Mind-Blowing

Hiya, Mike Grell here.  You may know me as the creator of Jon Sable Freelance, The Warlord, Starslayer and other masterpieces of sequential art.  Of course, I’m assuming you a) are awesome and b) know good comics when you see them.  What can I say, I have faith in my readers.

What you might not know, however, is that I am also, as the good folks at Wikipedia put it, “an avid big-game hunter”.  Although I have to say, dudes, while I appreciate the shout-out, the adjective is totes in vain.  ‘Cuz if it floats, flies, lopes, scuttles or crawls, the Grellmonster will put a bullet between its eyes and slap it on his dinner table.  Give me an elephant gun and a desert island full of nothing but rabbits, I’m not gonna turn up my nose--those bunnies are going down.  Buckteeth and big, floppy ears all over the fuckin’ place.  ’Cuz it ain’t the size of the package that counts, right ladies?

Now don’t get me wrong, I loves me some big-game hunting.  There’s nothing quite like sitting crouched in the tall grass, sighting down (iron sights only, ’cuz I kick it old-school like that) on something huge and endangered, the rifle butt slamming against your shoulder as you pull the trigger and pop its heart like a water balloon…gives me a fuckin’ hard-on just thinking about it.  And as for actually doing it?  Well brah, let’s just say there’s a reason I wear a jimmy-hat at all times when I’m out in the bush.  And yes, that is a double entendre.  And before any of you tree-huggers ask, no, that’s not the only way I can bust a nut--just ask my wife.  Or my mistress.  Or both--they know each other, they’re totes cool with it, go on shopping sprees together and shit.  Never let it be said the Grellster can’t keep his women satisfied.

But lemme tell ya, hunting isn’t all blowing away dumb animals, using their blood as warpaint and eating their hearts raw (to absorb their power, natch).  There’s the not-so-fun stuff too--hauling gear, camping in the rain, digging holes in the ground to poop in (what are those called again?  I can never remember), spraying yourself with deer urine, squatting in one place for hours at a time, being miles away from the nearest woman (sure, there’s a few lady hunters, but most of ‘em ain’t buying what Grandmaster Grelle Grell’s selling, if you know what I mean), shit like that.

Hours or days of hassle for two seconds’ payoff might not sound like a good tradeoff, but believe me man, it totes is.  Try it for yourself if you don’t believe me.  Though I have to warn you, shit can get crazy out in the field sometimes.  I mean like really, really crazy--like Christine O’Donnell crazy.  I could tell you some stories.  In fact, you know what?  I’ll tell one right now.

Huh?  Whuzzat?  Why am I writing this instead of drawing a comic?  Good question, brah, with an even better answer--’cuz I ain’t getting paid, that’s why?  Mofos think they’re my kids or something, wanting a bedtime story or some shit!  You know what these d-bags are offering?  Half a six-pack of Simpler Times pilsner, that’s what!  Man, I hate pils--tastes like it was strained through a fuckin’ sock!  

Ah, what the hell--I just got kicked out of ANOTHER AA group, might as well get my buzz on.  Any port in a storm, right?  So all right, I’ll write something up--but that’s all.  You want purty pitchers to go along with--that you pay for.  Even comic-book artists have their pride.

So anyway, this happened back in ‘98.  I was hunting elk in the forest, beats me if I remember which one--Yellowstone or Redwood or some shit.  Trust me, brah, when you’ve hunted in as many forests as I have they all start running together in your head.  I do remember being the trees still being green in the middle of November, so a pine forest I guess.  That doesn’t really narrow it down, though.  Oh well, like anybody cares.

Anyhoo, like I said it was the middle of November, in the forest, which is gonna be cold and wet as hell no matter where you are.  And it was that day, I don’t mind telling you.  Big fat cold drops rolling down my face, getting warpaint in my eyes.  Yeah, I said warpaint.  When it comes to hunting, your acronym of the day is ABP--Always Be Painted.  Never hurts to look like a badass, even if your opponent don’t give a shit.  Especially then.  ‘Cuz if you’re staring some big-ass bear or lion or whatever dead in the eye, you got BRING IT BITCH written all over your face (I literally do that sometimes--can you say “badass”?), and the thing’s too fuckin’ dumb to realize it?  You will feel like a god.  A.  GOD.  Well, you’ll probably already feel that way what with the gun and all, but more so.  You’re gonna feel like Super-God; you know, the God God is afraid of.

Like I was saying, my paint was getting all messed up--looked more like it read BLIRG II LUCII or some shit.  Wasn’t just the face paint getting washed away either--I could barely smell the doe-piss anymore.  Here I’d spent all morning damn near MARINATING in the shit.  That stuff is expensive too, especially the Chinese black-market stuff I use.  Totally illegal--they say it makes hunting too easy, if you can believe that.  Yeah, you try hauling 50 pounds of gear in and out of the forest sometime, then we’ll talk about easy.  That, and if it’s about “difficult” why do you let us use GUNS?  That makes splattering animal-brains pretty fuckin’ easy, lemme tell ya!  If you’re really worried about “easy”, why don’t you make us go out there with ball-peen hammers?  Though, actually, I did that a couple times, and I gotta say…but that’s another story.

So anyway, the pee-smell’s starting to wear off and I’m limper than a…a…really limp thing.  I’m about to call it a day, pull this rubber off and head back to town when all of a sudden this buck comes trotting out of the brush.  And what a buck it was!  An absolute beaut (no homo) from head to toe.  And the antlers!  Most centerfolds don’t have racks this nice--I’m serious, this thing must’ve been, like, a fifty-pointer.  I have never wanted to hang something on my studio wall so badly.  I swear to you, Bambi’s dad (was Bambi a deer or an elk?  I always get those mixed up) decided to end it all, stepped off the silver screen and into G-Rell’s sights.  ‘Cuz if you’re gonna go out, might as well get your sendoff from the best, right?  So the old lowercase jumps right back to attention, I raise my gun and…

Okay, something you need to know in order to understand this next part.  At the time, I had recently come into possession of several hundred rounds of gas-tipped rounds--that is, exploding bullets.  They pretty much turn any gun into a tiny rocket launcher.  Get hit with one of these and KERBLOOEY--get turned into a meat smoothie from the inside out.  Yeah, pretty gnarly--even more gnarly if you hit the colon.  Blood and shit EVERYWHERE, like my bathroom on Enchilada Night.  Now I know what you’re thinking--”Sweet Jesus Mikey, that is a horrible way to die”, and you’re afraid to say it ‘cuz you don’t wanna sound like a pussy.  Well, don’t worry about it, ‘cuz you’re right, brah.  I wouldn’t wish that shit on my worst enemy.  Fuck, I wouldn’t wish that shit on Joe Quesada, it’s so nasty.  Knowing these things are out there and anyone can buy them makes me wanna burn my NRA card sometimes.  Then I go clean my guns and the feeling goes away.  Mourn ya till I join ya, C.H.

So no doubt you’re wondering--what in the almighty living fuck was I even doing with these ungodly abominations, much less bringing them hunting?  Well brah, to that I can only say, your guess is as good as mine.  Last time I hit the gun store drunk, lemme tell ya.  I didn’t even realize I had them by the time I was out there--I was a little buzzed when I loaded the truck (noticing a pattern?), so I must’ve just grabbed a few ammo boxes at random and tossed them in.  It’s a miracle I managed to bring the right caliber this time (unlike that time I  went on a trip with some buddies.  Closest I’ve ever been to dying.  But that, again, is another story.)  And somehow, I swear to you, I still didn’t notice when I busted open a box and crammed the things in my rifle.  I have no idea what was wrong with me that day; I don’t normally get that far into the zone.  Or that drunk.  Maybe it was a combination of both?  Maybe I was in the drunk-zone?  I have no idea.

So here I was, sighting down on the Tom Cruise of elk, unaware I’d loaded my trusty Winchester (or “Winkie” as I like to call it) with distilled nightmare.  As far as I knew, the round I was fixing to put between this elk’s eyes was the garden-variety copper-jacketed.  I pulled the trigger and…

Before I tell the rest of this, I need to make something crystal: this shit actually happened.  I’m not just telling some story, not just trying to make you laugh/cry/puke/shit yourself/whatever.  One hundred percent pure unvarnished truth, homes.  There’ll be a couple spots where you’ll be like “there’s no way it works like that!”  And if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d totes agree with you.  But I did, and apparently it does.  Or at least, it did that one time--I’ve gone through a lot of hassle (and animals) trying to make it happen again and it never has.  One in a billion thing, I guess.

I took the shot, it went high and clipped the very top of the elk’s skull.  There’s this huge BANG and, I shits you not, everything above the poor bastard’s eyes disappears.  I mean just literally VANISHES.  Well, okay, not quite vanishes, more like races as far away from the buck’s brain as possible.  Both antlers pop off, shoot in opposite directions into the brush--I searched for two hours afterward and only managed to find one.  And the skull?  You’d think some rednecks’d tried to make a hand grenade outta the fuckin’ thing.  Bone shrapnel flew EVERYWHERE--tearing down leaves, embedding themselves in tree trunks, leaving a kickass scar on my cheekbone, shit like that.

Remember what I said earlier?  All that “ohh explodey-bullets are awful and I wouldn’t do that to one of God’s precious creatures BAAAWWWW” crap?  Yeah, fuck that.  This shit right here was stone freakin’ AWESOME.  Blew so much man-chowder my balls felt like raisins afterward.  So much the condom burst like an overfilled balloon and left me with a pantload of Grell-goo.  Every time I moved I made “squelch, squelch” noises until I could get back to the hotel and change.

But I haven’t even gotten to the really awesome part!  You’re probably thinking this poor bastard’s gray-matter made like my man-juice and got splattered all over the place, right?  WRONG.  What happened instead was, the two hemispheres peeled apart, like, I dunno, buttcheeks (I’m totes not gay--that’s just the best metaphor I can think of), and drooped over the elk’s somehow-still-intact eyes.  It was like the grossest game of peek-a-boo ever up in this bitch.  Blew my goddamned mind.  The elk’s too, come to think of it.

So what did old Farmer-In-The-Grell do?  Well, first I sat there in absolute shock for a couple minutes, just stewing in my own baby-snot.  Then, I thought “there is just NO WAY anyone is gonna believe this,” so I pulled out my Polaroid and took a few pictures of the head, the skull chunks, everything I could find.  Then I cleaned the kill, hauled it to the truck, and headed back to the hotel.  Then I took a shower and changed into clean pants (I just threw the Spunky Brewsters away).  Then I faxed the pictures to my old buddy Garth Ennis, who was working on Preacher at the time, then called him.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, what’s up?” he said.

“You are not gonna believe what happened today,” I said.

“Why?  What happened?”

“Check these pics I’m faxing you, brah.”

“Okay…can I call you back?  The fax is in the other room and I don’t have a cordless.”

“No prob,” I said, and he hung up.  A few minutes later he called back.

“Dude…is this shit for real?” he asked.

“Sure as shit is,” I said.

“No fucking way!”

“No, it totes is!” I said, and told him what happened.

He was quiet for a couple minutes, then said the only thing that made sense.

“Ho.  Ly.  Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty fucking nasty, dude.”  And as anyone who’s read Garth’s stuff knows, if he’s calling something “pretty fucking nasty” it’s gotta be REAL bad.

“You should put that shit in Preacher, brah,” I said.

“I wouldn’t take this shit from you!  Put it in your stuff!”

“I can’t, man!  I haven’t worked in two years!  Besides, it’d look weird coming from me--people expect shit like this from you!”

Garth sighed.  “Can’t argue with that, I guess.  Fax this over to Steve, willya?”

“Will do,” I said, and hung up.

A couple days later Garth called me at home.

“Mike, dude, I have some bad news.”

“What?”

“You know those pictures you sent me?”

“Yeah, what about ‘em?”

“Turns out that shit’s not gonna be in Preacher.”

“What?!  Why?”

“Steve won’t draw it.  Apparently when he saw the faxes he puked for, like, twenty minutes straight.  He says it’s too out-there even by our standards and we’d be begging to get cancelled.”

“Aww, that weak-ass limey motherfucker!”

“I know.  These Brits, dude--not a decent pair of bollocks between them.”

Now it was my turn to sigh.  “Aw, hell.  Guess I’ll have to do it myself after all.  Thanks anyway, man--I owe you a Guinness.”

“Oh, ha-bloody-ha!” he said, and hung up.  I wasn’t even trying to make fun of him that time.  Why are paddies so fuckin’ thin-skinned?

So, a couple years later I got back in the comics biz.  I tried like a mofo to stick the elk pics in somewhere, but somehow the opportunity just never presented itself.  And quite frankly, I’m tired of waiting.

So you know what?  Fuck all y’all.  I couldn’t think of a way to end this anyway--let’s put some lovely parting gifts up in this bitch!  Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time anywhere, I present to you…(drum roll please)…the pictures in question!

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(Editor’s note: Assuming these supposed photographs exist, Mr. Grell apparently decided against providing them, submitting instead several close-up photographs of male genitalia, presumably his own.  We take exception to Mr. Grell’s attempts to “dick-roll” our readership and accordingly decline to upload the images.)

DISCLAIMER

The preceding was a work of fiction.  It was not written by Mike Grell, nor is it meant to imply such.  No attempt been made to depict Mr. Grell’s beliefs and mannerisms in an accurate manner.  I have not met Mr. Grell myself, and have no reason to think he writes/talks like a retarded frat boy (if you will excuse the redundancy) who uses the terms “totes” and “brah” to excess (I.e. more than zero times).  Nor is there any reason to believe Mr. Grell derives sexual excitement from the death of animals, is unfaithful to his wife, assumes women who share his interests to be lesbians, refers to himself by annoying nicknames, is an alcoholic, a sexual exhibitionist, or derives unfair advantages through illegal means.  It is certainly possible Mr. Grell does indeed possess one or more of these attributes to a certain extent, but I consider it unlikely.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION By Kyron Horman, age 7

I went to the school science fair and I showed everyone my baking soda volcano.  Everybody liked it and I set it off a whole bunch of times so lots of people could see it and I ran out of baking soda.  I asked where can I get more and teacher said the janitor closet so I went to the janitor closet.  I found some baking soda WAY up on a shelf so I had to climb up and get it.

When I jumped down there was this little man standing there!  He had BIG ears so he looked like Mickey and he looked really funny.  I asked if he was Mickey and he laughed and said no.  He said he was hungry and asked if I had anything to eat so I gave him an Oreo in my pocket.  He said thank you and made all these funny CHOMPCHOMP noises while he ate it so I laughed.  So he swallowed and burped and I laughed again.  He asked if I was thirsty and I said yes, how did he know that?  So he gave me a can of Coke and I opened it and drank it cause I like Coke.  When I finished it the little man asked if I wanted to hear something funny and I said yes and he said that wasn’t really Coke, it was magic flying potion.

And then I started flying straight up very very fast and I crashed through the ceiling and it went BOOM but it didn’t hurt.  And I looked down and I could see the town and everything and it was getting very very small and it was SO SCARY.  And then I couldn’t see anything cause I was in a cloud and then I was out of the cloud and then I stopped and I was standing on the cloud and it felt like standing on my bed.  And there was a man on the cloud and I said “hello” and he said “hello, my name is Jesus”.  But he didn’t look like the pictures of Jesus at church.  He looked like that scary Ben Loadin man from the news a little bit.  I asked if he was Jesus why didn’t he look like the church pictures and he said they draw him that way cause grownups are silly.  And then I knew he really was Jesus cause Jesus never lies.

Jesus asked me “what’s your name?” and I said “Kyron”.  And then he said “well, Kyron, do you want to help me with something” and I said “yes”.  And Jesus said the Mexico people had been sneaking into America and he was tired of it cause America is the only country Jesus likes.  He took me over to the edge of the cloud and there were a bunch of blocks that were like toy blocks and there were red ones and green ones and blue ones and yellow ones and some other colors too.  Jesus pointed down and I could see all of America and it looked really tiny.  He pointed to the line between America and Mexico and I started picking up blocks and dropping them and picking them up and dropping them and picking them up and dropping them and I did that a whole bunch of times until the whole line was covered with blocks.  And I missed with a block one time and it fell somewhere else and I asked Jesus what it fell on and he said Idaho and he said not to worry cause nobody would miss it.

And once I filled in the whole line and Jesus said congratulations and that I was a hero cause now the Mexico people wouldn’t be able to steal America’s candy anymore.  He asked if I wanted to help him celebrate and I said yes.  He said we were gonna have a Coke party and that made me happy cause I like Coke.  So he took my hand and we flew over to another cloud where a lot of ladies were dancing in their underwear.  GROSS.  I was afraid of getting cooties and Jesus said there are no cooties in heaven so I guess it was okay.

And there were also a bunch of tables on that cloud and some of the tables had poles coming out of them that the ladies were dancing around and some of the tables had BIG piles of white stuff on them and you could see your reflection in the top of the table.  I asked Jesus where the Coke was and he pointed at the white stuff and said right there.  I said that was funny-looking Coke and Jesus said it was grownup Coke but I could have some cause it was my birthday.  I said it wasn’t my birthday and Jesus said in heaven every day is your birthday.  And then we went over to one of the Coke tables and Jesus picked a little straw out of the Coke and he made a little bit of the Coke into a little line like I do when I eat peas and then Jesus put the straw in his nose (SUPERGROSS) and he breathed in and the little line all went up the straw and then he took the straw out of his nose and tilted his head back and sniffed a whole lot and then he said “Oh yeah, that’s good word-Daddy-says-I-can’t-say”.  And then he pulled out another straw and made another little line and gave me the straw and said here, try this.  So I put the straw in my nose and it tickled a whole bunch and I put the other end of the straw down by the line and I breathed in and the Coke went in my nose and it tickled even more than the straw and I felt like I was going to sneeze but then it went away.

And then WOW, I felt like I ate a whole bunch of candy and drank a whole bunch of normal Coke but even more than that!  I felt like Speedy Gonzales so I started running all over the place and yelling “Arriba, arriba, andale!”  And Jesus started laughing and said the Mexico people were starting to sneak into heaven and we needed another other-word-Daddy-says-I-can’t-say wall.  And I started running along the edge of the cloud really fast and Jesus said be careful I don’t fall but he distracted me when he said that and I tripped and fell off!  And then I was falling down, down, down, down, down and America started getting bigger and bigger and I could see my blocks only now they were REALLY REALLY big.  I kept falling and it was SO SCARY so I closed my eyes.

And then I wasn’t falling anymore and I was someplace really dark and it was hard to breathe and it was SO SCARY so I started crying.  And then I heard this noise like unzipping a backpack and then I could see and a policeman was standing over me.  I asked where I was and he said I was in a duffel bag in Mama Terri’s closet.  So he took me home and I got to ride in a police car and it was fun.  Mama Terri got to ride in one too except she was in the back seat and she kept her hands behind her back for some reason.  And then I got home and Daddy started crying for some reason.  I guess it was cause he’s a grownup and he’s silly like Jesus said.

So that’s what I did for my summer vacation.  I was surprised cause it didn’t feel like all summer but I guess it was.  I had fun except for the scary parts and those didn’t take very long so it was okay.  I see on the news that the President keeps trying to move the blocks so I hope he doesn’t make Jesus mad because I think he’s cool even if that loud man on the radio doesn’t like him.

*puff* *COUGHCOUGHCOUGH*

God DAMN, it's been a long time.

Not that there hasn't been a good reason for it.  I've been busy working on other projects.  Well, one other project really.  That doesn't account for all the time away; the dreary aftermath of the project going tits-up--during which the mere thought of writing anything more complex than a shopping list made me painfully ill--filled out the balance.

I came out of this period of hard work and mental anguish with nothing much to show for it, save a considerable collection of prose pieces.  Each one is a slice of my very subconscious, thin enough to melt on your tongue and suffuse your entire mouth with the flavor.  Like one of those breath-freshener strips, except they taste awful and leave your breath smelling like you've been eating your dead grandmother.

I'm kind of fucked up as a person, is what I'm trying to say.  This in itself was not a surprise; the surprise came from finding out just how fucked up.  That's why I mention all this--not because I wish to revel in my own puerility, a modern-day carnival barker pulling you aside and whispering "you wanna hear somethin' fucked up?", but rather to assure you that, grossed out though you may be, there's an extremely good chance I'm just as disgusted with myself.

Apart from plowing my way through this backlog, I'll try to throw in some extras as well--bringing back weekend music videos, the odd review, etc.  And I'll start writing new stuff once the well starts to run dry--see how much more of grandma I can stuff in your mouth.  I hear the perineal maggots are especially juicy this time of year...

Actually, DON'T explain her appeal to me

Recently while replying to a dear friend's blog post, I went on a (somewhat off-topic, I'll admit) rant about the sorry state of commercial radio.  Contrary to their claims that they provide invaluable exposure to new artists, I retorted that mainstream radio plays only those acts hand-picked by the music industry at large as potential platinum-sellers.  This involves playing styles of music which, by and large, I regard as at best irrelevant and at worst unlistenable.  Further, I made the claim that I hadn't heard any musician I liked and subsequently followed on the radio for the first time since I was nine (likely either Nirvana or Guns and Roses, judging from the age).  This last was, of course, an exaggeration and an infamy.  I was probably closer to twelve.

As my long-time readers (all six of you) have doubtless noticed, my tastes in music run somewhat to the extreme and eclectic.  This is, however, a relatively recent development--not until I by and large renounced mainstream radio for more inclusive sources of information (chiefly the Internet) did I discover such artists and musical styles.  As an example, allow me to present Godflesh.



Fronted by Justin Broadrick, this English industrial-metal band was active between 1988 and 2002, recently reuniting for several European festival dates.  Though not my favorite band by any stretch (I do not, at present, own any of their albums), I like them quite a lot.

Think about this for a few moments.  This band formed in 1988, released seven full-length albums (including one remix album), seven EPs, two singles, and three compilations, played innumerable concerts and festival dates, then broke up in 2002 in a not-unspectacular manner, with Broadrick suffering a nervous breakdown and canceling a tour at the last minute (financially ruining himself in the process).

And, until about 2007, I knew not a thing about any of this.

Before you ask--no, this band was by no means obscure.  By the time of their dissolution Godflesh had acquired a formidable international reputation, with many bands (both very good and very, very bad) citing them as influences.  Glenn Danzig attempted to recruit Justin Broadrick as a guitarist.  No less a personage than Kirk Hammett declared Godflesh to be "the heaviest band in existence".  They appeared on the soundtrack of a really shitty wide-release movie.

And yet not once did the tiny men in my mom's car radio see fit to play one of their songs.

You might be tempted to argue "C., you sheltered twat, clearly you weren't listening to the right stations!  Godflesh might have been big-ish, but they were never Top 40 material!"  That's a good point, actually.  Why, was I not listening to the stations geared to this sort of music?  I can't think of a single reason--oh, right, there fuckin' weren't any.  Not out in the redneck hellhole where I spent the bulk of my formative years, at least.  (Funnily enough, my family was actually friends with the family who ran the local radio station.  Decent people, but they wouldn't have known an eclectic musical style if it bit them on the collective ringpiece.)  This is getting back to the problem of commercial radio only playing the sort of music they think will make them money.  "The free market has spoken!" they say.  "Lowbrow pop and corporate rock is the best music in the world, because people listen to it!  More Ke$ha singles for all!"

Well, balls to that I say.  Much as I hate to turn this into a political/economic rant, it's becoming more and more clear that a free-market ideology is no way to run an economic system, so why the almighty hell would you use it as a gauge of artistic merit?  Nothing is more subjective than musical taste--there's a reason the "pop" in "pop music" stands for "popular" and not "good".  My theory is that many people are, by nature, somewhat uncultured and desperate to be seen as "fitting in", so by and large they listen to/buy what people around them are listening to/buying.  For every diehard, true-blue Lady Gaga fan (and can one of those people explain her appeal to me?  I ask in all seriousness, there must be something I'm missing) there are ten copycats trying to look cool, and those copycats then get copycats of then own...you get the idea.

Noticing this, the blind idiot god Mainstream Media proceeds to pump out even more product (at this stage it can no longer be fairly called music) similar in style to that of the profitable artist.  "One Lady Gaga makes money," it thinks, "so ten Lady Gagas will make ten times as much money!"  It never works quite that well, but well enough for the industry to do it over and over and over.  This phenomena is by no means confined to the music industry, of course, but to go into any more detail than that would make this already-too-long post even longer.

Hence, a pop-culture Ouroboros is formed, with the serpent's head of the Music Industry swallowing the tail of the Mass Market.  Or is it the other way around?  No matter, I suppose the metaphor works either way.  Meanwhile dozens of legitimately original and talented artists, foolish enough to view a major-label deal as their "big break", wither and die, unnoticed by all except those true fans not cool enough to attract sufficient hangers-on.


I suppose in the end, I mean this post as a love letter to the Internet, possibly the world's first and only form of disinterested mass media (for the moment, at least).  Without it, I never would have known Godflesh--or any of Justin Broadrick's other musical projects, for that matter.  Most people alive today still equate "listening to music" with "listening to the radio" in their minds, and yet it wasn't until I got the hell away from radio that my musical tastes started to develop a unique personality.

Curious, no?

Charlton, The Trigger-Happy Ghost

I don't ask a lot of my Facebook friends.

I know they're not all like me, and to be frank this world would be a rather scarier place were there more than one of me.  I realize they're all from different (in some cases radically different) walks of life, brought together on my profile by the common thread of myself--a tenuous thread indeed in some cases.  Accordingly, I realize all these people have their own unique tastes and viewpoints.  That's fine.  I'm not going to agree with all (or even most) of it, but then I'm into some pretty weird shit myself.  They can put up with me, I can put up with them.  In fact, there's really one thing I ask of my Facebook friends.

Don't be a fucking imbecile.

Allow me to explain what brings this on.  Until rather recently I had a certain fellow on my friends list, a guy I had known casually in high school.  This man, whom I shall refer to as "F.H." (short for "Fuck Head"), had managed something I very much had not and found a niche in the sedate redneck milieu of our mutual alma mater.  Reconnecting with him hadn't been something I'd planned--his name had popped up on my recommended list, I remembered not completely hating him and clicked "Add".  Nor, for that matter, did we ever directly communicate--his posts appeared in my news feed, vice versa, and that's as far as it went. 

At first I noticed only two things about F.H.'s posts--his atrocious grammar and his apparent all-consuming obsession with firearms.  Both of these, however, are pretty par for the course in that part of the world, so I didn't fuss about it.

But it wasn't long before F.H. gave me something to fuss about.

As you may have heard, the proposed plans to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks has aroused something of a furor amongst the more reactionary elements of this country's political landscape.  Aaaaaand right away you can probably see where I'm going with this.  Or rather, you think you can see where I'm going with this.  I've heard enough xenophobic fear-mongering over the past nine years to harbor the foolish belief that nothing could surprise me anymore.  Man oh man oh man was I ever wrong.

 So what were F.H.'s proverbial two cents on the subject?  He was...in favor of the mosque's construction.  Not for any of the typical, sensible, sane reasons, you understand.  No, F.H. approved the project for one reason, and one reason only...

Now, before I continue, I must insist that you, as a passive participant, make certain you are physically and mentally prepared for what I am about to relate.  I am not one to worry overmuch about the well-being and/or sensibilities of my potential readership.  I take it as a given that any reader of this blog knows what to expect, or failing that simply finds the subject matter not to his/her tastes and departs in disinterest/horror, never to return.  Problem solved either way, right?  Still, this is a bit outside the norm by TIP standards.  I just want to make absolutely certain this is understood.

So.  Seated comfortably?  Any sharp objects stored safely out of reach?  Not suffering from any ailments potentially exacerbated by shock?

All right then.

F.H. stated it was his belief the Ground Zero mosque should be built so that it could be haunted by the restless spirits of those who died on 9/11.

Yeah.

No...no!  I'm not fucking making that up.  He actually said that.

YES, F.H. is real!  This isn't some kind of incisive satire of the American right!  This is something a real, living person, one whom I have personally met, said and presumably believes!  No, I don't think he was joking!  Even if he was, it doesn't really help 'cuz it means he's really, really, really bad at telling jokes!

I mean...Jesus.  From this point on, every time I think I'm being a wee bit harsh in my estimations of my erstwhile hometown, every time I consider the idea I missed a prime opportunity to learn how to make the best of a bad situation, every time I entertain the notion I'm just a pretentious, elitist snob...I'm going to remember F.H. and what he said. 

So congratulations, Mr. Head.  You've made my already pretty abysmal childhood memories even more miserable.  It's like you printed them out, stuck them on a target (next to pictures of Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama, no doubt) and chewed them to bits with dozens of MP5 rounds.  I do hope you're pleased with yourself. 

So what did I do after he posted this comment?  Well at first I thought it important not to overreact; I merely hid his comments on my feed.  A day later I thought better of it and removed him from my friends list.  I briefly considered making this blog entry a name-and-shame exercise, but decided at last on an unflattering pseudonym, partly out of a desire not to alienate other high-school acquaintances still on my friends list, but mostly out of a desire to avoid being shot. 

The deed done, I found myself having twinges of something resembling second thoughts.  Had I just proven myself a hypocrite?  Was I not punishing F.H. for speaking his mind, something I myself have always insisted on doing?  Wasn't he entitled to his own dumbass opinions, just like me and everyone else?  And it's not like I'm any sort of virtuous paragon--I mocked a former Senator mere hours after his death, for fuck's sake.

In the end, I decided the expression of the opinion itself wasn't what bothered me, so much as the completely and utterly balls-out retarded means in which it was expressed.  Invoking the tragedy of 9/11 is a tasteless rhetorical device at the best of times, but turning it into an episode of Tales From The Crypt is sinking to a downright chthonic low. 

Hence, the banhammer.  Entitled to his opinion F.H. may be, but he's not entitled to my goddamn Facebook page.  

Travelling through time at the speed of time

I turn 28 this Sunday.

Not a very momentous age, I'll admit.  Apart from being a divisible of 7, there's nothing all that remarkable about it.  It's not like, say, 18.  Or 30.  Or 50.  Or 100.

Thing is, I don't feel a year older.  By that I don't mean I'm "only as old as I feel" or some other bullshit I got off a coffee mug (if only because I don't drink coffee).  I mean I have mental difficulty grasping the idea that a year of time has passed between this birthday and the last one.  It feels more like, I don't know, four months.  Maybe six.

Most people feel like time goes by faster as they get older.  Not me.  Time's sprinted past me with nary a hello as far back as I can remember.  This is a a large element of my memory problems: I can remember specific events from my childhood, to be sure, but often I couldn't tell you precisely when they happened.  Ask me about a specific year and, more often than not I'm pressed to think of a single memorable incident.  There are exceptions--1992 sticks out to me, for some reason.  I'm not one for nostalgia, but it's one of my favorite years, if only because that's the year Crystal Pepsi came out.

But that's not my point.  My point, in the most literal sense, is--where does the time go?

My theory is I just haven't been paying attention.  Certain predispositions have led me to find the most comfort with my head lodged firmly up my own ass--or at least in a book.  I spend so much time off in a world of my own while the "real" world (whatever that is) TiVos past.  It'll take care of itself...right?  Relaxing as this sounds, it does tend to grow dull after the first couple decades or so.

And now the frigging "Skip Ahead" button is stuck...

I do have methods for counteracting this, but I don't have much in the way of fine control.  I find if I anticipate some future event, the time leading up to that event slows to a crawl.  BUT!  Once the event comes, time goes by even faster, so it passes in the near-literal blink of an eye.  And once it does pass, depending somewhat on how much I'd been looking forward to it, I may go through an odd mental state where I feel as if the event never happened and I imagined the whole thing.  Then I get depressed for a while.

Something like this happened just last weekend--something I'd been looking forward to enough for me to go through all the above steps.  More often, though, it's something as simple as looking forward to the weekend or the end of the workday.  Those are frequent enough occurrences that I at least avoid the subsequent dislocation.

Another thing that helps--waking up early.  These days I wake up much earlier than I did previously.  You get up at 7, the day races by--and you look up and notice it's still only 10.  Only problem with this is, this has got to be the laziest fucking big city on the planet--good luck getting anything done when nothing opens before 10 am.

And another thing--for the first time since I was about 6, I don't live in the middle of fucking nowhere.  No longer needing to leave everything for the weekend and no longer needing all afternoon to run the simplest errands does wonders for one's schedule.  The closer you are to stuff, the less you miss out on.

Of course, it might also help if I didn't spend every morning and evening either on the Internet or playing X-Box...

But, you know, no sense sacking Rome in a day.  Baby steps and all that.

Not any stupider than Dinosaucers

So last night--well, early this morning--okay, in between bouts of thrashing around for the snooze button--I had a dream.

In this dream, I came up with, basically, the most socially irresponsible Saturday morning cartoon ever.  The animated hijinks of Joe Camel couldn't have topped this.  Were I to somehow, against all odds and sanity, succeed in ensuring its production it would be my greatest and final achievement all at a stroke.  Greatest because it would encapsulate every iconoclastic urge I've ever held or pretended, and final because I would in all likelihood be beaten to a stain on the sidewalk by a horde of enraged (and quite likely bereaved) parents.

In my dream the show was animated in a pseudo-realistic style, similar to Megas XLR (still the finest children's cartoon of the past decade).  The main characters were two young adult (young enough for children to identify with, yet old enough to live free of adult supervision) males of the stock "lovable slacker" character type; the sort who somehow manage to live in relative comfort despite the lack of any obvious employment or support.  These two young men (whose names I never learned) shared one joy, one specialty, one driving passion in life:

Blowing shit up.

A quick clarification: these two fellows were not petty terrorists, destroying random buildings in their neighborhood.  Rather, their specialty was homemade fireworks, the sort unlikely (at least initially) to cause property damage beyond scorch-marks on the driveway.  Though the duo frequently possessed pre-made fireworks, they rarely fired them off as-is; they preferred to take them apart, salvaging their combustible elements for use in their own creations.  These custom explosives were invariably large, very noisy and even more colorful, though the two's tendency to set them off in broad daylight dampened the effect somewhat.

Though the fireworks always had exceptionally long, match-lit fuses, this was the summation of the protagonists' safety precautions.  At no point did they ensure the ready availability of fire extinguishers (or even a common garden hose), wet down the ground before detonation, put on eye protection or employ any other risk-reduction tactics one might associate with such a dangerous hobby.  Yet they displayed no physical signs of any mishap--no missing fingers, no cauterized optic nerves, no burn scars.  The two remained as whole and handsome as my totally-not-gay subconscious first birthed them.  Every week some shadowy antagonist (the dream provided no details on this point, beyond his apparent existence) would threaten the duo's beloved neighborhood and they'd use their bomb-crafting expertise to save the day.

By itself, this all might not sound so bad.  It's nothing you don't see every drunken white-trash idiot do every 4th of July.  With the addition of about ten thousand disclaimers and parental-advisory warnings it might even reach the air.  Hell, just look at all the crap Japan pumps out with the seeming purpose of providing pedophiles with masturbation material.

And then came the moon voyage.

It's exactly what it sounds like--the heroes decide to take a trip to the moon and set about building a conveyance.  From what I recall it consisted entirely of a plywood board, with four plastic buckets attached one to a corner and stuffed with bottle rockets to serve as thrusters.  There was no way to steer (this will be important later), no oxygen supply and no life-support system of any kind, so I have no idea how the duo planned to survive the rigors of hard vacuum should the plan succeed--which they fully expected it to.  They lit the fuses and...

Now at this point logic should dictate that the contraption would explode (or simply catch fire) on the ground, held snugly by the Earth's gravity well.  Even if it were to attain liftoff, the would-be spaceship should reach only a few feet of height before plummeting back to terra firma.  Either should produce the same result--a fiery death for our heroes, becoming just another scorch-mark on the abused driveway. 

This is not what happened in my dream. 

For some reason I feel the need to point out that the two men did NOT, in fact, reach the moon.  This may or may not be an important distinction, given the result they did achieve.  Though outer space remained beyond the protagonists' reach, they did succeed in building a rather handy (and unlikely) flying machine.  Upon a bed of multicolored sparks they rode, zipping back and forth across their hometown with speed and ease--this despite, as previously mentioned, the machine lacking any steering mechanism.  The phrase "toyetic" floated through my unconscious--I recall a moment of pure shame at knowing what that even meant. 

There's not much else to tell--the dream ended just as the heroes managed to relieve one of the antagonist's henchmen of his pistol and started taking apart the bullets, to use the gunpowder within for--well, you know. 

So you can probably see how people would have a problem with this cartoon, were it to exist.  The sheer amount of "imitatable behavior" is nothing short of flabbergasting (is that a word?).  I've never been the sort to blame the stupidity of children on the media--kids are a little smarter than that, and even the ones who aren't tend to have a limited shelf life no matter what (if he hadn't put on a cape and jumped out the window, it would have been something else--say, eating spinach until his stomach exploded trying to gain super-strength).  But every fireworks-related injury would end up getting blamed on this show, rightly or wrongly.  And it'd only be a matter of time before some aspie tried to build his own bottle-rocket flying-machine and wound up cremating himself (and rest assured, it WOULD be a boy). 

So no, this show would never get made.  It's kind of a double standard, really.  So many people in this country--Michael Bay, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the US military--built careers and reputations on the premise that explosions are cool.  Isn't there room for one lousy cartoon saying it's cool to violate local fire codes?

Apparently not.