Human Pony Girl: A Missing Teenager, A Sex Shop, and The Manuscript

Back in the day I worked at the Pleasure Center.  For those not in Humboldt County, the Pleasure Center, before it went corporate, was this little shop that catered to people's various sexual desires.  The owner at the time, Bill, designed it to appeal to women ... mainly because he called himself a lesbian trapped in a man's body who routinely sexually harassed the women who worked for him and the female customers who stopped in.  (He's dead.  I found his body.  For the shit he, or to be more fair -- his corpse -- put me through that day, I think I can fairly call him that.  I'm not exaggerating.  I witnessed him hit on women on a regular basis.  I occasionally said something, but most of his attempts were so lame and weak that they were far more pitiful than menacing.)  One of the items we carried was this dildo-like object where one end of it resembled a horse's tail. 

You can imagine where it was to be inserted.  You'd be right.

It was while working at this place that the seeds for the manuscript I'm currently working on really started to germinate.  At the time a teen girl went missing, and while there was plenty of speculation on her whereabouts, nobody really had a clue as to what happened to her.  The most that could be figured was that she got into a white car and was never seen from again.

Humboldt, for those of you who don't know, has a pretty open sexual community.  There's the Imps, regular wife swapping, bestiality, and plenty of fetish-based prostitution.  There's also an undercurrent of the dangerous, though.  Many places have this.  Humboldt has it in spades, and I got to see plenty of it.  People who wouldn't/couldn't associate with the more open people because even the most open-minded wouldn't accept them.  Then there were the ones who just didn't care to associate with the sexual counterculture because, like most countercultures, you have to wade through a lot of crap to get to the gems.

The Pleasure Center branch in Eureka, where I started working, attracted those who traveled below the underground ... as well as the more prominent citizens.  One of those customers was someone involved in the investigation of the missing girl.  His sleaze of choice?  S&M videos.  At that point I started to wonder if the missing girl were tied up in his basement, a bucket to the side for bodily functions, a camera on a tripod before her.  That idea bounced around in my head without a home until about a year ago, when I started the manuscript.

Walking around with that image popping up from time to time can be distracting at best.  I knew it was a good image, and I knew I would use it eventually.  (To be quite honest, however, it merely inspired this manuscript.  The actual story I want to tell about that will probably be next after this book is written.)  The image sort of made it into the manuscript in passing.  (Some of you have read some scenes from it.  The feedback has been generally good.  I've been doling it out piecemeal, though, so a complete picture cannot be formed.)  It is a strong image.  Strong enough to inspire a totally different story.  You have to respect that power.

Working at the Pleasure Center had its moments.  Great characters.  Strange pornography.  Solid co-workers.  The inspiration that came from the place cannot be undervalued.  I learned more about Humboldt County working there than I have ever learned from our local news station or newspaper.  I met newscasters whose toy of choice was Jenna's Twat Twister, and men who liked to be tied up and urinated on.  I met girls who thought they were being dirty by buying pretty little vibrators, and men who bought videos where the cover girls resembled their daughters.  (Yeah, Humboldt County has plenty of perverts that are borderline dangerous.)  It served as a spring point for many story ideas, including one I've been toying with that involved finding Bill dead.

The missing girl has never been found.  Some say she ran away.  There was a rumor she was being held captive by meth addicts for whatever sick games they had devised.  Others said she was working a carnival up in Oregon.  Me?  I had my ideas.  I never really believed her disappearance was anything other than a crime of opportunity, and for some reason I think she got buried out in Samoa someplace.  Not by meth addicts, or twisted cops, but by a kindly stranger who convinced her to get in his car and maybe party a little bit.  She was game, and soon she found herself in over her head, regretting taking a ride from that proverbial stranger.  And when she found his fingers in her mouth, she really knew she was not going to make it out alive.  She fought, and he had to explain those scratches on his arm and face to his wife, kids and co-workers ... maybe his brother or something.  For weeks he worried.  What if someone saw him?  They got the car color wrong in the media, but what if someone remembered?  What if someone put two and two together?  The missing time and the scratches?  What if a dog dug her up?  After a few months, though, when there was no loud knock at the door -- the type that cops are trained to do -- he realized he got away with it.  Clean away.  Free.  And the thought scared him.  He wasn't going to it originally.  Just wanted to cop a feel.  Things got out of hand, and he had to kill her.  He had no choice.  She would tell.  There would go his job, his marriage, his family.  He would lose everything.  He felt bad about it, for sure.  He even threw up.  When he realized he got away with it, he wasn't relieved.  He was scared.  What if he did it again?  No.  That wouldn't happen.  But now, when he's alone driving, and he sees a teenage girl walking, he inadvertently slows down his car.  He fiddles with the crotch of his jeans.  They are tighter.  He drives by, his eyes going to the rearview mirror.  He sees those headphones all the kids wear.  Her head tilted down as she watches the sidewalk.  For a moment he wonders if he looks like her, and he remembers the fingers in the mouth.  He goes home and kisses his wife.  The kids are gone now.  Off to college.  His wife never suspected.  He will never stop for the walking girl ... or so he tells himself.

A missing girl.  A porno store.  And a single video rental.  It set off a string of thoughts that hasn't ended to this day.  Funny how those things work.



FTC Disclaimer: Clicking on my affiliate link, which is actually my Kindle short story, will net me a commission.  This is not the manuscript I'm talking about.  It was not inspired by the Pleasure Center, either, but is kind of twisted in its own way. 

Exploiting the Dead: Scavenging the Japanese Graveyard

Warren Buffett, that financial guru who tells you what to do with your money and you listen because he has your best interests at heart, doesn't let a tragedy like a major earthquake coupled with a killer tsunami and topped with a bit of radioactivity slow down investment.  In fact, he sees the tragedy in Japan as a "rare opportunity" to invest in Japanese businesses.

This is all done under the guise of helping out a struggling country while getting a little return for your buck, and it does do that.  Make no mistake, though, this about being the fastest and biggest vulture on the block.  Capitalism has ensured that when markets are worthy, they will get the funds needed to rebuild.  (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't read about Buffett making the same claims about Haiti.)  Japan will recover, and if you get in now, you can get a piece of that pie ... and help them out a bit.

I'm sure the Japanese will appreciate the help, but I'm also sure they'll realize the greed behind it.  They are capitalists, too, afterall.  They aren't strangers to voodoo economics and trickle down myths, but unlike us, they are a bit more realistic about it all.

The Nikkei went nuts after Buffett's words to the elite went out.  Like Jesus walking on water, Buffett had arrived to save the Japanese citizenry like a white-haired Gamera.  "Buffett, Buffett!  He's our man!  His words are going to save Japan!"  Like Charlie Sheen, the Japanese stock market went a little crazy, and like CBS, Japan may have to embrace a little crazy in order to bounce back. 

Buffett doesn't even call it a "tragedy" or "earthquake."  It's an "extraordinary event."  Imagine the kind of world you must live in to see everything as a matter of simple economics.  A world where thousands dead from a natural (and soon to be unnatural) disaster is an "extraordinary event" and not a disaster.  I picture Buffett sitting on his couch, his well-manicured and smooth hands fondly his shriveled penis.  CNN is playing its usual loop of disaster coverage.  The tsunami starts throwing vehicles around as if they are paper cranes.  His penis starts to twitch.  It's getting harder.  Stoic Japanese faces fill the screen.  Look at them.  Going about their business without all that troublesome looting so epidemic in the West.  Harder now.  He is stroking.  Faster.  Look at those roads.  They'll have to be rebuilt.  The power plants?  Them, too.  That'll take a lot of money.  Boom!  His orgasm is over.  A trickle of clear semen moistening his elderly fingers.  He imagines it tastes like money.  Everything does.

What an extraordinary investing opportunity.  Imagine the possibilities if those reactors thoroughly explode?  Now that will be a proper economic orgy.



Usual FTC Disclaimer: Warren Buffett did not pay me to write this positive piece about his masturbation habits.  If you click on my Amazon affiliate link in this post, however, and buy the anarchist book, I'll receive a slight commission, which I may or may not use to invest in this extraordinary event.

Palin Visits Israel. Is She Lost?

CNN reports that Sarah Palin is visiting Israel!  Holy shit, Batman!  She's on a fact-finding mission to find out how they deal with those pesky Palestinians so that when she gets "elected" back in the good ol' US of A she can do the same to liberals.  This has "international incident" written all over it.

Palin likes to present herself as a person just like you or me.  And she is.  I've been governor of Alaska, and I've also had my own TV show.  On a whim I can visit foreign leaders and pop onto to Fox News to spout nonsense.  So, Palin is just like me ... and you.  Nothing special about her.  No way.

Or so she thinks.

A lot of those Tea Party Parrots love her.  Worship the ground she walks upon.  Would gladly sacrifice their own first born (but not in the womb) for her.  They want her to be president.  They don't need another hero.  They need a savior.  And that is why Palin is going to Israel.  She wants to see where all that "Bible stuff" started.  She wants to see Ground Zero for the Holy of the Holiest.  If she can't lead them to freedom from stone throwing, bomb-wearing terrorists, nobody can.  (Except, of course, some U.S. supplied weapons.)

Where I really want to see Palin go is Africa.  Deep in the heart of Africa.  Unaccompanied by photographers, body guards and her dancing daughter.  I want her meeting with gun-toting maniacs in Rwanda, and then I want to hear her report on it.  That's the kind of move I expect out of presidential hopefuls.  Israel, as they say in Delaware, is for pussies.

Wisconsin Businesses Fight Back! Still Hope They Lose...

Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerece, a pro-business group issued some strong words against the boycott of Wisconsin businesses that supported governor Scott Walker in his 2010 campaign.  Wisconsin businesses apparently don't like losing money any more than public servants do.  Guess what, though?  If you take away the ability of someone to make money, you take away their ability to spend it, so ... why spend what money you do have at businesses that supported the man who took that money away?  James Haney, the president of that pro-business group, must think union members are as dumb as he is.  I support continuing the boycott.  In fact, here's the next business ...

AT&T!

My old enemy (you can find many posts on that company by clicking on the label below), through the AT&T Wisconsin Employee PAC donated $21,000 to Walker's campaign in 2010 from its headquarters on the 13th floor (how appropriate) of 722 North Broadway in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  (If you live nearby, you should stop in and see them.)  My hatred of AT&T is well-known.  The company is run by idiots and has some of the worst customer service in the business.  If you are a union member and the actions of Scott Walker righteously pissed you off, now is the time to drop your service plan and let the company know why.  Yes, an employee will try to talk you out of it, but stand firm.  Remember, an attack against one is an attack against all.  

If you want to read the rest of the boycott list, this is a good website to go to.

Happy business busting!

Targeting Wisconsin Businesses -- Fun, Fun, Fun!

We have all heard the news.  Well, at least those who pay attention to the news anyway.  Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, a lickspittle to his corporate masters, promised to bust unions and has done so with the help of his Republican drones.  The man who proudly believes girls who are raped by their uncles shouldn't be allowed to abort, wiped out collective bargaining for public unions ... except firefighter and police unions because they supported him (way to go, my union brothers).  Walker wasn't only aided by cops and firefighters, though.  He had plenty of business support. 

The website Scott Walker Watch has a list of businesses that have donated money to the governor's 2010 campaign.  Think of it as Megan's Law type site, but instead of sex offenders it's really crappy businesses that hate organized labor.  While I feel sorry for the employees that work for them, I don't feel sorry enough not to target them in effort to make them lose money and ultimately go out of business.  First on the list is ABC Supply Co..

ABC's site is handy and bland.  It helps you find stores near you, so you can go protest.  If, like me, you are fortunate not to have a store nearby (and hopefully never in my neighborhood), you can e-mail them your feelings on businesses that support such candidates.  There's even a phone number you can call!  608-362-7777 gets you in touch with its National Support Center.  ABC is, according to the site, America's "largest wholesale distributor of roofing, siding and windows."  Hey, somebody's gotta do it.  With some well-timed protests, some creative sabotage and bad press, ABC can go from America's largest wholesale distributor of blah, blah, blah to "the first business to fall due to Wisconsin's anti-labor Republicans."  If ABC wants to support a man who hates labor so much, maybe this company that caterers to laborers should feel the effects of its actions.  Any of you union construction workers should look to make sure you aren't dealing with materials bought at ABC.

Touchingly, and without a trace of irony, ABC posts its core values on its site.  And here you thought the owners only wanted to make money.  ABC has "American Pride."  "We pay tribute to our country, believe in the American Dream and all it stands for, and honor and respect the men and women who serve our great nation."  Unless, of course, you are a public servant union member (cops and firefighters excluded).  Perhaps it's time to add, "Fuck the unions.  We support Walker and his attacks on unions and women's rights!"

And if any of you readers happen to work for ABC and feel just as disgusted as I do, I offer you to anonymously send in any kind of incriminating memos or documents you have, and I'll post them here if they are newsworthy or even mildly interesting.  Got pics of your boss in blackface or sleeping with a tranny?  I'll post those, too.  Fuck ABC.

Charlie Sheen -- Why the Hell Do You Care?

I had this amazing conversation with someone about Charlie Sheen.  She was upset because if he continued the way he was going, he would "die." 

"Porn stars, drugs and alcohol?  Who wouldn't want to go that way?  Would you rather he die a long slow death from some disease?  Perhaps you'd rather see him shot or die in a car accident instead of doing something he enjoys."

The person was appalled I'd even say that, but I'm fairly sincere about it.  Unless you are a close friend to Sheen, why would you even care what he does with his life?  Does Two and a Half Men mean that much to you?  If so, you may want to re-evaluate your life.  Are you afraid he won't be around for a Hot Shots! Part Deux reunion at some convention?  If that's the case, you may want to find something else to be concerned about, like weeds in your yard or something.

It's not like Sheen has contributed in some wonderful way to our culture.  He's on a CBS sitcom.  That's what?   A step above a PBS show?  And yet far too many people are way too concerned about his sex life, drug intake and rants on radio shows.  California is heading for a total shutdown which will fuck up the rest of the country.  Billionaires backing politicians have openly declared class war in Wisconsin.  And you are worried about CharlieNavy SEALs Sheen.  You know who has every right to be concerned?  Martin Sheen.  If you didn't play the President of the United States on NBC, your concern rings kind of false.

Charlie Sheen comes across as the braggart who, once you get him in a private setting one-on-one, will ask to borrow a few bucks off you with the promise he'll pay you back tomorrow.  He then asks you not to tell anyone, and you know the whole time you won't get the money back.  He's not a great actor.  He's not even mildly amusing.  But give the guy a break.  If he wants to make his life a trainwreck, at least let him go out in the crash.  Hey, it's not like he has kids with him to keep him occupied.  He's got to do something.  Why not porn stars and crack?  He may never see his kids again.  He may even die.  At least we won't have to worry about a sequel to Terminal Velocity.