Ghosts

LOBO -Predator Press

Work, travel, and life in general have really limited my ability to write this year. Many immolated themselves. Many jumped from tall buildings. Many immolated themselves, then jumped from tall buildings. But fear not, o loyal reader! Your beloved Alabaster Battlemaster has not been idle!

Piece by piece, recording studio equipment has been arriving back home, and the plan is to make Predator Press -at least in part- a podcast. This should include audio and visual components, and Skype interviews with our -and by "our" I mean "my"- favorite internet personalities.

If you still insist on immolating yourselves and/or jumping off of tall buildings in the meantime, please be tidy about it. This isn't all about you you know.

 Show some goddamn consideration.

WTF Ever Happened to Quicksand?

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Once again, at no small expense to you, we here at Predator Press have set out to settle an age-old question burning in everyone’s mind: What ever happened to quicksand?

You remember ... one could barely get through a half an hour of television without some poor slob stumbling upon his buddy's pith helmet laying mysteriously on the ground. Then he or she goes to pick it up, and the horror ensues.

-It’s quicksand!

I remember being taught about quicksand by no less than three teachers during the brief debacle of my education. They all conflicted with each other too. “Don’t struggle,” one said. “Lay flat and roll out,” said another.

Clearly even then this enigmatic sedentary evil was barely understood. Of course this was the heart of Chicago, where they taught us to curl up in a hallway in case of aerial bombings and hide under our desks during nuclear blasts.  It's safe to say if graffiti didn't stick to it, we Chicagoans didn't know shit about it.

So after years of jumping over suspicious looking sidewalk squares, it occurred that inner city quicksand may well have evolved a cracked appearance -perhaps even a Hopscotch pattern as camouflage! And tedious "research" revealed absolutely no cases of Chicago quicksand attacks, thus proving conclusively the deadly hunting prowess of this formidable and fearsome predator: no one had yet survived an encounter with it to tell the tale.

-I haven't slept in years.

Unfortunately, the Predator Press scienticians really let us all down this time. All they did was gorge Dominoes pizza, play World of Warcraft, and work on their Facebook profiles until SPAM beguiled them into downloading crippling computer viruses via porn.  Obviously the Great Mystery of Quicksand is beyond the feeble understanding of even the greatest minds of our time.

Still, we here at Predator Press remain hopeful that perhaps one day Humanity will learn to communicate with quicksand, the most misunderstood, secretive, and voracious of Nature’s killers.

But we recommend you all wear big, buoyant hats in the meantime.

Just in case.

DARKNESS!!!

LOBO -Predator Press

Mutt

LOBO -Predator Press

"Of course I'm Celebrating Saint Patrick's Day," says Cindy.  "I'm Irish.  Don't you care about heritage?"

"Pthbtt," I says.  "If any our 'heritages' were worth a shit, our ancestors wouldn't have come to America in the first place."

Knox

LOBO -Predator Press

First I need to apologize to Stephanie Barr, who actually commented on the post "Sisyphus" --a post I promptly deleted. Long story short, about ten days ago I heard from my dad for the first time in a decade, and by osmosis got some contact from other lost relatives and siblings.

I've sort of inferred dad's health is in decline, but I'm not sure anybody was aware of the fact that dad found me. What ensued became quickly toxic, as I was accused of conveniently showing up by people already dividing his estate. Worse, most of this was spilling out on my Facebook account. I keep my "real" life off of Facebook. I consider Facebook and Twitter more of a playground. Worse than even that? Remember how I said it had been a decade? My mom helped me track these people down that time, and what I found was a viper pit. Don't get me wrong, family is family, but they all just stopped answering communication efforts ten years ago. See, I'm dad's only kid from a different mom. By not picking sides in the frequent feuds, inevitably, I became my own side.

I guess I thought dad's new pack would mellow with age, but it's full-on Game of Thrones shit at the moment. So this time I preemptively purged everybody. For posterity, I would like to leave two final thoughts for them:

#1) Congratulations!

If you all had not foiled my diabolical plan, a year from now I would be driving a Fisker at 35 miles per hour wearing goggles, scarf, and driving gloves, and smoking a cigarette with a filter like four feet long sticking out the window because fuck oncoming traffic.

#2) Thanks For My Sense Of Humor, Dad

-Michael

TurtleGate

LOBO -Predator Press

"Moriarty didn't commit suicide, you moron" Rachel explains.  "Morry is a tortoise.  Tortises live on land."

"Well you're certainly not making me feel any better about this whole fiasco," I says, pushing on Morry's chest rhythmically.  "This is a consequence of God's spurious equivocation when it comes to Creation."

"You're blaming God for drowning Morry?"

"I mean it's not like we see fish walking around downtown," I says, slamming my fist into the inverted carapace.  "I figured this would be a major upgrade for him."

Morry suddenly hacks, and ... starts breathing.

"Whew," I exclaim, wiping my forehead.  "We were really close to you giving him mouth-to-mouth."

"What's with the sunken hamster wheel?"

"It's called a spa, Rachel.  Jesus Christ.  Maybe you should think before you open your mouth sometimes."

"And the underwater radio?"

"Who doesn't like music?"

"And the mozzarella sticks?"

"Stop making me repeat myself.  Can't you see I'm under a lot of stress right now?"

Rachel stares into my eyes.  "Why are your pupils so dilated?  Did you eat those McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches that sat out unrefrigerated on the counter all night?"

"Maybe," I reply evasively.  "Or maybe Morry was committing suicide.  How else do you explain this suicide note?"

"That's the gas bill," she says.

Suddenly I'm stricken with paranoia.  "Well, we have to clean all this up before the cops get here.  They're going to have a lot of questions."

"How about you just lie down for a bit?"

"I still have half a sandwich left," I explain.  "Do we have any gasoline?"

The Shart Begins

LOBO -Predator Press

"Why does Bruce Wayne keep all this cool Batman memorabilia down in this cave?" I ask.  "Won't it get moldy or something?"

Stephanie Barr, at the Batputer, rolls her eyes.  Pulling up BatGoogle, she has Banksy's BatWikipedia profile in seconds.  "Why," she counters, "Are you so ardent about finding this artist?"

"Bruce Wayne made me a cool costume," I says.  "It makes me look like I have pectorals."

Nose-to-nose with an amazing Batsuit, I whistle involuntarily.

"Man this Wayne guy must be the shit at Comic Con."