My nephew is a freshman in high school, and already having trouble with a rumor spread around the school like a brushfire.  He’s a tough kid, with a big mouth, and very active in sports.  He’ll survive, but he’s quickly learning that high school is its own experience with higher highs and lower lows than other grades in the public k-12 system.

In that vein, here are some anecdotal stories of my experience  to remind you what it was like:

The Girl
I was sitting in class, vaguely paying attention to the teacher when a girl I knew as a psued0-friend came to the window in the door.  She stood out in the hallway and motioned at me.  Shocked, I nodded to acknowledge her communication.  She was trying to mouth words to me from the hall, but I couldn’t make them out, so I kept making a “What?” sort of gesture, and cupping my hand behind my ear.  That’s pretty clever sign language, I know.  This continues several times until finally she’s calling me out to the hallway.  Clearly she’s got something to tell me.  Maybe she couldn’t help herself and had to come get me from class to confess her secret crush on me.  I can’t just get up and leave class though, or should I?  Right before I decide to calmly excuse myself to the hallway to accept this gift from my new admirer, the girl behind me gets up, smiling, and walks out to the hall to meet her friend who was apparently not talking to me at all.

Dating the friend
I don’t know how I wound up around a girl that was in a class below mine, but somehow I developed a crush on her.  She was the younger sister of a kid in my class too, which only made things worse.  I’d walk over to her house to hang out with hopes that she’d pick up my signals and want me to be her boyfriend. Jeez, high school is dumb.  Time after time, and attempt after attempt, she seemed only slightly interested.  Finally she pulls me aside.  She pulls me close and whispers into my ear that her very heavy and obnoxious friend with the wild and crazy hair and lack of any “inside-voice” really likes me.  I’m in this to win this, so I figure that by dating her friend, she’ll appreciate my efforts and I’ll get her to return my affections.

The obnoxious girl’s mother brought her over to my house, several times, unannounced and a little overzealous of her daughter’s new boyfriend.  My parents were uncomfortable with this, thinking I’d arranged it secretly.  She’d come in, go to my room and close the door.  Of course she closed the door.  I’d spend the next hour dodging her in my own room and avoiding every heavy handed pass at physical contact until finally making up something I had to do and taking her home with my brand new driver’s license.

Although we never officially broke up, I stopped talking to her.  That didn’t win me any points whatsoever with the friend I did like and they both hated me.  It’s for the best though, I think.  The girl I was interested in continued to not date, and the girl who chased me around my room was spotted barefoot and pregnant, holding a baby, at the local WalMart store not more than 3 years later.  The cute friend caught me delivering pizza at her work once, and paid me $20+ in change with a smile.

Who is that guy?
I had a great friend in high school, who I’d known for a long time.  He was a bit dorky, but so I was I and it allowed me to be the cool kid in our friendship.  I’d mess with him in the way that asshole high school kids did.  I’d unzip his backpack and pull stuff out of it, then hand that stuff to him in class or something lame like that.  He would get mad, but overall he was a very even-tempered kid.  He loved to read, and had a great interest in history.  He carried a backpack with all of his school books and supplies and personal books and maybe even some action figures.

His parents had a lot of land, and I was good with computers from an early age, so I’d take a copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook over to his place on a floppy disk and we’d screw around with stuff we shouldn’t.  Once we burned an old tree down with home made napalm.  Kids…  One day, during a convocation on drug testing and searching, he stood up from his seat next to me in the auditorium with his giant backpack in tow.  He spoke calmly, but loudly, that the school had no right to test and search our personal belongings and has he spoke he left the seat beside me and walked the aisles passing out hand-made fliers about privacy rights with quotes for all the students.

He was a celebrity in that moment.  We never hung out anymore and barely had a chance to speak because he was hoisted up on a throne or in trouble with the school for the rest of our high school career.  I saw him a couple years later, on the street in college while going to various house parties on a road near campus.  He barely knew me.

Secret Love
There are groups of people who form “cliques” in any environment, but high school seemed to be the home of the clique.  I had friends in many groups, which was a bit of a luxury because I could hang out with older kids, band kids, smart kids and so on.  Still, I never considered myself part of the smart kid group.  It wasn’t about intelligence at all, but rather about money.  The smart kid group seemed to have wealthy parents and my family couldn’t afford to buy me Polo shirts and Dockers shorts for school.  I was more into black rock t-shirts and jeans, anyway.  It just set up a mental separation for me.

In that group was a very smart and very attractive girl who never really paid me any special attention, but always seemed very nice.  One day, during class session I was running late and in a hurry to get to class.  Nerve-wrecked over something I don’t remember and rushing up the stairs, I slowed as I saw another student on the next set of stairs.  I didn’t want to look lame for hurrying, you know.  The person in the hallway was her and as we passed on the landing she very clearly whispered “I love you, Jon Scott”.

I didn’t respond.  It was like my legs were on a mission, my body must comply and my voice was missing in action.  I thought and thought about it, but what could I do now?  What if I had misheard?  What would I say?  She paid less attention to me than before and the story ended there without me ever returning so much as a “thank you, you’re a nice person”.

Those are a few stories from my high school experience.  Just recounting them makes me realize the missed opportunities, the awkwardness and the feeling that I wasn’t popular enough.  Looking back, I’d change a lot, but I imagine the experience was similar for most.

Do you have a story to share?  If you’d rather do a High School Stories blog post, put your link in the comments and I’ll post it here as well.

Rumor has it that I’ve been off in Zambia, training lions to do my bidding as part of an overall goal of small-rural-town domination.  I will not tell you it’s not true.  You’re smart enough to know that it probably is, and I wouldn’t insult you.

The reality of the situation is that I was challenged to develop a 22 page comic book and ended up with approximately one month to complete it in.  The story began very differently, but the more I thought about it and “fleshed it out”, it grew and changed into something that does make a bit more sense.  That being said, it’s not perfect.

At this time, I’m not completely happy with all the artwork and I think the story needs a little bit of attention.  This is the first part in a series that I’m planning, but that’s not a good excuse for not getting to the point faster, I suppose.  I’m curious to hear what you, my internet friends, think.

Now here’s a problem, or maybe a good thing: The file is too large for me to upload directly through Wordpress Media Upload, so rather than upload it manually I’m considering releasing a few pages a week.  Maybe a page a day, and maybe just a page a day Monday through Thursday, giving me time to redraw and clean some things up.

You tell me, readers.  Would you enjoy reading a page a day, having something to look forward to (poking me with sticks and laughing at me), or are you impatient and you want to see the product of a month?

Tell me in the comments.

I think when you present anything, you generally have an idea of how it’s going to go. You at least have an idea of how you’d like it to go.  Well, I posted a partial project I’ve been working on, and instead of getting feedback from 2 or 3 people, as I expected…  Something different happened.

It all started with Elly Lou (blog) having some sort of confusion with the comment box having some sort of a minimum, which it apparently doesn’t.  Innocent enough, right? Seemingly.

Before I know what’s going on, the post has become a public forum with questions about caring for a new cat, the legitmacy of transexual mates and time machines.  A comment sandwich began and, my friends, it grew.  It grew like an unholy sandwich from sandwich-hell.

Somewhere in the midst of the tornado of comments, I believe, but cannot prove, that VapidBlonde (blog) got my cat pregnant, PattyPunker (blog)  stole all my lightbulbs and Dufmanno (blog) defended, again, that she does not have a condition referred to as “fur boobs”.   Oh and WickedShawn (blog) promised me pictures of boobies.  Man boobies…  I hope she forgets.

We laughed, we loved and we learned from each other.  VapidBlonde, for example, shared with us the gift that is the muffburger:

She then tried to shield us from the dangers of searching for “sexburger” at work, but when I did, I learned even more!  Go ahead and assume that all of my settings are modified to allow as much “accidental” porn to come up in my search results as possible.  Still, I learned of the “SEX BURGER” restaurant:

As it turns out, the SEX BURGER is a bit of Engrish (engrish.com) but I call this a happy accident.  Two things I love more than almost anything, barring comment sandwiches like this, are sex and burgers.  I want to fly there and eat them out

of business!

With this comment section rolling forward with the fury of 10,000 Mack trucks, I found it hard to stop it.  I wanted to do an update more of the guide to wishing – but…  My dog ate my Wacom pen.  This is because he is a bastard.  Until I order a new pen, I can’t do much more with that.

Furthermore, I’ve gone viral. I don’t mean that in the way that I’m all popular and stuff, although that’s clearly the case for you guys/girls who deserve big free beers and sloppy kisses, respectively.  Hell, depending on where the night goes, those might switch… Well, maybe just the beer part.

Being virally ill for several days made me think I was dying, because I’m really really bad at being sick.  Coming out of that, and ordering a new pen tomorrow, I will have additions to the guide for wishing AND I want to hear your suggestions.  Were there parts that you thought were confusing?

(during the writing of this post, Subwow (blog) tweeted, asking yet more people to be the condiments on this comment sandwich.  Hilarious.)

And now, my question to spark comments…  Uh…  Well, this is hardly necessary here, so let’s just start with sexburger.

Do you ever just feel like we’re all part of something bigger than we are? Like a giant robot? Because if so, I want to be his wang.

That led to some friends labeling me Robowang, which could be the best nickname I’ve ever heard.  Conversation about that lingered for a moment until I was contacted by Empire Labs [website] (NSFW) about a kit to make a mold of your wang for a sex toy.

Whoa, that’s incredible. Talk about the perfect gift, right? Just consider the possibilities here, would you?

• Merry Christmas, honey. I knew you’d like this because you’ve told me before how much you like mine.
• Congratulations, you guys. I got you a gift that I think you can use on your honeymoon. I know you’ll recognize it, Susan.

Or even:

• Happy birthday, buddy. What’s that? Why its a replica dildo I made you from my own penis. I wanted my gift to really be meaningful *tear* *punch*

Well, I’m not in the dick mold biz, but it would be funny to make a robot penis. If you don’t think that’s funny, I can’t explain it. My sense of humor may not be the same as yours. I’m very seriously considering buying the kit and, through use of prosthetics and creativity, making a robot penis.

Am I twisted? Has my mind fallen apart during my month away? Maybe. More importantly, do you think there’s a market for robot penises?

I’m going to go ahead and assume that you guys all know who Aunt Becky is, from reading Mommy Wants Vodka, or follow her on Twitter.  I’ll also assume that you’re a snappy dresser and a good kisser.  If any of those things are not true, now is the time to change them.  Visiting her new site and reading up will definitely improve the quality of your day by at least 23%.  It might even take away that terrible burning when you pee.  (Or maybe you should get that checked out…)

Can we be “real” for a minute?  It’s tough to get published nowadays.  Everyone’s afraid to put a lot of money into anything, and print is in tough times.  If you want to get published, you’d better be a sure thing.  That’s what we’re here to prove with this.  If Aunt Becky can get enough pre-pre-orders on her book, she’ll be green-lit (in addition to regular or drunken lit) and happy as a clam.

What do you have to do?  Give your name and email, then click the “Hell Yes” button, or just “yes” if you prefer.  You don’t have to buy anything and nobody gets hurt.  You’re just saying “Hey, this chica’s pretty funny.  I’d buy that, like, if it was, you know, like, cheap enough, or had a holographic cover.  Submit the form, and bingo bango, you’ve helped a young girl’s dream come true.

So without further Ado, and in celebration of yet another lazy Monday post on my part, go see Aunt Becky and help her get published.

It is because of that fact, that I am writing this post today.  You see, she’s got a contest going over at Coffee & Zombie Movies to post (on your own blog) the ugliest things you own.  There might have been rules to post only a few things, but I don’t like reading rules.  Rules are dead to me.  And nobody like dead rules, or rule zombies.  This has become a tangent.

A plaster cast of Falstaff from Shakespeare fame. Won this in a random auction box once. Everyone needs a fat guy getting drunk for their desk.

Phantom of the Opera brass lamp. This is a sad entry, as I've known this lamp all my life. It was my grandmothers, and last summer the lens was broken and the face dented... Still, pretty darn ugly.

UGLY crystal lamp that came, wrapped in an afghan, inside an antique dresser we bought.

Kitty Cat Creamer. He's here to pour your cream, then steal your soul.

The Haunted Vent Covers. We have 2. Both are broken and add a special ambience to any room.

This is the actual wallpaper from my laundry room, shot from maybe 5 feet away. BIG pattern... Notice the crazy floral wallpaper theme in the other pictures? We have A LOT of it.

The Wooden Boy. He holds his bowl laboriously, full of fake mustaches. Carved from a single piece of wood, and I am not positive he's not really alive.

Classic Car Dash for your wall. This is a GIANT art piece, made to look like the interior of a classic car. It has working dimmable dash lights, a working clock and (drumroll) a functional stereo and speaker.

The lady of the sea is a mural painted on the floor, just inside our front door. I wonder why the painter saw it fit to make her have some rolls and smallish boobies? Hmmm.. We may never know.

The Faceless Woman. This is the inside of our stained glass window, visible from the front of our 150+ year old country house. From the front she is gorgeous... From inside, the cold dark hallway, she has no face.

I love mystery, but I’m always trying to figure it out.  Effectively, I’m trying to kill the mystery I love so much.  When I read a new blog, or someone I’ve read for a long time, I often wonder what they look like.  How old are they?  Are they cooler than me?  Generally, yes and lately I’ve seen a handful of posts where brave bloggers post pictures of themselves and kill the anonymity for me.

Because I’m not much for anonymity and Aunt Becky, posted a self-humiliation post that I’ve been meaning to respond to for a month now, I present to you pictures from my k-12 years + one.  Here they are in order, as best I can tell:

1983-ish

That’s right.  Suede cowboy boots, a chicken leg in one hand, a popgun in the other, diaper and some character sunglasses.  This is probably my favorite picture of myself ever and the one I provide when anyone requests it.

1987-ish

I pity the fool that didn’t get the “I’m a ghost looking at myself” pictures in school.  This is almost as cool as the laser-beam trick that they did with vinyl mini-blinds and gel lights.  almost.

1993-ish

And here’s when the whole thing went downhill.  Note the BUM shirt, which was WAY oversized, the retarded bird’s nest on my head and the smirk that I know what’s up.  You’ll also notice I’m much fatter in this picture AND wearing a necklace that features a dragon holding a pearlescent marble.  Those last two things go hand-in-hand.

1996-ish

Growing into the pimple-faced rock t-shirt wearing dork you know and love today.  Or know and hate.  That’s a Pearl Jam tshirt, and a lovely example of hair that says “fuck you, hair gel.  I’ll do what I want.”

2000-ish

Oh dear God…  I let my hair grow out into what can only be described as a human mushroom cap.  In profile, as a silhouette, I would have looked like a giant penis.  Lots of people would say that hasn’t changed.  Those people are assholes.  Oh, I almost missed the bit of douchebaggery on my chin there.  That’s right, folks.  I was full-on hippie.

2001-ish

I picked pictures at random and they were mostly from k-12, so I almost threw this one out except that I wanted to detail that in my first apartment I was cooking my own food.  It involved car keys and prescription medication, but I was cooking!  I also got a haircut since I was now out on my own becoming a respectable (right…) member of society.

Well, there you go.  I’m sure there are cuter pictures of me before I was capable of completely fucking it up and there are definitely way more embarrassing pictures of the later years, but these are the ones I picked, so kiss it.

What do you look like?  (I’m betting my comments will be really low on this one…)

Have you ever written a story with someone? You write a few lines/paragraphs/pages and then pass it to a friend and they write some, lather, rinse and repeat?  It’s the coolest.  Well, not the coolest…  That’s a tough call to make, ranging from boobies to sharks.  Still, it’s pretty awesome.

Today, I installed a comment notification plugin so that you can get email updates on comments to a particular post.  I use it often, and got the idea from Elly Lou.  In celebration of what would normally be a complete non-event, I’ve hatched a plan to have some fun together.

I’d like to write a story together.  Maybe it’ll be ongoing, maybe it’ll last 5 comments.  I’m interested to see what happens.  You guys are all pretty funny, and have great imaginations to my best of knowledge.  I’ll start something out below to set the tone.  You just type something up in the comments, then hit refresh to make sure nobody else has posted before you and send your comment to add on to the story.

The beginning:

The room flashed with light of all colors.  The air filled with jabbering and jingles.  It was after midnight and the air was warm in this small downtown apartment.  Ruby’s paycheck didn’t place her in the social class that could allow air conditioning, so she made due.  In fact, there wasn’t much money to be made in the field of…

Ok – go.  Invent, change and combine.  Read all the previous story before you post, and try to post with an open ending, providing a good starting point for the next.