where I will cross them.”

“The problem is,” Thelonious replies, “You is guilty as Hell of First Degree Jaywalking. As your legal counsel, I recommend you just pay the thirty dollar fine.”

“Fuck that,” I growl. “I want this to go all the way up to the Supreme Court. Terri's credit cards are no object!”

Thelonious scratches his beard thoughtfully. “Well, my office could use new upholstery after the fire.”

“Fire?”

“Never mind,” he replies. “You should try intimidating the judge, like you'll kick his ass. Try and look menacing ...”

Wild-eyed, I bear my teeth.

“Meh,” he replies. “Just walk into the courtroom, tell him to fuck off, and then pee on the podium.”

“I love this strategy,” I confess. “Which law school did you go to?”

“I never went to law school. But I saw 'Flight' four times. And if Denzel Washington doesn't get an Oscar, I'm gonna stab me some whitey!”

“Me too!” I agree.

Saturday

Alive, Undisputed

Predator Press

[LOBO]

My best guess, when explaining the random fits of rage, would be a combination of lack of sleep and “Seasonal Affective Disorder” ... something I typically get in March. The extreme temperatures of the Midwest have made the outside extremely inhospitable and arguably deadly; the absence of warmth and sunshine coupled with the extended time trapped indoors has made for some frayed nerves -that the last few years have been fairly Hellish just pours gasoline over the whole condition.

I'm not sure how or if the poor sleep is connected, but it warrants consideration. My memory and ability to concentrate have notably suffered. This is probably how I lost my driver's license in the first place. While the identification card has since been located and recovered, I've been needled randomly while attempting purchases -most poignantly at a semi-local WalMart where I shopped weekly- where company policy was applied rather than common sense.

-I exploded in fury. And I would argue it was justifiable, thus I offer no apology and will never shop there again. Still, it's clear my general moodiness is obvious in all facets of my life. The few unwanted brushes with the general public seem to only exacerbate my angst; traffic and road construction triple the length of projects. People, somehow utterly oblivious to others, seem to obstruct my every move, and conversations seem disjointed, disconnected, analogous to a poorly-tuned radio. Quietly, I suspect that the intelligence of the population has dropped an average of fifty IQ points ...

Woman: What are teenage boys thinking when they look at me like that?

Me: They are plotting the shortest route to your ovaries.

Woman: Eeewe.  What do they think about when not looking at me?

Me: The shortest route to someone else's ovaries.


None of this is true of course. It's in my head.

A way to calm down and relax -as mentioned in a recent post- seems most imperative, lest another unlucky and unwitting individual face a massive supernova of my culminating, hair-trigger frustration.

Addressing the sleep issue seems the only approachable angle. I've spent the last week taking unwise amounts of time off of work, and indeed slept days away in my typical broken and haphazard fashion. My dreaming is wild and oddly exhausting: while not nightmares in the fearful sense, they are of wars, natural disasters, post-apocalyptic survival, almost borderlining into strangely rich and textured yet-unlikely adventures that would make little sense in “reality.” Colossal, impossible vessels -organic and bioluminescent in appearance- crash into crowded cities, killing untold tens of thousands as I watch in a helpless, macabre, and horrified awe. Abandoned houses I explore seem to change shape once inside, offering tunnels that could not fit in the architecture, precarious walkways, wide and dangerous chasms to jump, dungeons and underground waterfalls and streams, endless creatures to fight, puzzles to solve …

Admittedly, going insane isn't for everyone.




-But I'm digging it immensely.

Wednesday

The 2013 "Knock it Off!" Rebirth


Predator Press

[LOBO]

"I mean who really cares if we call it 'Christmas?' Now we call it 'Winter Holiday.' Or if the Ten Commandments are on display someplace in public?" A migraine almost certainly looming, I rub my temples. "At some point America lost the ability to call an asshole an asshole. And as a consequence, we lost the ability to tell assholes to knock it off."

"Man you think about this stuff too much," replies Barbarossa. "You need to relax more. Why don't you try golf?"

"I love golf," I point out. "I play it on X-Box all the time."

"No," he replies. "I mean for real. You meet a different breed of people. Last week I met a guy who is sooooo rich," he pauses for a second, "His name was Rich, and-"

"You met a rich guy named Rich?"

"Yeah. He's got a horse-"

"Is the horse's name 'horse?'"

Barbarossa ponders this for a moment, rubbing his beard. "I don't know. But he's got this wicked Corvette, too ..."

"What the hell would a horse do with a Corvette?"

"You're telling me to knock it off, aren't you?"

Friday

Com-Castrated

Predator Press


[LOBO]

One of the casualties of trying to pay for my car was my cable television.

-Between renting the equipment and blah blah services, I cut my bill by ninety dollars.

Still it was rough; pulling those cables out this morning was a very painful experience, analogous almost to euthanizing a pet. 

"So why are you working here?" I ask Barbarossa as we stand in the cafeteria chow line.  Friday chow has a Mexican food theme, and it's the only day of the week I may deign to eat there.

And the only lunchtime I see Barbarossa, now a non-smoker.

"My last boss was a racist," he replies.

The lady behind the counter 'wraps up' her last customer and turns to me.  "What can I get you?"

I manage a smile, despite the fact that I don't have cable.  "I would like the mega nachos with everything -including jalapenos- but without beans."  Well rehearsed and recited, my thoughts never left my dearly departed cable TV.

-But I decided to be strong.

"A racist?" I asked Barbarossa.  "What happened?"

Barbarossa, next in line, stares at the menu, jaw agape.  "He found a half a joint in my F-16.  And then he had me take a piss test."

"Did you want jalapenos?" asked the lady behind the counter.

"Yes please,"  I nod politely.

"So," I pause, "where did the racism come in?"

Barbarossa, still reading a menu that said, "Nachos or MEGA Nachos," scratched his beard in thought.

"I think he was like ... Ukrainian  or something," he replied.

The lady making my nachos dips the big spoon into a big, blacked pot.

"You said extra beans, right?"

Sunday

Predator Press got a BETTER Sponsor. FUCK YOU, Nike

LOBO

Predator Press

Too slithy for anything but the mimsy of gyring toves, wabe bororoves and gamey bandersnatches every frumious brillig?

Do you find yourself always galumphing around the tulgey with uffish, manxome, whiffling thoughts of completely outgrabed mome raths?

Well, break out your vorpal sword under the Tumtum tree and chortle with frabjous, beamish joy as you gimble up some all-natural nutritious lowfat Snicker-Snacks ®! *



Eat Snicker-Snacks ®
by Jabberwocky

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* Warning: possible side effects may include drowsiness, dizziness, migraines, insomnia, temporary blindness, stomach cramps, hallucinations, aneurisms, nausea, cancer, democratic fundraisers, projectile vomiting, projectile diarrhea, projectile vomiting and projectile diarrhea, tsunamis, wormholes, lesions, Microsoft updates, Chelsea Handler, malignant tumors, and conspicuous erections in prison.

If consumed, please consult your physician immediately.