Hey there sportsfans, here’s some of the good stuff going on in my life right now!<\/p>\n
1. I’ve mentioned this, but I have a hamster named Otto (the Doodlebug), his hair is long and I can gently comb it as a calming exercise. Otto holds the escape record currently; he has escaped three times<\/strong>, and each time he has come back when called. That is kind of a big deal, for all you non-hamster-owners out there.<\/p>\n 2. Regular church attendance has resulted in a group of people who care about how I’m doing, and whether I live or die. I’ve been doing yard work on the grounds, and last Saturday I had an amazing lengthy encounter with a bird, which those of you who follow my Instagram<\/a>\u00a0already know about. <\/p>\n 3. The new podcast is going great, even though I left my computer on all night last night to render the second episode, and the codecs suggested by Patreon did not work<\/strong>, resulting in an unplayable block of nothing. I am currently re-rendering the show using trusted codecs, and I’ll post it soon. I think it’s great, and make no mistake, both myself and the engineer have been putting in a shitload<\/em>\u00a0of work on it. Remember that fact for later. <\/p>\n 4. I’m not completely<\/em>\u00a0unemployed, I just need to make more money, because I owe my roommate a lot<\/strong>\u00a0for keeping the two of us housed (for the time being). I have (including church yard work) two running gigs that I am intensely grateful for. I try to make my gratitude known as often as possible, so, yeah. <\/p>\n 5. According to the doctor, my health is good, I don’t have HIV (which I knew already, where the fuck would it come<\/em>\u00a0from?), but my cholesterol is high because I eat cheap garbage. They’re putting me on some sort of program where I’ll get a certain number of healthy meals per week, and I’ll be switching back from butter to olive oil. (I literally eat butter sandwiches, which is a common “po boy” practice.) The nurse assured me I’ll be drawing again soon, because it’s my purpose and I shouldn’t waste it. You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that.<\/p>\n Note:<\/u>\u00a0There is no physical ailment keeping me from drawing. I have been mentally defeated since May of this year. Maybe I haven’t been clear, but when I was laid off in March from my newspaper-cartooning gig of 26 years,<\/strong>\u00a0I stopped exercising my “artist muscles”, and have felt creatively worthless since then. Hence the lack of Ceaseless Fables<\/a>\u00a0pages. Thank God I have a regular design gig, but this requires the hated Adobe subscription ($60\/mo). Hey- remember my Bands I Useta Like<\/em>\u00a0strip? That was in legitimate print for 19 years.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n Lastly, I fought off a nervous breakdown this morning, but this had less to do with me chanting “everything is okay” than it did with a paycheck coming in which I can use to reopen my storage unit again. Otto has been grooming himself all morning, so I can’t just fish him out and start combing. Funny thing; his hair is changing colors. The little patoot is a joy and a blessing.<\/p>\n I spent hours last night editing the podcast, because of overwhelming feelings of defeat and worthlessness that kept me from doing it earlier. You hopefully don’t know what it’s like to have a voice in your head telling you it doesn’t matter, you’re a failure, give up, there is no point in anything you create. I sincerely hope you don’t. <\/p>\n Speaking of voices…<\/p>\n Listen folks, some foreign people are great. I have friends at church who are technically foreign people, though I personally wouldn’t label them as such (nor do I think they’d appreciate it). And yes, I accept that I have lived for the past 7 years in a suburb designated for refugee resettlement, though moving here was a choice made when there were no other choices. <\/p>\n That said, I need many of you out there to understand something. Particularly those of you with the means to live in a neighborhood occupied only by people who look like you, and\/or people who share your political ideologies, for better or worse. Particularly those of you who have means.<\/strong><\/p>\n Some foreign people never, ever, ever, ever, ever stop talking.<\/strong><\/p>\n I want you to imagine, while you are reading these words, that from beneath your feet, a woman is hoarsely shouting in an indecipherable tongue, maybe she’s mad, maybe she’s excited, who knows. I want you to imagine her doing that for eleven hours straight.<\/strong>\u00a0She can be clearly heard in every room of your apartment,<\/strong>\u00a0which currently reeks so badly from her foul cooking that you and your roommate are physically sick. I want you to imagine paying over a thousand dollars a month for this apartment, during a time when you are so poor you can’t even afford food (or air freshener). <\/p>\n I want you to imagine dealing with this situation for five years.<\/strong>\u00a0Five years of lost sleep because someone is shouting beneath your bed. Five years of nausea from the inescapable stench of the worst cooking in the world. Okay? Can I talk about this? Can I express my righteous frustration without some mewling pissant half my age calling me a bigot? Can I? Or should I just continue to bottle it up until it becomes a cancer and kills me? <\/p>\n Atlanta, once my favorite city, has become an absolutely intolerable place to work during the run-up to tomorrow.<\/strong>\u00a0Some of you will never understand what it’s like to labor under the conditions in which I live, while an army of ignorant rich people who share my skin color paper every yard and street with signs that essentially say WE WANT MORE OF IT AND WE KNOW BETTER. <\/strong>I’m tired of going through ugly phases of animosity wherein I fantasize about killing myself and\/or other people. I can’t make it funny. I’m overwhelmed with violent, suicidal hatred, to the point where I can’t possibly work a regular job among regular folks. I have psychotic episodes at the drop of a hat. <\/p>\n I don’t update as often as I used to, because I’m afraid<\/strong>\u00a0of telling you how bad it is. Not to mention, I’m not alone. There are millions of people who are angrier than I am, living worse lives than I do. <\/strong>You think I want the responsibility of touching off that firestorm? No thanks. <\/p>\n So, back in mid-October, I tried hammering out a Bands I Useta Like<\/em>\u00a0article that would put a humorous, accessible spin on how I’ve felt for the past few weeks. <\/p>\n I failed in every aspect aside from starting the title with an “S”, as promised. <\/p>\n Instead of finishing the article and posting it on BIUL,<\/em>\u00a0I’m posting it here and giving you the option of continuing to read hereon. These are the words of someone who is struggling to envision a future for himself and the ones he cares about. Someone who has reached a dangerous peak of alienation. Someone who has given up hope that the world will ever wise up. Someone who knows that life as he knew it is over, and will never return. <\/p>\n If you’re as sick of politics as you should be at this point, read no further. Thank you for your understanding and support. May God have mercy on us all in the coming weeks. <\/p>\n ———–<\/p>\n “SUSPICIOUS MINDS”<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s entirely possible that I would have gotten a lot farther in life were it not for one troublesome character trait: I don’t trust anybody.<\/p>\n Oh sure, there are a handful of human beings walking this Earth whom I do<\/em>\u00a0trust, but as far as the other<\/em>\u00a0seven-odd billion, I expect them to fuck me over at the earliest opportunity. Why wouldn’t they? There is no reason<\/em>\u00a0to take me or anything I’ve ever created seriously. Even when times were relatively “good”, my work never made a dime.<\/p>\n That’s the test of whether art is worthwhile, right? Whether or not it makes a lot of money? Well, sort<\/em>\u00a0of.<\/p>\n Historically, art is only worthwhile when it makes a lot of money… for other people.<\/strong><\/p>\n I look at myself as a sigma capitalist.<\/strong>\u00a0First, let me explain the “sigma” part. Here’s the untrustworthy, condescendingly biased Wikipedia “explanation”<\/a>.<\/p>\n When I was in first grade, my school library had a book I’d made at home upon its shelf, complete with date-stamped card boasting signatures of kids who’d checked it out. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always thought “yeah, books are cool, but I want to write my own<\/em>\u00a0books, for people to read.” I wanted to be an author when I could barely spell the word. I saw friends and family reading Peanuts<\/em>\u00a0comic books, and became overwhelmed with the indescribable desire to be the one who drew them.<\/em><\/p>\n Anytime my school passed out those little composition books for assignments, I’d swipe an extra one, and write my own Choose Your Own Adventure<\/em>\u00a0stories inside it. I grew bored with linear narrative and obsessed over malleable, multiple-choice concepts. Some kids were intrigued by my work, and encouraged me. Some kids were envious and cruel. Like, Stephen King novella-type cruel. The kind of emotional cruelty you carry for the rest of your life, whether you intend to, or not.<\/p>\n See, unlike the luckless protagonists of the average King paperback, I was never “touched” or otherwise physically fiddled with as a young lad. The bullies I dealt with knew of a far more effective way to cause lasting mental damage on someone like me.<\/p>\n They fucked with my stuff.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is the part where any real artists reading this nod in silent solidarity. Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, when one or more bullies ruined or destroyed your hard work, there were no bloodsucking lawyers or crusading educators who took your side. There was no instantaneous form of shaming like social media; the best you could hope for is the principal calling the entire student body into the auditorium and unintentionally embarrassing you in front of everyone you know,<\/em>\u00a0as they rant and rave about how disappointed<\/em>\u00a0they are, as if that means a goddamned thing to any child that has ever existed.<\/p>\n And you just try to hold in your anger and sadness, until you can get the fuck away from them.<\/p>\n Your parents don’t take your side either; they lash out at you for being a weird little creep who’d rather draw in his room than play outside with the other kids. They almost literally push you<\/em>\u00a0back into the clutches of the bullies. They never give you any advice for dealing with the kids who hate you. It’s your fault<\/strong>\u00a0they want to hurt you. If you could just be like them<\/em>, and throw a fucking ball around once in a while, your parents would accept you. But no. You’re just a miserable, unhappy little nuisance who won’t get with the program.<\/p>\n