In case you missed it, Bands I Useta Like (the comic strip, not the site you are currently reading) is over. I am forced to accept that a printed periodical outlet for the strip I have drawn for the past twenty-three years no longer exists. This is the theme of the 2020’s; forced acceptance and submission. Historically, I do well with neither.
So, in the spirit of the current times, I am accepting my own flaws and shortcomings as personal advantages, and forcing them on the rest of society and the world. As a pipe-tooting sailor once said, I am what I am.
As I say, fuck you if you have a problem with it.
Hey, that’s a great place to kick off; I am a naturally angry man. I’m probably pissed off ten hours out of every day. I was born angry. Due to circumstance, my parents were unable to prepare me for anything, so I attended school naively thinking that it was my fault for getting bullied. Any time I lost my temper or got upset was my fault, regardless of the situation. I’ve done a lifetime of mental damage to myself believing this.
There’s actually a technical term for the type of person who freaks out and cuts me off when I lose my temper. It’s not too obscure a term, the layman can understand it.
Pussies.
If your first thought whenever I fly into a rage is that I’m going to harm you or anyone else, and you’re not a innocent youngin, you are a pussy. (If you are a youngin, get the heck off my site, kid!) I’ve never fucking harmed anybody in a rage, unless you count the time I had to kick a larcenist off my property, for which I was fucking jailed for 48 days. I’ve taken yards of physical abuse off females and never touched a single one in anger. If you think angry people are bad people, that’s your problem, faggot.
That reminds me; I refuse to stop using the word “faggot”. I’ve never, ever called a gay dude by that word; it doesn’t mean gay, it means a person who can’t be relied on for shit, and lets you down every single time, because they have zero self-respect. I don’t care what you think it means; I said it, I’ll tell you what I meant. If I’m taking responsibility for saying the word, then I get the right to define its meaning.
How about this. I know people who are brainwashed enough to use the made-up word “cishet”, indicating heterosexuals who accept the gender with which they were born. (Because that’s “bad”, regardless of the fact that almost everyone was brought into this world by one or a pair of them.) That’s the same as calling a gay dude a faggot. It’s your definition of “hate speech”, bold as a swastika. Legally punish anyone who speaks or writes the word “cishet” and I’ll quit saying “faggot”. Until that happens, all you fags can go fag each other for all I care.
Now, on the subject of actual “gay stuff”; for example, drag queens, folks who change their sex, male anal intercourse, movies or TV shows about gays with scenes where they get it on, “LGBTetc. issues”, and the like; I don’t care about any of it. I’m not gay. I’m never going to become gay. I can’t make it any clearer. I don’t give a fuck that the entire sphere of entertainment was “heterocentric” until about ten years ago; I am a heterosexual. I am descended from heterosexuals. I have as much interest in gay issues as Neil Patrick Harris has in watching me eat a pussy like a soft-shell taco. If you think that makes me “homophobic”, you’re too fucking stupid to read this website.
I get aroused when a woman is angry (not at me). It’s taken me nearly a lifetime of awkward dates, confusing crushes, and ruined relationships to figure this much out, but seeing a woman go apeshit on someone or something sets me off like Spanish fly. One of my earliest memories is of being clutched to my beautiful mother’s bosom while she verbally raged on some adversary on my behalf. That feline buzz that girls let out when you’re forced to bodily restrain them from violently slaughtering another girl in a catfight, as they shriek a blue streak at their opponent from over your shoulder. It’s the kissing cousin of the vibrations they make when you’re properly banging them. Go ahead, get pissed. I’m right.
Two things I’ve come to accept about myself; I never got over teasing girls that I like, and if a woman is angry at me, I fold like a house of wuss cards.
I get off on abuse. I deal with the abuse I have suffered in life by laughing at abuse. I enjoy videos of random people being harassed. I’ve watched Bumfights so many times I’ve memorized it. If there’s a savage donnybrook on the radio, I’ve bookmarked the recording. I love arguments where it’s more than obvious that the parties involved would kill each other at the earliest opportunity. I’m like the creepy neighbor who invites you into his rec room for drinks, and then casually shows you an 8mm reel of a dwarf tossing competition. I think almost literally anything inappropriate is funny. Jokes, by nature, are inappropriate.
I think racism is funny, and if you disagree, you’re wrong. The funniest comedians are all racists. The funniest jokes are all racist. Show me a person who claims to be “fervently anti-racist” and I’ll show you a person with no sense of humor. Tell you what; you get all offended about racism, and I’ll laugh at it, and we’ll see who comes out the winner. Spoiler alert: me.
Allow me to fall on my sword here, and tell you an anecdote from my youth that proves my point. One of my best friends in high school was a guy who was sincerely socially sensitive, and genuinely poetic, in that way that straight guys useta be. He had a great sense of absurd humor, and both of us were tremendous admirers of Monty Python. I am omitting not only his name but general descriptions of him, because even as a teen, he was very particular about not being seen as racist. Technically he wasn’t any kind of “racist” (nor was I), which is why the story I’m about to tell you is funny. I assure you it is, read it where no one can see you if you don’t believe me. Go on. I’ll wait.
Anyway, one fine day we got to watch a video in the library, along with many other juniors and seniors. It was a miniseries about Martin Luther King, Jr., probably for Black History Month. The credits were in the beginning, so we either missed them or just weren’t paying attention.
At first, my friend and I weren’t paying attention; we were silently writing and passing notes to each other, most likely about the handful of female students with whom I was psychotically obsessed. But as the session wore on, the video won out. Our surprise at enjoying the show was reflected in the crumpled paper notes we surreptitiously passed back and forth under the long library tables.
this movie is actually not boring
i know, the acting is excellent too
i recognize a lot of the actors from other stuff
guy playing MLK sounds and looks just like him
i wonder who he is
The guy was the late great Paul Winfield, whom you might remember from Wrath of Khan and The Terminator. My house didn’t have cable just yet, so I was only tangentially familiar with those films and Winfield’s excellent turns in both. (It’s borderline impossible to know those movies and not know Paul Winfield; you’d have to have missed huge chunks of them or really not pay attention.)
My friend’s reply note was two words, which upon reading I was nearly ejected from the library for a surfeit of hysterical laughter.
some nigger
It’s totally okay if you laughed, I won’t tell anybody. Laughter is precious.
I’m not supporting racism, I’m not defending racism, and I’m not saying you should “be racist”. I’m saying that getting offended about your own personal perception of “racism”, whatever that might be, is like setting the family dinner table by farting. It only stinks the place up, and leads everyone to presume you’re completely full of shit.
Speaking of smelly shit; as I crawl towards the half-century mark, I’m done holding back on the tobacco thing. Read the following words carefully.
I can’t breathe cigarette smoke.
Note those first three words. I can’t breathe. I know we only pay attention to those words if they’re uttered by a black political martyr, but I have always used those three words. I can’t breathe. Not “I don’t like it”, or “I hate that smell”, but “I can’t breathe.”
Despite this, literally no one has ever cared. Smokers are even resentful assholes about it. For four fucking decades, I have held my breath, the better to not offend anyone who might be addicted to this wonderful practice that’s made my life so easy and fun. My own fucking mother didn’t even care that I couldn’t breathe in our own house. Why would I expect better of anyone else?
In the interest of self-acceptance, I am coming clean on this matter. Here’s all you need to know. When I smell cigarette smoke, I can no longer breathe in. My lungs will not allow it. Until there is clean air, I cannot breathe. You want a doctor’s affidavit? Eat a knife. If I tell you I can’t breathe, and you need more than that, what the fuck, you’re a piece of shit. Especially if you’re defending your precious seven minutes of cancerous odors. There’s no reason that I should have to budge on this matter. You’re the one smoking. I’m just trying to breathe.
I’ve tried to conceal all this because I’m a heterosexual man, and women are never considerate about their incessant cigarette smoking until they get pregnant, in which case it’s suddenly toxic and must be shunned at all costs. Also in the 2020’s, women are apparently offended at everything anyone else says or does, so daring to mention that their smoking bothers you is the same as sexually assaulting them. There is no acceptable way to do it. Suffocating to death is preferable.
Speaking of death; any celebrity who bitched about Trump is dead to me. I don’t give a fuck if they cure cancer. I won’t even mention them in jest. They are null and void. I don’t care what you think of Trump, especially at this point; any rich celebrity who bitched about him is a pile of shit. Literally every single one of them did something illegal and disgusting and thought they were about to be exposed. Show me a Hollywood star and I’ll show you who gives the best blowjob. Every hashtag-metoo starlet is a washout who betrayed the wang they eagerly gobbled on that famous couch. Meanwhile, everyone ignores the fact that this is how it’s always been, there are legions of movie stars who made it without debasing themselves first, and the only reason it’s out now is because actors are too fucking stupid to keep their mouth shut about themselves on social media. If you don’t want these people to have the power that they do, then cut them out of your life completely, and they won’t.
Does this seem overly harsh? Well, so were the past five years. I can only withstand so much intellectual betrayal.
Newsflash: actors, comic book writers and pop singers are all rock fucking stupid. They shouldn’t be allowed within ten miles of a voting booth or a computer. Take it from one who knows; those are all occupations you attempt when you can’t handle real work. Thirty years ago, if you said that you took political advice from an actor, a comic book writer or a pop singer, you’d get slugged in the solar plexus for your stupidity. But after a full generation of wilting hothouse flowers, we have plenty of folks dumb enough to seek wisdom in someone who literally pretends as their occupation, or someone who crafts fantasies where tights-clad body-builders punch each other, or someone who warbles ballads about breaking up with their boyfriend. All of whom are guaranteed to have a God complex, if they enjoy any fame whatsoever.
These are the people we’re supposed to pretend we can live alongside, and don’t want to kill. Because if we said anything, even in jest, they’d just squirt some crocodile tears and stump for legislation to censor us, or whine to our boss to get us fired. Because that’s what you do when you know you can’t fight back. Play victim, cry and get people in trouble.
You wanna watch Disney stuff? You wanna see a movie with the latest Hollywood sex drone, fresh off that sticky casting couch? You wanna hear music by some corporate robots? Go for it. But don’t expect me to shut up about how fucking dumb you’re being. Think about it. You’re gonna argue on behalf of millionaires you don’t personally know, whom you’ll never befriend in your lifetime? Well then, hit me with your best shot, because I have that damnable song stuck in my head now, and I’m even more pissed off than I was five minutes ago.
For this reason, I now maintain a sort of blacklist, inspired by the progressive left. Any paid entertainer who loses my respect is the same as deceased to me. Same with any pundit, or gadfly, or really anybody. Fuck with the bull, you get the horns, and your ass is off the artistic roll-call forever. I am bitterly resentful about the headspace I have unwittingly rented to these mendicants in the past. I am under no obligation to be nice or even courteous to anyone who crosses a line with me. I was stupid to allow any one of them into my life.
Think about that the next time you’re on social media, and you speak fervently free of cost on behalf of a studio movie or streaming show you like, or a politico you support (or want dead). It may be the last you ever hear from me. I won’t even watch Shia LaBeouf in movies I liked anymore. He ruined them for me, so I don’t watch them anymore. That’s how that works. Hey, it ain’t my fault he’s a psychotic domestic abuser who can’t act, and worked harder dividing the country that anyone else you can name. I’m sure reasons reasons reasons or whatever. But fuck him, fuck his mom, and fuck me for ever uttering a positive word about him. Lesson learned.
To anyone who claims rape in the national news media: I don’t believe you. If you are raped, broadcasting it to the entire world is the last thing you’re interested in doing; it’s the easiest way to ruin your case and give your rapist the time and opportunity to ruin you. Nothing about the sexual assault of a public figure is relevant to my life, unless I’m next. Jesus Christ; how dare you presume no one to whom you are speaking has been raped. How fucking dare you.
Oh, I’m wrong? The person claiming rape in public news media is doing it with the intention of helping other rape victims? Do you need a breather after those strenuous mental gymnastics? How do you operate a computer? With your tongue, or nose?
It’s agenda. Whenever anyone takes their personal trauma to the world stage, they’re exploiting it for personal gain, and to advance someone else’s political agenda.
Here’s when I want to hear about a rapist; when that person has been imprisoned and is currently being raped. Before that, it’s none of my goddamn business. I can’t imagine someone I care about getting raped, and then dealing with the media’s involvement on top of it. That’s some fucked-up, revenge-fantasy bullshit. If anyone raped my ass, the matter would be between me, law enforcement, and the person soon to be brutally disemboweled with a reaping scythe. Certainly not a world of gossiping strangers eagerly passing judgment on social media.
Check this out, since I guarantee you’re pissed off now. Go back a few paragraphs and pick out where I assigned gender. I didn’t. You assigned gender to the rape victim(s) whom I callously refused to believe, based upon your own personal experiences with the issue of rape. This is the problem. This is how headlines manipulate you. This is why I had to stop using social media, because it’s too easy to let your emotions be exploited regarding matters that require logic. Global corporations have worked out how to influence your behavior, and that of your neighbors. That should scare the living shit out of you. They know how to craze you. They make you believe lies and like it.
Let’s see; what’s left? Oh yeah.
If you are black, I take no issue with you stating that your life matters. I take no issue with your concern over people of your pigmentation being killed by law enforcement. That is a legitimate concern for anyone, in my opinion. If you are black, and you tell me you dislike hearing a particular word, I won’t use that word around you, out of standard courtesy and human respect. None of this is any imposition upon me or my rights. Being black doesn’t mean you aren’t a person who gets frustrated when it seems like things are against you. All of us are that way. Clearly I have my own serious issues with frustration, as you can see.
However.
If you aren’t black, and you’re telling me “Black Lives Matter”, you’re being a phony. Black lives only matter to you as a political bargaining chip. You are as racist as they come. You’re dividing human life by skin color. You make Hitler look like Donald Trump. And you vote? God help us all.
The phrase “Black Lives Matter” has been co-opted and corrupted, forever. You want to get mad about that? Then look up the people responsible and get the fuck out of my face. The people behind Black Lives Matter think black people are stupid and violent, and have to be controlled by “benevolent”, “outside”, “secretly European” forces. If you support BLM, that’s what you think too. Nothing you can say to someone of a different race than your own is as nauseatingly condescending and bogus as telling them “your lives matter”. You might as well say “you crap in a diaper”.
I cut all news and stimulus regarding “Antifa” and “BLM” out of my life completely while they were competing last summer to see who could fuck up the country faster. Guess what happened when I did? Not a thing. Both are radical nuisances propped up by the acid-cunt media, to more easily commit election fraud, strong-arm weak-willed governors, or stage political murders in public. If you support “Antifa”, without exception you are supported by one or more parents. If you support “BLM”, you support an actual hate organization that buses vagrants and criminals into your cities, to riot. You think actual Atlantans destroyed the CNN Center? You probably also think provable racist and pederast Biden won more votes than Trump, or that lead paint chips taste like chocolate. And hey, how convenient; the cable news network that reports all the nasty “true” news gets their headquarters trashed. The rest of us here barely noticed.
I’m not even joking, dude. I live next to the fucking city and I only heard about the “riot” on the news, before I cut them out during the relentless Summer of Shitstorms. We don’t riot here; there’s a guy from Atlanta you might have read about who was dead-set against it. He looked and sounded a lot like Paul Winfield. Rioting is for shitholes like Chicago and Portland. Irredeemable states like California and New York, governed by stooges who couldn’t locate their own assholes with a flashlight and a map. Chickenshits who cower in fear of manufactured strife and imaginary pandemics.
That’s right. I said the pandemic is imaginary. It exists almost entirely in people’s minds, based upon what their governments and media tell them. Save your outraged breath; this time last year you were keening that Trump said to drink bleach. Remember how you screamed that the mystery disease was everywhere, even on counters, where it lived forever? Remember how you shared those dancing-nurse videos? Remember all those “mass grave” pictures you tossed around like Uno cards? Remember how Evil Cheeto Man wanted your beloved grammy to die, so you claimed? Remember the blind faith you put into Dr. Fauci, and all the other puppets of the WHO and the European Union? Remember how you raged over Trump’s travel ban, and invoked the Holocaust, and what life would be like if we kept our house in order instead of catering to every conceivable special interest other than our own? Remember all those pictures of dead kids, kids in “cages”, and kids being used as political props for your chosen side that you eagerly disseminated in places online where mothers talk about their children? Remember how justified you felt in doing so? Remember all the people you angrily told off, because you knew better, and they were wrong?
Remember all the ethical concessions and moral compromises you made over the past five years, just so you could enjoy the entertainment you wanted to, even though you knew the people involved were suspect, even criminal?
I remember. I’m probably even complicit in some small way. Think of the internet as the ocean, and I’m the operator of a low-rent party boat, with which I carve out a meager living. Over the past two decades, people have polluted the ocean with their bullshit to the point where I have to get really nasty. I’ve been fighting giant squids and giant garbage crabs and holy fuck, where was I going with this.
Oh right; acceptance.
I accept that this is who I am, and even though it drives people away or nuts, I understand. It’s a hell of a tempest to weather, especially if you’re a girl. But the only way to survive as any kind of respectable polemicist is to be culturally neutral and politically amorphous.
That reminds me; I will publicly murder with a deafening firearm the next person who tells me to “vote”. I double-dog dare you, motherfucker; say “vote” again. The cutesy-poo world where we all cheer-led voting and pretended it mattered is dead. It was killed in late 2020 by the savage cocksuckers known as the Democratic Party.
I’m no Republican; I’m not even a Libertarian. But if you’re a Democrat, fuck you for what you did. Fuck you for supporting the monsters that you do. Fuck your ideals, fuck your unworkable and divisive agendas, and fuck you. And thanks for making my town look worse than shit with your goddamned signs, because you honestly believe black people and people who come here from other countries are so stupid, they have to be constantly barraged with propaganda in the form of public landscape pollution. You literally put a man in the Senate who said as much. You laud people who have called me and my family “racists”, “white supremacists”, and “domestic terrorists”; people who are known sex criminals, not to mention literal traitors. The Democrats have made a lifelong enemy in me. I will drag this grudge to the grave. You went too far.
Here’s the punchline of this article, for anyone who managed to make it past that last rant. If you can, recollect my behavior and attitude over the past five years, regarding the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Think about the tone of some of my comics from that period. If you know me on social media, there’s no doubt you’ve been subjected to my opinions and invective on certain candidates. So.
Who do you think I voted for, in 2016 and 2020?
This is a big deal, folks. I’ve kept mum about this until now. My roommate is the only one who knows. The funny thing is, as soon as you know the answer, you’ll feel like a dummy for not guessing it. I’ve been very careful about whom I support or endorse. I have to remain true to myself, and the things I believe in.
Ready? Knowing what you know about me, after reading this never-ending dross, who do you think I voted for?
(Highlight this line for the answer) NOBODY!!!
(Continued) I DIDN’T VOTE FOR FUCKING ANYBODY, IN EITHER ELECTION! I STAYED PROFESSIONALLY IMPARTIAL! MY DISGUST WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS BASED WHOLLY UPON THEIR ACTIONS, WHICH I CAN PROVE, IMPARTIALLY AND THEREFORE MORE VALIDLY! I WAS GENUINELY AND LEGITIMATELY WON OVER BY TRUMP, AND I STILL DIDN’T VOTE! THAT’S HOW COMMITTED I AM TO BEING IMPARTIAL POLITICALLY, AS AN ARTIST AND A HUMORIST! THAT’S WHY I’M BETTER THAN ALMOST EVERYBODY! THAT’S WHY!
I feel cleansed. All of this was festering inside me for a long time. This was a necessary chapter in my journey to self-acceptance. If I’m not true to myself, I can’t be true to my audience, and that’s not an option. Hiding my real feelings is artistically toxic; far more toxic than you might consider anything I’ve said or done.
I’m a mercurial cartoon artist with a macerated social buffer, a relic of a time when transgressive art and literature were celebrated, not censored. I was raised better, in a better time, by better people. Taking a joke in stride was considered admirable then, far preferable to taking offense. I was educated at a time before indoctrination, when grades and achievement actually meant something. I possess a valuable body of knowledge and wisdom on a wide range of cultural and aesthetic subjects, gleaned over decades going back to early childhood. I’m formally trained in figure drawing. I used to work at Blockbuster.
I accept myself, warts and all, as I would expect of anyone else. Especially if they can somehow accept a pederast fraud and criminal cheating their way to high office. Accepting my nonsense should be a picnic by comparison.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. I don’t know where that talking bear is, so don’t ask. Those of you who still manage to think for yourselves, I welcome you. Those of you who continue to take offense, I refer you to the definition of insanity:
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
-The real definition of insanity is trying to source this quote.
I accept that the fault lies with those who take offense. As well, I accept that there will always be more and more people who claim to “take offense” at whatever they don’t like, or anything that makes them uncomfortable. They will always worm their way into creative industries and institutions with the intention of improving them, and they will always end up sabotaging them instead. They will always eschew responsibility for their actions, regardless of the effect of those actions, or if they’re caught. They will always insist that their way is right, and they believe it sincerely enough that they teach it to their children with a straight face. They will always assume they outnumber us, that their offspring will replace us, and that their sovereignty of the future is assured.
They’re wrong. I’m right. Accept it.
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