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| T A C T I C A L L I P B A R R I E R S |
I don't know if you're like me, an actual girly man with no usable human skills and the toughness of tissue paper after crying into it after watching Hope Floats again, and have a hundred half-used, half-assed lip balms scattered throughout your house in hopes of keeping your blood inside your body. They show up in the laundry and in the pockets of my kevlar vests. They melt in the 110 degree Tucson heat into puddles of liberal Subaru-driving sadness. In fact I can see eight from where I'm sitting: Carmex Strawberry Daily Care SPF 15, Dr. Hauschka's Lip Care Stick, Carmex Cupcake Batter, Carmex Wintergreen, Burt's Bees Cucumber Mint, Cliganic Vanilla Organic Lip Balm, an unlabeled Tucson Medical Center lip balm I've had for a year or two, and Badger Highland Mint Lip Balm which at least sounded promising when I bought it. They are all only ok. Many of them are castoffs from my wife or my eight-year old daughter. None of them have the clinical strength, action hero performance, or tactical response I need from a lip protectant. Where, I thought, is the lip balm made not for tweens, but for the unique needs of oversized, rugged MAN lips, hardened from a thousand days of battle? I mean, when I'm in the shit, I don't need a lip balm: I need a lip barrier. As always, the answer came to me from watching Predator. Late in the film, when Dutch, desperate to escape the alien that just killed his whole badass crew, trips and slides then falls a hundred feet into a jungle pool and eventually is washed down a couple waterfalls and nearly dies before he barely crawls ashore, he finds himself smeared with a light coating of mud from his scrabbling. He collapses there, helpless and exhausted. When the creature comes ashore after him, he's vulnerable and has nowhere else to turn. Spread eagled, he waits for his death to come. But then he realizes: the thing cannot see him! Because of this thin protective covering of mud, his body heat is obscured: he cannot be seen by it. Now, aware of this advantage, the movie turns, allowing Dutch to finally hunt the Predator. Now you too can turn the tables on whatever Predator rules your life by buying one of these Predator: a Memoir Tactical Lip Barriers. If it's good enough for Schwarzenegger, it's good enough for you. They're proven tough, tested by active-duty military personnel in some of the baddest-ass places you can't even fuckin' imagine being, on missions totally unsanctioned by the American government with maximum deniability. This unique formulation holds up in the most extreme conditions due to its premium ingredients, sourced from the blood of your foes, which gives this TACTICAL LIP BARRIER its epic performance in the absolute worst conditions. Utilize a tube—or a hundred of them—to cloak your body heat from those who seek to kill and skin you. Not just a balm, these TACTICAL LIP BARRIERS are super tough and will hold up to whatever —or whoever—you throw at your lips. It's like kevlar for your smoocher. TACTICAL LIP BARRIERS come in three varieties: EXPLOSIVE, PAINLESS, and ANYTIME. BUY ONE FOR $5 OR COLLECT ALL THREE FOR $10. $1 shipping in America. __ PAINLESS Tactical: when this gun's a rockin' you best not come knockin (because you'll be pulverized by the insane action of the baddest minigun any action hero ever held in a movie). Have no time to bleed? Then get this tactical lip proectant on your lips. It keeps the blood and the emotions in. It also stops any other bleeding you may experience, so it's perfect for the shop or for the field. Burly man or girly man: we all like Double Mint, which is what this is flavored. Approved for those times you have to go one on one with an alien. ANYTIME Tactical: When what you say is not what you mean, is never totally what you mean, because it's hard to say, now you are a man. Even this sentence doesn't mean what it says, nor does it say all it means! This tastes like betrayal and eventual valor. Also Maple Cinnamon like your mom used to make you on cold winter mornings. Weaponize your childhood memories and keep yourself safe from alien killers! EXPLOSIVE Tactical: "When something explodes, / Turn exactly opposite from it and see what there is to see. // The loud will take care of itself, and everyone will be able to say // What happened in that direction. But who is looking / The other way?" (Alberto Rios; hat tip to Noam Dorr). Tastes like pomegranate, one blown apart by a grenade. TACTICAL LIP BARRIERS ARE:
I F I T B L E E D S , Y O U H A V E N ' T U S E D E N O U G H . |
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F O R T H C O M I N G
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September 20, 2022 from Graywolf Press. [Details and preorder links] [Readings & screenings]
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