Retroceding for Self-Betterment

Posted on January 10, 2012 by You Monsters Are People

No one is clever enough to figure out a way to change the past. I’ve lived a pretty unapologetic existence but there are a few things I’d go back and change if I were given the opportunity. Fortunately, that is not how reality works. We are allotted the opportunity to learn from the past, wallow in it or even ignore it entirely. But the best stories always end in one of two ways, by either succumbing to a tragedy or overcoming it. Either of those seem infinitely better than experiencing a mundane and dry existence absent of movement or poetry.

There is no assurance that people, luck or fate (if you believe in such things) will always be on your side. My advice is for you to just try to stack the deck in your favor. I can’t say with any certainty if the world is better or worse for my having existed in it, but I’d certainly like to attempt to make it a little more interesting.

Posted in comics, Current Events, Dark Humor, friendship, humor, Life, musings, stories, true stories, web comics, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , , | 23 Comments

The Guest List At My Funeral

Posted on January 2, 2012 by You Monsters Are People

I’m going to make a guest list for my funeral, that way people I don’t want to show up can’t waltz in and pretend to have been my friend or some long lost family member.  Normally, I don’t believe in the the velvet rope but I have to make an exception in this case.  There are just some people you don’t want to give the satisfaction of seeing your corpse before they remove the bones so they can be bleached, dressed in a top hat and and posed at the entrance of your children’s daycare center.

And, since it is a well known fact that I’d like to be consumed at my wake or (at the very least) have my ashes smoked by my inner circle, there isn’t enough to go around for every random person that shows up.  There might not be enough to go around anyway.  Hoards of people you haven’t seen in a long time always seem to randomly show up for funerals. Sometimes these are people nobody else claims to know that had a pretty minimal connection to the deceased.  I see that all the time; some weepy nonentity recounting, in great detail, about how close they were.  If you had once told them a joke at a party, they’ll claim that you shared a deep and profound moment.

I’ve even heard of an enemy putting aside years of bad blood to honor their fallen adversary at the funeral.  Granted, that’s impressively civil, but they are missing out on a golden opportunity to disgrace them in front of their friends and family, postmortem.  How could anyone resist placing a crawdad in the open fly of their foe and pointing it out to the great shame of their entire family?  I, most certainly, could not.  I sincerely doubt anyone could and that’s another good reason to restrict access to my corpse while it is on public display for my loved ones.

Then again, maybe I wouldn’t need to bother with a guest list.  There are times in your life when you wonder who, if anyone, would even show up.  I suppose it is the living moments that really matter, though.  The connections you have, or had, with people before the blood stops squishing around inside you are probably a lot more important than who shows up at a place with way too many curtains just to stare at your dead body inside of a box.  So, maybe, I’ll just charge a cover for the people I didn’t really want to show.  After all, someone has to pay for the laser light show.


Posted in comics, Dark Humor, friendship, humor, Life, Uncategorized, web comics, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 43 Comments

True Facts and the Warranting of the Preposterous

Posted on December 13, 2011 by You Monsters Are People

Despite its ability to manipulate others, end relationships, ruin lives, escalate ignorance and spread fear, misinformation can still be a lot of fun. Since moving to New York, I’ve been trying to spread as many vehemently ridiculous lies on the subway as I possibly can. First of all let me preface everything else by assuring you that the train car hasn’t been a cool way to travel in over one-hundred years. It may be the best suited vehicle to move people around in this dense urbanity, but you never know when someone is going to be breathing their garlic breath directly into your mouth or telling a racist joke you weren’t ready to hear. It is, at best, a double edged sword.

Amazingly, this still beats driving. This is not because driving is somehow impossible in the city, I actually don’t mind it, but finding parking in some neighborhoods is the definition of a Sisyphean task. I see people crying inside of parked cars all of time and I always assume it is because they are either overcome with joy for having found a spot or mad with grief because they are about to lose it. I haven’t looked at the statistics but I bet the police find a lot of people with a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside of their own vehicle.

So, unless you’re some wealthy tycoon who can take taxi cabs everywhere, you take the subway with the rest of the poor people. However, it’s supremely boring because most people will go well out of their way to avoid any human contact with another person. Therefore you really have to get in their face with something crazy for them to pay attention, however you also need to seem credible. My solution is to wear a tie and seem friendly.  It also doesn’t hurt to wrap up by saying, “That’s a true fact.”  People love true facts.

Obviously some of these events play out better than others and I rarely pick out anyone who looks too crazy. I suppose as long as someone goes home with a good story, I’ve done a good deed and entertained myself. Then again, maybe what I’m doing is wrong. People will believe anything these days and I could create the sort of confusion that could lead to irreparable harm. For example, I remember once wanting to see the film The Mask, with Jim Carrey, and my Mom almost renting Mask, with Cher. I was still a child in 1994, could you imagine the sort of mental anguish and psychological trauma I would have suffered? At a glance, “The Mask” and Rocky Dennis have similarly exaggerated features and I could swear the two films used the same makeup people. I could have potentially gone the entire movie not knowing the difference only to find out at school that I had seen the wrong movie. I would have been running around pretending to die in my sleep and saying “Now you can go anywhere you want, baby.” While everyone else was dropping classic Jim Carrey lines.

I guess we should all be careful with misinformation. You never know when someone is going to hear something ludicrous and just run with it. There’s a good chance that’s how most major religions and Fox News got started. But there are some things that sound ridiculous that we need to believe. Who would have thought amazing things like dog racing, bow ties and indoor plumbing existed before they saw it with their own eyes? There are some things, like love, that we simply have to believe no matter how ludicrous they seem because they just might be true.

Posted in books, comics, humor, Life, stories, true stories, Uncategorized, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Epidermal Ornateness and Absurd Discord

Posted on November 13, 2011 by You Monsters Are People

I’ve noticed a lot of people complaining about tattoos lately as if they are some sort of heinous affront to humanity.  If anyone has any insight to offer on this, I would be interested to entertain your thought in the hopes to gain some clarity.

I never really bothered to consider it before but there is some pretty hefty discrimination against people with tattoos.  It’s all sort of of baffling to me. Sure, not all tattoos are works of art or beautiful but I can’t ever recall having been actively offended by one.  It’s not like they smell bad or secrete a goo that makes everything sticky.  In fact, I’ve come across pieces that I’ve found quite beautiful and have an affinity for several inked bodies.  I’ve been enamored with burning giraffes running across a skin landscape, an octopus clinging to a ribcage or an all black abstract sun spread across a porcelain white sky of flesh.  Body art can be beautiful- especially on the right person and done in the right way.  Maybe not as beautiful as one of those time-lapse videos of a flower blooming or someone doing a wheelie on a dirt-bike, but pretty close.

I’m not really certain as to why so many people have an aversion to body art and the people that wear it.  Maybe it’s because people associate tattoos with gang culture or that bad element that nobody can seem to define but everyone assures you is “out there.”  It truly does offend some people but I have trouble with the logic.  I really don’t see the point of being offended by something that has literally nothing to do with you.  I could understand if the tattoo was in a conspicuous place and was actively threatening, but how often does that really happen outside of white supremacy groups?

A lot of people feel like they are protected by their First Amendment right to freedom of expression.  This isn’t the case in the corporate world.  As long as they’re not directly infringing on your civil liberties, your employer can force you to look however they want unless you can prove it hinders your racial, religious or gender identity.  Prison has the same rules but I’ve been told it’s more lenient on tattoos.  Still, there are some items that I absolutely refuse to endorse.  Some unacceptable tattoos include swastikas, your favorite athlete, any Looney Tunes character not strategically placed in a mosaic of other images, a poem you wrote, a poem your friend wrote, anything relating to Harry Potter, the name of almost every band and anything proclaiming your status as a gangster or informs me that you may or may not be “straight thuggin’.”

However, there are some tattoos that I would really like to see more of.  They include directions to famous landmarks, mathematical formulas, pin numbers, my name, the name of this website, a best page from your favorite book, babies posing as pin-up calendar girls, plates of food, unicorns, cats, classic cars being driven by dogs and Mount Rushmore with whatever presidents you see fit (allow me to suggest three Teddy Roosevelts and a Taft) .

Anyway, I’ve officially moved and am back to regular postings and, as a going away present, a friend wrote a song about me that I’m quite fond of.

Back to business.

Posted in comics, Current Events, humor, Life, musings, Uncategorized, web comics, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , | 151 Comments

Always Abscond with an Interminable Trail

Posted on October 17, 2011 by You Monsters Are People

I am moving to New York City.  Don’t worry, Michigan, I’ve left something for you to remember me by.  My love for you is as ceaseless as it is cardinal, and I shall return.

 

I’m not sure if people still do these, but a shout-out to Vinnie Massimino for his additional camera work.
Posted in comics, Dark Humor, humor, Life, love, street art, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 32 Comments

Anthropophagous Togetherness: Meat, Your New Friends

Posted on October 2, 2011 by You Monsters Are People

We’ve all looked at someone we’ve loved and thought, “When they die, I might eat them a little bit so they will stay part of me forever.”  It probably doesn’t happen all that often but it has happened.  You’ve noticed your mouth watering once or twice when you’re affectionately pretending to eat up a baby.  Do you know why?  It’s because a part of you wanted to eat that baby for real.  You wanted to pick up that baby, put it into your face and go to town for some cosmic cannibalistic reason that you could not even begin to explain.

It’s definitely a taboo but sort of makes sense when you really think it over.  Skeptics will claim that people aren’t food but everything is food once you are willing to eat it.  Also consider that some of the best foods for you are occasionally the least appetizing.  There could be untold benefits.  By eating someone else’s brain, there is always that chance you’ll gain some of their intelligence and a few of their memories.  I hear you asking yourself, “Is that really possible?”  Basic science points to yes, but research results have been mixed.  Experts probably want further testing before committing entirely.

But this isn’t a lecture on science, this is a request for progress.  Eating another person doesn’t have to be a big deal anymore, we can learn to evolve.  When you’re on your way out just let everyone know that they don’t absolutely have to go out for a burger after you kick the bucket.  It’s as simple as that.  Your wake would also be a barbecue.  While we are spending millions on slaughtering animals that probably would rather not be slaughtered, we’ve got a great source or protein that we’re wasting.  Cannibalism isn’t all Albert Fish, Armin Meiwes, Jeffrey Dahmer and Issei Sagawa.

Although temporarily incarcerated in France, Sagawa explained that he wanted to eat a Dutch woman he was in love with in order to gain sexual power but the only way he could see to do it was through killing her.  If you can argue with that rock solid logic, I would like to see you try.  He currently lives in Japan as a free man and low level celebrity.  This might seem like a miscarriage of justice but maybe Japan is just a more progressive and rational society than France and every other country I’ve ever heard of.  He wanted to eat someone, but couldn’t do it without killing them so he had to murder them.  One plus two equals three.  Still, he probably should have asked her in advance and not just assumed she’d be good to go.

Frankly, it almost seems disrespectful to just bury someone in the ground.  They put Lenin and Mao into glass cases and I can hardly believe that not one super fan has managed to sneak a piece of that red meat to taste the power.  I’d want to be eaten.  I’m considering putting it in my will that my grandchildren all have to take a bite before they put me in the ground or shoot me into space, (whatever is more fashionable in the future) or else they don’t get a dime of their inheritance.  Did you know that, before photography, people used to make dead people’s hair into jewelry?  I learned that at a museum and museums always have the facts.

Listen, I don’t want the whole world randomly biting hunks out of one another.  That’d be taking this too far.  I don’t even want you to think that it’s okay to eat a person unless they give you specific permission to do so.  Cannibalism isn’t a game.  It’s just a good way for us to all become a lot closer as people.  We’d appreciate each other a lot more.  Wait, maybe that’s what I wanted all along.  Perhaps, all the acceptable societal cannibalism is just a way for us to appreciate one another.  I suppose, we don’t have to consume human flesh to achieve a greater affection for our fellow human beings.  Let’s forget that idea almost entirely.  Maybe we can just strive to be less awful by holding open doors, listening and helping each other achieve their dreams.

If a person kept up being civil, somewhat kind and helpful, there is no telling what might happen.  They could even find love, I suppose.  It’s important to be close to people and give a piece of yourself to them, metaphorically.  And it’s imperative that you let them know how you feel, using your own words.  You never forget when someone important tells you something special.

Posted in comics, Dark Humor, friendship, humor, Life, love, science, web comics, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Modern Problems: The Cultivation of Pulchritude in Ugliness

Posted on September 14, 2011 by You Monsters Are People

There is a distinct absence of class today.  Back during what many refer to as in the day, if two parties had a disagreement, someone would have made a clever quip and then tap danced up a marble staircase.  Chances are, they would have probably even taken you out for a fancy dinner to settle your differences so you could discuss the matter over coffee, tea, champagne or all three mixed together.   If emotions were to run too high and an accord could not be reached, dueling rules were established.  Fights never broke out randomly.  Everyone took off their jacket before fisticuffs and took it outside and if they were already outside, they took it to the wilderness.  Even domestic violence was classier.  People only beat their own spouses and they usually exchanged gifts afterward.  It was basically a paradise.  There was a renaissance and then everybody stopped going to the bathroom in the streets and started using handkerchiefs.  Of course there were exceptions to the rules, often in the form of toothless chambermaids and stable boys.

As time marched on, the general population gradually became more exposed to the rest of the world through increased literacy rates.  Lewdness was coyly hinted at but rarely exposed outright.  Then came radio, television and the Pandora’s box of the world wide web.  These things turned a world full of handsome knowledgeable men who pursued gentlemanly conquests into a planet of hideous warmongering misers.  Terrifying magic has been replaced with the dull stability of scientific reasoning and, all of a sudden, people are trying to give everyone access to free information.  You can hardly even sit around without learning something these days.  While this may sound all right, let me remind you that it was at the expense of sophistication.  If you don’t believe me, try to imagine Gregory Peck checking his email or surfing around on an image board with his mouth open.

There are people out there that can’t live a normal life because they are addicted to pornography.

“Disgustingness” has evolved right along with humanity.  In fact, it might even have outpaced us.  If you’ve ever seen someone eating a turkey leg at a renaissance fair, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  With the internet, we’ve turned abhorrence into a business and business is booming, although, like information and entertainment, online perversion is unlimited and mostly free of charge.  That hasn’t stopped some people from spending nine-ninety-nine a month on it.  This is because the easy access to it results in a decidedly swift desensitization.  People yearn for a full-spectrum of emotional pain and cerebral sensationalism.  The heinously bizarre is sought out, absorbed and sought out again.  There is nothing inherently wrong with this.  The problem arises when a person becomes incapable of putting themselves into a normal situation due to sensory overload and the inability to relate to real life.  It isn’t their fault, it’s just the nature of the beast.  It can be too much too fast too often.  Before the internet, if you wanted the kind of mind-altering penetration at the same frequency, you would have had to go to the circus and pay everyone in the freak show to eat each other.

Do not mistake me.  I like having instant access to something so horrifically bizarre that, if I showed it to a theater full of hardened criminals, they would be so dumbstruck that you could hear a rat pissing on a cotton ball.  We should never ever take a gift that great away from ourselves.  We just need to police ourselves a little better and, occasionally, use these tools to make ourselves better informed and more talented individuals.  Remind yourself that, for every three videos of people crushing food with their armpits, there is probably a great article that can actually teach you something.

Posted in college, comics, Dark Humor, humor, Life, Musing, musings, science, web comics, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Great American Pastimes: The Lust of Four-Wheeled Abomination

Posted on September 5, 2011 by You Monsters Are People

It doesn’t matter if you spend your week cleaning out septic tanks with your bare hands, managing hedge funds, changing diapers or telemarketing in some far away country.  Everyone who was ever born loves Demolition Derby and Enduro Derby races.  I hear the doubters out there making claims that such things are reserved for the uneducated and the destitute.  These people need to leave their ivory towers and recognize that there are cars gloriously smashing into each other down here on the ground.

If aliens landed on earth and said, “Take us somewhere fun,” I would get them a couple of beers, cram them into a minivan, take them to the nearest county fair and sit them down in front of the most American thing I can imagine.  I assure you that, if they didn’t decide to destroy or enslave humanity, they would be singing along to John Fogerty and cheering on their favorite car (probably a Mercury or Saturn).

It all begins with the national anthem played over the vintage horn loudspeakers followed by the unintelligible words of the announcer and the rumble of ten gutted automobiles.  Everybody starts smoking cigarettes.  All the cars are painted.  Some even have themes.  The Halloween car, the rainbow car, the stars and stripes car, the my-child-painted-this car.  The referees take their places and stand on the mud track’s crash barriers in their blindingly white pants.  With all of the art and pure majesty, you almost forget that you’re waiting for a race to begin.  But, when it does, everything else fades away.  The fact that you have a collection of monocles that is so vast that you can actually sort them by what precious metal they are crafted from is irrelevant.  All of the things that seem hand crafted to make your days awful or boring immediately stop mattering.  You are on your feet with your friends and yelling hard enough for spit to fly out of your mouth at men in cars that couldn’t possibly hear you.  A three-hundred pound eight year old begins shrieking with joy as a girl with a large scar on her face tries to climb the fence and show her breasts to the drivers.  All the while a college professor is running around in front of the bleachers pouring out beer after beer onto his own face in the hopes that some of it would find a way to his stomach.  Of course, this is all seasoning for the main course of the steel ballet of automotive rage.

When it’s all over only one champion can stand to claim the prize.  In the last event I was fortunate enough to see, it was as if that man had channeled all of the hatred that he had for his job, his wife and his children through that machine and was focusing it on the other drivers like a laser-beam.  It was easily the best overall strategy for winning that I had ever encountered.  While I couldn’t quite make out any of the words he said into the microphone or read his lips through his mustache, I feel like I got the message:

“No matter who you are or what you do, the next time there is a county fair near your home, I urge you to grab some friends and lay witness to the greatness we vehicular gladiators can offer you.  I swear before my god that you will always be entertained!”

Posted in Uncategorized | 18 Comments

The Month America’s East Coast Gently Tried to Tear Itself Apart and Failed

Posted on August 28, 2011 by You Monsters Are People

I don’t want the current crisis involving the hurricane to overshadow the earthquake that occurred in Virginia last week.  Please don’t forget the tragedy and damage that those poor people still have to face during the cleanup process.  Those misaligned picture frames aren’t going to straighten themselves.  And, while you watched day five of the twenty-four hour news coverage of a rotating storm of pure hatred, there were eight million people in Virginia mentally replaying that terrible day they all got the rest of the day off from work.

Posted in comics, Current Events, humor, Life, science, true stories, web comics, Webcomics | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments