Brenda and Howard: Pabst Blue Ribbon and Smiling Mustard

Note to the Reader:  I've been struck with a great idea for a 7 part serial following two characters and their married life.  Trust me, it'll be a bit more interesting than that description.  Enjoy!

Pabst Blue Ribbon and Smiling Mustard

            There's a day in a man's life when his wife's usage of two simple words cause an internal apocalypse.  On a June Tuesday morning after 5 years of marital bliss, Howard's wife Brenda handed him his lunch with the usual good bye kiss on the cheek.  What was unusual was the extra weight in a usually light sandwich ladened bag due to the celebratory beer she had packed for him.  A beer celebrating the two words she had scrawled on a neatly folded paper towel.  Two words that oozed the scent of Sharpie, mustard, and turkey--"We're pregnant". 

            In Brenda's excitement hours earlier, she squeezed yellow lines of mustard into a smiling face before layering on lettuce and lunchmeat.  She subscribed to the belief that love made sandwiches better.  Howard's face was anything but happy sitting behind his glass desk behind glass partitions.  In fact for the last four months of their trying to have a baby, it was really a one sided venture.  Sure sheets were grasped, the appropriate cum faces and cuddles were done, but Howard was dreading the fateful day Brenda's urine would become potent with baby indicating hormones. 

            The sandwich was dumped and the PBR can drained.  Howard, who was unaccustomed to drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon at 11:30 in the morning, promptly speed-walked to the office bathroom to vomit.  He got as far as the ladies room sink.  With the taste of alcohol and half digested oatmeal fermenting in his mouth, he stared at his exceptionally groomed face in the mirror.  The furrow between his well maintained eyebrows belied the waves of self loathing and anger.  Anger at his life long cowardice.  You see, dear reader, Howard was a closeted homosexual. 

Guest Post: War is Hell, and Sinning is Delightful Part 2

Note to the Reader:  Sorry that it took so long to get this guest post out.  And yes, I'm copping out of my Wednesday post by posting a late guest post.  Yeah, I know.  My parents' expectations of my life are probably the standard to which you should hold your expectations of my posting schedule.  That bar is limbo low.  In regard to this Nony piece, I really wish I just sat down and edited it with the first part.  The two are much stronger together than apart.  I'm personally looking forward to the next installation because this one was a ripe cunt to edit.  I may be too close to it to appreciate it singularly, and frankly, I'm/we're still waiting for the story to move along.

Have you ever heard of Hedonic Adaptation?       

War is Hell, and the sinning is delightful. (part 2)

               Put simply, it is the reason why the amount of Nutella you put on your drumstick gets larger with each passing day, until you get tired of it. We all experience this little bitch in one facet of our life or another. The reason we exist and push onward as ethical, sexual, political, intellectual etc... creatures is because of a need for new and exciting additions to our personal experiences.

               The experiences of war (especially of those who have indulged in the savaged privileges granted to them by unnatural positions of authority in foreign lands) have irreversible effects on a man's appetites in ways you would be fascinated to hear an NPR report about.  As with the previously mentioned lack of recruitment standards, a whole lot of Bill & Ted's with preexisting fascinating appetites were given clean slates after a retreat to an environment in which they were pretty much allowed to get away with rape and murder.

               You may not be aware of it. You may deny it. Doesn't change the fact that the world is a hard and tragic place that does produce people with certain quirks and kinks in their minds. For an assortment of "logical and ethical" reasons they are perfectly normal at least in their own eyes. Then they are just sent home and out of respect granted the don't ask, don't tell policy in regard to their experiences.  Their extracurricular proclivities simply never entered public view.

               Sighting down my scope, I realized that I don't know what to do about any of these issues.  I can't do anything about the numerous teachers, preachers, politicians, and god knows who or what else that get away with such despicable deeds.  Many just slip through the cracks of bureaucracy only to commit savage acts yet again.

               I honestly believe you can never know the mind of another man. Thus I can't pronounce with absolutely certainty that I was correct, but the look Bill and Ted had through my scope left me without a shred of doubt that they aimed to misbehave that day.   

               In their minds eye they are perfectly normal for a conglomeration of logical and ethical self redeeming delusions.  But when I look into the mirror eyes of  men like Bill and Ted, I see a creature who knows how much more intense and satisfying it is to take without permission. To gnaw at a thighbone with claws and teeth covered in mud and blood.            

               As I watch Bill and Ted start to descend towards the sun bathing girl, I remembered something some talking head Wall Street prick said in an interview.  He was going on about his belief in the "Falling Tree Methodology." What's that, you ask? If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is there to notice, then it's legal. That was his legal, ethical moral guiding tool. The CNN bloke or whoever was interviewing him just nodded and agreed, as if this is the new norm. 

               When you are deployed, everyone knows everyone if not directly, then by association via rumors and stories. Based on what everyone knew about Bill and Ted, I knew they subscribed to that man's sort of methodology. When we returned home, I couldn't let it go.  After a while I began shadowing Bill and Ted from time to time. Eventually, I found myself watching them through the scope of a barrowed rifle as they stalked to rape a girl in the middle of the woods.  Perhaps, come to think of it, they might have just been trying to kidnap her. But then, definitely rape her, I would bet.

               Do details like that matter to you?  

My Parents Aren't the Only People Disappointed

Will post a blog tomorrow. 

Have you ever thought about the person who would find your dead body?  Strange leading question for my upcoming entry, I know.  Think about it.

Love,
Hermia (or whatever Pseudonym I'm going by)

Guest Post: War is Hell, and Sinning is Delightful (Part 1)

Some Insight for the Readers:  Let's speak on length and content.  This serial already was a huge monster of text before I got my grubby, bloggy hands on it.  When I made the agreement with my writer friend, Nonny, to take that monster and share it with the world, I had the stipulation of 500ish words.  I'm not too persnickety about the 500, but I wanted to keep the serial to have enough content to make your brain-gonads want more.  This is a two parter, which was divided by Nonny.  In regard to content, this is definitely a food for thoughty installation.  Really digest it.  Read it a few times.  Then curse Nony for not moving the story along.  Yeah, he can suck a monkey for drawing this sucker out.

Enjoy!

What a piece of work is man?

War is Hell, and the Sinning is Delightful. (part 1)              

               The whole concept of "Sin" has lost all its weight in western culture. I'm not weighing in on this from a political or religious stand point mind you, just an objective observation. With the rise of secularism in the world, the idea that individuals, cultures, and even whole nations could be rewarded or punished based on the merit of their actions and behavior has been shrugged. I would have to write a rather novel book to answer all the critics on that statement, but stick with me here.

               With so many atheists and faux religious people in this world who have no idea what sinning is, the dynamics of human interaction have changed a bit and next to no one has noticed this.  

               I'm sorry... I do not know how to put this gracefully, so I'm going to just cut the shit.

               People just don't understand the gray miasma which is now ethics. There are a few things that I need you to be aware of so you can see why I had to put Bill and Ted down in front of a 18 year old girl, but not before letting them scare her for a bit.

               Out of over 3 million people, only 1.4 million serve currently in the US military. Out of that number, only about 200,000 are female. As you might imagine when deployed in places like Iraq or Afghanistan there are very few women around. Now think about the goings on of war throughout history. In my blunt summation, it was mostly a brutal and all too imaginable rape orgy. Especially if the motivations of the people involved were religious in nature. 

               In the days of occupation post the 2003 Iraq War and long after the President had declared "Mission Accomplished", which I guess is a modern way of declaring armistices, the American economy was booming. The news media was painting the ongoing conflict as sloppy, bloody, and increasingly unnecessary. The truth about poor equipment, neglected troops, and crimes against humanity made recruiting for the war effort difficult for the military.

               In light of this the Marine Core and Army began to wave their recruitment restrictions. The bar to which these standards were lowered makes me wish this were fiction. Any who was willing was recruited, scrubbed, and shipped off.  It mattered not if on their glowing CV was a list of prior drug charges or violent crime convictions.  Although throughout human history it was normal for the military to accept a the ragtag rapey type, but unique in today's secular and capitalist world. The truly hilarious thing is, they started paying outrageous bonuses to men who would agree prior to ever touching foot in boot camp, to go through boot camp and go straight to Iraq.

               Hell, up to and over six figures was offered to get Special Forces quotas. Despite all this, they still couldn't get enough people.

               Naturally, some very unsavory types were drawn into this sort of work.   

By: Nony

Regret

Note to the readers:  Because I'm attempting to keep the pledge I made to my blog readers, I'm going to not watch Vampire Diaries Suits right now.  I had a physically miserable day yesterday because of some bad decisions disguised as a good idea.  I went through something I really never had before.  If you're unlucky, it's a something you may experience time and time again.

Regret

Regret.  It's a hard thing that grows and swells in your gut like a miscarriage waiting to happen.  The rolling of its shoulders and the kicking of its feet punch the breath out of your body.  Perhaps you'll find yourself lying awake at night mulling over all of your decisions leading to this inexorable pain.  Pain that chokes your throat and clenches your bowels. 

That's how she found herself at 2 in the morning.  She awoke beside her ex in sheets that were soaked in sweat and other shameful things.  The last few hours had been spent in revelry, the press of warm bodies, and mind altering substances--all to the tune of food and drink.  A desire for gluttony and hedonism was the excuse they gave to spend time together. 

Everything in excess when the world was ending, so they told themselves. 

She had been battling the pain in her mind and body beside his restless silhouette.  The emotion she had been denying was growing too large for her to ignore, let alone coherently contemplate.  It was as if the first shared bite of that evening's dinner sealed her fate to internal damnation. 

It wasn't that she was not accustomed to pain.  Nicks, cuts, broken bones were merit badges she collected as she walked through life.  But pain that sizzles, pops, and explodes to fill your body like a bag of mating snakes was something new.  Something that snuck up on her after too many bad decisions albeit among good company.  Regret poisoned her and infiltrated her every nook with each bite of food shared with the sleeping man beside her. 

Regret gestated within her as they lost themselves in a tangle of bodies to the tune of a TV turned down.  It lied in wait until sleep sucked her under and made her vulnerable.  When her eyes snapped open hours later she realized what she had done, and she fled to her only escape.  The bathroom.

Quiet with a door that locks, the bathroom was her sanctuary.  She gave herself over to the pain and vomited until even her soul was scraped out from the bottom of her gut.

Staring into the newly flushed toilet water as the porcelain sighed, she condemned herself to a sleepless night. 

After all, food poisoning is a demanding bitch.

Guest Post: More Meat, Less Potatoes...And a Rant from Your Blogger

Hello, the two people who read my blog. 

Firstly, I apologize for missing my posting schedule, which was this past Wednesday.  Ironically, my guest poster managed to send me his entry on time.  Show's you how easily I'm one-upped.  I will be going to Florida soon enough for work, where I will be divorced from distraction.  I promise a slurry of posts that are hopefully less shitty that their predecessors.

Now that the obligatory, yet sincere apologies have been dealt--a rant from your blogger:

So, this guest poster of mine promised me that the title of this next post would be apropos.  More Meat, Less Potatoes implies that the story of the lone gunman, the two stalkers, and oblivious lady friend would move along a bit more laterally than it has been.  Frankly, I had a key board smashing moment while I was editing this bit.  It's good, but that fucker needs to get to something a bit more meaty before wasting such a good title with a misdirect. 

Enjoy the third installation of the Nony serial. 

So I was watching my two former co-workers through the scope of my rifle when-

More meat less potatoes.

               She came into view.

               I was perched far and away, but within perfect view and range to witness or intervene in the fateful scene that was about to unfold. 

               There she was, the adorable and care free product of a unwittingly sheltered life.  She came bursting out of the woods.  She engaged in various childish high jinks with the freedom of someone not aware that she's being watched and with the abandon of someone very much certain she's alone.  With that certainty, she pranced along the riverside and leaped semi-Disneyfied from boulder to boulder. Funny how when viewed from far enough away, like bacteria seen through a microscope, all human activity tends to resemble childishness.

               All the while, hungry wolves were circling the fawn.

               She picked a large flat sun exposed rock, promptly dropped her top, and laid out to bathe in the sunlight.

               Now, this is a perfectly normal and even natural behavior for a woman who thinks she is alone to take in and enjoy nature in a perfect world. Oh, but if only people would look around and see that the world we live in is not only far from perfect, and it's all our own fault.

               (Not their real Names)

               Bill and Ted stood off in the distance, watching her with... a familiar look.

               How is your understanding of Einstein's theory of Relativity? My favorite laymen parallel is the novel notion that a moment with a beautiful woman slips by like sand through your desperately clutching fingers, but when you place your hand on a hot stove time seems to stretch on forever.

               I bring this up so that you might apply that principle to me at that moment and thus understand and appreciate the convoluted emotional storm I was experiencing. I was both an observer of and an ambiguous participant in the scene I have described to you. I do hope you know that it is truly impossible to know the mind of any man, but I want to show you mine as honest as I can, twisted as it may be so you might better learn.

               When I see naive innocence about to be introduced to truth, I feel a slurry of things:  Pleasure--the one I am least proud of; ethical panic--the one that usually ends up determining the outcome.

               Shall I be brutally honest about what went through my mind as I watched this girl through that scope?  

               I have seen so much violence in my life, and have been on both ends of it, that I honestly don't know any more what is the right or wrong thing to do or feel about anything anymore.

               My first bitter angry thought, "Good, let the arrogant bitch get a life lesson."

               I'm not proud of it.  Sometimes I forget that people, who aren't as close to the follies of man as I am, are not silly, self centered cunts for getting themselves into these situations.

               My second thought, "Am I legally or ethically allowed or obligated to intervene here?"

               At which point I'm starting to get a headache that I am pretty sure a few untraceable trigger pulls would have remedied.

               My third and favorite thought was, "How much reality should I let this girl be exposed to before snapping the curtains closed?"

               I mean after all, had I not been there to protect her from the situation that she had unwittingly stumbled into all on her own, she would surely suffer a horrific fate.

               Shouldn't I let her get a little taste of reality to help her better protect herself in the future?

               But, alas!  We just assumed that Bill and Ted would do harm didn't we? Until I interjected this bit of rationality you were about to condemn Bill and Ted to execution along with me, weren't you?

               How do you know you can trust my telling of the story? If you don't understand things from the larger perspective, then you might argue I was out looking for trouble.  

               Maybe I should tell you a few things about Bill and Ted first...

Guest Post: Nony Series--First, a Totally Related Tangent

Note to Readers:  If you haven't started reading the Nony series from last Saturday's post, read it here before this one.  Although this post is titled First, a Totally Related Tangent there are still spoilers.  Be sure to read the first one.

Enjoy!

So why was I stalking her?

First, a Totally Related Tangent. (That might prove I'm not entirely crazy)

               Life is Suffering.

               I had a rough childhood.  I will gladly spare you as much of the whiny details as possible, and instead just gaily prance to the pearls of wisdom retained from so much "real world experience". Without much option, I naively turned to the military who decided Iraq would be the perfect place for me to resolve my adolescent issues. As you might imagine it didn't help all that much.

               Despite the waking nightmare that has been my life, I am the inevitable and well adjusted statistical anomaly you get from child abuse. Too frilly? In other words, nature abhors a vacuum, if 99.9 percent of children who are abused go insane, then it stands to reason that .01 will come out as well...

               I'll want you to decide for yourself as to what I am.

               I will tell you that at least in my own mind I feel that I am fabulously well adjusted, albeit darkly twisted in my sense of humor.

               But is there a fringe benefit to all my suffering?

               A sort of bullshit detector that makes my skin crawl such as when the President told Americans that the most important thing they could do to contribute in the War on Terror was, as I may paraphrase, "spend more money, and keep a close eye on your neighbor" at which point he cackled and exited stage left.

               Before I go much further on this tangent, you need to understand that I am a strict atheist and skeptic.

               I come from a family of Christian morons, whose idea of accountability was that personal responsibility was trumped by angels and demons.  Domestic violence caused by demonic possession?  Yeah, didn't buy into that either by the umpteenth time the back of his hand popped a welt on my sister's cheek.  Worse yet, I was raised in the ghetto that prescribes to exorcism attempts on my entirely sober father.  At that point in my childhood, I started to wise up.  My father's abuse paired with sobriety and distinct lack of demons belied an individual who was the epitome of a piece of shit.

               Nope, no need for personal responsibility, it's just the demons.

               That said... did anyone else notice that the "Five Pointed Star of David" on the Republican (GOP) Party's elephant mascot became inverted into a pentagram right about the time the War on Terror kicked off?

               As you may ask, what does all this have to do with stalking this woman?

               Well, I was stalking two men originally, two blokes I worked with in Iraq when I discovered they were stalking her. This caught my interest for a number of reasons.  Reasons that would make me wish retrospectively that I had stayed the fuck out of her business, but not really.

               Anyways, it was at this point I decided to thrust myself in her life. 

               For her own good.

               Opps.

---

 [SA1]Weave this throughout the story in later installments.