What Do You Do?

"Well, if you want to know where I work, it's at [WORK LOCATION], but what I do is something else entirely. It depends on the day, really. If you want to know what I did yesterday, I drank cola and clicked around Wikipedia. What I've been doing so far today is meeting tragically uninteresting people and making insipid conversation with them. If you ask me what I'm going to do tomorrow, I'll probably say, 'wait until I'm alone in the house and masturbate furiously to fetish porn.' But at this precise moment, what I primarily do is hate your fat fucking face.

"Aren't you glad you sidled up to a stranger at a party and asked them to reduce their entire existence to a single superficial activity?"

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That's the response I give in my head. In reality, I shrug, say, "I work retail," and another part of myself dies inside. And no matter how much they deserve it, I never ask the same thing back, because fuckers who ask "what do you do?" are always more than eager to volunteer that information.

I Don't Trust...

...gray-haired men with black eyebrows. How can I believe anything they have to say when they can't even get all of their hair on the same page?

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...people who laugh too easily. Seriously, ladies, that greeting card is not that hilarious. How do you react when something is genuinely funny? Can you even tell the difference anymore?

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...ghosts. Motherfuckers be stealing all my shit.

Steggar the Mirthless in "The Spire of the Ubermages"

Steggar was born to Urion the Valiant and his wife, Velma the Fastidious, in the Village of the Elders in the third century of the Age of Hytophrexes, beneath a blood moon as the baying of the carrion hounds echoed mournfully across the Betur Plains, which everybody agreed was a mouthful to print on the birth announcement, but Velma, as her nickname would suggest, was insistent that every little detail be just so. Steggar was bathed in yak urine as per the tradition that nobody was certain to the origin of, and Urion and Velma were showered with many gifts of yak meat, yak hide, and wind-chimes made of the bones of yaks. The yak-poor were allowed to forego gift-giving provided they had a daughter of "taking" age who was willing to offer herself hound-style to the village chieftain. Most civic disputes were solved in this way. The relative merits and faults of the system are open to debate, but it was the only system they had, and the chieftain wasn't about to change things any time soon.

Steggar's childhood was a blur of violence, circumcision and ritual yak-blood drinking and is best not dwelled upon. Upon the reaching of adulthood, Steggar decided that he cared not for anything and took the nickame "the Careless", a decision he didn't think through very well. "Watch your feet, Steggar," the other warriors in the village would giggle. "Steady with that pile of boulders now, Steggar," the elders would cackle through their beards. "Are you sure that hut's properly constructed?" the youngsters would wonder. "I don't think you took the proper care in thatching that roof."

"Okay!" Steggar roared after a few short weeks of this ribbing. "I get it!"

"You have no sense of humor, Steggar," the village chieftain said, and he quickly re-dubbed the younger man Steggar the Mirthless. Steggar, happy to be shed of his hastily-chosen nickname, threw himself into the role, and for the next 13 years was never seen to bare his teeth for any reason but hunger or battle.

Then a few years of other events happened of no consequence, leading us to the situation with which this story is concerned.

To Be Continued

Stand-Up Jokes #1

They say that a friendship is irrevocably altered once one friend has allowed him or herself to fantasize about the other while masturbating. But I don't know. My relationship with Jesus has never been stronger.

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One of the things that's hard about getting older is that suddenly everything is "creepy" about you. You know? Everything that used to be sweet or innocent about young love, poetry, yearning, all that stuff, becomes creepy in middle age. Like, the other day, I was changing out the tape in the video camera that records in my toilet? And my friend was all, "CREEPY, KEVIN!" I mean, when I was 17 or so, you would have found my habit of hanging around the Juniors' Department fitting rooms taking discreet upskirt shots AS CUTE AS KITTENS.

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I would never advocate violence, but if you ever see a tall, sorta gimpy red-headed guy with a scar on his nose? That guy's name is Jonas Spitz, and he's a TOTAL ASSHOLE. Ask him, "Hey, are you Jonas Spitz?" and if he says yes, murder him. I mean, whoa, violence never solved anything, right? But seriously, kill Jonas Spitz. You probably won't even get in trouble, because everybody knows what a douchebag this guy is. Just in case, though, just in case there's maybe another guy named Jonas Spitz matching this description walking around, make sure it's the total asshole one first. A good way to find out is to, oh, I don't know--leave him alone with your girlfriend for about an hour. Trust me, you'll know if it's the right guy soon enough.

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Whenever you see one of those shark programs, they always have a guy on there who got attacked by one. He'll show you the scar, and they he'll talk about how he bears the fish no ill will, because sharks are a graceful beautiful and misunderstood species...Well, let me tell you, if I was ever bitten by a shark, I would become the world's most vocal advocate for seeking out and killing thost fuckers wherever they were hiding until they were extinct. I'd be like, "Sharks? Yeah, they're cold-blooded killing machines. A lot of people really have the wrong idea about sharks nowadays, thinking that they're these graceful, misunderstood creatures, but no: they live for human blood, and they will swallow your babies. Hey, did I ever tell you about the time one of them TRIED TO EAT ME? IN THE OCEAN?"

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Some people don't appreciate my attempts to stay current with the new music that the kids are listening to. I was jamming in my ride the other day, and the crossing guard was giving me the dirtiest look. I guess she doesn't like KIDS' BOP. So I put my van in gear and got the hell out of there. There are other schools for me to try out my new "After school shuttle-van pick up and free candy" service, lady!

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I think a great idea for a movie would be one about a persistent Cub Scout who tries to sell a candy bar to Harrison Ford for two hours.

Facebook Is Hitler

There are a lot of people trying to convince you that various things are Hitler nowadays. Obama is Hitler. Health care reform is Hitler. The economic bailout is Hitler. (Interestingly, according to these people, the same things are also "socialism", which, if you know anything at all about Hitler, is the most ignorant thing you've ever heard. Right, Bill O'Reilly?)

None of these things, of course, are actually Hitler. In fact, the only thing I've encountered in my life which can legitimately argued to be similar to Hitler is Facebook.

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, haha, Kevin, Facebook isn't that bad." True, except it really is. The sort of unthinking society of followers that the "Facebook generation" represents is as disturbing to me as the insanity that led a trollish art-school failure to become the most feared and hated figure of 20th Century evil. Now, I don't think that Facebookers are going to be gassing Jews or invading Europe. But I do think that people are giving away their souls to an individuality-sucking corporate cult of branding.

Earlier today, I got a couple invites from some relatives on Facebook to join some app called "We're Related." What the hell, I thought. I'll make my aunt and my stepfather happy and join this little thing. As soon as I hit that "accept" button, the virus started working. "Choose these other friends to be related to," it enthused. "Fill in your relationship to these people," it ordered. "Manage your family updates!" "Wait, you haven't done this other thing!" "Wait, there are still aspects of your life unsullied by this application!" "What are you doing?" "Get back here and finish what you started!" "NOBODY LEAVES BUSINESS UNFINISHED!"

I eventually just shut the whole thing down and erased it from my profile, but I suspect it's still worming its way around in there, goosestepping its way through Facebook and keeping the rest of my information in line.

That's the indisious thing about Facebook. It's not happy enough for you to be a part of the game. No, it asks you to inform on your friends, family and neighbors, too. It's a self-perpetuating sickness. Are you a member of the party? Why not? Don't you love your family?

From the ever-present branding to the simple fact that everybody's profile looks the same, Facebook promotes homogeneity at every turn. It won't rest until the games you're playing are the games that everybody's playing. And if you choose not to participate, people look at you askance and whisper suspiciously among themselves: "He's not playing. What makes him so special? MAYBE HE DOESN'T BELIEVE!"

So, pardon me, Facebook, but I've had enough of your rallies and book-burnings. I'm joining the resistance. I'll keep the profile just so the odd family member can get in touch with me in an emergency, but I'm taking off my Hitler Youth outfit.

Writing for Other People Is Weird

So, I've taken on a little no-money writing gig for a start-up blog out of New Zealand called Men's Domain. The site owner found me through Twitter and asked me if I would like to write a movie column of some sort, so I proposed "The DVD Cave," which would be a spotlight on movies that "real men" should have in their collection. So far I've featured The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Hard Boiled. It's a neat little thing, and even though I make no money at it, it makes me feel like professional writer to publish things on somebody else's website.

Here's the thing, though: it's really hard. Here on my own blog, I can vomit up words by the page and the only standards I have to meet are my own. But when I write for somebody else, I get all self-conscious, and my language gets weirdly formal, and the worlds wind up petering out way too soon. For instance, I should be able to write a few thousand words about The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly in my sleep; after all, it's one of my favorite movies. But for this other blog, I barely managed a page.

I keep telling myself that I'll eventually learn to relax and write as comfortably for other people as I do here in my own comfy corner of the blogosphere, but every time it's time to write a new DVD column, I procrastinate until the last moment, then quickly type up an awkwardly-written series of words that doesn't even communicate one tenth of the opinions I hold about the chosen film. Or, at least, it feels that way. I don't know how it reads.

Personal Message

Whatever half-ass apology you sent me recently has been deleted unread. If I hadn't been looking in my Trash for an old email, I never would have even seen it. The Trash is where all communication from you goes. It has been going there for a long time, and it will henceforth continue to go there until the day one of us dies. You have no invitation, implied or offered under any circumstances, to ever be a part of my life. I thought that I had made that more than clear. Whatever relationship you had with me in the past, be it familial or friendly, no longer exists. It never will exist.

You severed that relationship. You made a choice, and the last thing I want from you at this point in my (quite content) life is one of your patented, self-serving, weak-sauce "apologies". Just go on about your life, lie to whoever you need to lie to to get what you want, and forget that we were ever related to each other through some sick genetic joke.

If you attempt this again I will undertake procedures to bar you from contact in any way legally available to me.

Do you get it?

GOOD BYE. I don't expect to hear from you again.

Lock up Your Dogs

The other day, I was driving back from the store, and I saw a guy in his driveway trying to separate a couple of playing dogs. One of the dogs was a sort of white-and-gold colored one, and the other: holy shit, was that Stella?

What the hell was my shaggy black bitch doing out of the house and playing around with a random dog several doors down? I slowed down to get a good look at the situation, and since I am near-sighted, I had to squint at the dogs as I cruised by at a creep. It turns out it wasn't Stella, but actually another black dog which, in the final analysis, didn't look much like her at all. It was just another gift given to me by my poor vision, like when I see a business sign that reads, "Shelly's Lock and Bolt" but I think it reads, "Shelly Licks Cock." When you are near-sighted, every street-sign is a look into a parallel universe.

I sped up and pulled into my own driveway, went inside, and pet my own dog, then started wondering what that little situation had looked like from the perspective of the man trying to separate his dogs. He had seen a random car slow down to a crawl while the driver squinted up his eyes and stared intensely at his two harmless, fun-loving dogs, probably with the intention of coming back later and molesting them. Yep, I'm pretty sure that at least one of my neighbors now considers me a potential dog-rapist.

Every week I add another neighbor to the list of people I can't make eye contact with.

DOWNTIME--A Roleplaying Game

Hey, kids, did you know that your favorite Goddamn clever blogger is building his own roleplaying game from the ground up? It's true! Uncle Kevin is making an old-fashioned pen-and-paper RPG just like you used to play when you were kids, except this one is revolutionary because it doesn't have any orcs or wizards in it.

It's called DOWNTIME, and the basic premise is that the characters are souls killing time after death in a big, dangerous city before passing on to their Eternal Reward. But that's just window dressing: what it actually is is a lunatic hardboiled crime-noir game with metaphysical overtones.

The writing's going very well, and this idea is pretty exciting. As you can see, I've even dummied-up a rough draft character sheet:

This is a preview image, of course, and things could change before the final product, but please let me know which of you would be interested in a "quickie" version of the game for the purpose of playtesting. The quickie version would be missing some character-creation options, much of the setting detail, and the advanced rules, but you could still totally play a game with it.

I suspect I'll have a fully working version of this game by the end of the year, at which point I'm probably going to test it out as a downloadable .pdf. Let me know if you have any interest in testing and/or aiding the development process in anyway.

Thanks.