My Mind Owns Weird Real Estate.

Posted on April 26, 2015 by underwhelmer

Hi interwebs! I know I’ve been away for a few months, but it’s been for a good reason. The book is almost done and I’ve been up to my eyeballs in editing and draft work.

Good news for you though, I desperately needed a break so I decided to put together a little something special for you. Enjoy!

People often mistake me for a thoughtful and happy person. To the casual observer, I’ll pause over mundane items or statements and find something entertaining. Sometimes, I’ll even chuckle quietly to no one but myself. This is usually done with a slight head tilt, vacant smile and an upward glance, like I’m using my head as an aluminum covered TV antenna to tune in to my own very special broadcast. What a pleasantly happy idiot, right?

The truth of the matter is little more dark. When I’m standing there giggling like a moron, people should know that I’m a mostly functioning mental patient and I’ve found something hilarious by connecting a weird series of associations in my brain. It’s usually so obscure and removed from what I’m looking at, that I don’t share it with other people. Over the years, I’ve learned that I have a very strange sense of humor, usually from the reactions of those close to me.

If my brain were a person, this is what it would look like.

Creepy right? If I knew how to go about drawing an anthropomorphized brain tweaking its own nipples, I would have. Consider yourself lucky I’m not a better artist.

Normally I wouldn’t share my weird inner thoughts for fear of torch-wielding villagers, but with the power of internet anonymity, I can do that with you now!

Here’s a good first example. I bought a blue colored sea salt scrub from Lush, an all natural and very granola bath product company. The first time I used it, I noticed this icon on the label, proclaiming their intent to fight the practice of animal testing.

I started laughing because this is what I immediately thought of.

Before that, I was walking out of work when I noticed a TV news headline on one of the many TVs in the hospital that were always on and playing to no one in particular. The headline read, “Ryan Seacrest Live.”

I let out a small chuckle that caught the glance of a few patients in the waiting area. This is what I envisioned.

Not even touching, tear-jerking charity commercials are safe from my weird imagination. I cracked up when I saw a pancreatic cancer awareness commercial narrated by Bryan Cranston.

I smiled like a maniac when I saw this news story. An 11 year old boy boarded a mega bus from Nashville and took it to Atlanta, where he was picked up by the Atlanta police when they found him wandering the streets alone. When the story concluded, the official statement from Atlanta police was that they were not sure if they were going to release him. I’m sure this was done because they hadn’t contacted the boy’s parent/ guardian yet an they were figuring that out, but that didn’t stop my crazy brain from going down into one of its weird rabbit holes.

THE END!

P.S. 12,000 subscribers and counting! Thanks to everyone who makes this blog what it is!

P.P.S. Again, sorry for the dry spell and thanks for your continued support and patience!

How Does Every Holiday Sale Devolve Into This?

Posted on December 22, 2014 by underwhelmer

The Christmas shopping season always makes me think. Companies all across the US are looking to unload their garbage onto you or your loved ones and they’re willing to use any tactic in the book. Holiday sales used to be just Black Friday and then Cyber Monday, but now they’ve added more days and weeks to the sales and I just can’t keep track of it all. It just seems to be a nonstop orgy of sales all the way between Thanksgiving and Christmas. As someone without a lot of people on my Christmas shopping list, I get my Holiday shopping done early and without much fuss. I then get to sit back and watch in complete awe as my phone, radio and email explode with special once in a lifetime offers for shit that I’ve never expressed any interest in whatsoever.

This is what every Holiday sales season feels like to me.

THE END.

P.S. I actually left out a few of the other holidays that have been steadily added to incrementally bloat Christmas Shopping Season over the years.

P.P.S. No imaginary creatures were harmed in the making of this post.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 27, 2014 by underwhelmer

Just a little something to make your holiday brighter!

THE END

P.S. Be sure to give thanks or you may summon Turkor the Destroyer.

P.P.S. Have fun and eat till ya pop!

Hummingbird Feeders

Posted on November 14, 2014 by underwhelmer

Just wanted to do a short post on hummingbird feeders today.

Somebody mentioned hummingbird feeders to me the other day and I started thinking about them a little. I wondered why I hadn’t seen one in years. I tried to remember back to our hummingbird feeders that my grandparents put out when I was a kid. At first, the memories were pleasant. I remember seeing iridescent little birds flutter about and feed off of sugar water.

The more I thought about it though, I began to remember that there were other creatures that loved sugar water more than hummingbirds; bees, primarily. They love that shit… so much so that hummingbird feeders were only that in name. These were plastic, sugar dispensers for bees. For every beautiful hummingbird, there were hundreds of bees. It suddenly dawned on me that most of my experience with these feeders actually played out like this.

Yeah, those things sucked pretty hard.

THE END.

P.S. Let me know what other horrible inventions you’d like to see me draw.

P.P.S. For you Tommy Boy fans… “BEES! BEES ! BEES IN THE CAR! BEES EVERYWHERE! GOD, THEY’RE HUGE! THEY’RE RIPPING MY FLESH OFF!”

Another Long Hiatus Concluded

Posted on November 13, 2014 by underwhelmer

It’s good to be back once again. Sorry for the long departure, dear interwebs, but I’ve had to contend with exploding laptops, the new job and a few other curve-balls from life. The good news is that, much like the absentee father, I’m here now and I’ll always be here for you. That is, until I run out of smokes or my new girlfriend starts bitching about me spending too much time with you. Then you’ll just have to stay at your mother’s place for a couple of weeks while I smooth things over. You’ll understand when you’re older.

So, back on track. I’ve really been up to a lot lately

Yup, things have been a virtual beehive of activity. You’ve probably even noticed the new art style. My company made a horrible mistake and issued us iPads and I’ve been drawing up a storm! Here’s the first thing that I drew.

Do you like it? Well, I’m lying. It isn’t the first thing that I drew. The first thing was some god-awful iPad monstrosity that looked like the fevered dream of a mentally disturbed child. I deleted it as soon as I was done because I was afraid Hastur, Cthulhu or some other Lovecraft horror would use it as a portal to our world. I’ll try to recreate it for you.

Isn’t technology great?

So a little update on what’s been going on for the past several months. I’m making great progress on the book and I expect to be done by the end of the year or early 2015 at the latest. The new job is going great. I’m basically a guide and adviser for electrophysiologists during live surgeries. The fact that I don’t have a medical degree isn’t slowing me down either because everybody keeps listening to me for some insane reason that I haven’t figured out yet.

A lot of my friends ask me if I’m under a lot of stress working in these conditions with people who are far more educated than I am. To this I respond,

All in all, I’m really excited to be back at the blog-o-sphere with you. Although I haven’t posted in months, I have been jotting down ideas and I’ve got some good material planned for you guys. Expect stories about my flight from hell, discovering my real life clone, my take on the news and even my time in College Park, Atlanta; holla! Stay tuned!

THE END

P.S. Let me know what you guys think of the new artwork. I should be able to make many more pictures with each post using this technique. If my calculations are correct, expect to see approximately one metric fuck-ton of pictures!

P.P.S. Just don’t be too harsh on the criticism. I’m a delicate flower.

Early 1990s: The Best Time to be a Kid, Part II

Posted on September 22, 2013 by underwhelmer

I spent a long time thinking about what to showcase in this next segment. “What could be more awesome than Gak?” I asked myself. After some deep soul-searching, the answer was Saturday morning cartoons. As a wee lad, Saturday morning cartoons were the highlight of my week…

Er, maybe the highlight of my early existence.

Spider-man was indeed awesome, but it was one of many great cartoons. I thought about which Saturday morning cartoons were my favorites for a bit and then, all of a sudden, it came to me.

One word…Thundercats.

That’s right, Thundercats. I know some of you are probably crying foul right now. “But underwhelmer, Thundercats aired from 1985 to 1988 and technically isn’t an early 90s show.” I hear your concerns, but that’s what made Thundercats even more awesome to me as a kid. In the early 90s, it was all reruns and they were all out of order; completely demolishing any semblance of a plot or feeling of continuity between episodes.

My memories of the show hold up much better than the actual show itself. I re-watched a couple of episodes and came to the conclusion that it was completely fucking insane. The basis of the show was on the same preposterous level as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ninjitsu master, teenage, pizza-addicted, crime fighting anthropomorphized turtles named after the great masters of art and science? Why the hell not?

Thundercats made no more sense than the turtles. First off, they’re space-faring cat people who are fleeing the destruction of their planet, Thundera. Let your mind wrap around that one for a moment. Good now? OK. Next, they flee to a planet called, Third Earth (never-you-mind what happened to Second Earth.) Along this journey, they are nearly hunted to extinction by mutant marauders hailing from the unimaginatively named planet, Plun-Darr. The Thundercats stave off extinction with a magic sword that houses a powerful artifact called The Eye of Thundera. Upon landing on Third Earth, Lion-O is appointed the leader of the Thundercats despite the fact that (due to a stasis capsule accident) he literally has the mind of a child in the body of a cat/ Conan hybrid. The Thundercats build a base of operations called the Cat’s Lair with the help of the Third Earth natives, who we never seem to see in any other episodes. This plot hole is quickly left wide open with the swift arrival of the Plun-Darr marauders and the introduction of Mumm-Ra, who for no clear reason is a D&D Liche living the bowels of Third Earth. The series then catapults into a series of skirmishing conflicts between the Thundercats and the Mumm-Ra/ Plun-Darr alliance. Nothing is ever resolved and the Thundercats and Mumm-Ra’s forces are locked in perpetual struggle for dominance of a planet that seemed to be completely oblivious to the alien races battling in their jungles. In short, it was the perfect recipe for a Saturday morning cartoon; utter madness.

Despite the fact that the show was created by crazy people, it did follow a fairly structured episode layout. I think the below graph sums up about 90% of the episodes across all of the seasons… enjoy.

THE END.

P.S. Snarf!

P.P.S. SNARF!!!

No, I won’t Play Farmville with You.

Posted on April 29, 2012 by underwhelmer

Dear Readers,

With the new job in full swing, it’s been hard to get behind the laptop and put my funnies into your brain. Don’t worry. Things are starting to level off and I’ll be back up to my old schedule in no time. For now, I’ve put together a little something to show you my feelings on Farmville… enjoy.

-underwhelmer

********************************************************************************

I F&CKING HATE FARMVILLE, CASTLEVILLE OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF VILLE THAT’S ON FACEBOOK; STOP ASKING ME TO PLAY WITH YOU!!!

That’s right. I hate this game and I’d sooner gnaw my own arm off than play 15 minutes of it.

When I get one of these on Facebook,

I’m all like this…

and then I hit the delete button on the request.

I know you think your four hundred requests that you’ve sent to my Facebook page over the past year seem innocuous,

but in reality, it comes across like this…

*It is a really cute chicken though…

Do yourself and everyone else a favor; close down Facebook and pick up a copy of Skyrim.

The game of Skyrim a beautiful work of art with an enthralling story and engrossing atmosphere. It’s not some Adobe Flash, browser-based abomination; plus, Skyrim has chickens too, so the transition should be a little easier for you.

THE END.

P.S. We can still be friends, just don’t ask me to play Farmville with you anymore.

P.P.S I’ve thought about it and the only way I’d play Farmville is if they added a Mongolian Horde DLC Pack, wherein I get to make a cute little Genghis Khan avatar, amass a raiding party and then put your farm to the sword.