When You Call Your Heavy Metal Band Lamb of God, You Can't Complain About Confusing People

 

Looney Tunes

***LOONEY TUNES***

Do you feel like the world’s getting you down? You hate your job? You hate school? You don’t have many friends? Tragedy strikes in the strangest places? If you ever want to be lifted up from your slump, all you have to remember is…the Looney Tunes can make anything funny. Anything. No matter how dark or depressing the subject matter, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and all of those wacky characters can make light of it with their over-the-top antics. George Carlin once told his audience to “picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd” and they laughed like hyenas. I know you did too, because George Carlin and Looney Tunes go together like cherry pie and whipped cream. Wait a minute, that sounded dirty!

The Looney Tunes are funny because no matter what happens to them, they’ll always be alive and well during the next cartoon. There was an entire cartoon dedicated to Elmer Fudd shooting Daffy Duck’s beak off multiple times. Low and behold, Daffy didn’t die; he just kept telling Bugs Bunny how despicable he was. So if Looney Tunes characters don’t die, that means the animators can subject them to any kind of inhumane torture they can think of and nothing will happen except for audience laughter. Suppose Elmer Fudd is strapped to a torture table with a ball gag in his mouth while a circular buzz saw is being lowered into his stomach. It’s horrifying as hell when it happens to Ryu in the Ninja Gaiden arcade game from the 80’s, but if it happened to Elmer Fudd…shit, I’m chuckling just thinking about it!

It’s safe to say that the Looney Tunes have been a major influence in some of my writing. It’s especially evident in my Poison Tongue Tales stories “Forever Autumn” and “Sitka the Nose Biter”. The main character in the former, an elf sorcerer named Mathias, gets a coconut dropped on his head and stars circle around him while a big fucking knot forms on his dome. In “Sitka the Nose Biter”, whenever the eponymous kitty Sitka would bite someone’s nose (surprise, surprise), instead of exploding like a blood bomb, their noses would make honking sounds, like a clown horn or a goose squawk.

The Looney Tunes influence is something that spans multiple generations, not just to small children looking for cheap laughs and pointless violence. My mom loves the Bugs Bunny cartoon where the baby buzzard searches the desert for Bugs in an attempt to bring home dinner for his demanding mother. Mom especially loves the way the baby buzzard says, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no!” in a deep and goofy voice. Another one of her favorites is when Bugs Bunny gives Gossamer a mouse trap manicure. “Monsters have the most INTERESTING fingernails!” The cartoons in general are cute and cuddly despite the fact that they feature anthropomorphic animals getting blown up or shot. I always make the joke to my mom that it’s cute whenever Elmer Fudd goes hunting, but it’s disgusting when Ted Nugent hunts. I’m not wrong.

I know it seems like I’m preaching to the choir when I’m singing the Looney Tunes’ praises. They’re universally loved and continue to be relevant in today’s world. Quite frankly, we could use a little more Looney Tunes influence in a world full of bad shit. When I posted the #MeToo blog entry a few weeks ago, it was one of my most sobering experiences. After reliving those horrible moments, I had to be reminded that the world is a funny place full of funny people. The Looney Tunes will never judge me. They’re too busy blowing each other up and being cute little cuddle muffins.

Maintaining a sense of humor throughout all of the world’s tragedies is paramount to happiness. If you don’t buy the Looney Tunes example, then buy the Trevor Noah example I’m about to present you with. I’m currently reading “Born a Crime”, a memoir by Mr. Noah detailing his childhood in Apartheid-ruled South Africa. As someone who’s biracial, he was loathed by pretty much every ethnic group in his home country. He could have sealed himself off in his room and brooded for the rest of his life, but he didn’t. He developed a sense of humor and won the hearts of so many people that he’s now the host of The Daily Show. Good things do happen when you want them to. Positive attitudes aren’t just new age mantras; they’re tools for survival. We’ve got ears, say cheers! Actually, since this blog is about the Looney Tunes, a-beep, a-beep, a-beep, that’s all, folks!

***POISON TONGUE TALES 2: THE RIGHT TO REMAIN PSYCHOTIC***

Would you believe it if I told you I only have six more stories to write for this series and then I’m done? Where did all the time go? Holy shit! For the sixth to last short story, I’ve got something called “Thor and Gore”. It goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1. Thor, Cannibalistic Zombie
2. Kyle Houston, Lead Vocalist of Resistance
3. Resistance, Heavy Metal Band
4. Nameless Fans and Bouncers

PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.

SYNOPSIS: Resistance is playing a show at the Tiger Dome and Thor is a member of their audience. Other concert attendees think it’s okay to piss him off by pouring beer on his head, throwing popcorn at him, and moshing roughly with him. Underneath his gargantuan frame lies a bloodthirsty monster who takes his aggression out on those who wrong him by biting and slashing them. The bouncers are powerless to stop Thor and it doesn’t help matters that the members of Resistance are encouraging his behavior by playing louder.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

Because Thor was drawn and uploaded earlier today, Kyle Houston is naturally the next in line for a drawing. Since he’s a heavy metal vocalist, I’m trying to figure out who I should use as my reference model. Ivan Moody? Phil Anselmo? Randy Blythe? Corey Taylor? So many options, so little time!

***FACE BOOK POST OF THE DAY***

When I was a teenager doing Mad Libs with my family, James would always want me to skip my turn whenever the narrator asked for an example of a liquid. I still to this day wonder what would make him do that. Hehe!

Bury the Past

***BURY THE PAST***

In my college days, I used to talk candidly about my past like it was no big deal. I would write little essays of my most negative and emotionally draining experiences and post them online as if I was hotter shit than Tobias Wolff or Alison Bechdel, both authors masters of the memoir style. I even had aspirations of writing my own autobiography and talking about high school in Chehalis, living with my former step-dad Art, and being depressed at Western Washington University. Every negative experience I had in my life would bring me gold and silver, I thought to myself.

But then people would see these nonfiction postings and would want to know more. So they prodded me with questions like “What did he say?” and “What happened?” and anything else that would be considered nosy and detective-like. Talking about these experiences doesn’t bring me peace of any kind. It brings me sadness and heartache, so I try to avoid these conversations as much as possible. But then the nosy people would ask me why I posted my memoirs online whilst refusing to talk about it afterwards. I could never argue with that logic. I knew in my heart it was wrong, but I couldn’t disprove it. So please, if I don’t want to talk about the past, don’t make me. I keep those memories buried beneath the dirt forever, never to surface again.

I say these things not just as a warning to anybody digging into my past, but to anybody who wants to write memoirs themselves. If you publish something, people will be nosy about it and ask you about traumatic memories until the end of time. A prime example of a memoir gone bad is “My Fight/Your Fight” by UFC fighter Ronda Rousey. I haven’t read it yet, but I do know about it through Rousey’s Wikipedia profile. In the memoir, she talks about a time when she beat the shit out of her ex-boyfriend because he wanted to post revenge porn (nude photographs) of her online. Ever since then, domestic violence groups dropped the hammer down on Rousey while completely ignoring the cyber abuse her ex-boyfriend tried to commit, which is just as bad in my opinion as any physical beating.

Rousey has her own reasons why she wrote the memoir and none of her public backlash is her fault. But after hearing about that part in her book, it makes me want to read it more. Make no mistake about it, though: if there comes a time when the two of us talk online, neither of our pasts will be on the menu. Same thing goes for authors like Jaycee Dugard, Randy Blythe, and Amanda Knox: if I want to know their life stories, I’ll read their books and make no further comments other than to leave an online review.

Privacy is always a fuzzy gray area with the internet being as abundant as it is today. People love to share their lives online, but when the sharing becomes too much, their followers still want more. I personally enjoy my offline privacy. I keep my past buried beneath the earth, I refuse to write memoirs, and the only pieces of my life that I do share are clean photographs and occasional updates of events that might affect my artistic performance. Being an introvert and being a private person go hand in hand. When privacy is violated, the introvert becomes bitter at whoever violated it and rightfully so. So please, don’t force anybody to talk about something they don’t want to. Talking doesn’t bring peace for everyone, mostly just traumatic flashbacks and chilled blood.

　

***CREATIVE WORK***

A new week at the WSS is on the horizon, so expect another Poison Tongue Tale to come from that prompt as well as my independently written short story “Zombie”. The biggest update I have so far is for the Dark Fantasy Warrior drawings I’ve been doing. Up next is Rosie Moonbender, the antelope wizard from Unleash the Animal. She is the epitome of the “colorful, over-the-top violence” Edward Davies at the WSS likes to talk about when commenting on my short stories. Unleash the Animal was a bizarre story to say the least, which is what will make this picture of Rosie Moonbender all the more special.

　

***WRESTLING JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What does Stone Cold Steve Austin say every time he changes a baby’s diaper?
A: Austin 3:16 says I just wiped your ass!

"Nowhere To Run" by CJ Box

After reading “Nowhere to Run”, you have to wonder to yourself which one is worse: hearing dueling banjos in the middle of the forest or hearing something played on a pink iPod that was stolen off of a random woman’s belongings? If you answered the latter, you were probably quivering in your snakeskin boots at the presence of Camish and Caleb Grim. And why wouldn’t you? They’ve been slashing tents, butchering elk, and vandalizing property all over the park that Joe Pickett has to investigate. Not only do the two brothers appear to be the ones who did it, but they’re not going down without a fight. And when they fight, they use the most vicious tactics a hunting bow and bone-crunching traps can provide. Good luck, Mr. Government Man, I mean, Mr. Pickett! As long as we’re wishing good luck to a guy that’s been referred to as a “government man” (much to his chagrin), I believe it’s time to fill you in on what CJ Box appears to be about. In terms of political acumen, it would seem that Mr. Box is a mirror image of Carl Hiaasen. And why wouldn’t the former be? He lives in Wyoming and walks around in a cowboy hat all day long. It’s not a huge secret that Wyoming is a hotbed for conservative politics. A lot of those politics show through in CJ Box’s writing, particularly as it relates to much later in the book where government corruption runs rampant. The woman that Joe Pickett is looking for up in these mountains was said to have been a diehard Ayn Rand fan. The Grim brothers weren’t much different when asked about their political stances. As a hardcore liberal and even more hardcore socialist, I should be upset that one of my favorite books has this kind of agenda attached to it. The truth is, I’m not. I’m not shocked that a cowboy from Wyoming thinks differently from me. My only advice to readers of his books is to enjoy them for their quick pace, intelligent writing style, and three-dimensional characters all across the board. I even dare say that I could learn something from Mr. Box as it relates to my own writing. Then again, whenever I compare myself to someone else, I usually end up hating what I’ve written down. Short moments of low self-esteem are a small price to pay for learning how to write from one of the best in the business: CJ Box.

　

***CONCERT QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“So as everyone here knows, Mr. Randy Blythe is free and well. We’re going to do this next song for him. Because no one gets left behind!”

-Ivan Moody from Five Finger Death Punch-