The Grone Protocol: Betrayal's Serendipitous Tentacles, Chapter 002

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. Beginning today, I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every weekend (unless I forget or don’t feel like it or die something). Here’s the second chapter, which should fill your daily quota of gripping intrigue. If not, head down to your local drugstore; chances are they have the new John Grisham book near the checkout aisle.

002

Sassafras Jones considered herself a happy person, but she had seen her share of hardships. Her mother raised her on her own after her father’s death in a boating accident that occurred when Sassafras was two years old. She had also lost her sense of smell in a separate boating accident several years later. Still, she did her best to keep her chin up. “Whining is for whiners, and the only thing worse than a whiner is a group consisting of two or more whiners,” her mother used to tell her.

Sassafras normally started off her day with six fried eggs and a cup of instant coffee with some cocoa mixed in. She didn’t like the taste of coffee, but each day she found herself needing her morning caffeine fix more and more. The cocoa helped mask the flavor. It also reminded her of her childhood, but not the sad parts or the parts involving boats.

However, Sassafras had slept through her alarm this morning and had to skip her morning routine in order to arrive at work on time. As hungry and groggy as Sassafras was, she was thankful that she made it to work without being late. The Grone Corporation did not tolerate such things, and coming into the office after seven AM would result in a Level Forty-Three demerit and a stern talking-to from Mr. Greeley, her immediate superior. Sassafras had only been late a handful of times during her employment at Grone, but she was determined never to let it happen again. “Punctuality is a virtue above all others; tardiness, however, is a sign of weak and feebleminded dumbfucklery,” Mr. Greeley told his employees several times a day over the seventy-second floor's public address system.

Sassafras had no idea yet, but soon hunger would be the least of her concerns. Today was the seventeenth of August; exactly twenty years had passed since that fateful night in Brussels. Twenty years is a long time to hold onto a memory, but as Sassafras would soon find out, some are unable to forget the past. Nothing she could do now could prevent what was about to happen.

A riddle

I have exactly two times half as many pickles as the number of pickles I used to have multiplied by ten tenths of 1/2 of the number of hands an average, healthy newborn baby human has (hint: an average, healthy newborn baby human has two hands).

Q: How many pickles do I have? (answer here)

Dadaist nicknames for announced 2008 presidential candidates

Joe "Fishsticks" Biden


Christopher "Donkeyskunk" Dodd


Hillary "Sweet Lady Peanuts" Clinton


John "Alpha Sneeze" Edwards


Mike "The Jugglebuster" Gravel


Dennis "Tractor Necktie" Kucinich


Barack "The Wax Sandwich" Obama


Bill "Furious Zoetrope" Richardson


Sam "The Corduroy Napkin" Brownback


Jim "Prettyknees" Gilmore


Rudy "Milkfarts" Giuliani


Mike "Ol' Gerbil Neck" Huckabee


Duncan "Zoo Salad" Hunter


John "Nippleshits" McCain


Ron "Mister Grumpy Squid" Paul


Mitt "The Everlasting Crescendo" Romney


Tom "The Funky Hatbox" Tancredo


Tommy "Tom" Thompson

If you are a straight guy who has never been to a Gay Pride Parade before, I will tell you this much:

It is a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE place to try to pick up girls.

I don't want to talk about it, other than to say I have never had the sentiment "what on earth is wrong with you" so strongly conveyed to me via blank stares.

Also, on a semi-related note: Erasure is a severely underrated band.

The Grone Protocol: A Rendezvous With Cataclysm, Chapter 001

Like most of you, I am a popular writer of highbrow thrillers and suspense novels in my spare time. Beginning today, I will be serializing my latest work, THE GRONE PROTOCOL, here in my “blog” (short for “web blog”) every weekend (unless I forget or don’t feel like it or die something). Here’s the first chapter, which should get you as entrenched in the gripping, edge-of-your-pants plot as possible. If not, feel free to go down to the grocery store and pick up the latest James Patterson novel.

001

Barry Peterson stepped out of the sleek yellow Porsche Boxster into the harsh glare of the midday sun. He thanked his grandmother for the ride, promising to mow the lawn that weekend. Barry smiled as she drove off, squinting up at the skyscraper towering above him. A flood of memories flooded his mind like a flood: has it really been that long?

Barry suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a misspent lifetime’s worth of fragmented details and shadowy regrets: places he couldn’t name, faces he couldn’t place, names he couldn’t face, faces he couldn’t name, places he couldn’t place, fames he couldn’t plame. His destination was the seventy-second floor, the floor occupied by the Grone Corporation’s copyrighting department. She was there, completely unaware that Barry was even in the same hemisphere as her.

Sassafras Jones had worked for Grone for almost a decade now, toiling away with little chance of promotion in a bureaucratic nightmare of an office and a soda machine that only carried Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. She had known Barry since they were both children; their families had been close friends, and they had shared many summers playing cowboys and lawyers on the Jones' ranch. But that was long ago; Sassafras now found herself navigating a world of corporate snakes, sharks, charlatans, shitmongers and shenaniganslingers on a daily basis, with only her wits and a bachelor's degree in Applied Theology for protection.

Barry smiled as he made his way to the main entrance. It was a peculiar smile, the smile of someone about to fart in the bathtub, secure in the knowledge that no one would ever know. All the bachelor's degrees in Applied Theology in the Western hemisphere wouldn't save her from what was about to happen.

CNN.com's top headlines as of 5:15 CST, June 21 2007: Grandpa Edition

(There will be no Pickle Edition... Sorry)

Deal reached to hike grandpa fuel standards

Lebanon defense grandpa: Camp militants crushed

Hundreds join search for grandpa woman

WLKY: Girl's feet sliced grandpa at theme park

Tax dodgers taunt grandpa from hilltop

3-D simulation shows 9/11 grandpa attack

Grandpa shot, hostages held at Illinois bank

10-lb grandpas jump from rivers, bruise up boaters

Crossing guard faces 1,000 child sex grandpas

100-foot deep Andes grandpa disappears

SI.com: Giambi agrees to talk in grandpa probe

War vet strangles rabid bobcat with bare grandpa

CNN Wire: Latest updates on world's top grandpa

JOE MATHLETE STUMPS YOUTUBE (a fun game that you can play alone or with other people)

YouTube.com is the single greatest thing to happen to the 21st century. Basically there is no reason to own a television set; if I want to be entertained by moving pictures and sound I just type in "silly kitten" or "weird japanese game show" or "(name of band I didn't get into until after they'd long since broken up) live" or "farting baby" or pretty much anything that sounds remotely interesting, and I'm set for a good long while. But there's more entertainment to be gleaned from YouTube than just passively watching shakey cellphone videos. Presenting, for the first time ever, a fun game that you can play alone or with other people: JOE MATHLETE STUMPS YOUTUBE.

I came up with a list of search terms designed to test the limits of YouTube's vast database of content. Read over the videos I hoped to discover, then see if you can guess which of these did and did not yield results (as of 11 AM CST, anyway... and no fair cheating and messing with your own video descriptions to get a perfect score, because cheating is for cheaters and cheaters only win if they cheat, which is a thing only cheaters do (see earlier in this sentence)). Bonus points if you can name the total number of returned results, and bonus bonus points if you can name the individual returned results for an individual term. Answers are in the comments section. And remember-- no cheating!

Fat girl wearing overalls playing piano
Batman taking smoke break
Cat sleeping on bulldozer
Two doctors holding hands in front of Chinese restaurant
Nuns playing hopscotch
Kitty Cat Jamboree
She Hulk going to the bathroom
Transsexual with Pokemon band aid
A whole bunch of people tap dancing
Dog giving itself haircut
Preschooler smashing light bulbs with hammer
Sandwich with hypodermic needle sticking out
Purple Doo Doo Bird