today my goal is to do find something like feeding tic tacs to a whale.

Hughie,
When I do things like what you are talking about I am in "Patrick Bateman" mode.

(the kid, who got into the fancy superhard to get into middle school last night, hurrah. She beat out like 700 other kids to do it) calls switching the shower from bathtub spigot to shower nozzle, "shower mode".

It's the little things that demonstrate deep craziness. The little things and having a tattoo of Paul Bunyan on your forehead.

*casts come hither look*
≡ Click to see image ≡
≡ Click to see image ≡
≡ Click to see image ≡

"Patrick Bateman"

I read this a Jason Patrick, and was confused. Then I thought Jason Bateman, and was equally confused. I get it now, but the brain, she is moving slow. Perhaps walking forward while looking back.

Every time I look at the title of this post I see:

Trivia, Ephemera, Apocrypha, Boogers...


Might be time to up the dosage.


Walking forward while looking back is a great way to find out what it sounds like when your head hits one of those hollow metal light polls, it's kind of a meaty snap and then a muffled bong. The only really good response I've ever had was to clutch my hurt face and then say in an accusatory tone of voice "Damn man, that was fucked up."

eth, I love your art.

good because you're in the comic
most everyone looks like zombie bunnies though

Hubba, hubba.

*growls*

British caricature.

When I was a kid, my parents would sometimes take us for a day of museum-going in our nation's capital, and we would stop at a Mexican restaurant called Señor D's on the ride home.

The menu noted, "For Added Enjoyment, sour cream and guacamole are only 50¢ extra."

My older brother would always order chiles rellenos "with the added enjoyment thingy."

I just need like 32 cents worth of added enjoyment, don't wanna blow the circuits like some kinda club hoppin' happy e-tard.

Heh. I love that. From now on, whatever I order, I'm going to ask for it with the added enjoyment thingy. Who knows? - I might be surprised.

Anyway, why do you feel so angry, Hugh? I know this is going to sound stupid, or patronizing (I hope not!), or at the very least ineffectual, but I would do whatever it takes to get less furious. Move? Find another job? Resolve what needs to be resolved? I get the feeling that you're often right on the edge of exploding, and you shouldn't have to live that way.

Yesterday, I was driving through downtown Dover, NH. I saw a scruffy older white guy with a big bushy beard sitting on the bus stop bench. At his feet was a large shaggy white dog. I looked again at the dog, and realized it wasn't a dog. It was a bearded mountain goat. I shit you not.

When I was growing up, my family at an old-school red-sauce Italian place called Sal's, that had been open since pre-prohibition days (it began as a speakeasy). On the menu they had a couple of philosophical gems by the old man who owned the place. Our favorite was:

"If a man takes a drink, that's his business.
If a woman smokes, that's her business.
Our business is to please you, you can be sure, double and triple sure."

This has become a traditional family saying, and we can use shorthand rather than the whole expression. Rather than raise an eyebrow when we hear of some new social scandal, one of us will just say "Hey, if a man takes a drink..."

Move? Find another job? Resolve what needs to be resolved?

Probably a lot of what gets me is the feeling that I really can't do any of the above. Can't afford to, can't bring myself to....

I also really wear my heart on my sleeve when I write things here. I'm a little more mellow in person, and particularly gregarious in speech, but, well, I'm a closed book in a lot of ways, and I think sometimes when I write I'm just slitting open my belly a little to let the black stuff come out.

I get frustrated because I'm not doing what I want to be doing right now (banking sucks: the only reason to do it is if the pay is good, which in my case isn't so). I'm a playwright and gradually, as I've worked here (the ideal job at first, because I could better leave work in the office every day; it's gradually encroached on my off-time), my writing output has become not less in volume, but more fractured.

I've also had a particularly rough year, but I don't feel comfortable writing about it all from work (death, heartbreak, heartache, worry). I know I just need to step back and relax, but it gets a little tough when I don't feel like I can afford it, timewise or else.

I've gone back to some of my core reading, trying to reestablish my relationship with my world, and with truth. Dame had a thread about most influential books the other day. I was glib in my "but there are so many" answer, but on further thought (and on picking it up yesterday for the fiftieth time), I realized that it's a manual to writing classic style called called Clear and Simple as the Truth, by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner. It calms me and helps me focus on truth and solutions instead of illusion and frustration.

Doesn't much make sense, maybe, and isn't necessarily an answer, but yeah, taz, I'm working on it, and thanks a lot for asking, you're a real gem; when I can afford it I bet a trip to Greece would sort me out (inspired as much by Durrell as by what you write and your awesome pictures).

Anyway, thanks, taz. You're a good person. That means a lot.

many fine men were in bookkeeping and banking
it's the kafka in you oozing up
i completely understand

I'm a little more mellow in person

actually he's comatose in person. It's a real pain in the butt pushing his carcass around in that wheelbarrow from saloon to saloon.

Yes, it does make sense, Hugh. It's so easy to get trapped and so complicated to find our way out of those traps... and then there's always another one waiting right around the corner. Sometimes I think that life is about nothing so much as constantly digging/clawing/gnawing/fighting our way out of those snares.

Metachat helps a lot.

I want to read the plays
now i'm all stimulated

Ok, I just put in the Hugh's Women section that I'd be honored to read your stuff, cause I've read for some small competitions and festivals, etc. I was just thinking about it driving back from lunch.

Sounds like quite the Invisible Man esperiencia (Ellison, not Wells; well, maybe Wells).

(I just read Ellison with my seniors, so it's on the brain...)

Hemingway's A Moveable Feast always helps me at these kinds of times (to the extent that such things can)... and anything by Bukowski.

When all else fails, like Jon said, hop in our wheelbarrow.

MetaChat: For Added Enjoyment... 50¢ extra

I have to be proud of it to send it out to be read by anybody, and most of my work is in pieces (write it, break it, put it back together, read it; rinse, lather, repeat) right now, but I may send something (both of) your way(s) in the future; thanks for the interest.

Pips, I bet you are the only people in your apt. building who own a wheelbarrow. The neighbors must want to borrow it all the time!

rainbaby: Well, we do hafta share with our 80-odd year-old Greek landlady with the cat with the same name as jonmc (gets a little confusing), and with the massage parlor/dentist/phlebotomists on the first floor, but every other Thursday it's ours for sure.

Cat and son, I should say.

Same first name or last?

First, dude. One day apparently the cat (one of the fattest fucking felines I've ever seen since our landlady* only cooks for him) ran off and she was in the alley plaintively yelling in her Greek/Bronx accent "Yanni? Yaaani-cat?"

*next to the word 'ethnic grandma' in the dictionary there's a picture of our landlady. Housedress, thinning gray hair, accent, swollen ankles, the works, just like my nonna.

I'M IN THE COMIC!? WHEN DO I GET TO SEE ME!?
i see so little of myself these days.

the zombie bunny version or the humanoid?
you wear a big scarf
dabitch and hugh get viking horns

BOTH!

i'd like a big scarf, but it has to be cotton (not wool or polyester), and cotton scarves are so hard to find. i'm glad cartoon-me found one.

Yo, I gots horns? Sha-fucking-zam!

here's where hugh and i fight off ninja
he gets the gun
i get the sword

we're in battle wear so no horns
the horns are just for drinking
≡ Click to see image ≡