Library Adventuring! :D

Yesterday I realized how stupid it was that I never read books.

The thing about books is that intellectuals read them to twirl their mustaches and say, "Oh ho ho, I have read many the book in my time," and because they have read 'many-the-book', they believe they have advanced knowledge into the world and stand a little taller and walk a little straighter and keep their noses up and their eyes down.

Then again, some people read books simply because they don't believe in themselves, they don't believe in the real world, and wish they could have more friends but instead escape their lives through page after page after page of the stuff until they can contentedly say that they have read more books than anyone else they know. This happens, of course, simply by chance, by nerdy kids who are forced out of the soccer games to sit under a tree and hide from the big guys, and the words simply give them something to do. But in the end, these too twirl their mustaches at the air because they are, in their minds, well-read, and deserve the Stache of Respect because of it.

And then there are some that read in secret, behind closed doors, the same book over and over until they have experienced exactly what they want to experience and they carry the book on their shoulders with a full heart and a half-empty mind, with very vivid memories of a place called Narnia.


I still don't know the reason I went to the library yesterday. I'm scared of books, scared of mustaches, and yet yesterday I carried home the most randomly selected works of literature I have ever seen. I was baffled with myself, walking in there, and you could see it on my face. There were all these regular library-goers there too, floating around like pixies, with this happy, sparkling glow about them, looking around this magical place for the books that take them wherever they want to go...

...And then they would look across a shelf and see this:

The books are arranged according to author, and since all the computers were booked and I had no clue what I was searching for, I could only really find books with EXTREMELY well-known authors. After wandering around for some time with no goal in sight, I remembered the name of a book I had heard of from someplace forgotten. When I found it, I looked at the cover, realizing it was a romance novel, and instead of getting scared and putting it back, I said, (I would like to think it wasn't out loud, but I really can't make any promises.)

"You know what? Screw this. I'm going to read a kissing book."

And then I wandered around a little bit happier.

Until I realized what I was holding.

 

I suddenly realized what I must have looked like to all those library-goers, walking around with a kissing book of all things! This wasn't who I was! I had to change things, I had to cover it up, but with what?

C'mon, Shady, I thought to myself. Get another book. Hurry. Otherwise they're going to think you're one of THOSE people!

I thought fast, and suddenly remembered Charles Dickens. Dickens is a respectable author, right? (My ignorance disgusts me too, don't worry.) So I hurried over to the D's section, mumbling "Dickens, Dickens, Dickens, Dickens...."  letter by letter until I found him. I was told to read A Tale of Two Cities, I remembered. Once I found a copy and slid it softly off the shelf, I saw this other book, and it caught me. It caught me good. It was red and hard-backed and sturdy and old, so old you couldn't even read the title off of the fabric - what books have fabric covers anymore anyways?! - and on the inside it still had that yellowed paper pocket where the real, actual paper library checkout card used to be on the inside of books, before they had card scanners and those magic scales that could weigh your books and know exactly what they were, even if you put like ten of them down. That thing still freaks me out.

But anyways, by this time I had finally figured out Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes, and I had a giant collection of that, as well as the kissing book, and a two-in-one Charles Dickens book (when I had honestly just wanted the one), and I looked at the worn-out old red book I wanted so badly but decided there was only so much my little twig arms could carry.

With these three books, I walked courageously up to the counter - the question-asking counter. And I wasn't about to ask some normal question, such as, "Can I have a library card?" or, "Would you please direct me to the biography section?"

No, sadly not. I winced slightly for a moment, and then this happened:


Me: "Do you have any comic books?"

Librarian: "Um?"

Me: "Like, comic books."

Librarian: "Well we have graphic novels..."

Me: "I'm looking for the Peanuts."

Librarian: "Yeah, that's not exactly a graphic novel...here, I'll check."

Me: .___.

Librarian: *click-click-c-clickety-click* "Oh, well there is one. It's in the um... it's in the back."

Me: "The...the back?"

Librarian: "Back there," (gestures) "behind the magazines, by the biographies, very last shelf. That's where we put all the big books."


I was disappointed in this librarian. I'm sure if I was a librarian, the conversation would have gone more like this:


Random Book-Hugging Chick: "Do you have any comic books?"

Me: (leans forward dramatically) "...What did you just say?"

Chick: "Comic books...like, the Peanuts or something."

Me: "You're looking for the Peanuts, eh?" *clickety-click-click*

Chick: "Yeah, do you have it?"

Me: (eyes widen, staring at the screen) "There is one..."

Chick: "...Well where is it?"

Me: "I'm not sure you'd want...to go...there..."

Chick: (staring uncomfortably and impatiently)

Me: (slides glasses down my nose, looking up intently at Chick) "It's in...the back."

Chick: "Alright I'm leaving."

Me: :c ...Crap.



And that is why I should probably not be a librarian.

So anyways, I go to 'the back,' and the lady was right. There are all these huge books down there, organized almost entirely by size, definitely not what I needed with my arms already aching from stupid Sherlock. But I run my finger down the names until I find dear old Peanuts, and decide against checking it out when I see the biggest book of all time. It was incredibly hard to miss, three inches thick across the spine, with small cursive letters reading, "big questions".

I'm intrigued. Must be an awful lot of questions, I think to myself, but when I open it up what I find instead are... birds. Lots and lots of drawings of birds, and I then see that it's a comic - a MASSIVE graphic novel that must have taken eons to write. I open up the first few pages and start reading, but my arms are tired after a few seconds of holding the thing, so I carry my burden of wanted intelligence all the way up to the few lounge chairs facing the windows, where you can sit and look out at the fields beyond and sleep, which many of the people there are doing. I can tell, because I hear snoring.

I set down my books at a table in the corner, and open up Big Questions and start reading. I follow finches through what looks like World War Two, which to them is just an egg that turns out not to be an egg, because it blows up everyone who was pecking at it, and then there comes this giant metal thing that crushes the farm house, which is thought to be a bird, which is then thought to be an egg, which is then thought to be a pretend bird that humans made for themselves when it is discovered that voices come out of it that sound like people. Out of this bird comes the Hatchling, a pilot, who the birds take on as their responsibility, feeding it leftover doughnuts from the wreckage of the house, which the Hatchling does not appreciate.

I'm sitting there for hours, watching the intricacies of the philosophical birds go about their lives. I watch as Curtis the skeptic keeps on coming to feed Betty, the self-appointed bone collector of the birds that died from the 'egg' blast, and I watch them fall in love. I watch Algernon be saved and cared for by the Snake who ate his child, as he looks persistently for his beloved Thelma. I watch Bayle foolishly follow the mentally retarded survivor (from the wreckage of the house) with fierce loyalty, and I watch Philo foolishly staying loyal to his friend, despite Bayle's stupid decisions. I watch so many creatures die and love and fight and kill and rise and live again. I watch them learn and speculate and argue and take power and take over power, and scavenge doughnut after doughnut from the wreckage as the pilot battles his day-dreams of birds that haunt him.

Eventually I hear someone start to breathe, loud and rhythmic, with the obvious presence of sleep, and after a while I stumble back into reality and drag the book into my arms and wander home to finish it. I can't feel anything anymore, only a dazed reality of black-and-white sketches of the birds who are me and you and everyone I know and don't know and everything I've seen and haven't seen. Only after the door closes behind me do I finally realize that the look on my face is now, plainly, the same exact face of the library-goers.

I'm one of you now.

Do congratulate me; it did take a lot.

So if any of you have ever had any library adventures that you found interesting in some way or another, you should tell me about it. Or, if you have a blog, blog about it. Or you could email it to me. Or leave a comment. Or just keep it to yourself forever and ever, so that even after you die no one will ever know what happened. It's your choice. Goodbye now. :3

A Question

Even now, I don't know why I asked. It was probably out of boredom.



 

Fear, the Morning After

           The threat of mass shootings is starting to envelope the country. It used to be so rare, it never even happened. And then, after a decade, it is happening everywhere, all the time. It’s like a spreading disease with no means of control.

           And it’s weird. I don’t know why it’s happening. But it's making people scared again.

           I think in the seventies, the fear of nuclear annihilation was so great that it forced that generation to do all the things they wanted to do before the bomb dropped and destroyed everything. The thing that is so similar between nuclear blasts and public shootings is that it could happen to vast quantities of people, anywhere, anytime. And there's nothing you can do about it. Sure, you can duck and cover, and you can skip school, but the truth is that if it's going to happen, it's going to happen.

            And personally, if I were going to die, I would rather spend the rest of my time alive doing the things I wanted to do before death, than live longer hiding.

            I think that the fear of death is actually starting to push people to live. Honestly, if I were dead now, I would probably be okay with the fact that I didn’t get an A in Algebra, and not okay with the fact that I didn’t tell certain people that they saved my life. I would probably hate myself for spending so much time showering, putting socks on, and brushing my teeth, and not enough time staring out the window and playing with my dog.

The thought of death can sometimes make people uncomfortable, and they try not to think about it because it kinda makes them feel dead already. And me – I think I’m one of those people. Not that I’m particularly scared of death, but whenever the school has ceremonies about shootings,  and I imagine myself in that situation, I can probably assume my in-the-moment reflexes would be to save as many of the little guys as possible, and then just wait for my bullet. I know this because, whenever I have been in a situation of certain immediate fear, I end up in front of several other people, with my own hand on the doorknob. Not that this is proof of my great heart or something. I just don’t think that I’m particularly afraid of death.

I’m not sure that that’s a good thing.

Yesterday, even though 99% of people knew that the world was not really going to end, there was still a certain atmosphere of, “Oh crap, what if this really is the end?” You could feel that little hum of twitching fingers and darting eyes, and you could see certain girls watching certain boys, and certain boys watching certain girls, thinking whether or not this was a good enough excuse to tell them the truth.

I think that, the morning after the supposed end of the world, I still don’t feel all that great. I’m thirteen years old, and thinking about writing a will. Only, I’m pretty sure that my cello and my dog are already claimed, and nobody else would ever really appreciate my collection of thrown away kid’s sketchbooks, or dinosaur bed sheets. Living my young life in a world saturated in death is not the best viewpoint to grow up with, but the truth is, I think I would rather get up every morning and say, “Well Shady, this is it. You’re going to die today whether you like it or not, so you might as well hug everyone and tell them you love them,” than get up every morning and say, “Oh well, you have your whole life to do all that. Better get some math homework done.”

           When I was told this morning that there was a potential shooting at the school I go to yesterday, my thought process went something like this. 1) I could've died yesterday. 2) I could die ANY day. 3) If I was dead right now, what would I regret? The things that sprung to mind first were, surprisingly, calling Isaac fat, not hugging Ms. Comma goodbye, not feeding the dog that morning, and not telling Lafflin that I have his notebook on my bookshelf.

          Thoughts of death bring the truth to the surface very quickly.

          But even if I had done all that, and felt content with my dead self, I still wouldn't have felt ready for it. All it would have done is reminded me that even though I did everything in my power to do the things I wanted to do, there was still stuff I never lived long enough to be able to do. Like falling in love, or writing a book.
           Or playing the cello on the sidewalk for money.

Or yelling someone’s name in the middle of the street.

Or falling out of a tree.

See, this is why fear on the morning after the end of the world can actually be a good thing, because it shows you who you want to be. And it makes you feel Death’s boot on your butt, kicking you out of bed, saying, “You better get started TODAY.”

An Awkward Apology

I have a problem with calling people fat apparently.

Believe me, I am really not that mean of a person. It's just that instead of calling people faggot or motherBLEEPer, I just get mad and splutter for a second and shout "FATTIE!" I honestly do not believe that the people I call fat are actually overweight, and I don't feel any hatred towards fat people whatsoever.

My friend Isaac is this big mexican football geek who was a bit chubby last year, but then he hit puberty and he's grown up instead of out. But, since I was one of his few freinds last year, I know he used to be fat, and he still is to me. He's just a fattie.

But recently, for some reason or another, I have been accidentally calling him fat on a semi-regular basis.

Like, in book club, I was sitting on this table, and Ms. Comma told me to get off because it was already broken. When I asked her how it broke, she said a student sat on it, and I asked her who it was and she said, "A BIG guy." And, in all the noise and adrenaline of book club, I said, "Was it I-" And Isaac turned around and stared daggars at me, at which point I started laughing uncontrollably out of insuppressible guilt and said "No Isaac, I wasn't going to say your name!" To which he replied, "YEAH SURE YOU WEREN'T."

Yesterday, the school's orchestra and band went on tour to elementary schools and played some songs for them, so they'd grow up knowing the difference between a violin and a guitar. There would always be this one kid at every school, sitting in the audience, extremely easy to spot because he would be dancing so uncontrollably: head-banging, hand-flapping, wherever the music happened to take him. These were the ones who we clapped for while they were clapping for us.

So anyways, after we got back we had this pizza party, and watched a movie. Only, the movie never started, so we were pretty much all just sitting around having the time of our lives entertaining ourselves with Huong's plushy santa hat. She took it off and I put it on my hand and made it talk like a puppet, in my best Ice King voice. It would swing around its big white fluffy nose and yell at people about how stupid they are, and then I would reprimand the hat for being so rude, and everybody would either laugh their heads off or stare.

This hat really had some sort of problem with Isaac (it thought he was going to eat all the pizza or something). So it would look over at him and paranoidly say things like,

And Isaac would look at me and go "WOW, SHADY." (Isaac tends to speak in capital letters most of the time, it's not just me.) But anyways, this hat would just be so mean about Isaac's weight, and on the way home from school Isaac was telling everybody about it.

 

"It wasn't me," I told them. "It was the hat."

 

But then after a while I ended up almost calling him fat again, and then Isaac lost it. He threw his hands in the air with a "WOW, SHADY. We're not friends anymore!"

 

"Isaac, I was JOKING. You're not fat. I promise."

 

He narrowed his eyes.

 

"You have a muscular build is all."

 

He kept looking at me.

 

"You have a football player's body."

 

Still looking.

 

"You have a hot body. It makes all the girls go *SWOON*."

 

By that time, Isaac's friends just lost it, and started laughing and laughing while I sunk deeper into the compliment-to-overcome-insult pit. But Isaac was still offended, so he stormed off and left us alone.

 

"He'll get over it," Aaron told me.

"Teenage guys are like teenage girls," said Jake. "They're all emotional and insecure."

"Yeah," I said. "Isaac's a drama queen. But I still feel bad..."

 

Then we laughed for a while until I suddenly remembered that I left my cello at the school. I turned around and ran back. I saw Isaac sulking around the parking lot with this random skater kid.

 

I would love to explain myself before telling you what happened next, but I've done it to myself. I'd sunk too far into the I'm-sorry pit.

 

The I'm-sorry pit is where you go when you have to keep saying nicer and nicer things to the person you've offended until you are completely drowning in giving compliments that you don't even mean, it's just the nicest thing you can think of to say, and after a while you have crossed the boundary line in leaps and bounds and have no idea where you are anymore.

 

The bottom of the I'm-sorry pit, just in case you were wondering, is usually a proposal of some sort.

 

The only way you will ever understand the next part of the story is if you've seen the Fionna and Cake Adventure Time episode. Otherwise, then you will eternally think of me as the strangest person alive and hate me forever. Or not. But my close circle of friends quotes Adventure Time a lot, so it made sense at the time to say what I did.

 

I was running, and then I saw Isaac there all sad, and before anyone knew what was happening, I was on my knees on the asphalt with my hands clasped together, directly in front of him. These were my exact words:

 

"Isaac, you are the hottiest hottie in the whole land of Oo and I can't wait to marry you."

 

Then I continued running, and called a "Please forgive me!" over my shoulder.

 

That was yesterday. It turns out I had forgotten Isaac's desperate need for female companionship.

 

...He's been calling me Shades all day.

 

 

.__.

TWELVE TWELVE TWELVE

I am seriously disappointed with the lack of appreciation of this sacred date.

Even when I went to sleep last night, I knew that today HAD to be special. So I wrote out a nice little story about a boy who played a concert alone because he forgot where it was supposed to be, and I stapled it together on graph paper. Because that's at least a little special...

This morning I decided I had to record and memorize each and every thing that happened to me today, waiting for something magical to happen; to take into account all the things I wanted never to forget, and to hold it forever (or, until I die). Here's pretty much what happened:

At school, I went to orchestra, and we played together with the band and were so loud the office people came in the doors and clapped: the counselors, the secretaries, the principle - everybody. As I left I passed by Lafflin in the hallway, at the exact spot I always pass him, and instead of high-fiving him awkwardly as usual, I said "Happy 12-12-12!" but I'm not sure he heard me.

Then I had language arts, and researched indifference in China and accounts of murders not being brought to the attention of the police until the bodies are too rotten for the neighbors to deal with anymore, and it was depressing. After that I organized the book shelves in the classroom as Ms. Comma's student teacher taught in front of her professor, which was stressful for everybody, but I think she did a good job.

Every Wednesday during third period, Lafflin walks in COMPLETELY SILENT and sneaks up behind me (unintentionally) and all I see is a drawing and a hand and then he's gone. The only thing that made this Wednesday different was a slightly longer time period between the picture being in my hand and him leaving. He sort of just stood there looking down at me (I was on my knees, working on the book shelf) for a second or so, as if expecting me to say something after the initial spluttered "Thank you." Then, of course, he was gone.

In Algebra, the teacher was super excited about the date, and the kids who understood the f(x) = y concept just listened to her talk about it for a while and then tell us to stop talking about it because we were being distracting...

Then I was supposed to go outside for access, which I never do because I don't want to be cold, so I took out 1) Lafflin's Stick-Mania comic, 2) My Jokes with Oswald comic, 3) A random comic Sam gave me, and 4) my tsunami comic I had to finish before science. Then we (Me, Pen, Isaac, Huong, Sarah) stapled the comics to the board and went upstairs to check the Horgandy (technically, Jay-Horgandydi, but it gets confusing) board. There was nothing to report. So we went into Ms. Comma's room to do our last-minute science homework.

In the hallway, Pen said she hadn't straightened her hair, and said, "Do you want me to take it out of the ponytail?"
"No." I said.
She took it out and shook her head around. "Pen, you look ADORABLE!" I told her, which is something I don't usually say. I think my exact words after that were, "You're so adorable, if you were a year younger than me, I would adopt you as my daughter and follow you everywhere to make sure you don't fall down."

We all know one Lafflin is enough for anybody...

We went to Ms. Comma's room then. I asked if she had any band-aids, and she said no, she did not have any band-aids, but the teacher next door did. Then she asked why I needed one. I explained to her about my hangnail on the ring finger of my writing hand that chaffed against the paper whenever I wrote, and how I needed a band-aid to get through the day. Then I asked Sarah to go get the band-aid from next door, and she said why don't I get it, and I said because that teacher yells at me. We argued about it for a minute and then Ms. Comma just got up and got one from him for me.

She was sitting at her computer eating her lunch and drinking some kind of soft drink out of a can, and Huong said she thought she was drinking beer, and I said no Huong, Ms. Comma would never drink beer out of a can, and I thought about it some more and figured that she totally would if she needed to. Then we asked her if she was and she said yes and we said okay and then she said she was totally joking and we were extremely relieved.

In science we watched a Bill Nye video on light and color, and I suddenly realized how extremely outdated those movies are. I pretty much spent the entire time shaking my head at the ground. Don't even ask what happened when the punk rock band started singing about the light spectrum...

In history Jake walked in and had a sticky note taped to his back that said "I'm gay," which was funny, because Pen and I had just had a conversation at lunch about whether or not he's gay.

"I wish I had a gay friend," she said.
"Jake is my gay friend," I said. "He hasn't come out of the closet yet. But we all know."
Then Pen said, "I think him having the back of my head as his phone wallpaper is pretty solid proof against that..." and I said, "Ope. I forgot about that."

And so I took the note off of his back and gave it to him. He was quietly embarrassed. We took a test and colored a map. The teacher - an extremely large man, who we all refer to whenever discussing mosh pits - hit me in the head with papers sarcastically and said "Whoops, just trying to make it into the basket," or something. He likes to mess around with us, and I endure it light-heartedly and usually come up with a decent comeback, but the truth is that man like seriously scares me sometimes. I might have daddy issues...

After school I went outside with Sally and Miley and Sarah (it has just now occurred to me how white and suburban my friends sound by their names. Sally is Mexican and Anna is Vietnamese and Sarah was adopted from China as a baby.)

Then I went and walked off with Isaac and Jake, and we found Lafflin walking with his twin brother, and Isaac went up behind him and seriously stalked him two feet away for like a block. Lafflin was very scared. Isaac is like this huge frightening Mexican Care Bear. I would be too.

I was arguing with Isaac about his 'theory' that if you friend-zone a girl you like and then be a jerk to her, she'd like you, which was totally plops because nobody likes jerks. Then we argued about how Isaac needed to stop obsessing about Gregor the Overlander and just get over that relationship, and Lafflin was thoroughly amused, if not a bit scared. Then he showed us this drawing he did of this one stick man shooting another stick man in the head, and I ended up saying the words "This is going to sound really creepy, but I saw your file in Language Arts while I was putting the papers in them and yours had drawings of stick figures killing each other all over it."

And yet I managed to not be as creepy as Isaac was.

The whole day was really very average. I knew the date wouldn't change anything, but it did make me realize that I would never see another 12/12/12 in my whole lifetime. I'm going to die one day, and it's a very scary thing. But when you think about the events of this day, there's really not much I'll be missing, you know?

And then, when you really think about it, you realize that every single day is full of little special moments that you will never experience again, and that are usually disregarded and thrown away. So, I decided to make a very boring blog post about the very boring events of my day-to-day life - or, at least, one day of it - to prove that there's a lot we're missing. It takes a special date to realize it, too.

So, there goes 12/12/12. Just like every other day, passing away before we even realized it. It's sad, really- I wish it could last forever, this perfect day of twelves. I've been used to the expected 4/4/04, or 7/7/07, or 11/11/11, but there will be no 13/13/13. Ever. Twelve is the last one we'll ever see in this century.

Go do something special for it. Go out for ice cream, or give flowers to a stranger. Clap at a performance you didn't buy a ticket to see. Care about things you would normally be indifferent to; stay a moment longer, when you usually run away. Get excited about something no one else cares about. Come out of a closet - any closet - and actually tell someone about the kick-me sign on their back. Walk with your friends even if it's the opposite direction of where you're supposed to be going, and totally tell them that you've seen their file... and liked it.




Okay that is all.
You can go now.

Please Don't Read This :(

The problem with making things is that you don't want to make them for people because people make you want to stop making things.

Like if I made this into a comic and put it on the Board, somebody I know could say "Hey, Shady made that comic. That's a really lame comic. Shady is really lame." And then they could scribble all over it and crumble it up and put in in the Hate Mail box I made for the Board just in case.

Because I'm that kind of creative thinker.

Or, I could make that 'person' who hates me (who in reality doesn't exist) into some symbolic fantasaical creature who lives in my head and feeds off of my sadness that grows out of NOT creating things.

Because of this, I find myself hiding my work from public view. (A total of four six people know about this blog, two three of which found it against my will [don't worry dad, I told you about this one]). And then they get mad at me because they say I'm selfish for not showing them things like drawings of dead people and essays on Bieber Fever, and the sadness grows greater because people make things for other people.

For every Writer there is a Reader, and in every Reader there is a Writer, and so that is the great cycle of Making Things.

Because of this sadness, I find myself trying not to make things, which makes me sadder, and then I kind of self-harm in a subconscious kind of way. So like, instead of using razor blades, I drink coffee and don't eat food, and then eat too much food, and then forget to wear a coat outside and deal with the cold when I could very easily just accept the fact that I'm allergic to caffeine and go inside and get a coat and eat three meals a day instead of erratically consuming an enture box of peanut-butter-filled pretzel bites and then just totally forgetting food was supposed to go in your mouth the next day.

And then I procrastinate on the internet, which could be exactly what you're doing right now.

I have suddenly realized I am a kid, and I wish I was more of a kid than I can be sometimes, and I don't want to be responsible for my actions and have to make big decisions about life and the Holocaust and stuff, and that voice keeps getting louder about how my words don't make sense and nobody likes what I do and therefore nobody likes me.

ANd so I turned this thought into a blog post that I will publish without editting.

Now I feel like cussing myself out.

And over dosing on egg nog.


...Again.

Purpose

I can't just go and die.

Who would hang up Lafflin's comics on Thursdays?

A Tribute to Egg Nog

Hey!
Does anybody else remember EGG NOG?!
It's like magic in a cup! Or carton, or bottle or whatever.

It's like the most magical thing on the planet!!
And it's only available SOMETIMES! I think, like, when it's snowy outside? Because I'm really observant.

I remember one year my mom froze a whole gallon of the stuff in our freezer and we took it out in June and drank it all.

I remember it, because there was egg nog.

I remember it, because...egg nog.

Egg nog.
Egg nog.
Egg nog.

You wanna get fat?

Egg nog.

You want to put an end to veganism?

Egg nog.

You want me to love you?

EGG NOG.

There is absolutely nothing like it. Except egg nog ice cream... o.o

I think I should open a store and sell nothing but egg nog and egg nog flavored food stuffs and egg nog T shirts and socks and merchandise. And you know what it would be called?

Egg Nog.




...

JUST KIDDING. It would be called Folding Chairs. Because then people would walk in looking for folding chairs and see all this egg nog and be all "Excuse me, do you have any...um...folding chairs?" And I would look at them with an egg nog mustache - no, an egg nog beard - around my mouth and look at them like they are the stupidest person who has ever stepped foot on the planet, and then say, "...I think you mean next door."
Then they would walk over next door, and we would watch them from the windows as they look up all confused at the sign next door thats says 'Egg Nog'.


Those sillies, don't they know they ALWAYS sell folding chairs at Egg Nog? There are some STUPID PEOPLE in this country!

I wonder if they have caffeine in egg nog...or crack.

Because that would explain a lot.

INCOHERENT YELLING!!! D:<

Some of Lafflin's Comics

Lafflin has recently renamed his weekly comic strip Stick Man-ia. It's genius. I've photographed almost every one but the most recent two, which is a shame, because each one is better than the last. The punchlines are perfect, and the facial expressions and body language of those simple stick fingures is just absolute genius.

Here is the first comic he gave me, Pacman, which you have probably seen before:

 And here is Missile-crisis:

And ohhh, here is Dogs:

The comic after this was a drawing of 'Super Piece of Bread' throwing fire at a bread bandit, saying "Stop Theif youre Toast!" Only, Lafflin came with me to staple it to the Board, so he actually saw me casually take a camera out of my locker and photograph his drawing like it was the most normal thing in the world...

Doesn't it just make you smile? In a really messed up kind of way? If anyone has a job offer for this kid, let me know. Until then I will be quietly organizing a fan club no one will ever join. Goodbye lovelies.

Death and the Rules of Go-Go Fish

Today was the funeral (or, rather, is the funeral, because I'm not sure if it's still going on or not) of a police officer who was accidentally shot by another officer in a robbery near my home. I don't know the story too well, but the community seemed deeply affected by it. My friend's sister's friend was the daughter of this officer, and almost everyone has a story similar to that.

I don't even know what his name was.

But today was his funeral, and they completely closed down this busy street by my school for the procession. And, what's more, the teachers made every single student during access be taken outside and made stand in a line solemnly and watch the cars go past.

Pen and I had to come in to Ms. Comma's class near the end of lunch, before the street was closed, because we didn't understand the concept of an essay apparently. About seven or eight other sevies had to go in to make up work and read and stuff, and we were all in there when everyone was taken outside and stood in a line in the parking lot.

Eventually Pen and I understood the whole five paragraph thesis thing, so we just hung out and ate cookies and would think of secrets and tell them. Such as:

"Hey hey Pen! Do you wanna hear a secret??"
"Yeah!!"
"...office supplies make me giddy!"


or:


"Hey hey Shady!! Do you wanna hear a secret??"
"Yeah?"
"...I love you!"


And so forth. Eventually the kids in the room got sick of working and started listening in, and Ms. Comma said we might have to leave if we were a distraction (which we always are). But we knew we weren't going to leave. So then I had to whisper REALLY REALLY LOUDLY:


"HEY PSST MS. COMMA!"
"...YES?"
"DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET ABOUT ME?"
"...YES?"
".........I SIGN MY NAME IN CAPITAL LETTERS BECAUSE IT MAKES ME SEEM IMPORTANT."
"But you are important."
"Oh really?"
"Yes."
"Well then."

And the bell rang for the end of lunch. The classroom tensed. We looked outside.
The funeral procession had not ended, and huge crowd of students and teachers was standing in the cold. It wasn't a horribly suffering cold, it was just more annoying than anything else, with that gray frost that would blow through the stitches in your jacket and make your nose all red and runny. It was messy. We didn't want to go out there.

Ms. Comma said we should probably stay in the classroom until the rest of the school came inside, which we did. She took out some cards and a couple boys said they wanted to play Go Fish, only they didn't know how to play, so I said I would teach them.

Pen and me and four nerdy seventh grade boys sat in desks in a small awkward circle. "Okay." I said. "We gonn' play Go-Go Fish. You know the rules of Go-Go Fish? ...Anyone?" Ms. Comma looked at me sideways. She was smiling.
Nobody knew how to play.

I shuffled the deck. "Okay people." I said. "We gonn' play da ghetto Go Fish, an' dis one gonn' be a li'l violent, an' somebody might get SHOT so y'all watch out." <---((this is abridged. I don't remember what I actually said, but it was a lot longer and drawn-out and maybe a little less ghetto.))

Seventh grade video game nerd boys generally do not have good experiences with eighth graders.
They. Were. Terrified.

I shuffled and passed out seven cards to each person, and set the rest of the deck on Pen's desk. I told them that they could only look at their cards and COULD NOT under ANY circumstances let their cards be seen by any other living being. Or else they would blow up.

Also, there was no talking allowed. You would start by making eye contact- at this point I looked at one kid by the name of Robert and widened my eyes and turned my head back, and he did the same, and it was wonderfully awkward for a good five seconds before I continued. You would also have to ask the person you have made eye contact with what cards they had by hand gestures: you hold up the number of fingers your card is, and if it's a Jack or a Queen or a King, then you would make that letter with your hands.
When you find a match, you put it on the Pair pile next to the deck.
If you mix up the two piles, you explode.
If you talk, you expode.
If you don't make eye contact with someone for a considerable length of time, you explode.

After some time of learning the rules with a hilarious fear and caution, the boys finally figured out that Go-Go Fish was completely made up. One small boy with green eyes and fluffy short hair and freckles finally figured it out and voiced it aloud when I told them that it was also a mix of Old Maid and Uno, so when the entire deck of cards is used up and the last person who hasn't blown up has the Joker in his hand and screams out "GO-GO!", they win.

Pen did not appreciate the rules of Go-Go Fish, and spent much of the time chatting about Harry Potter and Minecraft and cats with her new best friends, who stood awkwardly beside the preppy-pretty-nice girl and smiled as she would say to the teacher across the room, "Ms. Comma, these people are just so wonderful, they're like my BEST FRIENDS." and Ms. Comma would say "Making new friends is good," or something like that.

Sometimes she would hear me making up new rules and look over from her computer out of the corner of her eye and try very, very hard not to laugh.

The game of Go-Go Fish was not finished when the bell for the beginning of the last period of the day rang. Ms. Comma made me go down to the library to see if there was anybody there.

I felt the emptiness before I saw it. Every single classroom was empty.

Every.
Single.
One.

The library contained nothing but books, and, strangely, Jon Cha typing alone at an open laptop.

"Um. Jon?"I said.
"Yes?" he said.
"Is anybody in here?"
"Nope." he said.

I ran up the stairs and around the seventh grade hallways. The freedom was so tangible you could almost reach out and touch it, and taste it, and hold it in your hand. It was like Narnia, only so much bigger. It was an entire kingdom, abandoned. We were runaways, escaping the Standing Ceremony outside for death, for an improvised game of go fish, celebrating life.

I came into the classroom with a sly look of excitement and glee. Ms. Comma knew that it meant there was no one at all anywhere and we were alone and we weren't supposed to be and we were probably going to get in trouble.
Ms. Comma tries very, very hard not to get in trouble.

She looked out the window, and the other kids all flocked around the glass and smudged it with their face grease. "Please oh please don't make us go out there!" they said. "Just- tell them we were locked in! Tell them we had to stay back to do work, and- that- that we didn't know the ceremony had started! Tell them anything!!"

Ms. Comma was making a decision. She kept whispering shh, almost to herself, in a strange way of clearing her mind, which the children heeded just a little and crept around the classroom waiting to see what would happen. We kept pleeding with her and making up more convincing arguments and excuses and the decision was made when she went up to Gunner, a tall boy with longish hair that really really liked Madi and was the only one who wanted to go outside. "Gunner," she said.

"...Would you like some fruit snacks?"

It was genius. We stayed inside the whole rest of the day, eating fruit snacks and playing cards, and were told that if anyone asks, we were inside working on homework.
Our excuses were extremely convincing.

I was playing speed with Robert, and Pen was sitting watching us, and the kid said
"You know that cop who died?" and there was a smiled stitched onto each end of the question.
"Why would you smile saying that?!" Pen laughed.

It was quiet in the room, so I think the other few kids heard our conversation. We were a little ashamed, you could tell. We kept wandering over to the windows, watching the kids outside coughing and shivering and sometimes singing to pass the time, all very sad and serious. The feeling of death was prevailant in the skies outside, but inside, we were laughing.

"Why is it funny?!" we laughed.
"I don't even know!!" Robert laughed back.

But oh, it felt so good. We knew that what had happened was wrong. We knew death was wrong. We knew that bad things happen and that they shouldn't, and that the community was strong and that sometimes pain was stronger, but...I don't know.

Sometimes it feels good to remember, when your best friend is writing the names of all the Minecraft nerds in the room under the heading "Pen's Best Friends", and when your teacher is playing cards and laughing at your jokes, and the entire building is empty and it feels like you're the only one left living...


           ...sometimes it feels good to remember... that life feels really good. (:

Elmer: "Oh no! The staple came out of my Taylor Swift songbook!"
Sally: "Just re-staple it."
Elmer: "I can't just RE-staple it. Do you know how hard it would be to get it exactly centered?!"
Sally: "Good point...I know! You could get a new one!" :D
Elmer: -_- "No. This one's special."
Sally: "Okay I'll go get my compass..."

*A SNOWBALL FIGHT*

Book club was canceled today, so I kind of just waited around the school with the gang until they stopped messing around and got in their cars and went home. Then I saw Lafflin (who draws the pictures who I am creepy to) walking with a few friends, talking and laughing.

I walked a little behind them, and watched.

Lafflin hung a little behind the small group for a second, reached down and scooped up some snow. I smiled. I knew what was coming.

He held it in his hands, patting it, compacting it, making it perfect, tripping over himself as he tried to keep up with his small little legs. Then, he swug back a little, sideways, and tossed it perfectly through the air. His friend turned and moved the back of his head, just a little, just a tad, and the snowball went cutting through the air and exploding to a stop in the rode. Lafflin's friend turned and looked at him, but said nothing else.

So he made another one, just as perfect, as the other boys left, until it was just Lafflin and his friend. The air was cold but the sun was warm, and the trees were drooling onto them as they fought. The sky was a perfect wool gray blanket, the trees black skeletons, the snow soft and white, with the yellow of autumn peeping under them. It was such a perfect shot, if I had my camera, to watch them play like that. Spinning, bending, scraping up melting snow, pffffft, pfffft....pfffft. They laughed half-way broken laughs, laughs of an unforgotten childhood, running sideways in the sun.

I stopped at the stop sign I usually wait at when I saw Jake.
"Jake!" I said.
He was walking his slow Jake walk, holding a poster board from History. "Shady...!" he said.

"Jake!" I tend to be more enthusiastic than Jake is. "Come with me and throw snowballs at Lafflin and his friend!!"
"...I have a poster board..." he said.
"Oh come on," I said.

We walked for a couple blocks or so, just talking, and then I ran a little ahead, and then he started running, and then we raced - the first race I've had in a long, long time - until we finally caught up with the two kids.

Lafflin saw me coming, as the fight was heating up with his friend. His smile and easy, doe-eyed gaze caught me, and his braces made a rare occurrence as he opened his mouth, panting in the polluted, frosty air. I reached down and took up a snowball, and Jake consented to do the same.

Lafflin's a shy kid. I don't talk much either. He doesn't really try to avoid me, but I yell hi whenever I see him, and he smiles back. Not in a forced, polite way. In a raw way. Like he can't help himself.

Today was what made it official.

I threw.
He dodged.
I missed.

Lafflin threw.
I dodged.
He missed.

I threw again, and got him on the shoulder, and then Jake threw an easy one at Lafflin's buddy, and then, just then, the four of us were an unspoken friendship in the afternoon autumn air. We made our way down the quiet, abandoned rows of houses, laughing and choking, the snow biting into us, down our collars, cutting into the ground, soft pats of frozen butter softly spreading the silence out with little snowball sounds.

Lafflin threw again, and this time I misjudged it, and he got me in the hood. I turned back, looking for more snow, as all I heard behind me was an unsure laughter as the kid pumped his fists into the sky and quietly shouted, "Ten points for Gryffindor!!"

I almost said something. Then I just stopped and turned back around and laughed, and thought about it, and laughed some more.

Footsteps, shuffling across the rode: two quick and soft paddings, two slow and solid footfalls.

Out-of-breath, hustling across the wet roads, dirt on our knees and sun on our faces.


One was a cartoonist.
One was a writer.
One played football.
One played lacrosse.


Something about the snow, maybe. Something about the accidental and yet purposeful companionship made with no words. Something about the air we were breathing, the numb fingers, the gray-blanket sky. But whatever it was, when I had to run back, I felt like screaming, and fist-pumping on the top of a mountain.

Five minutes of victory.

Victory over the bad.
Victory over the stuff that makes you want to die.
Victory over test scores, and future, and death, and longing, and over-dosing on gummy vitamins and wishing you could understand Shakespeare.
Victory over thinking too much.
Victory over the big things, the bad things, the hurt and the pain and the putting a razor blade in your pocket that morning 'just in case.'

I remembered as I turned the corner. The other guys were far behind me. I reached in and pulled it out and laughed. I laughed loud.

I ran up to some muddy bark dust and dropped to my knees. I found a stick and dug a few inches, and placed the blade cleanly in the dirt hole, and covered it over. A truck drove up as I made one last perfect snowball and set it on top of the little grave.

A little grave of the bad, for the victory of a five-minute snowball fight.

If you touch him, you die.

Did I tell you about my comic board at school?
No?
Well I have a comic board at school.
I've had it since last year. It moved downstairs when I did.

So anyways, Mr. Wood told me there was this sevie that wanted to draw for it every week like I had done last year, which nobody else had been doing so far, and I was all, "okay!" And then the kid showed up and suddenly it was like I had never met a cooler person in my life.

Mr. Wood brought him up to me at my locker during passing period. He's like so small and has brown eyes and dark blonde hair, and it grows down over his eyes and is kind of messy, not because it looks cool but because he doesn't have the time to worry about it. He stood as if he wasn't sure whether or not he was there, or wanted to be, and was kind of shy and had a pencil in his hand. And he really wanted to draw for my Board.

I was so excited.

It was like a Martian seeing a Martian for the very first time, and suddenly realizing it wasn't alone on this earth full of non-cartoonist humans.

Not many kids answer when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, 'cartoonist.' So I was considerably happy. In a fangirly sort of way.

The next day Ms. Comma gave me a pass to go to her class the period he was in it.

I walked in and came up behind him. He was reading Calvin and Hobbes. (egads!!)

Then he turned around and looked up and Ms. Comma told him to go out and talk to me for a second.

"Were you expecting this?" I asked worriedly. I understood how scary I was. I didn't want to freak anybody out.

He stood his ground in a strange way, quiet and dignified and I guess just chill.
"No," he said with a small smile.

"Oh haha I'm sorry," I said. "So um...about the comic board."
"Yeah?"
"Have you drawn anything for it yet?"
"Um yeah, I have."
"Oh! Awesome! Do you um, do you have it with you?"
"Yeah in my locker."
"Oh! Do you- c- can I see it?"
"Sure."

He walked me down to his locker.

It was really messy, as I had expected, and took a while for him to find it.

When he came back with the paper and handed it to me I smiled. It was a pencil drawing of an angry Pacman yelling at a ghost that had a fork and a knife in its hands and a napkin around its neck, and Pacman was saying "No You will not eat me!", and the ghost was making a :o face and saying "Okay." He had the bestest freaking handwriting ever.

 

I asked him if he ever colored them, and he said he didn't, and seemed a little embarrassed. I told him, a little too enthusiastically, that that was okay and we were really glad to have his comics on our board. Then I told him I should probably get back to class and he said he did too and I didn't walk him back to class even though I really thought I should because he is so tiny and just little and somebody could have hurt him. He could have fell down.

The next day, Mr. Wood called me up to his class and gave his drawing to me, this time cut out into a strip and colored. I went downstairs and hung it up with four complete staples.

If it was ripped off, somebody was gonna die.  -,-

Soo...I guess I'm writing this so that I don't post something on facebook like "there is a cute little tiny sevie child who is drawing for the comic board now and if you touch him you die", because that would be hard to explain.

As it is now...

Well anyways, he is my hero because he reads Calvin and Hobbes, his hair is messy, his locker is messy, and his lines are straight. Also he is a beautiful person and I love him. And if you hurt him, I will find you and kill you and no one will ever remember you. And also we will dance on your grave.

 

CARTOONISTS UNITE!!

Pen:  I'm so shaky right now.

Me:  Why?

Pen:  Idk o.o

Me:  o.o try eating some food.

Pen:  No o.o

Me:  Why o.o

Pen:  I ate everything. o.o

FLYING PURPLE KITTEH



I find it strange that you somehow don't know of Kitteh yet.

And then I remember how long a story it is, and how long it would take to tell it.

 

So I'll just tell you now.

 

It originally happened on facebook, when I didn't have as many friends and people didn't know me as well. Usually, I am very quiet around older people I don't know. Therefore they think I am just some awkward little towering teenage girl who doesn't say much and is all sweet and innocent and whose head is probably okay on the inside, but who never really cares to show it.

 

And then, somehow, through one facebook comment after another and the rediscovery of Microsoft Paint, I proved them all wrong.

 

And they loved it.

 

 

So here is the story, through pictures and facebook comments, of how The Adventures of the Flying Purple Kitteh and Land Shark came to be like my new full time career.

 

(I couldn't really take a screenshot of the facebook bit, so I had to take away most of the comments and stuff, but I left in some of them just to show how the story developed. The story pretty much just made people I didn't really know like me more, which is weird, but it's what happened. I just thought, if you wanted to know....)

 

 

It started out of sadness.

 

 

 

I was sad so i decided to draw Happy stuff to see if it affected my mood.

 

 

 

And then all that Happy just made me more sad so I drew a dragon that scared away all the Happy because it was STUPID.

THE END.

 

 

Pen: WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE KITTEH. D:

 

Shady: Those are scratch marks. It scratched itself. Dragon claws would have left a deeper mark.

 

Pen: WHY THE FLIP WOULD IT DO THAT.

 

Shady: Because.

 

Shady: Wait- I guess that doesn't really make any sense...

 

Pen: YOU DONT SAY? D:
 

Shady: Okay, I'll draw another one.
 

Jason(my stepdad's friend from college): Kitteh was freaked out by the dragon so it went berserk and started scratching everything as Kittehs do...see - I get it. It all makes perfect sense.

 

 

 

 

Okay, so it turns out there were all these little knives raining down everywhere and that's how everybody got scratched up. Because apparently it doesn't make sense for a cat to scratch itself. -,-

 

 

 (I then realized what Quiet Internet Shady had done to her reputaion)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I apologize to everyone who was disturbed by the previous drawings. I am sorry for your eyeballs. Here is the kitteh and he's all better now. Look! He's even doing a little jig in the sky. :D

 

 

 

Pen: DAWWWWWWW.♥

 

Jason: Her's all betteh now...until...Bwahahaha 

Shady: o.o until...?

Julia: yes, Shady make an until picture!!!!

 

 

 

I might have gone too far on this one. But don't worry, this isn't the end...

 ...or is it? O.o

 

"Kitteh had been receiving death threats in the mail for some time now. Apparently, if he didn't jump now, a sniper was already prepared to kill his wife and children."

 

And then...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

And it wasn't JUST a Land Shark...

 

it was a LAND AND SKY shark!!

 

 

 

 

And you thought this was the end!! ;)
 

Jason: It's like batman and robin.

 

 

 

Just like Batman and Robin.

 

 

 

 

Jason: Such a good team...

 

And thus followed other adventures, in Depression and Autumn and Mathland, with Massah and dead sunflowers and such. It's a never-ending kind of thing, and somehow, drawing and writing with such a sick sense of humor makes me, and the rest of my facebook friends, happier.

PS: Oh, that's just the worst tree I've ever drawn...I still can't get over it, even now...