Selling Jack

I recently inherited a new PC at work- one that runs on an 'operating system' known as 'electricity' . The old one used a system of springs, gears and wires and was 'booted-up' by turning a hand-crank for several tedious minutes each morning. This is how automobiles were started back in my childhood years, but shouldn't something as futuristic as a computer have an internal, electronic 'ignition' mechanism?
Like a button you could press or something?

Here is how a car was started back in my day, except instead of a smiling maiden doing the cranking, it would be me; standing barefoot in cold, ankle-deep mud:

Look at the date: Sept. 1911. By 1911 , advertisers were already using sex to sell cars - a technique apparently discovered before the invention of the automobile battery and 'hot-wiring'.
There is nothing accidental in the erotic composition of this picture, but please don't make me explain it.
I'm already distracted enough.

Check out what Crank Babe is wearing- in 1911 America had some really bizarre standards of dress for women- a repressive puritanical desire to cover everything.
Not unlike current Islamic standards, really:



Hmm...a little ankle , but no sash to emphasize the waist and I like the white gloves on the American lass better...
I have a crush on the model from that ad. I wonder what she's doing today?
Here she is in another ad.
This 1911 advertisement starts off by insulting the reader:

"Are You Lazy ?" it screams at them in the text.

If that ad were produced today , it wouldn't ask that question. It wouldn't have to.

Today, we are all lazy and we all know it, so why should we waste what little energy we have answering rhetorical questions?

Today the text would promise to help you lose weight or to overcome depression.
It would sell.

Again, there's nothing accidental in this picture.

I'm In The Cut-Out Bins

I found this on the Intertube while I was trying to find copies of some old comics that I wrote. Note: I was able to find myself by googling (w/") "Dark Fantasies Comics" , which was the name of my publisher. The books are being sold in bulk lots on eBay, 10 books for 4 bucks...sigh...anyway, it's a weird feeling reading a review that mentions oneself by name.

This spinoff from Dark Fantasies tells the strange (and sometimes hard to follow) tale of an immortal woman/goddess/angel and her immortal husband/god/demon who is trying to kill her—or maybe just trap her on an astral plane. Allan Coberly’s story is more than a little convoluted, and he isn’t helped much by Ben Fogletto’s art or sense of page layout, which makes word balloon placement haphazard at best. If you’re a fan of Dark Fantasy Productions, though, then you’ve probably already cracked the verbal/visual code and shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out just who or what a “destiny angel” is, and why anyone would want to destroy such a gorgeous and powerful celestial babe as she.

It's an honest and fair review, although the site lists publication as 1986- it was 1996. And there was no "code" that I was aware of- it was just a mess. A train wreck of monumental insignificance.

I wrote the script and I had a hard time following the art... I remember getting a test copy of the book in the mail. It followed my script for a while and then it changed... my lead character was wet, nearly naked and carrying a gun. What the?...in the margin you can see my angry scrawl :" She doesn't bathe with firearms!"

What the hell?

"Holy Mackerel?" Nobody says that.

I called the publisher, who was also a close friend of mine.

"Man, have you seen the art for #1? It's totally off-script! It doesn't look like the thumbs at all! What happened to my dialogue?"

"Well, you have to live with it. I need you to re-write #2 and #3 and take out all the occult references and sex scenes."

"Uh...it's a vampire comic- for 'mature readers'- haven't you read it? You paid me to write about lesbian vampires and that is what you got."

"Well, now I'm paying you to re-write it without the vampires and lesbians. If you don't, I will."

"Why the change?"

"My wife won't let me publish the tittie vampire books anymore."

"What? You have a wife? Since last month?"

"Yeah, I met her at a Star Trek convention- I was drinking with her and her fiance, and he got hammered and went into their suite to pass out. While he was conked out in the next room , I fucked her and the next day she dumped him. Now she is pregnant , so we had to get married."

"Dude. Please tell me you just made all of that up."

"No, it's true. Her name is xxxxxx. Now she has my last name."

"Uh...um...Dude. You probably shouldn't be making lifetime commitments with someone who will fuck around while they are engaged. Like, with her man sleeping next door and all. It's a bad sign. "

"Screw you. Just rewrite the book, I'll pay you again."

"Uh...OK. Why, though?"

"She is a Jehovah's Witness and the vampire stuff is Satan worship and the nude parts are pornography, which is also Satanic. Or something."

"Uh...lessee...you met this Jehovah's Witness chick at a Star Trek Con, got drunk with her and her man; ditched the dude, knocked her up in a hotel - now you are married and she thinks you are a Satanic pornographer? I didn't know Jeeho's even drank, much less do Con parties...
You are making this up, aren't you?"

"No. She went back to her faith after we got married. No more vampires. No more boobies. It has to be rated PG or G now."

"Um...so, like what do you want? I suddenly have a hundred pages to rewrite."

"I dunno. Whatever. Just follow the art. Keep it clean."

"Great. How soon?"

"Now."

Anyway, the new wife was OK with the gun and the not-quite naked woman. In fact, she didn't bat a lash when I inserted a deux ex machina gunfight that killed some of the characters that were important to the first version of the story but meaningless in the second version.

Hmmm...scantily-clad women and gun violence is OK, vampires and sexuality is not... so I wrote a lot of scenes like these below, lots of guns and bathing- feel free to insert your own captions.

Let's make it a contest:
I'll send a prize to the best entry- in other words, if you enter, you'll probably win. A cash prize!
Anyone still awake?
Here are a couple pages with the original dialogue removed. Fill in the blanks any way you want.

These scenes are from issue #3, which was never published. I never wrote another comic book but I'd like to someday ...who knows? Can you draw?

UPDATE: Contest ends like, whenever. Number of winners dependent on how many bags of cash I can scrounge up.

The Bubba Closet

The skin on Peter's face is so red that his blond beard seems albino by comparison, he speaks and his words clungle in a sticky fog of peppermint schnapps...Peter has a 'trick' -he uses schnapps to mask the dozen or so beers he drinks during his day shift as short-order lunch cook at the corner bar where we both work.

"Better than a breath mint", he says.

"Goddmanit Peter, get your drunk ass outta my way...fuck, did you thaw the shrimp like I asked you...what did you do? This fucking prep list isn't finished..."

I'm sick of Peter's crap- he's been working here for twenty years and pretty much has tenure, but he's pissed because he found out the night cooks make a lot more money than he does- he's old, like forty maybe, and he resents having to answer to a punk-ass kid (me). I wouldn't get on his case if he didn't suck at his job...his idea of soup is to drop some grated cheese into warm tomato juice and call it "Cheddar Tomato", something I refuse to serve. I usually throw it away while he watches, hoping he'll get pissed enough to take a swing and get fired. The kitchen would run a lot smoother without him.

Peter addresses me by my last name, continues,"...things haven't always been great between us
but I jush wanta letcha know that I resphect you a lot and I mean that like a Man."

"Whatever dude. What the fuck is this deep fryer? The goddamn La Brea Tar Pit? I can't fry fish in 30 weight motor oil!"

" I was waiting for it to cool down."

I look at the fryer. The oil is black and congealed, doesn't look like it's been used all day. I drop a single frozen french frie into it. It lays inert on the surface, not heavy enough to sink into the solidified grease.

"But seriously", he stumbles up to me, "I've noticed that you've grown over the last couple years, your shoulders are broader. I really respect you as a Man", he repeats, looking me up and down...I am being scoped.
Unpleasant.

Later that night, I'm relating this bizarre encounter to Billy, one of the older cooks that I get along with...Billy explains that in the South there are a lot of rednecks who really are gay, but repress it from themselves...it comes out in weird ways, awkward "fag" jokes and homophobic insults are pretty common, and yeah, they like to get a buzz on and talk about Men being Men, just ignore them and whatever you do, never, ever give them cocaine.
Good advice.

A couple years later, a friend was visiting and he brought his Boss, who was a Closet Bubba- he couldn't watch ten minutes of football without talking about men's asses...I expect this sort of comment from my queer friends, but this guy is "straight" and worse , he's a dentist. A drunk redneck closeted homophobe dentist...I am charging him extra for his weed.

"I don't like having faggots as patients", he informs us between bong hits, "I don't like putting my hands into a mouth that's sucked a cock."

"So I guess you don't like women as patients either", I say.

"Or your mother", adds my friend,getting into the spirit.

Bubba hands me my bong and it stinks. Not in a normal, rank-ass nasty bongwater way, but in a saturated cheap cologne way.
Bubba the Closet Redneck Dentist is wearing so much cologne that it has rubbed off on my bong- the mingled smell of bongwater and cologne is hideous, I gag and set it aside.

I'm getting ready to throw this guy out of my apartment but first I'm taking his money. I think I'll just hit him with a baseball bat, take his wallet, drag him into the alley and leave him for the trannie hookers.

"Dude. You have ruined my bong. Ounces are two twenty. "

A month later he came back- I refused to let him in. A year or two after that he got busted for a dozen felonies, mostly prescription drug stuff, but there was a mail-order bride and a pregnant teen-age patient in the mix...he was gone for a long time but I recently saw his name on a case at the Firm.

Medical Malpractice, of course.

Get Paid To Blog - Updated

My newer blogpals probably do not realize that I spent a lot of time (but no money) during 2005-2006 exploring various internet scams I investigated everything from Google Ads to Porno Sites and nothing really panned out- I once got paid twelve bucks by this outfit for a story about Whalanol...that article has since been used (as actual news) without attribution, permission or basic fact-checking.

I did figure out how to get as much Free Web Porn (any kind) as I wanted, but it turned out I didn't really want as much Free Porn as I thought- it was a Pyhrric victory at best.
Email me and I'll tell you how I did it-for free.
Trust me, you'll be dissappointed that you did.

Anyway, the only reliable source of blogger income I've ever found is to land a slack job where you can get away with blogging on the clock. Not hard, in my experience. In fact, I started this very blog from a boring temp job nearly three years ago.

This was a fairly typical exchange at my last job:

Boss: " What are you doing?"

Me: "Blogging."

"About what?"

"How much I hate my job."

Now, one might think that such behavior and remarks would be cause for dismissal, but in my case I quit first. I thought I had a better job, but it didn't work out and after a couple of fruitless months of job searching I wound up going back to the old Law Firm where I made those snippy comments.
Same job.
Same desk.
Same table.
Slight raise.

It took me a couple hours to catch up on the work from the last two months, and guess what I found when I finally cleared the new mess-yep- underneath the piles were my unfinished projects from November!- it was literally like I never left.

I was wrong about the other job and it cost me a lot of money but I feel a lot better about life after having a couple months off to sort some personal things out; I've also taken on a lot of new responsibilities at the radio station- which is not a complaint.

I love the station- it's really nice to be an integral part of something that is good.

When the drudgery of my day job becomes too much, I can always remind myself that the weekend brings radio- I get plenty of personal gratification and happiness from my volunteer work, so I should be able to get through my nine-to-five without needing any validation other than a paycheck and insurance.

At least that is my goal, to maintain the attitude of "I don't need happiness from work", just cash.
The pay isn't great but it's OK for a bachelor, got bennies, in a 40 hour week I probably only do real "work" 20 or less hours...it's not demanding , the boss is funny and well-read, free coffee and nice bathrooms, it's not so bad.

Did I just say my job was not so bad?

Stay tuned.

Get Paid To Blog

Get paid to blog!

I just did.

Bad PR

Here is another reason NOT to listen to corporate radio.

A 28-year-old suburban Sacramento woman died of apparent “water intoxication” after participating in a contest — “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” — sponsored by local radio station 107.9 KDND. The rules were simple: Participants simply competed to see how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom. The winner would receive a shiny new Wii video game console, the highly coveted, $250 must-have from Nintendo.

The station in the quote above thinks so little of it's listeners that it was willing to degrade and even kill them for a Nintendo publicity stunt; Nintendo, as far as I can tell already has plenty of publicity and probably doesn't want this sort anyway...


The non-profit station I volunteer at is not like this. For our 2nd birthday party we are having live music and free food for our listeners.

Don't listen to corporate radio- it can kill you.

Listen to indie radio- it will feed you.

To Bo or Not Hobo

The post that was here sucked . So does this one, but it's shorter and has a pic of a neat car. I'm not sure what make this is but it resembles an Italian or French military reconnaissance vehicle circa 1930's. Who knows?

Spent the entire day emailing and faxing resumes- 12 in all. I also signed up with two more temp agencies.
It's a new year, holidays are over and the wolves are at the door, huffin and puffin'...I expect I'll wind up taking on some really crappy jobs until I find something decent...

Saw something alarming this morning- one ad for an office manager said: "individuals with more than two j0bs in the last five years need not apply"- it's the first time I've see this on a job for which I was otherwise qualified- it stopped me from applying. If such notices become common I'll never find work again, since I've had about ten jobs in last five years...sheesh...maybe I'll become a hobo, beat the coming rush.

Hmmm...no, being a hobo might suck, come to think of it.

Ford Pinto

It's somehow appropriate that the bagpiper playing "Amazing Grace" for Gerald Ford's pallbearers hit so many wretched, discordant notes that he actually had no alternative but to stop and start over during the procession, which I am currently watching on TV.

Some Ford notes:

Mostly, all anyone on TV says is "he was a nice guy".
Great.
Maybe he'd have been an awesome neighbor or bowling buddy, but "nice guy" isn't even on the list of traits I find desirable in a President.

Of primary importance, the President must always place the needs of his country above his own needs. Sound pretty simple right?

The image of a crippled FDR comes to mind- leading America- and indeed, the world, through some of history's darkest days- being the man we needed even though he himself was dying...not merely troubled...the man was fucking dying and he put his country first, protected us.

Think, if you will, what might have happened if Dubya Bush, not JFK, had been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Think about that and look at the leaders the two(one) party system are offering us now.
Do any of them have what it takes to be a hero?
Because, no joke, what we fucking need right now is an honest-to-god hero that can be bigger than the job that needs doing and we need to stop worrying if so-and-so would be fun to have a beer with or who they diddled and how they diddled them and instead ask:

Do they have what it takes to be a goddamn hero?

I have yet to see that quality in a politician of my generation.

That sort of Presidental courage is long out of style, it seems.

I think Bobby had it, but he never got the chance.

Bill Clinton, who I generally respect and greatly miss, failed that very simple test of country first- if he'd just said "yeah, I did her, it's none of your damn business", he'd have saved us a lot of stupid national grief
( honestly, I don't care if my Prez fucks around, it's hard to start a bloody war when someone's going down on you-or at least it should be)

---------

Ford?
The best thing I can say about him is he wasn't Spiro Agnew.

He only got the job because Agnew got busted for tax fraud , bribe-taking and general bad behavior- damn, imagine if Agnew had become Prez- that's a scary thought, but it coulda happened.

First, Ford pardoned Nixon's thugs, just as intended; decades later, he had the chance to use his Presidential Voice to warn against Bush's Warmongering Hegemony and chose -for his own reasons- not to use the powerful platform that history had given him.
A great many so-called leaders knew that this war was wrong from the very beginning and they were afraid to speak up.

There is a word for that and the word is not "hero."

Jesus, I just learned Henry Kissinger spoke at Ford's ceremony.

Man, I don't like Ford, but no one deserves that sort of abuse.

I can't think of anything that would be more debasing, insulting or disgraceful than having Henry the K speak at one's funeral, so I'll ease up on Gerry now.
Feel kinda bad now, actually.

Rest in Peace Mr. President.

I'm Such a Hypocrite

After endless kvetching about Blooger and many words wasted in defense of the old ways, I have finally been granted access to the formerly exclusive realm known as "beta".
Whee.