Calcobrena from Final Fantasy IV vs. Garrison's Autism (a Common Opponent These Days)

 

If anybody has a problem with my shirt, I can always take it off...slowly...with "Pump Up the Volume" playing in the background. Get your dollar bills ready and make that shit rain.

Pee-Wee Herman On Crack

VERSE 1

Baldheaded puppets, intestines for strings

They’ll cut off your head, hollow everything

A present for the darkest of dark lord knights

Not bad for a bunch of freaks who look like

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Never get your serotonin back

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Childhood is under attack

VERSE 2

They’ll play you a nice little waltz lullaby

Not in hopes you will sleep, but want to die

Infinite loops until your sanity goes bye-bye

Not bad for some monsters who look like

Pee-Wee Herman on meth

Pray for the quickest death

Pee-Wee Herman on drugs

Intestinal noose fits nice and snug

VERSE 3

My guitar is made from puppet strings

When I open my mouth, the demons sing

When I strike the mallet, funeral bells ring

When the puppets dance, you’ll start to think

That they’re Pee-Wee Herman on acid

Schizophrenic voices bring the traffic

Pee-Wee Herman on pills

Getting their bloodthirsty thrills

VERSE 4

When you beat them down, the trauma remains

Making lemonade out of your melting brains

All the Xanax in the world won’t help you now

Neither will the simple phrase, “I disavow”

Pee-Wee Herman on heroin

Cool off your superhero arrogance

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Once they’re in your mind, there’s no going back

Pee-Wee Herman on crack

Pee-Wee Herman on smack

Pee-Wee Herman unpacked

From a body bag, goodbye to your sack

Food-Mindedness and Body Horror

In case it wasn’t already abundantly clear from my 300 lb. belly, I’m very food-minded. Almost everything in my life reminds me of food in some way. Hell, the word Life will conjure images of the oat square cereal swirling around in milk. The word swirling will remind me of frosted cinnamon buns, keyword being frosted, as in enough frosting to cover the whole fucking thing. At least those words make a modicum of sense, but then there are names of people that remind me of food for no reason at all. Marcus reminds me of hotdogs and mustard. Brad reminds me of French bread. Rachel reminds me of apple juice. Erick reminds me of birthday cake-flavored milkshakes. How did this happen? Was it the constant advertising? Was there some trick of the brain during childhood I wasn’t aware of?

Already, my relationship with food is off to a rocky start. But then there are the things I find disgusting in life and how they find their way into my food. Not literally, but I imagine that they do and my imagination is powerful enough to make me vomit in some cases. For example, if you’ve ever seen the movie Clerks, the View Askew Productions logo at the beginning will serve as nightmare fuel to haunt you at every stage of life. There’s nothing wrong with men dressing in fishnet pantyhose, high heels, and leather thongs…even if they do have grotesque body hair. But it’s the unwanted sexual attention and creepiness of his flirtation that makes it such a traumatic logo. After seeing that logo for the first time, I kept involuntarily picturing his hairy disgusting body in pieces of my lunch meat. Every time I take a bite of ham or turkey, I imagine I’m taking a bite out of that man’s body. My stomach is aching and my fingers are convulsing just thinking about this.

But that’s just one example. If that was the only one, then I wouldn’t have been inspired to write an entire essay on it. What about the Calcobrena Puppets from Final Fantasy IV? You know, those creepy leotard-wearing dolls with buzzed heads, bloodshot eyes, zombie movements, and murderous intentions. They look like they could be Pee-Wee Herman’s children based on their buzz-cuts alone. Pee-Wee Herman once taught his audience how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on his show. Therefore…all of my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches will taste like the bodies of the Calcobrena Puppets. It’ll be like eating right off of their skulls, head lice, fleas, and maggots be damned. It’ll be like giving French kisses to each and every one of those dolls…while passing pre-chewed sandwiches back and forth! Again, my stomach is boiling and rotting while I’m typing this.

And what about the Simpsons from their Treehouse of Horror Episodes, particularly the ones where they turn into pale zombies. They chew flesh, they lose limbs, they groan like exhausted monsters, and did I mention that they have pale skin? You know what else is pale in color? Pasta covered in white sauce, whether it’s American cheese or Alfredo sauce. Every bite that I took of those macaroni shells made me believe I was eating pieces of the zombie Simpsons. I took a long time to swallow knowing that zombie flesh was going down my throat and was going to poison me to death. The macaroni turned to mush in my mouth, so when I finally swallowed, I gagged and brought up a little bit of bile with it.

If I rattled off every example of food-related body horror, then we’d be here forever and a day. I could talk about the faceless masks from Pink Floyd the Wall reminding me of melted cheese. I could talk about the diarrhea blasts in The Human Centipede reminding me of chocolate ice cream (that one’s too obvious, though). I could talk about dead flies reminding me of Butterfinger ice cream. How did this all happen? Why are these disgusting things finding their way into my every meal? Am I so linked up with food that every trauma will remind me of such? Suppose I was more inclined towards Legos instead of food. If I touched a Lego piece that had three holes in it, would it remind me of the Pink Floyd masks? What if I was geared towards clothing? Would the View Askew drag queen’s body hair remind me of a wool sweater that’s literally hugging my chest?

I can already hear fatphobic assholes using my food horror as motivation for me to lose weight…or is that just my schizophrenic voices? Nah, I’m pretty sure someone has thought of exploiting me at one point or another. To those fat-shamers, I say watch the Human Centipede and eat a bag of shit and then watch Pink Floyd the Wall and eat an entire McDonald’s Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (there has to be cheese in it, no exceptions). Unlike drugs and alcohol, food is actually necessary to survive. A cheeseburger will carry you over into the next day. A pack of cigarettes will not. A pepperoni pizza will give you the nutrition you need, even if it’s bad. Alcohol will not. If I gave up all of my favorite foods due to the body horror I’ve witnessed over the years, I would die of anorexia. Imagine that: fat-shaming actually hurts people instead of helping them find motivation. It’s almost as if people are only fat-shaming to satisfy their sadistic urges and are just using motivation as a cover-up for their shitty behavior. Bullying never went away; it just adapted to the new world.

I could tell you all that I’ve found the perfect counter for body horror-induced trauma, but I haven’t. Yes, I’m still alive and eating like a pig, but that’s only because the trauma went away on its own. I eat ham sandwiches whenever I damn well please even though the View Askew drag queen lusted on me through the TV screen as a kid. I eat stuffed mushrooms despite the fact that it feels too much like I’m eating Phanto from Mario Brothers 2, the evilly-smiling little bastard. Trauma going away on its own is not a typical outcome for most people, especially if schizophrenia is a factor like it is for me. Sure, you can take away the stimulus and hope for the Law of Diminishing Returns to kick in, but it doesn’t always do that. I have no solutions for your body horror trauma. As a matter of fact, I may have given you some of that as I described examples of how they make their way into my food.

Sometimes I think I’m the only one who experiences things like this until I Google it and find entire communities full of people who share my problems. But that’s assuming I’m not too lazy on any given day to use Google. It’s such an easy thing, yet I find myself too lazy sometimes to type words into a search engine. If you’re out there and you’re as food-minded as me, I’m sorry I can’t provide solutions for you other than the occasional animal picture and some digital hugs. You know who can provide more than that? Your therapist. They can talk you through your trauma. They can encourage you to face your food-themed fears. They can be there for you when you feel like others would laugh at your plight. Yes, therapy can be expensive at times, but it’s worth every penny if it means you’ll be okay in the end. If you’re not okay, it’s not the end. Life is better alive. It’s a dumb thing to say, but the truth won’t wane away. Okay, now I’m just ripping off quotes and lyrics. I should stop doing that before I get sent to prison for copyright infringement and have my vanilla pudding remind me of my cell mate’s semen. Uh-oh! More body horror!

Baby and Floyd

Baby and Floyd didn’t always have dark roots. In the early to mid 2000’s when I still visited my father in Vaughn on a weekly basis, those were the names of two of the most hyper, yet sweetest puppies to ever play with my dad and step-mother Charlie’s dog Daisy. Granted, I was the only one over in Vaughn who thought Baby and Floyd were darling, Baby being a golden retriever and Floyd being a rottie. Those two neighborhood dogs would drive Charlie nuts, especially after they tore up the yard and pissed on her pants. To this day, whenever I say “Who loves Floyd and Baby?”, Charlie says, “Nobody!” That was all some time ago. I don’t even know of those two dogs are alive today. If they are, they’re getting old.

Maybe the literary incarnation of Baby and Floyd are both representative of the sadness that comes with pets growing old and eventually dying. As far as my characters go, Baby and Floyd are not cute puppy-duppies. They are dark. They are deadly. They are cannibalistic. Piss them off and they’ll have you for supper. Think of them as the baldheaded puppets in Final Fantasy IV on steroids. The puppets in that game are creepy enough as it is, but they were so easy to kill. If you start hearing the Calcobrena theme playing while Baby and Floyd are in the same room as you, you’d better have toilet paper handy.

Baby has a pit bull mentality as WWE commentator Michael Cole likes to say about Daniel Bryan. Well, any true animal lover would know pit bulls are only mean if assholes abuse them. But let’s say for a moment that Michael Cole isn’t blowing a whole bunch of smoke. What would that mean for Baby, the little baldheaded cannibal puppet? It means if you leave your leg out, he will attach himself to it and chew until either his belly is full or your blood is drained. Guess which one will happen first.

Floyd is an entirely different animal. Yes, he’s just as cruel and evil as his much smaller counterpart, but he doesn’t normally use his teeth to get the job done. He has a sword for that kind of deal. If you need a reference point to follow, picture the big fucking sword Cloud Strife has in Final Fantasy VII and give it the ability to throw fire bombs upon unsuspecting enemies. Did I also mention Floyd is damned near seven feet tall? Does a guy the size of Frankenstein really need a sword that can cause so much destruction? Of course he does, because there are times when Baby prefers to have his meal of human flesh properly cooked.

This would normally be the part in the blog entry where I try to find employment for the character or characters in question. However, upon further inspection of my notes on Fireball Nightmare Act 3: Peace of Mind, there are two spots conveniently open for villainous characters. Well, now. Who should get those two spots? Which pair is evil enough to align themselves with a vampire wizard named Rhys Black, a child molester named Donald Park, and a brutal luchador named El Comegente? I know! How about John Bush and George Kerry? I’m just teasing you, of course those two spots are going to Floyd and Baby. Have fun, you two, but don’t have too much fun!

　

***PARODY WRESTLING QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“The following contest is a First Blood match for the WWE Divas Championship!”

-Justin Roberts-

Books Based On Videogames

It’s 2001/2002 and you’re a member of Playbyweb.com, a post-to-post RPG website. You try to establish an RPG based on a popular videogame only to be met with comments like, “Why don’t you just play the videogame?” Are you sick of those comments yet? Get used to them, because in 2009 when you officially solidify your status as a bookworm, you take an interest in books that were adapted from videogames. A few weeks ago, I went to Barnes & Noble and bought something that I look forward to reading someday: “Diablo III: The Order”. I’ve never played Diablo III, just the second one and the first one. Judging from how memorable Diablo II was, I figured that the third one in the series should be just as exciting and fast-paced. I expect the book will be just as action-packed as the videogames themselves. This will be the attitude I take with me whenever I go shopping for books at Barnes & Noble. There’s a whole sprawl of books and graphic novels based on videogames. I’ve seen ones based on Halo, Diablo (as I’ve said earlier), Sonic, and…those are the only ones my shitty memory will allow me to say. I’m sure there are others. Shit, just the other day, I was surfing Amazon and I purchased a copy of “Super Mario: How Nintendo Ruled America” by Jeff Ryan. It’s nonfiction of course since it’s in the style of a biography. I’ll look good on my shelf once it gets here. In the meantime, all this talk about books committed to videogames makes me want to see some novels based on other games as well. A Mario biography is nice, but how about a novel based in the Mario universe? Wouldn’t you like to see a story told through the creepily curled eyes of Phanto? I would, that’s for damn sure. Or how about a Final Fantasy IV novel told in a Calcobrena Puppet’s point of view? I’m sure that would sell. Hell, I’ll even settle for a Pac-Man book if it’s at all possible. I’m sure someone out there with a wild imagination could do it. Or if you’re into something a little more action-packed, let’s try some Street Fighter and Tekken books. There’s a whole universe of videogames out there that hasn’t been exploited yet. The only thing stopping authors like me from exploiting them is the anal-retentive copyright laws where corporations will literally sue over nothing. That’s part of the ongoing debate over fan fiction these days: internet postings and personal sharing is fine, but no official publication lest you be taken to court. If there are any authors out there who are more capable of getting a license to write videogame books than I am, I implore you, make these novels a reality. And no, I won’t just “play the videogame”, because I’ll get frustrated by the immense difficulty level. The last time I actually played a game was in 2010 when I kept getting my ass kicked by a lava dragon in Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS. It seems hypocritical that I would want videogame based novels after not having played one in three years. Maybe I’m just nostalgic since they were a huge part of my childhood. So how about it? Will we have that Donkey Kong novel or not? Anybody? Hello!

　

***CODY’S ARMY***

Whenever I’m not posting blog entries like the one I just did or writing chapters of Hardcore Hate 2: It‘s a Real War, I’ll be reading “Cody’s Army” by Jim Case. I’m 20 pages into it and it’s already an exciting thrill ride.

　

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Mickey Mouse is in Walt Disney’s office and Walt says, “I can’t just fire Minnie for being stupid.” Mickey says, “I didn’t say she was stupid. I said she was fucking Goofy.”