It tasted like ash and ketchup

"Yeah, I- achem... I don't do this very much." He felt the cigarette's heat under his nails and the smoke twirling his nosehairs got him close to sneezing. He wanted to spit, the saliva and phlegm was pooling up under his tongue, but he didn't. It tasted like ash and ketchup.

I Always Have Trouble Thinking of Titles

~When you need to cross a large body of water, never summon a sharktopus~

When I started this blog I had decided to redirect my life. It wasn't that my life was going in a bad direction, spiraling down a rusty hole of debaucheried solitude flooded with In 'N Out Burger and hallucinations depicting the destruction of humanity at the hands of obese flower robots that dress themselves in cookie batter. I had just graduated college. But instead of graduating with a job, unwrinkled clothes, and skills, I only had the ability to think analytically, and a small jar of talent I kept hidden behind the gafilte fish so that no one would steal it.

I had no job prospects, but enough money saved that living wouldn't be a problem. I dug up this name from a note I had written in middle school when I started making websites and putting comics online. My original homepage was 'Advance Revolution', and I always had the plan that when I got good at my art there would be a second version of the site called 'Advancer Evolution' that would.. well, I never really finished the idea. I probably got distracted by a Pop-Up-Video marathon.

I moved to New York for the Summer with my girlfriend because she had an internship. I had the notion that I would become a writer with a sharp wit that could pierce deep into absurd truth. That New York would provide me with a palate of colorful characters and situations to draw inspiration from. I practiced by writing something here on a semi-weekly basis. I was confident that becoming a great freelancer was a simple, well-traveled path and all I had to do was follow the footprints. Living wouldn't be a problem.

Seemed simple at the time.

Turns out living is a lot harder than it seems in sitcoms. There is no ominous, foreshadowing one-liner followed by a ludicrous pose, a screen flip, and the unsurprising situation introduced by a laughing audience.

But somehow I lived. I learned to code programs, I got a few stories published, I made sold and performed an album, I started an artist group, we put our work in galleries, I started a few comics that never got done. Then I got a job.

And somewhere along the line I stopped doing this.

But it was because my direction had changed without my consent.

In 2009, when I thought I was in charge of life, I was really doing the same thing, a little different. Instead of advancing the revolution, I was evolving the advancer... (wha?)

It's been a long time since then. And without realizing it, I ended up at a different destination, going down a very different set of footprints. So now I'm not gonna try to pierce with a well-toned blade. I'm just gonna wave a jagged dagger around like Megman fighting the robot masters of the 1950s.

Because thinking and creating finalized ideas that sink deep into the psyche of America takes waaay too much effort, and I have pop-tarts to eat.

Speaking of which--

Hole In The Wall Mini Cupcakes

~Arctic Bear!~
I love hole-in-the-wall eateries. Something about the personality of small places where you can have a quiet conversation with the owner/chef/waiter/cashier. Or maybe it's the closest I can come to blowing up a wall and getting to the secret room to find that heart piece.

HMTFWS: We Will Be Full of Plastic

So it's been forever but I have a really good excuse: I had a job! Yeah seriously, I was doing stuff to make money. But then I realized that money is totally overrated and all that matters in life is absorbing the internet. So here's a How Much The Future Will Suck I wrote last week, but forgot to put up here. More in a few days