Blood Rain

One shot would be all it took. A flying diamond-tipped arrow to Shatter Man’s life core would earn Ino Kara the respect she deserved from her mercenary cohorts. No more jokes about her equine features. No more jokes about being ridden like a cowboy. They could forget about trying to feed her hay. They could spare her the horse dick references and anything else that had to do with bestiality. “You fuckers will put respect on my name,” she said in a low voice to nobody in particular.

Shatter Man was ripe for the snipe. Surrounded by a cluster fuck of dead bodies lying on the dirt and bone-covered ground, the necromantic machine sat cross-legged while his exhaust pipe belched red filth into the gray skies above. Ino could smell the ashen cloud it all the way from her sniper’s nest in the treetops. She had to be careful not to hack up a lung if she wanted to stay hidden.

With a bandana tied around her muzzle and stillness taking over her body, Ino pulled one of her diamond-tipped arrows out of her quiver and took aim with her golden edge bow. A shot to the head would have been her preference for any sniping mission, but Shatter Man’s mechanical dome wouldn’t allow it. She had to pierce through his chest at the exact spot and splatter his life core all over the ground. A filthy death indeed, but no more filthy than speeding up climate change with this necromantic smoke. Ino had to find her exact shot and make it quick.

She breathed deeply not only to calm her nerves, but steady her aim. Just when she was ready to release her arrow, a crow flew from out of nowhere and began pecking at Ino’s mask. “Shoo! Go away! Beat it!” she angrily whispered while swatting the bird away. She didn’t want to whack the poor guy too hard due to her respect for animals, but this wasn’t he best time to horse around. There was another mercenary joke that needed to be eradicated forever: horsing around.

Ino steadied her breathing once more and made a second attempt at aiming for the life core. “Easy…easy does it…you’ve got this…now take a shot!” she whispered to herself. The damn crow served as a distraction yet again, but this time perched its claws right over Shatter Man’s life core. The robot didn’t move an inch, just kept spewing garbage into the cloudy skies. “You asked for it, you stupid bird.” Respect would only go so far as Ino Kara finally took her shot.

Shatter Man looked so still and unaware this entire time, not unlike the zombies he was trying to wake up with his putrid smoke. Ino gasped when the mechanical nightmare grabbed the arrow just before it could pierce his life core. He crushed the arrow into dust, including the diamond tip, before ejecting bird seed from his hand as a reward for the crow.

“That little bastard,” whispered Ino, clutching her edge bow so tightly that a little crack formed.

Shatter Man spun his head towards Ino’s sniping nest. His visor flashed an eerie shade of red, making Ino’s heart race no matter how much she tried to suppress her fear. He pointed a drill bit finger at her and puffed even more pollutants into the sky. “My sacred ritual is not your payday!” he said in a monotone, demonic voice. “Arise, my children of the dead!”

A sprinkle of water landed on Ino’s furry head. And another. And another. When she wiped them away, her teeth and legs vibrated at the crimson color. The tiny droplets became heavier and denser until a full-on bloody rainstorm drenched Ino from head to hooves. Her purple battle dress and blue thigh high boots clung to her body like a frightened child wanting his mother’s undying love.

Ino’s own blood grew ice cold and a knot welled up in her stomach when the bloody rain caused the army of dead bodies to twitch. Limbs and heads awkwardly twisted around. Rotting flesh peeled and rolled. Bulging eyeballs retracted back into their owners’ skulls. Slowly and creepily, the shit-smelling dead bodies rose to their wobbly feet until Shatter Man and his crow informant had their own necromantic army.

The horse woman swallowed a golf ball sized lump while clutching her chest, hoping she wouldn’t die of a heart attack before this battle had a chance to begin. “Fuck it,” she said, tossing all caution to the wind. Even as crimson rain pelted her clothing and soaked her fur, Ino tossed aside her growing fear and ran into the fray.

“I want some goddamn respect!” she shouted, knowing assassinating Shatter Man was the only way she’d get it from her fellow mercenaries. As hordes of zombies trudged towards her with their rotten arms extended and their bloody mouths wide open, she fired multiple arrows at once and each one hit their marks. Chests exploded. Throats splattered on the ground. Guts spilled all over the dirt like a gory mudslide. When Ino ran out of arrows, she continued her assault by swinging her edge bow and smashing the skulls of anybody who dared take a bite out of her horse meat.

Shatter Man’s arms folded while the crow sat perched on his shoulder laughing his ass off at the equine warrior. “You little bastard!” shouted Ino as she trampled fallen zombies on her way to snatch the bird, wanting so desperately to rip his feathers out and snap his beak. The zombies wouldn’t stay down for long. As the blood rain continued to pour, they stood back up even with their detached heads and exploded bones. They grabbed at Ino’s shoulders with broken fingers, but she beat them down with her edge bow until they were little more than rivers of blood and organs.

Despite the aching in her own ribcage and limbs, Ino wouldn’t allow her waning energy to get in the way of her quest for respect, coin, and ultimately her life. She smashed more skulls, stomped on fallen bodies, ripped out spinal cords, but the zombies kept getting back up for more. Even the crow got in on the action when he pecked behind Ino’s ears. She swung at the bird, but he kept dodging and laughing the whole time, turning Ino’s ice cold blood into boiling magma. Even as more zombies grabbed her, she ripped her flesh away from their sharp grips and chased after the bird.

When Ino finally latched onto the crow’s tail feathers and seethed with bloodlust as she imagined ripping the little guy apart, a heavy metal punch to the gut doubled her over and caused her to dry heave on the ground. The zombies were called off as Ino touched her damp wound. She knew it was her own blood and not that of the crimson weather. She could feel her naked ribcage because there was no skin to protect it. That punch came from Shatter Man himself, who stood over her with his red visor glowing and blinding her with every flash.

“Go ahead…finish me off…what are you waiting for?!” begged Ino, spitting out blood in between words.

“You exhausted your body, battled my minions, and put your life at risk for a little bit of respect?” said Shatter Man. Ino tucked her head in shame as she laid in the fetal position waiting to die. “Everybody who tried to claim my life has the same story: a minority mercenary looking for acceptance from their peers. Killing me will suddenly net them the happiness they believe they’re entitled to. Truth is, young lady…you could cure cancer and end worldwide hunger all in the same day. You’re still going to be laughed at. You’re still going to be hated by society. Why? Because ignorance and fear are easier to accept than progressive values.”

Tears welled up in Ino’s eyes as this truth bomb hit her harder than Shatter Man’s punch to her guts. “I don’t want to be a horse anymore,” she sobbed. “If being a normal human will get them to leave me alone, then I’ll take it. I never got racial pride anyways.”

“It doesn’t get more ordinary and boring than laying six feet deep in the ground, no matter what race you identify as. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to please others to get the respect you deserve. You don’t have to conform to tradition. If you want respect, you’ve got to beat it out of those who deny it to you. You think I chose to be a robot? You think I was born with the name Shatter Man? I didn’t win any popularity contests with my background. Why do you think I have a price on my head? It would have only been a matter of time until you had a price on yours.”

Ino spit up more blood and wiped away her tears with her dress sleeve. “I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? I’m already on my way to hell. At least in hell, they’re honest about what kind of torture they’re going to give me. Here on earth, they just disguise it as making whatever country they live in ‘great again’.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” said Shatter Man, waving his arm in the sky to show off his bloody rain. “You can have a second chance at life just like my minions. As zombies, they don’t have the highest social ranking. But they take full advantage of their second chance. They hunger for revenge against a society that never wanted them when they were alive. They were and still are weirder than any horse woman they’ve ever seen. Let the blood rain flow into you. Join my army. Don’t wait for respect. Take it from them with both hands.”

The bloody rain poured through Ino Kara’s wounds as she laid on her back waiting for sweet necromancy to overtake her. A warming sensation spread throughout and she didn’t feel like shivering anymore, whether it was because of fear or cold weather. Her eyes rolled back in her head like she was in an orgasmic trance. Her tired body blazed with energy and happiness she hadn’t felt in a long time. Her pain numbed out and was replaced with a massaging sensation throughout her chest, legs, and head.

Slowly and shakily, she rose from the ground. Her stomach pounded with hunger, but not for food and certainly not for hay. She hungered for flesh. She thirsted for blood. Her tormentors would turn into victims. Her cannibalistic meals would taste juicier than a steak dinner. She licked her blood-covered lips and groaned with lust.

Shatter Man placed a hand on her shoulder. “Welcome to my army. You can stay for as long as you desire. They say the taste of vengeance is bittersweet, but you’ll find it to your liking. You will be loved and respected…or else!”

Ino Kara had no words for her seductive master, only groans. Then again, she wouldn’t have to debate the harmful effects of racism with the world ever again. Either her victims took yes for an answer…or they would get chewed up and spit out with no remorse. Ino smiled at that idea. Her newly rotten teeth would make her face look even more horrifying to the racists she would eventually devour. She was strangely okay with that. Fuck beauty. Fuck love. Fuck everybody in this butt ugly world!

"Happy!" by Grant Morrison

BOOK TITLE: Happy!

AUTHOR: Grant Morrison

YEAR: 2017

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Crime Fiction

GRADE: Pass

Disgraced detective turned contract killer Nick Sax completes an assassination of mob boss Mr. Blue’s sons. During the final moments of the confrontation, one of the sons tells Nick the password to a bank account full of laundered mafia money. Just as Mr. Blue’s henchmen are about to extract the password from him via torture, an imaginary blue unicorn haunts Nick’s psyche and agrees to help him out dangerous situations on the condition that he rescues small children from a porn studio. Will Nick Sax become the hero he was meant to be or will he selfishly reject Happy the horse every step of the way?

This graphic novel is incontrovertible proof that not all protagonists have to be saints in order for the audience to cheer for them. Nick Sax is a vulgar, selfish, negative alcoholic who would rather waste his life away than use it for good causes. Seeing as how this is a redemption story, Happy the Horse has a long way to go in order to convince Nick to see the light. The two of them get into schizophrenic arguments that make outsiders feel uncomfortable and downright frightened to death. When the big payoff finally happens, it feels right. Some would criticize Nick’s newfound reasons as being selfish yet again, but that just goes to show how stonehearted a broken man like him can be. To me, that’s gritty and realistic, which is what all detective novels should be like, imaginary horse aside.

Speaking of Happy, I enjoyed his characterization as well. He’s a goofy, lovable, lighthearted ray of sunshine in a world covered in darkness and beer. Sometimes the reader needs a break from all of the R-rated horror and Happy will provide that relief through his personality alone. In truth, Happy is the last line of defense for childhood innocence since he was one of the kidnapped children’s imaginary friend at one point. Once he’s gone, the whole world turns to poison. Imagination is the most powerful tool we have and it took a lot of it to incorporate Happy’s character in a believable way. Good job in that department, Mr. Morrison!

I don’t have many complaints, but I do have one about Nick Sax’s back story as to why he acts as coldly as he does. While it is a tragic story about his family that would make any reader tear up, it seems forced and cliché, like it somehow excuses Nick’s behavior by virtue of its mere existence in the storyline. I’ve seen this trope used many times before and it only numbs me to the real tragedy of the much larger story. But as I said, this is a minor complaint since it didn’t actually derail the story in any way. It’s just a flaw that needed to be pointed out, that’s all.

All in all, this was a fun little graphic novel and I can easily see why Syfy would want to make a TV show out of it. Sometimes it’s fun to root for the antihero, especially when a magical flying horse evens him out. That’s the trick with the antihero: he can’t be worse than the villains he’s fighting. Otherwise, there’s nothing to believe in. Nick Sax’s redemption story is believable to me and that’s why I’m giving this graphic novel a passing grade despite his clichéd character history.

The Ballad of Gravedigger Jane

Gravedigger Jane stewed in the middle row next to the aisle of the college auditorium, a place that was nearly packed with hee-hawers and pot smokers. She wished she could have some pot to soothe her boiling anger, but if she tested positive for it, it could mean the end of her college boxing career. Instead she pulled a metal flask out of her hooded vest and took a swig of booze. She shook her head at the hypocrisy of allowing alcohol but banning marijuana. What the fuck was that all about? No matter what her drug of choice was, hopefully it would get her through this god-awful performance.

As Jane relaxed in her seat with her sneakered feet on the empty chair in front of her, the madness was about to begin. Royal trumpets blasted over the sound system and almost gave her a migraine. While holding her ears with her taped hands, she turned around to see why such ludicrous music was playing at an obnoxious volume. There he was in all of his nose-in-the-air arrogance: Chris Duncan riding a horse while wearing a musketeer outfit: a blue tunic with a crucifix on it, black leather pants, knee-high brown boots, and a fedora with a feather in it. His bloated neckless bodyguards were also dressed in musketeer garb.

Chris swung his thin blade and pointed it at Jane before giving her a saucy smile and a wink. Jane responded with a shake of her head and a bruised middle finger, to which Mr. Duncan gave a royal belly laugh. The audience around her didn’t know whether to cheer or boo, so they just sat in wide-eyed silence. Then again, that could have been the pot talking. Jane took another swig of booze as Chris dismounted his horse and slapped it on the ass to send it trotting out of the theater. The speaker took the center of the stage with his bouncers standing at the edge, arms folded and attitudes in check.

The speaker adjusted the mini-microphone on his tunic and said, “Testing, testing, one, two, three.” Sure enough, everybody could hear him loud and clear as evidenced by the mixture of cheers and boos. The initial shock of Chris Duncan coming down in a musketeer outfit war off in a big fucking hurry once they figured out what he really came to talk about. Knowing that time was near, Gravedigger Jane took yet another swig and let out a monstrous burp.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” opened Mr. Duncan. “You’re probably wondering why I’m out here dressed as a musketeer. Two reasons: one, the musketeer has always been a symbol of loyalty to king and country. I’m loyal to my country and I would like to make it great again, if you know what I mean!” The mixed reaction blasted through the arena once again, but Gravedigger Jane sat still and clicked her knuckles.

Pacing around the stage and swinging his saber, Chris said, “The other reason I’m wearing this outfit is because it doesn’t look anywhere near as ridiculous as the dresses men put on to pass as women. You’ve got big ass men with neck beards going down to their knees walking into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms and this university doesn’t do a damn thing about it! It’s time we scrubbed this politically correct filth from college campuses everywhere! Political correctness is a threat to our free speech rights in the same way these so called transgender students are a threat to our purity! And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the rest of the fag population!”

While the auditorium unleashed a firestorm of half-cheers and half-boos, Gravedigger Jane’s muscles were bulging in red hot anger. Her teeth were clamped tightly enough to make her granite jaw ache. She popped both of her wrists while staring bullets into Chris Duncan. The sick prick pointed his musketeer sword at her and she knew it was time to get her violence on, but not just yet.

“You see that man slash woman over there? Boxing fans might know that person as Gravedigger Jane. But I know him as Kevin Ferguson!” snapped Chris. The combination of hearing her old name along with the catcalling of the crowd caused the blood vessels in Jane’s eyes to pop like hot air balloons.

Chris had only begun his verbal assault. “Thanks to your school’s lenient policy on gay crap, Kevin over here can waltz into a woman’s locker room without so much as a bat of the eye! He can swing his dick around like a baseball bat and let his nuts hang down to his feet in front of all those poor women! Not only that, but he can punch out women legally and split their skulls down the middle! You call this equality?! I call it bullshit! You’re a fucking man, Kevin! You will always be a man!”

The guffaws of laughter, the screaming, the vulgarity of Chris Duncan’s speech, they all led to the tightly-muscled, predatory-faced, and stone-fisted Gravedigger Jane to pop out of her seat and storm down the aisle towards the stage. The fat bouncers formed a blockade between Chris and Jane while the former dropped his saber and backed off, screaming, “Whoa!” multiple times in rapid fire succession. Jane breathed heavily and punched her fists together while the students chanted, “Fight!” repeatedly.

“Easy there, Kimbo Slice!” shouted Chris. “You’re not going to do a damn thing to me! This is America and I’ve got free speech until the day I die! Nobody’s making you be here! Go run off to your safe space, little boy!” To add spice to his already flaming rhetoric, Chris stood on the edge of the stage and pointed his chin out to the crowd. “You want to hit me so badly, go right ahead! I’ll sue the shit out of you and have you blackballed from the sport! Come on, tough nuts! Throw a big one! Knock my ass out!”

“I’d love to knock your ass out, you little turd biscuit!” shouted Gravedigger Jane. Despite the raucous noise of the crowd, she was as audible as every news pundit who liked to turn it up to eleven. She even threw her hood back and revealed her corn-rowed hair and rolled back demonic eyes. Chris’s own eyes were wide with horror as he slowly backed away while Jane gave her oratory.

Jane continued with, “I paid for my tuition by beating people up! I’ll punch you so fucking hard you’ll be shitting teeth for two weeks straight!” Using her taped hand for visual references, she gritted her own teeth and throatily bellowed, “Your nose will be stapled to the back of your head! Your eyes will explode like little hand grenades! Your brain will splatter like a bucket of paint! I’m not even sure you’ll have a fucking head by the time I’m done with you!”

Chris slipped on his ass and convulsed in terror as the students chanted, “Fight!” some more. Gravedigger Jane looked like one of her punches could tear this whole building down. She looked like a simple left jab could turn these bouncers into protoplasmic jelly. She was ready to start swinging and show why she was a multiple time boxing champion.

But then a tear rolled down her cheek and her bear trap jaw trembled and ached with sorrow. Once that one tear rolled down, several more followed. The levies in her eyes broke in the same way her heart did. With a shaky voice, she said, “You’re right about one thing, though: if I punch you or your bouncers out…I could lose my career. I could lose my scholarship. I could lose everything. You’re not worth it. You’re loud and stupid as hell, but you’re not worth it. I…I…um…”

The avalanche of tears interrupted her passionate speech to where all she could do was storm out of the theater with half of the students chanting, “Get a job!” in succession. She slammed the door behind her and plopped backwards against the brick wall. The tears wouldn’t stop coming. They raged on and on while all Gravedigger Jane could do was punch the bricks behind her and scream with no audience…except for the horse.

“What are you looking at? Huh?” asked Jane with trembling lips, the same trembling lips that took yet another swig of booze. And another. And another. The horse gazed at her with innocent puppy dog eyes and Jane said, “Aw, fuck it, you can have some too.” She gently poured some booze into the horse’s mouth and watched it drink the last of the liquid courage. “That’s some strong shit, isn’t it. It’s not doing a damn thing for me right now, but oh well.”

As Jane tucked the flask in her vest, the horse started shaking its head and neighing in a thunderous voice. The transgender boxer watched the erratic behavior turn into violent galloping and said, “What the hell?” More neighing and more galloping ensued before the lightweight drunken horse stormed inside the theater to the sounds of horrified screams.

Jane placed her ear against the door and heard even more heavenly sounds: furniture being destroyed, bones shattering, even Chris Duncan and his bouncers couldn’t help but cry like bitches in pain and terror. She even heard Chris yell, “Why, sweet god, why?!” The next “Why?” he let out was more like a child’s whine and less like a brave and mighty musketeer. This put a smile on Jane’s face as she wiped away the tears.

She was nearly bowled over as students flooded all exists in an attempt to escape the drunken horse’s mad kicking. Soon enough the horse itself chased after a winded bouncer and toppled him before stomping the shit out of the poor bastard. Jane’s smile was even bigger than before and her rainy tears were all but gone.

As soon as the doorway was cleared, she peeked inside and saw broken bodies of students and bouncers lying about in total agony while theater chairs were splintered into nothing. Chris Duncan huddled in the fetal position while holding his groin and coughing up blood. He cried like a baby as he met Jane’s warrior gaze.

“For the record,” Jane shouted. “I didn’t lay a finger on you! Your stupid horse did! I guess the horse won’t have a boxing career after all! Maybe that big ass thing shouldn’t be trotting into women’s locker rooms with his saber sticking out! Adios, amigo!” Gravedigger Jane blew Chris Duncan a kiss before shutting the door behind her and leaving her haters covered in blood and darkness. Freedom of speech wasn’t free. In fact, the price was higher than Chris’s new soprano voice.

The Franciscan Death Scream

There’s been speculation among every psychic my mother has visited that in a past lives I was always a warrior of some kind. It could have been a barbarian in the dark ages or a marine in Vietnam. I’d say those assessments are true to the fullest extent, especially as they relate to battle cries. Well, these days, the only battle cries I let out are ones where I’m in an extreme amount of pain. You want to know how I define an extreme amount of pain? Stepping on a thumb tack. Banging my elbow against the wall. Banging my head on the roof of a short car. With the way I scream loudly and whiningly in pain, you would have sworn I’d broken a bone or had a limb amputated. But that’s the price of being autistic: high sensitivity to everything, including the most insignificant kind of pain.

My blood draw in 2006 at the Franciscan Hospital in Gig Harbor, Washington was no different. I had to have one because it was part of my physical checkup. Just because I had to have one, didn’t mean I had to particularly enjoy it. Needles are sharp. Sharpness creates pain. Pain creates death screams that make me sound like I’m being fed through a wood chipper or being cut in half crotch first with a chainsaw. I don’t know why people say that needles aren’t a big deal. They’re always going to be sharp and they’re always going to hurt whether they’re drawing blood or threading yarn through a piece of cloth.

My blood draw went exactly how I expected it would. I sat in a chair that looked like it belonged in a dentist’s office. The anxiety in my stomach builds. The nurse tied a rubber tourniquet around my upper arm. The anxiety in my stomach builds even further and now I start making little whining noises. The nurse tells me to look away as if that’s going to help ease the pain. It didn’t matter where I was looking, because the end result was having a bastard sword-like needle plunged into my arm.

As to be expected, I let out a blood-curdling death scream. It was loud. It was throaty. It was slightly girlish. It was like being a female lion in an extreme amount of pain. Apparently, there were frightened little kids in the waiting room who ran upstairs after hearing my shriek of agony and their parents ran after them. Any stragglers would have hurried up after hearing me cry, “Take the needle out! Take the needle out!” The nurse did and I let out another bellow of berserker pain.

Ever since that day, anytime I go to that hospital in Gig Harbor, the nurses and doctors always expect me to scream. They make no attempt to silence me, unlike my mother whose favorite line is always, “There’s no yelling.” Oh, but there is. There is and there always will be, dear mother. There was screaming when I had to have my big toes operated on for ingrown nails, there was screaming when I had to have my foot examined after a cat bite, and there’s even screaming at my eye doctor appointments in Port Orchard when he puts stinging drops in my eyes for a glaucoma test.

Unless my mother is considering a career as a dominatrix, there will be no silence anywhere we go. If we go on another horseback ride in Arizona, my groin and legs are going to hurt so badly that I’ll yell as if they’re being blasted with an AK-47. If my computer malfunctions at home or if a WWE pay-per-view on my Roku freezes up, I’m going to scream and swear at either one until my blood pressure is in the 300’s and my pulse is in the 1000’s.

Three things are certain in my mother’s life as well as the life of anybody who lives with me: death, taxes, and barbaric war cries. The only thing I’m missing is a horned helmet and a double-sided battleaxe. Of course, carrying such a heavy weapon would cause strain and strain causes even more shrills of extreme pain. I’ve got the barbaric ethos down to a science and I haven’t even swung my weapon yet (and I’m not sure I will be able to).

　

***COMMERCIAL DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

GUY: I’m eating right and staying in shape. I’ve been doing the Duck Dodger.
GIRL: What’s the Duck Dodger?
GUY: It’s like a triathlon, but with dodge balls.
GIRL: Do they leave a mark?
GUY: Not on the outside.

-Subway-

"Oink" by Matt Whyman

If you thought big ol’ piggy pies were cute and cuddly, try having mini-pigs! Little fun size babies you can hold in the palm of your hand! Actually, as author Matt Whyman will tell you, his two latest runts, Butch and Roxy, are literally and figuratively a handful. Matt already has four children, a wife, a cat, some chickens, and a puppy-duppy. What the hell, why not throw two little oinker babies into the mix? Of all the animals Matt Whyman has, including the humans, Butch and Roxy were easily the rowdiest of the bunch and therefore gave him the most fits. Want to know all the things mini-oinkers are capable of? How about leaving a warm yellow puddle of piss over Matt’s feet while he’s trying to write children’s stories? Or maybe they can chew on the controller and wires for his Playstation One. Or if you really want a reason to get the blood boiling, how about ripping up the neighbor’s yard during an attempted robbery? The thing is, the piggy pies actually did more damage than the actual burglars. And the neighbor? He’s never in a good mood, so one could only imagine the kind of trouble Matt would be in once he came home. Despite all of these incidents that would normally give Matt Whyman a heart attack, he goes through a progression throughout the memoir where he learns to enjoy the controlled chaos and that all members of his family keep the unit together. In other words, “Oink” is every bit as heartwarming as it is silly and giggly. It actually reads like a novel and follows the formula very well despite the fact that it’s clearly nonfiction. When you read through it, you have no reason to believe that his storybook ending could be anything but nonfiction. He’s not just a celebrity who writes one book about his life with the help of a ghostwriter. Matt Whyman is a veteran author. He knows exactly what he’s doing when he puts pen to paper. He controls the pace, he writes in a giggly tone, and he’s got a great vocabulary. If those three things aren’t enough reason to buy this book, then at least buy it for the cute and cuddly mini-oinkers! AWW!!

　

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Sir, I don’t think ‘piss like a dog’ is a real expression. It’s ‘piss like a racehorse‘. How exactly do you piss like a dog? Do you lift one leg and do it over a fire hydrant?”

-Brad Loekle-