First, I have some terrible news: my friend of more than a quarter-century, a man you know here as Rocket, has lost his mind. It was a slow build to this point, and many of us suspected it would end this way, but it doesn't make it any less sad now that we're at this point of no return. I have no official diagnosis or confirmation from anyone else. All I have is a two-part NHL guest post preview he wrote, the first of which is on the Eastern Conference, as evidence. He has done the body of the work in haiku form, as usual. The intro is in some sort of old-time detective fiction meets Office Space style, which is not really a style at all. I've cleaned it up a little in order to protect him and everyone.
Rocket, I'll be thinking of you. In the mean time, here's the preview:
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It was a slow day. There had been a lot of those lately. To make matters worse, the summer heat was so bad that the hobos could cook eggs on the sidewalk. If things didn't change soon I was going to have pick up that skill myself.
I was cleaning my gat for the third time since I arrived at the office, hoping that this time would be the charm that changed my luck. I was out of excuses for the two months of back rent and I knew that if I didn't drum up some business quick the next visit from the landlord would be the last. I didn't dare look at the door because I could practically see a workman beginning to scrape, "Thorn Hammerrod, P.I." off of it.
I finished with the gat and was about to refile the paperwork again when I heard the sweetest sound I had heard in weeks – a knock at the door. I looked up and saw a shapely silhouette through the frosted glass. I knew the smell of trouble, and it smelled exactly like the silhouette's expensive perfume. My instincts told me that I should have told the silhouette that I wasn't available for her business, but I was hanging on by the skin of my teeth and I didn't have time to consult the dentist. "It's open," I yelled as nonchalantly as possible.
And then she opened the door. The moment I saw her somehow my heart turned to fire as my blood began to freeze. She was the kind of peach that could have just walked off of a movie set, even though she tried to hide it behind a thick set of poindexter glasses and an aggressive lack of makeup. "What do you mean, 'it's open'?" she asked. "You're sitting in a cubicle." This peach was more like a hot pepper. A habanero at minimum.
It was obvious that she was classy, not the type to be seen in the part of town. That meant that she was in the type of trouble that I didn't want to be mixed up in. But I had let her in the door, which meant that I was already in too deep. The only way out was going to be cracking the case. "What brings you to the wrong side of the tracks, Dollface?"
