armorofbacon

So there I was, in a bedroom the night before embarking on a journey to my grandparents' neighborhood for Thanksgiving. My elders live in the barren, anarchic country in southern Indiana where they hold these family reunion parties every Thanksgiving. I, not being a Thanksgiving person nor a sociable one, was not looking forward to this journey. But I needed enough strength to lift a turkey-coated fork that day, so I decided to get some sleep. Boy did I get some sleep.

My good ol' shuteye hours were being ravaged by a nightmare the whole time, like a storm tearing down every synapse and vein within my skull. Usually nightmares are frowned upon as a bad thing, but this time was different--I was about 20 years old, walking down the streets of an unnamed city in slow motion, the rain-slickened pavement sloshing beneath my feet. On my right shoulder dangled a puke-green gym bag that I lugged around with me on my journey from god-knows-where to god-knows-where. The distance between the squat hotel and I was steadily shortening, all according to plan. A violent soundwave shot from down the road to my right, jerking my head in that direction, seeing a teenager-riddled explosion go off that everyone ignored (except for the unfortunate teenagers, of course). Swatting this oddity away from my mind like a feeble insect, I focused on what I was supposed to do as I penetrated the boundries of the mildewed hotel, ordering a room.

Up in my 2nd-story room I was, lying down on a hideous beige matress, plotting where I was to go next. I had a roadmap and pen with me with annotations, footnotes, and doodles scrawled across the weathered and crumpled map. I had left my house a few days previously to embark on a quest for California--and keep in mind, dear reader, that I began in the midwest--so I could begin my job as a comic artist and writer for Slave Labor Graphics, as that is where their headquarters stand. Exhausted, I fell back on the reeking pillows, stared up at the celing, seeing the veins of cracked wood and paint bloom in all directions. While the cracks unfolded like a chaotic roadmap in Hell, the plaster and wood yeilded to the strength of an old woman's face peering at me from the ceiling. A pang of fear woke up every nerve in my body which threw me across the room to the door, throwing it open, and dashing down the short flight of stairs and into the squalid streets of the city.

But instead of ending up on the streets I walked previously, the view that met my eyes was instead a rainy, wooden wharf ruggedly built into a cliffside. Huge metal boats lolled in the harsh waters before me, their flying jibs ominously looming overhead. The wooden wharf was about thirty feet across, wrapping around the cliff's foot, and about ten feet extending into the ocean. Bullets of rain violently came down on us with the slashing storm wind rousing the poor wooden buildings of the marketplace. The marketplace, to my left, consisted of only a few wooden shacks and several tall and long racks of miscellaneous goods--tires, mufflers, knives, hoses, spoons--as many odd-looking people shopped, ignoring the raging storm. I hid among these racks lest the granny creature should find me. I was hiding behind a rack of pots and pans, the disorderly orchestra of rain beating down on their metal while I scanned around the place for it. But it was nowhere in sight, so I wandered about the wharf in curiosity.

A large, glass igloo covered in clay bas-releifs caught my eye. I ran over to it and saw my friend Aaron crawl through the tiny opening into the ornage igloo. I followed him into the narrow tunnel, requiring to get on all fours, only barely big enough to let me in. Within the igloo we admired the intricately detailed bas-releifs engraved all around and above us. While we did this Aaron talked to me about something I could not recall and, as I felt somethig wrong was about to happen, I decieded to frantically crawl out so as not to be caught by the unknown danged I sensed. The igloo's tunnel was originally very short, but soon I realized that the cramped tunnel I crawled through grew longer and longer, smaller and smaller. I became so claustraphobic that I released back into the dome and cast off my large brown coat. As I hoped it would, it made me a little slimmer which allowed me to escape from the Inuit dome. I lost my coat in there, but still I was releived to escape with my life.

The rain stopped and the clouds revealed the sun. My father stood beside me and handed me my Christmas gift early. Beneath the colorful paper was a very thick book, being all three His Dark Material books (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass) collected in one volume. This gift disappointed me not only because I have already read those books but also because I did not at all like them. Like a little child I stomped off and sold it to a bookseller nearby. Eventually I found my way back to the hotel.

I stood in the lobby of the hotel aghast to see all the air pipes and metalwork originally strung along the ceiling torn asunder, twisted and bent into a strangely orderly mess. The metal entrails from the walls, floor and ceiling were uprooted and hung about the room, with each bend in the pipe being exactly 90 degrees. If the building had been normally torn apart and destroyed as though by a bomb, it would still be astonishing yet would make some kind of sense; but this, an orderly destruction, was simply alien. I bolted up the stairs and around the second floor, but before I could reach my room a thick pipe above my head rattled and banged with violent, ugly coughing. A monster tore itself out of the pipe and dropped down before me--it was the grandma creature from before, only its body was a mass of tangled and torn pipework mimicking the human body in a grotesqu parody. Its face was a round screen that displayed a variety of twitching, sadistic, freakish faces as film grain and poor quality danced across its screen. A different face each second, it was truly a jarring sight. The pipe-creature retched with its hideous metallic voice and lunged at me.

The tangle of pipework clogging the room was complex and intricately crafted, yet it was easy to maneuver around it. The pipe monster chased me through the thronging jungle of industrial metal, hot on my tail, bent on killing me and continued to spew bursts of horrifying, sadistic threats with that blasphemous and rusty voice. It chased me to the far end of the hotel's lobby where a huge old-fashioned television sat laying upon the chaotic knot of pipes, playing only static and near-indistinguishable low-quality images. The monster thought I was cornered, closing in on my doom, but I jumped through into the screen which coughed me up inside a house as I landed on a cushion of several large-headed babies. The house had yellow walls and a door right across from the TV and I, which was only about two feet. I thought I was safe here but the spindly, spiderlike skeleton-of-a-woman Other Mother (from Coraline) opened the door with an eerie grim on her face. Her form was distored as though something literally crawled inside her skin--the pipe creature, I would imagine. But before it could get its sharp, metal claws on me the entire world around me warped and changed to a DVD menu. The babies and I were confused. I was about to press one of the options on the menu but one of the babies behind me told me it was a trap--each button was really a variety of ways the pipe creature could torture and kill me. I stepped away from the DVD menu, puzzled, trying to figure out how I could possibly get out of here. I looked behind and saw a black void yawn before me, and then the shadowy figure of the enraged Other Mother/pipe creature loom menacingly above, about to descend its doom upon me.

But I woke up, and I was scared--but in a different way. It was a fun nightmare.

Each and every one of you is required to bring me at least one wheelbarrow(s) of gold by midnight tonight to please your overlord.

Failure to meet said demand will result in a crippling blow to one organ(s) of your choice.

Thank you and have a nice day.

I've been really pumped for 9 ever since January, I believe, and I just got back from seeing it after that long wait.

It was...well...good. A bit better than okay, but far from amazing. 9 was sort of short--only an hour and 19 minutes--and compressing such potential into that small time frame didn't just work out. Perhaps if it were longer, the flaws would be fixed, except for the ending. The ending felt incomplete.

Overall, yeah it was cool, but it's akin to the experience of being really thirsty for some Coke but once you get it it's warm and flat. I waited for such a long time, and it slid a bit below my expectations. Shane Acker, frankly, is more of an artist than a storyteller because the visuals were astounding to say the least, but again, the story was riddled with many holes. Also needed a bit more action and more monsters. I was hoping for a monster fest, but each creature did not have a whole lot of screen time. Except for B.R.A.I.N., of course, because that's the antagonist, but I liked the other beasts better.

People complained about the story being flawed because it's the whole robots killing humanity thing which has been done a million times, but that isn't the problem and I had no beef with that. In a nutshell, it needed to be longer, the creatures needed more time, the action needed to be a little more intense, and the characters need more depth--again caused by the whole hour and nineteen minute deal; and the ending needed tweaking.

I waited so long and...I am disappoint. Shane Acker, I demand a sequel or remake or something.

I guess I'll go watch the masterpiece that is Coraline again. That should fill the holes in my heart...

No startup noise today, kids. Today we'll simply jump right in, down into squishy bouncy-castle constructed from my memories. You ready? Alright. Bouncy castle is a-go. Now BOUNCE!

We left off at the part where I summoned another cab--this one driven by an unshaven hotdog thinly disguised as a man with no war experience whatsoever--and escaped the pounding rain as I dived into the 34th floor of my temporary fortress. (I dived upward.) I was soon to be inevitably dragged by my eyeballs to see the performance of Wicked at the witch's very own tower. They don't have performers on Broadway--the monsters are REAL. I bathed in a thick bathtub of honey beforehand, getting all tidied up for the big show, the honey eventually hardening and forming a foot-thick impenetrable armor of honey with a cloud of bee bodyguards buzzing around in case the witch attempted any to cast any deadly spells during the performance. Honey and bees are, as everyone knows, every witch's weakness. Instead of taking the disturbingly fast Wonka-vator down to the ground floor, I merely stuck my back to the inside of the elevator shaft, slowly but surely sliding my way to the bottom, teeth and fists clenched for I had, for the entire trip to the bottom, the thrill of PURE ADVENTURE.

After long excitement-filled hours of reaching the bottom of the honey-flavored elevator shaft, I didn't bother with cabs this time. Simply by wishing I were at the theater--saving everyone the trouble of dragging me there--I was there, magically appearing in a puff of purple smoke. I sat at the top balcony where I could see tiny ant-sized dots if I peered through a microscope, and those tiny ant-dots were the performers. Y'see, the room where Wicked took place was very small and crowded for the stage was microscopic, everyone piling on top of one another attempting to see the wee performance. Luckily, I had my 3D glasses so I could view the play in 3D as opposed to those bland two-dimensional plays. Three-dimensional plays need to seriously catch on.

What did I think of the play? Okay, I suppose. There was a serious lack of both ghosts and busting, much to my dismay. There was, however, a Wizard of Oz robot mech that lacked a body. The golden robot-head spewed angry, belligerent threats specifically directed towards me as it flailed its wide, mechanical maw in fury, sending earth-shattering tremors throughout the room, reducing the audience to a thick and grimy stew that was not at all delicious. Unfortunately, it's very hard to understand what someone's saying when their mouth can only make two motions--open and close. It sounded mostly like "AHM AHM AHM AHM" until one corner of the jaw broke loose and made it sound more like a displeased helicopter, the rest of the mouth pivoting around only one screw. Two hours of this jaw-flailing madness, and then it ended with a slightly less powerful "AHM AHM AHM AHM" with more squeaky hinges. I left with tears welling up behind my eyes from the tragic tale the AHMs told in vocal morse code. I fought the tears down, though--just a little--where they then soaked into my brain.

Down the stairs I descended, using the Slip n' Slide I replaced all the stairs with two hours prior. Those people on the escalators had no clue what they missed. Soon enough I reached the ground floor, expertly tumbling and rolling my way to the entrance. But before I could go my tribe insisted we have our picture taken in front of a dragon statue that was, in no way at all, fake or just a plain ol' statue and was actually a legit dragon that simply refused to move and insisted to be made out of plastic. Since no one had extremely stretchy arms or cloning capabilities, we had to lend the camera to an innocent civillian in order for all four of us to have that moment in time successfully captured. The photographer was a very attractive half-Japanese woman with purple hair who had technical difficulties with my sister's primitive camera machine. You see, the first few shots she merely took a picture without the flash, but once her errors were corrected a blinding light fired out of the camera, burning all of our skin off, physically trapping that moment in time within the camera. It wasn't a picture--she actually took a slice out of time & space and stored it inside the camera. Thanking her for burning our skin off, we parted ways and fought our way through the supervillain-infested streets of Gotham straight to a delicious pizza restaurant. (Fun fact: Gotham and New York City are the same exact places.)

The pizza place was actually made of New York's glorious pizza. The walls were cheese, beautifully decorated with pepperoni slices of varying sizes, all forming a massive picture upon the cheesy walls. This pepperoni picture was a historically accurate image of New York being swallowed by a giant fish, reminiscent of that one time where that one fish swalled up the whole city. Yup, very real. We sat under it, sticking our entire arms into the walls and plopping a throbbing mass of pizza into our mouths. It was the most glorious pizza I ever tasted, so right there and then I hired an entire orchestra to perform a beautiful song to accompany the experience, squeezing every last drop of pleasure from the life-changing event of simply eating the Universe's Greatest Pizza. (It was the theme to Howl's Moving Castle, by the way.)

Once my stomach wall burst, flooding Manhattan with a deliciously deadly wave of pizza and Snickers, I immediately passed out and woke up to the sound of melted cheese gracefully flapping in the wind. (All through the night I could hear a queer and uncomfortable stomping and pummeling on the glass, but it was just Spider-Man.) I decided that somehow the pizza wore my body like a glove and got me back to my room while I was out. The pizza itself told me this. As it was being consumed by the gluttonous acid it spoke to me on its deathbed, sending delicious vibrations into my brain, informing me that it was the pizza that possessed my body for a joyride. Soon it blurbed out of existence, making its Heavenly voyage through my digestion.

Reluctant to let the pizza go, I woke up. I had a dream that night but all I could remember is that it had something to do with Emily the Strange. I bet she executed her evil scheme to rob me of my pizza by infiltrating my dreams, plaguing my sleep with nightmares of pizza-poverty. Luckily, her plans failed. Somehow. Anyway, I transformed into a bee and buzzed all the way back to my house, abandoning my expired temporary fortress.

But on the way there, while in Ohio, I stopped to eat food at Wendy's. I stared at the man at the register and the man at the register stared back at me with his unforgiving, reptillian gaze that would turn you into stone if you looked hard enough. His jarring necklace caught my gaze, for hung around his neck dangled a row of human skulls with numbers carved into their forheads. These were the skulls of Customers Past, I concluded, making me wary of his plan to devour any troublemaking customers. Uncomfortably, I ordered some food for the whole tribe, all four of us. He vanished behind the counter, slithering his way around the kitchen, leaving a gooey residue in his wake. Moments later he returned, handing us five drinks as he quickly swiped our money with astounding snakelike speed as he greedily inhaled the scent of the cash. I told him that four people do not need five drinks, and that he heard incorrectly. "Well, did you review your order?" he venemously hissed. "Review? Our order? Do you expect us to go down a list and check every single item, in case you could not hear our loud and clear voices?" I said in return, fist pounding, unaware of the new system where you're supposed to look down the list and make sure every single item was correct. (Alright, I'm sounding kind of lazy here, not going back and making sure the monitor displayed every single item, but seriously. You're supposed to LISTEN to the customer, not forcefully press their faces against the monitor of the register screen, demanding we carefully double check every single item with extreme care.) "Well then, you're stuck with five drinks. Heh." The register man again slithered away, his neck-worn skulls rhythmically clacking against one another. He didn't even apologize for the awry order.

We ate our food with caution. My father's sandwich was not a chicken sandwich and my drink was a coke and not a root beer like I specifically asked, that unnecesarry 5th drink evilly grinning at me from across the table. Now that I think of it, I did spy two large stictched areas on each side of his reptillian head. No wonder he got our order wrong--he stitched his ears shut long ago! It was part of his evil plan: first piss of the customer with a faulty order and then, later, strip that customer of his flesh and bake it into the food that would be eaten by fellow humans, unaware of this practice. This explained the odd tasting chicken. I dropped my fork in shock for his slit eyes were glaring back into mine, his head poking out from beneath the table. A hideous, bloodcurdling shriek threw itself violently out of his throat as his massive jaws snapped and clashed for my face, desperate for a meal of his own. My body was still coated in that foot-thick honey armor, so in return his gnashing teeth were crushed into tiny pathetic nubs, forcing him to live the rest of his life as a nub-toothed demon register man. I didn't even need to fight back for he dashed for the back counter in embarrassment where he assumed the fetal position, rocking back and forth, followed by silent cursing under his breath as tears of hate formed in his slitlike eyes. Worst Wendy's ever. Once again I mighty morphed into a bumble bee, flying back to my lair, getting home just in time to beat Psychonauts at midnight.

The End.

I wonder how many people actually read these.

That's all, folks. My amazing New York journaaaay that was not at all boring or mundane, save for the incredibly boring and mundane bits I had to drag you through. It was for your own good. For god's sake, stop complaining Now that we're back in the present, you can remove your skin where I branded you with the exploding scar should you have attempted to leave the building before my story ended. But now it has concluded. Run free, little ones! RUN! RUUUUUUUUN!

Also, the ending to Psychonauts lacked and disappointed, unfortunately. The story became a floppy, insubstantial pancake, lazily gurgling face-down in a pool of urine after the boss fight that was too easy and mostly centered around punching. The final boss looked cool, and so did my amazing psycho-robot suit, but looks only get one so far. Everything--the story, the gameplay, the everything--up to that point was glorious, but the ending...just don't look at me. Don't look at me right now. I'm drowning in my disappointment...come back another time...please...DON'T LOOK AT ME! STOP IT!
 

BZZZZZZZZZZKSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHA DOING A DOING KSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Hear that? That, wee lil' shitbeetles--as Warren Ellis might have said--was the sound of dial-up, confirming the connection to my memories. Remember when that horrendous FSHHHH flashed across your face, leaving you puzzled by the FSSHHHs of vague, traumatizing memories? Now that I am back at my house my powers are returning to me, and my memories with it. I will now fill in the empty blanks from the first day, the force of anticipation firing every single one of us through the bendy-straw of the future at an astonishing speed, only to slowly, squeakily slide down the plexiglass window of my recollections. Why that last word is in un-bold-able bold font, I will never know.

Carrying on, then.

Pre Image-Anime time, I think, The four of us were swept away by New York City's powerful, cigarette-cented evening gust, leaving us blinking into the sunlight at the doorstep of a Japanese restaraunt. Within the wooden belly of the Japanese eatery, I was faced with a seemingly impossible challenge--WHAT TO EAT. My brains argued and shouted over what dish I should order for the longest time, but the brain-cacophony noise had to cease. That noise was quieted with the oh so very silent fried fish I reluctantly summoned. The fried fish were so calming and noiseless that it could do a better job at being a ninja than an actual ninja could, and they could even calm down the Big Bang, reducing the explosion to only a mere tthhbthbtptpt. One by one the fried fish slithered down my throat, bathing in Sprite until i could eat no more and had to set the rest free into the ocean. To antagonize me, however, my father informed the waitor that I could speak Japanese (I forgot most of it and could barely speak it in the first place), encouraging that I embarrasingly talk to him in Japanese. "I have a confession to make," said the trembling waitor, his pen accidentally scrawling all over the bill from his internal earthquatke. "I can't speak Japanese either. I'm from Singapore," he confessed, as he yanked a zipper dangling from his forhead, his skin falling down around him as a Singaporean man stepped out. It was a truly heart-wrenching moment., the store flooding with manly tears. We threw money at him and then left.

Post Image-Anime and post-Forbidden Planet time: Entered the rectangular wooden mouth of Strand Books, or something like that. According to the website, the dilapidated building had over 8 miles of books if they were to put each tome side by side. (Instead they built a bookstore instead of an 8-mile long row of books, the morons.) I had the excietment and eagerness level of a giddy child, anxious to find a wide variety of cool books. Much to my dismay, however, they had very few comics and very few books that were interesting, lacking every essential fantasy, sci-fi, and horror book. The store owners did this to spite me, I know it. Seeing through their plan like one sees through a greasy McDonald's wrapper, I removed the largest book from the lowest shelf in the basement, causing the whole building crashing down on our heads. Luckily for us, I vanished in an outrageous thunderstorm and reappeared inside a taxi cab.

The driver stared back into my eyes with his wisened gaze through the rearview mirror, his eyes more vast than space itself. These wrinkled eyeballs had seen all of history with each emotionally-scarring moment from the American Revolution and both World Wars playing on a loop in his pupils. From the instant I looked into those war-torn eyes I was immediately teleported into the past for only a second, forcing me to re-live his entire life up until now at super light-speed, as if an elaborate way to tell me not to pull any shenanigans while on the way back to my hive-hotel. "Where to?" said the crackly wheezing  voice barely climbing out of his throat. I told him the location of my temporary fortress, and he drove me there. With honor! With dignity! I then left the cab, saluting him as he sped off into the night, a giant American flag fluttering in the nonexistant wind behind me.

DING.

That was the sharp noise of returning to the present. We have been yoinked through time into the present, the worm hole spewing you horrid wad of saliva-coated children into the story room where you should be. Now gather 'round, kids, for now we begin THE SECOND DAY.

My brain wrenched open my eyelids that morning, waking up to the menacing stare of the ceiling. I was able to defeat the ceiling in this staring contest, however, and to celebrate my victory I opened my bag of comics and read the pages of Zeke Deadwood and Mirror's Edge (the comic, not the game. Yes, it exists.) The room was filled with the shrieking and howling of debate, everyone arguing where we should eat breakfast before going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I could only duck behind cover as raspy words were dangerously flung across the room at one another, shaking the walls, eroding the foundation that kept the building upright. We all settled for McDonalds.

The voyage to the museum was not an easy one--the challenge presented itself to us, and that challenge was to get there by using only our legs. Vehicles not allowed. Getting there was even more difficult because of each member of my tribe kept halting the process by exploring the cavernous stores that lined the walls of the writhing, screaming city. Most of these stores involved wearing gas masks for the heavy clouds of perfume that were haphazardly sprayed about are deadly to people who were never exposed to such things as a child. My sisters, however, have been breathing the air of perfume and such ever since being enveloped by the womb, basking in the gaseous fumes of chemicals, becoming the perfume. The skeletal, birdlike inhabitants of the department store fluttered around the room, eyes unmoving, clawing and scraping at a fellow beast in a most primal manner only for a simple object one could acquire elsewhere in the store.

Arriving at the steps of the museum, legs now a healthy plethora of spaghetti, forced to drag my body around via hands, I carried a bottle of water and noticed a girl with short blue hair and black shirt sitting down and reading something over the shoulder of what was probaby her friend or just a really nice stranger. I could only assume she was Marie from Ed Edd n Eddy manifested into the real world, or perhaps an older, rebellious Coraline. Tearing my view away from her mesmerizing hair, I crawled the halls of the past and of the art. There was one particular room I was interested in. This room was hidden behind a statue of Buddha--his fat-rolls expertly hand-crafted--and within held glass cases full of living, writhing, organic wads what may have been alien undersea creatures. An abundance of eyeballs stared at me from across the room as I examined what appeared to be a tiny, shriveled man sitting in a fetal position inside the smallest glass case near the back. "Please," managed the wrinkly, crispy creature that looked more or less like burned bacon, "Help...us..." He uncrumpled from his position, slowly raising his hands up for me to see. His fingers had been cruelly replaced with candycanes! The horror! It was up to me and me alone to rescue the trapped beasts of the alien seas, but once I began my mission to return them to their respective oceans on their respecive planets using a rocket ship I cleverly built with a water bottle, two large square-shaped men with sunglasses and expensive cell phones rendered me unconscious and left me ululating in pig-latin beneath a hot dog cart outside the museum as I woke up. I had failed in my rescue mission.

Very soon I was babbling incoherent nonsene to myself on a bus in lieu of the underside of that hot dog cart. Curious glances were not glanced at me, surpsigingly, for every other bus rider were babbling themselves, including the mumbling driver that mysteriously leaked air from unknown orifices. I looked around for an explanation to this madness but decided everyone had simply gone mad from the hideous stench of the New York air. For most of the 30 minute or so trip the driver attempted to speak with us, but his alien tongue only sounded like KSSHSJHSSAKJDH static and nonsense to me, leaving me to assume he speaks in only the dreaded language of 1337-speak. Once 15 minutes passed, the bus violently jerked and flew beneath the city, scraping its metal roof against the underside of the concrete within the loud tunnels of the subway, sparks flying like the fourth of July. I peered out of the window, expecting to see a subway tunnel, but instead saw a subway tunnel from Hell. If you walk near the grates built into the ground on the surface, you'll hear the roar of what sounds like a subway going past. These are not subways, however--they are demons as everyone know Hell is located only a few dozen feet below the streets of New York City. Being chased by bloodthirsty minions with gnashing teeth were we, but alas! I saved us all by throwing my half-empty (or half-full) water bottle out the window, melting the minions into an evil, sinister stew. Hell soon vanished from around us as the bus vomited me onto the pavement at the edge of New York where land and sea met.

I could see the Statue of Liberty from a distance, for the waters were too roarin' and dangerous to be floatin' across, hmmm--a storm was a-brewin'. "Get out of here! The storm is approaching! Get to safetyyyyyyyy..." blurbed the statue as it was drowned by the raging storm, but still stood tall. It was a very large wave that reached to unbelieveable heights, but was soon parted by the Incredible Hulk's incredibly powerful Hulk-Smash, separating the sea into two sections he had done long ago (Moses helped the first time, however.)

Rain beat down on us, drilling tiny holes into everything it touched. It was a miracle I walked for about a mile until summoning a cab.

ZOOP

The sound of everyone once again being forefully forced by forceful powers into the present sounded, again forming all of ye into a writhing blob of time-traveling children. This is getting a little long now and it's almost midnight and I'm tired. Try to leave the building and I'll cut ya. After you asplode, of course. Remember, you're still branded with that seal. Everyone, quickly scamper back inside the musty old basement as best you can while I sleep in a giant, warm, comfortable bed decorated with Doritos. Have fun in there, sleep tight, etc. The story ends tomorrow.

Yesterday I majestically stepped out of my spaceship/time machine, helmet between my torso and my arm, returning from the excellently perilous journey from the hazardous vomit-stained pit known as New York City. I spent two days on the 34th floor of one of their mutant-inhabited hives, fighting off the creatures that dare come near my chambers, and walking the sleepless zombie-city on foot doing magical and wondrous things that are not at all boring. Here on this page I'll recap the two-day infiltration as best I can without making it boring and uninteresting. Open your information-receiving gates…now!

WHOOSH

That was the sound of my car blasting into outer space, causing an uproarious clash of noise before leaving the planet's atmosphere, only to be replaced by the absolute silence of road-trippiness. Auto-pilot engaged as we soared past the desolate vacuum of Ohio, Pennsylvania, West-Virginia, and then finally New York. However, after hours of travel--of both space and time--we had to stop and sleep at a Pennsylvanian hotel before continuing the next day. Morning came eventually after the horrible siege of Cheeto-flavored hotel creatures as we soon after hit the road. Most of the driving...er, space travel was spent reading Tick Tock and The Order of Odd-Fish, and occasionally drawing a heinous doodle or two. They all look appalling from the shakiness of the vehicle, but at least children's hospital I built with them was substantial and firm.

I AM THERE.

Camera in hand, I wandered the hostile streets of the giant pizza-island, taking pictures, buying things, and fought crime alongside Spider-Man. (He's getting his own Broadway musical next year, by the way. Not even kidding this time.) Anywho, the first few places I was dragged to by my siblings were boring and uninteresting, but eventually gazed upon the mighty paradise that was MidTown Comics. The treacherous, oil-slickened slope I had to climb was no easy task, for the powerful and metallic stare of the Hulk and Iron Man (see what I did there?) kept pushing me down the slippery staircase, but alas! My efforts were met with success as I eventually reached the top, leading into the neckbeard-inhabited lands of MidTown Comics. There were two floors all full of graphic novels, comics (there’s a slight difference), magazines, action figures, t-shirts, and a porno section near the back that was not hidden discreetly whatsoever. Arms full of comics, leaving the store empty and desolate (I took the other customers as well), I left the store for more adventures.

Some time later I landed at the doorstep of Anime Image (or was it Image Anime?) hoping to get me some cool Japanese stuff, being the anime-fan that I am. I grasped the handle of the door but soon my arm was torn off--the door was locked! How dare they close at only 7 PM! On all threes blood gushed out of the empty arm socket, cursing the store owner for closing up the place so early, but then the sound of a lock unlocking passed through my ears. They reopened, just for me! How nice of him. Inside the store was basically the Japanese equivalent of MidTown Comics, only smaller. Plenty of cool DVDs, comics, merchandise, t-shirts, action-figures, a lot images and statues of girls in bikinis and other revealing clothing and many other things cluttered the room, leaving little room for me to breathe. Drowning amid a sea of mostly cool stuff was I--much of it involving busty anime women--gasping and flapping for breath. However, I did discover some interesting things that I didn't buy for some reason (an FLCL and t-shirt that was pretty cool; didn't have enough time to look through the other t-shirts, though. Also laid my eyes on some excellent Gurren Lagann robots). Satisfied, I returned to the city-shaped bile pit.

FSHHHHHHHHHHHH

That, my friends, was the sound of briefly-flashing glimpses of what I could vaguely recall, FSHHing past your face. I can’t remember much else at the moment—probably because I’m tired—but I do remember walking an ungodly distance downtown to Forbidden Planet—an actual planet lodged within the back molar of New York City. By the time I was at the front doors my feet had become so tenderized the bones inside were merely dust; the flesh only jiggly sacks of meat with the consistency of a waterballoon that burst only minutes after. However, the travel was worth it—Forbidden Planet had everything I could ever want. DVDs, books of sci-fi and fantasy, games, t-shirts, action figures, and a gargantuan selection of comics as far as the eye could see (which had quite a variety) and even more. To put the icing on the already-fantastic cake they were playing Coraline on a massive HD screen for the whole store to watch. I could live there if I wanted to. And I did, for a few minutes, hiding within my fortress made from comics. There were so many comics and other cool things that I could only get a little taste of the experience before my overlords became impatient with my lengthy stay at the Forbidden Planet. I left sadly, reluctant to leave behind the holy building full of things I never got to look at.

The planet was not all that forbidden, really. There were no signs that told me to go away and the beasts guarding the building out front were swiftly crushed by my Hulk-smash fists. If you’re gonna close off an entire planet a good idea would be to have a leashed Rancor stomping around out front, the leash tied to a nearby fire hydrant. That's what's stomping around outside in my lawn, scaring off those neighbor kids. Sheesh.

And that, children, is where I will stop for tonight. You have now been branded with my seal which will detonate if you attempt to leave the building before my story concludes. Sleep tight.

RECEPTION LOST

This has been quite a cinematic week, what with watching about a hundred DVDs within a few weeks. I'll give ya a quick, lighting-fast review of each of the movies I've been watching lately in case some of them interest you.

Coraline: I won't really review that here, seeing as I already posted an over-exited entry about it prior to this one, (and also because I talk about it obsessively too much that you're all probably sick and tired of) so you can all tell that Coraline's pretty much my favorite movie ever. No explanation needed here. (Other than the soundtrack is excellently magical of which I have been addicted to.)

Time Bandits: a science-fantasy comedy movie directed and written by Terry Gilliam, co-written by Michael Palin--both part of the Monty Python troupe. A boy escapes with a group of midget bandits going all throughout time stealing things, with the aid of an ancient map stolen from God himself. An evil wizard, however, seeks to steal this map in hopes of overthrowing God to fix the universe. The fact that the people of Monty Python were involved in this movie attracted me to it, but it really wasn't all that great--I dug the concept more than the execution, to be frank. But still, it entertained a bit.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie: Based on the TV series, Mike Nelson and his two robots pals have to sit through godawful movies and make fun of them with their own hilarious commentary throughout the whole thing. (With a few sketches outside of the theater during the brief intermissions.) Hilarity ensues. However, it really wasn't a movie. It was just another episode with better cameras, but regardless, I laughed my arse off the whole time.

Spirited Away: Watching this one tonight. Y'see, two years ago I started this tradition where I would watch that movie once every year (July 23rd) in order for it's magic and charm to be intact. Since the future has DVDs and the internet and such, everything is so easily accessible and that makes movies and shows seem less special because it's far too easy, as opposed to waiting and waiting for it to be on. So, I carry out this tradition for my favorite movie. However, since February, Coraline has shared that seat and I now have two favorite movies, and I might just do the same tradition with Coraline. I have already stated how much I love Spirited Away as well, so I shan't continue in greater detail.

I know I've been obsessively talking about Coraline ever since I saw it on February 6th, but the DVD's been just released today, and naturally I'm bouncing off the walls in anticipation. Sorry 'bout that, but I just love that movie so much. It's a very special and magical kind of thing for me--that kind of thing that gives you a great nostalgia-like feeling you'll remember for the rest of your existence and takes you on a wild ride through imagination in its purest, finest form. The kind of thing that makes you forget for 2 hours that there's a real world within your periphery, outside Coraline's fantastic world I don't want to leave. The kind of thing that looks like a happy children's movie when it's really a trap--a horror movie, the filmatic equivalent to two razor-sharp rows of teeth covered in colorful candy wrapping. Something that you absolutely have to show to your kids and then their kids, whenever this happens.

For me, at least.

Coraline--and not to mention everything else by Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick--has really influenced my art and writing a great deal as well. After all, this is what inspired me to write Introvert in the first place, which is--so far--my magnum opus. Although it might be a little early to hail something as my greatest work, I've made hundreds of stories throughout my life and this is the most important and treasured creation of mine. I've really had a great time working on it, and I've gotten up to 20 chapters so far. And it isn't even halfway done, which means this incredible journey is far from over. Furthermore, I dream of having Henry Selick doing the stop-motion film adaption of Introvert once it's published, whenever that happens. Probably not for a very long time. This is one of my biggest dreams, and nothing will stop me from doing it. If--Heaven forbid--Henry dies before he has a chance to make this movie, Tim Burton'd be my second choice.

Of course, this is just me. Tastes in film and literature vary from person to person, so chances are you probably won't love it as much as I did. Nonetheless, it should entertain if only for the stunning visuals and the fact that it was 100% hand made, which is pretty freaking impressive. Once it stops being 12:49 AM and everyone's up, I'm heading straight for the mall so I can get my special 2-disc Coraline DVD. Nothing will stop me, not even the longest line, not the highest price.

Also, Watchmen's out on DVD today. Even though I'm a big fan of the graphic novel, I'm not nearly as excited. But still, I'm looking forward to it.

OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT. Alright, y'see, I bought The Path from Steam a few days ago, and not only is it a genius, original, and beautiful game that I love so very much but it's also really freaking scary. No joke. At first, it was just either a little eerie or not scary at all (albiet very mysterious), but as I got further into it my brain was melting and leaking out my ears because of how scary it got. I love it. It's been forever since I've been scared by a game and this really took the cake...

As I have informed many of you, Dave McKean--one of my favorite artists--was at a signing in Chicago just yesterday. I was already going to Chicago in the first place that day, so the coincidence made me a happy little boy. Unfortunately, my uncle's party started at the same time Dave began signing, so my plans collapsed into rubble and that very party took place upon those very ruins. I was within 10 miles of Chicago Comics. Anger ensued.

I won't go into all the boring detail of the party, but it was basically a gathering of family members from all around, including ones I've never met. However, I passed the time by annihilating each and every one of them with Captain Falcon on SSBM, so I got a bit of a kick out of that. (More like a FALCON kick, amirite?)

Now I'm back without a single item with Dave's sacred vandalism on the cover. Sigh...There's also a Comic Con in San Diego going on soon (or now, I'm not sure) but that's too far away for me to go to. Hurm.

Photos will come soon. Also, The Order of Odd-Fish by James Kennedy is GENIUS.

The day I lived today consisted of selling games and my DS for cash, throwing away burned pizza before the movie, watching said movie--and as always, drawing and writing. I went to B&N to get either MirrorMask or Time Bandits; I got the former.

MirrorMask attracted me due to it's stunning visuals and story by the wonderful artist wizard Dave McKean and the other half of the story by master writer goblin Neil Gaiman. Colossal fan of both. The movie was very good, but it disappointed me a tad--while the visuals were nothing short of visual pleasure, the story sort of dragged it down a bit. Only a little. There were some uniqe and creative concepts by Neil Gaiman, but gist of the story was--basically--a girl finds a mirror world and must save it and return home.

Even though every single one of my favorite movies and books are about this Carroll-inspired world-finding fantasy, those had much style and flair to it while MirrorMask was a little drab. (I actually can't quite pinpoint 100% what went wrong with the movie. It's odd.) Don't get me wrong--I enjoyed the movie, but I expected better from Neil and Dave. However, as far as the artwork and music goes, they hit the nail on the head. Hopefully, Time Bandits (directed by Terry Gilliam of Monty Python) will live up to my expectations.

I also noticed many similarities between this and my own story, Introvert. Many of the concepts that both stories share have been attacked, and this calls for some rewriting. In addition, Coraline--the work that inspired Introvert in the first place--seems like Introvert's loosely dangling onto a thread of it, attempting to be just like its older sister. More rewriting.

---

In other news, I plan on writing and illustrating a children's book. Those are, in essence, comics--the marriage of art and text to convey a story. Since children's books are ususally just story-style text with one big image, they should be a little different from comics, however. As always, the bizarre and the occasional morbid with follow in its wake.

G'night, ya bloody mongrels.

Nothing's really been going on this summer, so most of my time (i.e. right now) is spent sitting in my small, dark computer room, illuminated only by the screen of this monitor, drawing things in my notebook while listening to music. I'm trying to come up with some ideas for short stories, the next chapter in Introvert, and what will happen next in Underground. Ideas are forming, but the process is slow like a flowing river of bricks covered in syrup.

In addition, I've been praying for it to RAIN, but no luck. God damn. I want rain real bad. Sunny days just don't do it for me and I immediately burst into flames whenever I set foot into the outdoor inferno.

There is a tiny bug crawling about my screen.

That's all for now. Adios, fellow roadcrew workers.

After multiple failed attempts at making a LiveJournal account, I have finally succeeded in said endevour and plan to use this site to spill all of my brains onto. And you will read them. Me brains.

Right now I sit rotting here in a basement beneath the blistering heat of a 75 watt lightbulb, slaving away all for your amusement. Amusement is sure to come. But not right now. There is not much to update as of now, however. Stay tuned, hideous pixel friends.

(You can find me on other websites--Supacrazy on DeviantART; Squid_Dynamite on Twitter; The Unseen BBQ Plate on Steam; and The Periwinkle on Xbox Live.)

By the way, Neil Gaiman is hosting an Apocalyptic Ballon Party in honor of his 666,666th follower at http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/666,666_Apocalypse_Party . More information on that page.