Stuart R. West's Blog, page 8

Stupid Little Snappy Things

In our house, changing the bed sheets is a Herculean task. The bed frame is an incredibly awkward, large boxy thing that's nearly impossible to get your fingers into and the mattress weighs a ton. Yet my wife insists on making it even tougher.

"Honey, do we have to put on those stupid little snappy things?" I whined.

"Yes, yes we do."

"Ohhhh, I really hate putting on the stupid little snappy things."

The stupid little snappy things are like miniature suspenders, supposedly easy to snap onto the under-corners of the sheets to hold them in place. Emphasis on the "supposedly easy."

"But...but...we really don't need the stupid little snappy things!" I carried on with my whining roll. "I can't get my fingers between the frame to put the stupid little snappy things on! And...and...the stupid little snappy things don't work anyway." It was a last-ditch desperate ploy that probably wouldn't hold up under scrutiny.

"The stupid little snappy things do work. They're going on."

"But...but...but...I hate those stupid little snappy things!"

My wife volleyed with an out-of-orbit eyeroll. "Fine. I'll put on the stupid little snappy things." As an afterthought, she added, "And for God's sake, quit calling them stupid little snappy things!"

"But that's what they are and--"

"It's not even accurate."

"Well...what would you call them?"

"NOT stupid little snappy things."

This went on for another hour...

Speaking of ludicrous conversations, the preceding one is nothing compared to those between Zach, a bone-headed male stripper, and Zora, his beleaguered, often pregnant sleuth sister. Join in the out-of-control wacky antics and suspenseful mystery in the Zach and Zora books .

Pyro City, Pyro City, PYRO CITY!

You know, whenever we travel through Missouri, I'm always tickled by the gigantuous fireworks store just off the highway (conveniently located for yokels to drop in and pick 'em up 'splosives, perfect for the pyro on the go) called "Pyro City." If you've ever traveled along the highway around these parts, I'm certain you've seen it to. It's just a scooch down yonder from "Guns, Gas & Chicken" and just a holler away from "Porn Empornium."

But after I nearly burned down our house recently (twice!), I'm less hesitant to make a dumb joke about it, particularly while riding shotgun with my wife. To say she wasn't pleased is an understatement.

I blame it on the stoopid crab cakes (of course they're artificial crab cakes, I can't afford the real deal). When they go on sale at the grocery store, I snag about ten of them and freeze 'em. Ideal for microwaving, right?

WRONG!

Apparently, I had forgotten how long you microwave them from frozen. I wildly overestimated and tossed them in there for fourteen minutes. (I'd say I was having a "blonde day," but everyone knows that ain't right as I'm follicularly challenged).

I retired to the TV room awaiting the crispy, golden delicacy soon to be mine. After about seven minutes, it started smelling good. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Another five minutes go by and I'm thinking gosharoonie, I wonder if I should check them?

When I lean back to look into the kitchen, there's a huge cloud of smoke swirling in the air.

In a panic, I race to the kitchen, dogs coughing at my heel, and whip open the microwave door. Smoke billows out like an unfolding foam  mattress, clouding the kitchen to the point where I can't see in front of me. The smoke alarm goes off. Using an oven mitt, I take the offending crab cake out of the microwave and take it outside, where it continues to smolder.

Naturally, this all happened on a day when my wife was working upstairs. She left her online meeting to race downstairs and holler, "What happened?"

Well. Crab cakes happened. The work I had to do to try to air the house out was a gargantuan task. Candles were lit, windows were opened on a chilly day, and fans were set to spinning. Constantly, I microwaved vinegar in hopes for a "ta-dahhh" resolution to no avail. If you've ever burnt popcorn in the microwave, imagine that smell multiplied 300 times.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's been so long since I've microwaved crab cakes, I forgot how long to do it, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

But no manner of penance could change the horrific odor lingering in the house. For days, it reeked. My wife even threw in the towel and bought a new microwave, as I forlornly said goodbye to my old electrical appliance pal.

After about a week, the house was pretty much back to normal and all was forgiven. Or it would've been if I didn't do the exact same thing again. Hey! I cut the microwave time down to seven minutes! I was pretty sure that's how long I did them years ago!

For a while, my wife forbade me to use the microwave. Probably a good idea. Welcome to Pyro City!

Speaking of people making some incredibly bad life choices, meet Tex McKenna, teenage male witch. He makes quite a few dumb decisions, but hey! They're all in support of catching a high school serial killer, how dumb could they be? (In Tex's defense, he's excused because he's a teenager. Whereas, I'm still making poor microwaving choices.) Read about Tex's eerie, funny, socially topical escapades in the trilogy available !

Game Idiots On Display

 

You know what really gets my goat? I mean, besides what passes for so-called politics these days? Well, lots of things. I'm cranky! For instance, I never really realized that I had a "goat" until I started using that strange term, "You know what really gets my goat?"

But there I go, getting digression all over the place. No, I want to talk about electronic games that you download to your phones. There's plenty wrong with them. They're created solely to dupe poor suckers like myself into shoving cash at the faceless creators so you can reach the next, nearly unattainable level. But that's all a given. And the endless commercials and ads you're forced to suffer through is also to be expected. (I once asked my wife how many times she's had to watch the king die in the repetitive ads for "Royal Match." She said, "so, so, soooooo many.") 

And these damn games are addictive. I have to spend an hour a day just on daily maintenance! I fully expect to see an influx of gaming addiction meetings sweeping the world.

But what really, really gets my goat (besides that strange saying) is whenever the ads show someone demonstrating a game or puzzle, they've found the dumbest people in the world to do so. I mean, honestly...how hard is it to figure out how to put the pieces of the cat together? The animated hand gets everything so incredibly wrong that I just want to jump through the phone and strangle the animated person behind the animated hand.

And of course the ads are created this way purposefully to goad the poor unwitting fool (like me!) into trying the damn game just so you can show the animated idiot how it's done. Some ads even nearly taunt you by claiming "only people with a genius I.Q. can solve this cat puzzle!" So of course, we want to be designated as geniuses (just ask a certain orange, self-proclaimed "very stable genius"). 

But time and time again, I'm forced to watch the blockhead try and put a square chunk of the puzzle into the cat's rounded behind or tail outline.

It's enough to make me permanently give up my goat.

And while I'm on the topic of misleading gaming ads, has this scenario ever happened to you? You watch an ad for a game. It looks fun and different with amazing animation, so you figure "hey, why not give it a shot?" Only to find out that the fun tableau visualized in the ad has nothing to do with the game; it's merely the zillionth version of "Bejeweled."

Grrrrr! Give me back my damn goat already!

There's nothing misleading about my horror thriller, Dread and Breakfast. You pretty much get what is expected in this chiller set in a not very hospitable Bed & Breakfast during a terrible Winter storm. Except you'll get lots and lots of unexpected twists and surprises and scares as a bonus! Would I lie to you?

How 'bout a nice hot cup of revenge?

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." So says the ubiquitous and mysterious "They." Lotsa tough guys (the kind who stitch their own wounds up) say it all the time in noirs and endless Liam Neeson revenge films (and truly, if your dad is Liam Neeson...emancipate yourself kids! Now!).

But what the hell does it mean? I've always pondered this strange saying. For one thing, I would think that revenge should be served up hot, because if you're seeking revenge, you're probably damn hot under the collar.

Second, why is it being served? Does Liam Neeson have a chef on call who follows him around on his daily doses of revenge-driven carnage? Does he wear the funny, poofy white chef's hat and tell the Neeson-mangled and beaten body laying in the street "you've been served, monsieur," with a crisp, put-upon French chuckle? Does he ask Neeson things like "Does monsieur prefer his revenge served cold or hot today?"

I tell ya, it makes no sense. It's enough to keep me up at night. And it does. So in the wee hours of the morning, I turned to my faithful research assistant, Ms. Google.

The quote is widely attributed to French author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (why do the French have to have so many names?) in his 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. Or if you ask the geek contingent, they'll claim it's an ancient Klingon proverb. (I'd prefer to not ask them. Too often I hit my head in their mother's basements.)

Regardless, there's no clear answer as to what the saying means. One person suggests that seeking revenge is more satisfying if you put it off for a while (thus the "dish" growing cold). Another explanation is that if you seek to enact your revenge on someone who has wronged you, you won't be successful because the evil-doer is expecting retaliation. Thus, again, wait until the dish has cooled off than go in swinging. Or serving. Or eating. Or whatever.

These food metaphors really get my goat. Here's another one: "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Well...yes...yes you can! It's the whole point of ordering cake, for crying out loud.

I dunno. I think we need to ban food metaphors. It would make my universe much easier to understand.

And outside of Liam Neeson, do we "normals" really need to be worrying about serving up revenge, hot or cold?

Well, get ready, folks. Because if a certain "mandarin candidate" gets into the White House again, we can expect four years of ludicrous revenge, Neeson style. Only it won't be served cold. It'll likely be served IN ALL YELLY CAPS ON TRUTH SOCIAL!!!

Now that I'm done and kicked over my soap box, let's get to the hype portion of my post: check out my Tex, the Witch Boy series. It's got everything: humor, the supernatural, mystery, suspense, action, romance, and I'm pretty sure I included a kitchen sink in a couple of the books. Check out the series that nobody's talking about here!

The Dog That Would Not Be Groomed

Heed my true tale of canine terror, dear reader, because it could happen to YOU.

Take Mr. Loomis. Cute lil' guy, right? WRONG! Beneath that seemingly cute and friendly-looking exterior lurks the son of Satan himself.

Oh sure, he's sweet to us, his owners, but Mr. Loomis has the ability to strike fear and anxiety into the hearts of pet groomers everywhere, reducing grown professionals to tears of trauma.

We have three dogs in our "pack," and naturally, the one with the fastest growing hair is Mr. Loomis, who's in need of at least monthly haircuts. However, try telling that to the dog. He absolutely hates having hair trimmed off his face and will let the groomers know it.

The first time we recognized the problem is when a new groomer called us and said, "Uh, yeah, we're having difficulty with Loomis."

"Difficulty?" My wife said. "What kind of difficulty?"

"He won't let us get near his face. He keeps biting us and trying to get away and going to the bathroom all over the place."

When we picked him up, they told us there wouldn't be any charge. Small wonder, because he looked like a Dr. Seuss character with a hairy face and shaved body. (Furthermore, we soon found out that he'd torn out his dew claw in the cage they stuffed him in, so he was super pissed and in pain. We thought surely that's the reason he didn't want those barbarians near his face.)

By now Loomis was beginning to resemble a Wookie, so we found another groomer. Upon picking him up, they told us he was no problem at all. But they hadn't touched his face. Reading between the lines: they couldn't get near his face.

Next! We found this sorta hippy woman who refused to work on a computer, thus rendering her business practices frazzled and forgetful. But, soon it appeared she had developed a rapport with our little devil on four legs and knew how to treat him. Until one day when she called me and said, "I can't take Mr. Loomis any longer. He just has too much power over me."

Huh. I wasn't really certain how this little dog could wield such power over a grown woman, but hey, we began to take it in stride. Getting fired by our dog groomers was becoming second nature.

So, my wife found a dog grooming "school" which taught single mothers how to bathe and trim dogs. Cool idea, I thought. Loomis did, too. At least at first.

However, yesterday when I picked him up, the woman said they can't shave his face any longer. "He doesn't like it," she said.

With a heavy heart, a heavier sigh, and the little trouble-making canine under my arm, I left. Fired again.

Now, I have a certain affinity with Mr. Loomis. True, I've never tried to bite my barber (then again, maybe I would now if I had any hair), but we're both cranky old men who get crankier with each ensuing year and ache and pain. So I can't be too mad at the lil' fella. Besides...no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors and we're only hearing the human side of the story. Could be Loomis has legitimate gripes with these groomers (i.e., a torn dew claw).

But in the meantime, the hunt goes on for a groomer who'll prove to be a match for our tiny terror. Anybody want a job?

Speaking of terrifying creatures, pity poor Shawn Biltmore. On his corporate retreat, he's bitten by a werewolf. And believe it or not, there's something even more sinister going on at his mind-numbing, soul-destroying corporate job. Read all the thrills, chills, spills, and dark humor in Corporate Wolf.

Big-Ass Bustle

We were watching a TV show set in the late 1800's and after awhile, I'd had enough. Every "high society" woman had one of those goofy looking dresses that made their asses look huge.

"Honey," I said, "what's with the big-ass dresses? What're those called?"

With an eyeroll that threatened to eclipse me, my wife replied, "bustles."

"Okay. But what's the point of them? I mean...surely they have to realize they're not really flattering. And how do they sit in them? Why? Tell me why they existed!"

For once, my wife didn't have the answer (she mumbled something about bustles being a status symbol amongst high society women and it was the trend of the day and...and I quit listening and headed to Google.).

The answers I found varied. Ms. Google said that bustles were wire frames that were used to support the drapery of the ginormous dresses women wore, to prevent the material from dragging. Here's an idea, old-timey ladies: how about don't wear drapes and then you can forego the bustle. I mean, honestly.

Another answer was that women liked bustles because it kept the material from gathering between their legs, sort of a "gilded age" wedgie, if you will. This makes more sense to me. But, still...wouldn't it have been easier to just adjust your self instead of trying to sit in a giant, wire hula hoop?

Here's where things get interesting...the origins of the bustle can be linked to Sarah Bartman, a South African woman who suffered from a condition called Steatopygia. What is that, I hear you asking? Why, Steatopygia is an abundance of tissue on the thighs and buttocks!

Certain European exploiters paraded poor Bartman around as a "circus attraction." The bustle was created to achieve this look, for Gawd's sake. Now. You hear that, old-time women? About the circus "freak" part? Why would anyone want to emulate that?

A bustle was also supposed to make a woman's waist appear smaller. Huh. Clearly they didn't have diets back in the day.

I had kinda thought that maybe one of the reasons for the bustle was so that men couldn't ogle women's bottoms. But that's just the seven-year-old boy in me and Ms. Google couldn't confirm my hypothesis.

With the advent of the new creation--"the bicycle"--women began to come to their senses and abandoned the ol' bustle.

Everything that goes around eventually comes back again. Or something. So, ladies, are you ready for the bustle to make a comeback? Not to be sexist, though. Maybe they'll create padding for the front of men's pants. And call it a "penistle."

Do the Bustle!

And on that very high note of sophisticated and mature humor, I may as well keep it going and pimp my Zach and Zora humorous mystery series. They make the above blog post look like the work of a Rhodes Scholar. The first book in the series is called (so THAT should give you some idea of the level of comedy involved!).

Tail-Chasing

Usually, I believe that dogs have it made. What a cush life.  Sitting around all day, sleeping long hours, pooping wherever the whim takes you, being fed and taken care of, all in return for a little love. Easy-peasy.

Until you start considering the ultimate act of futility: chasing one's tail. I mean, what are they expecting? 

"Some day I'll get you, you damned tail," they'll growl. "So close, yet so far! But one of these days...one of these days, mister!"

Now, I've seen some smart dogs and some dumb dogs. Currently, we run the gamut of mutt-types in our house. Our newest dog, Biscuit, is a tail-chaser. But, c'mon! Chasing your own tail has got to be one of the most aggravating and useless wastes of time since approaching a MAGA guy and hoping for inciteful political debate.

Everyone knows Einstein's definition of madness: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Well, fine, in a dog's defense, I'm sure they're not very well-schooled on Einstein. But surely, they've run into a smarter dog than them who might help to guide them.

"Hey. Hey, Longfellow...Psst...you know your tail's attached to you, right?"

"Whaaaaaaaat? No it's not! Quit pulling my paw!"

DO they know their tail is attached to them? I had so many questions, so I turned to my trusty research assistant (who ALWAYS supplies nothing but facts), Dr. Google.

Dr. Google found a quote from an animal behaviorist who works at Camp Bow Wow (no, I'm not making this up; everything Dr. Google tells me is always true.): "Dogs are aware that their tails are attached to them. However, puppies may be exploring their bodies in this manner."

Well, I guess I can understand that. I spent many an adolescent day behind bathroom doors exploring my body, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

But there are also other reasons for tail-chasing. There's OCD. Now...leave it to us to adopt a puppy with OCD. But that may explain Biscuit's sitch. Every day we gather up the dog toys and every day, he must grab every single one of them and spread them all over the house, setting traps for his clumsy people.

Or it could be boredom. That holds true for our new puppy addition, certainly. Guy never rests and he hates when I'm on the computer. That's generally when most tail-chasing occurs.

Yet the behaviorist went on to say that the reason why they may be chasing their tails is they like the reaction people give them. While it's true that I laugh at Biscuit's ludicrous behavior, he'll always stop in his tracks upon hearing me as if in a game of musical chairs and stand very still. Definitely no tail-wagging as the behaviorist said they'll do upon pleasing their humans. So I'm going back to OCD as our puppy's diagnosis.

Furthermore, the behaviorist suggests taking your dog to the vet upon continuous tail-chasing. Where, I dunno, I suppose the vet will put the pup onto a chaise and ask him about his mother and stuff.

"Okay, Biscuit, what does this ink blot look like to you?" Dr. Freud will ask.

"Woof!" (Translation: "My tail!")

I believe Biscuit is truly in his "anal stage."

Speaking of dime-store psychology, you'll find a ton of it in my thriller trilogy, Killers Incorporated. Take my protagonist, Leon Garber. He's got some issues, a few daddy issues amongst other things. He's also a serial killer. Oh! And he's the hero! Read about his exploits in the darkly, morbidly humorous suspense trilogy, beginning with the first book, Secret Society!

Air-Conditioning the World

"We can't air condition the world," my dad would say. "Shut the door!"

Wow, my wee young brain thought, maybe air conditioning the world is a nice idea. I mean if people are starving in China (another shameful ploy my dad used to get me to eat lima beans), might not they also be hot in the summer if they can't afford air-conditioning?

So, for a while, young Stuart left the door open whenever he could get away with it, doing my part for humanity. (My liberal tendencies began from the crib onward).

Oh, sure, I felt guilty at times (particularly when my dad reached for his belt), because I knew that air conditioning the world might be a bit expensive. Yet, I thought a thousand dollars was about the biggest buncha money I'd ever heard of (next to a "Kazillion infinity"), and somehow I remember figuring that's what the bill for air conditioning the poor would ante up to, and I thought my parents could surely foot the bill. 

It was worth it.

I'd lay in bed at night thinking about how a cool wave emanated from our open door, circling the globe, and reaching the farthest countries of earth, delivering cool, sweet relief to those less fortunate and more sweaty than us. By golly, it's what Jesus would've done!

Then--after many, many punishments--I came up with a backup plan: if everyone who could afford air conditioning left their doors open, then the bill wouldn't be too bad at all.

Needless to say, my Quixotesque childhood quest to cool down mankind didn't get very far along after the first neighbor told me to get lost. (And I have absolutely no reason nor excuse for trying to leave the water faucets on and plugging the drains in the bathrooms when we'd leave for a family vacation other than I thought it'd be neat! Indoor pool! Gosh!)

But if everyone had opened their doors to cool off the world, we just might not have devastating climate change now. Hey, I never said I was a scientist.

While we're bandying about idiotic ideas, Tex McKenna--like all teenagers--is full of ideas that aren't very well thought out. His inner filter sometimes goes on the fritz when dealing with high school bullies. And his sudden newfound "witchdom" draws him straight into confrontation with a mysterious killer stalking the students at his school. But what's a teenage male witch to do? Find out the answers in my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy available here!

Ol' Dry Eyes

Just when I think I've hit the wall on my body betraying me in myriad forms (the horrific price of aging), my eyes start freaking out on me. I'm not just talking about the new floaters (which always look like bats swooping just outside the line of my peripheral vision), no-siree-bob-cat-tail! Now I've been diagnosed with "dry eyes."

Which seems to me to be a misnomer. My eyes won't stop tearing up, so how in the world can my newest ailment be called dry eyes? I'd think "swampy eyes" would be a more apt description.

For instance, last week when I went to the grocery store, floods were gushing from my eyes. By the time I got to the check-out, the clerk was giving me a funny look (with her perfectly normal dry eyes). Surely, she must've thought I'd had one of the saddest encounters in the produce section that any man had ever suffered. Or I was just bawling because the prices were so high.

I've tried eyedrops, over the counter and prescription (even the pharm tech commented "those are some damned expensive eyedrops!"), and none of them have helped much. Oh sure, it's a temporary salve, but just minutes later, I'm "hitting the bottle" again, singlehandedly keeping the eyedrop industry in business. (And at $135 dollars for a tiny vial, you'd think the drops would last longer than five minutes.)

Out of desperation, I told the pharmacist of my dilemma. "I had that same thing," she said. "They ended up cauterizing my tear ducts. Worst pain I've ever felt."

On that hopeful note, I visited my optometrist. "Doc," I said, "you've gotta help me! I walk around looking like I've just seen Bambi's mother die!" With great reluctance, I added, "My pharmacist said they burned her tear ducts." (For some reason, I couldn't grasp the word "cauterized" at this moment of near panic.)

The doc looked at me, perplexed. "Well...how about I put temporary plugs into your tear ducts and we'll see if that works. It's a lot less final than cauterization."

First, I thought why in the hell didn't you tell me you could do this before I spent $135 bucks on a tiny bottle of worthless eyedrops? Next, I thought this sounds tantamount to torture.

"How invasive is the procedure, doc?" I asked, attempting to swallow the golf ball lodged in my throat.

She shook her head. "Ah, it's nothing, nothing at all."

Several minutes later, I've got my chin and head strapped into a torture rack while she takes out extremely long--and terrifying--tweezers, attempting to grasp miniscule plugs. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, eye surgery is the scariest sort of procedure I can think of. And when I see tweezers growing, growing, growing in size and moving closer to my eye, I start to panic.

"Um, doc, maybe I think I'll change my miAIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEnd!"

"There," she says, "one down, one to go."

With the eye she'd just put the plug in weeping profusely (not giving me much hope), I considered making a fast getaway. If I can swing her magnifying torture machine gizmo around to smack her, I'd be able to feign right, jag left, and bolt for the door. Yeah, that's my plan and I'm going to...

"Hold still, this won't hurt at all."

"No, no, no, no, Doc, I, ahhhh, forgot I have a very important appAIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEtment!"

The doc sat back, sighed, clearly just as happy to be finished with the grueling procedure as I was. In a snarky voice (maybe meant to imitate me), she said, "There, Stuart...the torture is over." The accompanying finger quotes she used told me that she'd obviously never had the process done to her.

As I left, my eyes squirting oceans, the check-out gals had the gall to ask me for payment. This time the tears were real once I saw the cost.

Speaking of big man-babies, you oughta get a load of Zach Caulfield, male entertainment dancer (not a "male stripper," thank you very much). This guy's heart is in the right place, but his general motivations in life are strictly on a third-grader's level. So, when he constantly finds himself stumbling over dead bodies, it always falls on his competent, usually pregnant, highly exasperated sleuth of a sister to bail him out of trouble by finding the real murderers. !

Hair Famous

Recently, while visiting my daughter in her small town, she bust this out on me: "Dad, I'm kinda' 'hair famous' here."

Not knowing how to respond and not sure exactly what "hair famous" was, and maybe because I would never stand a chance in hell of ever being "hair famous," I jealously replied, "So am I."

"Oh, really, Dad? Really?" 

Well, in her case it was true. And she had no idea she was either, until people kept pointing it out to her.

A co-worker called it out to her first. "Are you even aware you're hair famous?"

"What?" she said. "What're you talking about?"

Then she showed my daughter the Facebook story. My daughter's hairdresser posted pics of my daughter's "famous hair" and it went pseudo-viral (is that such a thing?) and hairdressers started reposting it, commenting on it, and sending it everywhere. Soon, she became a celebrity in hairdressing circles. Kinda like Cher. Or O.J.

Boom! Hair famous! 

Now, part of me is insanely jealous. Due to the sadistic gleeful nature of the unjust supreme beings, I've been cursed with baldness, thus negating my chances of ever being hair famous. Now, how is it fair that a bald guy has a "hair famous" daughter? Cruel, I tell you, just cruel!

Maybe I can become "bald famous" along such other noteworthy follicly-challenged celebrities as Telly "Who Loves Ya, Baby" Savalas, Yul "The King and I" Brynner, and Donald "It's A Witch Hunt!" Trump. (Sorry, sorry, sorry, I just had to slip in a Trump slam. In fact, I think I'll do one every post until the November selection.)

Ah well, at least being hair famous happened to my daughter, a genuinely good person. (BTW, her other claim to fame is Kansas City's famous rapper Tech N9ne has hit on her several times. And he's not exactly hair famous!)

While I'm gabbing about hair, meet Shawn Biltmore, an up-and-coming corporate drone who wishes he had the power hair and prestige of his superiors. Unfortunately, he gets more than he ever wished for when a werewolf bites him. And that's all in the first couple pages! Horror and dark comedy ensue in Corporate Wolf .