God

"Oh, what," she says to me. I shoot her a glance, slightly annoyed.

"Can't I hide anything from you?" I pout, mostly on purpose but slightly because I actually mean it.

"Oh come on now, don't go there. Don't go changing the subject before you've even had anything to say." She looks at me, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, brow slightly pressed until mini folds of skin wrinkle up somewhere between her right eye and her left. Small enough that you don't really notice unless you're looking right at them, and even then you don't normally notice unless for some reason you do. A lot of things are like that.

I look at those small folds of skin and cross my own arms. "Hmmph," I say, not really a word but more of a sound. I don't want to talk about it. I really don't. In fact, I'd rather chew my own toe off then talk about it. She knows that. She does! That wrinkle of skin, right there, that proves that she does. "Hrrrmm," I express again. Maybe she'll get the idea and go back down to wherever she came from. That place that, well, I'm not quite sure where it is to be honest. She just sort of comes up from there and then disappears back into it, whether I want her to or not.

And, of course, she always has to come at the wrong times. Like now. Why now?

"It's God again, isn't it."

"Oh, shut up!" I snap back. I'm uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about it. She knows this! In fact, God is definitely the absolute last thing I want to even pretend to think about. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm probably so angry precisely because I don't want to think about it! Think about Him. It. You know, the whole situation surrounding it. Him.

It occurs to me that grammar might be a good skill to learn some day.

"He's a sock puppet you know," she says slyly, mockingly. "People just, you know, poof Him up into their minds, take some of that old glue they used to chew on as a kid and paste their beliefs all over Him." She takes a step to the side. "Kind of like those construction paper monstrosities you see in the kindergarten section of elementary schools. They're all ugly and horribly misshapen, little bits of extras tacked on to the side, some weird marker scribbles in the corner, a freaky attempt at a face in the upper middle." I growl, and she just nods, lip slightly curled in an expression that makes me furious. "God, really, is just as significant as those pasted artworks. Oh, wait!" She lifts a finger, as if a new idea has suddenly struck her. "In fact, less important! Because, obviously, every intelligent person in the world knows He doesn't actually exist. Unlike kindergarten art, you see. Walk into any elementary school and you'll see that exists, plain as day, hanging on the walls. But you can't really walk anywhere and see that God exists." She looks at me for a moment, head cocked slightly to the side, eyes looking painfully masked.

"Grrrmmm," I say, again, more of a sound than a word. She knows she's just making me angry. She knows that I'm feeling those thoughts again, the ones the bubble up from nowhere, that want to gurgle their way up my throat and squeeze their tiny hands through my teeth until they wiggle themselves so far through the cracks that my mouth just bursts open and out they come, spilling like a hypothetical overflowing toilet, spurts of words that when put in the right context would probably make sense but the way they're splashing out just makes them a jumble-

"Haha, ha!" She laughs. She laughs because even though I'm not saying anything, she knows what I want to say. "Oh you're silly," she mocks again, stepping closer. I can feel the anger oozing up my chest, thick and warm and swirling farther up my throat. "You think you can hide yourself from me? Oh, haha, how silly!" She steps close and places one, dainty, dirty, disgusting finger right square on my lips. "You can't hide thoughts from me. I'm you! I'm that part that you always want to ignore, that part that you want to forget about and pretend doesn't exist so that one day, maybe, I'll just disappear and never return." She smiles. "But you know that's not how it works, baby. Oh no. You try to hide things from me, you try to ignore me. But it doesn't work like that. In fact, I'd wager that I can hide your thoughts from you better then you can hide your thoughts from me!"

Oh that fucker. Her face with those wrinkles, that look, oh if I could just take my hands and wrap them tight around her metaphysical neck, and then squeeze-oh it would hurt so bad-squeeze until her little dull eyes pop straight out of her head, and her fingers wilt down the the ground like dying wildflowers, and her blood spurts out of her, pure evil I'm sure, smelling like rotten eggs and the dying piss and shit of babies-

"But then, darling, you'd be dead too you know." She says, simply. "You'd be dead too because as much as you don't want to admit it, I am you and you are me. Every evil thought I have you have too, every good thought that you grasp for is tainted by me." Her eyes narrow. "You can't escape me. Just as you can't escape God you can't escape me. You can't even breathe without Him saying its okay, without him pulling back your tiny little diaphragm, without him letting that oxygen and nitrogen and whatever else the fuck is in the air swoosh into your lungs so that your tiny little red blood cells, created and maintained by His power alone, can carry those essential things into your body and keep you alive."

"You're wrong," I say. No, I spit. I spit it right out of myself, thick and heavy and hot. "God is even stronger than you," I say, the words fumbling out. "Whatever you are, you disgusting thing, whatever you do to me, however I choose to go with you (for everything you do is done by me), God is greater than all of that. ALL of it!" I feel sick, somewhere in my body. It doesn't matter. "I don't care how bound I am by you, you twat, you disgrace, you piece of slime. Because you don't matter! You DON'T! You wish you had power, and you hold on to what you can, a parasite, self-bound, self-destructive, but in the end you have nothing because without God you are nothing and I, with Him, am stronger than YOU."

Her lip curls and her face is unreadable, and really, at the end of it all, what did I even say? Did I even believe myself? Does she believe it? That thick anger is still there, thumping, squirting, roaring. She opens her mouth and then closes it, not because she can't speak, but because she is fading away again, leaking back into that place where she lives deep within myself, that dark place, and hidden place, that place where she sleeps until the time is right...

She'll be back. She always comes back.

I roll over, exhausted.

Sleep.

I'm actually feeling quite good today.

Do you ever feel like the stuff you care about is something that no one else really understands? I mean, really. No one cares to see it, or look for it, or even think that it's worth caring about. They're more interested in making what you're interested in into something that they already like, or persuading you to move away from it, or trying to tell you that its dumb and obviously not as important as what they care about. I mean, shit, I do that all the time so just typing it out makes me feel a bit hypocritical. But at the same time, there are days when I just feel weary and wish I had more little "Sara-groupies" to keep me inspired and wanting to pursue the things I like. In general, I'm just lazy and devolve into this strange fleshy doormat that agrees with profs and peers and whoever about how my stuff sucks. And hey, sometimes they have great points and great insights so I love that. But other times I think, "can't you just try to like this? I like it. There are things in there that I know are worth liking." I think the fault in all this comes in my timid nature. I am not always the best in articulating what I think, and honestly it makes me nervous. So I devolve to this safe place, this comfort zone, where I don't try to explain what I was going for in a piece of artwork or whatever creative vision I may be working towards. I just agree with what people say and don't try to fight it... why would they care about something when I'm not showing them why they should care?

Hmm, this reminds me of how I go about stating opinions. Very similar really. Arguing for an opinion is way more difficult though, for me anyway. Though I'd venture to say my sense of right and wrong is persuasive, my logical explanations of said rights and wrongs leave me feeling very dissatisfied. Most of the time if I get to the point of explaining what is on my mind, what people mirror back to me is not what I was trying to say, and other times I just get poked in the logical holes I created for myself. Our world is such a logical place, and I know that all people have strong logical sides if only they'd let them out. I strangle mine and kill it with fear, and so it struggles and gimps along and leaves me with exactly what I try so hard to avoid: rejection. How ironic!

It occurs to me that maybe people don't preform as well as they wish they did not because they can't, but because they stop themselves. They have all these abilities but they are hard to those things, they fear rejection and failure and so they try to "toughen" themselves in order to avoid the unavoidable. Life, I think, is important because of rejection and failure. And if you think about it, rejection and failure are not bad things. They're sort of like getting a cold. No one likes getting stuffed up and sick, but the reason your body is doing that is to save you from death. Not that rejection and failure is that extreme, but I think they serve a similar purpose. They're uncomfortable and unwanted, but they are not bad things. And maybe, in an ideal world, they would not be quite so uncomfortable and unwanted. Maybe they're so feared because we try to harden ourselves to them, to stop them from happening. Maybe colds wouldn't be so bad either, if we just opened ourselves to them and allowed our bodies to fully and completely fight whatever is making us ill.

Or, maybe not. :)

Bearded Dragons and Normality

So, over the past month or so I've been doing a lot of research on different types of pets. Once I started learning about all the people who keep salamanders, I've been looking into different types of amphibians and reptiles just for fun. But, there is one type of reptile I keep coming back to... the bearded dragon. They're these desert lizards from Australia, really docile, easy to breed, and get to about 1 1/2 - 2 feet long. So, naturally, now I really want one... and absolutely can't afford one. Damn! They just eat too much and need a fairly large cage, and the animal itself (especially the color morphs) is not cheap. If I did get one it'd probably be a black and red male if possible. Man, if only I had unlimited money... oh well. :)

This little guy is available right now, and exactly the color I want... wow, I wish I could afford one!

In other news, I've been working a lot on t-shirt designs lately as I'm sure some of you have noticed. I've been motivated to try to get my work out there and maybe get a few dollars for it in the meantime. The problem is making a design that people would want to wear. O.O I'm not the best at anticipating what people like, but I'm gunna keep trying. I figure, eventually one of my ideas has to get through, right? I guess some people might think that mentality is dumb (I'm not really doing the "normal" thing, a.k.a. getting a job, but instead am making t-shirt designs to get money) but I enjoy it a lot so I don't mind. :)

Which kinda brings me to another thing I've been thinking about lately. "The normal thing." We all judge people according to what we think is normal. For example, when you hear about a 40 year old guy who is still living at home, or a person who drops out of high school or doesn't want to attend college, or maybe someone who has some crazy idea, like they're going to write music and be famous someday. That is when "the normal thing" rears its ugly head. I mean, lets be honest, all of us look down on people who aren't "normal" every once in a while. It's largely subconscious I think. You see it on TV a lot, on the internet ALL the time (trolls love this), and even when we're interacting with each other face-to-face. Sometimes, it's warranted. I mean, a 50 year old drug addict who lives on the street? That really is pretty gross and not normal or healthy.

But what about the people who are actually going for something that hasn't been done before? Something that isn't normal precisely because it is beyond normal, because it's new, it's exciting, it's different. Sometimes those new and different things seem weird. They aren't always amazing right off the bat, and they often go down in quality before they go up. And how do we as people treat those ideas? Basically, like shit. "Oh, you're trying to do what? That's not normal. That's weird. You're stupid, why aren't you doing something that's normal? Why don't you get a real job? Why don't you get a girlfriend? Give up your stupid dream, it's worthless." We aren't that harsh about it, but we all feel it. That awkward twisting in the gut, the sudden rush of anger or discomfort, the desire to say something lashing or demeaning for reasons we don't really understand. Why to people do that? Why do they feel the need to tell other people what they should be doing? Why do we all need to stick to what has been done before? What's wrong with a little bit of difference? A little bit of something new? And most of all, why do people even care what someone else is doing with their life? At some point you just have to give someone the authority to live how they want to live, for good or bad.

I personally am terrible at all this. But it doesn't stop me from thinking about it and being effected by it. (You're an art major? Have fun living in a box for the rest of your life. Oh, you want to do what? Write a book? Make shirt designs? And how many people are successful at that? That's right, no one you can think of. Why don't you go to college for a real reason, like being a nurse? Or maybe, I don't know, getting a job or something?) And I'm not even trying to do anything super weird or exciting! The world is a very strange place sometimes.

Well, that's about all I have for now. Thanks for reading guys. :)

Dungeons and Dragons Strikes Again

You know, D&D is one of those nerdy things that never seems to get anywhere, but never really goes away either. It's different, fun, and always hilarious, but in terms of actual plot and normal RPG style progression, nothing really happens. You kill some baddies, sometimes you die, every session comes with a slew of witty jokes, bathroom humor, and awkward roleplay. And, nearly every campaign has a fight that ends in a truely awesome way. But, eventually, people get busy or lose interest or something goes wrong, and the campaign drops off at a strange spot and

never is picked up again. However, sure enough, a month or two or three later someone says "HAY GUYS, lets play D&D, I got some suh-weet ideas!" and the process starts all over again.

It occurs to me that there are a few things that have taken on this "on-off" cycle throughout the years. Starcraft, obviously the best game ever (in my opinion), is one that always seems to make a comeback and delivers fun times. Diablo 2 appears now and again, and usually we'll all play halfway through Nightmare or a little bit into Hell before we realize how much of a pain in the ass the game is and move on. Magic has swelled and receeded, never really dissapearing completely but always sort of in the background; the game that fills up the boring times between other events. And, of course, World of Warcraft, a game that sticks around primarily because it is so damn addictive. There are other things too, like Smash Bros and nightly walks and other (less nerdy) things that come and go as well.

It makes me wonder what it is about these activities that makes them cycle in and out. They are all extremely fun, but I suppose that without variety even the most refreshing of activities can quickly become stale. So you need to boot them out and then bring them back in order to keep getting enjoyment out of them. I guess this is a pretty obvious conclusion... but it was on my mind. I think there would be a lot more activities that would take on this nature if people were able to participate in them. Especially "kid things" if you know what I mean, like playing at a park or who knows what. (Not that you can't play at a park now, but people would look at you pretty wierd if you did.)

You know, if adults were allowed to play in playgrounds, I think there would be a lot less fat people in the world. And why can't they? I mean, playgrounds are fun, and healthy! But think about it, if you saw some 30 year old man crawling around on top of the monkey bars (yes, you're not supposed to be on top, but everyone did it!) it would probably wierd you out a bit. There are a lot of things in the world that are like that. I mean, I'd love to go and play pretend out in the woods with some toys like I did as a kid. But it's just... not acceptable I guess. And because of that I'd feel wierd doing it too. I really think if there wasn't such a stigma attached to

adulthood, where you "need to grow up" and "stop doing kid things" people would be a lot healthier in general. They could just go play pretend and enjoy simple things sometimes, and you know, that makes people feel good. Sometimes you just have to go play pretend, or climb on top of the monkey bars.

Uuuh, wow. This post got out of hand.

Anyway, I've had the next panel of Adventures in D&D nearly finished for a few months now, so I should probably get on that and continue with it. It really was a great fight, and extremely hilarious at the time, so I should finish what I started! Here is a teaser in the meantime:

This time the Ent is the one freaking out....

The main reason why I should finish this strip is to make way for future strips. D&D always has funny moments just begging to be illustrated, you know? :)