Before this 25th anniversary year of my father's suicide due to his Vietnam War PTSD (you'll read more about this in a lengthy piece I wrote for MartianLit that will go live in Feb. 2012) is out, I thought I should share this. It's actually a song I wrote in 1993 and has music, but I probably won't ever get around to recording it.
So here at least is the lyric. In absolute and unrelenting hatred of Nixon, Johnson, McNamara and Kissinger, and all the other best and brightest bastards who cost me my dad. And the ones from since that have cost so many theirs.
All of you war pigs: burn in hell forever. And all who still defend the politician scum who send our young people into the pit.
Now the piece.
THE ARMY
I want someplace that I can belong___________________
I want discipline & purpose
I want my life to mean
Something before I die
I want to go to exotic lands
I want to meet the people there
And look them in the eyes
As I kill them, kill them all
CHORUS
Be all that you can be
And take away all they will ever be
Better than retail
Better than McDonald's
The Army's the place for me
Taking orders and marching songs
Now I feel like I belong
A gun in my hand feels better than sex
And it never, ever goes limp
This is the life for a man
It's just like a movie to me
And I won't feel guilty, I won't feel scared
Orders erase responsibility
This is so cool, yeah, this is so cool
I'm so glad I finished high school
I'm wearing ammo just like Rambo
I dreamed of this fucking day
And I'm alive, and they're just meat
Spoiling in the sun
Bang rat-a-tat
And die you loser
I'm number one, I'm number one
They scream as they die
In a language I don't know
Like I give a shit
Like I'd care if I did
Marching out with my buddies
We've done a good job for today
And we never sleep till no enemy's left
Except for peace
Except for death
I've never felt so fucking alive
This is, this is the ultimate high
Lock and load
Fire at will
I'm never going to die
(repeat chorus)
Written 5-9-1993
(c) 1993 John Linton Roberson. All rights reserved.
Labels: bastards, history, music, my poetry, my writings, personal, vietnam, war
¶ December 28, 2011 0 Comments
An excellent piece on now-deceased slimebag Christopher Hitchens by Sean Collins that says what I thought of him(click the tag with Hitchens' name below and you'll see what I thought of this "public intellectual" who had his balls waxed--no, really--while Iraqi and Afghan children were slaughtered) better than I could, or care to. Money quote:
In the end, life isn’t a fucking Authority comic book. I can’t, as a person who found himself thrilling to the burning of the churches in Homage to Catalonia, say that Hitchens’ infamous delight in cluster bomb fragments that will tear right through a Koran on the way to some benighted al-Qaeda fuck’s heart is alien to me. But those bombs found a lot of other people as well. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them. And in dropping them we also unleashed an atavistic tide of brutality, torture, state surveillance and oppression, and endless global warfare waged by an unaccountable executive branch; those bullets tore through not just Korans, but nearly every document we enlightened Westerners hold dear back through the Magna Carta. I’m no longer capable of performing the elaborate mental arithmetic necessary to excuse all this, and to excuse the deceptive and criminal way it was ushered in, because other people are bad. This is bad! When you’re primarily animated by hatred, as Hitchens was — and even though he generally hated genuinely hateful things — making the bastards pay is paramount. But the bastardry gazes also.
So Hitchens went to his grave quite literally praising endless war — a morally shameful philosophy that if adhered to would basically ruin civilization. But you don’t need to take my word for it. You can take the word of Hitchens’ hero, George Orwell, who wrote a book you may have heard of in which perpetual war was the core evil. Or you can take the word of Hitchens himself. I remember vividly his definition of terrorism: Demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint. How else to describe Hitchens’ call for a state of unceasing violence as some sort of curative for the other, wrong kind of violence?
I would only add that those who laud him now seem to mostly be those who got drunk with him, members of his own profession and class who have their own callowness in regard to Iraq & Afghanistan to justify and are doing so via him, as though Hitchens' own slime justifies their lack of journalistic integrity--indeed, embosses it in dignified stone. And anyone who calls him out as just what he was, a career character assassin who made money off of slaughter, gets attacked. A lot of the ones who object do so on the basis of Hitchens' atheism.
Which is what Hitchens wanted, I think: by flattering the egos of left-wing atheists he somehow made them forget how he betrayed them in every other respect. Between Clinton and Bush, and his frequent appearances on Fox, Hitchens, like, strangely, many former Trotskyists, found the right a more convenient home than the left, and did more to help them than anyone else. He was throwing the left a bone, while giving cover to right-wing neocons, who could say, "Here's this left-wing intellectual, and HE loves our war!" No more left than Dick Morris and exactly the same kind of Fox tool.
And on his atheism: so what? If you've read God Is Not Great, you realize: neither is this book. The entire thing, like Dawkins' God Delusion, is merely calling believers stupid and preaching to the choir in a way that only makes believers double down; it's a totally useless book except for atheists who want to feel smug. It changed no minds not already inclined to. And frankly, atheists who spend their lives obsessed with religion are no better than any religious fanatic. Same waste of time on a pointless idea but from a different angle, that is all. (I mean here just the subject of God's existence; religious institutions, which DO exist and many of whom DO harm, are totally legitimate targets for criticism) If you're done with God, be DONE with him. How sad he wasted so much of what remained of his life on this subject, along with trying to justify his support of the wars. But how appropriate he died the same day as his beloved Iraq War.
But more than that, Hitchens spent his whole career as a character assassin. And now people are supposed to canonize him? This is the man(and I agree with him here) who on the day Falwell died said that if he was given an enema you could bury him in a matchbox. True. And you could say the same of Hitchens. Cruelty begets cruelty.
Do not praise Hitchens. Just bury and forget him.
Labels: bastards, Christopher Hitchens, right wing
¶ December 20, 2011 0 Comments
Specifically, from 27 to 14%. He is now behind Ron Paul by nine points, Romney by six.He is still ahead among the Iowa Tea Party contingent, 31%. Wow. 31% of 30%. THAT'LL get you elected.
How does it feel to be Newt, who defines hubris by his very being(he IS Aesop's Frog), and be almost ten points and falling behind Ron Paul? And just think, so recently he was measuring drapes for the Oval Office. But as I've said many times, the GOP's fatal flaw is their tendency to celebrate victory before it's won.
And then they lose.
And Newt's entire career follows, in cycles, this arc. I was so happy the moment Gingrich started talking like he'd already won. Like Herman Cain, for instance.
And it looks like showing himself so willing to kiss the ass of Trump when every other candidate but the frothy Santorum(who's always happy just for someone to listen to him) had the sense to refuse this ridiculous debate (now cancelled) did him no favors. The debate was going to be a reality show straight up: the purpose of the debate was for Trump to decide who to endorse. I would have loved to see Gingrich up there with only Santorum. Then his true standing would have been revealed in all its tacky, low-rent glory.
But that's not the only way Newt got drunk on his brief and now vanished peak. his pathetic amateur fascist doesn't think people know that THE PRESIDENT CANNOT ABOLISH COURTS. Nor can he arrest people from other branches of government when they decide things he doesn't like. Both of which he promised to do when elected. (not "if" in Newt's ever-expanding head) Promising to scuttle democracy and seize absolute power: by him, this is "positive campaigning?"
But what he was actually doing, I think, was relying on the GOP base's misunderstanding of presidential power. The same misunderstanding that allows them to call Obama a "dictator." And that the GOP base hears about the fights on Fox but not the resolution, which is why they don't know the CA Pledge of Allegiance case(where they decided "God" in the Pledge was unconstitutional) was actually overturned. If they knew they actually won, how could they continue the resentful, paranoid, persecuted state of mind that is all that drives them?
But the truth is simple. The GOP base WANTS a dictator. It's the only model of executive power they comprehend.
It's just they want their dictator to be white. Well, and Republican.
But he won't be dictator, nor will he be president, and if the GOP are stupid enough to nominate this walking repository of attack ad material, they deserve to lose(though they probably will anyway). The GOP will, as I've said, have to eat their Romney. And Newt Gingrich will never be president.
We can all be thankful Newt cannot, ever, shut up.
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Labels: bastards, election 2012, HA ha, newt gingrich, right wing, trump
¶ December 20, 2011 0 Comments
The best-known Vladrushka story "Gulag Gangbang" (published by Eros/Fantagraphics in 2006) was done a little differently than many other of my stories.
The cover art too.
It was composed of single tightly shaded full-pencil drawings done out of order(like footage in film), then edited together(and slightly modified, but not inked) into comics pages in Photoshop. So for 24 pages there were 49 drawings.
Drawing 18
I explain this so the order you'll see the original art for the story for sale here at Sketchmaven will make sense, because the drawn order differs drastically from the printed. What this also amounts to is that, rather than looking like comics pages, this is straight-ahead erotic art, suitable for framing if you're so inclined.
Drawing 7
Anyway, all 49 pieces of it are up and for sale right now! None of the disappointment or uncertainty of an auction, just straight-up purchase.
Drawing 3
And as mentioned, all the art for STORY OF OH, MARTHA, and LULU that Ebay won't let me sell is there as well, for purchase with credit card or Paypal. Click here to browse & buy now!
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Labels: fantagraphics, my art, my comics, nsfw, sale, smut, vladrushka
¶ December 19, 2011 0 Comments
I already mentioned the Vladrushka & Lulu pieces ending soon for bidding(and Buying, which gets you free shipping within the US) at Ebay.
More art for sale, though. I have just uploaded to the original art site I just discovered, Sketchmaven, one hundred pieces of original art from MARTHA, STORY OF OH!, and LULU (with more to come), many of them pieces with explicit content that I am not allowed to put up on Ebay.
UPDATE: And now I've uploaded Vladrushka art as well.
None of these are auctions; you can simply buy them outright, and Sketchmaven takes Paypal and credit cards.
Have a look and buy! And also: I am happy to consolidate shipping.
___________________
Labels: lulu, martha, my art, my comics, sale, smut, story of oh, vladrushka
¶ December 16, 2011 0 Comments
And now we return to the catastrophe in progress. When last we left our Schwarz & Lulu, our young artist had at last succumbed to the torturous flirtation of this married woman much too young for her geriatric husband. Who was only going to be away for a few minutes. And returned. As you can see, not at a good moment. Read more here...
Chapter 2 is now offline, but now in print in This Sickness no. 7, also featuring Sam Henderson & Ashley Holt.
It's the holidays, so--This episode is premiered early & will run through this Saturday into next; subsequent will be weekly.
________________________AVAILABLE AT AMAZON & CREATSPACE
Labels: comics, frank wedekind, lulu, my comics, theatre, tragedy
¶ December 13, 2011 0 Comments
And now, an installment in my new series, News from the Future.
Our motto: you can't sue me for predictions.
Feb.14, 2013-Pres. Newt Gingrich was found dead today of a massive coronary due to an overdose of Viagra after locking himself in the Oval Office with 20 hookers.
"I can do whatever I want now! I'm the president!" he had been heard to say before he shut the doors. Aides reported that Pres. Gingrich had last been seen only wearing a pink thong with a Valentine heart covering his crotch.
Vice President Trump is scheduled to be sworn in at noon, promising to make America a super-classy nation.
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Labels: election 2012, news from the future, newt gingrich, right wing, satire, trump
¶ December 09, 2011 0 Comments
No, no, I do not think I do.
From around 1974 or 1975. I'm not certain what this is from--please let me know in the comments, if you know. (click to enlarge)
Also, Dame Mirren is to play Mrs. Hitchcock. Read more here.
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Labels: film, my crushes, nsfw, sex symbol, women
¶ December 08, 2011 0 Comments
Update: LULU Book 1 now available at Amazon & Createspace. Links to buy it (and testimonials) here!
Kendra Lee, the dramaturg for Carnegie Mellon University's production this year of LULU, back in March gave my own version of LULU a mention. Have a look. Hadn't noticed till now. I wish I had discovered this blog before, because there are some useful things I hadn't considered in Ms. Lee's examinations of the play. Including this one on Schwarz (the painter) whom she describes as the "creepiest fucker in the show." I'd actually been thinking of him more as a nebbish, but I might explore that angle when I get to Book Two. (by the way: I am one penciled page away from finishing the current book. ONE.)
And if Ms. Lee reads this: thanks for the kind mention, Kendra. Hope you like Book One when I collect it into one volume next year.
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Labels: frank wedekind, lulu, my comics, theatre
¶ December 05, 2011 0 Comments
Just a little thing I might later build into something more solid.
Click to enlarge.
By the way, did you know you can stalk Vladrushka on Facebook? She encourages it. Tell her you like her by pushing her buttons.
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Labels: my art, my comics, nsfw, Russia, smut, vladrushka
¶ December 02, 2011 0 Comments
