Scattershot

Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 5 "Krazy Klown Komedy"

2010-10-22T08:00:00.004-05:00

Koqteese had just turned Detective Lobster’s car around when a small, slightly comical looking Ford Fiesta traveling in the opposite direction erupted into a ball of flames. The crappy lime green Fiesta lifted off the ground and tumbled through the air like a child’s toy. As it spun through the air a handful of people spilled out onto the blacktop.

People in baggy trousers and enormous shoes.

“Holy shit,” Koqteese said. “I have just forgotten all about taking you back to your apartment to get your glasses!”

“Glasses!” Lobster shouted. “What are you even talking about!”

Koqteese managed to steer their car out of the fireballs bouncing trajectory.

“You know,” Lobster said. “Ford makes one helluva basketball…”

“It is bouncing pretty high,” Koqteese said in agreement.

“Oh Jesus,” Lobster said as the flaming Fiesta hurtled past his window. “That’s not a basket ball, that’s a fucking flaming car!”

Koqteese decided to pretend like she hadn’t heard him—this would be her new way of dealing with Detective Lobster’s many short-comings. This was the same method employed by Lobster’s mother and father, as well as his first two wives (Rebecca and Sayshauna Ann).

“Pull over, we gotta see if there’s anyone left to pull outta that wreck,” Lobster said, banging his hand against the dashboard dramatically as he spoke.

“Whatever,” Koqteese told him as he slowed their car down.

Detective Lobster didn’t wait for the come to a complete stop—he was so badass that he leaped out of the car when it was still rolling to a stop. He’d seen that done in the movies and had always wanted to give it a whirl. Of course, what they don’t tell or show you in the movies is the wear that this tends to put on the souls of ones shoes. Detective Lobster could suddenly feel the pavement through the bottoms of both shoes.

“It was time to get a new pair, anyway,” he said as he stomped over to the wrecked Fiesta.

Though it was smashed against a streetlight, and consumed with flames, Detective Lobster could tell that this was no ordinary sub-compact. The rear fender was shaped like the backend of a goose, and the front of the car was bent to look like an enormous bird bill. Clearly this was some kind of bird-Fiesta hybrid.

Not that it mattered. The flames danced along the green paint job, licking away the frivolity like a fat kid licking an ice cream cone on a balmy July afternoon when the air conditioner is broken and he won’t shut up about being so fucking hot so his mother gives in and gives him an ice cream cone even though he’s just developed Type II diabetes and the State is going to take him away because she’s let him grow so enormously fat that it’s become a sick kind of child abuse.

It was kind of like that.

“Hey!” Lobster screamed into the flames. “Anyone still in there!”

“H-h-haaa!” a shrieking clown laugh sounded from somewhere inside the burning wreck. “H-h-haaa! This haahahahaha, this hahahah burns…”

Then there was a series of strange honking sounds. It wasn’t like the honking of a goose (which would have kinda made sense) but rather, it was like the sound of a deflating bicycle horn.

“Oh my gawd!” Koqteese said, shoving her heaving bosom against Lobster’s back. “There’s a clown in there! He’s fryin’ like a piece of succulent cod!”

“Take it easy,” Lobster said. “I’m canceling this fish fry.”

Without thinking, which was pretty much how he always operated, Detective Lobster dove through the flaming (broken) windshield and reached down to grab a hold of the burning clown.

“Hahaha…don’t try to save me…I’m done for,” the clown coughed. “Hahahaha!”

By this time the other clowns, the ones who’d fallen out of the Fiesta as it tumbled through the air, were limping towards the burning wreck.

“Chuckle-chuckle! Garsh, we gotta save Mr. Giggle-Pants!” one of the injured clowns said as he limped to the burning car.

“Stay back!” Koqteese said. “Detective Lobster will save your friend.”

“Well I couldn’t save him,” Lobster said as he leaped out of the burning Fiesta. “Poor bastard wouldn’t stop laughing…I couldn’t get him to leave the car.”

“That was Mr. Giggle-Pants,” another of the injured clowns said. “Always laughing…right up to the end.”

In the distance there came the sound of sirens.

“The fire department can handle the rest,” Lobster said, wiping the soot from his pants. “Let’s spilt before those bananas show up and start making trouble.”

“Hey mister,” one of the clowns said. “Did you say bananas?”

“Do you know about this gang of vicious, killer banana bullies?” Koqteese said, pursing her lips in a way that reminded all of the clowns, as well as Detective Lobster, of that fat boy licking his beloved ice cream cone.

“Those rubber heads have been muscling in on our territory,” the smoking clown said. He wasn’t smoking a cigarette; his clothes were singed and giving off little trails of jet black smoke. It was really distracting.

“The bananas are doing kids parties?” Lobster said skeptically.

“No, no, we’re cocaine smugglers,” the sort-of-still-burning Clown said.

“I should have known,” Lobster said. “That explains the red noses…”

“Those bastard bananas must have slipped a bomb under our Klown Kar,” the clown explained.

Lobster frowned.

“Why did you say it like that?” he asked the clown.

“Say what like what?”

“You called your clown car your ‘klown kar,’ that’s really very stupid,” Lobster said. Detective Lobster was a very good judge of stupid. This was because of Einstein’s famous theory of “Takes One to Know One.” This rule applies to a lot of people, in a lot of instances.

“I guess I was trying to add a bit of levity,” the clown said. “To a terrible situation. You see, that ‘s what we clowns do—we add levity to a terrible situation. That terrible situation is called ‘reality.’ You see, the world is full of chaos and pain, there’s nothing I can do about that. What I can do, however, is try to make both you and your voluptuous friend smile by wearing baggy pants…and calling my car a ‘klown kar.’ Is that so wrong?”

Another of the dazed, and injured clowns nodded in agreement and said: “We also sell cocaine…to help with all that suffering and shit…honk-a-honk-a!”

Detective Lobster grunted in disgust and turned away.

“Come on Koqteese,” he said, heading back to his car. “Let’s leave these Klowns to their Krime scene.”

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU DECIDE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

DOES DETECTIVE LOBSTER PLAY POOL WITH AN UMBRELLA?

OR

DOES DETECTIVE LOBSTER DIG A REALLY DEEP HOLE WITH A SLOTTED SPOON?

VOTE IN THE COMMENTS SECTION!!!

Natalie Burroughs: Sex Detective

2010-10-22T07:59:00.007-05:00

RUSSELL: Um, hello? Miss Burroughs, are you in here? Your receptionist told me to come on in.

NATALIE: Yes, I’m Natalie Burroughs, Sex Detective. You must be Russell Muddige. You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. I almost gave your appointment to a young woman convinced her boyfriend is sleeping with his science professor.

RUSSELL: Sorry. I hit traffic on the 101.

NATALIE: Well, now that you’re here, we can begin. Why don’t you step across my spacious, ornately decorated office and sit in one of the brown calfskin chairs in front of my impressive but not quite boastful glass desk.

RUSSELL: (confused) Why are you talking like that?

NATALIE: I apologize. Sometimes I lapse into talking like I’m giving narrative details. It only happens occasionally.

RUSSELL: To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing here. I saw your late-night commercial after an ad for a phone-sex chatline. I’m not even really clear on what a “sex detective” does.

NATALIE: Some people prefer the term “sextective,” which may clear things up.

RUSSELL: Not really.

NATALIE: Mainly we specialize in helping concerned spouses or significant others uncover whether or not their partners are having … um … undisclosed relations. When the situation is more internal and no infidelity can be proven, we try to get at the root of what the couple’s problem is. I take it something’s not right with your relationship and that’s why you’re here.

RUSSELL: (defeated) It is. I think my wife may be having an affair. She’s been distracted lately, and we haven’t made lovey-doves in almost three months.

NATALIE: Is that what you call it? “Lovey-doves”?

RUSSELL: (refocusing his attention) Yes. Why, does that mean something?

NATALIE: (deadpan) It just means that I’ve cracked a case in which a young man tried impregnating a cat repeatedly and you still take the trophy in my WTF competition.

RUSSELL: I suppose it does sound a little … cutesy. (pause) Oh god. You don’t think I’m the reason my wife’s out having an affair, do you?

NATALIE: Well, we can’t even be sure that your opposite sex life partner is actually having an affair. It’s too soon to jump to any conclusions. But, to answer your question: Yes.

RUSSELL: I can’t believe it. I mean, I figured that things, you know, in the bedroom might have been strained because of the long hours I work and my freakishly misshapen penis, but I didn’t realize that something so simple as a phrase could snuff out our love dumpling noodle time.

NATALIE: I’m staring at you, incredulously and with a hint of disgust.

RUSSELL: More narrative detail talk?

NATALIE: Sorry. It sneaks up on me.

RUSSELL: If I really am the cause of all this, what can I do to fix things?

NATALIE: First of all, you need to retrain the language center of your brain to not sound so … hmm, what’s the clinical phrase … “fucking retarded” when you’re talking about sex. We women like a man who isn’t afraid to plow it like it’s harvest time, if you know what I mean. And the same thing goes for the way you talk about getting freaky under the covers. Don’t shy away from terms and phrases like “skanky ho,” “cum-hungry pig,” and “I want to fuck the shit out of you.” They’re scientifically proven to trigger the affection regions of a woman’s brain mass.

RUSSELL: (repeating, as if to remember) Skanky ho. Cum-hungry pig. I want to fuck the shit out of you. Got it. And you think that this may help rekindle things between me and my elementary schoolteacher wife?

NATALIE: I think it’ll be a start.

RUSSELL: Thank you, Miss Burroughs. I really think this might just be the turning point in my marriage. I don’t know how you do it, but you’re something wubby-bubby-snubby-lubby indeed.

Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 4 "Not Much Happens Because Jason Is Getting Burned Out (the second to last installment)""

2010-10-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

Willie Lobster started up at the banana thug. The thug's mouth trickled blood. The blood was red. The redness reminded Lobster that he had a weapon hidden under his divan.

The divan was a ratty-looking piece of furniture that Lobster kept for sentimental reasons. Most of these reasons had to do with his bitches. Lobster had, over the course of his life, had several female dogs...they'd loved the divan. They were gone now (just like poor Daniel) but Lobster kept their memory alive with the divan.

Lobster groaned and rolled towards the tattered divan.

"Hey!" one of the banana thugs shouted.

"Get him!" another shouted.

"Mu mufth!" the one with the bloody mouth said.

Detective Lobster stuck his hand beneath the divan and groped frantically for the weapon he'd stashed underneath--because one never knew when one was going to be attacked inside one's home by a rang of bananas.

"Get back! Stay back!" Lobster said, whipping out his secret stashed weapon. "I don't want to...but I'll use this if I have to."

The banana thugs stopped dead in their tracks.

"An apple?" one said.

"Yo, am I trippin' or is that dude holding an apple?" another asked.

The banana thugs were not seeing things, Detective Lobster was indeed brandishing an apple. He'd thought he'd left a 9mm under the divan, but apparently he'd moved it to another (presumably more secure) location.

Instead, Lobster had found nothing but a moldy apple.

"What?" Lobster said. "This is a fucking gun."

He looked at the grimy apple in his left hand. There was a generous dusting of dog hair and dust bunny remnants upon the apples mushy flesh.

"Ha! Ha! This muthafucka is nuts!" one of the banana's said.

"Grab 'em!" the banana leader said, spitting blood onto the floor.

As the thugs descended upon him, Lobster thrust the nasty apple in their direction. The first thug to reach the desperate detective got a face full of moldy apple mush.

"Gah!" the blinded banana shouted, frantically wiping the offensive gunk off his face.

The blinded thug's flailing smacked the second thug, whose gun went off.

Detective Lobster, who'd grown up in a bad neighborhood, wasn't fazed by the gunshot and jumped to his feet and raced towards his front door.

"Oooooawwww!" the lead banana thug screamed. "Youf -hot me! Youf -hot me inna mouf!"

"Oh man...I am so sorry, man."

The trickle of blood pouring out the lead banana thug's mouth was now a geyser of gushing crimson death. This banana's problems were now bigger than a few popped stitches.

"Dude, we gotta take you to the hospital..."

Lobster, meanwhile was racing out the door and down the steps of his apartment building. As he neared his car, he saw that Savanna Koqteese was sitting behind the wheel. Her face was a mixture of concern and constipation.

"Go! Go! Go!" Lobster shouted as he leaped into the car.

A true lady of action, Koqteese didn't question him--she just got them the hell out of there.

"I heard the gunshot and decided to get the engine warm for you," she told him after they'd gone a few blocks.

"You're one helluva woman, Koqteese," he said.

"Where are we going?"

"Shady Street, to see DeJesus's cousin, DeMoses," Lobster told her. "I'm getting to the bottom of this mess..."

"Fine," she said. "Could you do me one favor?"

"Anything, sweetheart."

"Put on your seatbelt."

Lobster, who was never a fan of mandatory safety devices, reluctantly reached back and grabbed his seatbelt.

"These bananas are driving me nuts," Lobster said gravely.

"Did you get your glasses?" Koqteese asked.

A thousand thoughts had been racing though Lobster's razor-sharp mind. Where was his 9mm? Who were these bananas? Why were they trying to kill him? Was Koqteese really a cock tease? Were DeJesus and DeMoses Catholics?

He was thinking about everything...everything but his glasses.

"Damn it," he grumbled.

"What?"

"We gotta go back," Lobster told her. "I forgot to get them."

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

DOES KOQTEESE DRIVE THEM BACK TO LOBSTERS APARTMENT?

DOES A CARLOAD OF CLOWNS EXPLODE NEARBY, MAKING BOTH OF THEM FORGET ALL ABOUT LOBSTER'S GLASSES?

That Which Has Led Me Here Before You

2010-10-15T07:59:00.006-05:00

“I’ve never really been opposed to the idea of slaughtering animals. Now, taken out of context, that statement can sound kind of bad. But hear me out. Before, when I was growing up, my parents never owned a farm. They never plowed fields or woke up at some ungodly hour to trudge through the rain or snow to collect eggs from a chicken coop. We didn’t live anywhere remotely city-like, but our shoes didn’t smell like chicken shit. Oh, sorry, Your Honor. Excuse me, ‘chicken poop.’ My experience with livestock came from the TV and a single trip to my aunt and uncle’s house in the country, one time when I was seven.

“Their farm wasn’t the biggest, and it was certainly nothing to bring in the big bucks. Nothing more than a couple cows, a litter of good-for-nothing cats, and one pig that went by the name of Lucas Pembroil. I’m talking, Your Honor, about my cousin, a fat little boy a couple years older than me, who decided it would be hilarious to show me the chickens. See, it was his job to feed them each day, and on one of my family’s trips to see his parents, he brought me outside, out to the hen house. They had a chain-link fence to keep the chickens penned up, but it was the most ramshackle thing ever laid eyes on. The birds always got out and ran amok, bringing dogs and coyotes around. It was Lucas’s job to get them back in the pen and fix wherever they’d managed to get out.

“So Lucas brings me to the chickens and tells me that they love to play. ‘It’s sure fun trying to run and catch ‘em,’ he says. And this, remember, to a little seven-year-old boy. ‘Why don’t you try it?’

“And so I’m all full of energy from being stuck in the car for the ride there and then being inside while my mom and pop gab-gab-gab with my aunt and uncle. So I go after this one chicken, a hen. This little burnt red soccer ball of a thing that’s running around, jutting its neck out like it’s dancing. Lucas, meanwhile, has a grin on his face that touches his scabbed ear, like my aunt smacked his mouth and sent it a couple inches sideways on his head. And as I’m going after this chicken, he grabs this wooden pole, even taller than him at five feet.

“All of a sudden this bird decides it’s had enough. It comes after me, jumping, flapping its wings, losing feathers like money in the state lotto. Surely you’ve seen chickens when they get agitated, Your Honor. Well, I hadn’t seen such a thing, and I screamed like a girl when I felt that first spur cut into my hand. She got me several times, and by the time Lucas had beat her away with that pole, my arms were scratched to hell and back like I’d just lost a fight with a rosebush.

“That event was a traumatization. That’s what my shrink calls it, anyway. I’m just a good old boy from Cornhole, Iowa. Ha ha! I’m just joshing; that’s just what us locals call it. You all probably know it as Compton. That’s where I was born and raised.

“Anyways, that moment stuck with me for the rest of my days, and it still wakes me up in the middle of the night sometimes. I’ll open my eyes to the dead of night, my hair matted with sweat, thinking that I’m surrounded by the prickliest feathers but which are really just the low thread-count sheets I bought at the Discount Decor over in Ridgemont.

“My parents didn’t have high hopes for me, and I guess maybe their lack of inspiration set me down the path that brought me here today. I knew from a young age that the college education card got left out of my deck, and so I turned to mechanics in high school. I thought about being an inventor, but I could never come up with something to invent. ‘Well, think about something people need,’ my shop teacher would say. ‘Try to fill a niche that hasn’t been filled.’

“Now that’s easy to say when you ain’t trying to invent things and you know what in the H-E-double-toothpicks niche means, but for me, the best I ever came up with was my own version of a clothes dryer for people who liked their shirts to smell like the outdoors. You know that smell that comes with hanging clothes out on the line? Well, this was a machine to get clothes dried fast but still get that outdoor-fresh scent, you see?

“Basically it was just a big vented metal tub attached to a motor. It spun like the devil and dried things quicker than you could say ‘Kenmore can lick my — ’

“Well, you get the idea.

“After graduating I spent a few years moving from job to job, working as a dishwasher and a laborer and a few other little things. But I never stopped thinking about how great it might be to invent something that people all across the country might use. Something that would make me rich and give me what my shrink calls ‘validation.’ Ultimately, though, my parents kicked me out of the house when I lost my job as the high school’s facilities cleanliness specialist due to a marijuana addiction that I’ve recently gotten under control.

“I ended up heading back to my aunt and uncle’s farm, where I figured they could use a hand since Lucas had gone on to bigger and better things in the United States military. Family, as they say, is the one place you’re always welcome. So I helped them with the chores and duties they couldn’t do anymore, and they let me into their home until I could figure out what to do with myself.

“Corralling the chickens had to be my least favorite job, but I did it because I was grateful. I swallowed the fear that had been my companion for all these years and took to those birds with my own stick. After some time, I jerry rigged the fence around the pen, and they didn’t get out except for every once in a while. Nothing like before, when Lucas had to take care of them. Dealing with those chickens wasn’t so terrifying after that; feeding them was nothing like corralling them, but when my aunt decided to cook chicken for dinner it was my job to get one and pluck it. It was bad enough having to get near them to feed them, but taking one in my hands was a whole other story.

“For months I had to go in that pen and hunt for the plumpest one. Then, after the rigamarole of catching and killing it, I had to pluck the damn thing.

“My uncle had quite a workshop in an old shed out behind the house. And one day I had an idea. What if, I thought, I put that outdoor dryer to use? So I went back home and got my dryer, and when I brought it to my uncle’s workshop I put little rubber spikes along the walls of the metal drum. In my head I imagined that, if I put a bird in there and started the motor, the rubber pieces would catch the feathers, plucking them out with no problem at all.

“And that’s exactly what happened when I tried it out. Sure, I had to use the hose to spray inside there to get that chicken clean. And, yes, it made such a thudding, horrible noise that my aunt and uncle came rushing outside to check on what they thought was a derailed locomotive crashing through their yard, but that chicken came out naked as a Playboy centerfold!

“Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time was that putting a live chicken in there would be considered animal cruelty. And that’s exactly what I did when I demonstrated my automated chicken plucker for the fine folks at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which has led me here before you fine folks and you, Your Honor.

“That’s about it, I guess. That’s all I have to say. My mouth to God’s ear, I am not one for treating animals with anything less than the dignity and respect they deserve. Those chickens, however…”

Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 3 "A Familiar Fruit"

2010-10-08T08:00:00.001-05:00

Detective Willie Lobster lived in an apartment over on Maple Avenue. It was a small, rinky-dink affair with just enough room for a a mattress, wardrobe, bidet, and hot plate.

Apartment 1313.

The neighborhood was diseased, a gathering place for those waiting to die and those who'd already done it. Lobster's next-door-neighbor had died a few years back, and no one had noticed for almost the month.

The stink was that bad.

Curling wisps of stream shot out of a number of crevasses on the sidewalk--no one asked what it was exactly that was leaking out of ground. All anyone could tell was that it stank. It stank like the apartment, the building, the street, the neighborhood, the borough, the city, the county, the State, the nation, the continent, the hemisphere, the planet...the whole goddamn universe.

"Everything stinks in the miserable city," Savanna Koqteese said.

She was sitting next to Detective Lobster. They were inside his 1971 Chevy Crapi. As you can imagine, it wasn't a very good car.

"Yeah, well..." Lobster grumbled, "It ain't so bad."

"It ain't so bad?" Koqteese said in disbelief.

"That's what I said," Lobster told her. "Now you wait here, I gotta run inside and fetch something..."

The word "fetch" reminded Lobster of Daniel, his fallen Spaniel.

"Get it together, Lobster. Get it together," he murmured to himself as he climbed out of the shit-bucket seat and oozed himself out onto the steaming streets.

The climb up to his apartment was long and arduous. In the winter, when there was snow and ice on the cold concrete steps, Lobster liked to pretend he was an explorer climbing some treacherous, far-way mountain.

Like Mount Kill-a-Man-orrow.

Lobster knew something was wrong even before he'd reached his front door. The "Wipe Your Fucking Feet" mat was slightly askew. As he approached his front door, he could see that it was part of the way open.

"Better check my piece," Lobster said.

He reached down and gave his dick a squeeze.

That was what he called his pistol--Lobster called it his "dick." He called his penis his "gun." The last time he'd tried to make love to a woman...well...you can see that there was a misunderstanding. Four hours and several phone calls to Sloan Whixler, his attorney, straightened everyone out (except his "gun" which was no longer very straight).

"Well, well..." a voice said as Lobster entered his apartment. "Look what the proverbial cat dragged in!"

There were five men lurking amid Lobsters meager possessions. These (the possessions) included: pizza boxes, empty tin cans, used tissues, discarded candy wrappers, a can opener, a TV Guide from 10 years ago, several dozen cardboard tubes (from paper towels, one never knows when one might need a cardboard tube), and a carton of milk--aged to a fine blue cheddar.

"A gang! Inside my apartment!" Lobster exclaimed as he reached for his gun, but he was confused himself and reached for his...well you know...which wasn't very helpful in this situation.

"Yo, check out this perv," the leader of the lurkers said.

All the men were wearing identical rubber banana costumes. There was something familiar about them...but Lobster couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"What the fuck are you doing in here?" he asked them.

"Okay, first off--we're not a "gang" we're a bunch," the leader of the lurkers said.

The rest of the bunch sniggered in approval.

"You lady friend, a Ms. Neverputt, she's a bit of a problem for us," the banana man said.

"What are you talking about?" Lobster said, wondering where his glasses were.

Lobster fumbled over to the light switch near the front door and turned on the apartments single dim-bulb.

"Like roaches," Lobster said as the bananas scrambled to avoid the light.

"Hey! Let's trash his shit 'an leave!"

"Let's bash his brains in!"

The leader of the lurkers huffed, "Nah man, we gotta rare opportunity to do a little one-on-five counseling..."

The banana thugs descended upon Detective Lobster in a loose configuration roughly resembling a crescent moon.

The Moon. It had been Daniel's favorite celestial body. He'd stay up all night a yawl at it, his furry paws occasionally swiping the air as if he could somehow...get at the moon.

"You're standing on Daniel's nest," Lobster sobbed.

It was true, one of the banana thugs was trampling on Daniel's circular puppy bed--Lobster had left it untouched in the dog's honor. Now it was soiled by the rubbed robed brute.

"Fuck you, Lobster...and your damn dog bed," the banana thug spat.

Lobster gritted his teeth and lunged in anger at the banana.

"I'll PEEL you! I'll PEEL all of you!" Lobster shouted as he transformed himself into a whirling dervish of hands, feet, teeth, and eyebrows.

Someone kicked someone else in the face, while someone smacked someone else in the knee cap.

It was all very exciting.

But in the end, Detective Lobster was no match for a gang of fruit-themed thugs.

"Hold 'em down!" the leader said, spitting blood.

The blood was from a recent oral surgery and not, as one might expect, all the excitement and scrapping.

"Oh crap, I popped a stitch. My dentist is gonna kill me!" the banana thug said. "Listen boys, wail on Detective Lobster until he knows better than to get mixed up with mysterious, provocatively-named dames."

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

WHAT FRUIT SAVES DETECTIVE LOBSTER?

APPLE?

OR

PEAR?

Ten Questions For The Person Who Literally Took A Shit In The Women's Clothing Wednesday Night

2010-10-08T07:59:00.004-05:00

1) What the hell were you thinking?

2) Was it really a good idea to, apparently, eat such a hearty meal before coming to shop at a major retailer?

3) If you are old and/or senile do you have someone to monitor you while in public?

4) If this sort of thing happens on a regular basis and you can expect such an event, why do you not wear protective diapers?

5) Honestly, how could you take the time to check for onlookers and then pull down your pants but not have time to get to the restroom ten yards away?

6) Did you wipe afterwards? If so, should we have looked for an empty, stolen package of toilet paper, too?

7) If no toilet paper was stolen, should shoppers beware any chocolate-colored blouses in that area?

8) After you finished, did you have to leave, or did you continue shopping?

9) If you're a teenage prankster, don't you have anything better to do, like get someone pregnant in the backseat of an automobile or cook crystal meth in your parents' basement?

10) Again, if you're a prankster, do you realize that we're going to search through our extensive security footage and find you, and then many jokes will be shared at your expense, kind of like what's happening right now?

Willie Lobster, Detective: PART 2 "Taco Night"

2010-10-01T08:00:00.001-05:00

Detective Willie Lobster clutched his gut and took several quick gulps of air.

The panting reminded him of Daniel, his recently dead Spaniel.

"My God," Savanna Koqteese asked. She hesitantly stepped out from behind the office door. Grimacing, she tried to to stare at the watery-eyed Detective.

"I'm not crying," Lobster wheezed. "I'm just...still in mourning."

"Shouldn't you go after him?" Koqteese asked, motioning out the still open office door.

"What?"

"The banana that attacked you," she said. "He's getting away..."

"Oh my God," Detective Lobster exclaimed. "Lady, what day is it?"

"Huh?"

"You know, Monday...Tuesday..."

"Oh, it's Thursday," Koqteese said, not sure what the day of the week had to do with running after the maniac-banana.

"Thursday," Detective Lobster said. "Thursday, Taco-Day. Come on..."

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Down to Nacho Heaven to see a man about a taco."

***

Detective Lobster and Savanna Koqteese were sitting in a grimy paper-mache booth. Lobster was wearing a massive, cheap, foam sombrero and a large bib. Koqteese, on the other hand, wore only an embarrassed look.

"This place is...interesting," she said.

"Yes," Lobster said. "It certainly is! Best tacos in the city."

"Listen, Detective, I can't go any further with you until I know if you'll take my case."

"Case?" Lobster repeated. "What case? I thought you were just looking for your dog."

And then the tears began to flow once again on the grizzled Detective's face.

"Daniel...you son-of-a-bitch..." Lobster sobbed. "That bullet was meant for me...for ME damn it!"

Koqteese got up to fetch a few extra napkins. She hated to see snot on a grown-man.

"Speaking of terrible injustices," Koqteese said, segueing into her brother's disappearance like a lazy podcaster. "My brother Pedro has gone missing."

"Really?" Detective Lobster said, wiping salsa from his fingers.

"My family hasn't heard from him in days," Koqteese said. "We're getting really worried."

"Maybe he can't remember your phone number," Lobster said. "Ever think about that?"

"But if he couldn't call, surely he could just come over..."

Lobster smiled.

"Honey, you ever think your brother might have forgotten your phone number AND where you live?"

"Could that happen?" Koqteese asked.

"Could a cocker-spaniel catch a bullet with his teeth? No. But damned if he didn't try..."

Just then, the portly-criminally-connected (but not a criminal) owner of Nacho Heaven, David DeJesus waddled over to their booth.

"Hola, Detective, how es your tacos?"

"Fabulous," Lobster said, sniffling. "I was just about to get up and order another soft-shell..."

"Con carne?"

"Si," Lobster nodded.

DeJesus snapped his fingers and a waitress appeared with the Detectives delicious soft-shell taco.

"So," the portly restaurant owner began, "You never bring a date with you to Taco Night...so I know that this lady must be a client of yours, senior."

DeJesus was right, Willie Lobster never mixed business and tacos. It was just bad business.

"Mr. Lobster was just about to take the case of my missing brother Pedro," Koqteese said.

DeJesus nodded, "Pedro. I like that, I have a few sons with that nombre."

Detective Lobster squinted across the greasy taco platter at Koqteese. He didn't like how she's presumed he was taking her case--he also didn't like how much make-up she was wearing.

"We were so happy when he got that job, working at the used car dealership off Interstate-21," Koqteese said, starting to cry. "But now my brother is missing..."

DeJesus stroked his mustache and said, "Interstate-21? You mean your brother got a job working at Carmageddon?"

"Yes," Koqteese said. "That's right, working for Mr. Baddguy."

"Oh man," DeJesus said groaning. "That's over in the Sunbelt...that's a real rough part of town."

"The Sunbelt," Detective Lobster repeated. "The Sunbelt. Why does that ring a bell? There's something I'm supposed to not do..."

"Hey Lobster, you gonna investigate this lady's brother you should be careful," DeJesus said. "Go see my cousin DeMoses, he owns a bar on Shady Street...it's not too far from the Sunbelt. He can tell you more about this Baddguy."

Detective Lobster bit into his taco, uncertain if his gut hurt from being punched or from all the Grade-F meat.

"Maybe I'll do that...maybe I will..."

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

Does Lobster take an antacid?

Does Lobster go home and get his glasses?

A Quick Message at the Mega Church

2010-10-01T07:59:00.010-05:00

"... and that, my brothers and sisters, concludes this morning's sermon.

"Now, I want to take a moment here at the end of this, our first nationally syndicated service, to talk about something that's been plaguing my heart for days now. I promise it'll only take a minute or two, so as we're not running over into time allotted for Travis Jones's Prayer Power Hour or whatever else fine programming the Cristian Broadcasting Network decides to air.

"Ha ha! And, you, Sister Jones, don't you worry one fake feather in your sunhat that you won't make it to the Denny's noon lunch special! Ha ha!

"Our church has seen its fair share of changes in its time. Why, I've seen it grow from a twig to a tree in my fifteen-plus years here. I remember it having just a few leaves -- like you, Sister Marsha, and you, Brother Marcus Levinson, who was just a young pup when we opened the doors and let the light o' God shine on out -- and now, we've got an entire tree full. Some are smaller, and some of us are, well, bigger, if you know what I mean! Ha ha! We have over three thousand God-fearing, selfless people, to put things in perspective. Several of you have known me for all of those fifteen-plus years. Many of you have known me for nearly as long.

"I want to address something that's come up recently, something so heinous and unspeakable that I'm loathe to even broach the subject. But I feel it's important to not let these ... rumors ... gain a foothold.

"As many of you have probably heard, a dear, dear member of our teen youth group, Brother Deshawn Clift -- who's eighteen -- has stated that there have been, between him and myself, certain ... indiscretions.

"Now, now! I know it's hard to hear, but I want to talk about this and make sure we all know the truth of the matter: Brother Deshawn is a, a troubled young man of eighteen -- which makes him legally an adult. I don't know the movies he watches, what music he listens to, or whose company he keeps, but it is obvious that he's been taken over, his mind ... infected by the seed o' the devil! His judgment has been clouded by Lucifer himself.

"One year ago next month will be the anniversary of the missionary trip Brother Deshawn and I took to Uganda, the month-long trip which our confused but good-hearted, green-eyed, athletic brother believes put the two of us in a compromising position with another young man who is not a 'prostitute' as some major news organizations have reported. Mistakenly.

"Brothers and sisters, this troubles me deeply. My job as pastor is to protect you all from the influence of the devil, and to have this filth slung up in our faces is ... is ... Oh, it just breaks my heart. Now, as you all know, ever since the beginning I have taught that hommasexuality is a sin. Plain and simple. I've been married to my lovely wife, Denise, for almost twenty-five years, and although we don't have children -- for personal reasons which are entirely unnecessary to discuss here -- we have built for ourselves a wonderful, stable relationship impervious to the temptation to be unfaithful.

"Intimacy is a ... a sacred gift. One that should not be taken for granted, even for husbands and the women to whom they're married. Intimacy is something that should be kept for special occasions. The secret, my friends, is to save it for ... once a year. Maybe every few years. As the Lord intended.

"Anyway, we need to pray for our dear Brother Deshawn. Pray that God shows him the truth about what happened on that trip to Uganda, so that this veil of confusion can be lifted! Pray that the Lord reveals to him the truth of my hired ASSISTANT and the fact that there was only one cot for the three of us to sleep on, as well as the reality of it being so hot in our tent that clothing had to have been shed so as not to suffer some sort of nighttime heatstroke.

"Pray that this disheartening, deceitful story goes back down to the brimstone it was written with so that we all can get back to worshipping Almighty God and our newly-inked television deal with the Christian Broadcasting Network does not suffer in any way from these falsehoods floating around.

"Thank you all. Let us pray."

Willie Lobster, Detective: A SCATTERSHOT Choose-Your-Own-Adventure

2010-09-24T08:00:00.005-05:00

“Mr. Lobster,” Savanna Koqteese said as she entered the cramped office. “I’m in desperate need of your services.”

Detective Willie Lobster looked up from his Jumbo Crossword puzzle book and squinted. It wasn’t because the room was bright, but because he’d forgotten his glasses at home.

“Look Mister, I’m not taking any new clients right now,” Lobster grumbled.

“But Detective Lobster, you’re my only hope.”

“Hope? Hope?” Lobster repeated. “Nope, I’m nobody’s hope…more like a dope. I just realized you’re a dame for Christsake. You can do better.”

“But I want you!” Koqteese said. She bent over and maneuvered her shoulders together in such a way that her massive breasts smooshed together. This erotic display was lost on Lobster, who as previously mentioned had forgotten his glasses at home.

“Look, I’m not taking on any new clients,” Lobster said. “If you want I can recommend a very good fella…does mostly doggie recovery work….”

Koqteese huffed and crossed her arms.

“Mr. Lobster, I don’t need anyone to help me find my doggie!”

“Oh,” Lobster said, shrugging. “Then you ain’t doing too bad, honey.”

Detective Lobster had recently buried his pet spaniel, Daniel. Daniel the spaniel had been Lobster’s pet and life-friend. The two had chased cars and perps for nearly fifteen years. The death of Daniel was one of the reasons why Detective Lobster wasn’t taking on any new clients.

“I lost my license,” Lobster said, revealing the other reason he wasn’t eager to acquire new work.

“But Mr. Lobster, I don’t care about all that,” Koqteese huffed. “I need help—your help.”

Squinting, Lobster tried to tell if Koqteese had smeared her lipstick or if she had a ginger mustache. Lobster couldn’t abide mustaches.

Hell, any facial hair for that matter. Nasty stuff, facial hair, it was always soaking up soup and catching crumbs. If this dame had a mustache she really was barking up the wrong tree. Lobster told her as much:

“Lady,” he said “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Mister, what’s with you and all this dog talk?” Koqteese whined.

It was starting to dawn on her that perhaps she’d made a mistake in coming to Lobster’s office. Koqteese bringing up “dog” made Lobster think of Daniel which caused his eyes to well up with quivering tears.

“Aww, I’m sorry,” he said sniffing. “I got something in my eye, will you excuse me?”

Lobster started to get up and head for the office door, when someone starting knocking on it from the other side.

“I can’t believe I wasted my lunch hour coming down here,” Ms. Koqteese muttered to herself. She followed Detective Lobster over to the front door. She’d come with the intention of hiring Willie Lobster to find her brother, Pedro. Pedro was a good boy who’d just gotten mixed up in some very bad things.

His last job, for example, was selling used cars off Interstate-21.

“I just forgot to take my Claritin this morning,”’ Lobster told her as he whipped the tears from his eyes.

The person on the other side of the office’s door continued to obnoxiously hammer away at the door.

“Alright, alright,” Lobster grunted as he opened the door. “What? Whattdya want?”

Standing in the hallway was a man wearing a rubber banana costume. His tan face poked out from the costume’s round face-hole.

“You Lobster?” the banana man asked.

“Who wants to know?” Lobster said. Again, the Detective had to squint because he’d left his glasses at home.

“Me.”

“Me who?”

“The Top Banana.”

Koqteese’s mouth fell open and her eyes widened. Before the banana man could see her, she ducked behind the door.

“Look, I’ll tell ya what I just told that lady with the stash,” Lobster began. “I’m not accepting any new clients…”

Before Detective Lobster could finish, the man in the banana costume punched him right in the gut. Detective Lobster didn’t have a large gut, but he was middle aged and had very little will power when it came to pasta and savory crepes.

These things tended to add up over time.

“Oof!” Lobster groaned and doubled over.

Staring down at the banana’s feet, Lobster could see a pair of blurry Nikes. There were a few flecks of white powder on them. Lobster noticed the powder because as he gasped for air his eyes narrowed and the world momentarily jumped into focus.

“Jesus…” Lobster wheezed. “Are…you…in…a…fuckin…banana…costume?”

“Hey man, you see me judging you?” the banana man asked.

“Good…point…”

“Look, I gotta split, but before I do remember what the Top Banana says—you listening?”

Detective Lobster shook his head.

“Stay outta the Sunbelt. That’s Banana Town, ya dig?”

Lobster grunted and said, “Oh, is that all? Of course…Sunbelt…stay out…got it.”

It should be noted that Detective Lobster had no idea what the banana man was talking about. But Lobster knew, from years of experience, that one never argues with a costumed bandit. A costume tended to lower one’s social inhibitions, allowing most folk to do things they’d normally know better than to do.

“Oh shit,” the banana man said, suddenly erupting into laughter. “I fucking said ‘split.’ That shit was not intentional, I assure you. I ain’t that wack!”

“No,” Lobster said, still gasping for breath. “Of course you’re not…that wack.”

“Alright Lobster, remember—I got my eye on you.”

And with that the banana man turned and fled down into the darkened hallway. Just as the rubber-suited attacked had disappeared from view, Lobster got his wind back.

SCATTERSHOT READERS YOU CHOOSE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

DOES LOBSTER GRAB A TOILET PLUNGER ?

OR

DOES LOBSTER GO BUY A TACO?

VOTE IN THE COMMENTS!!!

Hopped Up On Drugs

2010-09-24T07:59:00.001-05:00

Harry lost everything, buying drugs from the thugs.

Now life don't seem so sunny, cause he's one sad little bunny.

Acquired Taste(s)

2010-09-17T08:00:00.005-05:00

As a child, I never understood it when an adult would say something was an "acquired taste." If you tried something and didn't like it that should it...end of story. Why would I need to try something many times in order to like it?

And yet, as I've gotten older (read: fatter/grayer) I've discovered that there are many things that I know love that a long time ago I didn't like.

Olives. Olives are a good example of this. When I was a kid I wouldn't go near an olive. I don't even remember trying them and not liking them...I just didn't like them. I guess it was because the black ones, when sliced and put on a pizza, look a bit like shriveled bugs. Yuck, who wants THAT in their mouth?

Coffee. I used to think coffee was the biggest con adults played on children. Every morning my parents would wake up literally CRAVING the stuff. But what was so special about it? It tasted like dirty water. Any drink you have to "dress up" with sugar and milk can't be all that great to begin with, right? But over time (and many late-night "study" sessions) I've come to love coffee. In fact, when I'm working on one of my novels I tend to drink a pot a day. And I wonder why my teeth are so yellow...speaking of which...

Cigarettes. Cigarettes are fantastic. I won't lie kids--smoking kills and I don't do it anymore, but nicotine is the shit. The euphoria one gets from a puff off a fag can't be beat. And that first puff of the day? Forget about it. I've written about my history with smoking (go look it up) so I'll spare you the details about how I initially was skeptical about tobacco. Needless to say, if you do it enough you "acquire" the taste (read: develop a crippling addiction).

Beer. See a pattern here? Everything that's horrible/terrible for you seems to be an acquired taste. Maybe saying something is an "acquired taste" is just our way of saying "please let me kill myself in peace"? Anyway, beer used to taste pretty shitty to me but now I really enjoy beer (tastes just as good coming back up, too).

Ham. Growing up, my sister Amber and I were pretty much opposed to all forms of pork (with the notable exception of bacon) . Over the past few years though, my stance on bacon has softened a bit. Just this past weekend I ordered a pizza with ham and pineapple on it. And I love a good pulled pork sandwich. I'm not sure what happened exactly...one day I just said to myself "Ah hell, I'll give pork another chance." I'm still not a fan of the pork chop, however.

Diet Soda. If there's a better example of "acquired taste" I don't know what it is. Growing up I INSISTED on drinking regular soda (I have the gut to prove it). About a year ago my wife snookered me into trying a carb diet (read: eat nothing delicious). I was so desperate for soda that I let her convince me to try drinking diet soda. And guess what? After three months of no sugar, COKE Zero tasted pretty damn good. Now I can't drink the regular stuff (too sweet).

I feel like we can program our taste buds. The diet soda example is pretty good proof of this. As a child the psychology what we like or don't like is probably just as much a factor as ACTUAL taste. Like the ham I just decided to give "another shot," the things that are acquired tastes don't change. We change. An acquired taste basically when you "stop worrying and learn to love the ham. "

Apple Of My Eye

2010-09-17T07:59:00.001-05:00

In the fall of 2009 my friend Amber and I stopped in at a Best Buy, looking at laptop computers for Amber’s boyfriend. We made cursory passes by desktops, examining them in the way that all window shoppers do, when we came around to the computers adorned with little glowing apples. Before Amber went to the job of actually considering her options, she paused a moment at the Apple kiosk and stood there, as if dreaming.

The computers contrasted sharply with the simple, polished wood of their display table, which further set them apart from the rest of the brands. Everything else sat on black metal shelves, secured by black metal arms so that no one could pick them up and carry them away. The Apple notebooks had nothing keeping them there save for a thin white wire attached to a sensor. I’ve never attempted larceny, but I assumed that severing it would result in a lot of attention with loud sirens and flashing lights. Sitting that way, it truly felt like having one would be no more difficult than filling out a credit card application.

“My computer’s so old,” she said, tracing a finger along the lid of one of the shiny silver laptops. “I’d love to have a Mac, but…” She paused. “I don’t want to become one of those Mac snobs.”

I watched her finger as it followed the graceful curved edges of the otherwise rectangular lid, and I felt that familiar stirring, like heartstrings but in my back pocket.

Gadgets, to this day, are a big draw for me. As a self-proclaimed nerd, I have an eye for anything with glowing lights or blinking buttons, and the attraction is probably best described as “unhealthy.” Right up there with sugar and a mild self-loathing, technology could be described as one of my major addictions. Walking into an electronics store, I imagine that the sight of me is something like a kitten plopped into the middle of a room filled with yarn, if the yarn was dancing and the kitten hopped up on speed. God knows how much of my income I’ve squandered on technological trinkets that, really, are nothing more than flashy toys.

How, then, does one admit to already having become one of those snobs? I’d made the switch to Apple computers a year or so before, and I felt immediately uncomfortable in that moment, standing there looking at several overpriced products I had lying in wait for me back home. I went from feeling ashamed, then, to slightly defensive. I certainly didn’t think of myself as a snob, and as we walked away I ran through all my reasoning for wanting things like these and the justifications for already having them.

As a child, I loved toys that lit up and had switches and levers and made science-y noises. I would pretend that educational toys — things made of bright plastics that were supposed to teach a child how to count or multiply — instead made excellent controls for spaceships or a computer workstation at a distant outpost. Things didn’t even have to be toys. At my great-grandmother’s house, I would play with her melodica, a handheld musical instrument that looked like the result of a flute and a piano’s wild night in Vegas; the rows of black and white keys looked like buttons that would fire missiles or close a bulkhead against an advancing army of mutant soldiers.

Years later, in the middle of a camping trip where my mother and I seemed sentenced to boredom, she and I drove into town to look at the local shops. We were in the middle of a junk store, basically a glorified indoor garage sale, when I stumbled upon an entire computer priced at twenty-five dollars. The find felt like a prospector’s discovery of gold, and, without prodding, my mother asked if I’d like to have it. Never one to pass up a good deal, my mother, I think, overestimated the computer’s capabilities. When we got it back to our camper, we set it up on the foldaway dining table and plugged it in. From school and even at home, I was used to having a mouse and onscreen pointer to navigate things. But this thing was from a different era. All the monitor gave me was a black screen. That and a lime green cursor for typing commands in what I thought of as the old-fashioned way. At twelve years old and a child of the nineties, I had no idea how to work a computer that had possibly seen its prime during the Kennedy administration. So I was left typing little stories onto the screen, only to have no idea how to store or retrieve them when I shut the thing off.

The computer was a disappointment at best. Still, the sight of it, boulder-like and bowing the dining table, felt comforting in a way that got me through the rest of the camping trip. It even outweighed the fear I felt when using it, when the thought of it crashing through the table and crushing both of my legs covered me like a shadow.

In high school, when I got my first job, I passed up the opportunity to go to London on a class field trip so that I could buy my first real computer. The idea of going to another country felt promising in the way that adventure does when you’re a teenager and your departure date is still far off. Partly, it was my parents who diverted my desire to go. The trip was in the summer of 2002, not even a year after the events of September 11th. America had forced its way into the War on Terror, and being a U.S. citizen abroad — to my parents, at least — was like bringing a toasty roast beef sandwich into a bear cage.

“You could go to Europe,” my father said. “Or...you could get a brand new laptop.”

My mother chimed in, her voice masking her intention of me never leaving the country or even setting foot on a plane. “It’d be about the same amount of money. And it would last longer.”

All the wonders of the British Isles paled against the glowing promise of a shiny new computer, and in that moment, no matter how much I might have pretended to think about it, I was sold. As a family, we made the trip to a Best Buy, the nearest of which was almost forty minutes away, so that I could make my first foray into the world of zero percent financing.

In the way that these things go, the laptop ended up being outdated within eight months, and within shouting distance of its fourth birthday it quit on me, essentially retiring into the job of a thousand-dollar paperweight.

By this time I had a little better income, and so I purchased a new computer, an Apple laptop that I would turn around and resell less than a year later when a newer, better one caught my eye. I had no justification for doing it. I’d just finished paying off the desktop I’d bought, and there was nothing wrong with my laptop except for the fact that it lacked a few features of the shinier, slimmer models.

Standing there in the Best Buy, I had to wonder if I really was one of those Mac snobs. And not just a Mac snob, but a tech snob in general. What other reason could there be for my attitude toward technology? Should a man’s worth be measured in flashy gadgets, I guess I thought I might rank a few rungs higher than other people. But, as we walked away from the Macs and toward the other computers, perched on their demure black shelves reaching onward to infinity, it became clear that all my toys really are are testaments to the fact that I don’t have a life. While other people are out getting drunk in a friend’s cornfield or sleeping around in the backs of sports car, I’m sitting alone in a sea of glowing lights and blinking buttons, waiting for my next toy.

Hey, Remember Screensavers?

2010-09-10T08:00:00.002-05:00

I was introduced to computers fairly early in life. They were large, beige colored boxes that for the most part held little interest for me. I mean, there's only so much use for a massive calculator when you have grass stained knees and a snot nose.

Somewhere around the end of my elementary school daze I ended up at my mother's work--home to many computers. I remember being fascinated with PegLeg, a Galaga-style space shooter, and with her STAR TREK screensaver.

Pre-the-world-is-ending-because-we're-energy-hogs, people liked to waste electricity by leaving their computers on all the time. Monitors weren't as good and screen-burn was apparently a real problem (I've only see it on ATM screens and CCTV monitors). Her Mac would instantly fire up the screensaver if you put the pointer in the far corner and didn't touch the mouse for a few moments.

Over-pixelated clown fish chugged their way through a blurry seafoam "fish tank." I was enthralled with screensavers. They were somewhere between cartoons and video games when it came to entertainment. The STAR TREK screensaver suite my mom bought had a number of really cool screensavers. There was one where the screen slowly filled up with tribbles (who multiply like rabbits). There was another one where the Enterprise drifted along the screen as the Tholian Web slowly unfurled around it--trapping the ship. I also saw a really funny Three Stooges screensaver ("ya knucklehead!").

A few years later (actually a lot later) I decided my Dell laptop needed a Matrix-like screensaver. I foolishly decided to not pay for said screensaver, but instead just find a free one online. Needless to say, I got my screensaver--and a host of trojans and other Internet nasties. Here it is, 2010 and I'm on my third computer...and you know what? I don't use screensavers.

I don't know very many people who still use them. Most people (such as myself) have their computers set up to just got black. No more clownfish. No more tribbles. No more Matrix scrawls.

Part of me misses screensavers. I'm sure there are people reading this who still use them, but for the most part, they've vanished from my world. Kinda makes me wonder what other things will vanish.

Fast Food Slogans From Red Light Districts

2010-09-10T07:59:00.002-05:00

McDonald's

"Over 1 Billion Serviced"

Burger King

"Have A Four-Way"

Wendy's

"Where's The Beefcake?"

Quiznos

"Mmmm...sexy!"

Taco Bell

"Think About Those Buns"

Dairy Queen

"Hot Eats, Cool Teats"

Kentucky Friend Chicken

"Finger Lickin' Good"

Your Favorite Song Plays Forever: PET SOUNDS

2010-09-03T08:00:00.008-05:00

"They say I got brains, but they ain't doing me no good, I wish they could..."

I fucking hate "Kokomo."

Thanks to "Kokomo," whenever I say things like "The Beach Boys kick-ass" people think I'm joking. Or out of my fucking mind.

But back in the 1960's, before the dust had settled (and Brian Wilson completely lost his mind) The Beach Boys were in direct competition with The Beatles. History tells us that The Beatles were able to surpass The Beach Boys, and ultimately became the greatest rock band in history (arguably) but that outcome wasn't always certain. At one time, The Beach Boys had The Beatles on the run.

The year was 1965, and The Beatles had just released their first truly "grown-up" record REVOLVER. A non-touring, drug addled Brian Wilson listened to what the fab four had done and was moved. The Beatles had crafted an album whose parts added up to a (somewhat) larger whole. Rather than play by the traditional album rules where a handful of singles were anchored by "filler," REVOLVER was a full album of complex, interesting songs. Challenged by what he heard, Wilson decided to roll up his sleeves and top what the Englishmen had done.

Several months later in May of 1966, The Beach Boys released PET SOUNDS.

Although it carries the name "Beach Boys," PET SOUNDS may as well be a Brian Wilson solo record. Wilson had been toying with going solo, and the majority of the songs on PET SOUNDS were written and arranged by Wilson and his then-collaborator Tony Asher. While the rest of the band toured Japan and Hawaii, Wilson and Asher toiled in the studios.

When I say "Beach Boys" I bet you think surfing, cars, girls, and "fun, fun, fun" right? While those things are...well...fun, they don't really strike an emotional chord deep within the soul. When I'm feeling sad because the world is unfair or I'm having problems with the woman I love, I don't want to hear about some bitch's T-bird.

And when I doubt myself and the direction my life is taking, I don't want to hear "Kokomo." Actually, there's never a time when I want to hear "Kokomo."

I want to hear PET SOUNDS.

PET SOUNDS is one man taking a knife and gutting his soul. With bitchin' harmonies and an intricate, crazy-ass production. I'm not ashamed to say that I've listened to PET SOUNDS over 100 times in the past 6 months (which is when I "discovered" it by accident). I'm also perfectly willing to admit (as a BEATLE-MANIAC) that PET SOUNDS is 1000% better than SGT. PEPPER (which was the album Paul and John crafted after hearing PET SOUNDS).

PET SOUNDS is full of self-realization ("That's Not Me"), rejection of selfishness ("I Know There's An Answer"), and the awe one feels in the presence of love...not that bullshit kind you see in movies, but the actual thing ("God Only Knows" one of the first commercial songs to feature "God" in the title).

PET SOUNDS lets me know that it's okay that I'm not perfect, and that I'm not alone when I feel loneliness and disappointment ("I Guess I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" a fantastic song about trying and failing to fit in). SGT. PEPPER is a damn fine record, but if I was despondent, it wouldn't stop me from killing myself--but PET SOUNDS would. PET SOUNDS is like that older brother who sees you're having trouble and takes you aside and says "Look, I've been there...it'll get better...probably."

Sure, there are a few "throw-away" tracks. Things that the record company insisted Wilson add to increase sales (like the cover of the West Indies traditional song "Sloop John B" and the sadly immature "Wouldn't It Be Nice"). But overall, PET SOUNDS as a whole, cohesive unit, is about one man pouring his guts out--the ugliness, the insecurity, the doubt. PET SOUNDS is love, disappointment, and modern-day confusion. I feel all these things almost every day.

The love songs of PET SOUNDS are (with the glaring exception of "Wouldn't It Be Nice") vastly more mature than anything else on the radio at the time. Songs like "You Still Believe in Me" (about recognizing a partner's loyalty and patience even when you've acted less-than-stellar) and "God Only Knows" are realistic examinations of love and relationships.

What does SGT. PEPPER offer the listener? The album has been hailed for decades as a "concept album," but I ask you--what is that concept? Is it that The Beatles are pretending to be this other/fake band and the record is supposed to "be" Sgt. Pepper and his band (and not The Beatles)? That may have been the album's conceit, but other than the first two songs (and the reprise just before the end) there is little else on the record that functions as "another band's song."

For me, SGT. PEPPER is an amazingly intricate rock record. It's the greatest band ever at the top of their game. But to call SGT. PEPPER a unified work of art is a bit much. PET SOUNDS has a few tracks that aren't quite "on program," but in general, I find it much more cohesive than The Beatles album.

And those tracks that do "stray" from the theme of loneliness and self-reflection were forced upon Wilson (ala "Sloop John B") to sell more records--and make PET SOUNDS "more commercial." But being more thematic than SGT. PEPPER isn't all that makes it better, in my opinion. While it can be said that PET SOUNDS was not 100% Brian Wilson (and his immense will), Wilson was not Paul McCartney--he didn't have John Lennon sitting beside him when he crafted his record.

With two geniuses in The Beatles (although there were three, though at the time George was still hiding in the shadow of Lennon/McCartney) SGT. PEPPER should be twice as fantastic and thought provoking as PET SOUNDS...and quite frankly, it's not.

The Beatles made more classic albums, but for a brief 37 minutes, one man trumped them. The next time you're at a place where music is sold, for crying out loud do yourself a favor and pick-up the greatest piece of pop music of all time. Pick-up PET SOUNDS.

Camper

2010-09-03T07:59:00.000-05:00

When I was growing up in Brighton, Illinois, I watched as my father fell in love with the idea of camping. As a sportsman, his love of the outdoors was an exceeding one. Fishing, hunting, he loved it all; in fact, he might have taken to the woods with nothing more than a canteen of water and a blade had there been a permit for it. My great-uncle David shared his passion for anything outdoors, and it was from him that my father developed a fascination with extended stays in the wild.

David and my great-aunt Juanita owned a camper, and every so often they would take it up to a campsite at Greenfield Lake, just a few short miles outside of Rockbridge and Where The Hell Are We? Though I didn't have a lot of experience with these kinds of establishments, the first time I went it seemed slightly downgraded. I saw it as something more akin to a Motel 6 than a Hyatt, and it had a lot to do with the clientele present. My aunt and uncle got a free pass for the fact of our relation, but a good portion of the others looked as though they'd been pulled straight out of the movie "Deliverance." Pickup trucks abounded, most of them with attached trailers, empty of the boats now bobbing down along the lakeshore. Generic country music seeped from unattended radios like broken barrels left abandoned as dogs with names like Rascal and Cooter barked halfheartedly at passers-by.

The scene around everything had a kind of unspoiled beauty to it, except, of course, for the rows of eggshell white and yellowish campers lined up in a rough grid. Everything else, though, would have made for a nice, if somewhat generic, postcard. A breeze ran through the lush trees. The water glistened, golden with the afternoon sun. Empty cans of Bud Light lay half-crumpled and just a lazy toss from each fraying mesh folding chair.

After we arrived, my father split off to talk with my uncle and cousins. Meanwhile, my mother, my brother, and I planted ourselves at the wooden picnic table with my aunt and grandmother, who were sitting there with my cousin Tammy and her daughter Stacey. They all started talking as I looked around, surveying the place, already trying to figure out how long I would last if I made a run through the cornfields at my back and tried to get back home. After a while, what surprised me most was the overall quiet of things. Every so often one might hear a car crunching gravel as it made its way down the makeshift road or the whine of a little three-person fishing boat cutting its way across the water. There were no car horns, no trains or airplanes, and no television.

The silence was intriguing at first, but then as it grew longer and longer I realized that there was nothing to distract me. No video games. No cartoons. "How," I wanted to ask, "are you supposed to make the time go by?" It never occurred to me that this was the whole point of camping: an escape from the daily grind of work and life. What made no sense, when I thought about it, was what a person got in return. Sure, paper plates could be used instead of dishes, but there were numerous times when our family did that at home. And how was catching and gutting a fish easier than ordering a Fillet-O-Fish at a drive through window?

The answer came to me when Aunt Juanita invited us to see the inside of their camper. She opened the dinky screen door and we climbed up the two metal steps after her. Inside lay all the wondrous inventions and technological marvels that made modern life worth living, all conveniently packaged inside what amounted to an oversized U-Haul. My eyes grew wide as they gazed upon the two-person couch, the small-basin kitchen sink, the fold-away dining table, and (Lord, God, hallowed be thy name!) the television. To the left of the TV was a smaller room occupied by a short, squat bed just big enough so that three fifteen-year-olds could lie down side-by-side and just barely have their feet on the bed. But that paled in comparison to the television.

I sat down on the couch, relishing the soft, cool purr of the air conditioner and the warm glow of the TV. It didn't even matter that I couldn't explain the first thing about home runs or switch hitters, my eyes never left that soccer game.

Eventually my dad and Uncle David came inside, and when my father saw me sprawled out on the couch with my mouth agape, he must have mistaken my relief for enjoyment. That coupled with my mom's very interested examination of the midget-sized refrigerator sealed the deal, and by the same time next year we had our own camper.

I was eleven when my parents, brother, and I took a trip to a local RV and camper dealership. The parking lot reminded me of the lake, except where there had been grass now we had smooth asphalt to walk on; and instead of trees offering shade, I looked up to see a billboard promising guaranteed financing for a St. Louis used auto outfit. While the lot was nothing to scoff at, it was eclipsed by the main building, which basically doubled as a single massive showroom. Inside were open displays of all the latest models of campers and RVs. The concrete floor was covered in patches of fake grass to help sell the idea that, to be living in this dream, all one had to do was sign a few papers.

After making the rounds and looking at vehicles which appeared to be nothing less than mobile palaces fit for a third-world ruler, we moved back into a more realistic price range. Ultimately, my dad had the decision narrowed down to two campers: one which was nearly identical to my uncle's, right down to the "Mallard" printed in blue-green letters along the front, with the namesake duck flying beneath it; the other one was more or less the same, just a little longer to accommodate an additional set of bunk beds at the back.

After some deliberation, and under the coda of "bigger must be better," my parents walked away with one new camper and the promise of many adventures to come.

Our first trip out, we took the camper to Greenfield on a joint venture with my Aunt Juanita and Uncle David. After going through the lengthy maneuvering process of what amounted to a school bus squeezing into a spot the size of a Smart Car, we set up our plot with folding chairs and coolers full of soda. After a full afternoon of lounging around, snacking on the camper's stash of candy, I ate dinner, which was the haul from any number of fishing trips down to the lake. Later, as the sun set, Uncle David started a bonfire, and under the assumption that hotdogs and marshmallows make for a fine late-night snack, like stereotypical Midwesterners we ate again.

That night, as we retired to our beds, I listened as the first rumblings of a thunderstorm rolled in. Within a half hour the sounds had become a presence, rocking our little plastic box like an annoyed child with a broken toy. The rain fell hard, making a cacophony of noise against the roof and the sides of the camper. Things got so bad that my parents got up to check the weather on our own little TV, which we'd taken out of my brother's room for the trip; but the camper's antenna was little more than a piece of wire taped to the roof, and so none of the local stations would come in.

Finally, after a full twenty minutes of us not having died, my parents went back to bed. This left me huddled in my bottom bunk, built into the back corner so that my legs lay between the outside wall and the bathroom. Lying there, I felt like I was in a coffin, and when the next clap of thunder struck, I dug myself out of bed and went over to the couch, right next to the little room where my parents slept.

I fell asleep sometime after, and the next morning I swore that that would be my last time camping.

From then on, whenever my parents would arrange for us to go, I went so far as to stay home by myself. My father tried to dissuade me by telling me that, if I stayed home, I'd have to cut the front and back lawn while I was there. I think he expected me to relent, but he underestimated by desire to never be in a camper again. I gladly accepted the task of mowing the lawn in the middle of the summer in exchange for not having to spend another day kicking around a lake and trying out every folding lawn chair ever manufactured to see which one made a body of water most entertaining.

My parents' fascination with camping dwindled out as the years went on. I'm not sure if it was the hassle of hauling it back and forth, the arduousness of stockpiling everything one might possibly need for a weekend, or the frustration of setting the thing up. Maybe the luster just wore off after my mother and father had tried it out a few times. By the time I learned how to drive, the camper became nothing more than a shape in my father's garage, a silent testament to my dad's adventurous spirit and my lack thereof.

Happy. Apples.

2010-08-27T08:00:00.002-05:00

As the weather gets a little cooler and the leaves begin to turn colors...the Happy Apples return to the store shelves.

I love Fall. I like how cool it gets (not too hot, not too cold). I like how the bugs go away (yuk). I like the back-to-school sales.

But I LOVE Happy Apples. When the apple harvest comes in, the farmers (i.e. the good folks over at Happy Apples Inc.) dip their precious fruit into creamy caramel and kissed with peanuts (or sprinkles if you prefer).

Last week my wife and I found the Happy Apples at our local supermarket--and I was in heaven. I haven't always been a H.A. super-fan, but for the past two years I've been more hard "core" about eating them. There's something special about fruit covered with candy, which is then covered with nuts. I think if I could eat only one thing, for the rest of my life, I'd choose Happy Apples.

The first bite is always a challenge, where to begin? Should I start in a nut-free bald spot? Or should I take "the plunge" and bite into that massive cluster of peanutty-goodness? Decisions, decisions. Maybe this sort of thing isn't your thing...I can understand. But for me, there's nothing better in life.

Happy Apples are also a really good way to trick kids into eating fruit. I always eat more of the apple than I would if it weren't slathered in sugar and nuts.

What else can I say? It's the food of the Gods! Oh Happy Apples, if I weren't married already...I'd marry you (and then eat you). I'm not sure anyone can truly understand the depth of my love for this sweet autumnal treat...

Seriously though, I've decided to keep track of how many I eat this year (so far six). The apples tend to vanish from the store shelves just before Thanksgiving. I think I can eat 50, I think that's a legitimate goal.

I'm going to keep working out (this is week four working out at the gym) but I'm also going to focus on eating Happy Apples.

ALSO, DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT THE SCATTERSHOT PODCAST! NEW EPISODE POSTING SATURDAY AUGUST 28, 2010!!!

MAACOh My God

2010-08-27T07:59:00.000-05:00

While I do appreciate the ease of living that having a car affords me, I can’t get over the fact that they’re so expensive to maintain. When I first started driving I rode under the impression that, after the final payment was made, or if your parents bought you one outright, that was it. End of story. Even if the car was a ragged, aging, piece of junk (which mine was), there would be nothing which would demand my semi-hard-earned money. Except for gas.

As the years drove on, my tires, much like my disillusionment with the ways of the automobile world, wore increasingly thin. The first time I bought new Goodyears for my aquamarine Ford Tempo was an experience that I will never forget, namely because it was something akin to watching someone steal cash from my wallet and then light it on fire.

This week I not only had to buy new tires, but my brakes recently decided that they, too, wanted some attention. And so, like a frazzled mother with children in a toy store, I broke down and made arrangements to get two new tires, an alignment, and have my brakes serviced. The entire process took about five hours. That’s from the time I arrived five minutes late for my appointment to when they called, saying they were finished, and I nearly cried as I checked inside my wallet for the poor credit card, scuffed and chipped like it had just returned from a shopping trip with one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.

My grandmother gave me a ride back down to the garage — this after waking up early to bring me back home the first time. It felt strange having to depend of someone else for transportation. It was as if I were missing something vital to my very existence, and I wondered how on earth someone could go through their life not having a vehicle for transportation. At the garage I walked up to the cashier’s window. I opened my wallet, anticipating a total at least as devastating as news of a nuclear attack. Really, the number she gave me stood more in the ballpark of a tornado warning, but that still didn’t stop me from cursing, slightly, under my breath.

Dear Creepy-Ass Personal Trainer at My Gym

2010-08-20T08:00:00.005-05:00

Dear Creepy-Ass Personal Trainer at My Gym,

Hi. Wow, this is awkward.

Okay, so I get it that you're in better shape than I am. I really, really, really get it. Your size XXS T-shirt looks fantastic (wow your nipples are big). You have a very square, tough-guy jaw. I guess, if I wasn't such a lazy bastard, and if I didn't like food so much...I'd want to be just like you.

BUT--I kinda want you to leave me the fuck alone.

I know, I know...I get a free session once a month. I realize that I'm paying for this service, but I want you to stay the hell away from me "bro." See, I got two rules: I don't trust people that are taller than me AND I don't trust people who have necks wider than their heads.

When you came up to me, while I was on the elliptical and started talking to me about my shorts...yeah, that freaked me the fuck out. I kinda wanted to punch you and then run away.

So, no. I don't want my free session this month or next month. That whole "don't call me, I'll call you" thing? Yeah. Just keep waiting for that call bro.

Sincerely,

Jason

Big Deals at Small Prices

2010-08-20T07:59:00.001-05:00

My childhood was lived in department stores. That's how it seemed, anyway, because my mother had a love for shopping that ranked just shy of her love for my brother and myself, and well above her care for our pets. The everyday memories of my mother do not take place in parks or at Bingo halls, but rather among racks of moderately priced kitchen textiles and aisles of crafting supplies.

While other children were off learning about the rules of baseball and football from their fathers, I opted instead to hang out with my mother. And so, while I cannot tell the difference between a field goal and a grand slam, I can find my way around a Walmart or a Target like nobody's business. If one of my friends in grade school had suddenly come up to me and said, "I wonder where I can find some glass champagne flutes at Big Lots," I could have directed him with ease. Or if one of my teachers sprang a pop quiz on me, asking me to close my eyes and describe the interior of a Value City, I would have passed with flying white and brown colors.

If anything, I might have considered myself a navigator of retail, something akin to a seaman and his frequented waters. Except my boat was a shopping cart, and my sails were made of plastic shopping bags. Had the other kids my age been competing with me for the title of World's Best Retail Expert, I would have feigned congeniality but secretly told myself, "You're the one, you're the one. You're a shoe-in for this. This is what you were born for. You know where the highest thread-count sheet sets are, and you can get from there to the paper towels in no time flat." If I couldn't join in a conversation about the St. Louis Cardinals, then I could at least convince myself that I might impress someone with my knowledge of department store floor plans.

By the time I was eight I was off exploring on my own. The toy department became my destination of choice, and every time my mother and I would go somewhere we would part ways. She would go through her lists and stashes of clipped coupons, looking for basics like toilet paper and detergent. She'd then make her way to the grocery sections to stock up on cans of peas and pork 'n' beans to join the ranks of other canned foods and gallon jugs of water waiting in our basement. Meanwhile, I would drool over $40 Lego sets and Star Trek action figures, oblivious to the coming nuclear armageddon intimated by my mother's cache of food and water. I found myself so enraptured by the toys that my mother would have to come find me when she was ready to leave, prying my fingers off of a set of miniature plastic spaceships or a Batman doll with a working utility belt. "Come on," she'd say. "We...have...to...GO."

The first time my mother didn't come to find me was an experience, and a real eye opener. We were in a Target store and, somehow, I exhausted my desire to browse, so I set off to find my mother, thinking, I guess, that that would be the end of our stay there. As each department came and went with no Mom, a growing panic took hold. It's funny how rational though can escape a person when their age is eternities away from double digits and their height's rivaled by a yardstick. Oh my god, I thought, my mother has abandoned me. She finally got fed up with my neediness and my always wanting that Space Enforcer Lego set and she's taken off, and now I'm going to have to live in this Target store until I'm old enough to hitchhike back home.

After what felt like anywhere from three to seven trips around the store, passing families with their kids in tow, I started to reevaluate my pride in thinking I knew how to make it on my own in places like this. Sure it was nice being able to go look at toys I wouldn't be able to afford until I was well into my twenties, and it was something of a relief to say I had a skill that few of the others my age had (even if that skill was at finding discounted hand towels and dish soap on clearance endcaps). But what was it worth when you couldn't find the one thing that mattered?

All the dish soap and towels in the world wouldn't do me any good, and neither would Legos unless I could somehow build a giant, pedal-powered dune buggy that would drive me home. But, judging by how long it took me to follow the step-by-step instructions for sets as simple as the police station or the underwater sea lab, my Lego idea was a no-go.

Ultimately, by the time I came around to the toys once again, I was on the verge of tears. The thought of going up front, of asking strangers for help, made me lightheaded. It was the last option I had, and I was just about to take it when I saw my mother turn a corner up ahead and start making her way toward me. The weight of my relief felt like a quilt, heavy on my chest, and I walked, nearly running, to her and the fully-laden cart whose plastic bottom sagged like an overweight dog.

With a cursory once-over to make sure I wasn't bleeding or clutching something I hoped she'd buy, she said, "Well, I think I'm about ready. Did you see anything you liked?"

I started to speak, but I couldn't think of anything I'd looked at. Instead, I just said, "Not really," and, pressing myself close to her, we made our way up front.

Smoking

2010-08-13T08:00:00.001-05:00

Growing up, I never imagined that I'd be a smoker. Both my parents smoked when I was younger, and I hated it. Smoking was glamorous like it is in the movies--it was messy and smelly. The idea of being addicted to something (other than Pepsi) was also very repugnant to me.

The thought of "trying" it out never occurred to me, until one night while I was at work. Now, this was back in my security guard days (of course, everything terrible is from this period in my life). I had to relieve the guard who was working in the guard booth, who was a notorious smoker.

Actually, come to think of it, all of the guys smoked.

UH-OH! Peer pressure!

When I got to the booth, I caught my fellow guard sleeping. Well, to tell you the truth, I scared the shit out of him. He jumped about ten feet in the air when I knocked on the door. It was pretty funny because he was about 65 years old. He tried to play it off like he wasn't sleeping (the cardinal sin of guarding) so I played along and said nothing. In in his haste to get back inside (because it was cold and because he was embarrassed I caught him sleeping) he forgot some of his things.

One of the things he forgot was his newspaper. The other was a single cigar.

I found it an hour later while I was reading the papers (i.e. the funnies). It was wrapped in plastic, but it still smelled fantastic. When I'd worked at Walgreen's I'd loved the tobacco aisle where we kept all the cigars and pipe tobacco. The smells were all so colorful and delicious. Of course, I knew if I put a flame to the cigar it would go from smelling like exotic spices to odor of cat turds.

Still, the smell was intoxicating. I put the cigar in my pocket and forgot all about it--until I got home. Since I worked the graveyard shift, everyone in my family was gone or going when I got home. An hour after everyone had left I crept upstairs to my parent's room and scrounged up a lighter from my father's sock drawer (yes, that's where he used to keep spare lighters).

I went out onto the back porch and unwrapped the cigar, feeling like an outlaw. Tossing the wrapping aside, I put one end in my mouth and lit the other end (this was a cheap cigar, no need to cut the end off). To my surprise, the smoke didn't smell all that bad. I took a few puffs then stomped the thing out.

Smoking was overrated, I thought.

A few nights later I got in a fight with my folks (which was common in those days) and on my way to work I decided to buy a pack of smokes. It was kind of a "I'll show them! I'll slowly develop lung cancer!" As immature as that sounds, it's probably the best reason to start smoking. I puffed on a cigarette on the way to work and again on my lunch break. For some reason I just didn't get why people smoked. I mean it wasn't really all that great, just smelly and expensive.

I decided to try one more on the way home. With one hand on the wheel, I lit a cigarette (a Camel by the way) and stuck it to my lips. I was about to take a puff when I hit one of Kansas City's world-famous potholes. The sudden jolt interrupted my puff and I inhaled (for the first time) by accident.

Suddenly, my head my swimming and I knew why people smoked! I'd been doing it wrong! It took me a few attempts to replicated my inhale, but once I figured it out I became a smoking fiend.

Eventually I made a few attempts to quit, but it wasn't until I got married that I was able to quit for good.

Red Envelope: A Love Poem for Netflix

2010-08-13T07:59:00.000-05:00

Bringing me movies both day and night

Your limitless choices are just right.

Even if $20.99 a month is due,

Oh, Red Envelope, how I love you.

So many options, so many choices,

From Ugly Betty to Little Voices.

Truthfully, you never cease to amaze

With your suggestions via critical praise.

My dear Netflix I will never quit,

Because, oh, Red Envelope, you are the ... best!

Amazon.com: KINDLE, now only $0.75

2010-08-06T08:00:00.007-05:00

E-readers are the future (or so I'm told). As a writer, I'm a little bummed at the idea of owning digital files as opposed to a physical book that I can put up on my shelf. On the other hand, modern books are made pretty cheaply and don't last "forever" like older books.

So maybe digital files are the way to go. I don't know.

What I do know is, Amazon.com's Kindle is the leading e-book reader on the market. The only other reader I can think of (besides the iPAD, which does so much more I don't think of it as an e-reader) is the Nook (Barnes & Noble's in-house e-reader).

The Kindle seems to be doing for e-books what Apple's iPOD did for MP3's. And much like Apple's fantastically successful music player, the Kindle keeps getting updates/upgrades. It seems like every time I log into Amazon.com I'm informed of some new-and-improved version of the Kindle (which I can PRE-ORDER NOW!).

As annoying as that is (why should I buy something that will be better in a few months?) what's even MORE annoying are the near daily emails I get regarding the PRICE of the Kindle. I wake up, take a shower, and then I go into my office and check my email. Usually I have about three to five emails every morning. One is from Groupon (a daily online coupon/deal-of-the-day), one from Careerbuilder.com (from my unemployed days), one is from 1-800-flowers (because I like to send flowers), and finally I have between one to two emails from Amazon.com.

Now, I realize that I could unsubscribe from all of these daily emails/spam. But I'm lazy. And I like getting mail (sorry, I'm lame). The Amazon.com and the Groupon emails have the potential to actually be useful to me, so I wouldn't want to opt out of either of them of anyway.

BUT, the Amazon.com emails are annoying because it seems like once a week I'm told that the Kindle has dropped in price.

"Amazon.com: KINDLE now only $139!"

It seems that the price of this thing is constantly dropping, to quote Mr. Dogg, like "it's hot." I imagine a day will come where I'll wake up and see that the Kindle has dropped in price so much, that'll it'll be free (and on it's way to my house!).

I remember there was some controversy surrounding the release of the last iPhone when the price dropped dramatically just after the product's launch. I'm sure there's a very good, sound economical reason for lowering the price of high-end consumer electronics shortly after the product comes out...but I don't get it.

"Amazon.com: KINDLE now only $0.00 (we took the initiative and just mailed you one, Jason...you're welcome)!!!"

Fictional Newspaper Headlines Regarding the Prop 8 Trial Decision

2010-08-06T08:00:00.006-05:00

PROP 8 OVERTURNED, DISAPPOINTED FUNDAMENTALISTS PRAY FOR THE WORLD, SMITING OF FOES

RIGHT-WING PUNDITS CLAIM JUDGE WALKER “PRO-GAY FOR PAY”

VICTORY FOR GAYS LEADS TO QUESTION: WHAT IDIOTIC THING CAN CONSERVATIVES GO APESHIT OVER NEXT?

DESPITE SETBACK, WESTBORO BAPTISTS REMAIN COMMITTED TO DOUCHEBAGISH CRACKPOTISM

NEWS OF PROP 8’S OVERTURNING ECLIPSES ATTENTION SOUGHT BY LADY GAGA’S NEWEST OUTFIT MADE OF BABY SKULLS AND KITTEN TONGUES

Word Addiction: A Brief History of My One True Love

2010-07-30T08:01:00.001-05:00

Even if she wasn’t a huge reader herself, my mother knew the importance of making me fall in love with books. At an early age I was given a handful of little plastic-bound tomes to sift through so that I might learn the building blocks of what would eventually become my first real addiction. Had the doctors allowed such a thing, she might have brought some into the delivery room and put them in my tiny, placenta-covered hands to jumpstart the process. But, as was her fashion, she stuck to the rules and waited until we got home.

By the time I was in kindergarten, I knew the alphabet, and thus was bored to death as my teacher, Mrs. Young, showed videotapes of little cartoon consonants and vowels acting as though they were people. Instead of watching to figure out how a group of sans-serif individuals could befriend one another to make simple words, I resorted to looking out windows and staring at walls, wishing that I were at home.

That next year, during a parent-teacher conference, my teacher refused to believe that I could read a storybook deemed beyond what a first-grader was able to do. My parents disagreed, and so in a battle of wills, it was agreed upon that I would be forced to read the book in class. Aloud. In front of everyone. All in all, the book was pretty easy. It had to do with a star or a baby lion or something along those lines. Nothing beyond Charlotte’s Web or anything by Judith Viorst or even a James Patterson novel, for that matter. Still, I got up in front of my class and got about five pages in, a little more than halfway through the book, when my teacher told me that that was enough. “That’s all we have time for today,” she said, sending me back to my seat.

Throughout the rest of my grade school years I took an insane pleasure from copying down words and learning to spell, and on our visits to the school library my friends would find me salivating like a dog waiting on the promise of a treat. Every few months when my teachers would hand out the leaflets for a new Scholastic Book Fair, I would treasure it, worrying the edges with my fingers and taking in each title’s little synopsis with what amounted, back then, to ecstasy.

It wasn’t until middle school that I began to learn the joys of writing myself. Before then, my knowledge of composition had been limited to basic school reports, which were cookie-cut and had all the flexibility of a back brace. My first attempts at writing for fun were transcriptions of video games I’d played, scribbled in pencil in my school notebooks. Then came fantasies about spaceships from television shows like Star Trek scouring the galaxy for adventure. No one saw these. Not even my mother, who tried peering over my shoulder to see what I was up to, sitting at my desk, my back to my bedroom door, hunched over with one hand hidden and working furiously at something. Looking back, I suppose the concern she displayed might have been at the mistaken notion that I, at twelve years old, had prematurely discovered the fun that is masturbation.

From my space-bound adventures, I transitioned into more humorous fare. Namely, a collection of stories that concerned my friend and classmate Tiffany, who would make me laugh with her made-up recollections about living in a Mexican hut with a feline named HeyCat. The stories came out in a frenzy of excitement that was ushered in when I showed the first one to my language arts teacher, Mrs. Althoff, who would sit at her desk and read them, laughing occasionally against the hush of the classroom. The sound of her laughing was like a drug, and so I set out like a junkie looking for my fix.

At this time, books too became more adventurous, as I reached beyond the children’s fare of Judy Blume and Louis Sachar and into the deeper waters of Lowis Lowry and Rodman Philbrick, both of whom demonstrated a fascinating ability to achieve in me an emotional reaction. I read my first Stephen King novel my last year of eighth grade.

Throughout the rest of middle school and into high school, writing became more than just a hobby. I felt as though I had been called to write, and I took the mantle of doing so with all the seriousness and gravitas capable of a slightly overweight teenage boy into writing stories about talking Mexican cats and intergalactic spaceships. Stories stretched and reached for things which they had never attempted before. Characters grew larger as explosions diminished; humor took a backseat to my crazy, wild-eyed attempts at lassoing the same emotional power that I could see authors wielding in their works.

College brought on courses in creative writing, which introduced me to people who had the same desires as me. It felt refreshing to be in a room full of people who I imagined got the same thrill out of crating a well-worded sentence as me, even if in reality few of them actually enjoyed writing as much as they enjoyed having one less elective course to add to next semester’s schedule.

When I came into a class called Practical Criticism — a course dedicated to the routine dissection of stories, as if they were frogs — I first met Jason Wendleton, the coauthor of this blog. By the end of the semester we had struck up a friendship, one that I’m 98.6 percent certain remains to this day. Part of the draw was the mutual attraction to the limitless possibilities of writing. The magic of creation. The power of good prose. And, of course, our strong aversion to looking for real jobs.

After college was finished for Jason and myself — he with his genuine UM-St. Louis English degree and me with my still-in-progress dual major in Laziness and Procrastination — we started talking about our mutual desire to start putting our works out into the world. Seeing as neither of us had any major publications aside from some of Jason’s columns for The Current, the college newspaper, and a short story I’m managed to weasel into the UM-St. Louis LitMag, we decided to start a blog: this very one.

It is hard to believe how quickly time can pass. As most people do, I think the process gets quicker each year. It was approximately 365 days ago that Jason and I founded this little blog, this scattershot collection of random trinkets and pieces of work that remind us (or remind me, anyway) of why it is that writing draws us in like it does. It takes me beyond the ordinary, and it fills in the little gaps in life with things that I would never hope to accomplish. Through writing, both my own and others’, I have seen this world and more, lived years in other people’s lives.

My crazes for caffeine, candy, and fast food have all come and gone with relative ease, but the one thing that always draws me back, even when I try my hardest to ignore it, is the written word. When I sit down to write, I am reminded of the sheer power of imagination, and the everyday magic of creation. That, and it gives me the hope that, one day, I won’t have to have a real job.

Happy birthday, Scattershot.

Happy Birthday SCATTERSHOT, You Bitch...

2010-07-30T08:00:00.003-05:00

Believe it or not, but this blog hasn't been as much work as I thought it would be. One post a week, every week for a year sounds like it might be a lot but its been quite manageable.

Of course there have been a lot of goofy ass pictures.

On this historic occasion, the one year anniversary of SCATTERSHOT, I want to first off congratulate my co-author Mike. Not only has Mike delivered each and every week (for a whole year!) but some of those posts were actually pretty good!

I kid. I kid.

Thought provoking? Hilarious? Insightful?

Check. Check. And Check.

I couldn't ask for a better co-author. Look, Mike's as busy as I am okay? He's got a lot of toenails to clip and salsa to make (with his feet) so the fact that he's hung in there for a whole year is really to be commended. I knew that we could PHYSICALLY do the blog, but I wasn't sure if we could do it MENTALLY.

Does that make sense?

Writing is my one great love (after Leah of course). I liken it to mowing the lawn. I don't like mowing the lawn, but I LOVE getting to relax after I've gone out and worked in the heat. Nothing tastes better than that first cold drink. Nothing feels better than that icy shower. Writing, for me, is like that. The act of writing is hard--it's a struggle that if I had my druthers, I'd just go ahead and skip. But without writing, I couldn't taste that cool, delicious victory. I wouldn't be able to savor that inner warmth that comes from completing a post (or a novel, which by the way, not to toot my own horn, but I finished my third a few weeks ago).

Loyal Wendleton-ites will no doubt know the story behind SCATTERSHOT. How I had another blog, where I bitched about so much personal shit that I ended up pissing off a bunch of people. This blog only pisses off the Westboro people, and honestly...what doesn't piss them off???

What does the future hold for SCATTERSHOT? Probably another year of semi-intelligent personal narratives and slightly humorous cartoons. I've always wanted to do a podcast and two weekends ago I brought it up with Mike (over really greasy hamburgers). He seemed excited by the idea, but it could have just been gas. I'm too stupid to figure it out...but if someone wants to call Mike and tell him how to set up a podcast I WILL BE THERE with my viking hat on!!!

Anyway, I would have quit a long time ago, were it not for Mike's perseverance. I actually thought about pulling a press conference "I am IRON MAN!" and announce in this post that I was done. But I can't quit, can I?

I love it too much.

Happy Birthday SCATTERSHOT. You bitch.

Can We Stop For Tacos On Our March On Washington?

2010-07-23T08:01:00.000-05:00

Never in my life have I been much of an activist. I've always been fascinated by the dedication and drive protesters bring to their beliefs, but for the most part I just can't summon up the energy to rail against the status quo. Things have come and gone for which I've had one feeling or another, but something that would spur me to get up out of my chair would have to be a rally for free tacos or a demonstration involving drinking pina coladas. Indoors. On lounge chairs.

To say that I am a lazy person, I feel, is a bit unfair. True, I don't march on Washington or take part in sit-ins. Whereas some people organize their next rally against homophobic politicians or a war taking place in a far-off land, I take pill bottles and outfit them with construction paper and googly eyes, transforming them into cartoon characters. To me, this is a productive use of my time.

Still, that's not to say that I've never been involved with demonstrations.

My friend Amber is more politically inclined than I am. She and her boyfriend Andy display a motivation that would inspire those looking to make changes in the world. Their level of commitment is such that I can only describe it as "overwhelming," something I can attest to since I was with the two of them for the first rally I ever attended.

Together we were protesting the suspension of a former English teacher of ours for his classroom use of an article exploring the element of homosexuality in the animal kingdom. The article at its worst was timid (nothing more than what a person might read in National Geographic), but from the furor that a single parent raised after reading it, one might have believed the article was an excerpt from a Jackie Collins novel. And so our teacher, Mr. DeLong, had been suspended, and on the night on the school board meeting to determine whether or not he would keep his job, a small army of protesters gathered outside the building to show their support.

My decision to go was based on the emotional connection I had with Mr. DeLong. As a former student and someone who had once imagined himself becoming an English teacher, it felt even more unfair that he should be chastised for encouraging his students to think outside the normal bounds of small-town Midwestern life. As a homosexual the fact that someone would make a fuss over her child having to learn about the inevitabilities of gayness among peacocks and turtles made me angry.

While the motivations behind my going were sizable, the protest itself felt a bit underwhelming. In my head I'd conjured up scenes of people boasting signs and making catchy chants. People would throw bottles in fits of rage. And might it be too much to ask that someone set themselves on fire, like in those schoolbook pictures of Buddhist monks during the Vietnam War? What I got instead was a crowd of maybe seventy people, all of whom were in favor of Mr. DeLong's reinstatement. There were no angry counter-protesters. No screaming mobs. Nothing but a group of students and middle-aged parents standing outside a converted house in the middle of a field.

I guess, in a way, it's good that nothing got out of hand. But a part of me had to wonder, where's the fun in this? If I'm giving up my free evening, can't I get a little excitement in return? After all, the November air was chilly, and my feet were on the edge of a mild discomfort from standing for an hour and a half.

The more professional protesters, the ones who do this kind of thing all the time, might vilify me for that kind of a statement, and so it seems like a fair thing to say that it's a good thing I am not involved in many demonstrations. All in all, I make for a pretty poor protester. This being no more evident than when, at seven-thirty, I told my friend Amber that I was leaving to go to a birthday party. In all fairness, I'd made the commitment long before I agreed to come to the rally, but I did feel slightly guilty when I learned later that Amber and Andy and a good group of the protesters were there, showing their silent support, until a little after midnight.

So maybe it's a good thing that I don't make it a priority to involve myself in political demonstrations or rallies against injustices. After an initial bout of shame, I'm coming to terms with the knowledge of my place in the grand scheme of things. When I imagine myself at any of the great movements in history – Vietnam, D.C.'s civil rights marches, the 1969 Miss America Protest – I cannot help but hear my voice among the chants of civil disobedience, dampening their power, saying, "Hey, I thought there were going to be pina coladas! And where are the lounge chairs? Well, can we at least stop for some tacos?"

SCATTERSHOT Blog VS. The Westboro Baptist Church

2010-07-23T08:00:00.009-05:00

Back in March, I first actually saw the nutcases from the Westboro Baptist Church live and in person. My wife and I were attending An Evening With Kevin Smith out in Kansas City. Unfortunately for Smith (and us) K.C. Missouri is much too close to Kansas, which is where these vermin hail from.

There were quite a few of them, as I recall, holding their "God Hates America" and "God Hates Fags" signs. They were protesting Smith because of his film DOGMA I guess.

See, that's the first problem I have with these people at the Westboro Baptist Church--their message is so random. It's almost like a child, or someone with a child-like mind, put their whole message together.

For example, they've recently added a sign to their protests that feature a drawing of the Gulf of Mexico with a giant oil blot on it that reads "Gods Wrath" or "Thank God for His Wrath." I don't recall exactly what it says, but the point is this: the BP oil spill is God's way of punishing us.

Yikes. And what is "He" punishing us for? Well the gays of course. Don't you see? Doesn't that make complete sense?

Yeah, I don't get it either. I don't get the whole "Thank God for dead soldiers" either. So, our boys in the military are dead...and it's all because we're not locking people for being gay? I mean, last I checked, this country isn't exactly the most open-minded/progressive when it comes to sexual orientation.

OH MAN!!! Imagine the oil spill we'd get if DID legalize gay marriage! I bet God would make it RAIN oil. Hmm...maybe we should do it just to solve this pesky energy crisis. But I digress...

So I'm a closet Lady Gaga fan. Even though I freely admit to liking a wide variety of music, Gaga (when she first came out) was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. Now that she continues to put out interesting music and music videos (not to mention have wacky-ass fashion sense) I can be a bit more open about my feels for Gaga. She's not a one-hit-wonder but more of a cultural force of nature.

Lady Gaga, however, made one fatal mistake--she doesn't hate the gays. So Fred Phelps and his hate mongers decided to stage a protest at her July 17 St. Louis show. Because I didn't have a job for so long, we couldn't go to the show...but my wife found out about a counter-protest that sounded interesting.

I've never been one to shy away from confrontation, so of course I wanted to go. One thing that really bums me out about the Westboro nuts (or any nuts really) is that they ARE A VERY VOCAL MINORITY. I truly believe that most people are inherently good, and are repulsed by their "God hates Fags" rhetoric. Which is why a counter-protest is actually very important: it lets everyone know (for sure) that there are more decent people in the world.

I contacted my co-author, Mike, who agreed to join us outside the Scotttrade Center to protest the protesters. Early in the afternoon, Mike and I went to Walgreens where his "freedom debit card" purchased four pieces of "free speech poster board." Two neon green. Two neon pink. Then we went over to one of Leah's social work friend's house to make our sign. I initially wanted to just let Leah make my sign...but then I thought about and decided to do the right thing and put my creative mind to good use.

I needed a gimmick, something that would startle people into reading my sign, but at the same time parody the religious idiocy the Phelps crew use to justify their hate. I knew I was wearing my Viking hat to the protest, because Leah said I could (and she never lets me wear it in public). And thus, after a few minutes of thinking...and protest sign was born:

We drove downtown and found the streets choked with people. A Cardinals game and just let out (which the Phelps people also protested, apparently). By the time we got to the arena, we were sure both protests would be well under way. Gaga's fans (dubbed "little monsters") were out in droves.

But where were the Phelps protesters? We actually walked all the way around the arena before finding them. There were, just as I thought, more counter-protesters than Phelps-people. Now here is what pisses me off--leading up to the show there were many stories written online in the local media about the "Planned Westboro Protest." The media are more than happy to give these fuckers a platform to stand on. What is NEVER reported is how few of these people actually show up (unless the event is nearer to Kansas). There were only SIX people holding signs across the street, behind a little police barricade.

Leah's sign was simpler and more to the point.

What was also cool--Mike and I ran into our old friend Colin who was running one of what turned out to be two counter-protests:

Two protests? And only six people on the other side? It was pathetic. It was basically no contest, Westboro was out gunned (there were around 100 on our side). My sign got the reaction I wanted (a few head shakes, many requests for pictures) which made me happy, but the fact that so few people actually showed up to protest a pop-singer made me happier.

Can you even see them?

This man's sign beat mine in the "WTF?" category. But I still won for best headgear.

Here's a video that you HAVE to watch covering the event. We all made "the cut" as it were...and so did my little SCATTERSHOT advertisement (special thanks to Mike for finding this one online):

I was also filmed from afar (with Mike) in this random clip Leah found on YouTube:

A Day In The Life...

2010-07-16T08:01:00.005-05:00

Cartoons

2010-07-16T08:00:00.001-05:00

My favorite historical figure, of all time, is Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was a true "Renaissance Man. " He did everything--he was a scientist, a historian, author, publisher, postman, inventor, politician, diplomat, etc. Nowadays people will tell you to "specialize" and focus on one thing...but I've always thought there was a place for the "jack-of-all-trades."

I'm a jack-of-all-trades.

One of the many interests I have is animation and comic books. I recently saw TOY STORY 3 with Mike, the other writer at this blog, and I loved it. I visit the local comic book shop at least one a month, and I watch cartoons. I'm not ashamed of it.

On my birthday I watched a Hayao Miyazaki film.

I'm kinda artistic, but I'm limited when it comes to drawing. That said, I've penned three different, multi-issued, comic books. The first was my "Tiny Batman" comic strip, which I created after my sister Amber got her first (yes, I said "first") Chihuahua. For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to make a comic book about her dog dressing up as Batman. I did a couple of these. Sadly, none survive.

The second comic book I did a few years later. It was about a slacker-dude that looked like me (except he wore a viking hat) named George and a dinosaur named Timmy. The George and Timmy comic book was over 20 pages long, it was hand drawn by myself and had a pretty damn good plot (considering I was 19). I wrote it when the Olympics were in Australia (go look it up, I'm too lazy to do it) and the plot was that Timmy received a letter saying he was on the US Olympic team (but not which team) and he wanted to get to Sydney. I had another story idea where George and Timmy became ghost hunters, but my hand began to hurt from all the drawing so I gave up on it.

I would DO ANYTHING to see this comic book again. I have no idea what I did with it. I'm fairly certain that it's in a dump somewhere, because I threw it away in a fit of melancholy (yes, that happens to me sometime). But it's a crying shame, because I would love to scan it in and post it online. It was very funny and I spent several weeks on the drawings (which were some of the best I've ever done). Sadly, it is lost to the ages...much like the Holy Grail.

I did try and write a sequel a few years ago, though I only got the cover finished before running out of steam:

The third comic I've done is the SHEEPLE comic strip. I was at work, very bored and I had a bit of scrap paper in front of me. I was filled with political angst and no outlet--thus SHEEPLE was born. After I did the first post, I decided to turn it into it's own blog. I put out a few strips, then forgot about it/gave-up on it for a while. However when times get tough, or when the mood strikes me, I put out another one. If I tried to do this blog and the SHEEPLE blog I would HAVE NO LIFE. As sad at it sounds, coming up with one post a week is too hard--there is no way I could do both blogs. But damn if I don't try.

Since I've been a reader I've read cartoons (or "the funnies"). CALVIN AND HOBBES and THE FAR SIDE are my two all-time favorite comic strips. There couldn't be two different strips, one is very warm and loving--the other sly and cynical. I love the philosophy and the art of CALVIN AND HOBBES, it's almost like comfort food for your soul. THE FAR SIDE, on the other hand, is (usually) one perfect panel. I'm also partial to a really old strip called KRAZY KAT, which is a little like both CALVIN and FAR SIDE.

I'm was an English major. I love Dickens and Fitzgerald--but I also love Watterson and Herriman. I think it takes a special person to convey story and emotion through both text and pictures.

My favorite American Cartoon is THE SIMPSONS which had been a litmus of friendship for me for over 10 years (Mike and I are friends because he knows the episodes by heart). I think that's the cartoon that really made it okay for grown-ups to like 'toons. Though I don't think it would have made it onto the air had there not been shows like THE FLINTSTONES (which was also "for adults").

Oh, that reminds me of CARTOON NETWORK!

When I was in Junior College (back in '02) every Sunday night was "Adult Swim" night. Me and my then-girlfriend would eat doughnuts and watch cartoons like AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE and SEALAB on the cable channel Cartoon Network. Vulgar, violent, and bloody, ADULT SWIM was funny as hell and a great way to start the week. Eventually, the night's popularity bled over to all the days of the week and the novelty wore a bit thin. I was shocked to find none of the guys in the dorm watched ADULT SWIM on Sunday nights after I moved to St. Louis...but so it goes. I still love subversive cartoons. There's something about a "naughty" cartoon that gets me all hot and bothered.

Ultimately, cartoons are like those cave drawings they found in France...in that cave...

You know the one. Anyway, I'm not ashamed to say that I fucking love cartoons.

Parfait

2010-07-09T08:01:00.003-05:00

I've never been very coordinated. I don't know if it's my clown-sized feet or the fact that my legs are abnormally long (two details which make me think that, should I ever be shipwrecked, I could find a sizable piece of driftwood, cut off my legs, and use my oar-sized feet to row myself to safety).

From grade school games of kickball to high school requisite dance classes, I've always been the one to demonstrate his complete inability to be graceful. The latest in my ever-growing list of examples comes from a experience I had while working.

It was time for my lunch and so I opted for a drink and one of the fruit and yogurt parfaits sold at the little snack bar. After purchasing my items I headed upstairs, where our break room is. In less than five minutes, I would no longer be wearing my shirt, and I would have nothing to eat besides the basket of free Jolly Ranchers sitting next to the communal toaster oven.

As I made my way upstairs, I was moving quickly, practically skipping up the stairs, when my foot caught the lip of one of the steps. As I reached out for the railing to catch myself with the three available fingers holding my parfait, the two holding the little plastic cup squeezed, sending yogurt and mixed berries all over my shirt and face and covering the stairwell in a sticky red, white, and purple mess.

I stood there for a moment after it happened, wishing and hoping that, somehow, this was all a huge misunderstanding, as if I were dreaming or I'd somehow ingested some bad mushrooms and was now hallucinating one of the most mortifying experiences of my life. Unfortunately, as the yogurt dripped down my face in fat little globules, I realized that this was no dream. No bad shroom trip.

My first instinct was to try and cover up what had happened. I'd been alone in the stairwell, and so I thought that if I could just find some paper towels, everything might be fine. But as I searched my bosses' offices, I could find nothing. And so I had to swallow my pride and walk into the break room, where three of my coworkers were sitting.

It took them a second to realize that, despite my usual shabby appearance, I looked a little more shabby today, seeing as I was wearing a food item like one of those rejuvenating masks often seen on women in television shows. Their reactions ran the gamut from compassionate ("Oh no! What happened?") to crushing (a bark of laughter), and finally to the outright cruel (the camera shutter sounds of a cell phone taking pictures).

I cleaned myself off, and thanks to the ingenious invention of the undershirt was able to go downstairs, past the scene by the stairs that looked like a deleted clip from a homemade horror movie, and go buy another shirt for work.

So, I am clumsy. I am uncoordinated. I am never eating one of those damned parfaits again.

"Horseboy" & The Scariest Part of THE SHINING

2010-07-09T08:00:00.002-05:00

There's something creepy about seeing a thing incredibly out of place unexpectedly. I used to sit in a guard shack all alone at night and imagine all sorts of terrible things--but my favorite "let's freak myself out" activity was a sort of what-if game.

What-if a pumpkin-headed demon eating an ice cream cone came quietly walking down the middle of Southwest Boulevard? What-if a man in a bowler hat walked by with a junkie on a leash?

If I wasn't too tired, sometimes my mind could conjure up some quiet horror better than any F/X house on the planet. I think for me, there's nothing more unsettling than a subtle horror--or a "pedestrian" one. The idea of a mutant hillbilly with chainsaw hands is scary, no doubt. I mean, I don't want to run into him--but the idea of him pushing a flower cart calmly through a deserted street is scarier to me than if he were trying to chop my head off.

This concept is best exemplified in Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING. There's all sorts of scary stuff in THE SHINING, but the part that freaks me out the most (to this day) is when one of the characters is running around the Overlook hotel and they catch a glimpse of this fucked-out scene:

These two "ghosts" (or whatever) are on screen for less than 5 seconds, but they're way scarier than anything else in the movie. Why? Because they don't run out and try to kill anyone. They act as though they're spending a typical evening alone together...you know, just wearing the dog costume in the abandoned hotel.

What? Like you've never done that.

The hotel is a normal setting, and suddenly in the midst of this normal setting there is this bizarre couple. Who they are and what they're doing are a mystery. They are gone as quickly as they arrive. There is no explanation. There is nothing particularly threatening about them--except that they exist.

I bring ALL of this up because I read a story over at the Daily Mail's website about a guy who was using the street view of Google Maps to find his local optometrist. Instead of his doctor's office, however, this is what he saw:

They're calling this whacked-out fellow "horseboy."

If I was driving along in the UK, and I saw that thing on the side of the road I WOULD PLOW MY CAR RIGHT INTO THE NEAREST TREE. That would be it for me, game over man. What I love about it is the freakish absurdity of the whole situation:

Man either builds or buys a horse head mask. Man waits for Google car to come zooming by. And then what?

Surely he didn't expect to get rich or famous by doing this. I'm talking about it and the British papers are as well, but this person hasn't come forward. He hasn't sought the spotlight.

This was the act of a very strange mind.

So while the identity of the so-called "horseboy" is not known, here's what I do know: if I'd seen that thing during one of my overnight shifts I'd have crapped my pants. 100% guaranteed.

The Working Life

2010-07-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

The other day I was thinking about how great it would be not to have to work. This sentiment is a pretty common one, I'm sure, but the more I thought about it, the more invested in the idea I became. In my head I envisioned a scenario in which I lay on a chaise lounge, sipping Mai Tais somewhere in the neighborhood of eleven in the morning, maybe reading a book or just catching up on the latest cases in Judge Judy's courtroom. As it stands, I'm currently employed in the retail field, which is to say that I get yelled at by people who want important things like toasters and "That one bedspread; my daughter said it's called 'Jasmine' " that happen to be out of stock or, more often than one might believe, completely nonexistent. For the past five years I've worked for a major department store, and for three years prior to that, I spend my after-school hours stocking shelves and ringing up tubs of potato salad at a small-town grocery store.

Eight years of working with the public has taught me one thing about myself: that I hate people.

That might not be entirely true. For every ten middle-aged women trying too hard to pull off the sophisticated demeanor of upper-middle class status by claiming that the pillow I have shown them "does NOT go with their theme," there's always one or two friendly folks who will smile back at me and offer a genuine thank-you. An elderly woman in tight, leopard-print lycra will tell me her preference for fullscreen DVDs, and when I tell her that her chosen movie only comes in widescreen, she shrugs it off and says, "Okay. Thanks, hon." Then, ten minutes later, I'm attacked by a man whose child, it seems, has been taken hostage, and the only way he can save him is to buy ammo for his staple gun, here in the home improvement section the size of a Smart car rather than, say, at the Home Depot across the street.

Having been at my job for several years, I've managed to weasel my way into a position of some responsibility. How I managed to convince anyone that I should be in charge of anything or anyone I'll never know, but having been given a supervisory role in my store means that I get the brunt of most people's aggression. A coworker will encounter an angry customer, and before anyone can get too fired up, they'll jump in and say, "Would you like to speak to my manager?" Basically, offering my head to them on a silver platter.

I can't really blame them, though. I did the exact same thing when I first started.

Often, after explaining to someone that a sign for laundry soap in one spot does not apply to another soap three spots away, I get the privilege of listening to any number of responses. These can range from the litigious "Well, this is FALSE ADVERTISING" to the malicious "You sonofabitch" to the comparatively friendly "This is why I do NOT shop here." On a given day, when I have to crush someone's dream of owning a thirty-dollar slow cooker or telling a grandchild not to climb on the shelves, I'm thought of by any number of people as an asshole.

I've developed a thicker skin, having a few years of insults, curse words, and angry glares under my belt. Still, every once in a while the inevitable confrontation will get to me. In the middle of a woman's rant, I'll sense my heartbeat quicken to something I can actually feel in my neck, the pounding so loud that I can barely make out which four-letter words she's basing her qualifiers on. Thanks to that damned fight or flight response, the part of my brain that would ordinarily make me sound not like an idiot diverts its resources, leaving my mouth numb and giving me a tendency to stumble, buffoon-like, over words a toddler could speak with ease.

In these cases, after I've been left standing victorious or wallowing in defeat, I'll conjure up the image of me resting comfortably, propped up against a mountain of cushions with a drink in my hand. The room around me sits silent with the first words of a novel. Or maybe the television offers its passing promise of more Judge Judy, coming up next. Either way, back in the real world I'll continue on, checking my watch and counting down the hours until my fantasy comes true. If not the one in which I'm free from the bonds of working life, then at least the one, more attainable, where I can clock out and call it a day until tomorrow.

I Want to Retire

2010-07-02T08:00:00.007-05:00

So I'm employed once again, which has me dreaming of my retirement.

Hailing from a family of lower-middle class workaholics who laugh at the mere mention of the word "retirement," I'd never seriously considered doing it myself until recently. See, being unemployed sucked but it did show me that there can be more to life that chasing a paycheck. I got a TON of writing done, I became a better bread baker, and I started lifting weights.

Not so bad, right?

So Leah and I have a plan--okay, it's mostly my plan, but here it is:

I want to retire to Wyoming and raise Alpacas.

I know, I know...crazy right? But hear me out. The last summer vacation I took with my family (over 10 years ago) was to the American West. We went to South Dakota and Wyoming--and it was fantastic. Beautiful country, amazing animals, and most importantly FEW PEOPLE. Those of you who know me are aware that I'm a bit of a hermit, who would love nothing more than to just be left alone.

And friends, that's practically the State motto of Wyoming:

Now, the alpaca thing is bit more complicated. See, my wife and I love animals (okay, I like them--SHE loves them) and we've always wanted to live on a "farm." Well raising animals for meat is not something Leah is capable of doing. She knows it, I know it. There is no way she could ever part with a big 'ol friendly steer or chicken. Instead, our farm would quickly turn into a barnyard sanctuary. Alpacas are good because you don't raise them for meat (in this country) you raise them for their soft fur. They're cute and they're easy going animals. I can almost see us now: Grandma Leah shaving the Alpacas while I stand far back and tell her to be careful with the razor.

For my birthday last week, Leah took me to the Zoo where we pet an Alpaca. It was so soft and warm feeling. I like to call them "bunny-deer" because they a have rabbit heads. We saw one spit on this really annoying kid, it was an awesome birthday present (thanks Alpaca).

Anyway, now that I'm starting my new job, I'm going to be more responsible with my money. Instead of investing all my dough in CD's (music cd's) I'm going to start saving for my golden years. Down on the farm with Leah and the Alpacas.

BONUS: Check out this awesome business I found online. Maybe Leah and I can buy a franchise!

Alien Disco

2010-06-25T08:01:00.001-05:00

SCATTERSHOT Writers as MARVEL Heroes

2010-06-25T08:00:00.004-05:00

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry":

Mike, post-Adamantium-enhancement surgery:

Toy Story

2010-06-18T08:01:00.000-05:00

Although I’m nearly halfway through living my twenties, I have yet to grow up. I say this because, as anyone who knows me can attest, I have few of the qualities that grown men exhibit. Not only might I reach my middle-age living out of the same bedroom in which I grew up, but the majority of my income goes not to health insurance premiums or electric bills, but rather to things that entertain me.

Aside from the standard fare of movie ticket stubs and video game discs, my purchases occasionally can go a step further into rather embarrassing waters.

Take, for example, an instance not long ago when I was walking around a department store. I’d originally gone to pick up replacements for several tattered pieces of clothing with split seams and stains I’d somehow convinced myself were still good enough to wear. I walked in with every intention of marching straight to the men’s department, but thanks to my cat-like curiosity and the insatiable need to look at things I have absolutely no reason to buy, I wound up snaking my way around the store, ending up in the toy department.

It was a couple months before the release of the Star Trek motion picture directed by J.J. Abrams, and the merchandising was out in full force. Not only were there colorful graphics placed above the aisle sections dedicated to tiny plastic phaser-wielding figurines, but entire endcaps had been erected in honor of what had been one of my all-time favorite childhood shows.

As a youth, I would fantasize not about scoring a winning touchdown in a Superbowl game, but rather I’d imagine myself commanding a spaceship, fending off an alien invasion and saving a distant planet. One of the main elements of my dream future was the spaceship, and so when I stood before the endcap and saw that there was a plastic replica of the iconic spacecraft from the movie, I had to have it.

Picking it up, however, I only stood there, considering myself. Here I was, standing in a toy department, well into my twenties and about to buy a toy rather than some much-needed clothes. Was I crazy, I had to wonder, for being stuck on such a choice?

My friend Michael shares a passion for collectibles, especially those of the science fiction kind. He once told me that, upon finding a toy that caught his eye, he decided to buy it. When his cashier bagged the item up and announced his total, she asked, “Did you need a gift receipt with that?”

“No,” Michael answered firmly, as if he were making a stand. “No, I don’t.”

I thought about him as I worried the box with my hands, wearing away at the edges of the packaging like a nervous thief. My feet shuffled back and forth, as if toeing an imaginarily line between justification and utter madness.

So what? I thought finally, and I walked up to the checkouts.

To this day, I have nowhere to move. I have no savings to speak of. All I have is a plastic light-up spaceship sitting on a bookshelf. That, and the hope that, if I can’t one day fly through space, defending alien civilizations, I can — at the very least — grow up.

My Second Pilgrimage to ‘Macca’

2010-06-18T08:00:00.010-05:00

EDIT: BY STRANGE COINCIDENCE, I JUST LEARNED THAT TODAY IS PAUL'S 68TH BIRTHDAY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL!

Growing up, some of my best memories were of listening to The Beatles. In the early 1990’s, my Uncle David bought my parents their first CD player (which was roughly the size of a VCR). He bought them two “compact discs” to go with their new player—“A Decade of Steely Dan” (which I’ve only just recently learned to appreciate) and The Beatles album “Revolver.” My sister Amber and I used to crank up “Revolver” while we were home alone...

There was much couch jumping.

In 1993 Paul McCartney came to Kansas City to promote his then-current album "Off the Ground." Even though I knew very little about The Beatles, I knew that this was a big deal. My parents had never taken us to a concert before, so I didn’t know what to expect when my parents told us we were going. I was in elementary school, so while I don’t recall 100% of the show, it had a profound effect on me. I started buying records (cd’s) shortly after the concert. I started accumulating all the other Beatles albums (which I gave to my other sister Lindsey, after I got the remastered boxset a year ago).

I've been to a lot concerts since that Sunday night in 1993, but none have compared to McCartney’s show. I guess it's true what they say--you never forget your first time.

The concert was at Arrowhead Stadium and I remember there was no opening act—McCartney just got on stage and started playing “Drive My Car.” I only later came to understand how strange this was (most bands today usually have TWO opening acts). I also think there was an intermission (though I can’t be sure about that). I do know that it was light outside when the show started and nearly 11:00 at night when it was over.

Who knew that Muslims really do love him do?

While the show is a bit blurry I can recall a few key moments. Like the fireworks during “Live and Let Die,” and the really cool neon-lighted/psychedelic piano that Paul played during “Magical Mystery Tour.”

When I found out my Mom was pregnant a few years later, I became determined to make my unborn sibling a Beatles fan. I used to put headphones on my Mom’s belly and play Beatles albums. I’m not sure if Lindsey had a choice, but she has since grown up liking the Fab Four. A few years ago, while I was still in college I took her to see 1964 A Tribute, which is a Beatles tribute band I’d seen a few years earlier.

I made sure we sat up in the balcony so it’d be kinda hard to tell they weren’t the real deal. And while 1964 is fantastic, nothing beats the real thing. I missed the boat on seeing The Beatles because I was born too late which still kinda bums me out. I guess that's about as good an excuse as one could have, but it still smarts. Seeing McCartney was as close to seeing The Beatles as I could ever get, and I’ve always felt bad that Lindsey didn’t get the opportunity I had.

After all, McCartney is still alive. And touring.

So I every year I’d check and see if McCartney was coming anywhere near Missouri. I missed him once, in St. Louis (oddly enough) because I found out about the show too late to go. I swore I'd never let that happen again. Which is why I'm happy to report that on Saturday July 24, 2010 I’m going to see Paul McCartney once more in Kansas City. The show is going to be at the new Sprint Center (downtown), which I’ve never been to before, which adds another (albeit small) layer of excitement to the show.

But the real reason I’m excited isn't because I'm seeing Paul McCartney, the legend, live in concert one last time. And it's not because I get to go inside a shiny new concert venue…

No, I’m excited because I’m taking Lindsey with me. Luckily for her, she’s a hell of a lot older than I was when I saw him, so hopefully she’ll remember more than I did. The tickets were, as expected, way too expensive (I think I owe Paul McCartney a kidney for these damn seats) but we’re going. And it’s going to be great.

My Butler

2010-06-11T08:01:00.000-05:00

"Jeeves, bring me some aspirin..."