While You Was Out

its hard to tell if i'm being crazy or i'm being strong.
i guess if you think something is worth fighting for you have to fight for it until you can't
or don't want to.
-e

HttGrrl Numba12: I've had quite too much to drink. and your beginning to look quite cute.
Auto response from DMsqdMn17: I'm sleeping. I'm dreaming. I'm awake.
HttGrrl Numba12: The cuteness! It burns my eyes!

feeling like I need to find some kind of direction. Like I'm a sitting duck who's doing just what she always said she wouldn't: dropped out of school and working full-time in the same place she grew up. I want to get away come Summer but I don't know where to go! I will not attend that school ever again. Ever. Except maybe I will if every asshole there leaves, and by then I'll be too old. Where can I go that's away from New England? That won't cost me a lot of money and what can I do that will be memorable and exciting? You are away, you are fun and exciting. Help me out...I'm up for anything...
-L

SuppleSextusCinString: your sleeping and your awake?
*** Auto-response sent to SuppleSextusCinString: I'm sleeping. I'm dreaming. I'm awake.
SuppleSextusCinString: like, all quantum superposition and stuff?
SuppleSextusCinString: like schrodingers cat? alive and dead at the same time?

Ya Know...
In Wisconsin...
if you win a girl a giant purple rhinosaraus...
she puts out
-t

Da Mom of DMM: This is your father.
Auto response from DMsqdMn17: I'm sleeping. I'm dreaming. I'm awake.
Da Mom of DMM: Just wanted to let you know
Da Mom of DMM: They have a very good Broadcasting Program at SF State
User: Da Mom of DMM has signed off

I like your blog sometime, When I tune it it is like something for both sides of your brain. You channel all of these poignant and poetic melodies on the right side, and inject them with devilishley awe-wielded teenage testosterone on the left. Impulse, and introspection. It's like the the sweetly phrased confessions of a tortured soul in the one hand and it's often syncopated by a madcap counterpoint of crazy energypower -- a couple of cartoon-character angels and devils sitting on either sides of your masked head, offering 2 very different interpretations of a uniquely human experience
-kt

OMGDucDuke1486: Do you have a blueprint for your brain?
Auto response from DMsqdMn17: I'm sleeping. I'm dreaming. I'm awake
OMGDucDuke1486: I'm planning to build an idiot..

Z'planz for ze Weekend

It's Friday and I'm making my weekend plans.

D'MaskeD MANzzog
WEEKenD PlANzz BLOG

Nope theres Nothing decent on tv tonight.....bored.....'tis grim without entertainment.....*sigh*.....

Cue boredom.

*crickets chirp*

Maybe somebody here in the office has some good ideaz...

"Any plans for the next few days Qee?"
“I'm going to become an atheist this weekend.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, and I think I’m going to be one until someone can tell me where dinosaurs came from.”
“Alligators.”
“They wa—wait, what?”
“Dinosaurs came from alligators. And they went into chickens.”
“Don’t talk to me.”

Amazing how some people [my brother included] can walk into a room of strangers and talk about nothing and keep them entertained for hours. Meanwhile, I am dreading even going out in public tonight, [hours from now], and I'm having chest pains and because I'm so nervous.

I'll need a reward for this or something.
Maybe I'll just stay in and write poems.

hahah how loser can i get.

"cool stuff"
A Haiku by DMM
Um. EXPLOSION. Ha!
Whoa, that is like, SUPER COOL!
yeah, that's all I got
Poemz iz out. Maybe I'll go scour for chicks at the grocery store.
Man, Limitations are crushing. But they make your imagination soar.

Oh I had a dream that I was an international spy with a mission on every single corner of the world and I walked around with Timothy Busfield, trying to find all the amulets stolen by some evil intergalactic confederation. But it was a young Timothy Busfield. And we were drunk. And I turned to him and told him that he looked like my friend Jag and that it was "weird - but good weird." And then we started discussing remedial physics as we lie back in the green grass beside the sidewalk under teh dorm where I went to school, looking up at the starz. And I woke up with a headache - a hangover that I would have kept dreaming about perhaps- and the strangest of desires to watch Field of Dreams and read A Brief History of Time.

“If we had a keen vision
and feeling of all ordinary human life,
it would be like hearing the grass grow
and the squirrel's heart beat,
and we should die of that roar which lies
on the other side of silence”
- George Eliot

DO NOT LET ME TURN OUT LIKE THAT SPACEY FRUITCAKE>>>> PLZZZ>>>>
GIVE ME SUMTHING TO DO THZZ WEEKEND K
K THNX BAI

Blue faces, shriveled hands clicking for SEX

Pretend you are reading a blog. On the internet. Now pretend that you hear someone scream from behind you.

Hold on, did you hear that? What was that... ok nevermind. Back to the hypothetical.

Pretend you are reading a blog by a man you do not know, let's say it's a blog that is usually about something funny. Full of little rich n'bitchin' rhyming witticisms and stacks of equivoques that you may or may not attempt to file away to claim as your own over some tea party conversation later on. But today it is different. Today you feel a lancinated dread. Foreboding. Pretend that all your little hairs stand up on end. Pretend to distract yourself from this gnawing disquiet by focusing on how to spell the word "apprehensiveness ". Pretend everything is going to be OK.

Quick, now pretend like the blog just got really really good and so you're staring at the screen, eyes locked in, racing over

line
after

line
after

line

as the tension builds and the plot thickens.
The blogger holds your attention rapt, churning out his words into some sort of rapidly accumulating crescendo (which you're not sure is actually going to pan out into anything since this IS a blog and in the land without editors, quaNTity always exceeds quaLity... but you're rooting for it to stay as good as it's been...) Pretend it's not boring. Pretend it's really interesting. Pretend that you don't notice there is a man sneaking up behind you with a serrated cooking KNIFE.

You're so rapt up in the blog, so on the edge of your seat that you're not even breathing, not even making a noise, not even aware of any of your surroundings. The man stands perfectly still, right behind you, and raises THE KNIFE up in front of him taking aim at the little spot on the very top of your head where he will plunge THE KNIFE down through your skull and straight through your brain, and then he will hack through the back of your spinal cord, ripping out everything in the back of your skull causing your body to go suddenly limp and lifeless. Once the twitching subsides he will push your bloody corpse out of its smelly seat and sit down in front of the computer himself, intent on checking his email... only to see the blog you were reading... still open... half read. He sees something of interest shine out at him. Maybe the word SEX. Maybe the paragraph about THE KNIFE. Whatever it is that catches his eye he's hooked and so he scrolls back up the top of the page

And then...

And then...

There's a scream. That scream that you ignored. There it is, that blood curdling scream. He looks down to where he threw your body but it's not there. You're not dead, you've crawled into the next room and are dialing 911! Screaming into the telephone!
Screaming for help when he storms in after you. To finish you off.
Screaming when he slashing THE KNIFE across your face and arms, slicing away at little chunks of your flesh...

Pretend you're reading a blog the author breaks the fifth wall and he tells you something. (I'm going to you tell you something). Not just telling 'you' in the generic Mr. or Mrs. Reader sense, but you, personally (You, I'm talking to You. Yes. Hello there.) Pretend that he tells you maybe you should lighten up and unplug for a little bit, (-- what he said...) try not to be so tense... ... get up and go do something.

Don't just pretend to get up. Go do it. But first leave a blog comment. Something that just screams "SEXy" Quick! I have to go get out my KNIVES...

[This Space For Rent]

It';s Oppositite DAY herE at l'Chez Du'Masquedmon, WHICH means that you should think I mean the opposite of everythign I say. Or does it mean the opposite of everything I say is what you think? Or, since everything I've ever told you is the God'sHonestTruth, does it mean that you stop believing in what I DO say and start espousing everything that goes unsaid.

Whatever. Opposite Day. Pfft.

Random Erik's Uncle Quote of the Day:
ukeepsmile56: brainey-smarrts wont meen shit wit out a salami to your name

Oh did you know?
more photojournalists cover the Cannes Film Festival every year than covered the entire Vietnam War

I really meant what I said about the Truth. I don't make shit up man there's not enough fucking time. Like that story I wrote about my kids in Montana who live with their mother but I never see. That's true! I mean, I make myself sound like I don't believe they're my kids for the sake of my court appointed liason... (I like to really make that guy question every reality)... but those kids is totally be mine. And Nigel, my evil twin. Dude, the guy is EVIL! And my TWIN! Sure we went out for drinks on Friday night in the heart of Oakland and ended up passed out, robbed blind, naked and tied together... ended up using a welding torch to cut our way out of an unmarked van abandoned up in Redwood country... but I couldn't possibly make stuff like that up. Nor could I invent what we did the week before... I don't have enough of an imagination.

"We email 50 times a day and i still know nothing about your life except that you seem to be developing a drink problem around older, sleezy, slutty and more european women of late".

Question: if one of your best friends sends you this, would you be a) worried, b) insulted, d) amused?

i kinda need to know soon cuz I just pressed Send. Ooh look, an email from Kara!

I love you readers. For putting up with my august aloofness.
Conversely I hate y'all. Despise thee with a seething dispassion.
(It is opposite day, yes?)

All over the place.

Picture this:
an entirely different kettle of fish

Which brings me to L'Main event:


Today’s game is called Picture of the Day!

Here be d’rules. I showeth thou uń picture, und you must leave a caption/dialogue insert for it.

Here beith thine Picture. Let the games begin:



Now if you'll excuse me, I have some death to defy
-Th' Masq'd M'nn

Dasmascus Lyceum

Let me get right down to it.

I love being underestimated. That may sound wrong.

But think about it. Why else would I wear the mask. I'm too smart to be defined as a freak by any classical definition of the word. It should be obvious I do it for the attention, the novelty of being noticed for my "odd" looks when without this little accessory it would only be my brains that got me laid.

Today's Blog: Brains Get Laid
That'd make a great band name.

Ok. But I love being underestimated. I love being written off as a kitten and then roaring as the lion that I am. When I can cause some Jake to make a doubletake, I've done my job for the day.

And I think I learned how to do this from school. School, since the industrial revolution, is not about learning things it's about churning out comformity. In order to succeed in school we have to become the machines that the machine wants us to be. In order to succeed as human beings we have to find little ways to subvert the machine and develop, cultivate and covertly maintain a sense of individuality. My way of being noticed was by not being noticed. I was the snarky one. Snatching one or two of my peers at a time away from their studious pursuits like a wolf lurking at the periphery of a flock of sheep, and subverting them with sarcasm and my own blend of satire.

The world is a veritable ringed circus of freakish delights, let me show it to you!

Masked Man! The Ringmaster!

Watch! as I introduce the acts. The little plays. Step into my kaleidoscope where I'll reguritate the world back to you through blogs and poems and comics and stories...

We now return to regularly scheduled IM conversation, already in Progress:

DMsqdMn17: What do you mean "people have an essence?"
1 August Youth: the y do
1 August Youth: all I do is listen
DMsqdMn17: so you learn everything about a person just by listening to them?
1 August Youth: You're not getting it. You just have to tune in. Everybody has their own wavelength.
DMsqdMn17: crazy
1 August Youth: Some people ride on other people's signals, and then you tune into that
1 August Youth: but whatever frequency you find you'll see it eminating from somewhere, and you can understand the source just by examining the emination

We all learn different ways. Education is not an assembly line, its just being open to as many different ways people see the world as possible.



Today, I will learn by drinking all the way to the bottom of this mug of beer. Cheers!

-D'M;-d Mn

Basement Solipsism

dissent is not revolution
-George W. Bush
22 Feb 2002
"I am my own God" said I to Smurf and Slicey, exhaling deeply. Neither one of them disagreed. I continued with the Haiku: "Furthermore you don't exist... except in my mind."

The basement smelled like smoke and altar candles. Smurf was reading The Decline and Fall of Ancient Greece with a look of perfect indifference on his face. Slicey was ramped on Barbiturates, and slunk so low into his indent in the sofa that he may never get up. I peel a slow palmful of fingers across the imagined glint of perspiration on my forehead, worse than bored, thinking of leaving. We're absent-mindedly anticipating 10 minutes from now when we will be doing nothing but trying not to yawn.

"If I'm wrong then God, the real God will strike me down. Just Like at my job."

I used to work at a radio station. I worked at the radio station until that day, that afternoon. Then the powers that be voiced their displeasure with my artistic vision, and the way I would never take my mask off in the studio.

"But It's a RADIO!" I argued vehemently, already shuffling to stuff my few belongings from there in the studio into the flimsy industrial cardboard toilet tissue box, "This is not television! No one can see me." But they could see me, and didn't want to any more, in fact they wanted to see and hear a lot less of me. I had built up my career, I had gone to (and dropped out of) school for broadcasting, I had worked the odd job in stations from here to Pittsburg since high school, and they had cut me down.

But that's just a job. Corporate Smoke and Mirrors. It's not like that in the real world. The real world that is my mind. I create my own house of cards and I'm the one who decides when to blow it all down.

"I like plants. Like grass and shit. Plants don't so much grow as appear out of thin air really really slowly."
"The evolution of photosynthetic processes and the chemical congealment of various soilstates work together to transform aggregrates of flora. It's not just outta thin air."

When they talk science I inevitably daydream about a girl. Some beautiful expanse of feminine skin that I can fly over in my mind... a bunch of soft and beautiful topography. Women carry positive vibrations you know. They carry babies too, I'm told. The afternoon I got fired, this afternoon, I was thinking about a girl who had the the moon in the middle of her forehead. Running my hand across her belly, then lower... lower... she wouldn't have stopped me in this little daydream like she would have in real life.

"I am accounta--" I stopped to cough, a vicious long rumbling cough. And then to laugh, embarassed for inhaling so deeply my lungs rebel, "accountable to no one! No one watches me!" Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? No one. I am an island.

Slicey blew real hard on a flute and then stopped, a little light bulb going off somewhere behind his cobwebbed eyes. "One attracts what one projects," he says.

Smurf frowns and suddenly pushes himself off the sofa. I drop my lighter. Slicey reaches for something deep in his left pant pocket.
"It's magical thinking! Both of you! Life is tough, often unfair and the world is something just less than a meritocracy but close. You have to work for success not just sit around visualizing it. And sure the universe will provide... bla bla blah, but you run up that credit card long enough..." He took half a deep breath and stormed out.

We didn't get up to follow him. Sitting there, we imagined he hadn't even left. Maybe he hadn't really left.

Hell, he'd probably never even really been in there with us in the first place.

"Pass it on," said Slicey to me. And so I did.

Back it up Grandma

OMGDucDuke1486: Worst gAMe evRr GNAT DICk!
Auto-response sent to OMGDucDuke1486: GrindHouse. And Hot Fuzz. And Pathfinder. Da' Masked Movie Night!!!
OMGDucDuke1486: Canker-BLoSsom!!
OMGDucDuke1486: You SUxx0r @ L1F3

His name is Packer and he's been an IM bastard since he got my SN from godknowswhere.

I LIKED HIM RIGHT AWAY.

And I hope he never meets Nigel because those two would immediately "duke" it out.

But he has a valid point: Namely, yesterday's GAME, when I read through it with 2 or 3,000 of my closest friends, didn't seem up to par. At least not compared with some of the Greatest Games of DMM's Past...
I deny any responsibility for it (Unless you liked it, in which case: please send cash!) For the record: I did not write that blog.

The blog in question...

Let me get some things clear here. My named is The Masked Man. Quit calling me Ray. I am a socialist tour de force and an expert chef,and also the author of my own comic strip, of which I am the star.

This is much like how God is the author of his own omniverse, of which
he himself created and controls.

That's me. I'm in the comic strip. I draw the strip that I'm in.

This blog is a blog that the character of me writes in the comic strip that he draws.

Got all that? Ok good. Here's more; I don't know how to draw so I stopped drawing the comic strip. Actually the fact that I don't know how to draw was part of the reason I Started the comic strip in the first place. The only reason my character wore a mask was because I needed some sort of obvious facial trait to distinguish our hero from the other mostly shapeless scribbled cronies. Ironically, in real life I do actually wear a mask almost everywhere I go as well... but that was never intended to effect the character.

One more thing. Since I stopped drawing the comic but kept writing the blog that takes place within the confines of that comic universe (that I created) The Comic Syndicate has hired on other artists and writers to continue drawing them in my stead. Staffers. Union Guys. Deadlines to meet. Reader demands to satisfy. Editorial content 2¢ per square inch and whatnot.

This unfortunate decision on their part has resulted in me (the character) saying and doing some things that I (DMM) regret. I can't help it.
They draw me dancin', I dance.
They draw me jacking off, I jack off.
They draw me writing the Next Great American Novel, I jack off. Wait, I mean, whatever.

The point is, yesterday's blog SUCKS as far as my Games are concerned. It's not my fault. It's the writers fault. Blame the writers.

That is all.

OMGDucDuke1486: dAMN WRight DICkBag!!
DMsqdMn17: Aww can it!

DMsqdMn17: Something is wrong with this
The Gun Dude: what? those 4 passengers were assholes. And screw the united airline bastards...

The Gun Dude: in reality: i'm betting those 4 passengers were retrieved by family and burried back home
DMsqdMn17: or no one liked them, or knew who they were
The Gun Dude: or they were borg
DMsqdMn17: Or the people who put down the plaque didn't have enough money
The Gun Dude: the other 4 passengers were hijackers...
DMsqdMn17: The other 4 passengers were Doc, Marty, Old Biff and Einstein
The Gun Dude: and yer mom

Poésies et jeux

"Ready for this Mr. Masked Man?"
"You can call me sir."
"Ready for this, sir?"
"Sir Masquédmæn"
"I am not going to call you that."
"Sir Miguel Du Masquédmænaldo"
"Stop Talking."

Yes yes. Prepare yourselves for the long overdue recomeuppance of that, the greatest of days.
The one, the only, the notorious and long absent:
GAME DAY!
YAY! Game Day!


But first a poem:

Games are all I bring Wednesdays—
These, and my poem first—
My poem and my penance, and games—
And the small boats of solitude skirt—
my golden glimmering thoughts—
do not forget these—
for they sail a turgid sea—
these, bringing poems to lay,
at the foot of shimmering shores pay—
penance, I bring, as well,
my thoughts where Games do dwell.

A'ight now a Game.
First: I wear a mask for a reason. It may not be a good reason. And you may not know my reason. But it is a reason. And I have come to believe that it's as good a lifestyle choice as any... so today's game I'll be showing y'all a little bit of the benefits of living la vie dupleé, or The Double Life en flambe, err en Anglais (in English, layman)The game is called:

Beauty is only a light switch away
and it will be filled with gratuitous neologisms and misused terminology,
'cus that's what this Maskedmyn do best!

Objective is to have fun. And to have sex. There are two objects to this game.

Success will look like a newer happier you, smiling and smoking a cigarette in bed, after having tried something you may never have done before

Step One: Imagine you are someone else. Someone more confident. The kind of person you wished you were friends with. Note: DO NOT imitate a person for the sole reason that you imagine that a certain personality will get laid. There's no sense or delight for anyone in watching a worm become a prick

Step Two: Now that you are someone else, you will immediately begin to feel less shy. This will give you plenty of freedom to dare to do what you might not have before. Freedom is a scary thing. Explore the boundaries of being someone else’s personality for a while. NOTE: If “becoming someone else” for you means pretty much just imagining that you look different, ie. Physical appearance, it’s best to keep away from any mirrors at this phase in the game.

Step Three: Foreploy: noun; Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid. Now that you are acting like, and becoming someone else, start to use this new set of personality traits to your advantage. Approach other people like you've always wanted to. Hike up your skirt and knuckle up your nuts and get your ass in gear!

Step Four: Don’t back out. When you approach some pulchritudinous person, they don’t know that you're on a ruse. Play it up and don’t let up. When they ask questions, answer in character. Look into their eyes and try to divine what they want to hear. Say what you’d imagine a fun-loving person would say. The words may just start flowing out of your mouth.

Step Five: Fun and games! Suggest you play a game. Try out something fun and unexpected. Whether it be spinning that bottle or playing naked twister… use your imagination. Strip poker is guarantees a great wild time. Be bold. Balls-alicious!
Step Seven: Don’t let on that you’re a phony, a fake, a real pussy in real life. Take this charade as far as it will go, and enjoy it. Peel off the facades, ladies and gentleman. You’ll find yourself freed from things you didn’t even know where holding you back!

Last night my friend and I tried this game. I’m a changed man.
She pretended she was a palm reader. I pretended I was an atheist.
The only thing wrong with being an atheist is you have no one to talk to when you have an orgasm.
My friend said she read in every palm the fated certainty of getting laid, and guaranteed each prognostication with results.

So there you have it. Deliverance from weeks-on-end without the sweet and delicious reprieve of Game Days (o'yé's!)

Warm Safeties,
-DMM

Our Densities

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:
for in the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die."
Genesis 2:17

"...the people who gain the world
and lose their soul."
- The Beatles

We're pretty dense.
The size of brain our brains is largely owing to the kind of fleshy tissue highly absorbitant of water, but that's not the kind of dense I'm talking about. At least not entirely. I think the complexity of brain has something to do with it. Dried Brains would be a good band name.

When did animals start sleeping? I mean, in the evolutionary scheme of things. Was there some random trilobyte that was the first to take a nap? Where was it in evolution that our brains began to process such complicated inputs that they needed large chunks of "time-out time" just to process it all?

And how could we ever know? Fossils tell you jack shit about sleep! Napping dinosaurs look about the same as dead dinosaurs don't they?

Yes. Yes they do.
*yawn*. Tired. Fat and tired. There's a beer that I drink at bars sometimes called Fat Tire and I got to thinking about it the other night because really you think it should be Flat Tire but it's not. It's not a bad beer. If I drink too many beers, I feel fat. Dense.

Bloated.

We're all pretty bloated. Like sometimes here at my office I don't even look up at people when they come by my cubical to say hello.
"Hello Masked Man, err, employee Number 21165"
(We have to address each other by Employee Number now to avoid the discriminatory baggage of non-company assigned racially patterened nomenclatures.)
"Ugh"
"How are you today? Hows the comic coming?"
"grggrlg"
"See ya!"
"wha..?"

There was a boy who used to live at the clinic I volunteered at. He is mostly deaf, an orphan, had TB, and numerous other illness and for a time they thought he had AIDS. He was so thin it's a miracle that a strong wind wouldn't blow him over. But he was also one of the happiest people I have ever met. He would always make a point of greeting you, no matter how inconvenient it may be. Every day.

Are we dense? Yes. Must we be? Allow me to respond with a most assured and emphatic "NO".
And I'm not even going to broach the subject of American Obesity. The American notion that bigger is always better. That's a notion I could discuss massively.

We're all pretty dense.

In Our Town when Emily Gibb dies in childbirth and gets to relive the day of her 12th birthday, she realizes how little she cherished life while she was alive.

Ok. I am twelve years old. It is now in my evolutionary development that I have started taking naps. It is a time when I see the world as a series of swirling shape clouds, contrasting color bars, balancing an unbalancing equations...

I am twelve years old and I am sitting in a corner afraid of the crowd. I am twelve years old and I am asking myself how this room full of people can be blood relatives, cousins aunts and siblings of mine, and yet I feel such a profound and cosmic disconnect from them as if they are disparate and glossy dotted universes on a dark and sprawling splatter-paint starfield, none touching, like fragile little glass eggs spinning on a black marble table clockwise and counterclockwise and the loneliness of the whole thing filling me which such uncommunicable sadness that I shed a twelve year old tear. A beautiful dense and salty twelve year old tear.

We are dense.
We are dense. And when we shed those little pockets of insecurities we can see God.
And when we drop our little social guises and disguises we can see each other.
And when we close our eyes and let the little mind mirrors on the inside of our eyelids smile at us, we can see ourselves.

And what we see is dense. A bundle of fears and thoughts. Stories and histories and needs and desires and wonderful wonderful fatty disregard for almost everything worth regarding.

Like the girl who I sat next to on Saturday night while I nursed my Fat Tire, sending chills down my spine as it floats down to my core. The girl talking about her senior thesis. Fossil Records. Dense bones. Hers, not the fossils. (She looks like a girl built like a brick.) I can see the frilly lace of her black panties. I glow in the white noise of her gentle soft skin that irradiates away all of the other universes that may float nearby.
*yawn.*
I try to imagine the shape of her brain beneath her bulbous skull and her thin trailing wisps of feathery flowery blonde hair. She calls me on my rudeness and brushes her hair aside and I wonder how it happened that at one point in history we all began to fade into something else. How she and I were once space dust and primordial soup that heated up like a bunsen burner and produced little letter writing lizards with notes that read "For Your Eyes Only" holding hands in the 5th grade outside of gym and band.

I just want to press up against her exposed parts. Press myself to her thighs. Pet her hair. Smell her and look into her eyes.

But when I told her this she slapped me because I'm being dense and I realize that there is a God and He is laughing at me for thinking that we are one. And then He is laughing at me for thinking I am unique. And He is laughing.

Clouds of dust sprayed throughout the cosmos

It's a dream I'm waking from. Let me rub my eyes and wrap my mask around my skull.

We're all pretty dense.
And I don't mean that as a criticism right now either. It's the density that holds us all together. Because if we allow ourselves to revert to dust we float away entirely.
We coalesce. With these blunt instrumental bodies fighting and loving and colliding and passing. Dense minds, dense bodies, dense societies.
We're all pretty.
Pretty dense.

Salvaged Haiku

Going through a rubbish bin of trinkets and tidbits I found a haiku that she had written for me. We were going out, I had obviously slept in (I didn't have a job when we were going out) and she had left early for work. It was written in sticky black ink on the ripped out corner of a newspaper.

It goes on and on
And then it’s over
good morning my love

Like A GodCopter

"You might want to try believing in something bigger than yourself. It might cheer you up"
-Toby Radloff, American Splendor

I talk about myself a lot. I talk about my long walks and my obsessions over unavailable women a lot. I talk about my lack of skill at drawing things or writing things or talking to people in person. I talk about my crappy job and my crappy career path since I dropped out of college to be a radio DJ. I talk about my sex life and my health and my thoughts about the weather and my IM conversations and my OCD poetry and it's all about me me me, my my my, I I I

ENOUGH!

I need a break from inside my head. I need to step outside these masks. Lately I've been trying to see myself by putting on a different mask every day. But that is only covering up who I truly am.

I need to take a step outside and look down on it all.

I need some sort of birds eye view of a birds eye view.

Take a step back. Take a step up. Look at your life like you were someone else.
Someone who doesn't know you. Take yourself out of the equation and blend in with your surroundings.

What makes you unique?

What makes you who you are?


Now, what do you want to change?



Let me know. We'll be back with more Masked Mannity goodness on Monday!

-DMM

Some Questions

Is it wrong that whenever I eat or drink Starbucks I think about Ken Kesey?
(They're both from the Pacific Northwest!)

If Jesus had been hung would everybody bow to a piece of rope?

Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

Would you buy this T-Shirt?

(Or should it say "without parallel?")
(or just "I'm with a Masked Man", and have a picture of ME on the back?)

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done?

4.11.07

Hey. You Again. My favorite asshole.

I have good news. Remember once upon a time I said I would consider going back to school, taking off one of the masks, as it were? Well upon my searching for a viable institution, I decided to start looking at all the school within a 5-600 mile radius, just to be fair. I am actually visiting one such institution right now. Thought I'd share cause I know you are really smart and would want to know about the virtues of different schools here on the left coast. Or at least I hope you do, and all of your little friends too.

Oh you don't? Oh well. At least I'm thinking about schools. And it's good practice to be writing nonfictives. You should have told me up front you didn't care about school anymore. What? You don't want anything that I try to give to you in a bond of friendship? Oh I get it, you don't want to be my friend anymore. What? you are sleeping with my ex-girlfriend. Get your skinny ass over here so I can dole out a whippin'! Oh, so now you are too good to come and see an old friend. Think I have to come to you huh? Really? You think I should move? I was thinking about it. It actually has crossed my mind more than once. I'm not losing my mind, don't put those words in my mouth.

So when I'm done visiting schools I'll write up some sort of reviews to show you. I haven't found the perfect school for me yet but I know its around here someplace. Don't worry, I have the a backup plan also. I will start my own secondary school in a remote location in the mountains (or in my father's basement assuming he won't throw me out.) DMU, D'Masqued University, enroll now for great justice.

So yes, you have a good day now. I'll be chatting with you sooner or later. More Importantly, leave me a comment to let me know you are ok. I get worried that there's no one out there when none of you jerks are saying anything. Think I should call it quits. This could be my final blog. So it would be cool if you were there. No I'm not going to tell you what to say. Just mention something about how awesome I am perhaps, or send money directly to my Paypal. Maybe I have a Paypal.

-Dr. Mr. Da Mask'd Man
Grand Master of Irrelevancies
Archduke of Marvel
Toilet Repairman
Most Sculpted Abs in the Universe Record Holder

Intraconnectivium

“a gradual crescendo of nonsense”

-Jean Bricmont

Was flipping through a report today, trying to pick out the key numbers, flipped the page, and somehow

I think you make me happy and sad, both at the same time.

And therein lies the trouble.

It's dark and lonely work, being a semi-professional comic character and Blogger extraordinairé. Sometimes one yearns for the opportunity to apply oneself to more glamorous, powerful or meaningful pursuits. Maybe a profession, of some kind. Professional Masked Man?

But what does it all matter? Work is work. As it is, work in the cubicle wasteland, completely deficient of willpower and lacking any and all seniors with managerial wherewithal or motivation, leaves one feeling like a wasted vessel.
Sit staring at the symmetry of cubicle geometrics. Each cube unique, each cube the same. Collecting paycheck after paycheck with inky hours of such opacity and length that all are suitably stupored into complacent homogeny.

In Infinity
There’s everything. That’s why I’m

Afraid, don’t you see?

Sometimes, I wish I could fast forward my life to see if you're worth waiting for

Relatedly, today at work I had this quick ray of light on my brain and I had this multireferential ultrafastidious insight into the nature of the void. The computer blipped at me bored and disinterest. A trans-dimensional machinic catalyst of sorts, I suppose. I stared off where colors started mixing and the taupe office floor started spinning. The transversalities of scale, each of us the cubicle bound pathic non-discursive characters expanding exanimously like heaving chest breaths, two lungs rising to life in one lurching motion.

Heartrending, ruinous, illumined.

We’re all the same melt

And nothing has ever seemed
much more depressing

One time when I was still living down by the river bottom, working double shifts to pay off my credit debt from school, I was walking home from the Warehouse and this homeless guy started walking alongside. We got to talking and eventually he started asking me this shit like "If you are you and I am me, what are we?".

This was before I moved to California and started running into homeless all the time. Truth be told we were in the middle of fucking nowhere. Some windswept hedgerow trail through the country. There was nobody around and I was feeling more cut off than ever before in my life what with the being a drop out and being in credit debt and working 2 jobs and living in a van (down by the river, I know! I know!). It was a cold night and all deserted. We walked by the tall empty dealership where all those fucking birds live on the roof of that building and squeal and shriek like demonic pigs. I think I told him it sounded like hell froze over. He laughed. I think he thought I was stupid.

Two guys out there walking together as one for no reason.
The computer and I crashing day after day in this tiresome navigation of paperwork irrelevancies.
This girl who doesn’t call, and doesn’t call then leaving a message late last night sounding smooth as hot silk.

None of it means anything. We’re all the same.

“the truth is commodious, abundant: we
must make a room so sufficient it will
include till nothing will be left
over for walls”
-A.R. Ammons

Understand

Does anyone know
why
it is that I create?

Ten of Eight

My brother The Desktop Computer
with it’s whirring whirring fan
Start up each morning at ten of eight
Mechanically running albiet in a limited capacity

We both slog through our days together
Only,

one of us does not have a flash drive shoved up their ass

Good Friday

Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil. ~ Proverbs 3:7

Good Friday

Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil. ~ Proverbs 3:7

Spring, Death and my emo rant at lack of Artskill

Is it morbid that whenever someone from my school dies I look them up on fbook and read what people wrote about them on their wall and then look at all of their pictures?
I have this senseless fascination with death, but I hate the thought of anyone I actually know dying. Meh.

Back to the effing grind.

The Gun Dude: Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.

ß----It’s his birthday today~

(Sorry, my mind is all over the fucking place today. Bear with me।)

I guess 'cause it's spring everyone in my online world is talking about their bodies. Living bodies. Only twisted masked minds like mine would immediately start thinking about decay. Ya’ll’rel getting the perfect figure just in time for summer-- I'm just jumping on the bandwagon, but since we don’t do photographs (we don’t DOOOOO photographs) I drew a little comic of myself yesterday.

Then Today I got upset that my art sucks. Honestly sometimes I think ART is the only subject that I could, even conceivably, excel at (considering the fact that i haven’t been to class or lecture since 2005, and when I try to help my friends study they fail almost every subject because I’m so spastic I can’t even focus or pay attenti--- ooh! Pretty Flowers!) BUT THEN ALL MY HOPES CAME CRASHING DOWN
BECAUSE I REALISED I SUCK
YEZZZ I SUCK AT ART
SHIT.

Dear Mr. Uncaring-World, these are not bad art days, like bad hair days. My works are just bad. So sorry I can’t meet up to standard. Kill me now, I'm pissed enough at myself as it is and could really wouldn’t mind the reprieve.

Sincerely, D’Masqued Man

(wth is wrong with me? hahaha।)

But if I were to die... No। beter not think about that.

Random Masked Man Made Up CharacteroftheDAY!

The androgynous Spaceship captain Ricky

Alright. Sorry. Death. Um, aging is Teh Suxx0r.
But You know what's Teh Crazzzyyx?

(I'm just typing whatever comes to mind.)

Well Aura Anderson: the more i learn about this, the more i jus think people are animals

DMsqdMn17: Of course we are

Well Aura Anderson: Genocide man. Rwandan Genocide. How do you explane this? Fuck!

DMsqdMn17: You and me baby ain’t nuthin’ but mammals. Let’s do it like they do on the discovery channel.

ß----I’m helping her out with class. “helping” ~

Exams Hell. Graduation Salvation. Almost done, they tell me.
Winter Death. Spring Rebirth. I love that in the midst of all this talk about death, it’s spring, and people are planting things…

Heh heh. Planting things.

DMsqdMn17: Can I come over and plant some things?
Well Aura Anderson: Your NOT helping

<----I’m helping her out with class. “helping” ~