even wookies get thirsty for diet pepsi

drunkest i have been in some time.
fun drunk, not mean drunk.
weird thing, i don't really get mean drunk anymore.
happiness'll do that to ya.

rough drafts are awesome

very rough draft of a poster i am working on. i can see myself doing this freelance, designing show posters.
i'm hitting a stride here, bitches.
watch out.
i know it's not the best, but wait until it's finished.
gogol bordello is a great band, by the way.
i am seeing them in march.
sweet.

blasts from the past

always have had trouble keeping my eyes open. everything is boring. even my dog looks bored.

my dad enjoying the luxury of a tent in the hospitable hellhole which was vietnam. again, eyes closed, bored as hell.

daniel day is boss

a tribute to, in my mind, one of the greatest performances in cinematic history.
stunning.

letter from hell

someone actually sent this to me.
evidently it is a scare tactic used by christians to make the teen set accept jesus as their personal savior.
http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=1b5bd6e3e034d00b4f73
i wonder what the postage from hell costs?
why wouldn't you just send an email from hell?
hell sounds very organized and well managed.
christians are crazy and awesome.

b8 and 7witch- Simian Similarities

note: i wrote this when i got home from school today. there are spelling and grammar errors, i know, but i plan on going back and cleaning this and part one up later.
stay tuned for part three- wolves at the gate.

Darkness. Black as the deepest crevice of any ocean. Open one eye, let the sun seap into my skull through the dusty curtains as water would fill my lungs. Close it, quickly. Light stabbing at my brain, vicious intent, a million jellyfish stings. I wonder how much i would need to pay someone to pee in my eye. My left eye absolutely refusing to open. With my blurry, swollen right eye i look around. I am in my bedroom, in my apartment in adam's building. My feet heavy as concrete clogs, i wearily throw them over the edge of my filthy mattress and go into the hallway, not bothering to look in the mirror, as i'm sure my visage looks like a chewed raw hamburger sandwiched within the throbbing confines of my face. I have no idea how i got here. Was i sleepwalking? Was it all a horrible sitcom dream? The beating? The half conscious drive home? That would be too easy. Life rarely missed an opportunity to shit in my cereal.
I knock on adam's door and walk in. he is sitting in front of his computer, fat spilling over the armrests, an inert whale of stink and useless knowledge. Three 24 inch monitors sit in front of him, linked, a wall of information and porno. Adam saw the matrix WAY too many times. He begins talking to me, it is impossible to sneak up on him.
"chuck, come here, you have to look at this, i think i just proved the theory of evolution to be valid."
I walk gingerly and stand behind him. He reeks of malt liquor and fast food. His bulk worries me, his penchant for a vast variety of pornography perplexes me, his smell makes vomit acquaint itself with my tonsels.
"listen, adam, how did i...?"
"chuck, please, in a minute, this is serious business. Now, check this out, it's going to fucking blow your fried, smashed in brain."
his fingers flutter, buttons click and on the outermost screens two videos pop up, crystal clear. Scarily so. On the middle screen some kind of weird asian balloon porn is paused, a stout japanese man lurking menacingly over a woman tied down with several of those balloons birthday clowns twist into phallic giraffes, smiling ear to ear, air pump in one hand, a container of peanut butter in the other, on the precipice of god knows what. Fat and sadistic, adam was my best friend. Again, life squats over my cheerios and lets its bowels do the work.
"now, as you can see, to your right is a video of a male chimpanzee taken from the national geographic website. Note his facial expressions, the way he moves his head, the look in his eyes. And," the second video fills the left screen, "to your left is a video of an older man with down syndrome taken from youtube. Now, if i time this out right," his head swivels left to right, right to left, tongue sticking slightly from between his nicotine stained candy corn teeth, "i should be able to prove my point. Right. Now."
and as i watch, the facial expressions of the chimp and the mentally challenged old man seem to mirror each other. The way they both scrunch their lips to their nose as if trying to smell their breath, the watery eyes, the slow, deliberate head movements, a seemingly uncanny relationship between the two begins to emerge.
Adam sits back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head, the now lit cigarette bouncing as he giggles.
"i should have been a biologist, or an anthropologist, or maybe both, it almost pains me that my brilliance is going to waste in this shithole of a city. So, what is up with you?"
He spins in his chair to face me.
"Or, who handed you your ass?"
i had so many questions, i barely knew where to start.
"okay, first, how did i get into bed? I mean, as far as i can remember, the last thing i recall is rounding the corner, and then, nothing?"
Adam smiled, knowingly.
"well, here i was, cracking open my 'hello monday!' forty and i hear the trash men out front. You know jimmy the trash guy, right? Well, jimmy owes me about 200 bucks so i step outside to chat with him and what do i see? You, my friend, slumped over the wheel, going, i don't know, i'd say about 30 or so, i didn't even know that bucket could go over 25, heading straight for the ass end of the trash truck. So i scream at jimmy and, oh, what's the other guy's name, you know, the guy with the hair lip AND the lisp, the guy who looks like he hangs out at the public pool parking lot in a van offering tykes licorice, fuck it, we'll call him sad eddie, i yell for jimmy and sad eddie to get the fuck out of the way, and boom! You plowed right into the back of the truck. It was so fucking awesome. You nearly killed sad eddie, that weirdo fuck. For an older dude he is fleet of foot, good luck for you, bad luck for the boy scouts who come to his door one dark, rainy night unaccompanied trying to hauck whatever shit boy scouts hauck, i guess. Anyway, they were none too happy about being nearly deaded by you so i wiped his debt away and threw in a bag of jamaican redhair for good measure. I offered sad eddie a pair of your boxers but he declined. They were being greedy, really, i mean their truck was barely scratched. Your little shitbucket, on the other hand, well, i already had it towed to the junk lot. I wrestled you out of the wreckage, and i mean wreckage, drug you up to your apartment, bandaged you up, and as i stood over you watching you whimper in your sleep, this whole 'proving evolution' thing came to me. You totally look retarded when you sleep. It's hilarious, really."

perhaps i should backtrack for a moment and tell you how i came to live with adam. That only seems fair.
I met adam in the fourth grade, to little fanfare. We were both weirdos, we liked the same stuff, blah, blah, blah. We grew up in each other's houses, but mostly in his, being as my mother popped pills like they were mentos and she had just gargled hobo diahrea, and my dad skipped before she got really fat. Shitty household, whatever, don't feel bad for me. I might have turned out okay.
Anyway, right about the time we graduated high school, one night adam and i are sitting in his house, and the phone rings. Adam answers it. He says, "uh huh" about thirty times, and casually hangs up.
"who was that?"
adam changed the channel and turned to me.
"oh, some bimbo. She said my dad's dead. You should probably go, i have to go get my mom at work and take her to identify the body down at general hospital."
Adam's father was significantly older than his mother, like, thirty years older, and he had been a travelling toy salesman since sometime when people still sold stuff door to door. Adam's attic and garage were packed to the rafters with overstock, mint condition toys dating from forty years ago to present day. We were never allowed to open anything, it was ultimate torture, but his mom was pretty and always let us do whatever we wanted, you know, accept open up the millions of toys and play with them, so his house became my weirdo home away from home.
Turns out, adam's dad had been having some secret affair with a younger woman for just about the entirety of adam's life. He was out with her, getting liquored up, making a fool of himself singing karaoke in the bar of a rather expensive hotel chain three towns over when the microphone shorted out, gave him a wicked shock, which of course triggered a massive heart attack, and he dropped dead on the spot.
I know this because adam knows this.
And how did adam come about this information?
Well, the sordid details of his father's affair and concurrent electrocution were divulged to him and his mother by his father's mistress over cocoa in the cafeteria of the hospital in which they had just stood and watched as the mortician unzipped the body bag to reveal adam's father, dead as disco.
Between the life insurance payout and the settlement with the hotel, adam became very wealthy, very quickly.
With her cut, his mother fled, didn't leave a forwarding address, simply gave adam the keys to the house and wished him good luck, a whisper in the night.
I promptly moved in and helped adam sell the house, after which he bought an apartment building downtown and i became his first, and only, tenant. I lived rent free, of course. Adam invested his money well, lived off of interest and a healthy income generated from selling all of those mint condition toys on ebay. He also enjoyed selling narcotics. He considered himself an "urban pharmaceuticals sales and distrubution manager," but he was really just a drug dealer. Our building was a high traffic zone for stoners, delivery people, and your random drunken hook up. From my count, he still had three apartments full of sealed toys. We had lived there for eight years to the day, until my boss beat me like his name was ike and mine was tina.
Adam's phone vibrated.
He snatched it up, said "uh huh' a couple times, and handed it back to me over his shoulder.
"for you. It's ben."
Ben was a good friend of mine from high school. Ben was ronnie, my violent boss' nephew, and he had gotten me the job because he was assistant to the president of the produce company, which was ronnie. You gotta know people to know pwople. Ben and adam did not like each other.
"ben, what the fuck, man? I mean, what the fuck?"
"chuck, are you home?"
He sounded scared. Which made me horrified.
"yeah, but listen, i think i may need to file some charges or at least collect unemployment here, i mean, ronnie smacked me around something good."
ben shushed me.
"listen, chuck, i shouldn't be telling you any of this, but there is a tape. Ronnie won't show it to me, but evidently you are in it. It doesn't sound good, chuck, leroy is in the tape too."
i turned to walk into the hallway, saying as i walked, my legs like jelly, "leroy, you mean ronnie's retarded brother leroy?"
adam swung around in his chair, yelling after me, "holy shit, i totally forgot about leroy. Chuck, chuck ask ben what kind of retarded leroy is. If he does have down syndrome, ask him if i could borrow him for an afternoon. Peco just opened a bitching new monkey house at the philly zoo. I'll spring for everything, i'd just need leroy to sign some consent forms. I'd need to borrow him for eight, ten hours tops."
i closed the door behind me as i walked into the hallway.
"ben, what the fuck are you talking about? What kind of video? Don't you think i would remember if i had made a sex video with ronnie's retarded kid brother? I mean, c'mon, what's really going on?"
I laughed.
Ben was silent.
" it's not a sex video. listen, chuck, ronnie's not going to the cops, he says he wants to handle this himself. If i were you, i wouldn't leave the house. I'll call back later when i know more."
dialtone.
I swallow, hard, and the vomit stampedes out of me.
I slip in throw up as i go back to my room to lay down.
Again, darkness.

keepin fresh

well, color me stupid grandma

lines and coloring by yours truly.

lines by my buddy manuel. colors for a test for his online comic by yours truly.

ishmael

drug free, promise

b8 and 7witch- Insomniatic Walkabout

A haze hung over the street, a misty, vaporous testament to the nefarious southeastern Pennsylvania humidity about to seriously fuck up my day. I took a swig from my energy drink, spilled some on my shirt, didn't bother wiping it off. I hadn't washed my uniform in weeks, the fabric of the armpits stained yellow and worn to cheesecloth, the buttons loose, threatening to fall off at any second. I put my visor down, the sun was seemingly at full bore even though it was still so early in the morning, and steered with my knees as i took another toke from the glass bowl i kept packed in my ashtray. With the windows up and the air conditioning non existent, the inside of my car became a sweaty clambake, how i imagined it would be if i would hang out with some phish loving neo-hippies in a sealed cargo container dropped in the middle of the Sahara. Mixing weed and a large amount of caffeine made my heart feel as if it might collapse in on itself, but at least it reminded me that i was in fact still alive, still breathing. I took a left into the parking lot, backed into the same space i had for the last three years, finished off the energy drink and tossed the nearly empty can into the backseat where it joined hundreds of other nearly empty cans of energy drink, announcing to anyone who happened to glance into the back of my car that whoever drove my heap was evidently nearly always tired, evidently nearly always dead, never really awake, a jittery sleepwalker.

I clocked in and drowsy already, sat at the table in the driver's lounge with all of the other crusty, indignant sleepwalkers and organized my route for the day. My nextel phone chirped, once, and then again, and i sighed. My life seemed to be guided by a series of beeps, chirps, buzzers, rings, polyphonic noise. Cell phones, alarm clocks, the scattered chatter of police scanners, the car stereo, a low volume television set, a computer. I looked at the phone, it was my boss, Ronald. I pressed the rubbery talk button.
“yeah, ron, what's up?”
silence.
“ron, it's chuck, you need something?”
“come to my office.”
his tone was even and cold. The kind of tone of voice that makes your stomach turn, your guts twisting, your ears burning. I was in trouble. For what, i had no idea.
“two minutes.”
“no. chuck, right now.”
The other drivers in the lounge looked up from their newspapers at me, the way you look at the kid who has just been called into an unreasonable principal's office, and i shook my head. I stunk like weed and incompetence, i just knew it.
“probably wants to give me a raise.”
they all looked back down at their newspapers, and i pushed away from the table and drug my feet across the loading dock to the side of the building that housed the suits' offices. I thought about just getting in my car and never coming back, but i needed to pay rent the next week, so i use my key card and started down the hall.

Ron's office looked like the Philadelphia eagles memorabilia monster had vomited violently into it. Eagles banners, eagles helmets, coca cola eagles bottles lined every shelf, signed jerseys hung proudly on the eggshell white walls, eagles paperweights and mylar encased eagles season tickets littering nearly every square inch of ron's plain birch desk.
i stood in the doorway.
“ron, what's up?”
ron looked from his computer screen at me. Ronald was a large gentleman, he looked like the bastard child of baby Huey and a retired, broken down polish boxer. He was fat, but you could tell that beneath the blubber was muscle, beneath his flabby exterior a tiger lay ready to pounce. I was scared and amused by him all at once.
“Did you enjoy it?”
I took a step back. I was high and was not ready for riddles this early in the morning.
“excuse me?”
“sit down, you fucking monster.”
I moved slowly towards the chair in front of his desk.
I kept my eyes on him, he was tensing up as i got closer, but now my interest was peaked and i wanted to see how all of this would play out. I sat and put my hands on my knees. Did he know that i came to work high? Did he know i had been stealing shredded lettuce and selling it to my friends that owned a shitty sub place? Did he know that i fucked his aunt once?
“you disgust me, you know that?”
“ron, seriously, you are freaking me out here. I wish i could answer any of these questions, but you are being WAY too cryptic. What exactly are we discussing here?”
The corners of his mouth turned down, then up into a crooked smile and before i could react he snatched a round eagles paperweight from his desk and tossed it at me, catching me in the corner of the eye, sending me toppling backwards in my chair. As my back hit the ground, the wind rushed from me, and he was around the desk with surprising quickness, too quick for a guy his size. I flipped onto my stomach and he grabbed my ankle and spun me back over. He fell with his knees on my shoulders and the blows came down on me fast and hard. Between punches i looked up and saw tears storming down his cheeks, and i blacked out. When i came to, i propped myself up on my elbow to see several other guys who worked in the offices restraining ron, to little avail because he broke free and kicked me in my side before they could get a hold of him again. I managed to get to my feet and stumble from the office, the vision in my left eye blurry. I could feel blood pouring down my neck onto my chest, and i barely made it through the door into the parking lot. I knew i was going to pass out again, i had a concussion for sure, and as i made my way to my car i took the nextel phone from my pocket and spiked it on the tarmac, electronics bursting into tiny pieces, to chirp no longer. I worked my key into the lock, fell into the front seat, started my car, and peeled out of the parking lot. I didn't bother looking in the rear view mirror, i didn't need to see how broken my face was. I threw up on myself as i turned the corner towards my apartment building and promptly passed out, foot coming off the gas, and rolled slowly into the back of a garbage truck.

firsties

2008

here we go.