Tim Lambesis from As I Lay Dying

 

Uncomfortable Topics

***UNCOMFORTABLE TOPICS***

Every once and a while during your creative journey, the inspirational well will run dry. It happens to the best of us. You get done with one project or you’re waiting on the results of another. And then boom, you’ve exhausted the creative well. Ever since I finished the new version of Beautiful Monster back in…I want to say June or July, I’ve been writing short stories that are hopefully different from all the rest I’ve written. And then just last week, I declare that I’m getting back into writing fantasy with the short story “3:16”, which I’m convinced has been a complete failure due to its hokey nature, vanilla characters, and silly antics. I’m back to square one as a man without a country, so to speak.

And that got me thinking about a piece of advice that budding authors frequently receive: “Write about things that make you uncomfortable.” It’ll make for some raw material and it’ll get you out of your creative rut. You’ll have new stories and your audience will believe that much more in them. Everybody wins! This whole time I’ve been afraid of making myself cringe by the mature content my stories have. And then I remembered: Beautiful Monster is about rape. Rape is the most uncomfortable topic there is. I’m already halfway there! Now I need a new story with a different uncomfortable topic. I’ve come up with nine different topics that make me squeamish whenever I see news stories about them on TV.

***ANIMAL CRUELTY***

Forget the fact that animals are cute and cuddly. Even if you disagree with that sentiment, animals are still defenseless in the hands of abusive or neglectful owners. Every beating a small kitten receives. Every pit bull who’s chained outside all day long in unbearable weather. Every circus elephant who yearns for freedom after being confined for so long in a cage. This shit hurts me on a deep level. I have animals of my own and if I found out somebody was abusing them, I’d beat the living shit out of said abusers and take my jail sentence gracefully. Animals should be comfortable and cozy, not fearful and traumatized. Two years is the maximum prison sentence for animal abusers. It should be higher. I’d also dare say that like sex offenders, animal abusers should be put on a multi-tiered registry. I love my fur babies. I love everyone else’s fur babies too. I donate to the ASPCA every month and I take care of the fur babies I have.

***CHILD KIDNAPPING***

I may not want children of my own. I may not be overjoyed whenever I have to sit next to a noisy child on an airplane or a bus. Having said that, it still horrifies me whenever I see a news story about a child being kidnapped by a pedophile and held hostage for decades at a time. Jaycee Dugard is a major example of this. She was kidnapped at age eleven and set free at age twenty-nine. Jesus fucking Christ! What about Ariel Castro’s three victims? For ten years he held them hostage and raped them. Ten fucking years! Keep in mind that this trauma is happening during their most developmental years. Even if they were adults when they were kidnapped, that kind of brutality can drive a person insane. There’s a special place in hell for people who kidnap and have sex with children.

***CLASSISM***

Every once and a while, a viral video will pop up of some asshole republican chewing out a poor customer at a store for using a food stamp or welfare card. You also see classism on dating sites, where profiles demand that their dates have a bazillion dollars and sports cars up to yin-yang. Poor people get labeled as being “lazy” or “leeches”, to which I say is complete and utter bullshit. You don’t know what that welfare recipient is going through. You don’t know what the broke college student will do for love. Classism is just like any other form of prejudice. And no, it’s not something that the individual has control over despite what the bashers will say. This economy was not designed to close wage gaps. It does marginalize the less fortunate.

***FAT SHAMING***

We live in a world where unrealistic beauty standards are squeezing the life out of everyday people who don’t have sculpted bodies or skinny frames. The body positivity movement is not about celebrating unhealthiness. It’s about celebrating absolution. In other words, we don’t have to feel guilty about our bodies just because some muscle head says we should. I’ve said this before: people who fat shame are secretly pissed about having a shortage of people they can jack off to. Yep. That’s your reward for losing weight: more people will jack off to you…unless of course you’re below the poverty line.

***MENTAL HOSPITALS***

If Terminator 2: Judgment Day has taught me anything, it’s that mental hospitals are nothing more than prisons for sad people. They operate like prisons, they make money like prisons, and the guards/orderlies beat their inmates like prisoners. You have no rights once you’re in a mental hospital and you can’t leave whenever you bloody well feel like it. That’s the dictionary definition of a prison. Most of the people in these facilities didn’t even commit crimes. They’re just locked up and treated like animals over something they have no control over: their own mental illnesses. As someone with schizophrenia, this pisses me off to no end.

***MILLENNIAL BASHING***

Bill Maher once said on an episode of Real Time that ageism was the last acceptable prejudice we have…and then during the same rant talked shit about millennials like the hypocrite he is. Bill Maher is a crabby old man, so that’s to be expected. Millennials bashing their own generation is even worse, however. That’s Candace Owens levels of selling out. Why all of this hatred for people born in the 80’s and 90’s? What did we do that was so wrong? Nothing. These stereotypes against us are just that: stereotypes. We all come in different flavors, your mileage may vary. More people need to call out millennial bashers until it’s recognized as the blind bigotry it is.

***POLICE BRUTALITY***

Whenever an ordinary civilian commits a crime, he goes to jail and serves his time. Whenever a police officer does something even worse (“hold my beer”), he gets administrative leave, which is really just a paid vacation. Cops are revered by society as being these superheroes who can do no wrong, and yet they continually get away with murdering, beating, or otherwise harassing minorities. This gross imbalance of power pisses me the fuck off, especially because there’s not a whole lot I can do about it short of spreading awareness on the internet. Even then, these cops continue to murder their own citizens for absolutely no reason.

***STEM SUPREMACY***

Whenever an artist rightfully complains about his stagnant or nonexistent wages, the first thing some asshole tells him is to get a tech job or go to trade school. Blind conformity equals good pay. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d rather make little money and be able to create whatever art I wanted than get paid a gazillion dollars to be a mediocre husk of my former self. Then again, if I did go to trade school or get a STEM degree, I’d be able to close the wage gap long enough to get a date on classist websites. But then I’d have to lose a bunch of weight or else nobody will jack off to me. Hmm…it’s a catch-22 if I’ve ever seen one.

***TRANSPHOBIA***

Turns out ageism isn’t the last acceptable prejudice after all. It’s transphobia. People are so scared of transgender people using public bathrooms for fear of their children getting molested, yet they’re perfectly okay with a rapist president sitting in the white house and a rapist sitting on the supreme court bench. Transgender people deserve to be treated with respect. So do non-binary people. And gender fluid people. They’re human beings, just like you and me. Why is that so difficult to see? And don’t give me that shit about Fallon Fox having an unfair advantage in MMA when you’re more than willing to condone steroid abusers.

***CONCLUSION***

Yes, these topics are pretty appalling. In fact, I’d say they’re beyond appalling. They’re uncomfortable as hell. So what kinds of stories could I write about these topics? Well, just last night, I came up with a novel synopsis for a story called “Fat Camp”. It’s not officially my next project yet, but if I develop it, it could be.

MAIN CHARACTERS:

1. Adrian Evans, Fat Camp Student
2. Rufus Lynch, Sadistic Camp Counselor
3. Stella Masters, Sadistic Camp Counselor
4. Tiffany Crowder, Fat Camp Student
5. Nameless Students and Counselors

SYNOPSIS: As part of a new initiative to combat teen obesity, students like Adrian and Tiffany are sent to a fat camp with a penchant for tough love and military discipline. Every time the students rebel against their harsh treatment, counselors like Rufus and Stella get violent with their punishments, such as cutting off flesh, breaking limbs, and Rufus’s personal favorite method of torture, twisting faces with pliers. The combination of extreme fat shaming and physical torture would lead the students to believe that none of this is legal, but when they try to contact a lawyer or the police for help, their pleas fall on deaf ears and the beatings intensify. Can Adrian and Tiffany survive this hellhole and graduate with their rights intact? Not without bruises and emotional trauma, they won’t.

Prepare to cringe. Prepare to cringe hard!

***QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Mental illness may be a life sentence for some of us, but it does not have to be a death sentence.”

-Mauro Ranallo a.k.a. The Bipolar Rock n’ Roller-

"Preacher, Vol. 4" by Garth Ennis

BOOK TITLE: Preacher, Vol. 4: Ancient History

AUTHOR: Garth Ennis

YEAR: 1998

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Horror

GRADE: Pass

Three tales of bloodshed, three glimpses into the pasts of the famous Preacher characters we know today. The Saint of Killers started off as a wild west bounty hunter with a heart so cold he brought snowy weather to Texas (that’s not a clever joke, that’s a fact). Arse-Face’s was a disenfranchised teenager constantly bullied at school and abused by his corrupt cop father. The Good Old Boys Jody and TC were swamp fighters who stumbled upon a gang of mercenaries trying to recover a blackmail tape from a cop and a smoking hot lawyer. Nobody is safe in these homicidal stories. What doesn’t kill them will leave a scar.

The level of violence in these stories is maximum tier, maybe even beyond that if it’s humanly possible. It’s more than just splattering blood across the scenery. It’s more than just broken bones and squishy organs. It’s psychological torture. It’s reliving those horrific scenes for the rest of your life (however long that may be). Maybe if you’re lucky, your brain will explode in this hurricane of violence and you can be spared from this maddening torture. But then there’s always the possibility of living with a sadistic devil or a corrupt god. In which case, the bloodshed and brutality will come full circle long before you’re ready to be reincarnated and have it happen to you all over again.

Unfortunately, this kind of horrific display is also applicable to innocent animals that’ve done nothing wrong. The animal cruelty in this graphic novel is easily the hardest to stomach while the violence to humans is at least sick and twisted fun. Whether it’s Gumbo McCready’s gang shooting horses, Pube shooting a yappy dog, or Jody beating the hell out of a confused gorilla with a baseball bat, your heart will sink so far down it’ll think it’s in the ninth circle of hell. While the animal deaths are a true representation of how screwed up life can be, it doesn’t make them easier to read about, much less physically see on the pages of a graphic novel. Thank goodness for the ASPCA, which I donate to every month.

Just as alarming is the way in which Arse-Face is treated throughout his story. He’s constantly beaten by his father, beaten by the students at school, and rejected pretty much everywhere else he goes, and this is all before his face became permanently disfigured. His only escape in life is through his punk rocker best friend Pube, who happened to be the one to shoot the yappy dog with a shotgun. Not much of an escape, huh? If I had to live that screwed up of a life in Texas, I too would want to find solace in even the most horrible people while smoking marijuana until the end of time. Disturbing as hell, yet the most poignant of the three stories, especially considering how Kurt Cobain’s suicide played a role in Pube and Arse-Face’s decision-making.

Preacher, Vol. 4 is equal parts heartbreak and violent fun. The delightfully vulgar dialogue sets it all up with perfection and can be another entertaining part of the graphic novel, even with Saddam Hopper and his inability to swear properly. Garth Ennis knocks it out of the park yet again with these Preacher graphic novels. He probably needs many years of therapy, but it’ll be worth it if he continues pumping out awesomely violent fiction like this. How does a passing grade sound to all of you?

Dog Fucker

CHORUS 1

When you kill a human being, it drives me mad

When you kill an animal, it’s twice as bad

Dog fucker!

Dog fucker!

VERSE 1

A sodomite with a bully’s might

You came to kill in the dead of night

Rape and torture are your tools of trade

Cutting your victims with an iron blade

Your latest kill was a sexual thrill

Man’s best friend now lies down still

The blood on your dick is so damn sick

Now the murder charge is going to stick

CHORUS 2

When you kill a human being, it’s a lifelong curse

When you kill an animal, it’s ten times worse

Dog fucker!

Dog fucker!

VERSE 2

Now you find yourself in a tight corner

Locked up in a cage by the judge’s order

Your new cell mate has a bone to pick

It’s in his pants and it’s called his dick

Knowing the rape of the innocent puppy

Is vicious and violent, not soft and loving

Pornographic passion, metal bunk thrashing

It’s Marvel Comics and Hulk is smashing

CHORUS 3

Murdering a human is a mortal sin

Murdering a dog makes you the devil’s kin

Dog fucker!

Dog fucker!

VERSE 3

Revenge is a fantasy played out in cinema

It’s eating us alive and damn near killing us

But goddamn, it’s so easy to get pissed

Punishment is more than a slap on the wrist

I tried to be nice, friendly, and forgiving

But you’ve stolen that dog from the living

I’ve got furry friends chilling on my couch

Go near them and you’ll be screaming “Ouch!”

LULLABY ENDING

Lullaby and goodnight

You know it’s not right

Close your eyes and start to smile

You’ll be going away for a while

When the dawn lights the sky

You can hear your victims cry

Start your day with a smile

No one believes your guile