Boredominated Ch. 1

Derby's decision was final. Half his life wasted on flash cartoons and cheap whiskey was more than enough. Stretching his back on the crumb and dust decked floor of his studio apartment, the thought that tomorrow he'd be 38 galled him. It was offensive. It was more than he could consider; more years, more cartoons than he could remember. The early years, well those he could recall with precision. Why wouldn't they still be fresh in his mind? The freshest years of his life. Since then, since he settled, since he adopted cartooning as a career mold and rot have riddled and ribboned him. First came the stale years. Rhymes well enough with failure. He's used that joke once or twice. Then there was the fungus. He can see his reflection in the TV on the wall and yeah, that looks like a mold-ravaged man. Then rotting. Brain rotting. No sex in years, no fancy restaurants. Making ends meet doing what he loved when he was a kid. Rot rot rot.

Who knew? Everything was new, anything was possible back then but it was all so ephemeral too. Appealingly so. Making cartoons was a hobby. Gained an awesome reception, bolstered some self-esteem, started making some money on merchandise. Real nice, a real nice college job. Who wouldn't want that on their resume: internet celebrity, influential flash cartoonist, had several thousand fans on facebook. What's that? You want to see my portfolio? Here, let me just borrow your keyboard and...there you go. My portfolio has 117 diggs this morning. Slow day for me. Not my best work. HIRED! But he never got around to actually applying to any jobs. With the DVD deal he didn't even have the time. Got into the habit of doing the taxes of a self-employed man. Got into the habit of sleeping 12 hours a day. Got into the habit of masturbating into empty starbucks cups and stacking them at the foot of the bed. Brushed his teeth every other day. Kept the LOLS coming on a strict and mandatory basis. Every week a new Beluga Whale & Orca full-length. Every other day an Onion-man short. Once a month a holiday special, nevermind that there aren't enough holidays when you can always make more. Being creative is the job. No breaks for the creative. Gimme. More more more.

When was the bottom ever going to drop out. How could people steal like this junk? He'd like to say "I don't know about you guys but I grew up" but of course that wasn't true. Re-read the previous paragraph for clarification. But he stopped enjoying watching flashtoons a few years after he started making them. Same with webcomics and viral videos and everything he loved back when boredom was his wiliest foe, when containing said boredom was his greatest responsibility. But it got old, didn't it? Homestar, Weebl, everything on Newgrounds. Was it bitterness? Insecurity? Lack of self-esteem. He should have quit five years in, jumped to a new high, a new competition. His tolerance level for this dope wasn't hitting the spot anymore.

So be it. No more. He'd made his decision. He'd done 2,999 cartoons. With 3,000 he'd retire. Or at least find a better job. Something that demands that he shampoo his hair every once in a while, perhaps. Didn't have anything lined up yet but this was his chance. Worst comes to worse he'll beg his parents to let him move back him. He has no shame. All that's left is mold.

He hasn't informed his audience. Hasn't told the company in charge of merchandise. Doesn't plan on it. Two years back his work became a bit more irregular, a tad more capricious. Like once a month irregular, when he damn well feels like it capricious. Of course of course a horse there was griping on message boards - same as it ever was. Took a lot of what was left of his self-discipline to keep him from telling his adoring, boredom suffering public to bite him on his prostate. They didn't deserve to be told anything but prices and sizes. They'll wait around for a while after number 3,000. Ooh, maybe he'll lurk the forums in between application. Just to gauge disappointment. Let's see who the real fans are? Whose going to keep clicking back the longest? Let's see some old-fashioned, god-fearing devotion!

But. What to do for a finale? A month has nearly passed since number 2,999. Not a very well spent month. No productivity, no work done on anything, no applications filled out, few showers taken, few vegetable eaten. He's never had performance anxiety before. From the start he just flung whatever shit he thought could possibly funny up against the computer monitor to see what stuck. And then he used it all, the good as well as the bad because who cares. He never expected a following but he took it. Never expected money but he took that too. As much as he could. Never expected fulfillment and what do you know? Can't be wrong about everything. So fuck it, just have Beluga Whale drown or something. Ahh, but then the forum jockeys might find an in on the joke. The joke is not for them, it's on them and his intentions must not be deciphered that easily. What to do, what to do...? Lunch, that'll do.

As he approached the kitchenette corner he saw a funnel of electricity rip a whole through reality right outside his window. Max Headroom appeared with an electric voice and electric eyes. He just stood there, massive! His chin nearly rested on the the awning. Derby opened the window. "Who are you?" "Why, I am a wizard! You must tell me your wish before I grow impatient."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Happenstances for Humanity: Introducing.....Man Ican Daly

Rachel Tree lost interest in what you had to say 25 seconds before you were done saying it

Rachel Tree Bides Her Time

High School Follies, Ch. 5

Mr. Benislav? I was hoping we could have a chat in my office. Please come over after your last class.

Sure thing, Ron. The good kind of talk, I hope. Lots of performance enhancing compliments.

Just be in my office.

--------------------

What's up, Mr. Benislav?

Oh, nothing Natalie. Just had a weird run-in with Mr. Tenner. I might have gotten myself in some trouble somehow. Maybe because I didn't bring my geography class to the assembly. No matter, they're better off for it and he damn well knows it. So, did you find anything for me?

I got a nice infographic from the UN-

Scum

-on hunger on Somalia.

A graph they no doubt spent all their time and money on. How nice. What about that thing Crystal was yammering about yesterday? About surgeon general warnings.

Yeah, I've got a few links to a recent study that suggests that she's right, warnings result in more smokers. Increases the appeal, I guess?

You know what they call that? The avuncular state.

Oh, also. I already told Mr. Tenner and Mrs. Kaylon but I thought you'd want to know. I was walking over here after my geometry class, passing through the palms, hoping your horde had already made their exit-

Watch it now-

-and while approaching I see this guy who's clearly too old to be a student but is also clearly trying to pass for one. And he's hovering around your class, like he's waiting for something.

I don't think I like this

-uh huh, so I ask him, perfectly composed but basically Hey Buster, can I help you? I'm a TA for this teacher, ya know. So what do you think he asked about. Your little law tribe. Just told him I was going to get security. Soon as he left, I saw Mrs. Kaylon walking by the assembly hall. We went off to tell Mr. Tenner.

Oh Jesus. You didn't think that might be what Ron- alright, did he look like a reporter.

Like I know what a reporter looks like. Want I google that? And for the record Mr. Tenner wasn't angry, just confused. Anyway wouldn't a reporter better than, like, a lawyer? Mrs. Kaylon and I got to considering that-

Natalie honey, I'm a lawyer! If Mr. Tenner tries to shut down the Bleacher High Gentleman's Law Club, then he'll need a lawyer to protect himself. From me.

So you'll still support those limpdicks-

Natalie, now don't get emotional. I support the free exchange of ideas and I know that you do too.

But they're paralyzing the school. A dozen students shouldn't be able to dictate to the school what kind of dances it throws or what kinds of fundraisers or what speakers get invited. That has nothing to do with ideas. Whatever you think about their ideas and I really hope you don't really believe that stuff about feminazis for your sake but still, it's not about ideas. It's powere relations. They've got too much of a say. They believe they're so important and they deserve so much that they're supposedly not getting and it's bad enough we let them get away with it like they really are the silverback alphamale cocks of the walk they pretend at. The school shouldn't cave in. That's irresponsible. It sets a bad precedent. You guys are training an army of pricks. Limpdick pricks in fact, because I stand by that adjective.

Well, they do have their rights. And one of those rights is the right to argue their case. If they can make a convincing argument and attract enough support for their cause, then so be it. If it means silly traditions and well-intentioned but deeply flawed attempts at alleviating alleged ills done to women, especially, say, if these attempts are the products of a liberal, let's say, superciliousness well then all the better. And if you have to resort to vulgarity to rebut their argument, well...And besides, what's wrong -on a mature and rational level please- with the club really, and watch the language. I mean sheesh.

Is it vulgar for me to wish your wife gives you a good backhand-

Boy you know what I give you a chance, I treat you like-

-no no, listen, hear me out because if she heard what your kids were saying. They're more than fine with hitting women. More than fine. You know what they say about wife-killers. They're "winners in a world of fail" I've been trapped here typing up your study guides while they go on and on and on about how sad it is that husbands who off their wives so often end up killing themselves. That it's a tragedy someone so committed to the cause is lost like that.

And they're obviously kidding. You need to stop being so sensitive, Natalie. But you know what, I'd rather get this sorted out sooner than later. I'm going to be in the principal's office. If period 5 shows up before I'm back just hold the fort, okay. Quiz them on the Reconstruction. Oh and by the way, you need to stop hanging out with that closet leftie Shonte. Took me a moment to realize where that talk about power relations was coming from. You'd have made a better point if you didn't fall back on Marxist cliches. Okay, I'll be back.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Miss Sumthina Oren Otter spends the day at the park

Fahrenheit 198.4 aka They Live in Utopia: A Neuromance for a Brave New Age(chapter1)

In the unlit fireplace sits a pile of haphazardly stacked books just itching to cascade at the feet of the conversationalists purple in the cold and panicking in overwrought prose, pacing from one corner of the twilit living room to another. Uncomprehending of the tortured talk of the these teary-eyed tenants, the dusty artifacts quietly abide in the stone-walled dark and dustier artifact amid the artificial artifice of this iron-wrought architectual ejaculation. Once this would have been a church. In later eras this would have been a factory. Later a courhouse, its perched gargoyles administering a Foucaldian gaze of justice upon this stone and steel city. Later it could have been an arthouse. Or a slaughterhouse. Today it is just a halfway house for homeless refugees, for authors and their ilk. There's a banging at the door, shouts, violence! The books see nothing and wait 'til tomorrow.

Now it is tomorrow. The books are dustier. The fireplace hasn't felt the warmth of flickering flames in an epoch now. The city is less stone, less steel. The city, the county and the State are almost entirely composed of plastics and electronics. It's an ugly muck-up of post-industrial design and city planning so long as you're not wearing your glasses. But no one would be caught dead without their glasses. It's the year 21**, for goodness sake. Might as well go out without clothes, ya silly! How can you navigate around town without seeing the news cyberreports viewable only on your glasses. Or the neuronews, or the microtetris. And that's how it goes. To leave your house without your glasses is a punishable offence: endangering self and others, misdemeanor. abandoning civic duty, misdemeanor, the practice and promotion of Luddism, a felony.

That this eyesore has survived the era of the Internet is amazing. That these books have survived the Censor's Sickle is truly astounding. Neither pose any danger to contemporary sensibilities. Inside the virtual reality the glasses provide, the building is nothing more than a kinetic wire framework in which advertising, street signs and digivision programs are enmeshed. All matter fades into the background, even this monstrous monument to a dessicated history. And with the conversion of sky to structure, what former scholar Rex Presley refered to quaintly as the "departmentstore-ization or Macysication of the ecosphere", modern man is not wanting for space.

That the books go unthreatened is nothing remarkable. What threat are books when all intelligent people are all-but-functionally illiterate. Literature is a dead language. Most likely no one today would know just what are these brittle, tree-scraping-derived things covered in webbing and dirt. Not that there is anymore a state-sanctioned force who would have cause to worry over such trivialities as censorship or cultural inculcation/indoctrination. Not that there is a state anymore. The closest modern analogue is the community court where civic duty is enforced, but not according to any national mandate or authority beyond the will of the community. There's no one left to stifle freedom. By definition, this is the freest much of mankind has been in a millenium.

Wait, there's a echo in this building. A young woman is pacing where the artists and author's of past revolutions paced. What is she doing here? Why is she crying? Watch, as she throws he glasses into the cubbyhole extending out of one side of this dry room. As the glasses strike them the books finally topple over, potential energy finally bearing fruit. And as we know from our digital lectures in the city center plasti-park, for every action there is a reaction.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Miss Sumthina Oren Otter stars in....My God's Magniflowers

High School Follies, ch. 1

The Bleacher High Gentleman's Law Club was first formed by sophomore Dustin Myers early last year at the suggestion of his father, Brent Myers, a well-known attorney well-known primarily as an outspoken & ardent promoter of respect for Law and Man. His history of lawsuits against "ladies nights" and other "egregiously patent examples of systematic reverse discrimination on a national level" which have granted him a profitable notoriety suggest that his emphasis is decidedly on the men-promotion. Not that anyone could so much as suggest it at a school or community gathering without embarking on a shouting match. Not that anyone who isn't already among his choir would bother saying anything to him on any subject in the first place. The man's collected quite the enemies list. Even the conservative city council dreads his attendance at public meetings. Understandable given the lawsuits he's shot like automatic rounds of rubber darts in every direction in the hope that one or two will stick. The Chamber of Commerce considers him a menace to capitalist enterprise. When Chuck's mirror & glassware shop on Pierce Ave. was handing out pink ribbons to little girls to promote breast cancer awareness Myers made the biggest and silliest stink a grown man is capable of, which of course entailed manly threats of a courthouse beatdown. The next day when Chuck relented & handed him a ribbon, Myers made an ostentatious show of tossing the ribbon down to the ground because, he loudly noted, if testicular or prostate cancer doesn't merit a ribbon then neither does breast cancer. He'd be universally detested were it not for the membership of the Bleacher High Gentleman's Law Club, to whom he's a hero.

Teachers are starting to talk. Some of their brightest students are developing an annoying habit of being arrogant, insulting dickwads. The principal is fielding complaints from teachers and librarians of sexual harassment at the carefully, pointedly un-grabby hands of sixteen year-olds. The student body is predictably oblivious. Most of the male population is either not interested in or not worthy to join the Bleacher High Gentleman's Law Club. It seems the uninterested are carelessly crushed deep under the cover of their own complacency, whereas the merely uninitiated are almost as obnoxious as the club members, only lacking the style and grace to be truly repugnant as opposed to slightly repulsive. The female population is enamored with the deep and mysterious down-putting gaze of the alpha males. This new social order is stable and enduring. There may not be anything that can be done.

In Mr. Benislav's class, (he being the only teacher supportive of their mission), the Bleacher Gentleman's Law Club enjoys their meeting:

"The matriarchy's whipped mankind into submission & yet I still hear the whores in geometry complain that they can't find a good guy. No one is ever good enough for these over-entitled girls. No wonder they can take the whole baseball team in one sitting. They're just trying to find the right guy." "Well it goes without saying that they're morons." "True story. And of course, if you got around like the girls at this school do you'd be a douchebag. All the scrawny, limp dick beta males would say so so it must be true. I mean, they know everything don't they?" "You mean Ryan, right. Ryan fits the trope to a tee. Heard him trying to talk up Kate Neston by raving about some pretentious indie band and I'm like, see, see, don't bitch about us just because we can get laid because you see? You do it to yourself, you boy bitch." "Did you really tell him that? Someone's got to explain the difference between a boy and a bitch to him before he's stuck straddling the line." "Say, those girls? You said they were in your geometry class, right?" "Yeah. Samantha something and I think the other one was Brigette" "Get their next test scores. I want to compare math grades by gender."

"Hey, I've been wondering. How do you guys feel about Sadie Hawkins?" "Well, it's PC bullshit meant to keep girls happy." "Psychobabble perpetrated to empower women like they aren't in power already." "Crap, plain and simple. We don't have some specially sanctioned dance wherein we're in charge. Where's the man's analogue." "So then I'm wondering...think it's illegal?" "Clearly it's illegal, that's not up for debate. What matters is whether we could convince some bitchified PC brigadier court. Remember, in this day and age facts and truth don't matter. Everything's relative..." "Relative to women, you mean." "True story, yeah. Double standards are standard ontology, it's not up for debate. But the hiveminds pushing their matriarchal propaganda take that as the natural order. Natural order's been fucked like a slut and the court is the whorehouse. No one denies this." "Look, equal protection clause. There you go. Because any sexual advance is hostile action and assault, according to the leading feminazis, so why are men allowed to be violated. It's bordeline rape. Court would have to be schizo to reject that logic." "C'mon guys. You're serious? Everyone serious about this? Alright then, easy enough, I'm gonna call my dad. Shit like this is why he went to law school. He'll know how to argue this." "No no no, this is ours. Your dad gets all the fun. If anyone's going to take this school down it might as well be us. Have you heard what some of the teachers have been whispering like some covenous conspiracy about us? The Bleacher High Gentleman's Law Club has made a name for itself. I say we justify it."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Introducing....Miss Sumthina Oren Otter