the WOW! signal

bill is up to his old tricks.

Malfunctioning Man

I have some words for you to read... they are from a story called the second safest city in america.  Teenagers on the rampage and so on, boring stuff.

Is it hard to discern sarcasm from text.  Sometimes I hear it in my head.  I can't tell.  Sarcasm is ephemeral I guess.  For a while people might think you're being funny.  Later on you're just an asshole. What was the point of this blog again?  To archive an asshole.  And so:


I was thinking about airplanes.  More specifically, I was visualizing the bolts up the side of an airplane, like the tacking on a piece of leather furniture.  It’s as thin as skin, the way I think about it.  It had been two years since I had last flown anywhere.  If my family went on vacation, or I was given the chance to do anything that involved air travel, I opted out.  Then I didn’t really think of it as a fear, more of avoidance.  Deferment?  Really, I had lost trust.  I could not accept being held thousands of miles off the ground by a stranger.  


If you start to think about how the mind of a man can simply malfunction, how it can fail and it can do so in such a way that everyone around that man is in danger.  Imagine there is a circle around him, this malfunctioning man, and imagine that circle acts as a sort of destruction radius.  Now that you have this malfunctioning man with his radius of destruction take him and put him on a 747.  Point that 747 toward any large city, then trigger that malfunction (or maybe it was triggered long ago).  You realize that we are all susceptible at any time.  I remember this in detail because it is something I think about even now.  There are people all around us and it doesn’t take much to flip that switch.  At that time though I didn’t understand.  Like I said, I didn’t think of it as fear.  I didn’t trust anyone...

A new addition to stuff I like...

Oh mother...

Landmark Town

Well, three out of four graduate schools have turned me down, and not that I blame them, really I don't.  I'm kind of hard to like...  I already bought a good professor blazer though.  I guess I could start wearing it to the bar.  I've noticed you get looks if you show up to a bar in  a blazer.

  

Here is a drawing of a lizard in a spray bottle:

I don't know what the idea was behind these drawings, they're old.  I know they weren't meant to be preachy or anything.

Here is a segment from a story called "Landmark Town" that I did not submit to any graduate school because I thought it was too goofy.  The story is just this guy describing the town he is from and all the landmarks that make it so great, and the landmarks just keep getting weirder and more violent.  I did submit as my writing samples more serious minded literature that really drilled into the idea that life and all our pursuits are meaningless (which I find to be funny, not depressing).  No wonder they loved me so much.  Maybe I dodged a bullet, not having to be trapped in a classroom with a bunch of hopeful people.  How do you write something optimistic without sounding like you're running for president?  Boy, things sure could be great if we lived like this!

Anyway, here are some words from "Landmark Town":

Up further where Broadway meets Main Street you can see our famous revolving restaurant, Chino’s Italiano.  Yep, it is the only street level revolving restaurant in the U.S.A.  Well, it doesn’t revolve currently due to the accidents.  The gears underneath posed a kind of hazard for children and small pets.  One lady lost her dog.  Look at your face!  You think I’m kidding?  Just snatched hold the leash, the ways those things will, pulled it right out of her hand and grinded him up like that.  Gruesome.  Could have been avoided, I think, with a little common sense,  but you know the city council got all up in arms and now the revolving restaurant is a more traditional immobile restaurant.   The gears are still there behind some chain link fencing.  You can see them from the sidewalk.  I bet they still work.  

Jersey Gore

Episode 57 of the acclaimed sci-fi drama The Grey Zone, starring Bearcat Ponder and Elly Tarsus.  Come back next week for a dick joke.

Sneak a peek!

here are a two pages from my sketchbooks and another useless robot.  No human should ever have to stand over a deep fryer.  I really like this arm robot.  So much emotion can be portrayed through a single mechanical arm.  Can you sense the despondency?  At least robots can't get heart disease.  Mmmm, I wish I had a toasted ravioli right now!

Tomorrow I will be posting the first panel from my comic strip The Grey Zone. It is a parody of the X-Files for all you lone gunmen out there.

More uselessness...

;) I have nothing clever to say.