Sometimes I feel just like a gerbil, running around and around on his wheel.  It just never stops, does it?  here I am sitting down to have a steamy bowl of jambalaya and the damn phone rings again.  “Hello?” I say.  “Alright yeah, I’ll be there in 15 minutes.  No, she’s been possessed this long.  15 more minutes won’t change anything.  Just keep her from jamming a crucifix in any orifices.  She can do permanent damage that way.”

Damn, it’s Steve’s Discount Exorcisms to the rescue again.  $19.99 with a coupon, no waiting, quick to-your-door service.  I thought if I became an exorcist I could charge exorbitant sums, do a couple gigs a year, and just chill out most of the time.  Maybe open up a place for tourists in the French Quarter.  But then I found out the exorcist biz is pretty crowded in good ‘ol NOLA.  Driving the prices down.  Some guys will even bring a bottle of Champagne to celebrate ridding the customer of their demons.

Plenty of cases to go around.  Though most of the time those “demons” are just a bad dose of smack or some spring breaker’s bad acid trip.  This city does strange things to people when they’re sober.  And it’ll really jack ‘em up if they ain’t.

I should have opened a massage place.  Even rubbing down fat Cajuns would be better than this.

I pull up to 202 Port Royal Ave.  I can hear her screaming already.  This chick’s got it bad.  The front door is open so I stroll in and follow the screams up the stairs to the second room on the right.  It’s painted a nauseating shade of pink.  Like Pepto Pink.  Maybe this girl can lick her walls to settle her stomach after she barfs up whatever she’s ingested that’s making her think the demons are stealing her soul.

There she is.  On the bed, about 18 year old, totally freaking out.  Sweat across her brow and dressed in a flimsy nightgown.  In another situation that could make for a very sexy scene.  But there’s nothing sexy about a girl that screams and drools on herself.

Her mother is beside her in a ratty old house gown.  “Thank God you’re here!  Please help my baby!”

“Stand aside ma’am.  I’ll do everything I can.”  I know should be more sympathetic or something.  I can come off like a delivery with a refrigerator coming in sometimes.  I set my bag down.  Step one: Smack her.  Sometimes that does the trick.  Like getting an old TV set to kick in.

SMACK!  I give the girl a wallop across the face and she growls and spits at me.  I was hoping this would be a quickie, dammit.

Ok, time for the theatrics.  I light some candles I have in my bag.  Lights down low I start reciting in Latin. “A combibo quod suus viaticus es nunc secui.”  I don’t know Latin from a hole in the ground.  But I translated that phrase from some internet site.  It means “A sucker and his money are soon parted.”

I ran it through a few times.  It does no good of course.  If it did, there would Latin classes at the Betty Ford Clinic.

I ask her mother to leave the room so I can concentrate.  I need to seriously focus and can’t have any distractions between me and the “poor victim”.  As she closes the door, I grab the hypo and vial from my bag.  A little bit of this crap will calm a raging elephant.  The tricky part is getting the needle in her flailing arm without it breaking.

“Calm the hell down, would you?” I say as I try to grab hold.  I practically have to sit on the chick’s head with one foot on her wrist, but I get the needle in and squeeze the plunger.  Finally she relaxes…

…For a second.  I’m throwing the stuff in my bad and getting ready to collect my meager wage.  All the sudden I hear a scream and a desk lamp goes whizzing by my head.   Oh, hell no…  This is not going to be a pleasant day.

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

Other Blogs On This Subject

Related posts:

1. Discount Flu Shots

It's not my best picture. I just took it with my webcam.

An Open Letter To The World From Satan.

Dear World,

I’ve been watching what’s going on.  I get my Yahoo news just like the rest of you yahoos.  And I’m getting pretty tired of it.

Look, everyone seems to think that I’m the evil one in this game.  But all this war and crap?  Everyone’s fighting for their own god-thing!  You got your Christians fighting for Jesus, the “Prince of Peace” (har har), and God.  For Christ’s sake, you Christians haven’t even figured out your God’s name yet!  You can’t even make one up?  That’s some lazy religion there.  The Greeks and Romans made up names for their bazillion deities.  You can’t even name one.

For the record, his name is Wendell Xavier Dinklebanger III.  He only adds the “III” because he thinks it makes him sound sophisticated.  Oh yes, hallowed be thy name indeed.

You got your Muslim’s fighting for Allah and his profit (oops!) prophet Mohammed.  At least you Muzzies got their names right.  Bonus points if you can figure out Allah’s middle name.  Yep… Katrina!  Good job Louisiana!  You can stop blaming George Bush now.  Al got wasted the night before at a party Wendell was throwing and made a total mess of the place.  Gods can be real dickheads sometimes.

Oh, and the whole thing where you can’t draw a picture of Mohammed?  Yeah, Mo put that in there just because he doesn’t like being in pictures.  Thinks his nose is too big.

Ok, here’s the thing.  You’ve got the Christians fighting the Muslims.  The Jews fighting the Palestinians.  All the “good guys” sending their minions into war like a giant celestial game of Battleship.  I never get to play and I’m sick of it.  I’m going to jack up their little game something fierce.

I was having lunch with Buddha and Confucius the other day and we were talking about this stuff.  Buddha told me to stay out of it.  Actually, he said “Stay the f*#@ out of it.”  He’s got a pretty filthy mouth, that Buddha.

But I’m about to do something about it.  See, I’ve been working on a little project of my own for the last couple decades.  Amsterdam.  Netherworld… Netherlands… Get it?

We’ll start by making food drops over the entirety of the Middle East.  Pot brownies to start.  Pot brownies and Cheetos.  Therein lies a never-ending cycle, my friends.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t smoke the idiot weed myself.  That stuff will make you dumber than a box of hair.  But it also makes you lazy.  And it’s awfully hard to go to war when you’re passed out on the couch watching Maury Povich.

And for reinforcements, I’ll send in a few companies of stoners to show them how to roll and joint and make bongs out of common everyday objects.  We’ll have stoner arts-and-crafts classes at all the community centers.  Somehow stoners can’t get their brains together enough to even glue macaroni to a paper plate.  But they’re a bunch of flippin’ Macgyvers when it comes to smoking accessories.

Next up will be the hooker battalions.  It’s tough to fire a gun when you’re getting a BJ from a Red Light pro.  They keep all their women in those beekeeper outfits.  A little bit of cleavage and they’re bound to forget who they were shooting at.  It’s a proven fact.  Boobs make men forgetful.

Once the Middle East has settled into a smoky, Cheeto cheese covered haze, I’ll start on America.  This will be much easier.  All those right-wing, religious nuts?  Half of them are already doing this stuff.  Wendell is a little lackadaisical keeping his thought leaders in line.  Oxycontin and pedophilia?  It ain’t the tree-hugging granola eaters doing that stuff, is it?  I gave them weed a long time ago because they’re super annoying without it.  Always trying to save some animal or another.  No, I don’t want to sign your petition for anything.

So, gifts of pot brownies and hookers to the nutjobs in America.  Maury’s ratings will go through the roof.  The Discovery Channel will just change every show to Shark Week.  Everyone will go back to playing video games with hand-held controllers instead of all this Wii Fit crap.  Domino’s Pizza stock will rocket sky high.  And guess what?  No fighting.  I will have totally jacked up the Battleship game.  Wendell and Al will pout for millenia, but screw ‘em.  That’s what they get for leaving me out.

Oh.. and a special note for Matt Stone and Trey Parker.  I’m not gay.  The cartoons are very funny.  And Saddam Hussein really is that annoying.  But I’m not gay.  Ever see “The Devil In Miss Jones”?  That’s a documentary dudes… Stop putting Lindsay Lohan in jail.  I’m trying to get her down here.  Anna Nicole Smith is getting way annoying.

Satan out….

Other Blogs On This Subject

Related posts:

1. Interview With Creator Of World’s Largest Latke

But there’s one vole… let’s call him Valentino… who just can’t settle down.  Can’t find the right girl with just the right beady eyes.  Val has commitment issues and is the village outcast.  According to the book “How To Defeat Your Own Clone”, Val has a deficit of a hormone called vasopressin that keeps him from being monogamous.

Val, having already been genetically altered to be more self aware than the average vole, decides to strike out on his own to track down a vasopressin specialist.  During his travels he runs into a meadow vole village.  Meadow voles are horny little bastards and will mate with anything that moves.  Sodom and Gamorrah for the vole set.

Val starts to feel mighty at home in this den of vole sin and iniquity.  Maybe there’s even a large slug that rules the town with a dancing girl on a chain.  Maybe not, it’s been done.

But after a few months of getting smashed every night and screwing every pretty vole that wiggles her pointy nose at him, Valentino starts to thing there may be more to life than a hot piece of vole ass.  He needs love.  And another beer.  But then love.

He’s noticed one girl around town that doesn’t seem as loose as the others.  She’s shy and cute and sober.  Her name is Britqknee.  The Q and K are silent.  In this village, she’s the outcast because she doesn’t keep a pair of knee pads behind the bar like every other girl meadow vole in town.

Val sidles up to her one day on the street and offers to carry her groceries (since she only has short stubby vole arms) and walk her home.  It’s love at first sight.  But Val knows it won’t last for him because he’s hormonally deficient.   He swears to find a source of vasopressin and stay with her forever.

She knows a guy in her village that deals vasopressin on the sly.  He know fear of commitment is nothing that a little hormone and genetic therapy can’t help.  Because this is the scientific future, Val doesn’t have to go on some silly quest to get it.  He ponies up a credit card, gets a needs jabbed in his butt, and wanders off into the sunset with Britqknee back to his own village to live happily every after.

Ok, Disney… Get on that one.

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

Other Blogs On This Subject

No related posts.

This is the story of Captain Unibrow.  He may have but one magnificent, bushy brow, but at least he doesn’t waste money on women with strings at the mall.  On a daily basis he wages war on needless beauty products for men and women around the world.  With his sidekicks Gay Porno Mustache Boy and Never Shaves Above The Knee Girl, Captain Unibrow patrols the malls, beauty shops, and home shopping networks of our great land saving unwitting consumers from fraudulent and useless beauty products.

His arch nemesis, Estee Olay Aveeno Cetaphil III, head of the worldwide so-called “beauty” conglomerate Barnum Beauty Enterprises, continually foists up the world one useless cream after another promising beauty, self-confidence, and sex.  His slogan, “Of course it will get you laid…”, gives false hope to millions of ugly people.

On this day Captain Unibrow gets word of a new product sampling at a local drug store.  The evil Estee Olay Aveeno Cetaphil III has released a new skin cream that claims to bond your skin cells to those of silicon, making it impervious to sun damage, wrinkles, acne, and scarring, leaving you with a porcelain white baby’s butt for a face.  However due to the enhanced electrical conductivity of silicon, even one small spark of static electricity from a cell phone could melt your face like a pat of butter on the surface of Hell.

As they enter the store, they spot one of Estee Olay Aveeno Cetaphil III’s minions endangering a human life.  They non-chalantly approach so as not to frighten the 40 year old woman in a pantsuit hoping to regain some of the dignity she lost at Lake Havasu in the summer of 1986.

“How much does this miracle cream cost?”, our hero asks.

“It’s only $49.99,” state the enthusiastically devious minion.

“For half an ounce!?”, Captain Unibrow roars.  “That’s $100 per ounce!  More than bottled water, more than viagra, more than gasoline!  Maybe we should be bombing Barnum Beauty Enterprises instead of Middle Eastern oil terrorists!”

But the minion heard none of this.  Instead her gaze was fixated on that wondrous piece of face fluff, the unibrow.  When she realized it was a trap she whipped her head to the left to avert her gaze from the powerful caterpillar only to be met with the most stunning mustache this side of 1977.

She knew she was trapped but couldn’t turn away from it’s beauty and majesty.  Like a sunset over the green hills of a small Belgian town.  A very hairy sunset.

Never Shaves Above The Knee Girl slowly crept up behind her, lifted her skirt to reveal a Sasquatch-like environment, and pounced upon the minion.  For a brief moment the minion remembered a childhood memory of a trip to a rural Chinese fish market in summer, before passing in the dark thigh muff.

The woman in the pantsuit thanked Captain Unibrow for saving her face and her money.  He handed her a free drink ticket for the meat market bar down the street and “Go get you some girl.”

And once again the day has been saved by Captain Unibrow and his two loyal hirsute companions.  Saving the world from wasted money and melted faces.  As the cheering crowds laud him he proclaims, “Beer is cheaper than skin cream!”

Phil Johnson
http://www.RoadsideAttraction.com

PS… I’ve got a whole album worth of free music and comedy for you.  http://www.roadsideattraction.com/8-free-songs

No related posts.

I’m prepared for a night of evil

A night of debauchery

A night of fun

I’m prepared to brave the elements

But mom says it’s cold out

I have to wear my mittens

And I was the only Sith lord

Wearing a down ski jacket

Cuz this is sure one lame ass Halloween

The darkness calls to me

A stranger’s gaze

The threat of danger in the air

I’m prepared to trick them one and all

But mom says it’s too dark out

We’ll trick or treat at the mall

But candy doesn’t taste as good

When it comes from the Gap

And this is sure one lame as Halloween

I arrive in my lair with the haul of a lifetime

Enough sugar to send me into shock

I’m fully prepared to have my stomach pumped

The first wrapper loosens beneath my fingers

When dad pops his head in

And says he needs to check it

He claims there’s razors

In all but the twizzlers

And this is sure one lame ass Halloween

Phil Johnson
www.RoadsideAttraction.com

PS… Did you get your 8 free Roadside Attraction songs yet?  Tell your friends!
www.RoadsideAttraction.com/8-free-songs

Related posts:

1. A Not-So-Gentlemanly Gentleman’s Club

It was another routine call for Steve.  Just another clogged drain.  The disposal had stopped working.  He was the man for the job of course.  Best plumber in the area.  He’d even won awards from the local press in those “Best of Springville” things.

Of course, nobody knew the real purpose of his job.  And they never would.  The government makes sure of that.  But that doesn’t change his drive to do his job well.  One doesn’t often think about a plumber enforcing a vendetta with his job, but it’s more common than you might think.  Terrorized and deceased family members have driven more than one young man into service for vengeance and a goal to keep the rest of the world safe.

Steve pulls up to 1080 Lily Ave.  Another quiet suburban house with a broken disposal and stopped up drain.  This one doesn’t seem like it could turn deadly, but you never know.  Steve had yet to lose anyone on one of his jobs and he aimed to keep it that way.  Grabbing his toolbox he heads up to the door and rings the bell.

The door opens and another suburban housewife answers the door.  She’s the same type of woman he always sees.  Looking a little harried from her duties as head of the household.  Still pretty, but life is starting to wear on her a little too.  It’s an early evening call which means she’s been at work all day too.  And her husband is either too busy to do his own plumbing or just doesn’t know how.

None of them really know what they’re dealing with anyway.  Even if they think they do.  Steve would rather they call him.  Safer that way.

“Hi, Mrs, Thompson?  I’m Steve from Clear Pipes.”  He flashes her his biggest, warmest smile to put her at ease.  People always distrust letting strangers in their house.

She welcomes him into the house and shows him to the kitchen sink.  “I’m not sure what happened,” she tells him.  “I turned the disposal on two days ago and it just made this grinding sound and stopped working altogether.  We’ve been washing dishes in the bathroom since then.”

“I’m sure it’s something simple,” Steve tells her.  “Probably some small object slipped down there and got caught.”  It’s the same line he always uses in this scenario.  He always tried to make it sound genuine though.  The truth is that disposal technology has advanced greatly in the past few years.  The newer ones can cut through darn near anything short of dropping diamonds in there.  The reason for the recent innovations is because of the one thing they can’t cut.  Cocoons.

Kartukian cocoons in particular.  The Kartukians would wait in hiding in the disposal they’d infiltrated, just waiting for the right object to come through.  Sometimes a chicken bone or an errant bottle cap that slipped off the counter.  Once inside, the Kartukians would wrap the object in a silk-like cocoon, not unlike spider silk.  But, unfortunately, many thousands of times stronger.  The stuff was impenetrable.  No American company had been able to design a blade to cut through it yet.  Though Steve had heard from a couple of government sources that the Japanese were coming close.  He wasn’t sure if it was for real of just hearsay.

Either way, it didn’t change his job right now.  He opened up his toolbox and opened the doors under the sink.  Fortunately Mrs. Thompson had left him to his work.  Some of his techniques can’t be used around civilians and it always makes his job harder when they hang over his shoulder.

First he pulled out a small black light and shined it underneath.  Yep, there they were, the tell-tale slime tracks of a Kartukian.  Pretty decent sized one from the looks of it too.  He got started pulling the disposal apart and soon enough found the object.  It looked like a piece from a baby bottle or something.  And it was covered in cocoon material of course.  Amateurs doing their own plumbing always mistook the cocoon for either hair or just general drain gunk.  Little did they know what danger they could be in.

The fortunate thing is that the Kartukians are rarely successful.  The government had discovered years earlier that their big plan for dominating Earth was to clog the drains in an effort to drown the populace in water and waste.  Nobody ever said they were real bright aliens.

But every so often, by a fluke, they’d hurt someone.  Steve had read case studies of exploding septic tanks, flying disposal blades, and “accidental” bath tub drownings.  Hell, he’s see it happen to his own parents when their septic tank exploded and killed them both.  The officials quickly talked it up as purely an accident.  They couldn’t let the public know that their neighborhood had a mass infection of Pinoodies.

‘Noodies, as those in the service called them, were closely related to Kartukians.  Kartuk being the next door planet to Pinoo in their system.  Pinoodies are much more difficult entities to deal with since they work underground.  Harder to detect.

Steve pulled his thoughts back to the job at hand, pulling out the small, cocoon covered piece of debris and placing it in a sample bag.  Everything goes back to headquarters for analysis.

After placing the plastic bag in the lower tray of his toolbox, he takes out a small item that looks like a pen light or one of those laser pointer things the kids play with in movie theaters.  This is no pen light though.  He dons his eye protection and a quick press of the button sends a very short flash of radiation into the disposal.  That will take care of that batch of Kartukians.  He’s never been sure why the radiation doesn’t work on their cocoon material too, but it doesn’t.  And they can’t permanently install radiation devices in the drain to keep them out.  It would take it’s toll on the people living in the house.  Steve sometimes wondered what it does to him too.  In the long run he decided that the job was more important than his own health.

Just as he finishes replacing the last part os the disposal, Mrs. Thompson comes and and says, “How’s it going?  Did you find what it was?”

“Sure did,” says Steve.  “Just a plastic piece of something.  From a baby bottle maybe.  It was pretty mangled, so I just threw it out.”

“Oh good”, she says.  “Thank you so much.”  Steve flips the switch and the disposal hums to life just like it was brand new.  “Here’s your invoice Mrs. Thompson.  The company will bill you.”  The government, go figure.  Saving the world and they still charge you an arm and a leg.  It’s an expensive undertaking.  People just don’t realize what they’re paying for.

Mrs. Thompson thanks Steve again as he walks out the door.  He drops his toolbox in the back of his van and gets in the drivers seat.  As he pulls away he sees that car again.  And the driver is that lady from the mental hospital.  She’d been by his house the night before trying to convince him that he’s sick in the head.  She obviously didn’t have the high end government clearance he has, so he told her to beat it and got on the phone with his boss to get him to contact her.  Obviously, he hadn’t.  So now she’s following him.  Intent on convincing him of his mental instability.  How lame.  He’s perfectly fine.  Isn’t he?

Phil Johnson
www.RoadsideAttraction.com

No related posts.