Jake "The Snake" Roberts vs. Christian Cage

 

Donate Your Blood Money

***DONATE YOUR BLOOD MONEY***

Have you ever done something for money you’re not necessarily proud of? Does it feel wrong to have that resulting wad of cash because of it? Maybe your paycheck comes from a far-right conspiracy theorist, overseas dictator, drug lord, or otherwise objectionable human being. Of course, if you need that paycheck to survive, then there’re no two ways about it. But…if you’re able to afford it and you’re not comfortable with your blood money…donate it to a worthy cause. If money is the root of all evil, then turn it over to the root of all that’s good in the world and watch the balance of power shift.

Suppose you’re a WWE wrestler and you’re being assigned to perform for the Saudi Arabian government. You can’t stand the oppressive way they treat women and LGBT people. You can’t stand the fact that there’s no freedom of speech. There’s no freedom of anything in that country, but you must perform there at the risk of being fired by the WWE. It’s money from the Saudi Arabian government, so it’s going to be a big fat payday…for a charity of your choice! It could go to RAINN (Rape and Incest National Network). It could go to HIV/AIDS research. It could be used to prevent LGBT suicide. Hey, it’s your hard-earned money. If you want to donate it to a cause that’ll make the Saudi government’s heads explode, that’s your call. WWE can’t tell you not to do that.

Suppose you’re a waitress at a restaurant Rush Limbaugh likes to frequent. You love the fact that he’s a high tipper, but can’t stand the shit he says on live radio whether it’s against women, people of color, the LGBT community, or god knows what else. What do you do with that big ass tip if you don’t feel comfortable with it in your bank account? What any normal person would, of course: donate it to a women’s shelter or a women’s health clinic! This was actually a true story that the Young Turks reported. I can’t imagine Rush was very happy with it and quite frankly I don’t give a shit.

I don’t want you all to think I’m just standing on my soapbox and spouting off my beliefs through a bullhorn, as much as I love to do that. Donating blood money can actually be something a protagonist does in a piece of creative writing. Suppose your main character is a space mercenary who gets a fat briefcase full of money from a disgusting Jabba the Hutt-esque crime lord. Said space mercenary could donate it to impoverished children in the galaxy. Suppose your main character is a streetwalker who takes a hefty paycheck from a client she fucking hates. She can donate it to a women’s shelter.

Part of that ongoing story arc is what the boss man does after the protagonist donates his money to a rival cause. Does he send goons after the protagonist? Does he sue the protagonist? Does he go after the charity with explosive devices? Boss men hate that sort of thing, so it’s going to make your story a hell of a lot spicier than before. Just think of how wicked it would be if Boba Fett donated his bounty hunting money to helping women escape from Jabba the Hutt. It’ll never happen, but just think of the world of possibilities!

To be honest, I didn’t really think this blog entry all the way through. It happens sometimes. I’ll have this big idea that only expands to…one full page of text. That’s okay. I said everything I needed to say. Remember: only donate your blood money if you’re in a stable enough position to do so. In this fucked up economy, pinching your pennies is paramount to survival. I get that. But if you’re ever feeling uncomfortable with such unclean money, the ASPCA is more than willing to use it to protect precious fur babies. I can only imagine that’s what happened to Michael Vick’s assets once they were seized and rightfully so. Dog murdering bastard! I’m Garrison Kelly! Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight!

***BEAUTIFUL MONSTER AND EMILIO & MARIGOLD***

Yard sales, house chores, concerts, illness, and general sleepiness have slowed down the process of putting together manuscripts for Beautiful Monster and Emilio & Marigold. But as Valarie Savage Kinney once said in a You Tube video, slow progress is better than no progress at all. E&M’s manuscript is complete and the first three chapters of Beautiful Monster are put together, which leaves twenty-five more to comb through for glaring flaws. Once the manuscripts are complete and I’m sure there are zero typos, I plan on sending them back to Hollow Hills for another few rounds of editing. My other beta readers have been wonderful, but Hollow Hills is the least expensive out of all of them. Plus, with two manuscripts instead of just one, being frugal is important. Sleepiness can kick my ass all it wants, but I’ll keep getting back up even if it fucking kills me!

***BEACH BALL Z***

I’m sure you all have noticed that in between edit jobs for E&M and BM, I’m writing more short stories for the Poison Tongue Tales and American Darkness trilogies. The next short story on deck will be a Dragon Ball Z parody called “Beach Ball Z”. It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1. Zoku, Martial Artist
2. Jeeta, Martial Artist
3. Nameless Audience Members

SYNOPSIS: In the finals of the Dragon Fist Tournament, Zoku and Jeeta square off at the world famous Preparation H Pavilion. Despite the warriors’ efforts to put on an intense, violent fight for the crowd, the audience is preoccupied with bouncing a beach ball around and getting a Twitter trend going on called #BeachBallZ. While Zoku has a lax attitude towards the distracted fans, Jeeta feels overwhelmingly disrespected and pops the beach ball mid-match, much to the crowd’s booing dismay.

FUN FACT: This story was inspired by true events that took place during a WWE Tag Team Championship match at Summer Slam between The Hardy Boys and Cesaro & Sheamus. Some idiots in the crowd were playing with a beach ball during what was an intense and brutal match, so Cesaro ran out in the crowd and popped the motherfucker. Good on him!

***WRESTLING PROMO OF THE DAY***

(RE: Jake “The Snake” Roberts)

“The first thing I want to be done around here is to get that piece of crap out of my ring! Don’t just get him out of my ring; get him out of the WWF! ‘Cause I’ve proved, son, without a shadow of a doubt that you ain’t got what it takes anymore! You sit there, you thump your bible, and you say your prayers and it didn’t get you anywhere! Talk about your psalms, talk about John 3:16! Austin 3:16 says I just whipped your ass! All you got to do is go buy a cheap bottle of Thunderbird to get back some of that courage you had in your prime!”

-Stone Cold Steve Austin after winning the 1996 King of the Ring tournament-

The Ophidiomancer

When Shaun Goldberg breathed fresh cool air for the first time in his life, he was nearly brought to tears. The grass underneath his bare feet felt softer than a kitten’s fur coat. The wind massaged his wounded body with every heavenly blast. For a minute, he thought he actually was in heaven. Then again, even a public bathroom would have been heaven compared to the blood-and-shit-covered cage he was locked in from childhood to his current thirty years. Bending those bars in half and running away gave him a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

With only a sheep mask and a pair of blue jeans to cover himself with, Shaun ventured out into the countryside plains looking for…god knew what. He had no idea what the hell was supposed to be out here. Would the strangers of this new land treat him just as badly as his mother had? Pushing that possibility out of his mind was like fighting with a schizophrenic ghost. The visions of his mother beating him with a belt and setting him on fire caused him to clutch his head so tightly that his ears bled. He had scars and slashes all over his chest and back because of it.

When the traumatic nightmares fought harder and harder to make Shaun’s head explode, he ran across the wheat field with no destination and a freakish cry in his lungs. He could only run for a short distance since his exhausted legs gave out on him. He crashed to his knees and bawled like a baby. He screamed like a wild beast and flailed his arms like morning stars. What good was having freedom if he had nowhere to go, no education, and nobody to talk to? Was he only delaying the inevitable? Was his thirty years on earth just one miserable hellhole?

Shaun’s traumatic voices were interrupted by religious chanting off in the distance. That baritone voice. Those Latin words. The hisses of poisonous snakes. Could he really be out here? Shaun picked his head up and stared languidly at the ritual going on before his very eyes. Yes, it was him! Reverend Carlos Pierre, the televangelist his mother used to watch on TV all the time. With such charisma in the preacher’s voice and a strong presence, surely Mr. Pierre could help Shaun find his way again.

When the masked giant approached the snakebite ceremony, he looked down on the ground to see several of Carlos’s followers rolling around and coughing up venom. The preacher smiled down at them and spoke in tongues while sprinkling some kind of dust on their bodies. With a blue Hawaiian shirt, white trousers, and sandals with black socks, Carlos looked more like a casual slob than a legitimate cleric. But what would Shaun know about fashion? For all he knew, Reverend Pierre was the real deal.

The priest gazed up at Shaun with his thousand mile stare and said, “You’ve come to the right place, my son. We were just in the middle of a ritual. You’re welcome to join us. Heck, it was probably destiny to begin with. The gods have brought you here, my friend. I know that you’re lost and you don’t know what to do. Kneel before me and all will become clear.”

Shaun was shivering with nervousness at the possibility of finding out what his true purpose in life was. He couldn’t have been a punching bag all these years. There was more to it all than that and he was sure Carlos was going to show him the way. With shivering legs, he got down on one knee like they did in the telecasts and bowed his head.

“Very good, my son. You should know by know what’s coming next,” said Carlos with his devious grin. From the crumbling stone well next to him, he pulled out a brick compartment and opened the hatch to release a hooded cobra from its resting place. He picked up the little bastard and petted it like a newborn puppy. “Hello there, little guy. Who’s my handsome little man? You are, my friend!” The Reverend kissed the cobra on the head before holding it like a whip and approaching Shaun while speaking in strange tongues.

The seven-foot tall giant lifted his head for a slight moment and leaped backwards while screaming like an infant. He remembered seeing these kinds of snakes all the time around his cage. He would cry out in the middle of the night and his mother wouldn’t help him. He got bitten and traumatized by these little hellions and his intense whiny breathing said it all: it was going to happen in adulthood.

Carlos wagged his finger at Shaun and smiled before saying in his smooth jazz voice, “Now, now, my son. You want to be healed, right? You want all of those scars on your body to fade away? You want to meet your savior and creator? You must go through with this, my friend. There is no other way to salvation. If you can’t trust this million dollar smile, what can you trust? Do me one other favor, my boy: take off that silly mask.”

“I…I…I can’t, Mister Reverend Sir. She won’t let me! That bitch won’t let me!” panicked Shaun with his hands defensively over his face.

“I’ll let that burst of foul language slide this time around, but if you do it again, you’ll find yourself in a fiery pit by the time this ritual is over. You don’t want to go there, do you? You look like that’s where you’ve been this whole time. Whoever this woman is you’re referring to, she can’t hurt you now. Nobody can hurt you now. The snakebite is all but a heavenly sting. And then the juices will release you from your worst nightmares. Now do as I say and take that mask off,” said Reverend Pierre in a firm, but polite voice.

Shaun slowly let his hands down and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Pierre. I can’t do it. You don’t want me to. I’m just going to be a sinner if I do.”

Like the animal he held in his hands, Carlos struck quickly when he yanked Shaun’s mask off. The preacher’s expression changed from polite psychosis to pants wetting fear. “Holy shit!” he whispered when he backpedaled and held his cobra out like a sword. The reptile hissed and flicked its tongue in Shaun’s direction.

Both the sheep mask and the gloves were both off. This man was not a preacher. He was a con artist not unlike a certain matriarchal parent. Shaun’s face was covered in blood and looked like a bare skull with a holy cross tattooed on his forehead. The face of a heavyweight boxer looked more pristine after one of his fights than Shaun’s did after thirty years of torture.

The savage giant stood up on both bare feet and slowly approached the frightened ophidiomancer. The cobra in Carlos’s hand would snap and hiss while the preacher himself kept chanting, “Get away from me! You’re nothing more than a foul beast! Be gone, sinner! Be gone!”

When Shaun got too close, the cobra finally struck. The little creature would have sunk its razorblade teeth into the giant’s chest if Shaun hadn’t instinctively grabbed its head and squeezed with all of his angry might. “Let him go!” shouted Carlos as he tried to pull the snake away. “He hasn’t done anything to anybody! He’s just an animal! He’s innocent! He’s the gateway to heaven!”

Carlos pulled too hard and snapped the snake’s smashed up head off. The goop, blood, and venom in Shaun’s hand was shaken off like a common stain. The preacher backed up until he was cornered against the stone well. Shaun lifted his hands offensively and smiled a devilish smile at his prey. When he reached down for his opponent’s throat, Carlos sprang back up and started punching and elbowing Shaun’s already bloodied up face. Sprays of thick red gunk splashed all over the now dead corpses of Carlos’s followers. After one too many strikes, Shaun fell backwards like a domino and snored heavily.

The ophidiomancer looked down at his victim with a wicked grin and laughed like this whole encounter was one big joke. He had life juices all over his arms as he held them to the sky and laughed like a maniac. “You see that?! I told you I was the one who was going to send you to heaven! But did you listen?! No, and that’s why you’re rotting in an eternal hell!”

Shaun sat up and glared at his attacker dead in his now frightened eyes. “No…no! How can you?! You’re just a demon! You’re a common sinner! You’re a fool!” shouted Carlos.

The giant nipped up to his feet and bull rushed Carlos back first into the stone well. While the preacher was struggling for air as Shaun held his throat, the giant said, “Truth is, Reverend, the only hell that exists for me is miles back there! If you want to know what a real fire pit looks like, I’ll be happy to show you!”

While Carlos was shouting “No!” repeatedly, Shaun reached into the well and pulled out yet another poisonous snake. With one hand firmly wrapped around the creature’s neck, he wrapped the body around Carlos’s throat and strangled him with brutal force. The preacher’s legs were dangling as he was being hoisted in the air by this ogre-like nightmare of a man. Oxygen only lasted for so long, but Shaun Goldberg’s newfound smile lasted forever.

The beauty of the afternoon passed into the chill of the night. The Goldberg family residence was little more than a beat up trailer with a shit-stained farm out back. Bursting the door open with a slab of red meat was a corpulent woman dressed in a pink bathrobe with bunny slippers. “Shaun! Rise and shine! It’s dinner time, you sack of shit! You’d better be up and awake before I bet your ass again!”

The matriarch of the Goldberg family kicked open the barn door and burst into tears at what she saw. It wasn’t her precious little boy in the bloody cage. It was her dear and beloved Reverend Carlos Pierre hanging by his own snake, lifeless as the corpses he collected that day. The mother sobbed and wailed as she waddled over to the dead body and hugged it tightly. “Oh, Reverend! I’m sorry my bastard boy did this to you! I know now that you’re in heaven!”

“Hello, mother dearest!” said a familiar gravelly monster voice. The bitchy mother slowly turned her head and saw that her “bastard boy” Shaun was standing in the doorway covered in live poisonous snakes. The mother dropped on her ass and continued to shed pathetic tears. The son? He had only one question: “What’s for dinner, momma?”

Necrocosm

***NECROCOSM***

This will be the first of many journal entries where I come up with an idea for a setting and hopefully a short story, D&D campaign, or novel will snowball from there. What are we kicking off with? The Necrocosm, of course. People who read my poetry will remember a heavy metal song called Necrocosm which basically described the audience at WWE Fast Lane 2015. Even though there was excitement and action going on in the ring, the Tennessee audience acted bored out of their minds. Therefore, they’re living in a necrocosm, or a death world (because they’re a dead audience). It seemed like an apt description to me.

The suffix “cosm” in the Greek language means “world”. I know this because I used to spend my time surfing You Tube for Clerks videos and in one of them, Randal says to Dante, “This is a life of convenience for you and any attempt to change it would shatter the pathetic microcosm you’ve fashioned for yourself.” I looked up the word microcosm on dictionary.com and it was defined as a “little world”, micro meaning “little” and cosm meaning “world”.

So then I thought, what other Greek prefixes could we pair up with the suffix cosm? I’ve done this exercise plenty of times with the suffix “mancer” and thus we have short stories like The Aeromancer (wind wizard), The Hydromancer (water wizard), and The Cryomancer (ice wizard). Let’s see what we can do with the word “cosm”. A pyrocosm would be a world of fire and can actually be an alternative word for the sun. A cryocosm would be a world of ice and that’s basically what Pluto is. A thermocosm would be a world of heat and Mercury would qualify since it’s the closest planet to the sun.

So what could we do with a necrocosm, or a world of death? Lots of things, actually. Some would say the earth in the year 2016 would qualify as a necrocosm since a lot of mass shootings and celebrity deaths took place. Some would say heaven and hell are necrocosms since according to Christianity, that’s where dead people go. Maybe the word necrocosm could apply to graveyards, funeral homes, and morgues.

Those are all valid interpretations, but what if I took it a step further? What if there was a planet in our solar system governed by an alien race of zombies? It doesn’t even have to be a structured government. It could be anarchy with zombies rising from the dirt to feast on trespassers. Maybe it could be an autocracy with an evil necromancer governing everything so that one day he can use his minions to conquer other worlds. Maybe it’s just one big farm where souls of the dead are kept and harvested. I’ve often thought of the possibilities of entire planets being used as seals for demons and undead creatures. Once that seal is broken, all bets are off, motherfuckers. Keegan Day from “Occupy Wrestling” never thought of this shit. Or did he? Hmm.

Okay, so we’ve got this world of reanimated dead bodies. What we need now is a reason for an adventurer to go there. Surely, traveling to such a violent and savage place would be a suicide mission. There must be something or someone of value on this necrocosm that would be worth wading through an army of dead bodies. A villain to fight, a prisoner to rescue, an artifact to steal, these are all good reasons to risk life and limb for a journey to that planet. If you know how to build tension, you can pull off this storyline and be successful at it.

So how about it, ladies and gentlemen? If this became a D&D campaign, would your character have the cajones to venture onto such a planet with the lingering fear of having his flesh and organs gnawed on? Would you have the solid steel spine to read through a novel that went behind fierce enemy lines like the war zone the necrocosm is? Could I possibly fit an entire world’s worth of action and drama into one short story? So many possibilities, so little time. Hell, if somebody else wants to expand upon this idea and do something with it, I’m not against it as long as you remember where you got this juicy creative fuel from. The table of opportunity has been set, people. What are you going to do?

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

It’s a brand new week and a brand new prompt has been put into place. Apparently, this suggestion was from many years ago when a former admin named Mike Ragland first posted it in the prompt ideas forum. The theme is Crumbling Well (that definitely has Mike’s fingerprints all over it), so my story this week will be called “The Ophidiomancer” (more Greek wordplay, for sure). It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

Shaun Goldberg, Sheep Mask-Wearing Giant

Carlos Pierre, Psychotic Snake Handler

PROMPT CONFORMITY: Carlos keeps his poisonous snakes in a crumbling well in the middle of the field.

SYNOPSIS: Shaun is a thirty-year-old man child who recently escaped from his abusive mother and is wandering the plains like a mindless zombie. He stumbles upon Carlos and his followers in the middle of a snakebite ritual. Carlos offers to heal Shaun’s soul with a “test of faith”, but when the snake bites the man child, he goes berserk and starts throwing the followers around. Carlos tries to get out of dodge, but he keeps stumbling and rolling.

FUN FACT: For all of you WWE fans out there (both old school and new), these two main characters are based off of actual wrestlers that worked with the company. Shaun Goldberg is likened to Erick Rowan and Carlos Pierre has similarities to Jake “The Snake” Roberts. They come from two completely different eras of wrestling and bring their own form of creepiness to the table. Since a match between Rowan and Roberts won’t actually take place due to Roberts’ old age, this short story is the next best thing.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

Elizabeth Wilson has been knocked out of the park and now it’s time for someone new. That someone is Desilu McCourt, the Amazonian hammer swinger from “Occupy Wrestling”. You know the one. She’s the ogre chick who nearly snapped Debra Winter’s spine in half before Mitch McLeod came to the rescue. I’ve done a drawing of Desilu in the past, but I don’t think very highly of it, so I’m going to attempt her again. Wish me luck!

***MOVIE REVIEWS***

The last time I did a movie review, it was for Zootopia and that was many months ago. I don’t do movie reviews very often, but that’s only because I can count the number of visits to the theater I’ve made this year on one hand. I don’t plan on doing a review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, because I’m still afraid of pissing off people who haven’t seen it yet with plot spoilers. That leaves me with two items on this short task list: the 2016 version of Ghostbusters and a little known documentary called Lucha Mexico. Ghost hunting and masked wrestling: such a delightful combination. Both movies will receive passing grades (four stars). It’s all a matter of putting the words and debating points together in a clean and crisp manner.

***BOOK REVIEW***

As most of you know, I’ve been doing some beta reading for my wonderful author friends Andy Peloquin and Marie Krepps. Their deadlines for publication are drawing near, so you can expect book reviews for them around those times. The first one to come up will be of Marie Krepps’ teen romance novel “What Money Can’t Buy”. It’s being published on August 11^th, the same day as my Slipknot X Marilyn Manson concert. We both have things to be excited for!

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“School uniforms: bad theory! It’s the idea that if kids wear uniforms to school it’ll help maintain order. Don’t these schools do enough damage trying to get these kids to think alike? Now they’re going to get them to look alike too? And it’s not a new idea. I once saw it in old newsreels from the 1930’s, though it was a little hard to understand because the narration was in German!”

-George Carlin-