Just a quick one for today. I won’t say I’m a high-class sort, really. I’ve been pretty lucky, though. I’ve enjoyed some hundred-dollar steak dinners at beautiful places, had some of the finest liquor in the world and enjoyed some very expensive cigars with some amazing people. These things brought me great joy and made memories that I’ll keep with me forever.
With all of this in mind, why the hell do I still love spicy ramen noodle soup, Mountain Dew and Kools?
Filed under Life
Men and women are different creatures, no matter how much we hear otherwise. I show women the same respect I show men without issue. Women are not objects to me, I value their opinions and contributions. That being said, ladies, there are rules you need to follow to help smooth our friendship. I hope my female friends will read this and have a laugh, having finally learned why I act so strangely sometimes.
1. Flirting is okay; it’s a light, fun form of interaction. If you touch me while we’re flirting, you’re sending mixed signals to a man in a serious relationship.
2. Friendly cuddles are a great, non-sexual form of bonding that I truly adore. That being said, I will do anything within my power to avoid touching your breasts. When you grab my arm and pull it across your chest for your comfort, you’re making it worse. It’s not because your breasts are bad, it’s because my mind is.
3. At no point in our friendship should I ever know anything about your reproductive cycle. Your wacky system of tubes and things is largely a mystery to me and I’m happier for it. I have been known to make a midnight tampon run before, but avoid getting too specific. You’re getting the variety pack.
4. When you give me a choice between two things and reply, “I don’t care,” unlike a woman, I really don’t.
5. If, at any point during our friendship, I missed an opportunity to sleep with you, keep it to yourself. (16 and counting)
6. If you’re not prepared for an honest answer, don’t ask the question. Remember, you’re not my girlfriend and I don’t have to keep the peace with you. “Does this make me look fat?” and, “Does that make me a slut?” are two excellent ways to end our friendship.
7. Exclaiming, “I’m naked, don’t look!” is counterproductive.
8. Please don’t make me do anything that involves “women’s health.”
9. If you’re in a bad relationship, don’t be surprised or angry when I suggest that you dump the loser.
10. Did I mention your period and/or ovulation cycles? Yeah, it never becomes necessary for me to know about them.
Avoid these things and we’ll get along fine. To my friends, I can picture your nodding heads and dawning comprehension even as I write this. Women are awesome people and I’m happy for those in my life.
I wish pot was legal. It needs to be legal. I would smoke it if it was legal. Alcohol is a poor substitute. I want to get baked and actually enjoy television again. I want to get stoned and listen to Megadeth with my best friend and bitch about modern music. I want to get high and fall asleep sitting on my ex-girlfriend’s porch swing only to find out that it’s not my ex-girlfriend’s porch swing when the police wake me up in the morning.
This is normal, right?
Filed under Life
Normally, I wouldn’t post two in a day, but I’m feeling good. The sun is shining, people are in good spirits and it’s almost time to go home. Anyway, a while ago, a fellow blogger and all-around funny lady, Rebecca (her site is Lady or Not… Here I Come; if you haven’t read her stuff, why the hell are you still reading my nonsense?), posted about her troubles going to sleep. I suppose this post is just my way of relating to that. Here’s a little story I wrote, it probably explains a lot.
It’s three in the morning, my eyes are burning, my throat is dry and I’m terrified to close my eyes. If I get out of bed, the dogs will go mad and think it’s breakfast time and, as a result, wake up the peacefully slumbering lovely next to me. I shoot her a hateful glance, eyes full of envy and spite. If I lie here much longer, I might snap and kill them all. How did I get stuck in this horrible situation? I’m glad you asked.
It was about midnight when we went to bed. The dogs were let outside and brought back in, the doors were locked, the computers were powered off and all was quiet. I kissed her for the last time for the day and we snuggled up under the blankets. I was the big spoon. She was warm and comforting and my eyelids were no longer obeying me. I felt a little movement at the foot of the bed, but it was no big deal. It was probably just one of the dogs setting against the bed frame.
Suddenly, something warm and wet slides straight up the arch of my foot. Moxie had worked her head up under the blanket and licked me. I smacked her snout with my foot and started to settle down again when she took a playful nip at my toes.
Attemping to sound authoritative in a hushed tone, I said, “Moxie, lay down, damn it!” I felt the covers move briefly and everything was still again.
With a quiet grumble, I settled in again, pulling closer to my lady and getting comfortable. God, I thought, she is really warm. And she was. It was getting uncomfortable, so I rolled over and turned the bedside fan up a notch. That’s better. I found a comfortable position on my right side, arm under the pillow and hanging off the edge of the bed. Drifting off slowly, I was finally going to get some sleep.
The funny thing about dislocating your shoulder is that it’s never quite the same after. It’s much more likely to come out of joint subsequently. I felt a twinge of pain, then something slipped. I bit my lip, fully awake at this point from the growing pain, rolled onto my back and slowly twisted my arm until the bones fell back into place. I heaved a sigh and shook my head at the futility of it and decided just to stay on my back.
When I lie on my back, I snore. Not just a little, either. I make the drapes move and scare pets. To hell with it, she’ll just have to deal. I thought about getting up for a cigarette, but it wasn’t worth the effort. I considered bothering my sweet for a bit of a romp, but she gets grumpy sometimes. Might be worth the chance, she’s only been asleep for an hour. I decided against it, anyway. The hassle of a negative reaction wasn’t worth it. Of course, now I was thinking about it. I’d never get to sleep like that. So I closed my eyes and pictured a fat, naked old lady. That did the trick.
I opened my eyes again and noticed my nose in the green glow of the alarm clock. It was something of a surreal experience. I had never noticed my nose before, but there it was, pale and green. I laughed a bit and that eased my tension enough that I started to fall into the sweet, silent embrace of sleep. Naked old lady got her revenge just then, over the hood of a Rolls-Royce, no less. It was only a flash (har), but it was burned into my retinas. I was at a loss. I just listened to her quiet breathing and tried to follow the rhythm.
Wow, what a mistake. As I tried to sync our breaths, it slowly dawned on me that I could no longer breathe without thinking about it. Literally, if I didn’t tell my lungs to take air, they wouldn’t do it. Wonderful.
That brings us to the aforementioned killing-spree-waiting-to-happen that is me. If I get up, the dogs will go ballistic and race to the front of the house for breakfast. I don’t even want to close my eyes at this point because pin-up granny might show up for another mental photo-shoot. It’s amazing what a few hours can do to a man; big spoon to time-bomb in record time.
As always, thanks for reading.
Filed under Life
They say it’s good to have a healthy fantasy life. They also say it helps to keep your mind active. What they, whoever “they” might be, never mention is that those two things don’t mix well.
I’ll warn you now, this post isn’t for everyone. Tastefully (and hopefully humorously) written as it might be, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s about masturbation.
At some point in most peoples’ lives, they’ve realized that having a mate doesn’t necessarily preclude them from occasionally having to take matters into their own hands, so to speak. I’m lucky enough to have a partner that doesn’t mind if I take in a bit of adult entertainment here and there, but sometimes that just doesn’t do the trick. Being primarily a fiction writer and an artist, I have a fairly active imagination. Occasionally, I get the idea to make that work for me when certain needs arise.
So I get comfortable, preferably alone, and think up something light and playful to get going. That’s about the time it goes horribly wrong.
I’ll give an example of what I mean. Things are going fine in the land of daydreams when, out of the blue, I remember the dogs haven’t been out in a while. Can’t have them making a mess on the carpet, can we? I get up and let them outside to do their business, call them back inside and go back to the task at hand, no pun intended. Back into my mind I go, only to realize that Zach wanted to visit later. Heaving a great sigh, I grab my phone and confirm the time with him. That done, I close my eyes and instantly remember that my sister has a birthday coming up. Okay, dogs, fine. Zach, fine. Sibling, I’m finished.
The real tragedy is that I can’t even put these scenarios to paper for other people to enjoy. Every time, I sit down with the idea to write only the naughty bits and end up with ten pages of nothing good. Why nothing good, you ask? Two reasons. First, I like a bit of narrative to set the scene. Second, when I write, I let my characters make their own decisions; they develop in an organic and fairly realistic fashion as a result. Too realistic, mostly. I end up with ten pages of dialogue and plot that couldn’t possibly lead to anything approaching the fun I had originally envisioned.
I’m generally very comfortable with the chaotic nature of my mind. The way I tend to overthink everything and pick up on details make me unique and I love those things. I’m aware that there are more important things than personal (read: self) gratification. It would be nice to shut all of it out for fifteen minutes and just have some “me” time, though.
Thanks for reading!
Filed under Life
If you’d have asked me twenty years ago, I would have said that I absolutely believe in God.The same question fourteen years ago would’ve gotten you a flat “no.” Now, I’m just not sure.
Religion is a topic that doesn’t get discussed rationally very often. Because of the passions involved on both sides of the issue, it’s become something of a taboo subject. Much like politics, its sister conversation-killer, religion is not suitable for discussion at that proverbial dinner table we all imagine. Enjoy the images I’m largely inserting as tension breaks and try not to take them too seriously.
That’s my kind of religion!
I’m tired of not discussing it. And by “discuss,” I mean putting pen to paper (no, really, I took a picture) and fleshing out my exact stance on the matter for my personal gratification. If this post offends you, I’m sorry. If it helps you, I’m glad. If it makes you think, I can’t ask for much more than that.
This will someday be used as a handwriting sample to incriminate me for sending threatening letters to the members of Linkin Park for ruining my favorite radio station.
I had a religious upbringing and while a lot of people can claim that, my grandfather was a preacher. While my mom and step-father weren’t the type to attend church every Sunday, they’re still deeply spiritual people. Good Christian folks, you might say. As a result, when I was young, I was devout in my faith.
As I got older and started to think for myself, I began to identify as an atheist. This was due in no small part to actually reading the Bible – something that a sad few Christians can claim to have done and something that many non-believers take a good deal of pride in bragging about. It was something that made me both proud – that had I decided something important for myself – and disturbed – because everything I learned from my family was suddenly a lie. I never felt betrayed, per se, but I wasn’t happy with the illusion. Despite these feelings, I settled into this new identity slowly and, by the time I was eighteen, had fully accepted science as the savior of mankind.
All these years later and it’s still pretty funny.
As I progressed through the next ten years or so, however, doubt once again set upon me. I began to question things and what bothered me most was that it wasn’t because of any singular event. It wasn’t even anything truly specific that did it. If you asked me to name it today, I still couldn’t. I simply began to see God in things where previously only nature had existed to me.
And that brings me to the present, almost 30 years old and still scratching my head. For my love of the last six years, it’s decided. She believes. For me, it’s just not as clear-cut. I’ve been on both sides of the fence at key points in my development and have very conflicting ideas. I want to believe, as was famously said regarding another subject entirely, but I can’t commit my mind either way.
It’s not as clear as you might think.
Now, let’s try to define this word, “believe,” shall we? Does that mean I want to give myself over to the idea that Bible is a literal transcript of human history? Absolutely not. No thinking person actually believes that the world was created in seven days around five to ten thousand years ago. Well, those Young Earth creationists do, but that’s because they blind themselves to hundreds of years of scientific research and blatant evidence. John C. Mather and George Smoot proved the science behind the big-bang theory and won a Nobel Prize for it, for God’s sake (get it?). That’s not even mentioning Stephen Hawking, who has taken our understanding of the universe to a level we never thought possible. The Bible is the collected works of men who were trying to make sense of the world around them without the aid of science. I’m certain in a few thousand years, assuming Homo sapiens has that long to live, people will look back at the so-called discoveries of our time and marvel at our ignorance.
I want to believe in a purpose, a grand design. While everything that is logical inside me fights the very notion, that desire remains. Are we all just part of the same compost heap? That’s a pretty bleak outlook, isn’t it? Did God give us all some kind of purpose and we’re just playing it out to His plans? That’s not very good, either.
If God has any influence in our lives, I believe it is in our individual talents. How we apply what we’re given is what defines our purpose. It’s how we affect others and the effects they have on us that shape our destinies. Maybe it’s not the most original sentiment, but it’s the one that best settles my mind when I’m trying to sleep. I remain, your hopeful agnostic.
If you’ve read this far, you might as well leave a comment and tell me your stance on religion, logic and how they fit into each other. All opinions are welcome so long as they promote friendly conversation. All insults or extreme ignorance shall go to moderation Hell. And damn it, I know that exists.
Do not want! Avoid this and we’re fine.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m not much for modern art. I mean, I like it as much as the average person. Which fits into the “passing interest” category at best. I’ve always been into fine art and digital media more than that dubious genre known as “modern art.” But this is brilliant.
Inappropriate, check. Disturbing, check. Accurate social satire, check.
Darren Cullen a “little-known writer and artist” who lives in London, England, across the pond in the UK. Well, Darren, I think this is going to change your “little-known” status. At least, I hope it will.
Stretch marks! Cravings! Oh, man, you’re a genius!
In a society that has started to not only accept, but glorify teen pregnancy, this really means something to me. It’s nice to see someone still has half a brain in this twisted world of ours.
Also available: Twins! That’s fantastic! Sisters who get pregnant together, lose their dreams together!
Anyway, head on over to his site and check this out along with the rest of his fun and quirky body of work! Even the site’s name is funny.
Do you like video games? Do you like random artwork? Do you like reading the rambling of someone you don't know? I'm your man.
Raslazel - Fun With Words 
My Little Pony: I Can’t Believe I Liked It
Okay, so after almost two years of hearing about this show on 4chan, Minecraft and every other bloody forum I frequent, I finally got around to watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
Damn it, that show is awesome.
If you’re like me and have been putting it off, stop it and watch. I’m a 28-year-old man with a job and a wonderful lady, not some basement-dwelling mouth-breather, so take it from me: this cartoon rocks.
For the uninitiated, forget every single thing you know about My Little Pony. This isn’t about toys or fluff. The first thing I noticed was that it was developed for television by Lauren Faust. I knew right away it was going to be good. Even if you don’t know the name, you’ll know her work. Remember the Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends? How about Dexter’s Laboratory? She brings that gender-neutral humor to the table along with character-driven storylines that are sweet, fun and enjoyable.
I found myself laughing with the ponies, rooting for them in times of conflict and enjoying every minute of it. Even my love, who tends to take the “Disney or die” attitude with cartoons, was enjoying it. What got me most, though, was that I was emotionally affected by some of what I saw. Over the last three days, I’ve watched the first eight episodes and already I care about the characters. That’s the kind of show they’ve put together.
If you approach it with an open mind, you’ll have a good time. Or you’ll hate it. I think it’s one of those kinds of things. Whatever the case, I’ll be watching.
GG, Lauren Faust. GG, indeed.
If you’ve had a My Little Pony experience or just want to state your opinion on the show, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to leave a comment.
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Filed under Life
Tagged as 4chan, animation, cartoon, commentary, entertainment, friendship is magic, funny, Lauren Faust, life, MLP: FiM, my little pony, raslazel, review