The Poptart Manifesto Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  The Epic Adventure of the Mighty Adventurers

  The Strange and Wonderful Tale of My Umbrella

  The Throwaway Interview

  Wedding Belle

  The Poptart Manifesto

  Cork Quest

  X-Deer

  Ajax: Slayer of Trojans, Destroyer of Grease Stains

  Blood for Bob the Dead Plumber

  The Ballad of the Bored Programmer

  Pooping on the Rug

  The Bingo Hell

  The Mom Diaries

  About the Author

  Bonus Chapter: BILL THE VAMPIRE

  The Poptart Manifesto

  A collection of inane stories

  & incoherent ramblings

  Rick Gualtieri

  Copyright © 2011 Richard Gualtieri

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. The use of any real company and/or product names is for literary effect only. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

  Published by Freewill press

  Freewill Press

  PO Box 175

  Dunellen, NJ, 08812

  www.freewill-press.com

  For Alissa, who continues to tolerate my existence.

  Introduction

  I’ve always known I have a great novel somewhere inside of me. Sadly, dear reader, this is not it. Sorry if you mistakenly thought it was. Oh well, these things happen. Just move on with your life and try not to be too bitter about it. If you must absolutely blame someone, blame your parents. They most likely instilled in you a sense of unfounded optimism and a hope that things will always turn out for the best. Silly parental units!

  What you’re about to read is a collection of short stories I’ve written over the past several years. I’ve at long last gotten around to pulling them out, dusting them off, re-editing, and finally putting them all together for your enjoyment or ridicule. I’ve been meaning to do this for years, but life sort of has a way of getting in the way of these things. Better late than never I say. Hopefully by the end of this you won’t be saying, “Next time, go with that never option.” If you do, however, then I respect your opinion. I will hate you of course, but I’ll respect you. As for the rest of you, what follows may give you a chuckle or two (hopefully), perhaps make you shed a tear (doubtfully), and maybe even give you something to think about (in which case you have my sympathy).

  These stories are all either outright works of fiction or are heavily fictionalized re-imaginings of actual events. In the latter cases, names have all been changed in order to spare myself the several ass-kickings that would no doubt be headed my way otherwise. To any guilty participants who might recognize themselves here I say: get over it! Things could have been a lot worse. I could have videotaped you instead and just posted it all to You Tube. Which would you prefer? Yeah I thought so.

  Rick G.

  The Epic Adventure of the Mighty Adventurers

  It was good to feel the wind in his hair again. For too long had he and his companion enjoyed the simple comforts of the village. True, the wenches and the drink were plentiful, but now the long awaited call to action had come. Once more, Magnus the Zealot - paladin of the sun-god Thorin - and his partner Tyros - war-mage of the Silent Brotherhood - rode forth to eat their destiny or be devoured by it. Behind him, he could still hear the wailings of the women bidding him to return soon. Feh! They were men of action. It would be a long time, if ever, before they returned to the peaceful village of Havenstone.

  * * *

  Mike and I said goodbye to our girlfriends and drove off, headed towards Wildwood. It was a weekend I had been looking forward to for months, ever since he suggested we attend this year’s Beachcon.

  “Think they’ll still be there for us when we get back?” he asked.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?”

  “You did tell Barb that we were going to a gaming convention, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well it’s not the coolest thing in the world,” he replied. “Maybe we should have told them we were going hunting.”

  “Doesn’t Colleen think hunting is cruel?”

  “Yeah, but she probably still thinks it’s cooler then throwing twenty-siders all weekend.”

  “Point taken,” I conceded. “But I guess if they’ve tolerated us this long, we shouldn’t be too worried. Besides, it gives them some time together to bitch about our shortcomings. They should be able to fill up the entire weekend with that.”

  “Yep, and if they get bored they can always make out with each other.”

  “They’re not going to make out.” I said.

  “I know. But it would be cool if they did.”

  “Can’t argue with that, my friend.”

  * * *

  Magnus and Tyros drove their steeds onward. Cresting a rise, they came upon a gruesome sight.

  “By Thorin’s beard! What has transpired here?”

  “A great battle it would seem,” Tyros answered “It would appear that King Crevex’s army met the goblin horde here. A great battle indeed.”

  As far as the eye could see, the plain ahead was covered in the corpses of friend and foe alike. Magnus and Tyros road their horses through the killing field, disturbing a great many flies that had already alighted to feast upon the still cooling bodies.

  Suddenly Magnus was thrown from his horse, an arrow lodged in his shoulder. He instinctively rolled with the fall and came up, already drawing his mighty blade, Necksplitter, from its sheath. He was too late, however. Tyros had already spotted the wounded, but still very much alive, goblin archer and had sent a ball of flame to finish what the king’s army had not. Magnus wrenched the arrow shaft from his bloody shoulder and gave a shudder as he looked around.

  “Are you injured?” asked Tyros, leaping from his mount, “I have healing herbs if you need them.”

  “Do not worry,” Magnus replied, “The wound is nothing. I have taken much worse. It is the sight of so many good men wasted that weighs heavily on my heart.”

  * * *

  “Goddammit!”

  “What?” Mike asked.

  “It spilled on my shirt!”

  “Well who the hell told you to get a jelly donut?”

  “I like jelly donuts.”

  “Fine, then like them while we’re parked, not while we’re driving.”

  “You know, a little sympathy would be nice. I really liked this shirt.”

  “Cut off your arm and you get sympathy. Spill grape...”

  “Raspberry.”

  “Fine, spill raspberry jelly on yourself and well...not so much.”

  * * *

  The adventurers arrived at the outpost shortly after dusk. The guards met them at the gate and challenged their arrival.

  “Who goes there?” asked one burly watchman.

  “It is I, Magnus follower of Thorin and my companion Tyros the arcane. We come to speak to your commander.”

  The guard and his companion did not step aside. Instead they put their hands on the hilts of their weapons. “Many can claim to be the heroes of the Greylands. How do I know you speak true?”

  Suddenly the very earth beneath their feet erupted in a wall of green fire. The guards jumped back as Tyros smiled and said, “You can either let us pass, or we can show your corpses to the next watch as
proof.”

  The guards immediately stepped to the side and opened the gate to let them pass. “No offense, great ones! These are troublesome times and we simply do our duty,” the guard whimpered.

  * * *

  We got to the Hilton and proceeded to wait in line. Sometimes pre-registering has its benefits, but not when everyone does the same thing. After making me show two forms of ID (I didn’t realize identity theft was so rampant amongst gamers. No honor amongst people role-playing thieves, I guess), I finally got my convention package. Mike got his a few minutes later and came walking over to me looking pissed.

  “They got my name wrong!” he complained.

  “Did you ask them to fix it?”

  “Of course. They wouldn’t do it, though,” he said pinning his nametag on. “Assholes said they were too busy and it was my fault for entering it wrong.”

  “How the hell do you typo Mike into Darren?”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell them.”

  Oh well, that was a snag, but nothing major (at least for me). Since we had signed up together, Darren...err Mike and I managed to get the same schedule: three games over the next few days, two third-edition and a retro first-edition one. We had requested sessions where the Games Master would be providing characters. Not as much fun that way, but at least we wouldn’t have to deal with assholes bringing artificially padded characters. I’m sorry, but your second level fighter shouldn’t have +5 plate mail and an intelligent sword of decapitation, I don’t care what sort of justification you use. Fair is fair, and neither Mike nor I were really in any mood to bring well rounded characters to a table full of walking nuclear arsenals.

  * * *

  The going was arduous. The keep had been beset by the minions of Devos, the vampire lord. Sensing the defenders’ depleted resources, his minions had attacked the outpost night after night. The captain had pleaded his case to the heroes and at last they had agreed to help put an end to this plague of evil.

  Magnus and Tyros had then been given the location of Devos’s tower and set out to end him once and for all. It had not been an easy journey, though. For a straight week they had traveled the featureless plains and valleys towards Devos’s lands. Following that, they had spent several more days fighting their way through the nondescript villages that had already fallen to his hand. It seemed that the battles would never end.

  Along the way, they had met up with two fellow wanderers seeking adventure. This proved to be a mistake as their new companions were not the seasoned warriors they had claimed to be. More than once, their blunderings caused Magnus and Tyros to lose the element of surprise against their enemies. It was almost a relief when the two fell during an ambush. Even so, the resolve of the great heroes was beginning to falter in the face of such unending madness.

  * * *

  Our first game of the weekend was this gem of an adventure called The Night the Magic Died. The GM should have called it The Night Anything Even Remotely Fun Died instead. It was an eight-hour boring slog of an adventure. First off we were shorthanded. It was an eight person game but only four players, Mike and I included, showed up. The two others that did show up, well let’s just say that both they and the GM were apparently from the same shallow end of the gene pool. I mean yeah, when you go to a geek conversion you expect to play with geeks. But damn, I have no idea what sunless dungeon these pale, bloated mutants escaped from.

  The only source of amusement for most of this pointless adventure was the many pained glances that Mike and I shared with one another. Of our two fellow gamers, one just sat there sulking the entire time, only doing something when goaded into action by either us or the GM. He was a prize, however, compared to Sir Please-Shut-The-Fuck-Up-And-Die sitting next to him. This twat spent the entire time trying, and failing, to amuse us by playing his character with a god-awful Monty Python-esque accent. The Knights who say Ni shtick is funny when the original actors do it. When it’s being said by some loser with a mouthful of Cheetos, it is much less so. Forget staying in character, it was all I could do to keep from killing him in real life.

  Sadly, these two poster boys for eugenics paled in comparison to the majesty that was our GM. It has been my experience that you can almost always tell when someone is either grossly maladjusted, or a sociopath just waiting to go off, by doing nothing more then listening to them for a few moments. If you notice little things, like say a failure to achieve mastery over the basic rules of inflection, you should be worried. If they talk real excitedly about every mundane thing they say and put bizarre emphasis on random words where no emphasis is needed, then maybe you should run. You’re either about to be killed or be led on the most god-awful boring adventure of your life.

  The GM had written the entire thing by himself. Being one who has on occasion put word to paper, I can understand the feeling of pride towards one's own work. However, as almost anyone who has every written anything can probably attest, even the best writers will occasionally turn out something that is utter crap. Being able to tell what’s crap and what’s not was apparently a skill that our aspiring novelist here had yet to learn.

  I’ll give the GM credit for writing painstakingly detailed descriptions of almost everything. However, he lost all of that goodwill for being so desperate for us to appreciate his genius that he forced us to sit through pages and pages of written details for even the most mundane of items. Even worse was his complete inability to adlib for anything that he hadn’t spent time on. We’d get a ten page description of a horse stall we were walking past, but when I’d asked the name of a shopkeeper we were talking to I’d get, “Umm, my name is not important.” Improv, man, improv!

  After a few hours, Mike and I were both more than fed up with the mundane flavor text. I was the first to snap, though, when the GM started reading off every detail of every shop in a small village we were just passing through.

  “We ride quickly through the town, not stopping once,” I interjected.

  Ignoring my disdain for his magnum opus, he kept going on about a blacksmith’s forge and some pub we were riding past. Finally I stood up, leaned over the table at him and interrupted, “and we don’t stop at ANY of them. NONE! In fact I close my eyes and kick my horse extra hard to get me out of this goddamned place!”

  I’d like to say my outburst got through to him and that was the end of that, but, being unaccustomed to the presence of another human being as he was, of course it didn’t.

  * * *

  Magnus and Tyros valiantly fought their way through the minions of the vampire lord. Floor after floor of his tower fell before their combined might. Magnus’ sword created rivers of his enemies’ blood, while the mystic might of Tyros left his foes in varying states of melting, burning, or just outright vaporized.

  It had taken them long to reach this place and they had shed much blood. At long last, the throne room loomed before them. Seeing the undead horror sitting before them on a throne of skulls, Tyros screamed an incantation. Suddenly a look of horror dawned on his face as nothing happened.

  “Your powers will not work here, foolish mage!” the vampire spat.

  * * *

  We finally got to the climactic battle after what seemed like weeks at the game table, and what did the dipshit GM do? Out of nowhere, he told us that none of our magic works anymore. No spells, no weapons, no potions, etc, just like that. There were no warning or plot points to tell us this might be coming. It just happened and we were given some lame excuse that the boss monster had just finished some magic destroying ritual, which is the first he mentioned it to us.

  Personally, I’d like to give the GM credit and assume that he was just doing this to fuck us over after having finally gotten sick of our complaints. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case as several pages of flavor text revealed. This was supposed to be the big surprise at the end of the adventure. We all sighed and started rolling our dice knowing that whatever transpired: A) it would soon be over and B) if we died, who cared? Either way, it w
ould still be over.

  * * *

  Devos screamed as Magnus’ blade overcame his defenses and plunged deep into his chest.

  “And now, monster, you die!” Magnus cried as the blade sank deeper until it found the fiend’s heart.

  “Nooooo! I am invincible!” the creature screamed before finally being consumed by the unholy flames of its own death.

  The deed done, Magnus knelt over the prone form of his comrade. He breathed a sign of relief. Tyros was unconscious but still alive. Magnus would tend to his friend soon enough, but first he needed to fulfill the vision which Thorin had granted him in a dream a few nights prior. He searched through the creature’s still smoldering robes and found it, the Orb of the Rising Sun! He hoisted it aloft and said a prayer to Thorin. Within moments, he saw that Devos’s corruption was beginning to fade from the artifact. Magnus knelt. “Thank you, Thorin. I, your humble servant, give you praise.”

  * * *

  So we finally finished. We beat the bad guy, saved the world, gained much useless treasure, etc etc. In short, yay for us (insert polite golf clap). Before we could leave, though, the GM stepped in front of us. Apparently a tradition at Beachcon is that the GM of every game should award a prize to the top player. Since I at least showed some semblance of emotion during the adventure (even if most of it was open hostility) he picked me. My prize: a Star Trek tricorder. I gave Mike a smirk, opened it up and then waved it at the GM while giving my best Commander Data impression. “Captain, I am detecting no signs of intelligent life.” That being done, we walked away.

  * * *

  The deed done, peace once more settled on the Greylands. Magnus and Tyros, weary from the battle, decided that they needed some time to mend and recuperate. Within a few days, they found themselves in the bustling city of Everdeep. They spent their gold freely at the Dancing Dragon inn and the ale flowed like a river. One night, several cups deep in drink, the two warriors were entertaining the tavern whores with tales of their might, when some of the locals finally had enough of their boasting.