G.I. FooDaddy (Recycled)

Disclaimer: The entirety of the research involved in writing this post comes from a mish-mash of all the war video games I have played over the last few years. So don't expect it to make a whole lot of sense. Fighting Germans in the jungle? Why not?

I am also aware of the intense focus exhibited by a well-trained soldier. This, I would not be. I imagine it'd be like in the video games, where my character spends most of his time bumping into walls, tripping over logs and trying to find his grenades. Getting shot also takes up a good deal of my time, but at least in video games, all you have to do is rest up a little. Who knew you could cure existing gunshot wounds by simply not incurring any new ones?

Also, there is a good deal of gratuitous cussage in this one, just like in the video games. Tell the kiddies to go outside.


In the hundred-and-eight degree jungle, the heat was nearly anthropomorphic in its unrelenting hostility. Only another member of the human race would know what buttons to press, which weaknesses to exploit; how to be so perfectly unpleasant. The sandy rattle of semi-automatic rifle fire and the relentless mosquitoes churned the air into a eddying pool of exquisite hatefulness.

"Sweatin' like a fuckin' giraffe over here," muttered Pvt. Jake Toboggan. He lay flat on his back in the trench, staring up into the hazy afternoon sky, balancing his M1 Garand rifle, barrel down, on the palm of his hand. "When do we get that ice cream you promised us?"

Major General Whack Buffalo glared over his shoulder at the private. "You'll get your goddamn ice cream whenever I jolly the damn well fucking damn say you get it! Damn!"

The Major was a big angry man. He always had been. That's why he had those stripes and was the only one Central Command allowed to carry the big box of C4.

"Now sit the shit still, soldiers! Fuck it sideways, Toboggan, would you fix yer puking gig line! Zip your goddamn fly, son, or your goddamn bayonet'll fall the damn out! Jesus Christ!"

Private Toboggan put down the grenades he was juggling and zipped his fly. He didn't bother lining up all his buttons. Most of them were missing anyway.

"Hey. I, uh, can't find my Browning. You seen it?" asked Randy Sourhill. Randy was the worst sniper in the world, and Jake's best friend.

"You were using it to shoot at those beetles about half a mile back. What'd you do with it after that?" said Jake.

"Holy dancing whores! Would you two fucktards shut the dick up? You want Jerry to find us down here? Balls!" Major General Buffalo screamed. Brightly colored birds took startled flight for miles around.

The Major General was mad. The company could tell because of the way he kept eating C4 by the handful.

"No, I meant my little chocolate cakes. Brownies, I guess. I always get those two mixed up. I have my pistol gun thing right here," Randy whispered, patting his cargo pants. Suddenly there was a sharp crack and a flash of light from Randy's thigh.

"You really shouldn't keep it cocked," advised Jake, handing him a roll of tactical duct tape. "This should stop the bleeding."

"Fuckitty damn damn balls!" screamed the Major. "Cockin' yer gun, boy? Jesus Bob Christ!" He pulled a dirty magazine out of his pack, ogled it furiously for three seconds, then punched a hole in the earthen wall of the trench.

A Focke-Wulf droned by overhead.

"Germans! Aw, crap, man, right there! Take 'em down! Americaaaaaa!" Jake and Randy both emptied an M1 clip at the plane. When the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, Randy threw his gun at the aircraft and fished a beer out of his flak jacket.

"Time to celebrate!" he said. He popped the cap, and stood up. "To the Allies!" he said, and got shot in the shoulder.

"Ow."

"Dropped your beer," Jake said, pointing.

"Rusty ass-varnish!" thundered Major Buffalo. "Fer chrissake boy, quit getting shot! We're gonna flank the fuck outta that machine gun nest and we need you to stop the damn shit rabbit fuck chocolate--!"

At this point, the Major became too enraged to see straight, so the chaplain had to lead him by the hand so he could in turn lead the charge. The Whoop of Victory tore from the throats of Cheddar Company, as they broke cover and fanned out.

"Holy shit! These guys have guns! Nobody said they'd have guns!" Jake screamed, dodging machine gun fire and flying debris. "This is totally not fair!"

Limping and grasping his shoulder, Randy followed close behind. "Let's see if we can get behind that hill. I can take out that gun emplacement. Cover me?"

"Hell no! Didn't you just hear me? Jerry has guns!"

"Bah fuckitty cunt a ding dong!" howled the Major General. He skidded to a halt and wrenched the bumper off an infantry transport truck. Holding it like a Samurai sword, he charged a line of German infantry. He detonated a smoke grenade, and was lost from view. Metallic bonging noises and German curses drifted out of the cloud.

"Hope the Major don't get shot," Jake muttered, throwing himself behind the hill. Bullets pelted the dirt and mud on the other side. "Hey, a Snickers wrapper! What's this doing here?"

"Okay. Jake, keep an eye out for guys in the trees. See that gunner in the pillbox over there?"

"Roger."

"Whatever his name is, that cracker's gettin' capped."

Randy went prone. He opened the case and extracted his gun's stock, action, scope and barrel and began to quickly assemble them.

"Is that a Springfield M1903A4?" Jake asked, tucking the Snickers wrapper under his helmet.

"Only the finest!" squealed Randy, happily twisting the screw on a hose clamp.

"I, uh, didn't know they came apart like that."

"They do. This thing was a bitch to disassemble, though. I had to use a hacksaw. Hand me that C-clamp, wouldja?"

Randy mounted his gun on a tripod and took a deep breath. He squinted into the glass eye of his scope. He took the cap off the end and tried again. He slowly let his held breath escape in a carefully measured--

"What the hell!?" The Springfield toppled off the tripod and into the mud as nearby gunfire startled the hapless sniper.

"Oh, sorry. Saw a parrot," grinned Jake, re-holstering his Browning.

"Did you get him?"

Jake's grin melted like wax lips on the sun-washed hood of a Willys Jeep. "No."

"Hey man, don't cry. Maybe we can shoot at some monkeys when we're done here. Remember when we were back in Japan and you shot that lizard?"

"That wasn't in Japan," sniffed Jake.

"Wasn't it? Oh. Well. Still."

Randy re-mounted his rifle and took careful aim. He centered on his target, then moved slightly up and to the right to compensate for wind and distance. He slowly squeezed the trigger. The Springfield spat a brief burst of flame from its muzzle and the scope fell off.

"Ow! Hey, what the fuck?" A dismayed cry from Cheddar Company.

"Oh, geez. Sorry Gerard!"

"You shot me in the ass, Sourhill! Goddammit, that's the second time today!"

"Totally uncalled for, man! I said I was sorry!"

Jake stealthily pulled the pin on a grenade. "Look. A turtle."

What To Write? A Surreal Journey Around Writer's Block

The Blogger meandered amongst the armchairs.

He considered writing about some hilarious little scenario that unfolded at work today, but sadly nothing hilarious happened there. He supposed he could make something up, but that felt dishonest for some reason.

"You could just change the POV to third-person, change the names, and bingo! Hilarious workplace antics," suggested one of his cats.

The Blogger shooed it away.

That didn't actually happen, and it was a cheap trick to play on his reader. Being scrupled did not change the fact that he was stuck for a subject to write about, though.

He continued his thoughtful trek around the living room. Whenever the Blogger suffered from blogger's block, he wandered. As if the idea were somewhere around the house, wedged between the couch cushions or stuck in the dryer's lint trap, and he could find it if he walked around enough.

An image of his father floated across his mind, as images are wont to float into people's head in a metaphoric sense.

"Doctor! I've never seen anything like this before. He somehow managed to get a picture of a bearded fellow stuck inside his skull! It appears to have floated there. Don't ask me how."

That was just silly. English is silly.

The image of his father clearly showed the beardy gent wearing a homburg hat and sitting at a table. Spread out on the table were three or four pairs of headphones in various states of disassembly, and one plate containing the man's favorite vegetarian dish. The Blogger detected curry in the dish.

"What's wrong with you, boy?" asked his father. "I'm serious. You need to start going to bed earlier. If you're looking for something, you need to equip y'self with an LED flashlight. Gummy bear?"

The Blogger shook his head. The image popped free and floated in a lazy see-saw down to the carpet.

"Alright! Curry!" said the cat, pouncing on and eating the image.

"I suppose I could offer an opinion on some contemporary subject. Maybe make it funny somehow," the Blogger muttered, making another circuit around the furniture.

"I wouldn't suggest that," said Alan Orloff.

"What're you doing in my imagination?" the Blogger asked.

"Sweaty, horrible things. Never you mind. The nugget of wisdom I wish to leave you with before I take my leave is this: never never write about your opinions. No matter how right you may think you are, (and in the capital-A Absolute sense you very well may be right) you will find no shortage of knuckle-draggers all too willing to take it as an invitation to offer their own stupid opinions. Most of these opinions they will have formed while angrily relieving themselves in a gas station restroom. They will bother you."

"Like a town hall meeting?"

"Hey! What did I just say?" said Mr. Orloff, fading back into the blog from whence he'd come.

"Strange," thought the Blogger. "Usually the voices that give me advice belong to people I have actually met." Which reminded him of an idea he had once.

He had been reading about some modern day Tool of Jehova who had set fire to his whole family because he believed God had told him to. It had struck him as funny that nobody ever seemed to hear voices that told them to do nice things. Those poor souls who claimed to have been taking orders from God or nuclear skunks or whatever...they always seemed to be told to perpetrate really rotten deeds.

"Sir, can you tell us why you personally funded the FooDaddy Wing for the Terminally Clumsy at this hospital?"

"Well, Samantha, I did it because I woke up one morning, and my cats--and I distinctly remember them both being in agreement, which is rare--were telling me to go donate all my money to the local medical concern. They also told me to offer you a treat. Gummy bear?"

It's probably because folks are much more willing to take credit for their actions when they aren't likely to be jailed for them. Blame it on the voices, and maybe they'll just give you some pills and let you go back home.

That was silly. People are silly.

"That's it! I could write about how silly some things seem if you look at them too long!" the Blogger exclaimed. "I'll get started as soon as I finish procrastinating and throwing up roadblocks of my own devising."

The Blogger considered that some pretty good social commentary, and decided to leave it at that.

She Loves Me; She Loves You Not

“You do realize, Buck Studsworth, that she does not love you as much as you believe she does?”

“That’s a lie!” roared Buck with such force that Thurgood Bastardson's hair blew back on the gale of his manly breaths.

“It might be,” said Thurgood, “but it’s not. Do you remember that day the two of you walked hand in hand along the creek?”

“The babbling one whose course brings it near my cabin, filling it with its music on the quiet, moon-bathed nights?”

Thurgood gagged a little, but managed to hide it with a well-placed chuckle. “Yes, the very one. Do you also remember the conversation you and the Swoony woman had?”

“The recollection of that glorious time,” Buck said, unhinging his knees and thrusting his Buckhood forward, “is as the initials of lovers carved just yesterday into the vital bark of a thriving tree!”

“It, uh, was yesterday, Studsworth.”

“Ha! Then I gain the upper hand, Bastardson!” said Buck, thrusting in triumph. “I shall now refer to thee solely by thy last name, in order that I may patronize thee with my tone.”

Thurgood Bastardson stomped his feet and shook his fists. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought. This man, this willfully willful man, possessed powers of obliviousness whose true bulk lay mostly concealed, like stupid icebergs in a sea of irrational thought.

“That’s not the point, fool! The point is that Cassidy Swoony loves another man!”

Buck stopped his victory thrust in mid-tilt. His piercing gaze of blue ice skated over Bastardson’s twisted visage like a pack of skate-wolves.

“Other? What you say is truth. I am that other man. I am the only one in whom she feels secure,” he said, but his voice carried an undertone of uncertainty that did not go unnoticed by Bastardson. He pressed in, meaning to clear the penguins off Buck’s icebergs one by one with his mental shotgun of deception. He chuckled.

“Oh, I think you know what I mean. Throw your mind back, Studsworth, and you will recall one particular line of your dialogue. It was when you remarked how wonderful it was to find someone who understood you. Do you remember what she said?”

“As if it were lover’s initials--”

“Yes or no!”

“Yes, I remember.”

“And what did she say, Studsworth? Tell me what she said!” Bastardson screamed. He was really working himself up, face red, hands shaking feverishly.

“She remarked that she found rabbits particularly cute.”

“BEFORE that!”

“Aye. Before that, she turned her face upon mine and told me with feeling that there was yet out there a man who could do the same for her.” Buck said steadily. He pointed to himself. “Me.”

“Arrogant, arrogant man!” Bastardson shook his head. He slammed his fist down onto the table, upsetting the salt shaker and the checkers. “You merely assumed it was you? You just thought that since she happened to be speaking to you, she was speaking about you? The folly! You must allow me a chuckle!”

Before Buck could answer, he took one. It tumbled around the room like a sack of malicious ferrets. Finishing up, he wiped his streaming eyes and glared levelly at Buck.
“She’s a nice woman. A lady. Ladies don’t offer their hearts to savage, uncultured cowboys, Studsworth. You’ll have to learn sooner or later that this is the way the world works.”

“We constructed large quantities of love! Right there in the birch grove!”

“Pity sex.”

“She screamed my name over and over again upon her climax!”

“Autonomic guilt reaction.”

“She told me that if she could cut off one of her legs that she would do so that I might always have it with me!”

“Post-coital crazy talk. Means nothing.”

The Ideal Complainer

Let's see here. I found two aces, and this stack seems to have a lot of clubs and spades in it, thought Nathan. I really must learn how to play solitaire someday. He clicked on a stack of cards, and watched a bunch of them fly meaninglessly around the screen. Except that I won't, because it's such a stupid game.

It was one of those days.

Nathan worked the help desk for a local something-or-other, and the people who called him fit neatly into two camps: those with familiar problems that he could easily solve himself, and those with problems that sounded like they were most likely caused by evil spirits and should not be talked about ever again, lest the demons become restless. These latter he usually passed on to his supervisor, a skilled exorcist.

With a very few exceptions, both varieties of caller were generally patient and calm, however, because they were professionals.

Nathan's phone rang. He quickly un-slouched himself, jabbed the line connect button and swung the handset up to his ear in one fluid motion.

"So-And-So Concern, this is Nathan!" he said cheerfully.

Silence.

"Hello?"

"Oh, I'm sooo sorry!" said a voice. This voice belonged either to a super villain or a benevolent school headmaster. "Things are just going so wrong over here right now, I didn't even hear your greeting, blast my ears! This is Larry from that concern you tech-support, and I was wondering, you know, if you could help me out."

"I will most certainly try, Larry!" Nathan replied.

"Well, oh my gosh, I'm not even sure where to begin. I don't know if this was even the right number to call! It seems that---is it still doing that? It is? Well, I'm going to trust that this is the right number, and even if it's not! Oh!"

There was a muffled explosion and Larry's voice sounded echoey and far away. "Somebody better get a lot of rags," he said. There was some further rustling, and Larry's voice regained its normal volume and timbre. "I'm sorry about that Nathan, but it seems that things are actively on fire over here! Wouldn't you know it? And on a Monday too, isn't that always the way things go?"

"Of course. It wouldn't be a Monday without some sort of calamity, huh?" Nathan said in a reassuringly jokey manner. He pulled a pencil and scratch pad out of his desk drawer. This sounded like one of those problems he might have to take notes on.

"Nathan, allow me to explain. It seems we have had some people calling in and complaining that a certain service is not working for them! It's hanging up on them and calling them names, and telling them nasty stories about their spouses. That wouldn't be something you could take care of, would it?"

Nathan put away his pad and pencil and smiled. This wasn't anything new after all, but a problem he was actually familiar with.

"Larry, I believe I can actually fix this problem for you," he said.

"That would be SPLENDID, Nathan!"

"Sounds like the ol' CRS machine just needs to be reset. I'll get right on it."

"Oooooh, thank you Nathan! This is wonderful news, and I'll surely pass it on if I can make it out from under these collapsed girders without, you know, sawing my legs off. You have a great day now."

"Thanks, Larry, you too!"

Nathan placed the handset back in its cradle and resumed his slouch. That guy was awesome. If Larry survived, Nathan hoped he would call again soon. Talking to Larry beat solitaire hands-down.

The Sociophobe Orders an Omelet

The Sociophobe was not feeling his most chipper. He certainly had occasions to feel chipper before, so he knew what it was like.

This was not it.

He forked a sausage and lifted it to eye-level. He noted all the little dents in its surface, and what appeared to be a liberal sprinkling of pepper cooked right into the meat. He wondered if it really was pepper. It looked like pepper.

He ate the sausage. Tasted like it might be pepper in there after all.

Chewing, he wondered why when he got depressed he always noticed things like that. The texture of his sausage.

Or the little embossed designs on his napkin.

He wondered if anyone would notice if one day they suddenly stopped embossing the napkins. Or if they did, would they care? The Sociophobe thought that people would probably care. The napkins wouldn’t look as fancy, and people would complain that they were sub-par. They would look down on the plain, unembossed napkins, despite the fact that they were probably every bit as good as the embossed ones.

The Sociophobe ran a finger across the little bumps on his napkin, like a blind man reading Braille. Yeah. If they were just smooth, people would think they were cheap. Even if they worked just as well as the bumpy ones.

He pulled himself out of his daydream with a shake of his head. Here he was, sitting at a restaurant, feeling sorry for napkins, for Christ’s sake. He’d never even seen a restaurant napkin without embossing on it, but he was feeling sorry for any unlucky plain ones out there. That was kind of pathetic, so he opened up the lid of his ThinkPad laptop computer and launched his word processor. This way, he would look like he was doing something important. Perhaps he was a student, working his way to a prestigious degree in being a rich guy. Or maybe he was already a rich guy who just came to this restaurant when he needed to get away from his crowds of friends.

Or maybe he was just depressed, and it seemed fitting that he should come to an empty restaurant and get a booth to himself.

A grey cloud of carcinogens drifted unimpeded over to the Sociophobe’s table and settled in a haze around the ineffectual ventilation system.

He coughed and looked back down at his laptop. Its screen, which was a nice wide model capable of displaying two documents side-by-side, according to the box it came in, was displaying zero documents.

The window was maximized, showing clearly and full-screenly that there wasn’t a single word not part of a toolbar on the barren expanse of LCD white. The Sociophobe pointed at the blinking cursor. “Any moment now, a torrent of brilliance will fill the page and make me rich,” he fantasized aloud.

“Sounds exciting,” said a female voice to his right. The Sociophobe jumped. “Can I start you out with anything to drink? Coffee, iced tea, Pepsi products?” his waitress asked sweetly, hand poised over one of those waitress notepads.

“Oh, coffee, please.”

“You want cream with that?”

“How about your telephone number with that?” the Sociophobe imagined himself saying, gesturing suavely out the window to his Porsche with a nod.

“No thanks,” he said with a nod that made his sunglasses fall off the top of his head and into the booth behind him.

“Okay! Do you know what you want yet?”

“A Porsche.”

“Heh. Don’t we all? If you need a few minutes, I can go get your coffee while you decide.”

“That’d be spiffy.”

“I’m Megan, if you need anything else, okay?”

“I know,” the Sociophobe muttered quietly as she walked away.

It was the Sociophobe’s habit to lope into this Bob Evans location with his laptop at least once a week to look interesting. At least that was the plan. Anyone in a restaurant by himself without a book or a laptop computer was probably a stalker or some sort of sex criminal. The Sociophobe was neither, and since he fancied himself a writer, he toted his laptop under his arm whenever he ate alone.

This is, of course, what his brain told him.

“You can’t go in there by yourself, man! It ain’t done that way ‘round these parts.”

“These parts? You think West Michigan is some sort of giant, multi-county cult?”

“Yes. A conservative one. Look out for the Christian Reformed Church and their arsenal of lame white person food!”

“Okay. You have a point there. A cynical one. But still…what’s wrong with going into a restaurant by yourself?”

“People will look at you.”

“They have to. Otherwise, they’d bump into me.”

“Aww! Lookit you trying to be witty! You get a gold star for effort. What I meant, though, is that they’ll suspect you.”

“Of what?”

“Oh, you know. The kinds of things you hear about on the news when people are being interviewed about a serial killer the police caught in their area. ‘He was a quiet man. Always ate at Bob Evans by himself. Good tipper, but he liked mustard on his pancakes. That was a little weird, now that I think about it.’”

“That’s ridiculous.”

It was, of course, but what started as a laughable little seed of a scenario had grown into a festering social anxiety bush, complete with suspicious berries and teeming with awkward squirrels.

The Sociophobe looked around the restaurant and saw an elderly couple standing at the pulpit thing by the doors, doing what the sign on it told them to do. Waiting to be seated. He looked back down at his LCD before they could make eye contact. It had powered itself off to save battery power, and he poked the TrackPoint nubbin to wake it back up.

“Here’s your coffee!” said the returning Megan. She set a white mug with a blue stripe around the inside of the rim down in front of him on a napkin. Next to it, she set a little bowl of tiny garbage cans filled with Half and Half. Waitresses always asked him if he wanted cream with his coffee, and he always said no, but they always brought him some anyway. There was perhaps something telling about that, but the Sociophobe couldn’t think of what it might be. Maybe he just looked like one of those guys who enjoyed lying about wanting cream.

“Do you know what you want? There’s a special today on pancakes with stuff in ‘em. Do you like pancakes with stuff in ‘em?”

The Sociophobe preferred pancakes with stuff on them. He deftly avoided conflict by ordering an omelet.

Captain Michigan and the Grungy City

The night was misty and full of rain. A perverted wind slithered between the skyscrapers, lifting the skirts of the prostitutes and whipping the ash from the ends of the pimps' cigars. Somewhere a car alarm was abruptly silenced, replaced by the howl of spinning tires.

Captain Michigan looked out over Grungy City, his expression stolid, his glass half-full of gin and tonic.

"Crud," he said into the teeth of the gale. He did this with great effort, as his window was closed. He compensated by being extra squinty. Like that other paragon of crime-bashing and badguy-spanking...ol' what's-his-name...Squint Eastwood.

"Come on, CM. Just sit down. Hang up your shield and come back to the game. It's your turn," said Captain Michigan's girl, a classy dame named Leggy Smalls.

"By the goofy little tufts on the side of my head that vaguely resemble wings!" Captain Michigan roared, "I will not rest until--!"

"Darling, we know about your dedication to kicking crime in the dinky," Leggy interrupted. "It's basically your entire persona. You want me to roll for you? You're on Baltic right now."

Captain Michigan beat his begauntleted fist upon his mitten-shaped shield, the reverberant bonnnng! echoing 'round the apartment. "And betray my city? Leggy! I thought you knew me better than that."

"Stop calling me 'Leggy'."

"Yo, Mitch, you owe me sixty bucks from last time you landed on one of my railroads. We gonna keep playing or did you want to go punch some pimps tonight? The rain's gonna get your mask all soggy, but I'll still go with you if you want," said Captain Michigan's faithful sidekick, Dude Detroit.

"Don't encourage him!" scolded Leggy.

"By the lumpy waters of the great Grand River, let it be so!" Captain Michigan fetched up his Saginaw sword and buckled on his belt of sand bombs. "To the Chevy!" he cried.

Hey!

I dee-mand to know just what the hell is goin on here.

I was just trying to get a recipe for meatloaf, and all of a sudden I'm on this stupid site and some bonehead's talking to me. I find this highly objectionable.

Doesn't anybody actually do anything useful in their spare time? When I was this guy's age, I already owned my own company. It was in a brown building, and it made end tables.

Now, ya might be wonderin what an end table is. I'll tellya if you'd listen. Where'd a man put his Coke if it weren't for end tables?

Oh. Hold on a second.

What? The floor? Hell!

That was my no-good son. He said he puts his Coke on the floor, if you can believe it.

I hate kids.

Where was I?

Oh. Right. This stupid website. I suppose I'm done giving it what for. If anybody is reading this, and I sincerely doubt it, I would go find something better to do with your time. Go build yourself an end table. It'll keep the badgers outta yer Coke.

Trust me. I been there.