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By Tgreen, June 10, 2011 8:30 am

Hello everybody and welcome to Happy Friday, the weekly blog post that has chosen to define the word “weekly” as “appears whenever the hell I want it to” in order to not technically be lying about the schedule around here. But I need to be careful, because it’s just that kind of thinking that could accidentally get me into politics and apparently once you get into politics you’re contractually obligated to either send a picture of your underwear zone to your Twitter followers or be a hypocritical douche about every single point for the rest of your career. And frankly, Twitter’s already asked me to stop sending out those pictures on at least a half dozen occasions.

And speaking of underwear zone pictures, NY Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted this week that his Twitter account wasn’t hacked, as he originally claimed, and that he actually did send out a lewd picture of his weiner to one of his Twitter followers. But it could’ve been worse, since I’m told his nickname in college was “Taint,” so we probably all dodged a bullet on what kind of picture he could’ve sent out.

The day after Weiner held his press conference about the picture and vowed not to resign, news leaked that his wife is 3 months pregnant. Which is great, because if there’s one thing worse than living with a hellaciously pissed off wife, it’s probably living with a hellaciously pissed off wife who’s going through 9 months of hormone spikes. And ironically, it was Weiner’s weiner that caused this problem in the first place and then made it worse for him. What’s it going to do to him next, show up in a nightvision video with a Khardashian sister?

In other political news, this week GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich saw his entire campaign staff resign at once. While this does seem to seriously damage the former House Speaker’s chances of getting elected, things could be worse. His staff could’ve told him it was leaving while he was laid up in the hospital fighting cancer. So look on the bright side, Newt.

This week rumors surfaced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is interested in leaving her post to take a job running the World Bank. And I have to say that during a week when the biggest news story involves a sex scandal and a penis, Hillary is not the Clinton whose name I would expect to turn up.

In sports news, this week in the NBA finals, the Miami Heat’s LeBron James has only scored about 4 more 4th quarter points than I have, which is probably not what Miami had been counting on when they signed him.

In other sports news, this week the NHL is also holding the Stanley Cup finals. And by writing that sentence , I may have just doubled the amount of coverage the NHL gets in the media at this time of year.

In entertainment news, reports say that work has begun on the script for The Hangover 3. Since that work mostly involves a search and replace on the Hangover 2 script to change the name of the city it takes place in, they could start shooting this masterpiece by next Tuesday afternoon.

Last night a Black Eyed Peas concert in Central Park had to be cancelled due to a torrential downpour, thus proving that sometimes Mother Nature is looking out for us after all, lack of daily tornado attacks on Ke$ha’s house notwithstanding.

New York City is partnering with AT&T to bring free WiFi to several city parks. Possibly including some that fall within Anthony Weiner’s district. So be careful if you get a tweet from him that promises a nature photo.

This week officials in Alaska are releasing 42,199 pages of emails from Sarah Palin’s half-term in office, nearly 3 years after they were originally requested. Officials explained the delay by claiming they wanted to release them 3 years ago but it just took this long for their spellchecker to fix all the mistakes that kept them from being readable.

And in Breaking News, the Happy Friday News Team has just read the first Sarah Palin email. The subject line says “I can haz VP job?” it would appear that 3 years wasn’t a long enough wait.

This week DC comics announced that it’s rebooting its entire line of comics this September, while at the same time making all new issues available to purchase digitally on the same day they’re released into stores. And in related news, several thousand men in their 20s and 30s announced that starting in September they have one less reason to ever leave the house.

As the whole Anthony Weiner story unfolded, the Congressman admitted that besides sending the one lewd picture that became public, he’d also been involved in online relationships with six other women, which immediately raised the question of what other pictures he might have been sending out. Question no longer, as you take a glance at…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Other Questionable Things Anthony Weiner Sent Out On Twitter:
10. Picture of him at Sarah Palin rally
9. Recipe for his version of McDonald’s special sauce
8. Picture of him in Wonder Woman Underoos
7. The five Ke$ha lyrics that have touched his soul
6. A hundred-page text file outlining how the 2009 Star Trek movie could not possibly have been connected to the original Star Trek universe
5. Autographed picture of Bill Clinton’s penis
4. Several poorly-written Top Ten lists attributed to someone named “Tgreen”
3. Map with directions to his three favorite Chili’s restaurants
2. Link to pirated version of upcoming Green Lantern movie that’s still missing most of its special effects shots and is therefore approximately 3 minutes long
1. Picture of Lady Gaga’s penis

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next week (uh, yeah, sure, let’s go with that), stay cool, stay hydrated, stay the hell off of Twitter when you’re lounging around in your underwear and, as always, have a Happy Friday!

T “would it kill Heather Graham to send out a couple of lewd photos? I’m just saying” green

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By Tgreen, April 9, 2011 12:15 pm

On this special Saturday edition, we’re going back to Happy Friday’s humble roots. Back before the News Roundup and the rhymes and the infinite number of OJ jokes and Introduce Yourself and the Timmy Mooney Hall of Fame and the website and the comic strip and the blog and the busted-up hotel rooms and the drugs and the groupies and the sex tapes and the public fights and the dwindling sales and the stints in rehab and the jail sentences and the multiple parole violations and the failed comeback tours and the reality shows and the feuds and getting banned from Conan O’Brien’s new show and the failed live show and the comic book that got pulled because of some unintentional indecency and the unfortunate Happy Meal scandal and especially back before this rambling and slightly made-up paragraph started. Back to the very first Happy Friday, when it was nothing more than a Top Ten list about the then-current 1995 government shutdown.

We came close this time around. Really, really close. Down to the last hour, supposedly. I say “supposedly” because I’m pretty positive that they knew they were making a deal and just needed to stall long enough for John Boehner to stop blubbering, Barack Obama to get back from his local Communist Party meeting, and Rush Limbaugh to figure out exactly everything he hates about the deal so he can tell his audience on Monday what it’s supposed to think because otherwise how will it know?

However it happened, this time around they managed to avoid driving everything off the cliff. The players have all changed (thought somehow Newt Gingrich managed to make my Top Ten list both times), and maybe that’s the difference. But even though the government remains open for business (which is probably for the best because if the government was closed where were all those lobbyists going to hang out?), one result is the same as last time. And that result? Once again we get undeniable proof that we as a nation suck at electing politicians who will actually do the job we elected them to do, plus a lame Top Ten list explaining it all. Which part of that is worse? Only you can decide. So without further delay, let’s go old school with…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Reasons the US Government Almost Shut Down This Week:
10. All part of secret plan to lull Qadafi into a false sense of security
9. Everyone in Congress bought tickets to Charlie Sheen’s live show, was too busy winning to do any work
8. April Fool’s joke gone awry
7. Because Obama’s an America-hating socialist who won’t show us his birth certificate and is a closet union-loving Muslim liberal who doesn’t like the Easter Bunny, or something
6. Someone on Fox News said it was a good idea
5. Because the government almost shuts down any time someone says Newt Gingrich’s name 3 times on Meet the Press
4. They finally ran out of ways to be useless, and needed time to come up with some new ones
3. No one wants to be on duty once the inevitable international incidents stemming from filming The Jersey Shore in Italy start rolling in
2. Latest budget plan smudged until it’s illegible by John Boehner’s tears
1. Heard Trump wants to run it and figured it was safer to just hide out until he loses interest

Of course, since the government actually did shut down before, and since that did inspire the original Happy Friday email way back in 1995, here’s your chance to see what’s changed in the last 15 1/2 years (not much, because I’d have used an OJ joke in today’s list if I could’ve gotten away with it) and to judge if I’ve gotten any funnier in the last 15 1/2 years (not really, because I’d have used an OJ joke in today’s list if I could’ve gotten away with it). Take a look at the very first Happy Friday Top Ten list…

And now, The Top Ten Reasons the US Government Shut Down Tuesday:
10. Bill Clinton sent all 800,000 government employees home to watch an Elvis movie marathon on TBS.
9. National holiday declared for “Screw the Poor Week.”
8. Bob Dole lost his pen and won’t let the government offices open up until he finds it.
7. Due to a lawsuit, Congress had to fire everyone who’d ever been hit on by Senator Packwood.
6. Local theater started half-price matinee of Ace Ventura 2.
5. Government employees ran out of Post-it notes, paper clips, and scissors to pilfer from office supply rooms.
4. Hillary said so.
3. Newt Gingrich fired everyone who didn’t buy his book.
2. New David Hasselhoff album went on sale.
1. Rumor spread that OJ was in town with a little time to kill.

Now get back to the rest of your day secure in the knowledge that we have a government that’s as efficient and productive today as we had yesterday (uh, wait, what?) and have a Happy, er, Saturday!

T “editing on the fly” green

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By Tgreen, April 8, 2011 10:00 am

Hello everybody and welcome to Happy Friday! And just how happy a Friday is it? Well, we’ve got a possible government shutdown looming at midnight, so if you’re like me and you enjoy a good political trainwreck, then it’s pretty damn happy. But what if you’re not like me? Besides being one lucky son of a bitch, where can you go to see your concerns vented? Well, just for today, I’ve got you covered too. Today while we wait out those bastards in DC, let’s take a look at both sides of the story in double Top Ten list form. Which brings us to…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Reasons To Look Forward To A Government Shutdown:
10. No more FCC means someone can finally show Kim Kardashian’s sex tape, which is literally the only reason she ever got famous in the first place
9. How can your payment to the IRS be late if there’s no one there to take in the mail?
8. No government = no chance of ever having to say “President Gingrich”
7. Finally a political story to bump Obama’s birth certificate down a notch in importance (Fox News viewers can safely ignore this one)
6. Jay Leno can go back to his 1995 joke vault, thereby updating his nightly material by at least a decade
5. Vegas will start giving odds on who can resolve things first, Democrats and Republicans or NFL owners and players
4. Chances of us finding a fourth Middle East war to get involved in drop by at least 10%
3. No government means there’s one less thing for Sarah Palin to offer her “expert analysis” about
2. At least now Barack Obama will have some free time to start replying to all those “Congratulations!” emails he got back in November, 2008
1. Finally John Boehner has something to cry about

And if you don’t agree with all that, maybe you’ll agree with this…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Reasons This Government Shutdown Is A Terrible Idea:
10. Dick Cheney might finally be able to launch his takeover attempt from his secret base on the moon
9. Lack of new government news might mean Fox and MSNBC will have to start airing reruns from the Clinton and Bush years
8. We no longer have Larry King to ease us through this troubled time
7. That unemployment extension check isn’t gonna mail itself, you know
6. All those poor members of Congress who made this happen are going to lose their paychecks and might end up out on the streets…oh, wait
5. Bill Clinton could try to swing by the White House to check up on the current crop of interns
4. Canada might realize this would be the perfect time to launch their secret invasion plan
3. Anti-government crackpots are suddenly gonna have a lot of free time on their hands until they figure out who they’re supposed to hate now
2. Little-known Constitutional loophole reverts control of USA back to England if government shuts down for two weeks, and that might interfere with the Royal Wedding plans
1. Barack Obama will have plenty of free time to Photoshop himself a birth certificate

So there you have it, the pros and cons of the government shutdown, all in convenient Top Ten form. Now go on and do something productive for the rest of the day. If you can pry yourself away from Farmville long enough, that is.

T “point/counterpoint” green

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By Tgreen, March 21, 2011 11:19 pm

25 years ago next week, during my last semester as a senior in high school, I created a comic strip for my friends. Sgt. Suarez and his Howling Commandos was poorly drawn, crudely lettered, and barely plotted, with a title that was a huge copyright violation all by itself. It was a mix of action and comedy designed to make fun of my classmates while kind of commenting on what was going on in the world at the time. Then final product wasn’t anything great, but the period of April-June 1986 is one of those crazy, ultra-creative periods of my life, and I’m happy with what I produced back then, eye-straining artwork and all.

The reason I’m thinking about this strip now, and writing about it here in this blog, is because of the massive case of deja vu I had when I realized this was its 25th anniversary. As I mentioned, the strip included current events in between the bad jokes at my friends’ expense. And two 1986 events that got major play in the strip were the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the bombings of Libya. And this week, as I contemplate a 25-year-old comic strip, what’s dominating the news? A nuclear disaster in Japan and the bombing of Libya. The more things change, huh?

Near as I can recall, in the comic strip an invasion of Libya accidentally led to a war with Canada, and somewhere in the middle of that the title character gains some sort of super power after being involved in a nuclear accident. Hey, I said it was barely plotted, and it’s probably been at least a decade since I read the damn thing. But nuclear disaster and Libya were definitely in there.

Later this week I’m gonna have to dig out the old strips and read them so I can see how all of this is gonna work out. I could scan some of them in and post them, but they’re so bad looking I’m not sure I should. And considering some of the stuff I’ve been willing to share with the world, that’s gotta tell you how bad these really must be. And yet they unknowingly offered a peek at the future, so that should count for something.

If only I could match that 1986 level of creativity and work in 2011. Then I’d have something.

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By Tgreen, March 17, 2011 12:53 am

Just a reminder, we’re coming up on the two days you are absolutely, positively, under no circumstances allowed to call out sick. Do you even have to ask why? First up, we’ve got St. Patrick’s Day on the 17th. Call out sick then and everyone you work with is gonna know you’re passed out on some bar, open tap crammed in your mouth.

I mean, we all know you’re the type who would invent an entire adopted family if it provided you with some new family members you could kill off when you want some time to attend their fake funeral. So it’s not a stretch to assume that when you say you’ve got some kind of bug on the 17th, you really mean the drinking bug. And your plan to eliminate this bug is to drown it repeatedly with Jameson’s and Guinness. Your fake cough, while impressively authentic-sounding, fools no one.

And if the 17th is bad, the 18th is worse. Call out on the 18th, even if you legitimately have coughed out a lung, tripped over it, fallen down the stairs and suffered two concussions and a ruptured spleen, and everyone thinks you can’t hold your liquor.

So be careful over the next two days. Your reputation is at stake, and considering what you did at the office Christmas party after totally ignoring my advice about that, it’s not like you have a whole lot of reputation left in the first place. Think it’s annoying when your coworkers think back to that night and call you the “Millimeter Monster”? Call out on Friday and see what happens.

See you in the office.

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By Tgreen, March 13, 2011 5:03 pm

I used to work at a place called The Voyager Company back in the mid-90s. We made CD-ROMs (remember those) back when CD-ROMs looked like they might be the future, at least for a little while. The place closed down in 1997, gave me a severance check I used to buy my first Jeep, and that was the end of that. Here’s a clip from an astrology CD we made:

Okay, so maybe it’s not such a huge mystery why the place went under. Or maybe it still is. I worked there for about two and a half years, testing software, managing the group of testers, and maintaining the testing “lab”, which was basically a couple of long tables piled with several out-of-date computers. We did make some cool stuff along the way, and any job that forced me to watch Spinal Tap, Robocop and A Night to Remember multiple times as part of my regular duties couldn’t be all bad.

The problem was, or my problem was, anyway, no matter how interesting a job might look to an outsider, eventually the people on the inside are gonna be sick of it. Do the same interesting tasks, or look at the same interesting thing, every day and it’s gonna wear you down. At least I have to believe that or else I’ve got to take responsibility for how most all of my jobs have ended. But really, could you look at this every day for a couple of months and not go just a little insane:

The only reason I’m even thinking about this old job is because I realized recently how much it contrasts to the job I’m doing now. On the surface, the jobs look the same. They’ve got the same title and fairly similar job descriptions. But the main difference is that at Voyager, I was mostly helping artists make their art work on new technology. At my current job, well, I’m not. We won’t get into who I’m helping or what I’m helping them do, but there’s not a whole lot of art going on.

As I try to squeeze some form of creative activity into whatever time is left over after work is done, I find myself thinking more about jobs I had where I got to do the creative work, or jobs like at Voyager where at least I was able to contribute in some way to someone else’s creative works. I have a feeling this will all contribute to whatever decisions I make when it’s time to move on to the next thing. Assuming the economy allows for such thinking and doesn’t, as it does now, force everyone to take whatever they can get and be thankful they’ve got it. But yeah, when I watch a clip like the one below, and recall the crazy days and nights trying to force the technology to do what the art demanded of it, and ultimately succeeding, it makes, for example, banner ads feel a little lame:

That clips is from Laurie Anderson’s Puppet Motel. I worked on the Mac version of it my first day at Voyager. A couple of years later when we wrapped the Windows version, on the spur of the moment I decided it should be my last day. I stayed because it was raining out and I wouldn’t have had anything fun to do in the rain. This was seriously my thinking on the matter that day. And that thinking reminds me not to get too nostalgic over the Voyager job, or any other job I ever had, because no matter how good they might look in the rearview mirror, there wasn’t a single job I didn’t spend some time trying to figure out how to bust the hell out of at some point.

But hey, Voyager folks, don’t think I hated the place. I didn’t. You were all crazy talented and I consider myself lucky to have worked with you as long as I did. I sure can’t say that about some places I’ve been. Time to leave the mid-90s back where I found them as I contemplate my next move.

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By Tgreen, March 12, 2011 2:13 am

Yes, I know I should’ve posted this 2 weeks ago, but I was busy. So busy that I couldn’t take 5 minutes to slap together a blog post? Perhaps. So let’s not waste another moment. Here’s the deal. I’ve got a story, Cog in the Spring 2011 issue of The First Line. Until March 13, you can get a free PDF download of the issue. So click here and look for the Free Issue link. You’ll get a free PDF that has my story and several other fine pieces of fiction. And if you get there after March 13, you can buy the PDF, or a hard copy of the issue, and not only will you be entertained, but you’ll be giving some nice folks a couple of bucks. You can’t lose.

And to give you an idea of what you’re getting into, here are the first 2 paragraphs of my story:

Sam was a loyal employee. This wasn’t saying too much in an age when a loyal employee was mostly one who didn’t steal office supplies or badmouth the company on Twitter every other day. Still, such employees were getting harder to find in an age when a loyal employer was one who didn’t lay off half the staff every other month. Sam realized that for many it was all a game now, with some of his coworkers trying to screw the company before the company screwed them, but Sam didn’t play that game.

For one thing, he didn’t have time. His role as lowly cog in the great Transglobal Endeavours machine kept him busy for nearly 50 hours a week. He constantly referred to himself as a lowly cog, but in truth he’d worked at Transglobal Endeavours just shy of 5 years now and had officially figured out a long time ago that his entire division, and possibly the entire company, was made up of nothing but lowly cogs. He often wondered if it was appropriate to refer to anyone as lowly if everyone was lowly. He didn’t know what he was, really, and so he said cog because it was somehow comforting.

Wanna see the rest? Head on over to The First Line and get yourself some short stories. Thanks for stopping by.

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By Tgreen, February 13, 2011 12:39 am

Earlier this week I got this scene stuck in my head. I don’t know where it came from or why it hung around so long, but it kept playing over and over in my head until it became way more distracting than it’s worth. That happens every now that then. Lots of times a scene will show up from out of nowhere, with no warning, and after a little while if I ignore it, it goes away. But then there are the rare cases when the scene won’t go away no matter how hard I ignore it. Those scenes dig in and force me to pay attention to them. The only thing to do when that happens is to type the scene out and move on.

This particular scene really has nothing to do with anything I’m trying to work on now. Doesn’t really have anything to do with anything I was thinking of working on in the future. It just showed up and didn’t want to leave. So I typed it up. And since Molly asked so nicely, I’m gonna post it here. Maybe it’ll make some sense to somebody. It’s first draft writing, banged out in one late night and one evening. Not the kind of thing I’d normally share with the world. But I don’t know that I’ll ever use it for anything, so I might as well share…

George climbed the stairs on the side of the building and found the room in the back, overlooking the parking lot. The door was open. He couldn’t see anything inside from out here on the narrow concrete walkway, but he could hear Glen Campbell wailing about the pitfalls of being a Rhinestone Cowboy from a tinny radio speaker somewhere inside. He looked this way and that, peeked down at the parking lot one last time to make sure he was alone, and entered the dark room.

There were two beds. The one closer to the door was still made and the top blanket looked relatively clean and pressed for a motel of this caliber. The farther bed was a tangle of sheets and blankets, with an open suitcase balanced at the foot and a lanky man in boxers and a t-shirt sprawled across the rest of it. His name was Kyle and he looked up at George and lifted a hand in a lazy greeting. His other hand clutched a can of beer that was a close relative to the short lineup of empties on the dresser.

“Aloha,” he said before taking a drink.

“Why’s the door open?”

“Air’s busted. Gets too hot with the door closed.”

“Why don’t you call downstairs to get it fixed?”

“Why don’t you stop assuming I didn’t think of that already? They’re sending someone up.”

George shrugged off the backpack he’d been wearing and dropped it in the center of the made bed. “There any more of those?” he asked, gesturing toward the beer can in hand.

“In the bag,” came the reply, along with a nod at the small round table pressed hard up to the dresser. It held a paper bag with the top folded over, plus a Styrofoam container, a pile of napkins, and a couple of squat cardboard cups with lids on them.

“There’s ribs in that box,” Kyle said. “You can have ‘em if you want. They’re too spicy for me.”

“Where they from?”

“That place down the road. The one that’s open all night?”

George flipped open the top of the Styrofoam container and snatched up a rib, thick and meaty and glistening with a thick red sauce. He took a bite and the heat of a thousand peppers seared his tongue and nearly tore his head off his body. The heat flared, then subsided into a low, nagging pain. Whoever had created this sauce was a genius.

“Good stuff,” George said as he used his free hand to pull a beer from the paper bag.

“I like food that’s a little spicy,” Kyle said. “But usually I order something hot and you can barely taste anything. So I ordered the super hot or whatever the hell they call it. And I think that shit melted my fillings.”

“Look at you, outthought by a pit boss in some two-bit fast food joint.” George gnawed the rest of the meat from the bone and then deposited the bone in the small trashcan by the door. He snagged another rib before he took a seat on the edge of the empty bed.

“Where’s the rest of them?” he asked.

“Room on the other side of the place,” Kyle said. “They’re too loud.”

George nodded as he popped the top of his beer can. He gulped the contents of the can. It was still cold, but well on its way to lukewarm. George wouldn’t be able to drink another if he waited too much longer. He finished his first beer and second rib in a few moments, then mashed paper napkins between his sodden fingers to clean them. Once all remnants of the barbecue sauce were gone, he grabbed a second can and returned to his perch on the bed.

“You bring it?” he asked.

In response, Kyle sat up, reached into his open suitcase, and retrieved a small packet wrapped in a dirty towel. He tossed it across the gap between the two beds. It landed beside George with a thud. George drained half of his second can before he hefted the packet, testing its weight. It was heavy and solid, and the towel it was wrapped in smelled of old dust and mildew. He unfolded it, flipped it over and unfolded it again to reveal a dark hunk of metal. A revolver, .38 by the looks of it. The metal was dull and lifeless. George slipped a hand underneath it and lifted it from its nest in the towel.

“What the hell is this?”

“My uncle’s service revolver,” Kyle said, his tone somewhat defensive. “He was a cop once.”

“Once in the 1800s?”

“You asked for a gun. That’s the only one I could find.”

George turned his hand to view the weapon from every angle. It looked exactly like something that had been cared for once, long ago, then forgotten and neglected for more years than anyone cared to remember. It would have to do.

He flipped it to the side and snapped it open. The cylinder popped out and he eyed it to confirm his first impression that there were no bullets.

“You bring any ammo?”

“Couldn’t find any,” Kyle said. “We’re gonna have to buy some.”

“Gonna have to buy a kit to clean this fucking thing too,” George said. “Where’d you find it?”

“In the attic, in some old boxes. I didn’t even know it was there. Good thing I found it now, before my kid went poking around up in there.”

“You have a kid? Since when?”

“Since always. He just turned five last month.”

“Shit, I don’t think I knew that,” George said. He turned the gun around and looked up the barrel. “No worries about your kid hurting himself with this thing. Even if he could find a bullet for it, it’s so damn dirty it’s not gonna shoot anything. He’d be in more danger if he dropped it on his foot.”

He thought he saw something clogging the barrel, so he held the gun over the towel, pointed it downward, and tapped against the side. After three taps, some dark flakes fell out, along with the tiny, dried and shriveled body of a brown spider. George barked a laugh.

“Was your uncle Barney Fife or something? Did he ever use this thing?”

“My uncle’s dead twenty years,” Kyle said. “Gun’s probably been in that box at least twenty-five.”

“After I clean it we’re gonna have to shoot it. You know anyplace we can do that?”

“I thought we were bringing the gun for show,” Kyle said. “You never said we were gonna use it.”

“Probably we won’t. But if you’re bringing a gun, you’ve gotta be ready to use it.”

“And you’re ready to use it?”

“Right now I think I’m more ready than the gun is.”

“You ever shoot a gun before?” Kyle asked.

“Plenty of times. More rifles than handguns, to be honest. But I’ve shot guns like this before, over the years.”

“Ever shoot one at somebody?”

George leveled him a look that said there would be no forthcoming answer to that question.

“You know a place we can shoot this thing?” he asked again.

“Down by the river, probably,” Kyle said. “Go down there right after sundown and it’s not real crowded. Quiet too, but not so quiet a couple of shots would send anyone running.”

“Sounds good enough.” George rewrapped the gun, along with the spider’s corpse, and slipped the packet into the drawer of the nightstand between the beds. “I wanna meet the others. Introduce me.”

“They’re in room 211, around the front of the building,” Kyle said. “Introduce yourself. Don’t be shy.”

George was going to argue, but he was already tired of Kyle’s voice. He drained the second beer and added the empty can to the collection. Without another word he walked out of the room.

There were seven doors along this side of the building, then four more after George turned right, and then after three more doors following another right, he found the door to room 211. It was closed, like every other door except for Kyle’s. He could hear the TV from inside. He knocked.

A short, dark man with longish hair and a full beard cracked the door and peered out at George. He said nothing, and based on the small slice of his face visible through the space between door and frame, it looked unlikely that he was interested in speaking.

“¿Hablas Inglés?” George said.

A small shake of the head. “¿Habla usted español?”

George did, a little, but for now was going to play dumb. “No,” he said, with an emphatic headshake. A standoff, he thought. Mexican. How appropriate. He smiled.

The door was pulled open from inside and another man was revealed behind the first one. He was older, the hair at his temples white, his skin dark and wrinkled from years of exposure to the elements. His dark eyes narrowed and he looked George up and down.

“You’re el Blanco?” he said.

“I guess so,” George said. “Kyle’s friend.”

The man waved him into the room and shut the door behind him. The room looked much like the one he’d left Kyle in, but there were four other men lounging on the beds or on the floor or basically anywhere a body could sit. Any space not filled by a body was covered in grocery bags, some stuffed with groceries and some already doing duty as garbage bags. The room smelled of sweat and beer and junk food. And George thought he smelled the faint aroma of marijuana too. This was how he imagined a dorm room might smell.

The man who answered the door pushed his way back to a spot in the edge of the bed and joined his compatriots in watching the TV. Wresting was on, from Mexico, and the picture was so fuzzy and static-filled that George couldn’t imagine how they could follow the action. That was their problem. They were content to ignore him for now and he was content to be ignored. George turned his attention back to the older man, obviously the boss of this crew.

“You have guns?” George asked.

The old man shook his head. “Kyle said no guns.”

George nodded. At least they could follow orders. Or lie to him convincingly. For now he’d assume that first one.

The man fished around in a paper sack on the dresser and produced a can, which he held out to George.

“¿Cerveza?”

George took the can, which felt colder than what Kyle had been drinking, and thanked him. He looked at the can and all the words on it were Spanish. While George could understand it a bit if he listened, and could mangle it a bit if he spoke it, he couldn’t read a word of the language. He drank anyway, and it wasn’t the worst beer he ever had.

“You been to the place yet?” he asked.

The old man nodded. “Yesterday. It’s like Kyle said. Should be easy.”

“It’ll be the first easy thing, then,” George said. “But here’s hoping.”

Comments (7)

By Tgreen, December 24, 2010 12:03 pm

Some years get so hectic that the sound of “Ho, Ho, Ho!” is actually drowned out by the labored gasps bursting from your chest as you try to wrap up all your last-minute holiday errands. But no matter how crazy things get, your reward is a nice, relaxing Christmas with family and friends, right? Maybe. Or maybe instead you’ll end up experiencing something from…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Signs Christmas Isn’t Going So Well:
10. Accidentally gave wife’s gift to mom, and mom’s gift to wife, and neither one of them noticed
9. Egg nog + new Wii Fit = trip to emergency room
8. Mistletoe belt buckle attracts unwanted attention from your sister’s aggressive cat
7. Gingerbread house gets foreclosed before you can eat it
6. Slightly-confused aunt thought she was getting you tickets to Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, actually got you tickets to Batman & Robin: Turn Down the Bed
5. Everyone’s stocking stuffed with coal from mine in Chile
4. 1966-era fruitcake bought on eBay as a joke suddenly promoted to dessert
3. Children insist on marathon playing of A Very Bieber Christmas album
2. Best gift you got was copy of Sarah Palin’s new book
1. Most party guests spend day discussing next year’s trip to Mecca

Now go on and finish wrapping your presents, mixing your egg nog, trimming your tree, decking your halls, and be sure to have a Happy Friday and, of course, a Merry Christmas!

T “holly jolly” green

Comments (1)

By Tgreen, December 17, 2010 1:00 pm

Stumbled across an article recently that offered some advice on what not to do at your office holiday party. It offers some good advice, as far as it goes, but it could do better.

Office parties are a strange ritual. Sure, it’s a party, and who doesn’t love a party? Free food. Maybe free booze. What’s not to like? But it’s a party with the same miserable bastards with whom, through no fault of your own, you’re trapped for 8 hours or more every day. Are free cookies and some store-brand egg nog enough to balance that out? Unlikely. And since it’s Christmas, there’s a good chance some fat coworker is going to be forced into a Santa suit and that’s just bad for everybody.

Over the decades I’ve been to more than a few office holiday parties, and I’m going to take a moment to share some of my hard-won knowledge to help you avoid the pitfalls so many others before you have encountered. I hope it’s not too late to save some of you. Everything mentioned on this page stems from a 100% true story. Only the names have been removed to protect the guilty. So, here are some things to keep in mind for this year’s office party:

Just Don’t Go
You can’t actually follow that bit of advice, but I do need to include it because it’s the simplest, most effective way to get you through the holiday season without either completely embarrassing yourself or accidentally dropping a hand grenade onto your career. Now that we’ve gotten the most obvious and least likely bit of business out of the way, let’s see what else we’ve got.

If the party’s being held in your office, at least make sure it’s not anywhere near your desk
All day long you sit at that desk, marking time until the grim reaper pays a visit. If they throw a party there, how festive can you be when you’re sitting in the same damn seat surrounded by the same damn page-a-day desk calendars and clipped Dilbert cartoons and pictures of your coworkers’ freakishly ugly families? At this point the only difference between regular work day and party is that there’s alcohol. And be honest, there are days when the addition of alcohol wouldn’t mark a difference between work day and party. Make sure those party planners plan something down the hall. Not only does it give you even the slightest change of scenery, but it’s easier to sneak out when things get dull, and if the party’s in your office, trust me, that’s gonna happen real soon.

If you see a senior VP doing the Chicken Dance and walking drunkenly into a wall, you did not see a senior VP doing the Chicken Dance and walking drunkenly into a wall, and you are obviously mistaken
Does this even need to be explained? The stupid behavior of anyone above you in the food chain operates under a cloak of invisibility. You didn’t see it. It didn’t happen. Exceptions include drunken passes that you’re not interested in, drunken passes you are interested in but are sober enough to recognize as a bad idea, and anything that involves on-site nudity.

Drunk people can bounce way better than sober people
See that drunk coworker downing the one glass of wine beyond what can be consumed without falling to the floor? Well, stand back. That drunk will go all wobbly, drop to the floor in what looks like slow motion, and get there without injury. If you try to interfere, odds are good your sober body, which possesses few Gumby-like properties, will trip and fall and possibly end up in the emergency room with a busted ankle. Simple rule: let them drop, have a good laugh at their expense, and then assess the damage.

If your coworker disappears for a half hour and then returns with a mysterious stain at the bottom of his shirt, don’t ask questions
Of course you want to know the answers, but you can’t ask. If a brag-worthy story led to the stain, you’ll eventually hear about it. And if it’s a stain of humiliation, it’s guaranteed someone witnessed it and by next Tuesday you’ll read all about it on Facebook. But during the party, look at the stain, accept its existence, and move on.

If the intern, who may or may not even be of legal drinking age for all you know, wants to make egg nog with a booze:nog ration of 2:1, it’s not your place to interfere
People need to learn from their mistakes. If you tell someone that’s too much booze, that person might listen to you but won’t know why. If that person nearly gives the entire company a serious case of alcohol poisoning, a lesson has been learned that will not soon be forgotten. That’s why you’re here, to teach.

You don’t want to get stuck with the pink frilly underwear at the end of the Yankee Swap
I mean, for one thing there’s a 50/50 chance you’re not even the correct gender to wear them. And for another, even if they fit you like a glove, do you want to cover your underwear zone with something that was previously manhandled by one of your coworkers? I thought not.

If you look around the room and realize everyone you work with looks like a freak, you’re probably in deep denial about how much of a freak you actually are
Seriously, your company employs 50 freaks and one super-cool normal guy? You’re cousin Marilyn to your company’s Munsters? Not likely, freak.

If the party venue offers any games of skill, like pool, darts, beer pong or even full-contact Jenga, let your boss win
Sure, the boss might seem too drunk to remember your victory dance, but odds are someone will, and then you can kiss that bonus goodbye.

If the coworker you’re crushing on brings a husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other of some sort, you cannot spend the night hating that person and plotting their demise
That’s what the new year is for.

If Santa shows up, give him a wide berth
Otherwise this might happen:

And no one wants this to happen.

For yet another consecutive year, the mistletoe belt buckle is a bad idea
It’s offensive, a potential fire hazard and, most importantly, there’s a decent chance it’ll attract the exact wrong person, and then where will you be?

If you have any kind of resentment against anyone you work with/for/or above, steer clear of the scotch (Or, to put it more clearly, everybody steer clear of the scotch)
Too many people think free booze = drink the good stuff. But if you live a Miller Lite lifestyle the other 364 nights of the year, trying on the Johnny Walker lifestyle for 1 corporate-sponsored evening is not going to go well. If you don’t know Johnny, you’re gonna think he’s your new best friend and when he eggs on your every crazy thought, you’re gonna open your mouth and say them all. But Johnny’s not your friend. He knows this is just a one night stand and he’s gonna do to you what usually happens on any one night stand, and it won’t be pretty. If there’s anyone you dislike enough to talk trash about, and if you have a job there’s at least one person there who qualifies, stick to your usual. You might still wake up with a headache the next morning, but at least that headache will still be employed.

If you just don’t care anymore what you say, order up a gin and tonic
Gin and tonic won’t make you less likely to say something stupid, but you’ll look classier as you get there.

So there you go, some hard-earned holiday wisdom to keep in mind as you venture out there for some corporate-mandated holiday cheer. Enjoy the season, and really enjoy that gin and tonic if that’s the route you choose to take. Happy Holidays!