My Father vs. Crustaceo, The Giant Land Crab

So you've probably been saying to yourselves, "What the hell happened to Lance? He's been quiet for over a week!" And I'd like to tell you that I've been held captive by an elite squad of lingerie model ninjas. I really would like to tell you that.

Unfortunately, it would be blatantly untrue. Instead we've been really swamped here at Penetrode, Inc. As the only writer, I've been paying the price for my "plays poorly with others" work ethic.

The Dougie thing is still in the works. Lord knows I'm not keen to get dick-slapped by Mr. Scoop again. In the mean time, here's an entertaining little story from my childhood. As the title indicates, it's the story of me, my father, and a gigantic landgoing crustacean.

There are such things as land crabs, you know. People always think I'm making them up, much like the lingerie ninjas. Here's a picture. They're big enough that a pinch would get your immediate and undivided attention.

Apparently they climb trees, and then jump on tourists and eat their heads. At least that's my theory.

Anyway, when I was about six or seven, we lived at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. I played with the other children on the base. One day, I pulled out my little riding fire engine to see a gigantic blue land crab. Now in my memory, this thing was about nine feet across. In reality they're about six to eight inches. But this thing was hissing and waving a gigantic claw at me. I took off screaming.

My mother came out and saw the crab. She immediately called my father, who came back from work. The crab was still hanging out in the yard, entertaining itself by eating pedestrians or something.

My parents decided that the only way to make me feel safe again, and to restore the equilibrium of my little world, was to watch the public, violent, and very, very, final, execution of the crab.

So my father got a hoe and a hatchet. I don't think these were his first choice for weapons, but I think the neighbors would have frowned on hosing the backyard with shotgun shells. As I tailed him very closely, we went looking for the crab. It was in the back yard,hiding beneath the hibiscus.

My father used the hoe to flip the crab onto its back, and pinned the big claw. Once he had the crab pinned, and demonstrated to me that the crab was no longer a threat, he picked up the hatchet. Within seconds, there were crab parts everywhere. Seriously.

This memory is very vivid for me. I have kind of mixed feelings about it. I mean, the crab wasn't a real threat, but if something were terrifying my kids (not that I have any) and I could do something about it, I probably would.

So we buried the crab, and forever more, I've enjoyed the great fresh taste of boiled Maryland crabs. I particularly like the kind where they bring you a bunch of crabs and you get to dismember them yourself. It makes me feel better knowing that I'm protecting the children of the world.

LM

The Darkest Evil the World Has Ever Known

Okay, the Dougie thing is taking a while. I'll get a few paragraphs in and have to stop until the screaming subsides. So in the mean time, I've decided to repost my thoughts on the other greatest evil ever to manifest in the UK. - LM

Last night Mrs. Manion and I had Indian food. We like a good curry now and again. I got into Indian when I lived in the UK some years ago. The UK was a cool place. I was born there, but left as a kid. (Air Force brat. Long story. They seized my accent and the extraneous U at the border, so now I can spell words like colour, honour, and favour, 18% faster than the average Briton.)

I also lived there during and after college for a couple of years. The UK has many wonderful things to recommend it. Two of my favorites were Hob Nobs and Merrydown Silver cider. Get me a tube and a bottle and I'm a happy camper. You can usually find the Hob Nobs in the US. Never tracked down the cider, though.

Unfortunately, the UK is also directly responsible for the greatest evil the world has ever known. Namely, Marmite.

Marmite: Lord of Darkness

"What's Marmite?" An innocent victim might ask. Well, according to the good people at Marmite, it's the following:

• Yeast Extract
• Salt
• Vegetable Extract
• Niacin
• Thiamin
• Spice Extracts
• Riboflavin
• Folic Acid
• Vitamin B12

I have no idea how it's manufactured. Presumably there's a crack in the Earth's surface that extrudes this ick. Maybe they've got a Hellmouth. I dunno. And I'm not getting close enough to find out.

People will tell you that it's a lovely spread for use on toast and such. They'll also tell you that it's an integral ingredient in Twiglets (If Marmite is Satan, then Twiglets are like the Arch-Duke of hell or something. More on Twiglets later.)

Let me walk you through the typical Marmite experience.

1. Well intentioned Brit hand you a jar of Marmite and a piece of toast. "Try it," he says, "It's TRADITIONAL," he intones.

2. You look at the jar. It's cute. Small. Sort of like something a high end jam would come in.

3. You open the jar. Inside is something that looks like tar. But not as appealing.

4. You sniff delicately. It smells like something that decayed a good while ago.

5. You look questioningly at your host. "I think it might be past its prime," you say politely.

6. "What? No, it's fine, try it!" You host replies, putting the pressure on.

7. Well, I've eaten weirder stuff than yeast extract, you think, and spread some on your toast. The tar metaphor continues to apply as you lay the dark brown/black evil on your innocent slice of toast.

8. You taste. In order not to appear rude, you take a decent sized bite. You chew.

9. It hits you. It's like all the hounds of Hell have taken an Armageddon sized crap in your mouth. Repeatedly.

10. You struggle to control your gag reflex. In a supreme act of will, you swallow.

11. "Did you like it?" your host asks. "It's an acquired taste."

12. You stab your host repeatedly in vengeance for defiling your mouth forever.Yeah, it's that bad. Seriously. No one ever believes me, and then they learn the hard way.

And on to Twiglets. Sidekick to evil.

For some reason, the technology to manufacture pretzels never made it to the UK. I couldn't tell you why. The closest thing they've got are Twiglets. They're basically pretzel thins baked in, you guessed it, Marmite.

You've been out drinking, you've got the munchies, and you want pretzels. You look the bag. The picture looks right. The slogans are... peculiar.... "Satisfyingly 89% fat free!!" ... "Extremely crunchy!!" ... "Hazardously knobbly!!"

The knobbly thing should be a warning, but hey, you're drunk.You shell out your 1.49 and dig in. And you've just been orally ambushed by Satan's little buddy. Repeat steps 9 and 10.

It really is that bad.

So on your next trip, have fun, try the Red Fort on Dean St. in Soho, and kill anyone who tries to push Marmite on you. You'll thank me later.

LM

The People Have Spoken... And They Demand Mixed Nuts!

Wow. I never expected that so many of you would sign up so quickly and enthusiastically for such a twisted and depraved journey. Honestly, I thought I could just sell the story and not come through. But you've shown me that there's a market out there on the interweb for stories of questionable moral content.

Perhaps I could do something with photos of naked women that people would pay to see or something. Incredible that no one else has already thought of this...

Anyway, here's the deal. I'm going to go home, stretch, drink half a bottle of peach schnapps, and start writing. The story of Dougie and the Mixed Nuts is not a short one. And it's not for the faint of heart.

So take a page from Ithiel's book. Start working on your buzz now, find a comfortable chair, and have a therapist on standby.

We're going in...

LM

Dougie and the Mixed Nuts

Mrs. Manion and I have been going back and forth about whether or not the world is ready for the story of Dougie and the mixed nuts. It's a true story that I myself lived through many years ago. It's a story of four football players, two theater majors, 60 pounds worth of sex acts, pool cues, Stratford-Upon-Avon, photographs, insane amounts of body hair, second story windows, rope ladders, and one small bisexual man named Dougie.

Mrs. Manion feels that the story of Dougie and the Mixed Nuts is a little too "spicy" for even you, the people who don't flinch at the sight of scabies or hot clown on clown action.

I think you guys might be able to handle it.

So what do you think? Are you ready? If you guys think you can handle it, I'll tell the story. If you can't, or if Mrs. Manion tells me that I'm looking at another FCC indecency fine, I'll restrain myself.

So let me know.

LM

For a taste of yer whiskey, I'll give you some advice...

I don't karaoke very often. It's not really my thing. But some people, like Amandarama, or Mrs. Manion, like it. So here are my tips for having a fun and entertaining evening out at the local karaoke bar.

• No matter how much you think that MeatLoaf is god's gift to music, not everyone shares your opinion. Your decision to perform the twelve and a half minute unedited version of "I'd do anything for love (But I won't do that)" will not be appreciated.
• If you're forced to sing, choose "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers. Everybody else in the bar will sing along with you, removing the need for you to actually sing. Lip sync it like you were Britney and everybody will still love you.
• As soon as Mrs. Manion starts doing the ass dance on top of a table, you have about thirty minutes to get her home before disaster strikes. If she starts telling you that you never let her have any fun, you're down to fifteen minutes.

There you go. Now get out there and belt out some Irene Cara tunes.
LM

Manion 2K

Yes, here at Mercenary Words we've finally had over two thousand hits. And many of those hits were not generated by Mrs. Manion pounding the refresh button on her browser. And that's pretty cool. So I'm going to hoist a celebratory Diet Coke in recognition of that brave soul out there who said, "Dammit, I want to know more about scabies, but rather than go to a reputable medical info site, I'm going to get my information from some random guy with a blog." 'Cause that's exactly the sort of thing that I would do.

"Hey honey, it's okay to ignore that rash, because RickyBoi63 says on his blog that his cousin had one just like that an' his arm didn't fall off or nothin..."

And by way of thanking all y'all who visit Mercenary Words on a semi-regular (or semi-nude - We're cool with it either way, just keep posting those photos!) basis, here's a little card that I'd mail to you if I had any idea where any of you lived.

Thanks for making a fun little project a little more worth doing.

LM

The Unleashing of the Hamsters of Madness

We still don't have Diet Coke. And now I don't have any madness hamsters. Talk about a rip off. They should have been called "Crawl into the Heating Ducts and Die Hamsters." I'm mad, sure, but I don't think that was an accurate representation of the hamsters.

So I've decided to up the ante. I've contracted the Penguin of Death to track down an eliminate the person who drank all the Diet Coke in the office. The Penguin of Death was trained by an elite school of ninja penguins. At least that's what it said in the brochure.




I will smuggle him into the building in a box. With air holes this time. And let him waddle off to wreak such carnage. Delicious, meaty carnage!

There will be such an ass-kicking. In 412 flavors. Get ready for it, people.

LM

Madness Hamsters!

I'm getting a new pet - Madness hamsters.

They kick ass over dogs and cats. I will train them and unleash them on my enemies. It will be awesome. This is going to be so great.

And do you know who the first victim of my madness hamsters will be? Of course you do! It's going to be the person who drank all of the frickin' Diet Coke and didn't order any more! I don't know who this person is, but I'm going to learn. Oh yes. And my madness hamsters will quickly reduce this damned soul to a gibbering mass of a humanity!

BWAH, HA, HA!

LM

And a Manion Dreams...

So, many of you have written to me saying:

Dear Lance,
What do you dream when you are asleep?

Signed

Lots of People

And that's a difficult question. Mostly because the world seems bound and determined to prevent me from getting a decent night's sleep these days.

But because you're probably looking for an insight for the various biographies of me that you're working on, I've written down a few of the most recent entries from my dream journal. Psych! I don't have a dream journal. I'm vastly too macho.

Anyway. Here they are - real(!) dreams that I've had in the past week. To make life easier on my future biographers, I've already researched the symoblism and meaning of the dream and provided an explanation.

Manion Galactica (Yeah, I watch Battlestar Galactica. You should too.)

So I was on the surface of Caprica with Starbuck and Helo. And Starbuck had forgotten to pack a lunch. So I shared my lunch with her. 'Cause I'm all gentleman-like.

Meaning - packed lunch = always prepared; Starbuck = hot chicks dig me;

High School Manion

So I was back in high school, but I had forgotten my pants. Somehow I had to get to class without anyone noticing my pantsless state. Hilarity ensues...

Meaning - School = past source of tension; pantsless = my continuing belief that more people would really like to see my magical pants weasel.

Aliens vs. Manion

So I was an officer on board a naval destroyer, and we had to dock with an aircraft carrier that we believed to be infested with aliens from the movie Aliens. I was ordered to lead the first team on board. I had invented some sort of ultraviolet flashlight that could kill the aliens, but didn't hurt people or equipment. Of course, right after we got on board, the batteries died...

Meaning - Aliens = Aliens; flashlight = inventiveness/creativity; batteries dying = Desire to show how badass I am by personally clubbing aliens to death with the magical pants weasel (Certainly does not mean that I fear letting myself down. Absolutely not. Definitely means the badass thing.);

There you go. Now can I get a nap or something?

LM

Guest @ Das Manion Haus

So we just finished hosting several of Mrs. Manion's friends. Now we're recovering from the flat out exhaustion of spending two days cleaning. It's the price we pay for convincing random people that the house is always beautiful and elegant.

Little do they know that three hours ago the bathroom was a biohazard.

Argh.

LM

Everyone in Hollywood Has a Script

Or so they tell me. So I decided to come up with a script. I'm going to just give you the overview here, because otherwise you'd recognize the awesome genius of it and steal my idea.

For what it's worth, this idea was inspired, in a loose and non-copyrightable way, by Amandarama's latest post...

Here we go -

"Divided We Stand" - by Lance Manion

It's the year 2105. Brain transplant technology has just been invented. Police detective Turk Mannington has just been gunned down in the line of duty. Racing against time, surgeons manage to remove his brain from his body. Unfortunately, they don't have anywhere to put it. So they run to the animal testing lab to find a host body.

Unfortunately, the testing lab only has a bunch of lemurs. Even more unfortunately, the cranial capacity of a lemur is not nearly big enough to hold a human brain. So Mannington's brain
gets divided amoung a dozen lemurs.


He can only think clearly when all of the lemurs are within a 10 foot radius of Stinky, the lead lemur. When a lemur is outside the circle Mannington loses the brain function contained in that lemur. Like if the lemur for a given memory is outside the radius, he loses that memory. Hilarity ensues when his memory of ettiquette steps out and two of his lemur selves have sex with a bag of coffee grounds.

Manningon frantically tries to keep his lemur-selves out of trouble while investigating his own murder. It's like a buddy movie, where one buddy is the hard-bitten cop, who does things by the book, and the other cop is 12 lemurs that like to mark their territory with poo. Despite his initial rage at being trapped in a collection of small primitive mammals, Mannington eventually accepts his fate, and become the first lemur detectives on the force.

It will be filled with touching scenes like the one where Mannington tries to reconnect with his fiance, while 11 other lemur selves check the fiance for ticks and fleas.

The climax of the movie will come when 12 lemurs collectively fire a rocket launcher into the fleeing limousine of the bad guy. In a stunning twist, the bad guy is then transplanted into a dozen fossas (that weird looking thing below), natural enemy of the lemur.



That smell you're smelling? That's the great, fresh scent of Oscar. Check it out, people.

LM

Once Again, I Got Nothing...

So I've been devoting way too much time this morning to coming up with something to write. And the muse isn't singing, no matter how much White Out I sniff. Stupid muse.

So I'm going to try something a little diff. Something a little free-form. Sort of a Spinal Tap style Jazz Odyssey (and we all know how well that turned out).

So lets ride that camera eye, as Dos Passos would call it, into that nutty world we call "The Mind of a Manion" (Just as aside, it helps if you say "Mind of a Manion" out loud with a kind of
reverb effect. Seriously. Try it!)

Cars
If one or more body panels on your car are made of Bondo, don't bother getting the wide bore exhaust. It's not like your car is one cannister of NOS away from being in "The Fast and the
Furious"

Movies
"Cruel Intentions" was a great, and underappreciated, movie. It had Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillipe all being delightfully tawdry. If you're looking for some quality sleaze on a Friday night, try this puppy out.

Costco
This place rocks. It's the american dream for people who want to build something out of beef jerky. And some day I will build something out of jerky. I'll start small. Perhaps a tool shed.

Now that I'm bringing this puppy in for a landing, I see that my Jazz Odyssey metaphor may not have been too far off. But anyway, I made a promise that I'd post something every day. So bleah.

LM

Good Mood

I'm in an unusually good mood. I almost don't feel like crushing most of the galaxy beneath an iron glove in a velvet fist, or however that's supposed to go.

To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm feeling good. Perhaps it's because I slept well last night. I think it's called the "Sleep of the Just." Or in my case it might be better described as the "Sleep of Someone Who Knows the Statute of Limitations Has Passed." I've never been sure. In any event, I'm feeling well rested.

It also might be because I've switched from Gangsta Rap to Classical. The problem with gangsta rap is the headphones. When I'm in the writing zone, and grooving to "Rat-a-Tat-Tat" by Dr. Dre, and someone taps me on the shoulder, everything goes hazy for a minute, and the next thing I know, I'm hanging from the ceiling by my toes and holding some poor QA guy's spleen. It's always QA for some reason. You'd think it would be marketing spleens. Oh well.

With a little Strauss (specifically, the Blue Danube Waltz), I can turn and calmly ask how I can be of service. Although at this point they've outsourced the QA department anyway. They were running out of spleens fast.

It's not because I've switched to decaf. I would never switch to decaf. Decaf is for the weak. Decaf is heresy. Or possibly apostasy. I don't know.

Perhaps I'm a good mood because my current deliverable is finally coming together. I'm already 43 pages into a guide for Application Remediation.

I don't know. Either way, I'm feeling pretty good about life this morning. If I didn't feel good, I'd be concerned that my normal baseline of rage was being displaced. I can only hope that someone incurs my wrath tomorrow.

LM

Naked Night @ The Annex

Way back in the olden days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and grunge rock was new and hip, I was in college. I lived in a section of a dorm, that, thanks to poor architectural design, and campus politics, had a semi-independent existence.

The dorm was called Mary Low, after Colby College's first female graduate (fyi, Colby was the first private liberal arts college in New England to admit women). Our apartment, for lack of a better word, was called the Mary Low Annex, or simply, The Annex. We referred to ourselves as Annexians. Our first, and only, political act was to secede from the main dorm. Not so much because we cared about anything political, but more because we didn't want to share our kegs.

As theater geeks, we had plenty of stage weapons and power tools, and Scoop could kill a man at thirty feet with a field hockey stick. The revolution was brief, and relatively bloodless. We weren't worth the trouble of subduing. Which was fine with us. Violence interfered with the partying.

Life was good, for many moons. But eventually our grades started to suffer. People came to us to rage, and experiment with their sexualities. Mostly, this was good, except for the time that Backdoor Johnny Balls crawled in through my window to eat my money, but that's a different story.

Eventually, the six original Annexians listed below:

Lance Manion (Me! Me! Me!)
Scoop
Twitch
Rob
Zaq G'Yce, the Xorphian Warlord
and last but not least,
Karyl

...came up with a plan. We would come up with something that would sound really cool, and really hip, but something that would also keep people away. We came up with Naked Night @ The Annex.

It was great. Every Tuesday we'd talk about how we were going to take all our clothes off, and be naked, and explore whatever. We invited everyone. Of course, mid-winter in mid-Maine ensures that anyone stupid (or desperate) enough to show, won't survive the trip.

As a result, we got to work on our lighting design plots, our theses, our student teaching plans, whatever, without interruption. It was, and remains, a thing of beauty.

Every Tuesday, we would really sell Naked Night, to everyone we knew. And every Tuesday we got an night of uninterrupted studying in. It was brill. I'm thinking of reintroducing it into my professional life.

Try it yourself. It works!

LM

Savage Love Monkeys

This morning I decided that I'm not doing enough to help other people feel good about themselves. Now you're probably saying, "But Lance, you hate other people. Your dream is to crush them under your iron boot heel once you become supreme overlord of the galaxy."

And that's true. But it doesn't mean I am not occaisionally filled with the desire to be nice to people. True cruelty requires an element of capriciousness. So today I decided to refer to all of my coworkers as "Savage Love Monkeys" I know that I would be happy if someone called me a savage love monkey.

So I opened every conversation with "Hey (coworker name), you savage love monkey." And when that look that says, "Has Manion finally snapped?" crossed their faces, I knew that I'd made their day a little brighter.

Unfortunately, many of my coworkers are not native English speakers. For example, this morning I said, "Hey Dharmender, you savage love monkey...". Dharmender was confused, to say the least.

My first attempt at explaining things was to use Babelfish. Unfortunately, Babelfish produced things like "Ape of barbaric sex," which totally did not help my already tenuous relationship with HR. Further attempts produced "Monkey with abusive genitals" and lastly "Merciless wrench of desire."

And so the concept of savage love monkey took a great deal of additional explaining involving visual aids, spreadsheets, and shadow puppets. The shadow puppets weren't really necessary, but I like shadow puppets.

So now coworkers are coming over to my cube just to be called savage love monkeys, except for the non-native speakers, who have begun filing a class action suit. Such is often the case is my world.

LM