The Snooze Button and Nightmares.

I don’t like nightmares. I’m not saying that anyone really does, but bear with me. Every since I was little I have had a very vivid imagination. Whole worlds sprang into being in my head. I planned invasions with my toys. There were more plot twists in an afternoon of G.I. Joes than in most M. Night Shyamalan flicks.
This wild imagination led to some pretty eventful dreams. These dreams could be good or bad, my mind was not biased.
This has continued through my adult life. I frequently (usually once a week) have a zombie dream where I’m fighting off hordes of the undead. I haven’t had a good nightmare in a long time.
Until today.
I hit my snooze button for 10 more minutes I’d blissful sleep before I got up and tried to hump this Tuesday into submission. Instead of sleep I got terror. Follow me through this dream.

X, Cootie, Haley and myself were in my house. My house was old though. Dark wood everywhere. Rich tapestries and carpets. Like a manor house. We were all getting some coffee and I remembered that X and Cooties’ daughter and her 2 friends were in the RV parked on the property. I asked if they may want some coffee and after a confirmation from Cootie, began filling a thermus. One Keurig at a time.
I know, right?
So my thermus full, I begin to exit the house to go to the RV. X says “Don’t let me forget to tell you about the 10th director of The Exorcist he only directed a 3 minute scene, but it was amazing.” I agreed to remind him and stepped out into the pre-dawn / post-dusk gloom of a thunderstorm. As lighting flashed and thunder boomed, I noticed a man and a woman talking. She expressed her intent to leave and then began moving toward a near-by high walled garden. He looked longingly after her and I though I should follow her. As I rounded the corner of the house, I heard a disembodied voice say “BEWARE OF X’S MOTHER!”

What the fuck.

I glanced up the lawn and saw a blue push-mower coming toward me, with no one pushing it. Immediately thinking of Maximum Overdrive I dodged out of the way. The Damn thing turned around and came at me again. “You’ve got to he fuckin kidding me” I exclaimed as I dodged out of the way a second time. As it turned for another attempt to make me shorter, lightning flashed and I suddenly there was a woman there pushing it. It was this woman, to be specific:

spooky shit, eh?

She was wearing a flowered dress and house shoes. Her eyes were vacant. Like she didn’t see me at all, but I could tell that she wanted to hurt me. As she came toward me with the mower, the Voice again chimed in, “You must placate her.”
So naturally I began to apologize for being in her way, for intruding on her thunderstorm mowing, for being here. I promised to not do it again and then to top it off I hit her with the Sign of the Cross. She stopped. So I took that as an indication that I had placated her. As I walked down the side of the house, I passed by a large, single panes glass window. When I looked into the darkened room, there she was pressed near the window. I stumbled back as thunder boomed and then the glass broke.

I woke up in a startled panic. It was very real and very fuckin weird.

So any idea what that would mean? If anything? Give it your best interpretations in the comments below.

Love.

All Your Heroes Are Gone…

I grew up reading comic books. Specifically Marvel and Image. Marvel had my standard favorites, Spider-Man, The X-Men, Wolverine, Daredevil, and Deadpool. Image was a small company created in 1992 by 8 creators who were tired of doing the work and “The Man” (Marvel, DC) owning the copyrights to their creations. So Image was founded as a creator-owned company where these artists/writers would solely retain the rights to these creator-owned properties. Seven illustrators (Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld, Whilce Portacio, and Jim Valentino) and one writer (Chris Claremont) created Image to work on things that they wanted to work on with complete control. Now 5 of these guys came from X-books (X-men, X-Force, Wolverine), Valentino came from Guardians of the Galaxy, while Larsen and McFarlane came from Spider-Man. Talk about a fuckin upheaval of the normal. Image as a company was founded as purely a licensing company, owning only the logo and its name. The property was formed under two principals, the first being that the creator is sole owner of their own work; the second is no company partner can interfere either financially or creatively with another partners work. To guarantee this, 6 of the creators made their own studios that would own the rights, but then still publish under Image. These studios were Extreme Studios (Liefeld), ShadowLine (Valentino), Todd McFarlane Productions (McFarlane), Wildstorm (Lee), Highbrow Entertainment (Erik Larsen), and Top Cow Productions (Silvestri). The first books released were Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.s, and Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon. These successful books, along with a few less successful endeavors, were sub-published under Malibu Comics. Image took off like a ROCKET. In less than a year, Image was publishing their own books and owning more of the market than DC with less than half of the number of titles. Next thing you know these industry leading creators that were fighting the good fight were leasing out work to freelancers. They were obtaining the rights to all of the works, but they also allowed the publishing of some other non-partner created and owned licenses, such as Bone, The Maxx, and Astro City. I stuck with them on a couple of their books. Spawn and Youngblood were great, I also loved Cyberforce and Shadowhawk. The point here is that the little guys were doing it. They were winning the good fight. They were doing what they wanted and were doing it successfully. Then they got too big. They had too much going on and all of a sudden there were delays in monthly books. Then there was in-fighting, claims of stealing talent, and eventual departure. Silvestri left Image, taking Top Cow with him because of the shady, underhanded tactics. Lee even sold Wildstorm to DC!!! How are you going to sell your “creator-owned property” to one of the most creative stifling companies out there. Valentino became the publisher and manager of Image and started a new practice of publishing creator-owned books but charging a fixed fee upon publication. Erik Larsen took over the publisher title and saw the #3 spot that Image held fall to number 5. Larsen was replaced by Eric Stephenson and Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead / Invincible).

So why this trip down Image Blvd? Well I am a huge fan of Neil Gaiman, as both a comic writer and as a novel writer. My first introduction to Gaiman was my friend Dustin’s big brothers collection of Sandman comics. Sandman was a DC character and it stands to this day as one of the few DC/Vertigo titles that I adore. His books Good Omens, American Gods, and Anansi Boys are phenomenal. He was already an established name in the comics game back in 1993 when he was asked by Todd McFarlane to write an issue of Spawn. The issue (#9, and one of the highest valued of the first run) introduced Angela, a Hellspawn hunting, angel. Basically the opposite of Spawn. Medieval Spawn, the dark ages version of a the Hellspawn that shows that not all Hellspawn are “evil”, whom is destroyed by Angela, and Cogliostro, a mentor to Hellspawn, who turns out to be a former Hellspawn, and the original murderer Cain. These characters were agreed upon as 50/50  co-owned properties between the two men (the founding principle of Image, remember?), until McFarlane continued to use the characters as main players in the series, spin-offs, toys, movies, clothing, etc. The problem? Well now McFarlane says that these are solely his owned property as he hired Neil to do the work as a work-for-hire freelancer and therefore McFarlane owned everything that Gaiman had created for him. Todd McFarlane proved at that time, in my opinion, that he is a back-stabbing, money-grubbing, two-faced, asshole. The entire purpose of why he left Marvel was because they wouldn’t release rights to him for characters he created. SUPPORTING CHARACTERS (remember that), as he didn’t create Spider-Man, only drew one of the most memorable supporting characters ever, Eddie Brock / Venom. Now this is an entirely different debate as to the creator(s) of Venom, as the suit was just an adaption from Spider-Man’s symbiote suit. There are people going back 10 years before the creation of Venom that claim they have some part in the character. This contention was one of the main reasons McFarlane left Marvel, because even though Eddie Brock/Venom was wrote by David Michelinie and drawn by Todd McFarlane, the character was created as a work-for-hire project and is solely owned by Marvel (sound familiar?). So ultimately Gaiman had to sue McFarlane and Image to be paid for re-issues and revenue generated from the 3 created characters of the Spawn universe. Gaiman had to return to court over the characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina, and Tiffany which were OBVIOUSLY rip-offs of the Medieval Spawn and Angela characters, an attempt to utilize the characters and still not pay the due monies to Neil. The characters are slightly re-drawn and include small cue changes like hair cut/color, etc.

So now this is to where we currently are. Erik Larsen, is utilizing a social network (Twitter) to spout off bullshit about how “Neil Gaiman could not have created Angela elsewhere. Her existence is dependent on Spawn and Todd McFarlane.” (via Twitter @ErikJLarsen) but the same can be said about Venom. With no Spider-Man, there would be no Venom. No Venom, no controversy. No controversy, no “Forging a new path” with Image’s principles. Ultimately Marvel made Todd McFarlane a recognizable name, he used that fame and the controversy revolving around the creation of these characters to headline Image (100% true statement, as Spawn outsold all of the other books combined) and then tried to screw Gaiman out of the rightly deserved claims. It’s not as if Gaiman attempted to use the created characters outside of the works they were shown in, but he still deserves to be paid. McFarlane has now went so far as to not include the #9 issue of Spawn, as well as the #10 issue containing the copyrighted character Cerebus, from the 1-12 reprint collection. McFarlane was also sued by hockey player Tony Twist after he used his likeness and name for a mob-based character. Seems McFarlane wants to make his own rules, but not play by anyone else’s.

The long-winded point I am making here is this. I looked up to Todd McFarlane, I used to doodle my spider webs just like he drew in the Spider-Man comics, I have 1-100 of Spawn including many off-shoots, I have many of the Spawn toys, I went and saw the Spawn movie TWICE, even though it sucked horribly, I bought the fuckin SOUNDTRACK and a T-Shirt, I snuck out to watch the cartoon on HBO, and I even picked up the return issue of McFarlane coming back to Spawn. Unfortunately, heroes that you think are diamonds can turn out to be made of glass. I looked up to this man, I didn’t even question him paying that ungodly amount of money for the purchases of (from Wikipedia) “Sosa’s 33rd, 61st and 66th home run balls, and McGwire’s first, 63rd, 67th, 68th, 69th and 70th. (McGwire’s 61st was the ball which tied Roger Maris‘ then-record, while McGwire’s 70th, bought by McFarlane at auction for US $3 million, set a new record at the time — broken in 2001 by Barry Bonds.) He later purchased Bonds’ record breaking 73rd home run ball for $450,000. ” He owns half of the Edmonton Oilers, he bought Green Monster Games with Kurt Schilling and changing it to 38 Studios, they are currently working on MMORPG games. All of this money flying around and he tries to SCREW another artist out of due payment for rights. It’s a fuckin shame.

I know this is kinda off topic for me, but I couldn’t help it, some of the shit being said on Twitter by some of the less savory characters involved (or believing themselves to be involved) in this ordeal really pisses me off. I am glad that the judicial system stood up for the very rights that McFarlane himself was so adamant about protecting.

If you have some money to donate to a worthwhile organization, please visit http://cbldf.org/ and help protect people who deserve to not have their art stolen, to be paid for work created, or not cited for obscenity by selling comics when anyone can purchase “Maxim” or the “Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition” and see real people in more obscene positions and states of undress.

I have never understood why people don’t want to be chosen for Jury Duty. I would love it. I have waited and waited, but as of yet, I have not been chosen. First the Jews, now the Government? When lord, when’s gonna be my time!?! I don’t wanna get chosen for one of those shitty day courts either. I wanna be a juror for this century’s Scopes Trial. I wanna be sequestered (Tell me, did the Ramones start playing in your head? They did in mine) for at least a week. No contact with anyone, media black-out, free room and board, plus PAY! What’s not to love about that? Maybe this all stems from that movie with Pauly Shore…

Y’know what I hate? People who have no idea what they are talking about, but force other people to listen to their inane bullshit. I mean sure, I may ramble, I may even say things wrong. The difference is that you have to come to me. I am not forcing my opinion on you. The people that usually have the most bullshit opinions are ususally the ones that know the least about the subject to. I remember as a child waking up on Sunday morning and all you want is cartoons (this was before The Disney Channel or Cartoon Network kiddies, we had 5 channels and that included PBS). The problem? There’s no fucking cartoons on Sunday. Instead I have to choke down my Cocoa Pebbles while listening to a pinch-faced, walking stroke victim berate people who don’t believe or send money to him. So for a bit of a learned lesson, if someone says “Hi, I am a professional painter, I deal with painting all day, I can tell the different colors of paint by taste alone,” don’t be the asshole that tries to tell them that they are doing it wrong. It makes people hate you. It makes me hate you, which admittedly isn’t hard, but still.

Why in the fuck has this oil spill not been stopped. Like, it boggles my fuckin mind that there is not some sort of fail safe that makes it STOP PUMPING OIL. I mean really? Are the oil companies so cocky that they are like “Our shit is tough, it won’t break.” Now they’re like “Well it broke, so we need possibly 90 days to ‘TRY’ to fix it.” I mean really? That’s a worse exit strategy than Iraq. Look, I am all for drilling in America, I don’t care. I am a consumer, through and through. I don’t give 2 fucks about the world after I die. I don’t and probably will not have a legacy left behind. Drill here, make gas cheap, do it. But have the common sense enough to make a fail safe. I mean this fuckin government MAKES me wear a seatbelt or they fine me, but there isn’t a requirement for oil rig fail safes? I saw a report saying that there are MULTIPLE products designed to prevent this exact thing from happening, but they chose not to use them. Probably cost ratio. Dumb fucks. I hope it gets fixed, I want gas back to a managable price. Plus I like seals and shit. Y’know what my dad uses when oil is on the garage floor?

Someone call Tidy Cat!

So I think I may have a touch of depression. This is completely self diagnostic, but I may be right. I don’t wanna do anything. I would rather just sit somewhere and write, draw, or just stare blankly at the wall. I prefer the company of my dog to the company of people (except for X, Cootie, Drew, My Sister, Ant, and my Mom). I have all kinds of ideas of things I could do, but I have neither the means, nor the drive to accomplish them. It sucks, maybe I need some medicine…

Think about the money that these 3 people have.

Carlos Slim Helú – $53.5 Bil

William Gates III -$53 Bil

Warren Buffett – $47 Bil

That is $153.5 Bil net worth. Lets put that in perspective. Worlds most expensive plane? Stealth Bomber $1.8 Bil, Most expensive piece of sculpture? Alberto Giacometti’s – Walking Man 1 – priced at $104.3 Million. The average salary of a New York Yankee’s Player? $7 Million. Denver Colorado’s Gross Metropolitan Product last year? $145.6 Bil. These 3 fuckers are worth more than an ENTIRE CITY/COUNTY made last year, and a large city at that. These are just the top 3. So here’s my question? Why the fuck is there poverty in this world? Why is there disease? Why are there wars? Why the hell hasn’t someone built an Iron Man suit? Honestly? Through all of the ridiculous amounts of money that these people have, no one can pay to have the best minds come together and fix shit? Bull. Greed, people, greed.

Well that’s all I have for tonight. I am off to sleep. And props to X, who’s picture idea I totally ripped off, but it makes me laugh. Peep his movie blog here http://bettergeekthannever.wordpress.com/ he’s at least 10 times funnier than I am.

Salutations.

Napolean Pedophile and the giant-toothed monkey

Today was my niece’s 8th birthday party. It was held at Skatetown USA in Fountain City. Upon our arrival, there were a few people there as well. By 2:00, it was full of people. I saw a black guy dressed in a referee’s shirt, a bubblegum pink haired teen, many tween to teens dressed waaaaay to provacative, and 3 specific “Old” Men. Now these old men were completely alone, no kids, grandkids, or friends. One had a long white beard and was a skating machine. Backwards, forwards, fast and in traffic. I’ll grant, maybe he skates for his health or for the pure love of rolling around in circles. The second guy stood leaning on the half-wall watching the skaters. Its possible that he had a kids, I suppose but in roughly 20 minutes of watching him he didn’t wave or acknowledge any skater. He also intently watched the tweens and teen girls, and stared off on the others. Creepy, for sure. Harmful, possibly. The third, whom I affectionately termed Napolean Pedophile. He was wearing dark slacks, white tshirt, glasses, and tussled hair. He was attempting to skate. Mostly he was stumbling around the rink staring at the kids. He came over near our party table for a water break, and straight up leered at my 4 yr old nephew. I kept a very close eye on him and he moved on. Now I don’t know for sure that anyone had bad intentions, but it made me very aware. Watch your kids.
My niece, Faith, is obsessed with a monkey named Bobby Jack. I don’t think this smiling little bastard has a TV show or anything, but it’s probably in development. The monkey doesn’t do anything except have GIANT teeth and smile. Two things piss me off about this little simian anti-christ. 1.) He can be drawn by an epileptic 4 year old with those big, fat, jumbo crayons. Its an oval, a half circle, 2 eyes, 2 round ears, and a giant watermelon slice. Some asshole drew this and now has made millions. I hate that there are true artist that don’t make shit, while some jack-a-lope scribbles a fuckin Cheshire Monkey, and it’s yachts, russian bikini models, and handmade vodka in a crystal caraffe. 2.) It’s a fuckin monkey that has 2 first names.

Jesus, the youth of today. We also had a group of church skaters “Holy Rollers” if you will. They had shirts and hoodies proclaiming that Jesus is comin back, and he’s mad. I. Can’t. Wait! Jesus “The Christanator” wielding duel shotguns that spray holy fire. I wanna see it. Or maybe he’ll come back and attack like Godzilla, squishing the chosen and the heathen alike under his sensible desert inspired footwear. Awesome. Well they also skated around holding a bible, that they passed off to each other. I named this the Jesus Relay. Awesome. I love East Tennessee.

Get down with the Sickness

Yeah I am sick. No blogitty blog right now. We’ll get back to my regularly scheduled blog as soon as I feel up to typing on this TINY KEYBOARD!

Failure

Well here it is the third day of the year that I have set a goal to blog every day. Ha! With this one, I am 2 for 3. That is par for the course. I never see stuff through, usually because it gets boring. That is why exercise has never worked for me. Its not because the act itself is too hard, it is just that repetition bores me. Now granted I am sick right now and did a ton of eyelid watching yesterday, but still. So I apologize. If there is one person that saw my Jan 1st blog and thought, “Awesome, I cant wait to read more of this assholes random self-depreciating ramblings,” then I apologize to you for letting you down. But honestly, if you know me, what do you expect?

Welcome to Zombieland

I watched Zombieland today, and it has inspired me to blog my Zombie Survival Guide. Not taking credit for that name, because there is a great book by the same name, that everyone should read. Here’s mine. Enjoy. (noting that I do have a family, but for spacial reasons, they are away and they took my dog with them.)

6:00 am – wake up to breaking news that the dead are walking the earth.

6:15 – Put on my fatigue pants, tshirt, sweater (if cold) and duster. Put on my hiking boots with 2 pairs of socks. Grab my pre made disaster bag (fuck yeah, I have one), which includes 50 ft of nylon rope, a butane torch, 2 tshirts in sealed plastic bags, 2 knives, 1 hatchet, 1 blanket, 1 20 x 20 tarp, 2 extra pairs of pants in sealed bags, 6 pairs of socks in sealed plastic bags, 1 rain gear, 1 bottle of scotch (just in case). I would load this bag in my car along with my shotgun, a box of shells, a crowbar, and a pair of bolt cutters. My .357 mag revolver is on my belt.

6:45 – I pull up to Bass Pro Shops. The backpack is put on, the .357 mag’s holster is unbuckled, the crowbar is slipped through the loop in my jacket, bolt cutters slipped through the straps on the bag. With shotgun in hand, and car parked right outside of the door, I break the door glass and make my way upstairs to the guns. On my way I grab a hiking backpack with a frame out of the camping area. I open it and stuff fill the bag with .45 auto, .410 3 shot, and .357 mag ammo boxes, as much as will fit in the backpack. My backpack is turned around in front, the new bag goes on my back. The gun counter gets bypassed, as I can’t break the gun locks. Instead, I go through the back door, take the box marked Springfield Armory 1911 .45 automatic. Then I get outta there. It should not have taken more than 15 minutes. If there are no police outside, I am in the car and gone. If there are police, I would declare right to bear arms, and hopefully get to my car without getting shot.

7:00 am – On the road. I am texting all of my friends finding out who has any idea of a defendable building. Preferably a building with roof access, no more than 3 stories, few windows or doors, and a wide open area around it. After agreeing on the place, I would text a list of what people need to bring. Food, weapons, blankets, clothes, batteries, radios, laptops. These things can be used to communicate and find information until the power grid goes off.

7:30 – 8:00 am – Meet everyone at the safe house. Take inventory of what supplies we have. If needed, send out teams of 4, 2 to stay in a car, 2 to go in the store. Once we are all together, we can monitor the situation while keeping a 2 person watch on the roof. If the government provide a quick response and is working, we will follow what is being suggested. If the bullshit drone of “stay in your homes, it’s under control” further options will be discussed. I personally will be comandeering a large sized boat and making my way to the ocean, hopefully a lady or two will go with me. Hopefully all of the lockes will still be working. Once on the ocean, I will live off of fish, and find an island to live out my days.

There ya go. Of course some plans may have to be altered onthe fly, but you get the jist. Watch Zombieland and come up with your own plan, just because you never know.

Stop paying the death merchants?

I have quit smoking. Not really because I wanted to quit, I got sick. Really sick. H1N1 – that’s swine flu, and an asthma attack, that turned into pneumonia. I went to the Emergency Room and my vitals were so bad that I was instantly admitted. In 15 minutes I had 3 bags going into me via IV. I was honestly close to death. 103.6 degree fever, serverely dehydrated, half of a lung down (both of which are weak from asthma and smoking). All of which was taxing my heart, which is already taxed by my weight and lack of exercise. The Dr told me that 2-3 more days and I would have been dangerously close to death. Awesome, huh? The last thing on my mind was smoking. At this point (sunday night) I had not had a smoke since Wednesday morning. The nurses, or bloodletters as I like to call them, kept trying to put nicotine patches on me. Luckily I was awake enough to stop them. I am not really having bad nicotine cravings, it is more the habit of doing it. Driving is hard, I chainsmoke when I drive. After a meal, just because it feels like a smoke should end the meal.
The truth is I can use the money that I would have spent on smokes (nearly $50 a week), but most importantly my stay at St. Mary’s scared the shit outta me. I laid in that bed, usually alone, and thought about how close I was to dying. I don’t wanna die, I have a lot that I want to do. So I will suffer the headache that I have had for a week and a half in order to keep breathing. I hope I can encourage some of my friends and family to quit next. If you have kids, a spouse, hell even a pet, stop smoking. U need to decide that these people want you around and ultimately you are taking years off your life. Join me in quitting! It is crazy to pay someone to kill you. Yeah I ripped that off from Clerks, fuck off. Try some Chewlies Gum. Noodge!