Mary Worth Hentai

Sorry to not deliver on the promise of that headline.  It was just another case of sidebar vandalism, on my part.  Not that I’m morally opposed to horny fan comicking about syndicated nosy cartoon grandma Mary Worth, but it’s more effort than this post requires, and I’d probably get another FtB Ethics Committee called down on me.

My dude once observed that bro-ish young artists all seem drawn to making horny or violent versions of innocent characters from the comics, the cartoons, children’s TV, etc.  It was certainly a recurring theme at the art school I went to.  This has a ye olde tradition in what were once called “Tijuana bibles,” where you could see Popeye and Blondie get it on.

I am not going to sit here and tell you that I haven’t drawn Blondie and Dagwood knowing each other maritally, and that as Dagwood went for a post-coital sandwich he wasn’t turned into a zombie by the reanimated Calvin of And Hobbes fame.  But is that a pursuit worthy of an artist’s gifts?

Sure.  Why not?  I once dreamed of starting a project where I’d take a random comic strip and continue whatever situation was happening past the punchline into a pornographic scenario, doing my best imitation of the drawing style.  Might actually work in reverse too, having the porn culminate in the events of the strip.  Still, never got around to it.

Anyway, a hearty welcome to anybody who found FreethoughtBlogs dot com by googling “mary worth hentai.”  Have you considered if atheism might be right for you?

Take off your shoes and make yourself at home.

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Manoposting III: An Unfortunate Self-Immolation

I’m sure we’ve all been following the really important things happening in US culture at the moment, but it’s nice to see our humorists put them in perspective, cut through the haze of this whirlwind we’re all experiencing.  I present for you D’Angelo Wallace’s thoughts on ostensible feminist Katy Perry’s newest album, made with the help of notorious alleged rapist Dr. Luke.

Well worth watching.

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Manoposting I: Two Reasonable Things

Since Mano is doing light posting for the moment, the rest of us should be picking up the slack, but it’s looking slow around the network.  To fill the manohole, I’m going to do three manoposts today.  This be the first.  I am far from perfect at impressions, at capturing the essence of another’s voice, so apologies.  Since I am not plugged into the news the way he is, I’ll have to make up news to be reacting to.  Proceeding thus…

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As a rule of thumb, one should look askance on anyone who is too simpatico with one’s own beliefs.  Today I read an article by Hannikah Meier-Shalam on reporgo.com which, at first glance, seemed eminently reasonable – a return to the common sense punditry from her tenure at The Gotham City Gazette.  See if you can tell where her reasoning breaks down.

Pet grooming is a very popular subject of internet videos at the moment, from Youtube to Instagram, and everybody’s getting in on the act.  Some dogs stand with quiet dignity, offering sensitive and nervous side-eye to the camera.  Others whimper and shiver.  Others need to be restrained bodily – as do cats.  This suffering is mild, if melodramatic, and therefore quite cute.  We know the procedure is for the animal’s own good, that it is genuinely not painful, and that there is an end in sight – all comforting truths of which the hapless beast is not fully assured, in their own mind.

My pet turtle is, as any who have a passing familiarity with science can tell you, a reptile.  The thing about reptiles is that they have to shed their scales.  This includes the scales known as “scutes” that make up the outer surface of their shells, which are much larger than the tiny scales on the softer parts of their bodies.  It takes a long time to happen, during which they have a dull look to their shells.  Then they start to come up in great big chunks.

Well, nerts to that.  If I can’t yard that stuff off Donatello and it’s hangin’ there like a blowed-off hurricane shingle, I’m gonna glue that shits down and polish his ass with turtle wax.  They say it’s for cars, don’t use it on animals or people, but these are the same Deep Staters that want to bury the truth about hydrochloroquine, so make of that what you will.

It seems she is now following that old post-Ferengian rhetorical technique of saying two reasonable things as cover to slip in a third outrageous statement – something no one would believe if given to them straight.  It’s a shame, but after her self-styled cancellation at the Gazette, she has completed her transformation into a right wing hack at reporgo.com.

I like to think that my readership has the discernment and mental powers to avoid using harsh cleaning chemicals on their pet turtles.  Please do not prove me wrong in the comments.  Thank you.

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Kid Culture

Children have their own culture that, while it can be influenced by adults, runs in parallel to their authority, and is handed down verbally from who knows when.  What dirty rhymes and gross pranks were played at your school?  Thought I’d share one with you from my own childhood in Seattle in the 1980s.  Content warning for misogyny and dookie humor.

Ain’t yo mama pretty?
She got meatballs for her titty
She got scrambled eggs
Between her legs

I took her to a party
She turned around and farted
I asked her why she did it
She turned around and shitted

Ah, those halcyon days.  By all means, in honor of the tribe you left behind upon reaching maturity, dookie up my comments below.
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The Size of the Matter

I spent most of my 20s working in fast food, and as I was pushing 30, at Jack in the Box specifically.  Fast food, like being a security guard, is work you can get without a high school diploma.  Poorly compensated, but the people who do it for a living get by living close to the ground.  We have rotating casts of roommates and romantic partners, pooling resources in endless strings of makeshift households.  We’re modern hunter-gatherers, unable to survive health problems or any of the crises that money would buy some amount of prevention.

But it’s cool.  Nobody deserves to be insecure about food, shelter, medicine, etc etc, but it’s kinda funny being a sheisty fuckup among sheisty fuckups.  Office drama doesn’t hit the same as the soap opera of a workplace where people aren’t distracted by cerebral activities.  When you aren’t worrying about TPS reports, you have all the mental freedom to live in demented fantasies and romances.  I was on the loserly end, so fantasies all the way, and that was good for me.  I couldn’t afford to do it forever, but I got to do a lot of drawing and dreaming, conceiving of creative things that might bear fruit many years later.

Fast food workers are characters.  Like, in a movie, they’d never be played by the star; they’d be played by character actors.  Stanky weirdos with funny faces, sultry sirens with scars and piercings, people on a path to homeless-flavored mental illness, druggies in between freakouts, and of course, hard-working family people with zero economic privilege, like immigrants and children of broken homes.  I guess a few of those could have described me.

So in the Jack-in-the-Box scenario I am about to unfold, I was the stanky weirdo working the front counter, while hard-working family woman was having an idle conversation with a sultry (very short and chubby) siren at the window.  It was a slow moment, all was quiet in the universe, and I could hear that chat well, tho I was not involved with it.

Siren says, “Yeah, this guy I’m with is real nice and all, but I just can’t stay with him.  His dick isn’t big enough.”  “What do you mean?,” asked family woman.  “When I have sex, it just doesn’t hit the same unless I feel full inside.”  Anyway, I must have pulled some kind of embarrassing face, because family woman felt the need to say at me that size doesn’t matter.  She even came over to me, offered some other kind of nicety.  Maybe it wasn’t my face that was the matter; maybe she just sensed my small dick energy.

I don’t think I was offended at the time.  Pretty sure I found it amusing, and I still do.  But at this point, the funniest thing about it is wondering just what made me look like I needed my vienna sausage consoled.  Also, that some people are just so quick to nurture that this is their first instinct.  And that by going out of her way to offer that comfort, she specifically let me know she thinks I’m packing a triple-A battery.

So funny.

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100 Words on Metamorphosis

Got a donation with a suggested topic I don’t quite understand.  I wonder if it’s a sex thing.  Phrased, “A butterfly/artist go-lightly. ;-),” it contains evocative words.  I got evoked.  Let me answer it as impressionistically as it hits me…

A butterfly, an artist, go lightly between lives, between colors, between forms. Yea tho any given moment be as solid as a chrysalis, what lies within is the fluid that bridges one unknowable state and the next.

Know me now?  Think again.  Know me in another minute?  Keep guessing.  My love and my passion are colors of light that oscillate through bandwidths beyond your limitations.  Transmutation, alchemy, coagulation, dissolution, thesis and synthesis, these words are pathetic feints at the meaning that underlies my life.  Take my heart if you dare.

This has been a metaphor for butt stuff.  Thank you.

100 Words on the Topic of ;-)

Hey there.  Howzitgoin’?  Nice, nice.  I haven’t noticed you around here before.  You come here often?  Me?  I’m a regular.  Everybody knows my name.  It’s no big deal.  Let’s talk about you.

What do you do for a living?  Oh, that’s terribly interesting.  I know a guy who does that too, always has the wildest stories.  What’s your sign?  Yeah?  I don’t know if I believe the motions of the celestial bodies control our destinies, but sometimes it seems like there’s somethin’ to it.

Well, now that we know each other a little better, how about you and me?

No?