With the taste of sweet vom still burning my tongue, I came upon a large and decayed mansion, of the Mc variety. Here was a place for solitude, for contemplation. I found my fear of recapture leave my body as I filled with a sense of ease. There was something about this place. I stood on the front porch a while, admiring the relatively intact structure of this 20th century domicile. 

Inside I found my inner peace redouble as I came to admire the furnishings within. A tattered black and orange curtain swayed limply in the breeze from a broken window. From one lamp sprang a marble tail, thick and smooth. From an open closet I could see several blue dress shirts, some still in good condition. There was a soothing familiarity to these sights which brought a stupid grin to my face. For a moment I thought maybe I had inserted the serotonin vial into my spine applicator this morning, but I then remembered the clear blue of the estrogen vial.

​Wandering slowly in my state of bliss, I stepped out into the backyard. There leaning against a striped pillar was a young man, pale and gaunt, smoking a cigarette. Stubble adorned his face and dark circles lay under his eyes, which were a cold blue. His hair was thick and black and it swayed along with the smoke circling his head. He was dressed all in black and had a couple body modifications on his ear and wrist- the kind you could only get in the city. 

"Hi," was all I found myself saying. The shock of seeing someone from the place I had fled this far out into the country barely registered. 

"Hey,' he said. "How'd you find this place?"

"No idea." I admitted. "How long have you been here?

"Not sure. A week? Maybe a month. But it feels like less."

"Wow."

We both stood in calm silence for a while. Before I knew it we were watching the sun set against the green horizon. Suddenly I remembered the question on my mind.

"...Do you know anything about this place? This house? Why it all feels so familiar?"

The man in black flashed me a knowing smile. He dropped his cigarette but didn't turn his gaze from the sunset. Neither did I.

"All my friends from the city know who this place used to belong to. They've all moved on of course, but then again, they were never big fans of Garfield."

He glanced at my confused expression and continued, suddenly seeming impatient with me.

"This house used to belong to Jim Davis, bitch."

When I heard those words it all made sense. The decorations within the house, though in disrepair, all bore the features of a certain fat and lazy cat. I was now sure that if I had gone upstairs I would have found a bedframe with those cute ears and large sleepy eyes. Who would ever think to have such a bed custom-built other than Jim Davis, creator of Garfield?

You might think this revelation would have pleased me. Yet somehow it filled me with fear and dread. This was wrong, so wrong. Jim Davis was not dead. This I now knew despite how many years had passed since I had seen a Garfield strip. I also knew that he was in pain. Terrible pain. I shouldn't have come to his mansion. The site of such beauty was a trick, and it had worked.

Bounding over the fence before us leaped a dark figure against the sinister orange glow of the setting sun. The man in black ran inside and disappeared. When the figure approached the porch I saw who it was and froze. It was Stanley.

"You fucking killed Brian, Riese. I'm taking you back."

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Chapter One || Previous Chapter || Next Chapter

​In my hubris I deigned to pull that bag behind me for hours, until the city had well and truly disappeared over the horizon- and with it my fear of being recaptured. When I could take no more I emptied it out on the ground and had myself a post-feast feast- my favorite kind! The noodles were as slimy as the day they had been cooked for way too fucking long, which was yesterday. After a post-post-feast feast nap I packed up the remaining leftovers and some of my favorite commemorative Nixon plates and continued on my journey.

It wasn't until that evening that I stumbled upon my first trace of human life since Bite Town. There in the distance, seeming for all the world to be no more than an idyllic scene painted against an infinite flat canvas of blue sky, rested a farmhouse and a barn belonging to Bryan the Wise.

He greeted me with the friendly fervor of an aging Hunter S. Thompson- yes, that's right, he let loose a volley of buckshot from his rifle. 

"Dance, monkey!" he cried out from the porch of his farmhouse.

After jiggling erotically for a few tense minutes the old man yelled for me to follow him and retreated into his home. Once I was inside and surrounded by the intoxicating musk of rotting wood and delicious pig shit, I found him in the corner by an old gramophone, listening to a song on wax cylinder which I recognized as being one of George Butterworth's, cheating liar of a man that he was.

"Shorty had those Apple Bottom Jeans, Boots with the fur..." he sang along with Bastard Butterworth, and I couldn't help but snap my fingers to the tune he carried with such solemn reverence.

"What the hell?" he cried, turning around, "What are you doing here? You're the monkey that can't twerk, aren't you?" I drew my breath to answer but he pressed a wrinkled finger to my lips. "No, hush- don't answer that. Since you're here, I suppose I might as well make the necessary introductions: my name is old man, and these are my daughters: Cosby, Stills, and Nash."

With this three women in their mid-to-late thirties descended the staircase behind me. I spun around to meet each of their gazes. Stills had the presence and demeanor of an ethereal bisexual who I was sure I'd have to read many more volumes of Foucault and Woolf to impress. Nash, meanwhile, with her quiff haircut and piercing eyes, seemed to hint that she wouldn't mind strapping me into the hip lifter they use on fallen cows and going to town on me with a prod, though that may have just been my hopeful imagination going a bit wild. I didn't meet Cosby's gaze, however, as I thought her name a rather tasteless joke I'd rather her father hadn't made. I was soon after introduced to a fourth daughter named Young, who was nineteen. Before finding her attractive I tried to figure out whether it would be appropriate, but realized I had forgotten my own age. Anyway all the women were all quite handsome, including Cosby I would assume.

After a dinner of beef I was cast out of Bryan's delightfully musky farmhouse and shown to a bed of hay in the barn. I kept waiting for Bryan to leave as I prefer to sleep in the nude, but he kept coming back in to tell me about that episode of Family Guy where Brian the dog died and how much he related to that character and how sad he was when he learned their names were spelled differently.

"Get out of here old man!" I yelled in a raspy voice, "I am very tired and I am trying to sleep naked on your pile of hay now! I don't want you to see my butt so please stop talking about Brian the dog from Family Guy and leave!"

At this Bryan the Wise seemed crestfallen, and he apologized profusely as he left, shutting the heavy barn doors behind him. I took off my shirt and skirt but left my underwear on so as not to be scratched there by the hay. I lay down and took my rest as it came, which was surprisingly quickly. It was cut short, however, by the muffled sound of low whispered tones and the bang of the heavy barn doors as Nash kicked them open. 

​There, dressed like a soft butch lingerie ad, were Stills, Nash, and Cosby. After pausing for a second, I laid back against the hay and turned my back to them, muttering something about how I was getting too straight for this shit. Stills wouldn't let me return to my slumber, though. She shook me by the shoulder and my eyes fluttered open lazily. There I saw her standing above me, in her sports bra and her boyshort underwear, with her curly hair cascading down toward me, coming within inches of my face. Her lip quivered slightly as she noticed my shifted attention and affectionless gaze. She pulled her arm back, tensing up, and bit her lip as she prepared to ask something of me.

​"Uh, Riese? My sisters and I were wondering... uh..."

"Yeah?" I asked curiously.

"...Would you wanna play Mario Party 3 with us? Young doesn't wanna play and we don't wanna play with CPU Donkey Kong because he cheats like a motherfucker."

I resisted the urge to tell her that CPU Donkey Kong is actually really easy and I could totally beat him because I've played Mario Party a whole bunch of times and I'm really good at video games, I mean REALLY good at video games, like better than Dream and that's not just a joke or something I'm making up because it makes for a good story I actually really am incredibly good at video games for real and this is real life, and instead followed her and her sisters to the playroom. Nash won by three stars but I won the Mini-Game star.

The next morning I thanked Bryan the Wise for his hospitality and waved goodbye as I walked off. Once I was a dozen yards away I yelled, "MINI-GAME STAR BITCH!" and ran away, laughing deliriously like a child until I collapsed in the grass and threw up on myself a little.

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Chapter One || Next Chapter

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Next Chapter

DISCLAIMER
*In this post, terms I am making up mostly for ironic effect will be pink*
So this post is going to be a little different from the older ones. I hope to do more All Artist's Albums reviews in the future but if that's more what you're here for this might not be your speed. I was inspired to write something like this partially by the wonderful blog DAVID (content warning: pretty explicit stuff) so it'll probably veer towards some personal stuff. If that's not stuff you wanna know, you can leave. Last chance. No? You're staying?
​Okay.

Here it goes. This will be the first personal blog post I've made in some years, but it's worth writing about briefly. I won't be going as in-depth as I do about some album from 1966 or whatever but here are some thoughts.

I've been slowly coming out as trans to friends and family and got the feeling I should come out publicly on the internet as well, since that's where it really matters am I right? This website is a bit different from the other sites I've come out on, so I'll just say that part quickly then move on.

I am trans, and identify as a woman. I prefer female pronouns, which you should probably know are she and her. I've known this definitively for a few months, though on some level I've known for at least a couple years. 

It's pretty important to who I am, but I don't think it's the most important thing. I still find that I want people to like me for my art and music at least as much as I want them to like me as a woman. That art is where I've been consistently expressing myself truthfully, in ways that I never could even with some of my closest friends, since as far back as I can remember. Some of the stuff that's up on this site is what I consider to be an honest expression of myself as a person, and saying something like "I am trans" is so general and ultimately kind of non-informative that it's far less of an expression of who I am or what to think of me. So yes, being trans is important to me, being a woman is important to me, but in some ways it's incidental to who I am.

Thank you for reading and I hope you continue to enjoy the art I create.

So, here we are again. Feels like it's been forever. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. This was initially slated to be my second AAA review, and honestly it very well might have been my first. This was certainly the first band I listened to enough to be able to write about them as much as I will here, and I could probably have written this review when I was twelve, excluding the last several albums. 
Friends and acquaintances John Linnell and John Flansburgh (The Johns) graduated to bandmates in 1982 and performed around New York City, playing guitar and accordion to a drum machine. Eventually they recorded some demos and after four years they released their first album. We take you there now...

I just remembered about this RPG I developed a year or so ago. I got the files from my old hard drive so I could post them here and anyone incredibly fixated on both RPGs and the Half-Life franchise (which I've been replaying for the seventh time) can maybe find some fun in it. Maybe some people will actually play it, maybe they won't. But I just feel like I put a little too much time into this for just the one campaign I DMed.

The core of the game is similar to what I know of AD&D. The stats are all the same: STR, DEX, WIS, INT, CON, and CHA. I recommend skimming through here if you're unfamiliar with the basics. 
​I do like to use the ability modifiers from a more recent edition:

​If you're precise about rules, assume anything not covered here is the same as in AD&D. Otherwise, feel free to change any rules to make the game fun for you.

I'm writing this after going out to see Adam McKay's newest film, "Vice", about the political career of former Vice President Dick Cheney. I'm still of two minds about the film and I'm less of a critic than I make myself out to be anyway, but I can say for sure that therein lies some fantastic performances. But then again, the 2008 Oliver Stone picture "W." tread some similar territory, featuring almost all of the characters from "Vice". So I thought I'd go ahead and compare the performances between the two films, solely based on accuracy. So let's get into it.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: I can't do all these tonight. I'm going to add more analyses later. Stay tuned.)

The Beatles recently released a reissue of their self-titled 1968 album. It just so happens to be my favorite of their albums.

 The reissue features full remixes of all the original tracks, plus extensive, mostly unreleased demo versions of each track, many with overdubs. There are also tons of outtakes and the like.

With all that in mind, I had the crazy idea to compile a list of the personnel I'd most like to see perform The Beatles given one restriction: No musician can appear on more than one track. This means that each Beatle can only play on one track of their own album. Otherwise it has to be outsiders who can really do the songs justice. Other than that, these performers can be from any time period. Some weren't alive when this album was recorded, and many were already dead. There's no possible way this album could ever be or have been made, hence the "dream" aspect.

The following is my full dream personnel for each track of this wonderful album, in order. Please enjoy reading them, and there will be a few notes after the list for the obsessives out there.