Throughout his celebrated career, Jon McLaine has touched countless terrorists with gunfire and explosions. Now he seeks to touch a woman's heart with Pretty Ass Poems.
Pretty Ass Poems is best described as Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts" goes to the Super Bowl.
Throughout his celebrated career, Jon McLaine has touched countless terrorists with gunfire and explosions. Now he seeks to touch a woman's heart with Pretty Ass Poems.
Pretty Ass Poems is best described as Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts" goes to the Super Bowl.
 I hate zippers.
Regardless of whether youâre zipping or unzipping, be it pants, a sleeping bag, or a tent, zippers notoriously run off the rails, pinch fabric that need not be pinched, get all jammed up, and blatantly refuse to zip, no matter how much one jerks.
Zippers suck.
Even more surprising than the fact that zippers are constantly fucking up is the fact that there have been no advancements in zipper technology. There must be a better way to secure and unsecure two pieces of fabric. I know there is, because Iâve found a solution:
Magnets.
           A thin line of very powerful magnets woven into both sides of the material to be secured and unsecured at will. When entering or exiting a tent, for example, simply push (or dive through) the door and allow the magnetic charge to snap the flap shut behind you. Ditto sleeping bag. Yes, magnets are the answer.
           Of course, this does pose a dangerous problem for menâs pants. However, Iâve come up with a solution for that as well:
           Microchips.
           Pre-programmed microchips, also woven into the fabric and attached to the magnets, presumably via wires, causing the magnets to attract or repel the material by a remote-controlled device, maybe a cell phone app.
           âBut Colonel,â a critic said âYou donât even have a cellphone. And even if you did, it wouldnât have any apps.â
           True. But I would have a phone if it meant I didnât have to deal with zippers. Zippers can kiss my ass.
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Colonel John Matrix
1st Special Forces Operation Detachment / Delta
U.S. Army, Retired
ï»żï»żPretty Ass Poems is less a collection of poems and more like a written script for a series of sketches in a bizarre off-the-wall comedy show. There are poems collected here, of a fashion but what you have in this book is more like snippets of the writerâs musings interspersed with absurd editorial interjections, all dressed up with a healthy dose of surrealist humour.
Not only do you have poems, you have memes based on the poems and other written material contained in the book, as well as photos which mirror what has been presented in the written word and mostly, it must be said of pretty ass women.
All of these incongruous techniques blend to create a book, which is at times difficult to get your head around. It is funny in parts, there is no doubt about that. I especially liked the opening editorial about zippers, which is daft in its suggestion of using far more complex things to fasten as an alternative to the frustration of zippers and if you like that sort of humour that is less pedestrian wit and more satirical, then this is the book for you.
It is certainly edgy in its style as Jon McLaineâs delivery is less flowery language and more about getting to the heart of the matter. I quite like this as it pulls no punches and sometimes being challenged by what you are reading is good, whether thatâs from its chosen format or what the words actually contain.
On reading it, I was reminded of Monty Python in the way that it has been put together: the poetry is delivered in the form of a competition between two teams, incongruously called the Mambas and the Scorpions and a score sheet is kept throughout of how well each team is doing. This is also true of the editorial interruptions that hint of a world outside the text that have a bearing on the way the book continues.
It is weird but not disturbingly so and I know that I read it with a mildly quizzical look on my face punctuated by a half smile with the occasional intake of breath at something particularly humorous.
This book has left me in two minds: I canât decide if it is brilliant or nonsense. Maybe itâs both but I think that this is something that you have to decide for yourself.