Hunting the Right Way

Hey look, a dead Viking, or at least a nerd pretending to be a dead Viking.  Whatever.

There is no reason why the Lions can’t beat the Vikings on Sunday.  Well aside from the fact that the Metrodome has become a despicable place for the Lions, full of the dull-eyed stupidity that runs rampant in that hinterland of the soul known as Minnesota, bovine beasts lowing while the stadium pipes in false noise to match their false hearts and Jared Allen dances around like a fake methhead, abusing poor Jeff Backus who just sits there and takes it and oh the horror, the horror . . .

Right.  There’s that.  But honestly, these are two teams heading in opposite directions right now and in a league in which momentum is everything that could – and I think should – make all the difference in the world.  The Lions have won two in a row and they looked better last week then they did the week before when they looked better than the week before that and, well . . . you get the point.  Meanwhile, the Vikings have lost two in a row, first to the perpetually mediocre Buccaneers and then to the Seahawks, a week after the Lions beat them, so . . . yeah.  A month ago the Vikings were a good team, headed up and the Lions were a shitty team, mired in the sort of demon swampland that we’ve called home for the better part of the last sixty years.  But now the Vikings aren’t any good, they’re headed for the oblivion that’s become increasingly familiar for them the last few years and the Lions are looking like the team we all thought they could and should be.  The NFL, like many things in life, is capricious and strange and these things just happen.

I don’t want to spend this whole post shitting all over the Vikings though – well, actually I do want to do that but I don’t feel like I should, because here’s the thing – it doesn’t do us any good as a people to constantly denigrate our foes, to pretend that they are all shit while we’re the kings of turd town.  We do that way too much and frankly it’s kind of annoying.  Look, the NFC North is the best division in football.  It just is.  The Bears are a really good team – don’t argue with me because you’ll only reveal yourself to be a slave to your own prejudices – the Vikings aren’t nearly as shitty as we all thought they would be and the Packers are still the Packers, even if they’ve struggled a bit this season.  It’s one thing to hate your enemy and to wish a pox on his house and pray to the old gods and the new for his destruction and the shame of his family.  That is the natural way of things and it is good.  But it is quite another thing to disrespect his abilities because then you just look like a fool and you end up getting your throat slit because you refuse to acknowledge Truth and the gods, both the old and the new, have no time for that shit.

I’m just saying, it does us no good to pretend that everyone else is awful and that we should never, ever lose because then when we do beat them, so what?  There is no honor in abusing a cripple.  And if we lose, we descend into either apocalyptic death spirals or we start making absurd excuses and slandering the fans of teams that are actually good.  Frankly, it’s kind of embarrassing and I wish it would just stop.

I say all this because I want you all to understand that there is a very real chance that the Lions could lose to the Vikings.  It would be absolutely insane and hubristic to the point of nauseating dementia to try to insist otherwise.  Yes, the Viking appear to be falling apart and their 5-4 record doesn’t exactly paint them as a powerhouse but shit, the Lions are 4-4 and have already lost to the Vikings once at home so . . . yeah.

Look, I know that contradicts everything I wrote only a few paragraphs ago but that’s only because I want everyone to understand that we need to live in reality, and not in some wizard’s fantasy because that way is the path to madness.  I think the Lions can and should win but the idea that they will definitely win is just dumb, okay? 

Like I said, the Metrodome has been a hell house for the Lions and the Vikings defensive line has spent the better part of the Schwartz era hideously abusing the Lions offensive line in a way that would make the most degenerate Catholic priest blush.  This will not be easy.

To make matters worse, the Lions aren’t exactly the picture of pristine health.  Louis Delmas was apparently the inspiration for Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable, St. Calvin is dealing with fucking nerve damage, and the defensive backfield continues to be a revolving door of madness and despair.  This is not a perfect team marching in lockstep with blessed destiny.  It is a team trying to fight its way through a jungle of poisoned vines and broken limbs and goddammit, we need to understand that and start paying that its proper respect.  Again, pretending isn’t gonna help anyone.

Every time I think about this game I picture Jared Allen flying by Jeff Backus, who’s flat on his ass, while Matthew Stafford turtles and some Nordic looking motherfucker blows a horn and fat ladies cling to their husbands who all look like Dauber from Coach and scream and it’s terrible and disgusting and then I have to lie down for a while.  But fuck that and fuck the Vikings.  Really, that’s what it comes down to.  Fuck the Vikings.  Fuck ‘em.  This is a game the Lions need to win because the Vikings are our enemy and they’re in our way and sometimes it is as simple as that.

Again, it doesn’t mean that we should piss all over their name and pretend they are the joke of all jokes, for that is the way of the fool.  We should respect them, fear them even, because the wise warrior understands that fear is good, fear is healthy, and fear properly channeled turns into victory and the death of your enemy.  There are many different types of fear.  I am not talking about fear of oneself or its master The Fear, both of which are paralyzing monolithic monstrosities that enslave us with chains made of our own pathetic nightmares and insecurities.  I am talking about the wary sort of fear that the good hunter carries with him, the fear of the beast.  The Fear is a hunter and when we run from it we become little more than mindless beasts.  But the good hunter harnesses fear and uses it to remain ever vigilant, ever wary, even as he stalks, and then when he finally corners his prey he can do so knowing that he triumphed because he faced reality with bravery and an open heart.  The hunter who just staggers noisily through the forest, like a besotted fool, drunk on his own bravado and stupid hubris will alert his prey and then his prey will turn on him, corner him and eat his heart.  We must hunt the Vikings with wary intent, careful, patient, measuring them, stalking them, until they are at the edge of a cliff and then we destroy them.  That is the way of the wise hunter, and that is the way to glory.

I have descended into utter gibberish again but that is what happens when you sit down to write with no plan.  Okay, give me a second and I will get back on track. 

Alright . . . so yeah, the Lions can beat the Vikings and we should understand this and cherish this, but we should also understand that the Lions might lose this game.  We must find balance in our own hearts and our own souls so we can stop crashing through the forest like drunken idiots, celebrating like fools whenever we manage to skewer a starving squirrel and collapsing in a heap of shameful tears every time our prey eludes us.  We must look to the example set by our own blessed football team, the balance with which they destroyed the hapless Jaguars last week.  That is the pathway to righteous enlightenment and we must embrace it and become acolytes of its Truth.

Clearly, I have become trapped in some sort of strange gibberish labyrinth and any moment now I expect to be set on by a Minotaur, and I have probably confused you all with my dueling sensibilities, in one paragraph defaming the Vikings and promising a noble and glorious victory and then in the next gibbering about respect and fear and hunting squirrels or some such shit and warning against overconfidence and I would apologize but that would make me look weak, weak like Jared Allen’s sense of dignity, and I won’t have that.  No sir.  So, instead, I will embrace the notion of simplicity and I will say, in unambiguous terms for a change, that I think that the Lions will beat the Vikings.  Because, really all it comes down to is that the Lions have to win this game.  They just do.  And if they are any kind of team at all, a team worthy of our love and a team worthy of their and our playoff dreams, then goddammit, they will win this game.  So I’ll say it again . . .

Lions win.

The Great Willie Young Beyond Thunderdome: The Battle of Oakland

After sacking Baltimore, General Jim Schwartz led his troops on an exhausting overland trek to the West Coast, marauding through the heartland, burning and pillaging as they marched, like a Napoleonic army on PCP.  They would have returned to Detroit but the General received a phone call from the Mayor informing him that agents representing the War Crimes Tribunal had gathered outside of Castle Ford, awaiting the Lion army return, where they would have arrested several of the General’s best men for crimes against humanity, especially Private Fairley for his baby eating rampage.  The General asked the Mayor what they should do and the Mayor responded “Fuck if I know, Jim.  Go fuck up Oakland.  Those motherfuckers hid a goddamn vampire named Al for over a hundred years.  ‘Bout time they get what was comin’ to them.  Oh, and thanks for the pants, Jim.  You didn’t have to mail them first class, but fuck am I glad to have ‘em.  They a little tight in the dick region, Jimmy, but hell, good luck findin’ me a pair of pants that ain’t.”  And then he laughed and hung up the phone and so the General gathered his men and set off for Oakland.

It would be a hard fight.  The General was under no delusions there.  The Kingdom of Oakland was like a scene out of Mad Max.  Its people were said by some to all be vicious hooligans and reprobates, animals really, who feasted upon the corpses of their own dead and were rumored to drink the blood of their own children and howl at the moon, drunk on their own degeneracy, monsters devoid of morality, swept up in their own profane perversion of life.  Others said they were just typical Californians. 

But the General surveyed his army and knew that if any group of scum were capable of outdoing those vile Oaklanders when it came to the dark arts it was his group of warriors.  But tragedy struck somewhere around Iowa when agents representing the War Crimes Tribunal snuck into the camp, put a black bag over Lieutenant Delmas’ head and dragged him away like an animal, accusing him of being a voodoo priest and of violating no less than 168 different international health codes for what he did with those chickens and goats.  Incensed, the men wanted to go after Delmas, rescue him and butcher the War Crimes Tribunal but the General explained that that probably wouldn’t help their cause unless, of course, the War Crimes Tribunal were fans of irony.  This was lost on most of the men and a few of them took off after Delmas anyway.  This left the Lion army shorthanded and the men were never seen again.  It is rumored that they are currently being held in a detention camp somewhere in the Alps, but until The Great Willie Young returns either with more information, the rescued men themselves or the bloody pelts of their captors, no more can be said at this time.

And so after that unfortunate bout of attrition, the men kept up their brutal march.  Private Backus was tricked in Nebraska by a cruel farmer into making love to his prize sow and the resulting paternity suit bogged the army down for another several days.  While they were stuck in that depressing land, Lord Suh went AWOL.  A price was put on his head but Corporal Gun eventually found him in a Lincoln whorehouse, and was stunned to find that Lord Suh was attending to no less than 78 bastards he had spawned during his training days in the Nebraska wasteland.  Corporal Gun was a kind man beneath his gruff surface and rather than pistol whipping Lord Suh, as was the customary punishment for desertion, he merely gave each of the bastards ten dollars each out of the army’s petty cash and then escorted Lord Suh back to camp in leg irons.  Lord Suh then broke his chains, flipped a Chevrolet and punched a farmer’s wife before Corporal Gun soothed the rogue Lord with promises of both glory and blood in the coming Oakland campaign.

Once that was all sorted out, the army crossed the Rocky Mountains, losing several more men to an unfortunate bout with cannibalism.  When informed of their horrible act, the General was dumbfounded, saying only “But it’s the middle of summer, no one was trapped . . .”  The offending men were executed and flung from the top of Pike’s Peak.  This understandably shook the army’s morale, but still they soldiered on, stopping in Denver to run whores and sack that mountain hamlet.  Sergeant Tulloch even entertained the rest of the men by throwing a saddle on a conquered John Elway and riding him up and down the city’s main street while the Denver citizens watched from their cages, weeping and begging Tulloch to spare Elway’s life.  But then Elway threw a shoe, was hobbled, and Tulloch had no choice but to slit the poor beast’s throat in front of his own children. 

Afterward, the team made a concerted effort to keep it together until they reached Oakland.  Unfortunately, several of the men were set upon by Mormon zealots in the Utah desert and were converted to the faith.  They simply could not resist the promise of countless servile wives and the General had no choice but to watch with disgust as they settled down amongst the natives.  After that, the army had to pass through Las Vegas.  Naturally, ¾ of the men were lost either to social disease or to gambling debts, and by the time the Lion army stumbled out of the desert and into California, they had been badly reduced and the remaining men were both exhausted and disillusioned.

To make matters worse, at the border the army was set upon by agents of the War Crimes Tribunal, who had finally caught up with the army thanks to its repeated forays into degeneracy.  A sort of running battle was fought between the army and the Tribunal all the way to the Oakland borders.  There, amidst heavy fighting, several of the Lion army’s most promising officers were abducted by the Tribunal, including Lord Suh, Field Marshall Snake Stafford and half of what remained of the Lion army’s defensive perimeter. 

And so it was with that as the backdrop that a ragtag group of survivors, bloodied, exhausted and half naked, marched on the walls of Oakland.  The people of Oakland met the charge by flinging their own feces and the heads of their own pets at the army.  And still the men fought on.  By now The Great Willie Young had joined the army once again after spending time in China dealing with family business.  And with him leading the charge, the men broke through the Oakland walls and began to savage the people.  Private Fairley, who had somehow avoided the War Crimes Tribunal, was last seen riding the same police horse he had stolen in Baltimore – and my God, that horse had become something more akin to some sort of bear from hell by the time they reached Oakland, and it was even said that Private Fairley fed the animal a diet consisting of baby left-overs, various prisoners from the army’s previous campaigns, steroids and the prostitutes the army had broken, oh and apples because horses love apples – marauding through the streets, skewering children and eating them raw while their mothers wept horrified tears and cried out in terror.  The General has reportedly been mulling turning Private Fairley over to the War Crimes Tribunal himself because, goddamn man, enough is enough, but until they find the degenerate, there is little he can do.  Besides, Private Fairley could implicate the General in the grisly demise of John Harbaugh and so I’m afraid that they’re all in it together, for better or worse.

And so Oakland began to burn, the same way that Baltimore had burned.  But in a cruel and shocking twist, it seemed that the people of Oakland had anticipated what was to come and had imported a secret weapon, a crackhead from Ohio named Pryor, a terrible beast who had been raised in the rust covered hellfires of that savage land.  That animal Pryor flummoxed the Lion army by slaughtering his own people and stacking their corpses in an impenetrable wall in the heart of the city.  And from atop this corpse wall, Pryor rained down his own radioactive feces on the Lion army, burning the men like acid.  The men wailed in pain and were forced to pull back while that ogre Pryor laughed and ordered more Oakland bodies stacked around the wall’s base.  The Oakland people wept with fear and recognized their terrible mistake – putting the city in the hands of an Ohio barbarian was worse than the worst fate that the Lion army could ever deal to them – and they tried to fight back by pulling the stake from the heart of the vampire Al Davis.

This bout of foolishness only worsened their plight as Vampire Al then began devouring the Oakland people who, savage as they were, were in way over their heads here.  This then pulled The Great Willie Young away from the terrible battle, as he was forced to engage Vampire Al in single combat.  With the Great One busy, the Lion army’s depleted reserves were slaughtered by Pryor’s vile counter-offensive.  Private Wendling was last seen, flesh burning from his body, trying valiantly to climb the corpse wall before Pryor unleashed a terrible weapon – a cluster bomb which when detonated released the stench of a million poop filled Ohio coolers.  The smell was overwhelming and powerful, a piece of dirty chemical warfare that would horrify even Saddam Hussein.  Both the Lion army’s reserves and the people of Oakland withered under the stink bomb, and as their flesh melted and their eyeballs burst, their brains cooked and their hearts seized, Pryor stood like a fell beast atop the corpse wall and laughed the laugh of the truly corrupt of spirit. 

Meanwhile, The Great Willie Young fought valiantly against Vampire Al Davis, slaying the beast over and over and over again.  And yet, whenever the monster fell, he would arise again and The Great Willie Young was forced to battle him all over again.  At one point, The Great One vomited when the monster’s rotting flesh peeled off of its body, revealing cankerous sores.  And yet he battled on for that is what heroes do and eventually he slay the terrible Vampire Al Davis, set the corpse of the beast on fire and then, in one last heroic act, gathered up the remains and dove deep into the Pacific Ocean, to deliver Vampire Al to the bottom of the Marianas Trench because he didn’t know what else to do and that is how they dealt with the evil robots at the end of Transformers. 

But without The Great Willie Young, the remains of the Lion army didn’t have a chance.  They fought valiantly that day and eventually Oakland and the surrounding Bay Area was left in ruins.  It is even said that the General stepped away from the battle and found Jim Harbaugh’s house and shit in his mailbox.  He knew that the battle was lost and figured, hey, why not?

With the General busy defiling the Harbaugh mailbox, Corporal Gun was left to organize the men into a fighting retreat.  The idea of surrender sickened him, especially to the likes of that Ohioan mercenary beast Pryor, but the Corporal loved his men and he couldn’t stand to hear their dying wails as they tried to climb the corpse wall only to be inundated with Pryor’s acidic hell-juices.  And so Corporal Gun ordered his men to fall back and with a grim smile, he stripped himself naked and charged the corpse wall himself.  He climbed and he climbed, gritting his teeth both against the stench and the damage wrought by Pryor’s acid-piss.  Miraculously he reached the top and there, it is said, was fought a mighty battle between good and evil.  The young Ohioan troll was said to know fear in that moment as he was beat about the head by the sword-hilt of the grizzled old Corporal.  They fought and they fought and they fought atop that terrible corpse wall as the sun sank and then rose again, although you wouldn’t be able to tell for the skies had been darkened by the smokefire and the chaos of war.  Eventually, the sky began to clear and the men pointed and cheered as The Great Willie Young appeared, blazing like a beacon fire, a bolt of heavenly lightning which vaporized all the hell-soot unleashed by Pryor.  Some even say that in that moment it was revealed that The Great Willie Young and the sun were one and the same, and that every time you enjoy a sunny day, you are merely enjoying the reflected joy of The Great Willie Young, who shines so that we may all might live, but that is still just a rumor.  Then again, the movement already has priests and a growing following and the worship of both the sun and The Great Willie Young has grown by 178% since I started writing this paragraph, so who knows?  By the time I am finished it just might be the official state religion, much like it was in Ancient Egypt.

Anyway, religious discussion aside, when The Great Willie Young appeared and the sky cleared and he shown upon the world again, it is said that Pryor burrowed beneath the corpse wall, insulating him from the light which burned his Ohioan flesh, and that he now lives, plotting his revenge from a small pocket in that very same wall, surrounded by the rotting flesh of thousands of dead Oaklanders.  Someday, the beast will have his reckoning, and someday The Great Willie Young will stand above him and pronounce his sentence as he dispenses his immortal justice but that day will have to wait, for when the General returned from defiling the Harbaugh mailbox, he wept at the state of his ragged army and issued an immediate pullback to Tijuana, where it is said the Lion army rests and whores and waits and whores and prepares and whores and plans its mighty comeback.  For there is much to be done – revenge against Pryor, a brutal battle with the War Crimes Tribunal (by the way, it is rumored that this mysterious Tribunal is none other than the creation of the Lion army’s sworn enemy, Sheriff Goodell, and that it is headed by none other than the Lizard Man Pereira, which makes his escape from the Battle of Baltimore all that more tragic.) and the upcoming campaign against the army of Buffalo, a meager force that nonetheless is said to be preparing to march on Detroit as we speak.  In fact, it is said that Mayor Bing has gone so far as to trade his new pair of pants in so he could afford to buy more minutes for his cell just so he could call the General and warn him of the new threat.  The Tragedy of the Mayor’s Pants knows no end it would seem.

And so the battle of Oakland ended in misery and heartache for all involved.  All of Northern California lies in ruins and half of the Lion army is either in custody or missing in action.  But the Lion army shall return and when it does, led by The Great Willie Young, the rest of the football world will pay for the actions of that degenerate Pryor, the War Crimes Tribunal and those tantalizing Mormons who led so many of our boys astray in the Utah desert, and when they do I shall be here, a humble chronicler of Truth, and I hope you will gather before me to hear more Tales of the great Lion Army and of The Great Willie Young.  Good night and Vaya Con Dios.

The Battle of Baltimore

[The following came to me in a fever dream, a dream which lasted an entire week, which, uh, explains why this is up so late.  Anyway, I fell asleep shortly after the Lions game against the Browns, and a week later I awoke, drenched in sweat, having felt like I aged 100 years.  Sure, I tweeted during that time and also communicated with a few of you via e-mail and even killed a man in a bar fight using only my mind but I am a versatile creature and these activities only required .0001% of my brain.  The majority of my brain however, was dialed into what was referred to me by my dream guide, a homely looking old Italian man who called himself Dirty Virge, as The Truth.  The visions shown to me were both exhilarating and terrifying, filled with blood, sweat, semen, dead bodies and even the sight of a naked Nick Fairley riding a horse through the streets of Baltimore, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Anyway, when I awoke, I furiously tried to gather those stray visions into something coherent, and the result is this . . .]

Prologue:

Just before dusk in mid-August, General Jim Schwartz attended a meeting requested by the Mayor, Dave Bing.  The General thought the meeting was just a formality, the latest in a long line of celebratory fetes congratulating him for his heroic defense of the Michigan homeland from those vile Ohioan fiends, but when he arrived the General found the Mayor sitting behind his desk, head in hands underneath a single flickering lightbulb.  It was clear the old fool had been weeping and immediately the General steeled himself for the call of duty.

The Mayor released a ragged sigh when he saw the General enter his cramped, shadowy office and he motioned for the man who had saved his ass more than once to sit down across from him.  “Jim,” he told him, wiping away a stray tear, “we got a motherfuckin’ problem.”  The General just nodded his head.  When didn’t they have a problem?  “You hear about these motherfuckers from Baltimore, all callin’ themselves Murder City?  What, just ‘cause they get a fancy show on the HBO, they think they know thing one ‘bout Murder?” 

The General sighed.  So this was how it was going to be.  Baltimore was where he was from.  It was in his blood.  It was where he had learned to play human chess, where he learned to understand the value of a life.  But Detroit was his home now.  It had taken him in, had promoted him to the highest ranks, and had trusted him with her defense.  And besides, Baltimore may have taught him about the value of a life but Detroit taught The General all about the value of taking a life.  Yes, Baltimore was a hard land, but he knew his old friends were mere babies, clad and coddled in sheep’s wool compared to the steel men of Detroit.

“Jim, I know you tired.  I know you got men in and outta every whorehouse in the city, but goddammit, man, if we don’t stand up for ourselves, what the fuck we got left?”  The Mayor rose from his seat and pounded his desk.  It was then that The General noticed The Mayor wasn’t wearing any pants.

“I mean, goddammit Jimmy, all we got is our reputation.  And ain’t no soft-ass motherfucker from Baltimore gonna take that shit away from us.  Fuck Baltimore, Jimmy.  Fuck ‘em.”

The General tried not to look directly at the Mayor, especially since the man’s underwear was as ragged as the rest of him, and the General could already see the Mayor’s python trying to wriggle its way free.  “Uh, Mr. Mayor, you are aware you aren’t wearing any pants, right?”

The Mayor slammed a fist.  “You goddamn right I’m aware I ain’t got no motherfuckin’ drawers on!  And you know why I ain’t got no drawers, Jimmy?”

The General just shook his head.

“I ain’t got no motherfuckin’ drawers ‘cause I had to sell ‘em just to buy ammo to hunt down those motherfuckin’ coyotes been gettin’ into folks’ garbage on the edge of town!” the Mayor screamed.  “Now you tell me if we can afford to sit here and take the insults of those cocksuckers from Baltimore, Jimmy.  You tell me!”

The General couldn’t, and with that he knew what he had to do.  He gave the Mayor a curt nod and left the maniac to his own despair.  After leaving his office he placed a single phone call.  “Corporal Gun?  It’s the General.  Gather the boys.  Tell ‘em ‘We ride.’”

The Battle for Baltimore

The men staggered into Maryland, hung over and dripping with cheap sex.  Violence was in the air but then again, with this gang, violence was always in the air.  The men were in no condition for the serious fight which lay ahead – the General may not have belonged to Baltimore anymore but he harbored no illusions either, he knew Baltimore would bring the fight – and the General cursed himself for allowing the men to pillage the Ohio countryside on their march to Baltimore.  Sure it had been satisfying seeing the rust covered villages of Ohio burn under a hell sun and yeah, the men had made a fortune selling Ohio slaves to greedy Pennsylvanian pimps, but the men had had too much fun.  Hell, Private Fairley even ate a baby outside of Youngstown and then slapped the brat’s crying mother when she protested.  Sure, the “woman” looked more like a mutilated hill troll but baby eating was pushing things just a little too far.  The General knew he’d have to have a talk with Private Fairley.  He just hoped the degenerate understood English.

But whatever worries the General may have had about his men’s willingness to fight was obliterated when Baltimore sent a weird emissary doing a bizarre dance to the ranks to parley.  The man spoke in strange tongues and the men had no choice but to take it as an insult.  They grabbed the emissary and tarred and feathered him and sent him back to the city riding an ass backwards, gibbering about dirty birds.  The last thing the emissary said before he was lost to distance was “My General, the noble John Harbaugh, will hear of this madness!”

At that, General Schwartz’s ears pricked up and his blood began to surge through his body.  His pulse quickened and his dick grew hard, as it often did before the killing began.  Harbaugh.  Heh.  The General spit on the ground.  He knew the man.  Oh yes.  After all, Jim Harbaugh, the brother of this John Harbaugh, was the General’s mortal enemy.  No one could ever forget the two of them clashing in single combat before the gates of hell while their men cheered them on.  If it wasn’t for the intervention of The Great Willie Young, The General and the fiend Harbaugh, a turncoat who spurned his Michigan roots for the cheap sodomy and lurid hedonism of San Francisco, might have killed one another.  But now, just the name was enough to get the General’s juices flowing.  Harbaugh.  The General wanted blood.

And so he appealed to the men, men who were already alive with their own bloodlust following the emissary’s fateful visit.  The General explained to them that Baltimore was out to take something away from them.  It was out to take their pride.  It was out to take their women and fuck their mothers.  At this, Lord Suh broke from the ranks and made a single mad charge on the walls of Baltimore.  He was riddled with arrows but yet he kept charging until finally he was lost behind the walls.  Even the General was shocked and for a moment the men fell silent before Snake Stafford, the team’s Field Marshall, sauntered from his tent.  The Snake was always cool, always calm, and although he enjoyed the fruits of his labor perhaps even more than the others, he was also more refined, and by that I mean he preferred to fuck his women one at a time, in the comfort of his own tent rather than out in the open, rolling around in the blood of the fallen and the guts of slain horses like some of the men preferred.  Of course, this always meant that there was a line a mile long outside of Snake’s tent, which is how he earned the nickname, as the line often snaked its way through the entire camp.  Still, the Field Marshall was a young man of boundless energy and he commanded the respect of the entire army.  And so when he appeared, the men all grew silent and listened.  “Well boys,” he said “I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to leave one of our own behind those walls.  Let’s say we go and give Lord Suh a helping hand.”  And with that, the men all roared and charged en masse.

The fighting was indeed fierce that day.  At first the effects of the men’s hangover was a problem, as Baltimore sent a wave of crackheads at them, each one buzzing like a disease ridden mosquito, offering to suck the dick of any Lion who would give them a thin silver piece.  And a few of the men, still drunk on sex, succumbed.  Private Logan, a little man, had his penis bitten right off by such a fiendish Baltimore crackhead, and the site of him screaming as blood poured from his groin was enough to make the men buckle down.  The fields ran red with the blood of Baltimore crackheads that day, and as punishment for such a vile offensive, Field Marshall Snake Stafford called upon his friend, a demigod from another realm simply known as St. Calvin to ride down from the heavens aboard a sixteen foot tall horse, and assail the city walls with him.  The two of them, along with their young apprentice, Private Titus, singlehandedly breached the Baltimore defenses and opened the way for the rest of the army to sack the city.  What followed was sheer mayhem.

The Baltimore General, Harbaugh, hid like a coward in the bowels of the city once he heard that General Schwartz was coming for him, and he sent wave after wave of his best men – degenerates and freaks all – to try to chop down General Schwartz and his army.  But one by one, the Baltimore defenders were mutilated.  Their own Field Marshall, an inept coward by the name of Flacco, pissed himself and tried to hide but was caught  and beheaded by Private Fairley, who in his frenzy of bloodlust, stripped himself of all clothing and then stole a police horse and rode through the city, naked, howling and butchering every man, woman and child he saw.  A toddler tried to run from him but its stubby legs couldn’t move fast enough and Private Fairley speared the tyke and held him up like a rabbit on a spit, gibbering and frothing at the mouth about having found that night’s dinner.  The site terrified and unnerved the people of Baltimore, who immediately sued for peace. 

But the General knew that he had to send a message.  Sure, he didn’t enjoy destroying his own hometown, but he had a duty to perform and it was time to end this Harbaugh nonsense once and for all.  And so the General ordered his men to raze the city, and surrounded by a few of his most brutal and merciless troops, he entered the city.  A part of him wanted to weep, as the smell of burning flesh and the sound of terrified wailing met him when he passed the city gates, but he rejected that part of him as the soft bleating of a child.  He then hardened his heart and ordered his men to kill every last living thing that crossed their path.  And so they did.

And still the cowards of Baltimore wept and offered surrender.  The Lion army laughed and forced the cowards to do unspeakable things.  They made Lieutenant Lewis, a man of great notoriety who had once knifed a man in the streets of Miami just for looking at him, march through the streets naked with his penis tucked between his legs.  They then poured boiling water on him and placed him in a catapult.  They then flung him to the tower in which General Harbaugh was hiding and laughed as he made a sickening splat against the walls.  That was but one of the atrocities committed on that dreadful day, but what is a simple atrocity compared to the slight of a city’s pride?  Baltimore dared to bow up to mighty Detroit and now it suffered the consequences. 

As the city burned and its people wept and died, its cowardly General Harbaugh called for a full retreat, hoping to barricade himself and his best men behind impenetrable walls.  But General Schwartz had other ideas, and it was then that he called on his best man, his secret weapon, the legendary one himself, The Great Willie Young, who was currently splitting time between observing the battle and fighting The Battle of Lepanto in a different time and place (don’t question the ability of The Great Willie Young to exist simultaneously in more than one place and time.)  The Great Willie Young excused himself from The Battle of Lepanto for a moment and appeared like a bolt of lightning on the Baltimore horizon.  The people – or what was left of them anyway – dropped to their knees and prostrated themselves before his magnificence.  The only holdout was one lone stubborn old lady, who spat in the direction of the great one and vowed to never give into him.  It turned out that she was the great, great, great granddaughter of a man named Beauregard, who The Great Willie Young had once crushed during his time in the Louisiana Bayou.  The Great Willie Young recognized the scent of her foul blood immediately and charged the retreating Baltimore line.  He destroyed them effortlessly, disemboweling the weak-willed fools, and then strangled them each with their own intestines.  The old lady pissed herself but still she refused to bow to the great one.  She was 95 years old and her grandchildren were watching, but The Great Willie Young booted that old bitch in the stomach and then laughed as she fell to the ground, vomiting.  He then slapped the grandchildren around, caged them with a rabid gopher and then dropped the lot of them into the Baltimore Harbor.  This was no time and no place for mercy, for they carried an evil seed and above all, The Great Willie Young was a force of pure good.

And so the city of Baltimore fell.  The men later found Lord Suh ensconced in a whorehouse, covered in blood, being pleasured by no less than eight different ladies who he immediately made his wives, as was his right according to Leviticus.  He had thousands of wives across the country and he would never see these harlots again but they sucked a mean dick and that was enough for him to grant them his protection.  The men laughed when they found the Lord Suh and spent the rest of the night with him and his whores. 

But the General still was not satisfied.  He broke down the doors of Harbaugh’s stronghold and found the so-called man in there, whimpering, surrounded by a scaly advisor, a hunched man who spoke with a forked tongue which flicked back and forth, betraying his lizard man roots.  The General became furious for he knew right away who this inhuman monster was – it was none other than Sheriff Goodell’s hatchet man, that lizard son of a bitch known only as Pereira.  The Sheriff and Pereira had long had it out for General Schwartz and his men and so it came as no surprise that they would be behind this fiendish villainy.  After all, the Harbaugh men were too simple.  And so the General ordered the men he had with him to chase the Lizard Man Pereira down and bring him to justice but the fiend managed to wriggle free and it is said that a man – or a humanoid of some form – fitting his description could be seen slithering from the Baltimore sewers, accompanied by a sycophant named Brennaman, the Sheriff’s Minister of Propaganda.  These were ill-tidings to be sure, but they belong to another story which will be told in full at a later time.

But for now, the General stood alone before the quivering Harbaugh, who offered to suck the General’s dick but the General just slapped him senseless.  It was then that Private Fairley burst through the doors, naked, astride that terrible horse, a horse which, let me tell you, had seen some fuckin’ things in the short time since it had been abducted by Fairley.  A half-eaten child rested on the end of a spear and General Schwartz made a mental note to get the Private some help when they returned home.  But for now, the General was glad to have his most degenerate soldier with him.  He looked at Private Fairley, who just stared back with wild eyes and then he pointed at the quivering Harbaugh.  Private Fairley smiled a sick, fucked up smile and climbed from his horse.   He stood over Harbaugh and said, simply, “Now we gonna have us some fun.” 

The General nodded, satisfied, and turned away.  He didn’t need to witness this.  To know that it was done was enough.  After, he would return for Harbaugh’s head, which he would place in a burlap sack and mail to his brother, his mortal enemy, as a message that General Schwartz and his Lions weren’t fucking around and that soon, those San Francisco sodomites would get their reckoning.  But for now, Baltimore was conquered, and that was enough.  The General would give the men leave to pillage the city for another day or two and then they’d make the march back home.  He only hoped that when he arrived that Mayor Bing had found some new pants. 

“Wait . . .” the General said, before Fairley could get to it.  Private Fairley turned around with a grunt.  Harbaugh looked up, tears in his eyes and began thanking the General for his mercy, but General Schwartz just smiled.  He turned to Fairley and said, “Make sure you leave me his pants.  I know a man in need of a good pair of slacks.”  And with that, my fever dream and the Battle of Baltimore came to an end.  May God have mercy on all of our souls.