Blog Love Omega Glee: The Forthright Of July (4 July 2012)

As daylight retreats during a Fourth of July party in Cleaveland at Jake's friend Chandler's house, the boys, including Jake, have migrated to the far end of the backyard where they attempt to see how many firecrackers it will take to blow up an old Hulk Hogan action figure, while the girls, including Francine and Jake's sister Winifred, continue to converse around the still smoldering grill.

Francine takes another drink from her McSorley's Dark, and says to Winifred, "So, what was Jake's old girlfriend like? He's never told me much about her."

"That's because there isn't much to say about her. She was a bitch. She probably still is a bitch. I don't know what the hell he was thinking. Don't worry, you're much cooler than her," Winifred says, dipping another cracker into the buffalo chicken cheese dip, "I can't get enough of this dip. You want some more? Otherwise, I'm going to finish it by licking it."

"No, I'm good. Lick away."

"Here, would you mind holding my hair? If I hold the pan with two hands I can get a better angle," Winifred says picking up the dip.

Francine gathers Winifred's long brown hair up and holds it away from Winifred's face, which is buried in the pan.

When Winifred sets the dip down, Francine lets go of her hair. "Thanks! That stuff is good. Do I have any on my face?" Winifred says.

"All over," Francine says, and takes a napkin and wipes off the splotches of dip from Winifred's face.

"Thanks! You're definitely his coolest girlfriend ever. Usually he dates either girls who like him but he doesn't really like but he feels bad for them so he dates them anyway, or girls who he lets walk all over him."

"Which type was the last one?"

"Guess."

"She walked all over him."

"Right! Like I said, Jackson was a bitch. In fact, just between me and you, she was a black hole of a cunt. Once they graduated and she didn't need him anymore, she dumped him."

"What did she need him for?"

"I think he wrote all her school papers for her. She used him for money too, until she found someone with more."

"She doesn't sound very nice. What did he see in her?"

"She looked like a female wrestler, I think. The hot type, not the scary type. He never told her that, I'm sure. In fact, he seemed to hide his wrestling fascination from her as much as possible. It's his own fault really. He should have never gotten involved with her. Of course, I'm sure he'd say the same about some of my boyfriends."

"How is your lovelife anyway? Are you seeing anyone?"

"No, but I think I'm going to marry this buffalo chicken cheese dip. It's damn near orgasmic. I have to get the recipe from Chandler."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Blog Love Omega Glee: He May Be A Bastard, But He's R. Bastard (3 July 2012)

Sick of commercials interrupting television programs, Jake recorded the latest Grapple Groove, but he hasn't gotten around to viewing it since he has been meditating on marriage and potential fatherhood. If his own dad is any indication of their effect upon men, Jake may, having dodged this bullet, not want to continue playing Russian Roulette with sperm and egg. When the world gets to be too much to deal with, Jake, like many, finds solace in watching people pretend to beat the stuffing out of one another in a world where problems get solved by the count of three, and so he watches the recorded episode of Grapple Groove.

Spy music plays over the speakers in the arena. As the bassline races to a video of a chase scene on the huge screens by the entrance ramp, the audience wonders where R. Bastard will appear from this week. Supposedly an undercover operative who wrestles on the side, R. Bastard is a man of mystery. No one knows what the "R" stands for. Some say it means "Roosevelt", as in Franklin Delano, who supposedly said "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch" when speaking of a Latin American dictator. Some say it stands for "Harry R. Truman" (not Harry S. Truman, the president who supposedly said "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard" when speaking of a Cold War dictator)--Harry R. Truman was R. Bastard's first manager, who disappeared mysteriously last year.

Some say it just stands for "Ricardo" or something.

In any case, Bastard wears a Mexican-wrestling mask that looks like a yellow smiley face, and a black singlet, and claims to be Mexican-American from Texas, but frequently drops his "r"s like he's from Boston. He's a nasty piece of work, whatever that means, but claims to work on the side of the angels, provided somebody else doesn't bid higher. Technically a face, he breaks rules as often as any rulebreaker.

Bastard pops out of the crowd, where he'd been hiding behind/reading a newspaper, and runs down to the ring, catching by surprise his opponent William Whitecollar, who was looking at the wrong side of the arena. Just as Whitecollar turns around, Bastard clotheslines him out of the ring, and the bell rings to begin the match officially. Bastard then gets out of the ring himself and he and Whitecollar begin to pummel one another. The referee--retired wrestler Infidel Castro, looking guapo in his black and white striped ref shirt and black pants--demands that the wrestlers return to the ring or be counted out. He begins to count to ten. When he gets to nine, Bastard shoves Whitecollar into the crowd and rolls back into the ring just under the count of ten, where he is declared the victor by countout.

What a bastard!

Whitecollar, who looks like the white guy in the next cubicle over if you work in an office, picks up a microphone and begins ranting about the low and dirty trick Bastard pulled, and how Bastard is a bastard.

Bastard grabs a microphone and says, "Hey, my father and mother never marrying is no fault of mine. Yell at them if you want to yell at someone about that. Don't call me names. In any case, you're only upset because you lost. Maybe you ought to yell at your parents for not teaching you how to count."

That's our bastard!

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Blog Love Omega Glee: The Anti-Semitic Service Station (2 July 2012)

A detour due to summer road construction compels Francine to drive a different route than usual to Jake's house. She opts to steer her car on a meandering path through the east side of Cleaveland past the ever-growing Healthy Hospital campus swallowing land like a drunk attacking a bag of potato chips after a night of bar-hopping, row upon row of identical gentrification homes, blocks of abandoned boarded up houses, and vistas of vacant lots returning slowly to nature. Stopped by a red light near a gas station, she notes that the station has a mural painted on its side of what looks to be Arab children threatened by devilish and vampiresque Orthodox Jews, complete with fangs, horns, and tails. Underneath the figures is the phrase "Kill all the Jews before they kill you. Look what they did to Jesus. Save Palestine."

Francine rubs her eyes.

She looks again.

She finds the mural still there. It wasn't an optical illusion. She stares at the mural trying to understand why it's there. The gas station appears to be open too, so it's not like some bigot used an abandoned building for a canvas. A young black woman fills up her car at the pumps around the corner from the mural. "Doesn't she notice the mural?" Francine thinks. Francine notices that the mural's too detailed to have been graffiti, so she concludes that surely the owner of the gas station knows it's there. Why doesn't it get erased? "Could it have been placed there on purpose?" she wonders, "Do people really want to shop at an anti-semitic service station? What customers like their gas mixed with a bit of hatred? 'Hello, I'd like a pack of cigarettes, a lottery ticket, and some prejudice, please?' 'Yeah, they hate the Jews, but their gas is five cents cheaper than the place on the next block.' "Yo, it's on the Klan's list of recommended businesses so I drive in from the suburbs to fill up every week' 'I ain't Jewish, so I don't care.' 'At least the dude is honest. A lot of people be fronting about stuff like that. I give him props for that.' ''This is a poor neighborhood and there ain't no Jews here to be offended anyway, so let the man have his say.' 'It's just talking about Israel and their treatment of the Palestinians, and it just means "Kill all the Jews" figuratively. I think Zionism isn't kosher anyway.' Is that what people who patronize the place would say?"

The light changes and a car behind her honks. Francine turns her attention back to the road and starts to drive forward but not before the car behind her zooms around her with a tire squeal, and the driver flips her off while yelling something unintelligible. Ignoring the idiot, Francine supposes the mural is free speech, and freedom of speech is exactly for speech we despise, as many have noted, since no one has a problem with speech he or she likes. But, still, she thinks, how can anyone shop there in good conscience? "This isn't Nazi Germany. What business owner thinks it's a smart idea to openly advocate the genocide of an ethnic or religious group?" Francine thinks.

She continues to ruminate that people still have their prejudices in 2012, but they usually hide them, especially where business is concerned since currency had no religion or ethnicity. "OK, currency does have a nationality, but as long as it's convertible or spendable, somebody will take it, no matter what it is," Francine thinks.

She's glad her period arrived last night. She decides that this might not be the best world to bring a child into. Of course, when was it ever that world?

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Blog Love Omega Glee: What's Our Omega Point, Baby? (1 July 2012)

Like a steel chair to the head, Francine's words stun Jake. As he pauses the video on the computer, the image that gets frozen is of Crony Crushnik putting Dong Du Dong in The Russian Bearhug, and Jake knows exactly how Dong feels. Trapped and suffocating, Jake girds himself for "the relationship talk". Dragging every little movement out as he turns around to face Francine, he just hopes he can escape somehow, but, unlike Dong, he can't just spit vodka into Crushnik's eyes and wiggle free.

"Sure, darling, we can talk," Jake says, hoping his smile conceals his terror.

"Don't call me 'darling'. You know I hate that word," Francine says, sitting down on her bed and patting the space beside her, summoning Jake to sit down there.

"Your hair looks nice," Jake says, looking at Francine's newly-dyed black hair.

"Oh, thanks," Francine says, "Now like I said, we need to have a talk."

"What brand of hair color did you use exactly?" Jake says, sitting down on the bed.

"Jake, you and I both know that you don't care about my hair dye. Quit trying to change the subject," Francine says in the stern voice that she uses when her menstrual cramps are bad.

"OK."

"Now, where do you see this relationship going?"

"'Going'?"

"Yes, 'going'. What's our final destination? What's our omega point? I need to know."

"Uh, I guess I hadn't really thought about it."

"Well, start thinking, I might be pregnant."

"P-p-p-pregnant?"

"Well, my period's late anyway. Sometimes that happens though. Or you've knocked me up."

"Wow!" Jake says, reclining on the bed.

"'Wow'? It's not that unusual. A baby is a predictable result of sex."

"But you're on the pill, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"And we use condoms. Though I don't know why, as you're on the pill."

"The pill guards against pregnancy, not STDs."

"I don't have any STDs. I told you, those scaly things were just a heat rash. We were doing it a lot. That can happen."

"All right, all right, don't get defensive. I just want to know what we'll do if I am pregnant."

"Well, we'll get married, of course."

That must have been the right thing to say because Francine smiles and says, "Well, I'm sure it's nothing, but I just wanted to let you know. And I needed to know if this was more than a summer romance."

"Of course, it started in the spring. Now, why don't we use one of those pregnancy tests and find out for sure?"

"Oh, don't worry, I either am or I'm not; we'll find out soon enough. Besides, you might have to save money for something."

Shaking his head at Francine's gearshift from alarm to nonchalance, Jake puts his arms around her and starts to think of a ring that's not a wrestling ring for once.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Love Is Done!

Love, Part 2 of Blog Love Omega Glee, is now complete! We're at the halfway mark of the silly novel that is starting to rival the length of War & Peace; alas, B.L.O.G. isn't as good as Tolstoy's classic and has less Russians in it to boot! However, Part 3, Omega, starts tomorrow! Thanks to all the readers who have been with me since the beginning and welcome to any newcomers (you can catch up easily)! Stay tuned for more madcap adventures of Francine, Jake, and the gang as time runs out on the calendar of 2012! In the meantime, why don't you buy a copy of The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus if you haven't already? And, if you have already, why not buy another one and donate it a local library or give it to a friend? I suggest this because I'm afraid there's not much money in giving away novels for free on the Internet so I have to feed Jake's cats and keep the coffees coming for Francine somehow, and that's how I do it!
Toodles until tomorrow!

Blog Love Omega Glee: Print On Demand Lover (30 June 2012)

As Eve leaves Purgatory in a huff, Lilith throws a mug of coffee against the door. The mug shatters and the coffee leaves a stain shaped like a mushroom across the door and nearby wall. An elderly black couple, in the neighborhood for the antique fair, get startled and decide not to have a cappuccino after all. As they leave, coffee drips down the door, and the rest of Purgatory goes silent except for the piano of Vienna Teng playing on the cafe's stereo. Lilith grabs a rag, says to all the patrons "Sorry. That was a slippery mug. Ha, ha. Nothing to be alarmed about", and goes to wipe up the mess. First though, she opens the door and offers a cup on the house ("not on the wall, honest") to the couple going down the stairs, who return ("watch the glass, sorry, I'll clean it up in a moment").

After Lilith has restored order, Francine leaves Jake at the table and comes to the counter. "You OK?" she says.

"Oh, Francine, yes, I'm fine," she sighs, then leans over the counter and whispers, "No, I'm not OK. Do you have a cigarette?"

Francine nods, "Great! Let's have a smoke on the patio," Lilith says, grabbing Francine by the arm and dragging her out back.

"Wait! My cigarettes are in my purse on the table," Francine says, as they exit the back door.

"Oh, never mind, I don't smoke anyway. Let's just stay here and talk quietly. I can keep my eye on the counter from here," Lilith says stopping on the back stairs.

"Why'd you want a cigarette anyway?"

"It seems like a better vice than love. At least smoking kills you slowly instead of fucking stabbing you in the heart at a moment's notice."

"Trouble in paradise?"

"Only if your idea of paradise is a bookstore. Eve's latest crazy scheme to save her bookstore is to sell her house and use the money to buy one of those print on demand book machines. She thinks that way the bookstore can stay open because people will come in to get an instant copy of any book they want. I told her that's crazy. Print is dead. Everybody's reading on their cell phones or whatever now."

"I thought she was moving the bookstore in here."

"She was, and I was supposed to go live with her, but she's freaking out about how she's not sure if it's the right move, and how she doesn't know if I'm the right person for her. 'Out of seven billion people, can I really just choose one to spend the rest of my life with?'"

Francine's had the same thought about Jake and past lovers, but wisely keeps her piehole shut, and just nods.

"I tell you what. I wish they had one of those print on demand machines for human beings. I'd order up a lover who wasn't fucking crazy."

"All lovers are fucking crazy, Lilith. To be in love is to be crazy. Eve'll settle down, I'm sure. She's probably just having trouble dealing with change."

"Thanks, Francine. You're a good egg, you know that? Jake's very lucky."

"So's Eve."

"Well, if she actually tries to sells that house, she'll be lucky if I don't kill her."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.

Blog Love Omega Glee: And His Opponent, From Mount Olympus . . . (29 June 2012)

"Hermes? Really?" Jake says, interviewing Ringo at North's house for Jake's blog.

"Yeah? Why not?" Ringo, a.k.a. The Pamphleteer, asks, taking a sip of Mrs. West's famous lemonade, "He's said to have invented wrestling. He's the patron god of travelers and I'm on the road a lot."

"But . . ."

"But 'he's not real'. Don't laugh. At least I know my god is made up. A lot of people don't. They're the ones to watch out for."

"If you know he's made up, how can you . . ."

"Believe in him? Why not? It's a comfort to think that some imaginary force is on my side, that somebody's looking out for me. That's what's wrong with the world. No one believes in anything anymore. That's even been a problem with wrestling. Wasn't it better when people thought it was real and the wrestlers really hated each other? Wouldn't it be cooler to think that Wada Wolf was really a werewolf and not just a Japanese guy with a hairy back?"

"I don't know. I like it as it is. It seemed like it used to be pretty ridiculous when they still insisted it was real."

"Yeah, but it made you wonder, didn't it? 'Maybe it is real'. It was nice to have that curtain of doubt, even as thin as it got."

"Speaking of which, Francine's convinced that you're the writer of those pamphlets, but she said that you won't admit to it."

"I won't admit to it because I'm not behind it. I do like them though; that's why I distribute them around. Which reminds me, North, we need to stop at a copystore before we go. I need to make more copies of the pamphlets."

North, flexing his muscles and posing for the mirror in the living room, nods, and then goes back to admiring himself in the mirror.

"So why does the writer of the pamphlets always drop in a wrestling term or two?" Jake asks.

"I don't know. You'll have to ask him," Ringo says and winks.

"Ah, you winked! You are him!"

"No, I didn't. You must have been hallucinating. North, did you see any wink?"

"Huh? I was staring in the mirror; I didn't see anything," North says, turning towards Jake and Ringo, "Working out with you these past couple of days has buffed me up. I look good."

"See, no wink," Ringo says, winking.

"I have to get a video camera for future interviews," Jake says.

"You'd still never catch me winking. Like Hermes, I am fast," Ringo says.

"Wasn't Hermes the god of liars too?" Jake asks.

"Well, he's the god of storytellers. A fiction may be imaginary, but that doesn't mean it's not true."

North interrupts, "Unless Hermes is running us over to Detroit, we better get going."

"Well, thanks for the interview," Jake says, "Sorry I can't go with you to the show, but break a leg or whatever."

"It's wrestling. Whose leg do you want me to break?" Ringo says, winking.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.