Human Centipede Revisited

Still waiting for my conception of the Human Centipede sequel to be optioned. I posted this drawing to Tom Six's Facebook page, but no response yet!

MacGyver Lives

On one of my TVs, I'm now getting every local channel but one with this halved pop can scotch taped to a balun. It works better than most commercial antennae. I've completed several homemade antenna rigs now—mostly the 8-ear coat-hanger variety—and none work much better than this piece of crap.

P.S. Fuck you, Channel 10

Mandatory Holiday Treat

March of the Wooden Soldiers is a great example of the type of low-rent visual imagination lost in the age of CGI. If you don't get your mind right and watch this whole movie, at least watch this highlight for the surreal mental upheaval it guarantees. It's one of the only things on film that makes me laugh no matter how many times I see it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iVPyJ1viFE&feature=related

Thank you, odd mormonesque girl named Lisa from Hobby Lobby who first turned me on to this so long ago.

Infant Godling

This. THIS. The one brutal eventuality.

He takes all that you hold dear.

He configures the Abacus of Pain.

He gives birth to the Omega Disjunction.

He reads the Maps of Entropy.

He dines upon the Lease Agreement.

He incubates the Lethal Zygote.

He digests the Kibbles & Bits.

He friends you on Facebook.

Watch Out for Grandpa

The rise of aggressively marketed Big Pharmaceuticals coupled with the advent of Medicare D have led to such disorienting, counterintuitive anecdotes as one I heard lately, of an elderly man who takes Xanax four times daily along with 4-6 doses of oxycontin. The elderly man then generously motors himself around our fool city in search of adventure.

I’m led to believe that this scenario is now commonplace, so I’ve coined a new phrase (I think):

The Medicare D Visionquest Package.

You heard it here first.

Pirate Ship Name Generator

While starting a new story, I blanked out when I needed a good name for a pirate ship. Googling "pirate ship names," I immediately came on a website called seventhsanctum.com with a whole battery of "generators," or programs that randomly generate appropriate names for monsters, heroes, ships, you name it. I had it spit out a few pirate ship names before I took words from two of the combinations to make my own, "The Vile Mermaid," featured in the unfinished story below.

The site seems geared toward role-playing gamers, but I think it could be handy in many situations. You could name your pet or baby from either "goblin names" or "evil minions." This probably appeals to me more than most because when I was a kid I used to write numbered lists of nouns and adjectives that I liked and then roll D&D dice to generate random combinations, sort of like mad libs without the connecting story.

Yes, there were some slow and lonely times out at my house when I was growing up.



The Monkey and the Ghost Ship

A very high-strung monkey named Mr. Tinkertot lived on a pirate ship, The Vile Mermaid, in 1899. It was getting pretty late in history to be a pirate. Most of the pirates on board were getting old, especially Captain Poisoneyes, who was becoming fat, deaf, and forgetful. However, he could still give a man an angry look powerful enough to wither his timbers.

Even though the pirates were old enough to know better, they still drank and smoked to the point of folly. They drank horrible pirate ales, wormy tequilas, dirty rums and toxic vodkas from the Black Sea. These men would take the fermented juices of any spoiled thing and slurp it from a bottle. They drank until they vomited and they drank some more. Anything they couldn’t drink, they smoked. Mr. Tinkertot didn’t like to drink or smoke, so he spent his time patrolling the poop deck, the crow’s nest, the mast ropes and the hold. He even walked the plank sometimes, just for fun.

One day, the ship’s cook, Roasty Whiskermeister, very drunkenly tried to smoke Mr. Tinkertot’s tail. The monkey was sitting on the captain’s shoulder at the time. He shrieked and grabbed the captain’s ears, and the captain tripped over a pile of old beer bottles, falling painfully on his knees and elbows.
“Blast ye, Whiskermeister,” said the captain when he saw Roasty sanding there with a smoking match in his fingers. “I’ll soon give your job to a broad-shouldered woman.” He rubbed his knees and glared at Roasty till a little tear rolled down the cook’s dirty face. Then Captain Poisoneyes looked around and said, “What a slobby lot we are! It’s time we cleaned this pigsty of a ship! If I fall over garbage again, some mangy fool’s gonna walk the plank!” Mr. Tinkertot was clinging to the ceiling, which he often did when the captain was angry.

Found Glory

Picking up trash around a movie theater sometimes yields oddball treasures. I have found every denomination of money up to a $20 bill, endless Happy Meal toys (mostly broken), finger puppets, gloves, mints, magnifiers, balls, beads and more balls.

More common of course are the items solidly in the realm of garbage: drink vessels and candy wrappers ad infinitum, used condoms, diapers, and even pooped pants (yes, adult man-pants). Then there are discarded items like notes left on windshields to berate bad parking, grocery lists, and love notes. Sometimes you have to wonder if they were lost or dropped deliberately. Some things contain embarrassing personal info or just weird glimpses into a life; for instance, a list of someone's children tallying the monthly costs of all the prescription drugs they were taking.

My favorite things (like those pictured) are kind of personal/anthropological. Apparently self-motivational things like photos where someone's face has been vandalized, or drawings by kids (or adults) showing their attitude toward life. Once I picked up a ton of giftwrap paper and ribbons right after Christmas, which gave me visions of a trashy family opening their presents in their van and dumping all the wrapping on the ground so they wouldn't have to deal with it at home. There have been multiple Bible-study sheets with funny answers written in, dorky heartbroken notes, you name it.


What does one do with stuff like this? Normally you just end up throwing it away, but recently a friend of mine started working at a nearby building. One day an offhand comment I made seemed to reveal that he was worried about me leaving embarrassing things on his windshield (because I said I would, and told him some of my ideas). It seemed like he started parking differently after that, in a more "safety in numbers" fashion, nosing his car deeper into the co-worker motor-cluster. So, I keep him on his toes by sending him photos like the above, saying, "Consider this put on your windshield."

Fungal Feast

September's biblical rain flooded fields and basements, but once the water drained off: Mushrooms! They swelled out of soil and dead wood. They flexed their feeble muscles while I took their pictures. They only lasted a few days, but they put on a good show.

This fungal spectacle brought to you by the inescapable iPhone.

Carbondale’s Gauntlet of Death

this guy, but with bushy white hair

It was Halloween Eve, just fully dark in time for my drive back to Missouri. After a day at a funeral where I got a dusting of my uncle’s ashes on my shoes, I had multiple warnings from my dad that it was too late to leave, that I should drive back the next day, then lots of “drive safe” grumbling as he realized I was leaving against his advice. My mom ran out and gave me three caffeine pills (I think). I had a tray of funeral reception cookies and I was ready to make tracks.

To escape Carbondale, I would have to face various envoys of oblivion. My phone battery “going dead” did not strike me as ominous, but it did leave me to trial-and-error my way out of town. It took a few turns and a backtrack to figure out which direction I was going, and a few looks at a map made me decide which highway to take: 57 south. To get there, I circled a downtown block full of one-way streets, which took me past a haunted house. The street was empty but for me and a Grim Reaper figure with long white hair and a huge scythe. As I drove slowly past, he swept his weapon and beckoned eerily with his other bony hand. His skull face tracked me all the way until I turned the corner. The emptiness of the streets at only 8:45 made him creepy.

Getting to the edge of town went smoothly, but as countryside darkness took hold, a deer appeared at the roadside with luminescent hypno-eyes, tracking me much like the Reaper. It jerked slightly as if it might leap right into my speeding, egg-fragile compact car. “No, deer—stay away!”

A few miles later, a rabbit darted right for my wheels but missed. “God, rabbit, damn!” That was the last of Carbondale’s mortal taunts. I ate cookies, drank Powerade, and popped two of my mom’s speed capsules. Got home at 1:40 am. Those pills or all those subtle death threats did something to clear my sinuses; my nose remains clearer to this day.

Genetic Anomaly

Taking a child's toys for my own agenda, I transformed into the villainous TinkerEyes.


Then mere moments after sending this photo to terrorize my sister, she sent back this picture of my niece.

with the explanation: "Never fails, every time I get stickers at the store, I look back and they are just sitting there like that. Funny that they never say, "Hey Mom, look!"

So it seems I am not the only one who possesses this sinister mutation. Soon I may have to do battle with my young relative for supremacy of facial distortion by misuse of playthings.

The battle royale—TinkerEyes vs. Stickerface! To the winner goes the spoils: my mom saying, "Aren't they weird? What's wrong with them?"

Cranial Headgear

This hat now exists, making me look more successful than I am. Yes, I am vanity publishing these hats. There's also a lighter color, and a blue stocking cap if you think you're going to be cold.

George Washington's Hearty Breakfast

(with optional horse-joke ending)

Life was tough in the days of the Founding Fathers, but the rewards were rich. George Washington knew better than anyone that the key to having a monumental day, a healthful body, and a free republic was to eat a nourishing breakfast fit for a king—but made without the bloated and scurrilous appendages of tyranny.

Each morning General Washington sprang from his bed one second before the rooster’s first call (so trained were his senses that he could wake up to the sound of the rooster’s mere throat-clearing). Straight to the frosty morning air he opened the door, grabbing his bullwhip. Cracking the whip several times near to his face both galvanized his fortitude and knocked the gritty sleep-matter from his eye-corners.

Next he would reclaim his teeth from the river, where they’d washed overnight in the rushing water of the American continent. If the river was high, he had a brisk swim to the cord holding his ivory dentures in the rapids, where he hoisted them out, gleaming— “No soaking my teeth in a tepid teacup like an Englishman,” he declared. “This is America! I’m a Virginian!”

To shake off the river’s chill, G. Washington fetched meat from his smokehouse. This required that he wrestle a brown bear and a black bear, the two guards of his meat stores. Of course they were his pets, so he rarely suffered more than torn pajamas. Meat in hand, he rewarded his bears and himself each with a modest slice of salt pork: protein with stern authority.

“Martha, where browns my toast?” Washington cried, now in a hurry to beat the sunrise. “Hither flies the pigeon!” Martha held out her hand for the packet of sugar and cinnamon arriving by carrier pigeon, careful not to neglect the day’s ration of coffee—one charred bean clutched in each of the pigeon’s feet. Martha would grind her bean for brew, but George preferred to crunch his whole, in the mill of his teeth. As the sun brinked over the horizon, Paul Revere arrived on horseback with his clanking silver tea service. “Tea and grapefruit, General Washington,” Paul said, tipping his hat to Martha, then riding swiftly away without spilling a drop.

Finally Martha stamped out a griddlecake in the shape of a Redcoat, running with red, red cherry syrup like the noble blood spilled on both sides of freedom’s boundary. This they shared as they watched the sunrise together. Their plates clean, George Washington mounted his horse, bade his wife farewell, and returned to the chores of liberty. Any vestiges of hunger yet lingering in the depths of the great leader could be banished by a quick fistful of oats straight from the horse’s feedbag, which any experienced Minuteman would attest can lend a soldier the reliable, muscular bowels of the mighty stallion.

“May I gnaw on your raw oats today, my good steed?” Washington asked, always respectful, to which his horse replied, “A-fewww.”

works in (lack of) progress

Most of the new artwork I've done lately has been illustrations for a friend's book of poems—Wonder Girl in Monsterland, by Brenda Sieczkowski. The recurring character is named Yomi, Japanese for "underworld." The text is full of oddities I tend not to grasp until I draw pictures of them, at which point I think, okay, that makes sense now because I'm looking at it.

Drummy Croc

La Luna

Yomi

A Funeral in Monsterland

A Certain Lamentable Splendor (complete collector's edition)

or, Clan of The Cave Geeks

“Man, that place is sad,” responded a friend when I sent him a photo from the convention room floor at GAME con—and sad it was.


And yet, as always, because of some indelible devil’s advocate DNA in me, I found myself respecting the geeks of geekdom anew. OK, not the ones wearing the fuzzy fox tails, and maybe not the Damsels of Dorkington, and, well, maybe respect is not the operative feeling here, but some kind of appreciation feebly rose up...

...appreciation for a sort of social bravery that says it is okay to exist without an iota of cool. Bravery that could indeed be disqualified as such by the likelihood that hormonal deficiencies or degrees of autism have established in these folks either A) total lack of self-awareness, or B) sociopathic behavior that is not anti-social, but quacky-social, drawn to dwell in only the most impractical, imagined realities.

Today this bravery walked up to my Artist Alley table embodied by this earnestly, politely, home-schooled-ly harmless proto-woman dressed up in boy clothes and near-total sexlessness. For the minute she was there, I was merely bemused. Later, I sort of felt this retroactive affection for her—the same feeling I have for Sue Heck on “The Middle.” What a superb dork girl, in her outdated suit-jacket, jokey buttons, and modest androgyny. Was this one of her normal outfits? For all I know, she was in costume as an alternate-universe Dr. Who. She bought my choose-your-own-adventure comic book for a dollar and seemed pleased with it. I soon re-read said comic with her in mind, hoping that its crude comedy wouldn’t corrupt or disgust her.

Most of the day passed uneventfully. The “con” was scarcely attended. The lovable nerd girl had been one of maybe five people wearing a tag indicating that she was a paying attendee as opposed to a merchant, artist, or other “guest.” Mid-day passed. I bought a barbecue sandwich from a dim meat-scented alcove and ate it in the Media Room, where two other slobby gents were watching Tron. The twelve or so minutes of Tron I watched were pretty good, maybe because my sandwich was so dang savory. I kind of regretted spending two bucks on water when pop was also two bucks, but maybe I did the right thing in forsaking pop.

I was falling asleep around 3:00 when my friend Cody arrived with Mrs. Cody, AKA Sam. They provided me a vivarin-esque boost of conversation. Cody got annoyed when the audio-video tech guy zeroed in on me and said, “Do you have the movie we’re showing at 9?” I indicated Cody, and the AV Guy sort of scolded Cody in advance, saying, “You’ll give it to me on time, right? Because the movie I was supposed to show last night at 9, the guy JUST gave it to me.” Cody told him he’d have it on schedule. The AV Guy retreated but seemed unsatisfied.

Cody would be on two panels later, as well as providing the one must-see film on the movie schedule. In the meantime, he was going to see the first panel, with screenwriter, teacher, novelist, etc, Diana Botsford. I had no idea who she was, but decided to go check it out. I found out that she is like an all-around bad-ass who stealthily exists in our meager locale. She’s worked on several Hollywood movies, several TV series, and she’s shipping out to Antarctica in a few weeks to research her next Stargate spin-off novel. Who knew? Around that time, I’m sure to be fixing toilets and raking leaves, so I was wondering why she was giving us the time of day, but she treated even the kid holding the light-bulb-capped wizard’s staff with total respect.

After that, my old landlord and cartoonist-about-town Phil Morrissey showed up. I was quickly being surrounded by characters from my past. The show was being run by Scott Villareal, an all-around nice guy I went to art school with. He’s very dramatic, and half-hugged me in public, which is always a little more than I bargain for....

Part 2: OK, I'm a Bastard

I was trying to figure out how to break the ice with Phil, because I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and as usual, he was “holding court” with a certain segment of geekdom (above photo). He is, as far as I know, the local king of the Anthropomorphics, or Furries—people who like art and role-playing about humanoid animals, but of a certain fantastical seriousness. Think Avatar rather than Bugs Bunny, because the characters tend to have the proportions and the secondary sex characteristics of humans. Phil draws these, and some people collect this art exclusively, as well as sometimes dressing up in mammalian costumes. I don’t think Phil does the dressing up, though I’ve noticed that he and his art comrades have formed an Anachronistic Hats Society of sorts, for reasons unknown. I would eventually give him one of my new comics once a window opened in his fandom popularity—he was in big demand here, so it took a while to reach him without interrupting.

Just when I decided to throw in the towel, nearing 5:00, I was finally recognized by Joe-Man, seen above in his wheelchair (right side of photo). He’d passed me a few times and even said Hi once, but it had been 17 years since I’d been, for one semester of a poetry workshop, his wingman—getting his tape recorder out of his bag, relocating his beverage cup, removing obstacles from his path. He’d finally worked out who I was. He pulled up and began a 45-minute awkwardfest of reminiscence, starting with, “So Chad, have you written any more perfect haikus lately?”

I call Joe “Joe-Man” because he used to call me “Chad-Man” in class. He talks as if he’s been building me up as legendary in his mind, saying lots of grandiose things about my poems, even quoting lines that I’m pretty sure I never wrote. I keep saying thanks to statements like, “I felt as if I was sitting next to the next Poet Laureate of the United States.” A few times I said things like, “I think you might be overestimating me, Joe, but thanks.” Later I wondered why, if he thought my work was so great, why did he seem completely uninterested in all the new work I had on the table?

It is easy to be haunted by Joe-Man, who is near to being his own ghost—the wheelchair-bound specter of whatever functional man he might have been had he not been born into a tragically damaged body. He told me, after a metaphysical preamble, that “in the fourth year of his parents’ marriage,” he was born premature, and his father, a drinker and womanizer, was unprepared for such a child, and took out his anger and disgust on his family. He said he had given up his bitterness and had, in ways inspired by my “perfectly balanced poetry,” achieved a more Zen outlook.

How does one respond to this? Joe-Man is a being of pure tragedy. The sheer obscenity of what he’s had to endure, coupled with his overblown notions and his obvious need for social interaction make him the perfect foil for any positive outlook. If each of us must build a ship of conscience and practicality to stay afloat in this world, Joe-Man is something like a torpedo designed to sink whole fleets. I know because, after that semester with him, it was clear that his presence was simply catastrophic to any able-bodied group, disruptive and destructive to all discourse and progress. You begin with the best of liberal intentions and end with guilty resentment and existential terror. Joe is the eternally suffering child in the classic story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”

The thing about Joe-Man in this context is, he’s the only one in the room with an obvious, physiological explanation for being a delirious, fantasy-addicted fuck-up. On the other hand, I never saw him involved in any sort of gaming throughout the day. He obviously watches and reads science fiction/fantasy, but just like 17 years ago, he’s still addicted to inflicting himself on others. He parked in front of some tables and dominated their attention, sometimes for hours on end. Several times during the day, he rolled up very close to question the M.C. WHILE THE GUY WAS ANNOUNCING SCHEDULE INFO ON THE LOUDSPEAKER, so the M.C. had to stop in mid-sentence and cover the mic. At one point late in the morning, he motored his chair across the 40’ Pac-Man maze and got a wheel stuck on one of the “power pellets.” I think it was obviously not to be tracked across; I think Joe just wanted to get attention and maybe a chance to complain. I might not jump to this conclusion, but in his long haunt of (S)MSU, he was often seen ramming his chair into counters and library check-out desks, complaining about handicapped discrimination. Actually, it just wasn’t his turn yet. Whatever his major at the time, Joe minored in martyrdom.

It turned out that my wife once encountered Joe, recognizing him in my photo. Possibly not long after my semester with him, she sold him some perfume at a department store, for his “girlfriend,” whom he’d never met. They’d been corresponding by email, and Joe would help her escape an abusive boyfriend. Joe, I say the world is ripe enough with torment, without you sowing it Johnny Appleseed-style.

I finally packed it in. The biggest disappointment of the day was that the giant Pac-Man board was never officially used. But at least two children and some home-styled Ghostbusters got a little use out of it.

I broke even, around the $30 mark.

Marketing Freebie

HUGGIES: Strap Me to My Excrement!

(feel free to use this in your next ad campaign, diaper companies)

Secondhand Story

My wife’s cousin told this tale this weekend. It’s too wacky not to share:

“I was taking my dog to the vet when I saw this baby cow in the ditch, with its butt just on the side of the road and its head sticking up. I pulled up the driveway and this mean dog was barking and snarling so I was scared to get out of the car. When the vet finally came out, I told her about the calf by the road and she said, “Oh, that’s Trish!” The vet walked out to the road and called Trish by her name; the calf stood up and wobbled around. She said, "Trish is blind!" and put her finger in Trish’s mouth so she could suck on it like a bottle. “Come on, Trish.” I couldn’t get out because the mean dog was still acting like Cujo. The vet was coming back my way, when Trish ran into a tree, which made me laugh hard but it was also sad. Then when they got there, Trish ran pretty hard into my car. Twice.”

Regretfully, I have no picture of this one.

A Certain Lamentable Splendor

or, Clan of The Cave Geeks

“Man, that place is sad,” responded a friend when I emailed him a photo from the convention room floor at G.A.M.E. con—and sad it was.


Don't ask me why people do this to themselves— why grown men dress as cartoon dogs or wear wizardly dunce caps or why young women with acceptable or even admirable flesh agree to dress as Slave Leia or Silk Spectre, on any day but Halloween, for the onanistic entertainment of boy-men on the brink of flunking out of Natural Selection 101. I do not know why. If I could eat at Hooters without great embarrassment, I could answer these questions.

And yet, as always, because of some indelible devil’s advocate DNA in me, I found myself respecting the geeks of geekdom anew. OK, not the ones wearing the fuzzy fox tails, and maybe not the Damsels of Dorkington, and, well, maybe respect is not the operative feeling here, but some kind of appreciation feebly rose up...

...appreciation for a sort of social bravery that says it is okay to exist without an iota of cool. Bravery that could indeed be disqualified as such by the likelihood that hormonal deficiencies or degrees of autism have established in these folks either A) total lack of self-awareness, or B) sociopathic behavior that is not anti-social, but quacky-social, drawn to dwell in only the most impractical, imagined realities.

Today this bravery walked up to my Artist Alley table embodied by this earnestly, politely, home-schooled-ly harmless proto-woman dressed up in boy clothes and near-total sexlessness. For the minute she was there, I was merely bemused. Later, I sort of felt this retroactive affection for her—the same feeling I have for Sue Heck on “The Middle.” What a superb dork-girl, in her outdated suit-jacket, jokey buttons, and modest androgyny. Was this one of her normal outfits? For all I know, she was in costume as an alternate-universe Dr. Who. She bought my choose-your-own-adventure comic book for a dollar and seemed pleased with it. I soon re-read said comic with her in mind, hoping that its crude comedy wouldn’t corrupt or disgust her, as she was the sort of pathetic sweetheart that my wife and I frequently "fantasize" (quotes=touch of irony) as our daughter.

Most of the day passed uneventfully. The “con” was scarcely attended. The lovable nerd girl had been one of maybe five people wearing a tag indicating that she was a paying attendee as opposed to a merchant, artist, or other “guest.” Mid-day passed. I bought a barbecue sandwich from a dim, meat-scented alcove and ate it in the Media Room, where two other slobby gents were watching Tron. The twelve or so minutes of Tron I watched were pretty good, maybe because my sandwich was so blasted savory. I kind of regretted spending two bucks on water when pop was also two bucks, but maybe I did the right thing in forsaking pop.

I was falling asleep around 3:00 when my friend Cody arrived with Mrs. Cody, AKA Sam. They provided me a Vivarin-esque boost of conversation. Cody got annoyed when the audio-video tech guy zeroed in on me and said, “Do you have the movie we’re showing at 9?” I indicated Cody, and the AV Guy sort of scolded Cody in advance, saying, “You’ll give it to me on time, right? Because the movie I was supposed to show last night at 9, the guy JUST gave it to me.” Cody told him he’d have it on schedule. The AV Guy retreated but seemed unsatisfied, in his Asperger's-afflicted way.

Cody would be on two panels later, as well as providing the one must-see film on the movie schedule. In the meantime, he was going to see the first panel, with screenwriter, teacher, novelist, etc, Diana Botsford. I had no idea who she was, but decided to go check it out. I found out that she is like an all-around bad-ass who stealthily resides in our meager locale. She’s worked on several Hollywood movies, several TV series, and she’s shipping out to Antarctica in a few weeks to research her next Stargate spin-off novel. Who knew? Around that time, I’m sure to be fixing toilets and raking leaves, so I was wondering why she was giving us the time of day, but she treated even the kid holding the light-bulb-capped wizard’s staff with total respect.

After that, my old landlord and cartoonist-about-town Phil Morrissey showed up. I was quickly being surrounded by characters from my past. The show was being run by Scott Villareal, an all-around nice guy I went to art school with. He’s very dramatic. He half-hugged me in public, which is always a little more than I bargain for.

(part 2 coming soon)

A Little Taste of Thunderdome

At work I was dumping sand around some pavestones and tapping them into place when this pickup went ripping by with two young jerkoffs riding it and a puff of outlaw flair. I was nearly ignoring their rampage until they yanked it around a curve down the block and I heard something metal land on the road with a clang. It sounded like a pipe, and it was: I went jogging down to get it, thinking, If those fuckers want this pipe, they're going to have to see me.

I grabbed it up and had just enough time to walk back to my worksite before I heard the same loud truck circling back, driving slowly along the same curve and then turning around to look some more. I walked toward them in the middle of the road pumping the pipe in the air with one fist, thinking they'd see me in their mirrors. I rehearsed what I wanted to say, something like, "If you didn't drive like an asshole, fuckin' shit wouldn't fall off your truck." Then I'd hand it to the driver through his window, because it was much too long to have in the cab.

Well, they drove off, so I got to keep the pipe.

Coming soon: When Pedi-paws seems like a vibrator!

Still Picking on BP

When asked to design a commemorative "coin" for the Gulf Coast oil spill, here's what I came up with. I used Roman numerals so that Romans can read it. Pressing a nail head into the clay made a pleasing wave/scale pattern.

There's also a reverse side, featuring a Fish with a Screw in His Back.



Bonus outtake: new logo and slogan for British Petroleum. Maybe they'll have another blowout next year, so this can go on the 2011 commemorative coin.

Hard Times for Li'l Spidey

'Nuff said.

Looks Like D-Con Works

Yes, little scratchy ceiling dweller, you stopped waking us up over a year ago. Your minuscule midnight disruptions in the overhead darkness were your only crime, for which I sentenced you to a drawn-out, fatally painful stomachache. Now I peel back the attic insulation to find your filigreed remains knee-deep in dust, this photo your best shot at fossilized preservation.

The fine bones of your tail diminish to almost microscopic size, to the threshold of nonexistence. You shall no longer poop in my rafters.

Highlights from Billings Parade and Fair

"Why'd we come out here again, Tightpants?"

If your kids fall off the float, these bottles will help drag their bodies off the road.

Another questionable marketing strategy.

The Mormon Uprising!

Some kind of pit stop in front of a classic riding-mower OSHA violation.

I did it for the ditch candy.

These unpretentious tubers rose to the top of their category by way of masterful presentation.

Best in Show!


Ride the Paratrooper for aerial vomit opportunities over tractor-pull staging area! Plus, constant threat of instant death by metal fatigue.

(No photo available of me heckling the Roy Blunt promotional car, yelling, "Boooo! Throw the bums out!" until the old man in the car (not Roy Blunt, unfortunately) looked at me thumbing angrily over my shoulder and he frowned. HA HA, Blunt Flunky, you can't speed away when you're stuck in a parade! Even in Billings, MO, dissatisfied justice will find you.)

RIP Great One

I heard today that Bill “Great One” Gould died this week of cancer at age 66. I told my wife, and she asked, “Who is that again?” That made me realize I’ve been remiss in spreading the good word.

“You may call me Sir, or Your Highness, or Great One,” he stated on the first day of class. “I will call you maggot.”

I used to say that if you went to Willard schools and never had one of Gould’s classes, you pretty much missed the Willard experience. You missed out, probably on getting your ass kicked by the champ. “Great One?” would be answered, “Yes, maggot?” with lightning speed and just the right touch of imperiousness.

Surfing the pimply tide of smartass teenagers with golf club in hand, playing Whack-A-Mole with any heads that poked up too high, the Great One jabbed us with Rickles-esque mockery and made sure he scheduled his conference hour in period 7 so he could scram an hour early—to the Brown Derby down the road in his greenish El Camino.

If you had fortitude, Gould was one of your first shots at having an anti-hero. He proudly revealed his closet full of the same history tests he’d been giving for 20 years. “There are no tricks here,” he’d say. “I’ll write the questions on the board Monday through Thursday. Every Friday there’ll be a test. There’s no reason everyone can’t get ‘A’s. But most of you will blow it.” You knew it was all true, because the tests were all in purple mimeo ink even though the school had switched to photocopiers a decade earlier. Amazingly, some people managed to flunk those tests.

He practiced his golf swing at the front of the room. If you fell asleep, he’d hit your desk with it. God help you if you woke up drooling. He knew no fear or mercy. He skewered the kids of the School Board members, the Superintendent, anyone. He once signed a petition that called for the firing of… Bill Gould. He saved chalk dust and erasers long after blackboards were replaced with dry erase whiteboards, just so he could dust the cheerleaders’ black outfits on game days.

He thumped his liquor gut like a melon and said it was almost ripe.

Great One had funny nicknames for many students. Some were recycled year after year— “Zulu,” for instance, was used on my sister, and later on another tan blonde girl. Was it about the tan? Some were appropriated from the student lexicon, like Eric “The Juice” Poland, which Great One probably assumed was some ironic play on Eric’s being a pale antithesis of OJ Simpson. No, it was because Jimmy Barnes and I decided once that Eric’s big boxy noggin resembled a juice box. Maybe he’d call you J.J. or Bubba or Stairmaster. He didn’t have to explain.

If he lacked a nickname for you, he just said your name in a snide tone to tarnish it a bit. Great One knew that one’s own name could be the most cutting and original smear.

In Gould’s World History, I learned about Willardites. In Contemporary Issues, I learned about Rocks. In the end, Great One used the academic situation as a trojan horse to deliver his true curriculum: horrors of the social mirror. He tried to force our heads up through the low ceiling of our small-town youthful ignorance so we could see our own foolishness, and maybe see past it. He was also teaching us to wake up, to watch out, to be ready when it came time “to thin the herd.” Long after the facts about ancient Pharoahs faded, Great One’s core lessons remained relevant. I have never been more honored to be called maggot.

Maybe I liked Great One because I came off pretty well in his hierarchy of rhetorical beatings. Because I was academically mighty, he joked that I was “sitting back there in [my] ivory tower looking down on all you peasants” and that someday the others in the class would be working for me. Well, he blew that prediction. He kept a sharp lookout: he noticed when I’d written a letter to the Willard paper saying how stupid it was that some locals were hostile to Wiccans opening a church there. He read my letter and said he should give me an ‘A’ for the course because of it, but he wasn’t going to bother because I’d get an ‘A’ anyway. Well, he nailed that one.

A year after high school I was helping my dad at some land in Willard that he rented for his cattle. I had two big rocks in my hands when I looked up at the road, and who should I see, but Bill Gould in his El Camino. “Having fun, Mr. Woody?” he said jeeringly. Busted! Rocks were people caught hanging around in Willard—whatever hometown—after they should have achieved escape velocity. I think that was the last time I saw the Great One.

Now there’s really no one left qualified to judge us all so harshly.

Quincy Me, Quincy You

Tonight I learned that in childhood my wife, just like me, often watched the intro to the TV show Quincy M.E. but never watched the show. It must have had something good on before it. I always watched it at least until the part where Quincy challenged the new-meat medical interns to a hideous corpse by pulling back the sheet. They gagged and doubled over and I think one fell down. Awesome!

But was I ever tempted to watch the whole show? Fuck no! My wife thought it was about a doctor who got a lot of dates with attractive women. As far as I could tell, it was about an old guy with a strong stomach. I also always wondered what the M.E. stood for. That was the only thing I was curious about. I wouldn't be interested in watching a show about an old guy until The Equalizer, unless My Favorite Martian in syndication counts.

I'm going to see if the Quincy intro is on Youtube. The intro is all I want.

Now that I've seen it, she's right—Quincy appears to score more than his share of hot ass.

TV Show Proposal

A blog is a good format for ideas that will never be developed further. Here is an idea for a TV show that is as good as any in development, but because I have no clout or capability in the realm of broadcasting, this is as far as it will ever go.

"Ten-Dollar Haircut! and The Handbag Violator"

This is a two-part show. For starters, there is a hand-painted sign on Kearney Street here in Springfield. It is poorly painted on a little sign like you normally see for garage sales. It says "$10 Haircut" with an arrow pointing back into a crappy neighborhood. This is where you start. Each "contestant" drives here and has to get said haircut. Of course the obvious glee comes when we subject upper-class women to the Ten Dollar Haircut, but actually it will be nice to see people from all walks of life enter this experience. Maybe our hearts will be warmed when a homeless man is shorn of his scraggle and he feels social pride again. Maybe we'll laugh when some rich bitch protests her new do. Then again, maybe the Ten Dollar hairstylist will prove to be masterful and hip to current fashion. If this haircutter turns out to be a bland character, maybe we find a place with $5 haircuts.

As time allows, the people getting haircuts will turn their handbags and/or wallets over to the Handbag Violator, a guy named David Hohner. I recently saw him sort through the contents of a girl's purse at a restaurant. She watched as he verbalized lots of assumptions about her, drawn from whatever came out of her purse. Some of it was true, some not, but it was all pretty amusing just because he fearlessly jumped to conclusions about a person he'd just met. It was presented with confidence, like, "Here's a ziploc baggie with some Tylenol and napkins in it, so you're organized and like to keep things clean." He could tell if someone had kids or not, if they had pets, how wealthy they were, etc. At the time I called it Purse Rape, but now I prefer Handbag Violator, and David had a talent for it.

So there you have two handy ways to make low-budget reality TV with minimal cast, crew, or resources.

World's Fattest Ferret

Just trying to find out if people's factual outrage over the claim that this is a ferret will outweigh the automatic pleasure of looking at a picture of a kitty on the internet.

Spotlight on Reuben

What is Reuben?

A wacky beast.

A stinky powerhouse.

A beefy monsta.

Mirth made flesh.

Eternal canine baby.

Gaze into his face for a dollop of brain-mayonnaise.

It looks like he has a little tear on his face.

Maybe because he can't breathe right.

Reuben's tear means love.

The Fall Guy in Colombia

At a flea market last weekend, I saw this Fall Guy lunchbox and almost bought it for this guy I know, Antonio Martinez from Bogota, Colombia. I worked with him for a few months around 2006. We had many conversations about Latin America and whatnot. One of the nuttier surprises about growing up in Colombia is that, according to Antonio, Colombian children worshiped The Fall Guy. BUT, in their country that's not what the show was called. Apparently the title was changed to something in Spanish that translates roughly as "Dangerous Professions!" I remember it took about half a day to piece all this together because, without the same titles, I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.

Antonio said the Fall Guy's tough pickup was the dream vehicle of every Colombian boy. Colt Sievers's truck maybe had some kung-fu grip on their imaginations because it apparently resembled the hefty old trucks they use to harvest coffee in the mountains around Bogota.

Here's a Youtube where we learn how big are the balls on Colt's truck!

HOLY SHIT!

What's the Secret to My New Look?

Luckily, it's frosting.

Plus, a new story from Uncle Clown's Toothless Tales:


The Towers of Bologna

There was a baboon who lived in Italy on a very nice chair. He sat in his chair all day long, picking nits out of his fur and keeping an eye on his neighbors. Needless to say, his chair was rather grimy, even smelly.

One day a bunch of workmen built a bologna factory right next to his chair. They didn’t ask him or anything. “Rude!” said the baboon, but the workmen kept right on going because they had to have immense bologna ready by mid-October.

When the first slices of bologna came out, the baboon requested a sample. The Foreman said he would look into it, but in fact he never did. Big trucks started hauling bologna out to the hungry Italians, honking their horns at the baboon, who was writing a letter to his mother. (WTF, Ma? Love, Randy) When his birthday came, a package arrived for him, from his mom. She’d sent him a lasso and a book about big trucks.

He practiced with the lasso for a long time, until his lasso skills were unearthly. He could lasso a praying mantis off a dandelion. He could lasso a low-flying goose. He could even lasso two human heads and conk them together. He knew he was ready.

When mid-October came, so much bologna was done that it was stacked in towers around the factory. All the trucks were loaded and still there were stacks of delicious bologna 50 feet tall steaming in the sun. Just when he was about to lasso one of the bologna towers, he overheard the Foreman yelling for more ingredients.

“Gross!” said the baboon when he heard what the bologna was made of. He decided bologna was not what he wanted after all, so he lassoed his chair and dragged it down to the apple orchard, where he could sit in the shade and lasso apples for every meal.

Memories of Demon Dogs

YouTube makes it all too easy to recapture one's distant memories effortlessly. Although many moments in Thundarr are super-stupid, the intro sequence is still awesome—Doomsday came in 1994, busted the moon in half and made the world into pretty much the coolest D&D/Star Wars hybrid ever. All the bickering bozos on the internet seem to agree on just one thing: cartoons today are lame compared to Thundarr, one of the ballsiest, most mom-repulsing, glue-sniffingly deranged badass odes to psycho-chaotic survivalism ever served up to children. Hanna-Barbera drew some cheapo bilgewater crapola animation (just watched a scene where Thundarr and Ariel mount their horses... I've seen smoother animation in grade-school flip-books), but in this case, they made up for it with sweet conceptual vengeance.

Now I can watch all the Thundarr I want, but it's mostly better to just recall. One time there was a Deathrace 2000-like episode where Thundarr had to race bad guys in some sort of Big-Wheel Death Machines. One was a giant gyroscopic wheel with spikes for treads. Most of all, I was scared semi-shitless by the episode where the evil witch switched bodies with the hot princess, Ariel. Thundarr almost killed Ariel himself while she was trapped. The princess's soul narrowly escaped eternal imprisonment in the old crone's body as it turned to stone. I thought a lot about how easily that situation could have ended up in the toilet.

I'm sure it helped all us 1980s children learn the valuable lesson that hot sexy women have beautiful souls, and ugly old crones conversely have evil, barbed-wire bitch souls that are sure to mount astral attacks on our girlfriends.

Spider Outwits Lion

It's one of the more inspirational toys in the topsy-turvy post-apocalyptic MutatioNation line from "Pray for Death" Toys! Watch out Thundarr and Mad Max! This wacky arachnid sucked the marrow from the A-Team's bones and lashed his feline buddy-slave to this fine chariot lickety split. When the sun goes down they scamper around the irradiated landscape in search of edible tidbits, melted shinies and glowing steamies left by the searing atomic heat. In post-EMP Alabama they're the fastest team on Satan's Doomway, ripping around like a 12-legged Charles Bronson that's never even smelled common sense. We feel confident you'll shed a tear when you learn how their lives end in a friend-eats-friend misery tantrum.

TV Time

1. The Judge Judy Feedback Loop

As the chicken is to the egg, so is Judge Judy to that dominant mindset of our elders: that here in Hell’s handbasket, young folks are verminous and should be treated with the sourest suspicion. I rarely see Judge Judy, but today it happened, and her cold-blooded impatience shook me with the ball-cupping horror of coming awake in a sleeping bag full of snakes. Well, not quite, but as she chewed some defenseless human’s dignity off, I wondered if she causes old people (who love watching her, I’m told) to think most (younger) people are foolish scum, or if that basic retiree’s outlook is what drives Judge Judy to arrange her Theater of Justice to skin them alive. Today she all but said that she just bases her decisions on fuck-all, when she said, “You’re lucky today, ma’am—any other day, this decision could have gone the other way,” begging the question, BASED ON WHAT? Zodiac signs? Menopausal biorhythms? I know when you’re a professional bitch paid to prey on an endless parade of humps, there are no bonuses for politeness, but they do stamp the word JUSTICE on the show here and there.

All that’s beside the point, which is ratings. You don’t become a household name through careful onscreen deliberation. Much better to snap, fume and excoriate, to embody that frustrated demon that gestates in the bellies of so many elderly Americans: The World Will Never Be Good Again, Because Young People Are Lazy Nogoodniks and Liars, Not To Mention Mostly Not White. Ironically, Judge Judy is mostly not white, yet she has been channelling her fickle Dr. Laura WonderBread prejudices for so long that she gets a free pass. That’s not to say she’s racist. She just seems to hate all human weakness to the point of sadism. Today she berated a young woman for moving a 4-year-old child from one state to another, changing jobs, and for having a relationship that went bad. Well, sorry Judy, not all of us make millions on our own TV show. Some people lose their jobs, relocate, start over, and get so desperate that they appear on JUDGE JUDY to be reamed in exchange for paid legal fees.

The other day, my mom quoted a friend of hers as saying, “The world will never be the same again,” in the usual context that suggests everything used to be so much better… I think what most old people are lamenting, if they were being totally honest, is the world where they were young, and foolish enough to think they were in control of it.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. I’m laying some of it on Judge Judy/old people/Judge Judy....

2. COPS: Proof that Abuse of “Innocent” Citizens is Always Justified

Like JUDGE JUDY, COPS does a good job of painting the world in shit-tinted pigments. I always groan inwardly when my wife flips on COPS because, even though it can be entertaining and even educational, it’s corrupt at heart. First, nearly everyone is treated as if guilty until proven innocent. Then, as if by magic, 99% of all suspects end up being guilty, usually of drug/alcohol use/possession. Of course all the footage of innocent people gets edited out because it’s not exciting TV, leaving a clear portrait of Cesspool, USA: mostly poor, defeated users and abusers for us to laugh at. Laugh you should, because if you take it seriously, be prepared for a total disregard of human rights, an endless parade of cop-on-perp physical abuse and overreaction.

Of course, if you just finished watching JUDGE JUDY, you’ll be relieved to see beefy Boys in Blue punish the crap out of strung-out Mexicans and white trashoids, EVERY ONE OF WHICH is carrying either a crack pipe or a gun in his pants or his car. At first, you might mistakenly think, Hey, why are they pulling that guy over? (Oh, they say he rolled through a stop sign—OK, that wasn’t filmed, but whatever). Then you might indignantly say, Why are those THREE BIG COPS ramming that skinny loser’s face into the sidewalk? He’s obviously no threat to them! But watch carefully—all will be revealed. Yes, all suspicious-looking people are guilty after all. There’s nothing that can’t be tagged as illegal, and if the police do something REALLY cruel, they’ll edit that out for you. In the end, you’ll forget even your own Constitutional rights.

If you missed it, tonight's episode featured a Mexican guy caught peeing outside ("suspicious activity"). For some reason, not only did an officer show up for this negligible offense, he chased him down (actually the fat cop fell far short of catching him, but some quick civilian grabbed him), mashed him on a lawn and humped him a few times as if simulating prison sex, cuffed him, let two other officers pile on, jerked the guy up, clonked him around and into the squad car, bound his legs, put some kind of padded helmet on him, and found him to be intoxicated. Thank god they got that urinating menace off the streets!

Storytime: Punkin Scrochums

One Halloween, I thought it would be funny to give trick-or-treaters dried apricots and call them "pumpkin scrotums." My wife did a hilarious voice imitating an ignorant child fresh with the treat, running back to her parents, saying, "He gave us PUN'KIN SCROCHUMS!"

Then of course, the parent would say, "He gave you WHAT?" The police would promptly be notified and I'd have to turn over all my dried apricots to the authorities and stay at least 1000 feet from any schools. So, the dream of handing out wholesome, nutritious dehydrated vegetal genitalia to children died before it ever took flight. Thanks, paranoid parents.