Meanwhile, in the dank caverns of Hell...

On the topic of bathrooms, this reminds of a particular incident I had once.

I was in San Francisco and I had the shits really bad, so I went into one of those new fancy space-age bathrooms they have out near the coasts and towns. They're entirely self-cleaning; as soon as the doors close, boiled water and soap sprays, and rapidly sanitizes everything in there so they almost always stay clean. It was quite spiffy; and the newer ones know when there are people in it. The older ones did not, which my friend Jimmy Spitzer learned the hard way after I shoved him back in there for never returning a game he borrowed from me. Oh, he was steamed like brocoli in that thing, it was hilarious. Jimmy didn't think it was so funny, and neither did his parents since all the boiling water and soap make his skin peel like an onion and he was legally blind after the experience. BUT THAT ISN'T WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT.

There are times when a man has to make compromises in taking a dump. My dad told me a story where he had to take a shit on a piece a cardboard and rip a piece of his shirt off to wipe his ass since the place he was delivering at wasn't open yet. My tale isn't nearly as amazing, but it should suffice. It involves a gas station bathroom in the middle of the great California Valley. Some of you might already know where this is going. Have any of you ever been in a gas station bathroom? Trick question; nobody has, because they never leave them unless it's in a body bag. Gas station bathrooms are the last glorious havens for bacterial diseases that long should've died out. I saw somebody enter a gas station bathroom, and leave with a case of the bubonic plague before dropping dead in front of his car. Terrifying stuff.

Thankfully, I wasn't afraid. I'm the kind of person who makes people regret going into gas station bathrooms. I'm a walking maelstrom of insidious biles and putrid diseases when it involves anything dealing with the ass region. It was once so acidic that eroded a toilet seat with my excrement. YES I GOT IT ALL OVER THE TOILET SEAT. WHY? BECAUSE I'M A DESTROYER OF WORLDS. I WANT TO MAKE YOU HATE YOUR EXISTENCE, TO CRINGE IN TERROR WHENEVER YOU HAVE A BOWEL MOVEMENT.

Everybody needs the fear of God put into them. And that's what people like me do. We go into restrooms that are generally seen as the last resort or the last bastions of hope, and we make that person regret holding their bowel movements in for so long. We make it like they're walking into the gaping maw of Hell itself. When you walk in, the air is moist and thick enough that you're getting an STD just by breathing. The floors are soaked in muck and garbage and blood, and you don't even know where any of it came from. For some reason, it's even on the ceiling as well. The toilet is backed up. You have no choice though; you have to use it. You can smell, even feel the earlier lost souls who tried to traverse that restroom and probably failed. In fact, that unknown pile of whatever in the corner? Probably a corpse. Some poor bastard choked on the methane in there. You might, too. But you finish your business. And when you leave, you attempt to erase the entire memory from your mind. It never even happened.

But you'll still remember.

And we'll pay gas stations to never clean their bathrooms. Less money for them to spend, and more horrors and life lessons to teach to idiots who decide to hold it in until the last moment and use a gas station bathroom in the first place.

How Bob and I save Christmas, finale.

There are few experiences as terrifying as being hunted by a mob. Reading a lot of medieval horror stories about witch-hunting while possessing prevalent knowledge of the mob-lynchings during the civil rights era was enough to educate most people on how mobs like to hunt down particular groups of people who probably had it coming. Despite being white and in possession of a penis, I was used to this. Pissing off a large group of people and having them seek to beat my ass into bloody submission wasn't a foreign concept to me. But this particular incident can become slightly unnerving when what would end up beating my ass into bloody submission would be a bunch of erect penises from a substantial group of extremely horny and extremely desperate young men looking to satisfy their rage-driven libidos on whatever conscious biomass that they happen to come across.

And I'm serious; it could be anything. I saw the sex-crazed bastards start grabbing raccoons and tackling wild deer as they overwhelmed the poor animals with a bunch of testosterone-soaked man-flesh as some of them actively pursued me into the forest.

I honestly had no clue as to what my course of action would be. As vast as my expertise was when it came to fighting off large groups of horny sociopaths, I was only one man. And retreating into the woods to evade them wasn't exactly the smartest idea; if one intended to do something then any reasonable man would've assumed to stay in town where he had access to whatever tools of destruction he would need. I would have to go back there eventually. But there were too many to fight, even if I had help. I needed to plan an escape. Unfortunately for me that meant going back into town those lust-driven heathens were no doubt destroying.

My method of escape was simple; the town is in a very isolated region in Washington. And I mean fucking isolated. Not even satellite providers will give people service out here. To the north of the small town were expansive networks of forest; venturing through here was a surefire way to get lost, and being the smart bastard I was I went charging in headfirst with my only thought being to keep all these perverts off of my ass. The town was sandwiched between two rivers. To the south was the only viable means to get to the little town; a lone bridge that I had to get across to make it out with my dignity and orifices intact.

I knew how the little rabbit being hunted by a pack of wolves felt. Whereas that particular Discovery special ended with the little rabbit being disemboweled, it didn't have the access to liquor-driven rage and murderous intent. Working my way through the waning blizzards of the northern front, I found two of the pantless patrolmen taking a piss near a river that was freezing over. This was vital, as the warm urine passing through their dick kept frostbite at bay, although the throbbing erections certainly threw off their aim. I no longer had any alcohol on me, so I had to make do with my bare hands to incapacitate these two disgusting men that were on the route to the town.

I slowly sneaked up on one that started taking a piss and I shoved him into the river. The other man was getting ready to take a piss before he immediately spotted me drowning his friend, and what ensued was a fistfight/wrestling match that bordered on getting laid. Eventually I got frustrated and had to finish him off. I looked for the nearest blunt object I could find, which happened to be his frostbiten dick that was large enough to hunt with. I snapped the thing clean off of him and while he screamed in agony, then I hammered his own icy cock into his eye socket and jammed it in there until I crushed his brain. I worked my way through the woods and what unfolded was a stealth massacre that involved more dicks, skullfucking and homoeroticism than a slasher film with a gay BDSM director. The only people who had their hands on more dicks than I did that night were either prostitutes pulling extra shafts shifts or secretaries fishing for promotions.

The town was in shambles. When I arrived, it was completely overrun by the sex-crazed maniacs of the donkey show. Being the tiny isolated village that it was, the townspeople were woefully prepared for a bunch of rambunctious sexual deviants that fucked for something other than the act of procreation. The trail of blood, semen and violated orifices left in the wake of the mob passing through the town was like a malicious plague infecting what was once a delightful community in the secluded area of the woods.

But fuck if I cared, I just wanted to get back to my grandmother's and get wasted on nog for Christmas.

The one person I didn't expect to see alive was Bob. That greasy, drugged-out hippie was hiding out with the rest of the fleeing townspeople in the last standing house that wasn't on fire or had a bunch of pantless men with erections passed out on the patio.
"Bob, we need to get the fuck out of here."
"But Conrad, we need to fight off the scourge before it spreads to the rest of our glorious nation." It was a bunch of drugged-up fratboys at a donkey show, and it was a state, but I saw his point. Although there was nothing we could do; there were literally hundreds of these freaks breaking and sucking and humping and blowing and grinding and fucking the town into the ground. So the only course of action was to quarantine the place and keep it from spreading. Thankfully, also being a bunch of hics in the woods, these poor people had firearms. Bob and I grabbed what we could, and went out to start kicking ass while attempting to make our getaway.

The men were still seeking to violate any sentient creature that moved, and each one that did was greeted with a shotgun blast to the face. This in retrospect was a bad idea, as it gave them death erections, and every mob we managed to hold off had not only blood but disgusting jizz flying everywhere. We could've bankrupted a competing sperm bank with the amount of semen these heathens expelled. All it needed to do was rain heroin needles and then the holy triad of getting STDs would be bearing down on this terrible little town.

Eventually we found a jeep and loaded it up with as much gasoline barrels as we could. We occasionally grabbed a woman and threw her out into an opening to distract the crowd; better her than us. I even had to give up my charred corpse girlfriend, which was actually a fantastic idea since they must've spent several minutes finding where to actually stick it into. The jeep was ready to go, and all we needed was some badass escape music like Ride of the Valkyries.

We turned on the radio and "Grandma Got Ran Over By A Reindeer" was playing. Fucking Christmas music.

We were racing down the bridge while the hordes of sexy men raced at us with their frozen hard-ons, like a charging army with fleshy javelins giving chase. The barrels of gasoline were rolling off the jeep as Bob attempted to steady his aim and shoot them to set the bridge on fire. Of course it didn't help that I was stupidly drunk yet was the one stuck with driving. There was almost something ethereal about racing down a collapsing bridge with a bunch of pantless rapists chasing you down while "Grandma Got Ran Over By A Reindeer" was blaring over the radio. The car eventually broke down, though. We were screwed. So close to reaching the end of the bridge.
"CONRAD, I WILL HOLD THEM OFF! MAKE HASTE, FOR THE WINTER SOLSTICE'S SPIRIT NEEDS TO BE DELIVERED BY YOUR GOOD WILL FOR GRANDMOTHER!" I didn't know what the fuck that meant, but I assumed that it meant that I should haul ass while he stayed behind. I saluted the man, and ran. I finally reached the end of the bridge, and I looked back. There Bob was, standing majestically and then shooting the last gasoline barrel beneath his feet, creating an impassable wall of fire. The bridge eventually collapsed from all the stress, and the terrible sex-driven plague was halted. After all that, I sighed, drank the last of the cheap liquor and only had one valid point to say.

"This is why I hate Christmas." And then the march to my grandmother's began as the sun rose.

Nobody's a critic anymore.

A repost from a long-ass time ago, made painfully relevant yet again by recent events.

A moment on the Nsider2 forums has made me angry, and it's reminded me why I don't really choose to come to this place very often. Someone who frequents this place got pissy and left after some genuine, HONEST criticism about her artwork. While you could find out who it is if you did enough research, for the sake of that person I won't state her name. I can understand disregarding blatantly rude criticism due to the proliferation of internet trolls, but why the hell does that mean people immediately have to write off any kind of criticism or comments about their artwork as such?

What does "art style" mean to you? To a place like DeviantArt, a place pretty much devoid of any criticism, I'll tell you exactly what it is. It's a cop-out to cover up any flaws or issues somebody has in their artistic "skill". Misshapen proportions? It's their art style. Hardlined shadows that don't blend at all? It's their art style. Um yeah, contrary to popular belief, just because art is a subjective medium doesn't mean it can't be shit. You can hear somebody just mash the living hell out of a guitar like it's singing its death song, but you bet your ass you can't get away with saying "Oh, that's just their style of playing music." People can still sing off-key, and people here still churn out shit.

The issue? Nobody's a critic anymore. The line has been tightly drawn and nobody can cross it. Everyone is high-fiving each other so much that as soon as anyone offers the slightest hint of constructive criticism, you're branded the insensitive asshole. Just because your opinion on a SUBJECTIVE medium is negative. It's good to have people constantly patting you on the back, but if no one offers criticism then you won't learn what your weak points are and you won't ever get better. As an artist myself, you're going to have to accept that there are going to be critics. In fact you should embrace the people telling you everything wrong with your work; it's how you better yourself as an artist and improve. Granted you're going to have your trolls, you should never disregard what they have to say anyway. Judge the statement being made, not the person making it.

While we shouldn't be pessimists, we should never think we've reached the ceiling for our level of skill. We should always believe we can improve, and therefore embrace criticism. A truly good artist can walk the tightrope of appreciating the work they make and having pride in what they do while at the same time being able to see what they lack in so they can improve. Upholding this egocentric view on your own art is the reason there's so much shit out there now. Your "skills" will grow stagnant and never evolve. Why the hell be in a medium that's meant to be ever-changing if nobody is telling you what you're doing wrong so you can fucking fix it and let it grow?

Art isn't genetic. Artistic talent isn't something you're born with. It's a learning process, and for some it comes easier than others. Granted this person's art was completely appalling and absolutely mortifying to look at, there's clearly potential there. There's work to be done. You have no right to call yourself an artist if you can't take criticism and better yourself. It's something you need. You need to hear what you're doing right so you can keep doing it, and hear what you're doing wrong so you can stop or make it better. That's how it works. And yet hardly anyone has the balls to actually point out and go "HEY, THAT LOOKS LIKE SHIT! MAKE IT BETTER!"

You hear me out there? If you see something wrong, FUCKING SAY IT. HELP THE PERSON OUT. Pointing out what they're doing wrong is just as helpful as pointing out what they're doing right, even moreso perhaps.

Mr. Death among other things.

More story concepts to launch at you people, but first, some updates on my current stories.

-Next chapter of Beautiful World is in fact being written, just a big-ass writers block halted that. Now I know how to go about it and decided against writing it as a full-fledged novel and am keeping it to a series of short chapters.

-My Dear Little Remi won't be seen by anybody until it's done, or unless people want to volunteer to read and edit it. It's about 50 pages along and the actual story's maybe a third of the way done. Which means it's going to become the DNF of my stories, but this is a novel I intend to get self-published at some point. More details when I know what they are.

-Finale to the infamous Christmas story is coming, shut the hell up. I actually have to find it.

-My exploits with a gay man and a limbless woman in my basement will eventually come to fruition, I'm just sitting on some ideas right now.

-Two short pieces are in the works right now, you'll see them eventually.

Now for the two story concepts. The first centers around a very basic, very cliched story set-up that's probably been done before, but big fucking whoop, I'm doing it anyway. Simply going under the handle of Mr. Death for now, the story is about a classy gentleman who always visits a dingy diner in the earliest times of the morning and makes conversation with the young waitress working the graveyard shift there. He tells her stories of his exploits and adventures. The catch? He's Mr. Death, the grim reaper of sorts. A first attempt at a rather serious tale, these will be a series of short stories dealing with... well, the concepts of mortality. He's meant to be a detached man who offers no judgment on his victims or his job, but the waitress he tells his stories to brings a human outlook to them, which over time might serve to change his view on how to do his job. Yes, it's going to be depressing. IT'S DEALING WITH DEATH, WHY THE FUCK WOULDN'T IT?

The second is an expansion on an early story. Some of you may recall a love letter, a story about two idiots who learn to fall in love. Well, I'm going to flesh it out more. In fact, I'm rewriting and making the original longer and more wordy or some shit. It'll follow Dan and Eve's tropes through High School, through college, and beyond. Two irrational morons juggling their feelings around for a funny yet occasionally touching love story. WHAT? I CAN WRITE LOVE STORIES TOO, DAMMIT. EVEN I GET TIRED OF WRITING ABOUT RAPE AND DRUG TRIPS AND GRATUITOUS MURDER EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.

But right, there's an announcement for you idiots, and I hope you have a miserable Christmas like I certainly will.

Clearly not overcompensating.

I remember when I tried to kill myself recently. And I made sure to get the job done. IT WAS FUCKING MANLY, BECAUSE IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE A DICKLESS LITTLE PILE OF SHIT AND COMMIT SUICIDE, THEN YOU SHOULD AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO COMPENSATE BY MAKING IT THE MANLIEST SUICIDE POSSIBLE.

You know what I did? You know what I did? YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I DID? I picked fights with bears. Big, scary-ass bears. Have you ever fought a bear? The correct answer is no, because no one survived a round of fisticuffs with bears before. I FIGURED IT WOULD BE A FANTASTIC WAY TO DIE. But it failed. It turned out that I was so fucking manly, I just ended up fighting the bears off one by one. I grabbed one and crushed its ribcage. Did you hear that shit? I BEAR-HUGGED A BEAR TO DEATH. FUCK YOUR SHIT, BEAR. I JUST TOOK YOUR MANEUVER OF DEATH AND TURNED IT THE FUCK AGAINST YOU.

Eventually I realized that I couldn't commit suicide by fighting off bears. I figured the only manly thing I could kill myself fighting were dinosaurs. So I grabbed a bear, and I shoryukened it a million fucking years into the past. That's right; I uppercutted that motherfucker so hard that I punctured the space-time continuum and ended up creating some wormhole or some shit. So I used my manly calves and jumped off into the sky into the wormhole into the dinosaur ages before the wormhole closed. The shock of my legs decompressing on the ground made Yellowstone finally erupt and destroy humanity as we know it. FUCKING ACE.

So I was in the past, and I found them big-ass dinosaurs. I thought those motherfuckers were going to be scary, but no. THEY WERE PINK. ALL OF THE DINOSAURS WERE PURPLE AND PINK AND RED AND A BUNCH OF ALL FAGGOT-ASSED VAGINA COLORS. It was terrifying that dinosaurs weren't in fact manly. It crushed me. Oh wait, that was the meteor that came and wiped out all life on Earth at that point; the big-ass rock fell directly on me and hit me with enough force to send me down to Hell.

I was finally dead and burning in Hell, but shit sucked. This was before people and Christianity was invented, so Satan was the only guy down there at the time. He was wondering where the fuck I came from since people didn't exist. But then he decided to keep me there since I was the first person to show up. I wasn't haven't any of that shit; Hell was still under construction and was no way the pleasant resort hotel I remembered from the first time I was there back in the future. He didn't care, though; he was going to keep me in there.

So then I ended up fighting Satan and beating the fuck out of him. I beat the living shit out of that red-tailed baboon-assed pussy like my mother beats the shit out of Ligers. My mom is the reason Ligers are infertile; she beat them into sterility. Fuck yeah. But it was difficult, because I upset the foundation of Hell, so I spent literally eons digging and crawling my way up through the granite and dirt, fighting off demons and servants of Satan while I feasted on ore deposits and freshly-made oil reserves.

By the time I crawled out, I was back in my yard and it was 2010 again. Fuck, if killing myself was that much trouble and it didn't even fucking work, I'll just wait until God or Mother Nature kills me, then I'll kick their asses too when I'm pulled up into the great beyond. Satan banned me from Hell already, so I can't commit suicide and go there anymore.

BITCHES AND WHORES.