One of my stories recently found a home in an anthology titled “Bellows of the Bone Box,” published by Siren’s Call Publications. It is my first time working with them, and it was a pleasure. Everyone involved in the publication of this anthology came together to produce the best text possible. My thanks to the beta readers who took the time to help me polish my story.

You can learn more about my thoughts on Steampunk, and check out a preview of my story by clicking right the *%$ here. 

While the official announcement is still pending, I can say that I have a new book coming out in the near future. The tentative title of the book is listed in the catalog section of the Spectacular Productions website, which you can access by clicking here. The artwork looks really great and should be available in the near future. 

I also had the pleasure of working with Rooster Republic Press this year. They published the first bizarro story I ever wrote in Tall Tales with Short Cocks Vol. III (pictured below). The story, titled “Harry Holden: Zero Man vs. Jimmy Bogardus: BIID Looner, features some of my favorite topics, like BIID and looners (I love me some looners). It was an exercise in my bizarro style that I’m glad finally found a home. I’ve come a long way from the content and style featured in the story, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have merit. The story represents what bizarro meant to me when I first started working in the genre. 

I feel like there was more, but it has escaped me at the moment. I hope 2013 has been as busy and productive for you as it has for me. See you all again soon!

I knew my vision was bad, but not third-line-unintelligible bad. After I failed to read virtually all the letters, the doctor slid through various lenses until we settled on a set that brought the world into focus. For the first time in two years, I started to see what I had missed.

Two months later my glasses arrived. Since then, I have been amazed at the things I have seen:

Every light emanating from a house after dark is generally a wide-screen television that is big enough for me to see what they’re watching. I feel like I’m being invited into the homes of my neighborhood every time I drive to the store. Scratch that. I feel like I’m being strong armed into their living rooms to watch shitty CGI family films, MMA championships, and football. There are no refreshments served as incentive for me to feign interest. I’m grateful that the speed limit doesn’t allow for prolonged exposure to their programs, because I would probably watch out of curiosity and subsequently be bored to fucking death.

When I was a child, one of the most compelling elements of gaming was that there were these elaborate backgrounds that the player couldn’t explore. I wanted to hike in the mountains of Ninja Gaiden II. I wanted to go to a theater in Double Dragon II’s skyline. The virtue of 8-bit gaming wasn’t what I could do. It was what I couldn’t do and that limitation’s ability to spark my imagination. I don’t see that in games as much as I used to.

The houses in my neighborhood are the same way. Before I got my glasses, I saw nothing but a blur in the neighborhood windows. I had to imagine the source of the blur. Perhaps it was a fluorescent light used to breed some obscure species of moth that my neighbor was using as his murder signature. Maybe it was a light box and someone in my neighborhood was inking his/her magnum opus: a graphic novel.

Now I see the source of these lights. There’s enough detail to ensure I’m not compelled by what I see inside. The anonymous throng of people who make up my town could easily be a ubiquitous clone of the same person placed in house after house. They’re going through the same motions, watching the same screens. And if you drive long enough, you start to notice patterns, just like you might in 8-bit games or old cartoons like Tom & Jerry where cat and mouse run past the same fridge time and time again.

For some reason all of that disappoints me. Yet I am in complete awe as I stare up at the sky, watching the same stars and the same moon traverse the same pattern every night. Glasses or no, that black canopy above me evokes the same feeling of wonder. No matter how well my sight is, no matter what magnification I view the stars through, I’m mesmerized. I notice patterns there too. Some stars radiate with the same intensity, or waver rhythmically as if the entire universe dances to the same song. But I can’t travel there, which inspires me to imagine what might be if I could. One look up at night and I become a child again. I’m staring into a 32″ screen wondering what it’d be like to walk among the green-tinted wreckage that scrolls through the background of Journey to Silius. My sense of wonder is rekindled, and sight once again inspires wonder instead of apathy.

I want to lay on the rooftop of one of those abandoned buildings and stare up at that green intestinal tubing sky.

In my short time on this planet I have watched so many people who see things clearly become disillusioned. I have fallen into that trap in the past. But from now on I’m following the things that inspire imagination and wonder when I see them clearly. When clarity reveals intricacy instead of simplicity, that inspires me to seek understanding.

When clarity reveals simplicity, perhaps it is a delusion. Something lurks beneath the surface of even the neighborhoods where every 60″ television is switched to Sunday-night football. Sometimes I think simplicity is a personal construct, a horse blinder we create for ourselves to avoid being overwhelmed by the natural intricacy that exists even in repetition and ubiquity. Then again, maybe everything can be boiled down to repetitious actions on a repetitious template. If so, many of us seem to be perfectly fine with retracing our own steps and repeating our own actions.

Speaking of which, anyone remember this video that used to air on Cartoon Network?

Pure Genius

Ah, Ted. I still remember our first time. Your head was bobbing and weaving, either from exhaustion or a severe hangover, and I was on the tail end of a long journey for the internet’s latest filth. I was immediately drawn to the shit streaks on your face, and the hairy duct tape chunks dotting your cheeks, no doubt remnants of a losing battle with genital warts.

Shall I continue? The unkempt hair. Your piercing, yellowed eyes and half-paralyzed face told me you were a worldly man with much wisdom to share. My intuition served me well. This guy not only provides valuable insights into the human psyche, he entertains you while doing it. There’s no dry-as-twice-digested-dog excrement here. You know, the kind of writing you’ll find in Socrates, Kant and other droll bums like that. Pillman cuts through the rhetoric of stuffy old men and gets right to the core of what is important. Below are a few examples of how Pillman sums up the insights of the world’s greatest thinkers in simple songs belched to the melody of a cheap Casio keyboard.

On Humility

“If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble; for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, so it is believed of none but by itself; the voice of humility is God’s music”

OR

The examples go on and on. Stop by Pillman’s YouTube page and check out his brilliance.

Reblogged from H2retrO:

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Jack is due to enter the world this January...so naturally I started the nursery back in July. We decked the room out in 80's cartoons from our childhood. It is now the most popular room in the house.  My favorite addition is this:

I picked up this gumball machine years ago, again with the idea of turning it into an aquarium.  

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Reblogged from *Abraham Thinkin'*:

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This is part two of a series (Part 1) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) covering several ways that humanity's time on Earth could conceivably come to an end. The study of the apocalypse, known as eschatology  has been a pervasive force in religion, science, and popular culture since the development of the first cultures on Earth.

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Reblogged from Duck Duck Gray Duck:

A South Carolina newspaper is apologizing for placing an advertisement for “Guns for Christmas” next to its story about the Connecticut elementary school shooting which left 20 children and half a dozen adults dead. The Rock Hill Herald’s ad showed a picture of an AR-15 rifle, which is the same model used by 20-year-old Adam Lanza to kill 26 people and himself on Friday in Newtown, Connecticut.

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What the fuck? Good thing Apple is too cheap to cut substantial amounts of their retail prices, otherwise we would have had a chance to watch hipsters beat the partially digested tofu out of one another. THAT would have been a spectacle.

Anyway, here’s what we DO get to see:

I’m not sure what the fatality and injury count is yet, but while we’re waiting for updates, I thought I’d share a few things that-given the way Black Friday has been handled this year-are less violent and absurd than this ritualistic shopping spree that generally gets christened by someone being trampled to death:

1. Splinter to the eye in Fulci’s Zombie:

Why is it less violent than Black Friday: First, we’ve come to expect violence from zombies. It’s how they do. Conversely, there’s something incredibly disturbing about watching your aunt or grandmother crush other women underfoot to get 40% off 50 Shades of Grey. That. Shit. Will. Scar. You. For. LIFE.

2. 50 Shades of Grey

Why is it less absurd than Black Friday: Many people swoon over this book and act a fool when they get into the “hot spots” this book has to offer (like the infamous tampon scene) but most of them have the decency to do it in the privacy of their own homes, rather than on the tiled floor of their local shopping center.

3. The Atheist’s Worst Nightmare is a Banana

Why is it less absurd than Black Friday:  It isn’t. Nothing is more absurd than this jackass and his not-so-thinly veiled declaration of idiocy. But you haven’t experienced the dregs of society until you’ve watched this. You’re welcome.

Reblogged from ElasticPanda:

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'Rated G' is a series of illustrations made by Justin White. He reimagines famous movies and TV shows as cartoons.

Reblogged from #sasstag:

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Long story short: There's a woman in Rochester, New York named Jackie Samuel who is charging people (read: sad, desperate, lonely men) for cuddling.

What in fiery Hades is the matter with these bugaboos? Can you actually imagine paying for this? Oh, no? Well congratulations because you're not crazy.

Seriously though, the people (read: sad, desperate, lonely men) engaging in this transaction are just a hop and a skip away from this guy:

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