“I couldn't live a week without a private library
- indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor
before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.” ― H.P. Lovecraft

Friday, October 15, 2004

It's time for:
FUN WITH SCIENCE!
Or
TAMPERING IN GODS DOMAIN!

So I'm at the supermarket looking through produce, in particular the pathetic excuses they had for oranges, when I find the Grapple (pronounced "grape-l").

"Looks like an apple. Tastes like a grape." says the packaging.

The packaging also says 'Patent Pending' which is fancy advertising talk for 'Genetically Engineered'. You know, the way 'Impact Resistant' means 'Cheap-Ass Plastic'.

So of course I bought some.

Cause you never know when some mutant-hybrid fruit might accidentally cause you to gain superpowers, and since I can't seem to find any fucking broccoflower anymore this would have to do.

Anyways, they do, in fact, look like apples and, at least the one I ate, tasted like a grape.

AND like an apple.

It was kinda in-between.

Nate and Jeremy the Fu-Man-Jew, reported more mixed results.

I needed more subjects for a proper study.

Besides, nobody wants to be a mutant alone.

So I'm happily munching along and I'm looking up information on this wonderfully freakish piece of modern science gone wrong when I discover that it's not really genetically engineered at all, they're just soaked in some fucking artificial grape flavoring.

Dammit.

I'm never going to develop a mutant healing factor or freaking claws or anything with goddamn artificial grape flavoring.

Fucking FDA...

Hell, I'd be happy with just getting my memory back where it was before I got sick. (It wasn't great even before...)

Some of you have heard me talk about this before. Well hell, MOST of you have heard me talk about this before, at length, weather you wanted to or not, because I'm incapable of shutting the hell up about it.

Dying is the only significant thing I've done with my life in the last few years, so I tend to get hung up on it.

Anyways, I think when I flatlined I lost some important brain cells because I have 'holes' in my memory.

A perfect example of this is that I can't remember my cousin's computer.

I'll explain.

See, a couple of months before I got sick I visited my cousin in Baton Rouge Louisiana.

A short time after that, pornography appeared on her computer.

Her father, my uncle, apparently made the logical assumption that I (not being a catholic) must have been the one to put it there.

Now I'll admit, I love the porn, but I do have a modicum of tact.

Christ, I was only there for a few days, I had enough magazines to get me through that long.

Besides, I know how to cover my tracks, erase histories and the like. I'm not saying I'm untraceable, but you'd have to be looking.

In short: that just doesn't sound like something I would have done.

The bitch of it is, I can't say it wasn't me, because I can't remember the computer.

I can't tell you what brand, what options, what COLOR the fucking thing is. I can't even remember what room it was in, but I remember being asked to see if a CD burner they had was compatable with it, I remember that I did check and I remember that it wouldn't work.

I just have no memory of actually having done it.

It's not like a forgotten face or name, something trivial. Well OK it IS trivial, but this is the kind of thing I should be able to remember, or at least reconstruct, since I remember all the things around it, but it's like a blind spot, a gap, a bad sector in my brain.

I've got dozens of them.

For the most part they seem to be before the incident at the hospital.

Actually, now that I think of it, they get more frequent in the few months right before.

Significant? Damned if I know.

I guess what I'm saying is if you've got any gene-spliced fruit or vegetables send them my way so I can remember porn.

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Well work continues on the new Lil' Zombie strips as well as Terribly Wrong's 'Something Here Is Terribly Wrong'. And though those things are consuming slightly more time than anything I do besides sleeping (Roughly broken down it's sleeping, drawing, masturbating, video games and then eating) that doesn't mean the nieghborhood has gotten any quieter or less interesting.

To start with, just two days after my last incident with the police, I had another. I was putting the car in the garage after picking Nate up from work.

My garage faces the alley and as I have no garage-door-opener someone has to get out of the car (in this instance it was Nate) and open it. This pretty well blocks the alley.

So as we're doing this, a cop car pulls into the alley and stops a short distance away.

I figure he's just going to wait for a second.

Then he turns out his headlights.

Does the fact that I was a bit bothered by that make me paranoid?

He gets out and walks up to the car just as Nate is getting the door open (it sticks a bit) and...

*dramatic tension*

...it's the same cop from the last incident. The one we went to high school with.

This really bothers me.

See, there's this thing called 'Synchronicity'.

Synchronicity: Term for 'meaningful coincidence' coined by C.G. Jung to describe a cluster of events which do not appear to not have any direct [physical] causal connection with each other, yet are related through their sense of meaning. That is, the relationship between the events is evoked and recognized within the contextual meaning of the events.

In my world synchronicity is a bad thing.

Nothing good ever comes from it.

Ever.

So now I'm just waiting for the punchline. It may just be another speeding ticket (God I hope it's just another speeding ticket) or it could be far worse.

Guess which outcome is suggested by the way my luck has been going?

Anyways, I invited my cop friend to come by and hang out anytime, just so long as he keeps the cop car parked out front where the nieghbors can get a good look at it.

He said he wouldn't want to let it out of his sight around here.

That's fucking encouraging.

So in case you were wondering, the nieghbors are still loads of fun.

It seems that the guy across the street that used to bang on the electric box has moved out. Probably because somebody (probably our nieghbors with the dog) busted out all of his windows.

It was likely over an argument about pro-wrestling.

Dear God I wish I was fucking making that up.

And speaking of those nieghbors, my friend Sham's wife Macheal was coming into the house yesterday when she heard one of them remark "I guess those guys aren't gay after all".

At this point I'd like to point out that none of us are gay.

Not that we're anti-gay by any means, we're just not gay.

Thing is, all the gay people I've known tended to be fairly clean and conscious of thier appearance. Simply put: they wouldn't live in the rotting cesspool that we live in.

They would also dress better, probably keep thier lawn neater, and likely smell much better than I do.

Apart from those stereotypes, the only thing about us that seems gay is the fact that we're three single 30-year-old guys living together in a house and hardly any women ever come over.

And we can occasionally be overheard talking about butt-sex.

And Jay plays tennis.

Damn, maybe we are gay.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Soooo, news time.

I'm sure you've noticed the nifty new flash banner to your left.

No, your eyes are not decieving you, the former(?)-Reverend Mace has ressurrected the rough beast that was and is again TerriblyWrong.com.

Rejoyce you fools!

Your next question is probably "What does your renewed involvement with Terribly Wrong mean for Lil' Zombie?"

The answer is: not a damn thing. Lil' Zombie will continue spreading mirth and discord on Chaos In Motion just like allways. In fact, I'm working on several new Halloween strips as we speak.

So what will I be doing on the new Terribly Wrong?

Fucked if I know.

Maybe I'll finally get that interview with Jessica Lynch now that the rest of the journalism world is through with her.

Maybe I can call dibs on the movie reviews this time around?

In any event, it's gonna be quite an adventure.