Lanky Kong

 

     This guy was lookin' at me the way most fluffy orange monkeys that read my blog look at me with the whole fuckin' "You said 3 posts a week you dick sweater, and you barely do two." 

   And when you're talking to monkeys you have to make sure you don't smile or bare your teeth or anything or they'll think you're opening invitation to have your arms torn off, so I sort of made a face like a gummy grandma with my lips over my teeth and said: "Sir, for you, I will try to do better."

   So I'm going to try to do better.  The Friday Recommends shit has been harder for some reason, but from now on that won't be left behind.  This Friday will be the start of Magic Month, where I'll be posting videos and writing shit about magic and illusion on Fridays.


   And yeah, sometimes a Monday, Wednesday, Friday update will happen the day after, shit comes up late at night a lot before I update.  No need to get all frightened about that; the day is less important than the amount per week.


  I'm going to start doing video essays to hopefully widen my audience.  The ideas in your writing are a lot easier to consume when someone is just reading it all for you, and all ya have to do is click and listen and watch.

  So hopefully I get my first one out this Wed or Thurz.

  I'm submitting some short stories to this "Best of Ohio Short Stories" project soon.  One of them needs to have all of the swear words edited down to a single utterance of "fuck", so I'll probz post that one in its entirety here at some point.  The other one's only been seen published before, so I'll post that on the occasion it's not accepted, which it has a better chance of than previously mentioned one.

  Brush your teeth!

           -Max

Heffalumps

One day late gets you one extra heffalump.


The second one's just a blob, but the first one is one of my better recent kinda-constructed drawings trying to figure out line of action and clear silhouettes and stuff.  Sillouette would have been better if I separated the head and shoulder, line of action would have been better if I started it with the legs as opposed to arranging everything on a line inside him starting at his ass.  So it just sort of looks like there's actual thought just stacked on top of two straight legs holding everything up.


Again, not something I'm terribly great at, but it's fun stuff to think about and work through as a break from the things I am competent at that boil my PRECIOUS BRAIN

My First Book!

In 1st and 2nd grade the teachers would give us these little blank books made from torn paper stapled together with two pieces of floral wallpaper.  It was actually really cool; I'm not sure why by 3rd grade they stopped having this be part of class while learning cursive and never using it again was evidently of mucho importance.

All of my books were a surreal trip into my cartoon-fueled unconscious.  This one is called Giga Pets, which was a virtual pet computer game you'd get on a keychain that you'd clip to your backpack or something.  (I never actually had a Giga Pet, I had a Tamagotchi, which was similar, I was just misremembering.)  It was this little, pixelated blob that would hatch from an egg and need to be fed and have its poop cleaned and such.  They were banned from schools as a distraction because if you didn't take care of it for half a day it would die, so even Kindergartners with just a half day of school would be negligent murderers.

So of course I had very fond memories of this minor fad from preschool, and combined those memories with my love for Pokemon, cartoons and kitties.  To this day that love has never faded.

   

(As you can see the cut up script for the book has folded over.  It says:
"SO, what's your name?" asked Max.
"Comet", he said in a shaky voice.
"Okay.  Do you want some pretzles?" asked Max.
"Yes please.  Yummm". He changed into a different creature.
"I packed two things-a soda and a sword", said Max.  "Do you want a sip?
But Comet was chasing another creature and couldn't stop for a drink.

*(I'm pretty sure that last part about how he couldn't stop for a drink was added by one of my teachers to bring some cohesion to the nonsense.  The cat fishing with its tail was a common motif in my drawings back then.)

*(There's a goomba from Super Mario Bros. as part of the evolution, or 'deevolution'.  I had this whole thing about 'felines and canines' that's in some of the other books I did .  I learned that canine was a word for a tooth and dogs, so I guess I liked the wordplay of it or something, referring to both the Devil's teeth and that dog shooting Godzilla beams at him.)

*(This is where the blue box from Mulholland Dr. is opened and everything really goes to hell.  For some reason I drew CatDog.  I didn't even really like CatDog.)

*(I really like this shit about how I freed God and the animals like the end of a stage in Sonic the Hedgehog.  It's like I was more powerful than God; he wasn't powerful enough to save himself, but I was.  I was already a heretic and I didn't even know it.)

*(Here's the same page with the door opened and there's a house inside.  Fucking Duck Amuck weirdness up in here.  It's also funny how God can't grow a mustache for shit.)

*(Not a mistake here.  These are all pages.  I sort of felt like I had to fill all of them up.)

*(I'm throwing a tomato at the wall.  That is not a penis ejaculating onto the page; it just happens to look exactly like it.)

THE END?  Who knows?  We ended on such a cliffhanger.  I feel like I put a question-mark after all "THE END"s I did for no reason. 

   SO.  There that is.  I've got at least one other book around here somewhere.  Maybe I'll post more of these.  It's just really interesting seeing the things you created when you were young.  It's like a time capsule for my brain pre-Bush administration; what culture was telling was important at the time as a consumer child.  There was this trend in children's entertainment at the time of the KID THAT IS THE CHOSEN ONE.  The kid that doesn't really do anything but it's already decided that the future of existence entirely depends upon them and only them.  IT IS FATED.  I think my little book here was me putting myself into that role. 


    You see it in everything about Pokemon, the games, show and the merchandise all telling you that YOU TOO can be a Pokemon master, the greatest Pokemon trainer ever!  You just have to buy everything!  Do what comes naturally as a kid in a 1st world country and covet.


   And then you see it in Harry Potter, the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Dragonball Z, just so much shit I'd see growing up.  And then you get older and you learn about Joseph Campbell, and see that it's all the Hero's Journey.  It's all stories that we all as humans have told since we developed the mental capacity to tell them, and will tell until we're not around anymore. 


  All of those stories are so similar: Heracles, Achilles, Odysseus, Jesus Christ, King Arthur, Dorothy Gale, Luke Skywalker, Goku, Harry Potter, Link...  They are all this same amorphous figure that rests in our unconscious that just puts on a new face and just acts out the story again, but a little different each time. 


  Because it is all a part of our brain.  The greatest story is the one that is all about the greatness of us a species told through an avatar blank enough to be identifiable, but distinguishable enough to be awe-inspiring, great enough to do great, but flawed enough to fall.  A lot of them even defeat the greatest foe humanity has; the impermanence of life. 

  I of course had no fucking concept of any of this, but it's interesting how when pressed to tell a story, the story I squeezed out from my sponge that soaked up everything around me: video games, toys, kitties, Tex Avery cartoons, etc.,  I also squeezed out a drip of the oldest story that nearly every story soaked up from every other story: The Hero's Journey.

  I've only known how to read since I was 4, I can't even tell a story with coherence and still, the wave of those old stories through the stories I knew, put a sword in my hand, pit me in a battle against the Devil (a Pokemon battle), and fight for the Gods.




  King Arthur fought for England and God, Luke fought for the balance of the Force, I fought for the Pokemanz.  

The Easyman

  
     I been drawing this guy for a while now.  I think I first drew him sophomore year in my blocked German class when I was trying to draw one of those John K Lummoxes from Ren and Stimpy.  He then just sort of became this default guy I'd doodle on desks and notes and shit. 


    I called him: "The Easyman", because I was listening to the Barenaked Ladies (Fuckin' shocker there, huh?) album Are Me a lot and there's this song where they say "Easy" a bunch and I was writing EASY all over my doodle pages with flowers twisting around it and shit right by this guy.  I sort of thought it made him sound like a swindler kinda crook or something.
   

     I made an ongoing comic featuring him a while back.  I'll probably re-upload that, but actually scanned as opposed to the pictures I took just holding the pages up to photobooth.  It's pretty shit, but its weirdness more than makes up for that.

        I'll need to find the first drawing I did of him.  Maybe do an evolution or something.  I should probably just unearth all of the drawings I've done since middle school that I've saved and put some of them here someday...

With My Freeze Ray I Will-

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This article focuses on claims made by little kids in this video.

    It's called: "THE THAW"

    You don’t have to watch the video to understand what I’m talking about, mind you.  I recommend you do, it is kind of funny...  but you don't gotta ‘cause I quote directly each thing I’m responding to, so don't worry about wasting your time.  If you do watch it, make sure to dislike it to do your part in representing the Internet’s disdain for everything they are trying to do.  …Unless you actually like the video, in which case: 

   

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    So.  It looks as though this is a video made by kids sick and tired of the way that they see Christianity is being treated nowadays.  Let's see some of the things you kids got to say:

"Christianity is being completely frozen out of America."

     Haha, Oh dear.  I sense some impending members of the biggest majorities in America with grossly larger amounts of influence and power than everyone else pretending that they are a persecuted minority.

"Why Can’t I Pray In School?"

You can.  I mean… the school can’t sponsor prayer, though.

"Why do I have to check my religion at the door?"
You don't.

“Why can’t I write about God in my school papers?”

Huh?  When was this ever a thing?  These guys need to learn about specifics here. 

“Why do I have to tolerate people cursing my God, but I’m not allowed to talk about by God, and my faith?”

Yeah, this is too vague.  If it’s referring to tolerating kids saying using their lord’s name in vain, it’s because that’s how people talk and they don’t follow your religion so you have to.  If you’re talking about teachers then maybe we should define what ‘cursing your god’ is.  Just not sure how to respond to this onacounna I don't know what you're talking about.

“Why are they taking God out of my history books?”
     He was never there to begin with...  The Christian God is not a historically documented figure.  Not nearly enough historically documented proof.  If there was, you wouldn’t need to have faith in him.  Plus there's that whole Separation of Church and state thin-

“Why do they teach every other theory in science, except for creation?”

     Oh fuck.  They’re these kind of kids.

Well.  It’s because creationism/intelligent design IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY AND THERE IS A VERY SPECIFIC DEFINITION OF WHAT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY IS AND CREATIONISM HAS NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO RESEMBLING IT.

Ahem.  Oh my.  That was inappropriate.  I’m sorry I yelled at you.  You’re just kids and all.  You’ve still got time to learn about the world…

Why do I get called names because I believe in marriage the way god designed it?

Well...  It depends on what names you are called, I suppose.  If you’re being called an ignorant child promoting the idea that a just society should unnecessarily oppress the rights of minorities because of other’s religious faith, that would be understandable.  Or maybe if they called you-

"Some even call us hateful, hypocrites, unloving, close-minded, BIGOTS (Point at the screen)"

Oh.  Well.  There you go. 

"bigot  (ˈbɪɡət) http://dictionary.reference.com/help/luna/IPA_pron_key.html
— n
	a person who is intolerant of any ideas other than his or her own, esp on religion, politics, or race"

     -(Dictionary.com)

     You are bigots because you fit the definition.  No matter how young.  Close-minded is kind of a no-brainer, so you should be able to figure that one out.

You are hateful because you promote hate towards an unnecessarily persecuted minority group that has no reason to be recognized as deserving of less rights than anyone else, save for religious reasons that ignore the first amendment of our constitution. Until there are a shit ton of Christian kids killing themselves because of bullying from marriage equality kids, you kindly turn the other cheek and shut your fucking face.

     You are hypocrites because your evidence for the god you believe in is in a Biblical passage.  That in itself isn’t hypocritical, but treating the Bible as God’s word, damning those who don’t follow it while not following it yourself is.  Nobody really follows the Bible to the T, people still work on the Sabbath, people eat shellfish and shit, and because our society has become cool with those things it’s as though you are aware of a Biblical endnote none of us know of that says: “*All of this stuff is the word of an omnipotent, infallible God, until it’s not cool with the society you’re living in anymore.” 

     You don’t get to decide what is God’s word and what isn’t, if it’s the Bible then it’s the Bible.  If you shit on people for not following it when you don’t, then you are a hypocrite.

     And not ONE of you in the video was wearing a shirt not made of mixed fibers.  I know.  I’ve got an eye for these things. 

Unloving is the only one that’s a little problematic.  If it’s just referring to being unloving of your fellow man and not saying that hateful people are unable to love, then I’d agree.  There have been plenty of passionate, loving people who just so happened to hate people for terrible reasons.

“Why can’t Tim Tebow praise God after making a touchdown without causing a national uproar?”

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.  Whoa.  Some people poking fun of the piety of a guy who plays a sport isn’t a fucking national uproar.  You know what was a national uproar in response to events in the world of sports?  INTEGRATING BLACK PEOPLE.  Let’s save words like that for things that they actually describe, yes?

 
     My deal is if what he’s doing is thanking God as an intervening source of the good things that happen to him, then that’s fucked up and stupid.  God is going to come down and make sure Tim Tebow wins some game and he’s just going to let the 16,000 children starving to death every day go without a loaf of bread and a fish?

But I’m not going to fucking talk about Tim Tebow.  Who gives a shit?  If the point is trying to make it seem as though sports are being aggressively anti-piety by saying that people poke fun of the guy who is just the most fucking ridiculous and over-the-top with it, it’s a lame point.  People make fun of everything that is distinguishable about anything. 

But fucking seriously.  99% of what happens in sports are fucking inconsequential compared to fucking everything.  Let’s stop treating it like it’s the biggest deal in the world just because it’s more exciting than the things that matter way more.

“The football coach at Ridgeland High school in Georgia was investigated by the school board…”

Fuck.  More football.  Alright.  Go on.

“Did he abuse a student?”

That would warrant an investigation, probably a police investigation, though.

“Is he a terrorist?”

…What?  …What in the fuck do you guys think the school board is?  After the Boston Bombing do you think the School Board all put on their suits and hurried to the scene to start an investigation?

“He allowed local churches to feed his football team.”

(Sarcastic gasp)

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Guys.  He works for a school and he was bringing students into a church.  This shit raises flags.  The Freedom From Religion foundation had concerns about that and that’s what sparked the investigation.  This is what foundations like FFR do, and when a concern is brought to the school board they investigate it.

You know… Gay, Lesbian, Queer and Transgendered kids are bullied to the point that they kill themselves.  THIS is a very common occurrence. The government doesn’t allow them the equal rights of heterosexuals, and they are treated by their communities as less than human.  There are some that are killed and raped just for being who they are.
     Is this the best you got to prove how shit you guys have it?  Something questionable happened, someone complained and the school board did their job?  I mean, I feel like I should probably detail why the separation of church and state exists, but I feel like I’ll definitely get a chance later… 

In public school, I’m called lesbian (or gay) for not kissing (because) I want to save myself for marriage.

Well, that’s definitely not cool.  People assigning labels to you without knowing you when you’re in a chapter in your life underlined by self-discovery and picking on you is mean. 

But again, this pales in comparison to a closeted kid being called gay for their behavior and being outed, or an out kid being ridiculed for being gay.  You taking greater offense at it than someone else because you think that being gay is a bad thing is PART OF THE PROBLEM.  Until there are a shit ton of Christian kids killing themselves because of bullying from marriage equality kids, you shut your fucking face until your start to show some respect for the dead and how lucky you are to be so privileged that these are your problems. 

Also, what you’re talking about is goddamn uncommon.  I mean, I don’t know how old you are, but seriously nobody’s first kiss is after “I now pronounce you man and wife”.  Not even Abstinence Only education said you can’t kiss a chick ‘fore you slip a ring on her…

“In public school, dating is an obligation.”

That’s just not true.  Plenty of us who went dateless through public school are evidence of that.  I mean, those of us who weren’t just background to most people and did receive shit from people didn’t because we did not have a significant other.  At least I’ve never heard of a single case of that.  I ain’t got no statistics to back that up, but they're the one's being anecdotal and they’ve got the burden of proof, so I don’t know what else to say.

"In public schools, people are rude and disrespectful towards CHRISTIANS!"

   People are rude and disrespectful towards everyone.  Just because you're Christians doesn't mean you deserve special treatment above everyone else and have no one ever be rude or disrespectful towards you.

"What we see in our health classes

                           'Sex Education'

Fourth grade and up-

                         "Is PORNOGRAPHY"

     

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     Holy shit.  We are in really fucked up territory here.  You guys don’t get to just say shit like that and walk away.  Name one case where any teacher, as a part of the curriculum, showed children material meant specifically to sexually arouse them and not educate them.  I don’t care if you’re kids, you should know by now to not LIE.  

“Dirty jokes fill the hallways between classes.”
    Hey.  What did Professor McGonagall get Harry Potter on his birthday?  

    She wrapped his head with saran wrap and shit watery diarrhea on his face. 

      

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      Not really even a joke.  But it’s disgusting and unpredictable and fun.  This is what some of us did during high school.  School sucks, growing up sucks.  So we entertain each other, bond and forge friendships through an incredibly stressful point in our formative years with various methods.  If you don’t like my methods, don’t hang out with me. 
     Dirty jokes have been around since before fucking Canterbury Tales, you ain't pining for the good ole' days when you say you want them gone.  You're pining for the days the sun has never shone on, and never will.

“Despite modern popular belief, America was founded as a Christian nation.”

Motherfucking Christ…

I’m getting sick of this.
     No!

It wasn’t!

A Christian Nation would be a theocracy.  We are not that!  The first amendment of the constitution prevents our government from being anything but secular, as in not respecting an establishment of religion.  Not any sort of religious.

And some of the most influential founding fathers weren’t just NOT Christian, they were very aggressively ANTI-organized religion in general.

THOMAS JEFFERSON:

Edited the New Testament to remove references to the supernatural, miracles, and indications of Jesus’s divinity.  Why?  Because he didn’t believe it, while he dug Jesus’s philosophy.  Talk about disrespect for the words of God.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN:

    "I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies."

    "The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason."

    "Revealed religion has no weight with me."

    These guys wanted freedom and equality for their kind too.


    To all the founding fathers though, their kind was only white, male, land owners, yeah...  Sure...  Most of them owned slaves....   Maybe our foundation ain't that solid and we should stop romanticizing it.

   "In 1962 the supreme court decided that prayer was unconstitutional in schools."

Yes.  School-sponsored, mandatory prayer.  School is a government institution and the separation of church of state exists, and should.

    "In 1963, courts rule the BIBLE unconstitutional.  Saying that if the Ten Commandments read in school, kids might be inclined to follow them!"

    Yeah, the first amendment of our country DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS the First Commandment.  God says, “Have no god’s before me” Constitution says, “Have whatever/how many gods you believe, and no one can do anything about that.”

"REALLY?"

    Yes, really.  A government institution telling kids that you can only believe in the Judeo-Christian god is awful.  There are other people in our country, kids.  Fucking deal with it.  Just because you ARE the majority doesn’t mean you get to treat everyone else like shit, and just because our rules forbid you to, doesn’t mean you are being persecuted, it just means YOU can’t persecute US.

     Kids…  I want to go easy on you, because you’re only half-formed people who are just following lock-step what your parents tell you and a shit ton of you will see the real world the minute you get out of their reach, but I don’t think you would appreciate me going easy on you.  You all clearly want to change the world and make a difference. 

     So I’m taking what you said just like anyone else said it.  Show you the respect you deserve.

     It’s all wrong.  It's all wrong and it stinks of uneducated, privileged members of the majority who have no idea what it feels like to be persecuted, pretending that their right to persecute and make the world unfair is being unnecessarily restricted and that is akin to persecution in itself.

You simply do not deserve to act this way.  This isn’t a fucking game.  There are people seriously being discriminated against and being persecuted for victimless crimes and you pretending like you’re fucking kin to them, or like your problems are worse than theirs is fucking offensive.

     Imagine one day as a gay kid in an all-Christian school in the south.  Imagine one day as a transgendered kid anywhere.  When you’re so hung up on moral-absolutism and rules from fucking thousands of years ago it might be hard to see seriously people who are persecuted and abused by a society that includes kids like you.

    I don't like the word 'bullying'.  It really diminishes what's going on, and so many kids don't recognize what they're doing as bullying at all because it's so stereotyped.  It's abuse.  If kids are doing that to you, it's not okay.  But you still have no excuse for your abuse of others.

     So yeah, guess what.  We’re making the world fairer and you guys have less power to boss all of us around.  It sucks how you’re being treated if truly you have casted no stones, but when you are part of our society’s abuse of minorities, you, just like your abusers, revoke your right to sympathy.  The messed up kid who got beat up by his dad doesn’t get to use that as an excuse to beat his kids, and the bully who bullies because he got bullied is still a fucking bully.

     I can’t help but feel sorry for you.  Growing up is weird and it sucks and everyone’s hurting everyone to make it feel better.  It is some of the worst shit ever.  But I’m sorry.  If you are going out into the world to slut-shame my sister, single-out my queer brother and make everyone follow your beliefs just because you were born to a family who believes them, I don't care that you might think my fighting back is bullying, you're trying to change the world and you have to take opposition like grown ups. 

    You think you're frozen?  Alright.  We'll put you on fucking display just like all the other frozen cavemen.

     This is why we have freedom of and FROM religion.  You can believe whatever you want.  You are free from being forced Muslim, Jewish, and other religion’s practices and beliefs, and I am free from all of your horseshit, because unless you have secular/non religious backing to your concerns you’re bringing to the state, you are shit out of luck and for good reason.  Hopefully some of you will grow out of your myopic, self-serving stage of development, unlike your parents with their hands up your little asses making you talk and pose dramatically in front a black screen to scary music.





(Special Thanks to Jason Steele for the wonderful Psyducks.)

Confeder-cat