BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

… Ben had turned up the volume slightly on the television when the Saturday night movie had been interrupted for a breaking news update. Brandee Street, her cameraman, and the pilot had been arrested all right—but not before getting the morbid video into the station’s hands. Even through the overblown colors of the malfunctioning set, you could easily make out Ben, Constance and me on the balcony of the apartment. We had fought a desperate fight, but in the end the sheet had fluttered enough to give at least a partial view of the woman’s nude remains.

We all stared silently at the picture as the talking heads behind the anchor desk identified us each in succession. It was all we could do to stifle disgusted sighs as they proceeded to tag us with a sensationalized nickname. A moniker that would unfortunately not only stick for some time to come but was also picked up immediately by every other station and newspaper in the bi-state area. We had been christened “The Ghoul Squad.” …

Some of you may recognize the above paragraphs as having been excerpted from Never Burn A Witch, the second novel in my Rowan Gant Investigations series. And, if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter it’s a fairly good bet you’ve already heard about the “official” RGI GHOUL SQUAD. But then, maybe you haven’t, so that’s why I am going to flap my metaphorical gums about it here.

One of my fans, Walter Hardin Jr. to be exact – as I definitely want to give credit where credit is due – mentioned to me that I really needed a “Street Team” to free me up from some of the time-sucking promotional activities that come with the whole “being an author” profession. I thought I knew what a “Street Team” was, but soon discovered that there are two types – professional and fan-based. It was then I remembered something from my youth – The KISS Army. I was never a member myself, what with Styx being my ear candy of choice, but believe me I went to school with many of the KA inductees.

So, I did a bit of research. Then I researched some more. Then I got together with my publicist (Wendy) and my pa/publicist (Scott). They both gave me some great input. Then I ran it past a couple of friends, one of whom had done time in the music biz – they all had great input too. Some ideas were weeded out, others were solidified. The ones we liked most got a quick swipe of the photo fixative lacquer – sorry… had an old 1960’s Polaroid moment there… Anywho, it seemed like in the matter of just a few days I went from, “Street Team? What’s that?” to “YEEHAAAAA! Street Team!”

Better yet, a whole bunch of folks out there in Interwebz land did too…

And so, the RGI GHOUL SQUAD was officially born.

Complete with its very own website and everything, the “Squad” was set to go live January 1, 2010. But, that was before I committed premature post-aculation. By this I mean, while starting to write the posts that would fill the news section of the RGI GHOUL SQUAD website I neglected to turn off the ping.fm updater. As soon as I let loose with that first post it was all over Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace – not to mention a few other social networking venues.

Email began to pour in – “The join link doesn’t work!”, “There’s a password on xyz link so I can’t get to it!”, “I want to join right now!”… and so on. You get the picture.

Suddenly, I was busier than a cat covering up sh*t with all my email answering to explain the situation. But, I just couldn’t keep up. Don’t get me wrong, I was – and am – ecstatic that so many folks expressed an interest in the “Squad”. I simply wasn’t prepared to handle my screwup.

So, instead of fighting a losing battle I focused my energies and resources on making things happen a little quicker. Therefore, the RGI GHOUL SQUAD officially went “live” 18 days early – this past Sunday, December 13, 2009 to be exact. Hmmmm, 13… Seems kind of fitting in a lot of ways.

If you think you might be interested in checking out the “Squad,” its benefits – and responsibilities – then maybe even joining up, you can find the official website at www.rowangant.com.

Just be aware – I am NOT going to wear all that facepaint, breathe fire, spit fake blood, or even sing Rock And Roll All Nite…

Well… Okay… Maybe I’ll sing, but only after a few beers.

More to come…

Murv

Literally.

Why would I lie about something like that?

… And yes, I do realize that right now you are all sitting there chanting, “Murv’s gonna get it… Murv’s gonna get it…”

Normally, I would agree with you, but go back to the beginning and read again what I wrote… I’m fairly certain I typed in the word, literally. As in, E K is a literal pain in my ass. Not figurative. Not metaphorical. Nope. None of that dancing about and implied torture. No husbandly lamenting about a wife’s wifeliness. We are talking about the real deal here…

I mean to say, the woman literally caused pain and physical damage to my Gluteus Maximus.

Uh-huh… I know… Now all of you are sitting there saying, “So what? You’re talking about E K. Since you say she’s so evil then she probably just tied you up and spanked you or something like that. Big deal. Just roll with it you big baby.” (On that note – The cartoon on the right is just for you “perverted types,” BTW… )

Well, though it is apparently titillating for all of you to imagine such a scenario, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be imagining it… Hey…. Hey! Yeah, you. Stop staring at the cartoon and pay attention.

Okay… so where was I? Oh yeah… As I was saying, such graphic details might be a little too much info for a relatively PG rated blog like Brainpan Leakage… And, for the record, I am now firmly convinced that y’all have dirtier minds than I do… Especially you… Yeah, you in the back row. The one that keeps staring and drooling at the cartoon… It’s a friggin’  PG rated cartoon for Gods sake… Sheesh… For shame… For shame…

So, anyway, let’s set the record straight right here and now… E K did not spank me. Well… Not in this particular case anyway. (There, did that little bit of innuendo satisfy your prurient curiosity, or just pique it? Yeah… I thought as much, ya’ bunch of sickos… When you’re all done drooling over the silly cartoon, we can continue…)

(Jeopardy thinking music)

Okay, are we all done? Finally… Good…

So now that we’ve dispensed with the mental foreplay, we’ll move on already…

We’ve established that no spankings were had. The simple fact is that this is an entirely different kind of literal pain in the ass. And, it is also one that reaches far back into history. So, since the whole nostalgia approach of the “marriage blog” mini-series seemed to go over so well, I figured y’all might like to hear this story too. So, let’s all jump into the wayback machine and have a look at this particular, and annoyingly painful, slice of my past… (Yeah, you too… Yeah you… I don’t care… You can page back up and look at the cartoon again when we’ve finished the story… Sheesh… You don’t get out much, do you?)

Okay… On with the sordid tale…

The year was nineteen and eighty six…  E K and I had met by this point, and were more or less in the midst of doing that coy, flirty thing that accompanies the first three months of dating. You know what I mean…

For men it’s crap like: Getting a haircut. Making sure your shirt isn’t wrinkled. Actually tying your necktie in a Full Windsor instead of a Half, but only after making doubly sure it actually matches your shirt and slacks. Using aftershave and maybe even a bit of cologne… Holding your farts in until you are in the next county and downwind so that the object of your affection will never know…

For women it’s crap like: Shaving your legs regularly. Wearing a shorter skirt and higher heels than you normally would on your average workday.  A push up bra. Fancy jewelry… Holding your farts in until you are in the next county and downwind so that the object of your affection will never know…

Y’all know the drill… Typical, flirty – datey stuff.

On the particular day in question, E K arrived at our place of employment, all decked out in a nice blouse, blazer, shape hugging slacks, and the high heels that were a bit too high for your average work day… The pumps were a dead giveaway that she was being flirty, because:

1. She had service calls to take and was going to be on her feet, digging around behind printers, kneeling, bending over, and all of the other gyrations that come along with taking a service call. (For the record, it’s actually pretty good exercise.)
2. She had VERY RECENTLY uncovered my particular affinity for shapely female legs and high heels. (It bears mentioning that being the absolutely brilliant femme fatale she is, The Evil Redhead has used this information to her benefit on countless occasions, ever since making the discovery.)

The only thing missing from the overall package was the shorter than normal skirt, but see #1. She had to compromise somewhere along the line, and like I said, the slacks were definitely figure flattering…

Okay… I need some alone time now…

Just kidding. Well, not really, but I have too much to do and I need to finish this story…

In keeping with the flirty stuff, E K had some tasteful jewelry on to accentuate here and there. Of course, being incredibly practical as well, one of the jewelry items was a fancy little diskette lapel pin. I mean, after all, she’s a technician, so she needed to have herself some technician jewelry, right? And, yes, the picture here is of the actual pin in question. As amazing as it may seem, she still has it after all these years. Granted, it may look a bit odd to you youngsters who have never seen a 5 1/4 inch floppy diskette in real life, but that is exactly what it was patterned after. BTW, Sorcim / IUS was a software company. They were the “publisher” of a widely used, DOS Based program called SuperCalc. If I remember correctly, the lapel pin itself was a gimme type perk she received for attending a Sorcim seminar.

So, anyway, enough rambling on about ancient technology being transformed into jewelry. Let’s get back to this particular day in history…

E Kay’s truck… Yes, my dear and lovely used to drive a truck…  Anyway, her truck was going to be in the shop for some routine maintenance, which effectively left her without wheels, but she still needed to take service calls. Unfortunately, the outfit we were working for at the time, TC Service, didn’t have company vehicles for us to use. So, in order that my lovely be able to take her scheduled service calls, I loaned her my car. As it happened, said vehicle was the Mustang LX I was desperately trying to pay off… Yeah, that’s one of those, “another stories,” but if you read the “Mahwage” series of entries, you know what I mean.

So, after a bit of flirting and lustful stirrings brought about by E K in high heels purposely reaching for things behind her desk while standing in front of it, if you know what I’m saying, I sent her on the road with parts, tools, and my car. After that, the day continued in a relatively uneventful fashion. I configured a few Leading Edge PC’s, fixed a printer or two, answered some tech support calls… The usual crap… The Evil One completed her service calls and returned, both she and my car completely unscathed. Life was good.

As it happened, that evening was filled with “other obligations,” so E K and I were not going to be able to spend it together. Not exactly the best situation, given the fact that she had purposely lit my fuse, so to speak, but hey, stuff happens. Of course, we did the flirty-flirty thing through the afternoon, and retrieved her truck from the shop, then when quitting time rolled around, stole a few kisses before going our separate directions for the evening.

I hopped into my car, and at a point somewhere around halfway home, I felt a very sudden, very sharp, very intense pain in my right butt cheek. If I remember correctly, I even let out a yelp.  It was reminiscent of being nailed by a bee. Since it happened to be late summer, I assumed this was a real possibility.  Something else I considered was a cherry from a cigarette. At the time I was a smoker, so I had to wonder if I had inadvertently knocked the fire from the end of a smoke while shifting gears or some such.

Well, of course, I reached down and felt about in the seat while hiking myself up onto my left hip and dancing around in a circle, all while trying to keep the car in between the dashed lines dividing the lanes on I-170. However, no matter how much feeling about in the seat, or on my own ass I did, I found nothing.

Still, the pain continued.

Well… I have to admit, I have a fairly high pain tolerance. I’m not at all sure from whence it originates, but I can actually take a lot of abuse… Just ask E K… But, let’s not go there again… Seriously, though, I really do have a fairly high tolerance for pain, so since I couldn’t find the source I decided my best bet was to just ignore it. Besides, at this point, the initial shock of the pain was fading and it had settled down to a dull ache. The ache was making its way into the background as well, so I figured I’d be all good. Eventually, it would just go away.

And it did. For the most part, anyway. I mean, there remained a minor ache and soreness throughout the rest of the evening, but nothing anywhere near as intense as the initial stab of pain.

Life rocked on, I met my various obligations, and even had a quick chat or two with E K on the phone, just because I couldn’t stand to be away from her for more than an hour at a stretch unless I was unconscious. The evening grew late and eventually it was time to hit the sack. Following my regular routine, I emptied my pockets, then started getting undressed so I could go to bed. About the time I undid my pants and went to pull them off, I discovered that they seemed to be hung up somewhere around the right side of my ass. As in, they wouldn’t come off. At about the exact instant I started to tug on them a bit, the pain that had earlier ravaged my butt cheek exploded forth once more.

Now I was hopping about on one leg, cussing, and about to trip over my half-removed britches. Fearing that I was going to perform a flawless face plant on the floor, I twisted around and perched myself on the corner of my waterbed side rails, and rolled up onto my left hip. Reaching back and feeling around, through the fabric of the pants, my fingers now came into contact with a small lump on my rear, right about where my wallet had been residing earlier. Perplexed, I slipped my hand into my hip pocket and felt around some more. Within seconds I had hold of the offending object and pulled, much like the whole mouse yanking the thorn out of the lion’s paw scenario. Except, it was just me doing the yanking, and the paw in this case was my ass.

When I brought my hand up into the light, besides a bit of blood, I also found a gold, diskette shaped, lapel pin pinched between my fingers.

The next morning, when E K strolled into work, I waited for her to park herself at her desk, which was nearby and facing mine. After exchanging some flirty good mornings, I raised an eyebrow and asked, “So, were you trying to make sure I didn’t forget you last night?”

She furrowed her brow and cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”

I pushed back from my desk, stood, took the few steps in her direction, and then dropped the lapel pin on the desk blotter in front of her.

“Oh, I was wondering where I lost that!” she exclaimed. “Where did you find it?”

I shook my head. “You probably don’t want to know.”

I did eventually tell her, of course. A few minutes later, in fact. However, looking back on it now, that was probably a mistake in and of itself. You see,  it was at that point in our relationship that she became aware of my higher than normal tolerance for pain, and she has been trying to find my breaking point ever since…

But seriously… All joking and silliness aside, I think you can now see why I can truthfully say that, “E K is a real pain in my ass…”

More to come…

Murv