Novel

The Chapter I posted recently is from a book I am currently writing – a science fiction parody about an alien abduction. The protagonist is one of several abductees who the aliens are using to conduct a sociological experiment in cohabitation with. The lead alien believes he and the protagonist are best friends, but the protagonist secretly plots revenge against them for taking his life away. There’s more to it than that, of course, but that’s the general idea! I’m about half-way through it now, and it’s turning out quite well in my opinion!

Melvak Must Die – Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Abduction
I woke up flushed and drenched in a sickly coat of perspiration that clung to my skin like SPF 50 sunscreen. My heart was palpitating at an accelerated ninety beats per minute. My bedroom was basked a green eldritch light, and my ears were flooded with an oscillating bass sound that seemed to be droning in from every direction as though I were attending an invisible rave party. In the midst of my panic, I paused to consider that I may still be in some half-dreaming state. I pinched my nipple to wake myself, wincing at the very real – and, admittedly, very satisfying – pain I had induced. I was very much awake, and like a mouse puzzling over the looming cat-shaped shadow growing before it, vaguely aware that something completely fucked up was about to happen.
“Diedry,” I frantically nudged my slumbering wife beside me, “Diedry. Wake up. Something is wrong… something is very, very wrong….”
“Sorry Daniel…” she mumbled, rolling away from me and pulling the blankets along with her, “too tired for sex right now.”
“No, seriously. I really need for you to wake up right now!” She dryly smacked her lips a few times and began snoring obnoxiously.
Just then I noticed a white flickering in my periphery. I turned ninety degrees and watched in horrified awe as three shadowy figures began to materialize before my eyes. From what I could see in these lower light conditions, the gangly bipedal figures were standing at over six and a half feet and had distinctively large bulbous heads with almond-shaped white spotlights for eyes, like a 100 watt bulb shining from inside a big oval piece of swiss cheese. They simultaneously directed their spotlights at me and advanced slowly and ominously.
“Holy mother of crap!” I gasped under my breath as I deliriously pulled the blanket over myself in complete terror – on the verge of losing bowel control. Still asleep, apparently, Diedry pulled the blanket away from me and settled herself comfortably again, letting loose a big wet fart – the kind that has all the personality and inflection of a cute cuddly woodland creature. Normally I might have found this hilarious and endearing, but I was lacking the presence of mind to acknowledge my wife’s flatulence as much more than unhelpful. I reached under the bed for my Louisville Slugger, and scrambled to feet in my worn-down black boxer shorts and faded Batman t-shirt, backing into a corner and tensing my muscles in anticipation of hitting whichever one of these freakish apparitions got to me first. “Diedry, you REALLY REALLY need to WAKE UP and TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT this FUCKED UP SHIT in our BEDROOM!” She yawned sympathetically as though I had mentioned something trivial that didn’t require her immediate attention.
One of the horrifying creatures then intrusively entered my proximity, and I instinctively took a good swing at its head – a swing that would easily have given any ordinary man a seizure or worse – but, without pause, the creature fluidly and effortlessly deflected the blow, disarming me in the process and tossing my bat behind it with a wood-against-wood rattle. Panic-stricken, I turned and fumbled with the metal window lock. I didn’t have any real plan – my thoughts were a mess of fight-or-flight which left me precious little room for anything rational. The one who had disarmed me then procured a small black organic device and jabbed me in the ribs with it, sending an electrical current down my spine and temporarily disabling my motor functions. The monsters then pulled my feet out from under me, and, lacking the coordination to brace myself against the impact, I fell flat on my face and split my lip on my teeth. Feeling was quickly restored to my limbs as they pulled me along the splintered floor. I screamed and flailed, desperately trying to grab hold of something – anything.
“Wake up, you bitch!” I cried as I grabbed hold of my alarm clock, which was sitting atop my nearby dresser just within reach, and threw it at Diedry, bouncing off her head and flicking on the radio to INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” on full volume. Unfazed, she contentedly continued to snooze. Unbelievable. How the devil is she sleeping through this, were my last thoughts before I felt something sharp like a piece of cold lubricated metal slide into my lower back and I lost consciousness.

Dude vs Ninja

Stick cartoon of a dude with a ninja problem. Also there’s Fear Factory.

Stop Saying “Like”

Another entry in my ever-increasing list of petty grievances with humanity is the gratuitous use of the word “like”. What really drove this point home for me was riding a skytrain at 9 in the morning and trying to read a book while some jackaninny sitting behind me spouts the word “like” into her cell phone at a rate of no less than 4-8 times per sentence. Excuse me, Ms, but the last time I checked, it doesn’t make any fucking sense to include that many similes in a single sentence, and I’m pretty sure you don’t like that many things. I became fixated, unable to unable to focus on anything other than the relentless flood of “likes”; it was like trying to watch to Requiem for a Dream while your bratty nephews decide it would be clever to make a game of poking you with pointed objects until you hit them or their sugar rush subsides – that is, if I had nephews… or friends who would trust leaving their kids with me. Whatever. The point is that a lot of people need to reevaluate their position on rape of the language they’ve chosen to speak.

We, of the English-speaking variety, commonly share the problem of using “like” wrongly to some extent, and I’m certainly not without guilt, like, y’know? For the most part, it’s harmless slang. It gives your conversations a casual feel, and it’s really all too easy to automatically slip a “like” into a sentence pause instead of saying “uhhhh” or “ummmm”. Or you might say “like” when you’re quoting someone, making an approximation, or trying to sound like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. That’s fine; I won’t even bat an eyelash when you do. Where I take issue with the whole “like” thing is when it becomes a lingual crutch – a nervous tick – and you, like, find yourself unable to properly construct a basic sentence without it. “Like”-abuse is similar to mouth herpes – most of us have the virus dormantly where it doesn’t tend to cause much trouble, but in the event of an outbreak, you should really just get some cream for it so people don’t have to look at your stupid bloody sores or risk infection. Also, shower. You know what I’m talking about.

Here are some simple yet effective ways to clean up your sloppy English, you poor feeble individual:

1. If you pause in a sentence, you don’t have to fill that pause with anything. Captain Picard certainly didn’t get where he is with liberal sprinklings of “like”, nor did he need to assert his dominance by liberally slapping Wesley Crusher all the time – as awesome as that might sound. If you really find it difficult to not say anything during a pause, switch “like” up with some “ers” and “ahs” to at least infuse your inane conversations with some variety.

2. If you quote someone, you can often use the word “said” instead of “like”. Instead of saying “Joey was all, like, ‘Say, I’ve got a hankering for some swiss cheese!’”, you might substitute it with “Joey said, ‘Say, I’ve got a hankering for some swiss cheese!’”

3. When making an approximation, you could say something like “roughly” instead of “like”. For instance, When you tell your gay swinger friends “Ben’s penis size is, like, a meter, and it’s rough”, you could instead replace that with “Ben’s penis size is roughly a meter, which I like.”

Be advised that the words “roughly” and “said” won’t cover every eventuality, so you may want to read a thesaurus or take brain pills to get smarter. I’ve been taking brain pills for some time now and they’ve certainly not caused me any irreversible damage. In fact, my IQ is now well over 200, my erect penis size is a whooping 9 inches, and I’m able to bend gummy bears with my mind. You can’t deny the facts.

If you are now flustered, red in the face, and contemplating suicide at the prospect of losing your most frequently used word, and you’re thinking of conveniently pinning the blame on me, perhaps you might instead try shutting your stupid mouth. It isn’t my fault that your life up to this point has been a hilarious montage of spotty decision making. Besides, there are still two perfectly legitimate applications of the word “like”.

1.SIMILES, SIMILES, SIMILES!! Comparing one thing to the other. It’s a no-brainer. “Your whorish mother’s makeup is like clown paint on a walrus.”

2.Showing your appreciation for something, as in “I really like when you stick buttered-up root beer bottles up my ass.”

I hope this has been as informative for you as it’s been therapeutic for me. I haven’t felt this relieved since I beat up that 8-year-old orphan for using my tire swing; lousy freeloader. It might not be easy to stop saying “like” all the time, but with time and perseverance, we all can change our nasty habits and work together towards a common goal. Invading outer space.

I am Pyramid Head, and I am awesome and scary.

Every couple of years I get abducted by aliens around October and they rewire my brain into making me think I need to put effort into making a sweet costume for Halloween. So I obsessively put a costume together, piece by piece, spend one day gallivanting as some archetypal character… and then it becomes permanently retired to my already over-cluttered closet space. A quick recap on some of the memorable ones: a cardboard robot with pipe-cleaner antlers, a ghost wearing a white sheet, Wolverine, Edward Scissorhands, a hooker (done this one a few times I’m almost ashamed to admit), Lieutenant Data (or Lore, depending on who’s asking), and Magneto (minus powers of magnetism… unless you count animal magnetism *winky-smiley-face-larf-out-loud-vomit-suicide*). This year’s was easily my favourite. Pyramid Head. A malevolent figment of James Sunderland’s tortured imagination, and a symbol of his guilt, anger, and sexual frustration over his dead wife, Mary, who spends three years terminally ill before James kills her. Partially out of mercy. Partially out of spite. Very metal indeed.

This costume was probably the most difficult to create, mostly because I’m really not very handy. Sure, I can cook, write a sonnet, and make sweet Casanova-style love, but when it comes down to changing an engine in a car, it takes considerable mental effort on my part, like a dolphin trying to learn algebra. Also I don’t care. Let the grease monkeys figure it out. I’ll be in the kitchen baking pies to have sex with before they arrive at your table.

What was I talking about? Oh right, pies. I mean costuming.

I need to find another use for old costumes. Perhaps I could just incorporate them into my regular wardrobe rotation. Sure, I may get a few sidelong glances, and the occasional ass-nugget reminding me that “it isn’t Halloween” because he just can’t handle anything that deviates from his comfortably mundane existence. Even so, it would at least break a few people out of their self-induced hypnoses, if only for a few fleeting seconds before they go back to thinking about mortgages, reality TV, or whatever dumb stuff I imagine people get up to when I’m not around. Perhaps a girl might go home and tell her drunk dad that she saw a manifestation of a video game character’s guilt and sexual frustration, right before he beats the stuffing out of her for interrupting a hockey game.

Wow. Am I really this cynical? No. Well… yes, sometimes… overall, I’ve got a lot of love. Unfortunately it’s that special brand of tough love where I might visit your grave someday to skull fuck you, but then in the same instance, like night and day, I’ll get all teary eyed and leave you roses and sorrowfully ruminate on how we had so little time together.

Photobucket

The Tragic Nature of Being Ugly

Video of me making fun of Chris Sivak’s lame music.

The Breakup

Brad and Monica sort out their differences. Hilarity ensues.

$1000 / 2br – no smoking, no pets, no parties, no life (123 monopoly avenue)

Reply to: microwavedgerbils@gmail.com

Cozy 2 bedroom cesspool in a quiet god-fearing neighborhood available for rent may 1. Will only rent to single female occupants, preferably quiet students with no personality who know how to shut the fuck up and accept their life of servitude to the capitalist overlords who rigged the system long before they were born. Must be free of active sores and lesions. No fatties.

monopoly

Catnip Capers

OMG KATZ R FUNNEH!!

Nerds Fight Over Green Lantern Origin

Ha ha ha ha…