A Million Little Pieces of Feces - Softcover

Bonkers, Python

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1411677315 ISBN 13: 9781411677319

Publisher: Lulu Press, 2006

Synopsis

Late night shots ring out in tranquil Hermosa Beach, California, heralding the mysterious assassination of a nondescript pussycat. Will the trail lead to an enigmatic code hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci? Will a breathless race through the streets of Los Angeles lead back to Hermosa, where an explosive truth, contemplated for centuries, is finally unveiled as the Formula for God - reconciling religion's compatibility with physics? Well, no to the first question, and as for the second question, well, I guess it's all a question of faith. Nevertheless, conquer your own fear and loathing of fake memoirs and take a wild ride with the most original voice to come along in years. Truth is stranger than fiction; so much so, that sometimes it has to be toned down and just called fiction.

About this title

About the Author

For more than 20 years the pseudonymous Mr. Bonkers has earned his stripes in the world of magazine publishing. His travels have taken him everywhere from being a book critic to serving as the editor of seven national magazines. During this time, this jack of all writing trades has guided publications from such varied areas of interest as bicycling, motorcycling, active lifestyles, industrial technology, performance boating and golfing. These experiences have taken him literally around the world on various assignments. He has garnered numerous writing awards in pursuit of these activities. Moreover, having worked in offices ranging from small magazines to huge corporate publishing empires serves to inform his wicked look inside the world of magazine publishing and its Dilbertesque Machiavellian office politics -- very unlike the glamorous image put forth in movies and on TV. When he's not writing he can be found either mountain biking or playing keyboard in various clubs with his rockin' blues band.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Thursday was already shaping up as the type of day that you want to tear right out of your diary, put in an envelope, and address to: Adolph Hitler, 1 Hades Way, Netherworld, Hell 666, with a note saying: "Adolph, hey, hang on to this for me, will 'ya? I'll see you shortly."

I polished off my spinach but it was not a good idea. My stomach suddenly wasn't up to it and I had also microwaved it too long. It was like eating green, rubbery, bird diarrhea. I was sure it would never digest and I would be dead by tomorrow (where I could review all of the notes I had been sending to Hitler.)

Speaking of bird diarrhea, I would have to perform my morning routine, before I could hit the highway. I grabbed the box of birdseed from the closet and looked up and down the street carefully. I checked the windows in the surrounding homes, apartments and condos, to make sure there were none of the many neighborhood spies noting my behavior. I quickly scampered over to Mrs. Beasly's Jaguar XKR and poured a good portion of the seed into the cavity where the windshield wipers hide. Before she wakes up, leisurely, at about 10 a.m., the pigeons will, as they always do like clockwork, eat every bit of it and, while they are there, shit up a hood full of good-morning-to-you-Mrs.-Beasly-poop.

She deserved every dropping. She was the one I had seen a few weeks earlier spending an inordinate amount of time talking to the meter maid, whom she had just flagged down. I could make out Beasly's Joan-River-like stretched face, smiling, as she pointed repeatedly to my cherry '69 Firebird. A classic muscle car from a different era. My one joy.

She was a once-upon-a-time trophy wife, who turned into a fat yuppie, no doubt soon to be a take-everything-not-nailed-down, divorcee. But surgery could neither tighter her face any further, nor fix her figure - in fact, a liposuction surgeon couldn't suck enough fat out even if he stuck a hose into her belly from an Oreck vacuum cleaner, fitted with an industrial motor. It was her mission in life to torture us in an attempt to get us to move, so that only the royal yuppies could live in this neighborhood.

Having the meter maid check up on the Firebird produced its desired effect.

The next day it had a yellow boot on it. This arose from countless unpaid tickets from Mirtha's around town scofflaw adventures, when she "borrowed" my car. "Don't worry," she'd say, "they hand out so many tickets that they can't even keep track of them. Nobody pays them," she assured me. And so she'd frequently let them collect like bird shit on the windshield and make a half-hearted effort to clear them off before I saw them - but not before Beasly took notice of this happening on a regular basis and figuring out that we weren't - couldn't afford - to pay them all.

The boot was biting my rear tire like a cougar caught in a bear trap. This preternatural insult sat there mocking me every morning. Once, I even caught that fat yuppie Beasly, in her window, laughing, when I was inspecting the boot.

To free it I would have to come up with enough money to bankrupt a small country trying to pay ransom to free its kidnapped dictator.

Then the car was towed to the storage lot. I visited it there like a relative in prison and I saw that they had apparently used a forklift . . . a fucking forklift, to move the fucking thing around the lot. It was pushed flush against a rusty junk car. It was all banged up and scratched up. And wounded. It was an ugly sight.

But not as ugly its replacement. A puke green 1974 AMC Matador. It was sold to me by an overtly drunk, used car salesman named Tony, who knew someone broke and desperate when he saw one. He arranged this $319 deal to get the friggen thing off the lot as soon as possible, so as not to stink up the other cars. Apparently, it had been taken in as a trade not more than 20 minutes earlier. This way, he wouldn't even have to arrange for the tow truck to haul its sorry ass off to the junkyard. Bang. Off the lot and gone. And, much worse, later on he would use this dubious favor to leverage another kind of deal from me, not to my advantage but by ending up as another creature in my Lost in Space home zoo project.

But he did have that devious swindle talent that oozes from used car salesmen. My God, when his hand swept across the expanse of the Matador's hood he made it seem like he was Q introducing James Bond to his Aston Martin DB5. He assured me that it would perform as needed, wherever I had to get to. It looked more like something found on the bottom of the ocean on a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode. Besides, he'd be surprised at the wear and tear that goes on out there in the field. Could this car handle it?

It was uniquely boxy, and couldn't shine even if it was stripped and repainted. The pull of its ugliness was so strong that it would've kept the shine from radiating, like light waves unable to escape from a black hole because of the immense gravity.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lulu Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1411677315
• ISBN 13: 9781411677319
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260