2003 / 2004 / 2005 / 2006 / 2009
Mr. Toad, the Toady
His name's Sinsel G. Burton. I call him Mr. Toad--not to his face, though maybe I should. He's short and squat. He has a wide mouth and big bulging eyes. He even has a wart below his right ear, making the toadishness complete. He has the cubicle next to mine, of course, and gets his jollies by making me look bad in front of the whole office. He'll suck up to our supervisor in that loud, drippy voice of his whenever she walks by: "I can do that, Mara!...I found the file, Mara!...Got another superhuman task for me, Mara?" And he sucks up with such good humor, too. "Don't mind me, Mara, I'm just doing lip aerobics so I can kiss ass more effectively...Mara." I'm lazy and humorless in comparison. I'd like to chloroform him, tie him up, gag him, toss him into the trunk of my car, drive him to the woods, take him out of the trunk, toss him into an open grave I've already dug (I believe in careful preparation for any project) and watch him as he wakes up, looks around and realizes he's screwed. "Here's a superhuman task for you," I'd say. "Breathing underground." Then I'd bury him alive and conceal his grave by planting--what else?--toadstools.
I'd like to do all those things, but I never will. Why risk going to prison for something as trivial as killing him? Plus human beings aren't worth killing, anyway. They're worth fucking, but they're not worth killing. Sometimes you get bored with your right hand, after all. Plus I read somewhere that not getting rid of your semen regularly can cause prostate cancer or something. I've gotten rid of my semen with Mara quite a few times, and I can tell she'll want more tonight, the way she's sitting at her desk highlighting paperwork with her yellow marker and stroking the shaft of her marker with her thumb. She strokes stuff when she's horny--her pens, her skirt, her ceramic mug with that cartoon duck smashing his computer with a sledgehammer.
December 15-16, 2003
Mr. Sensitive
Some readers might find my previous story about "Buffy" Buffington offensive not only due to whatever crimes against the English language it might contain but because I devote much more space her heterosexual sex life than to her husband's homosexual one (assuming he has one). I don't consider gay sex or gay relationships unimportant, nor do I have any use for homophobia. "Buffy" just took over as I wrote the story. I promise I'll add more gay guys--in logorrheic detail!--to my gallery of maladjusted characters. I don't want to exclude any readers from the nonstop shindig known as Pixel Stupor.
December 13-15, 2003--fiction
People You Knew in High School Who Have Had Much, Much More Sex Than You:
Heather "Buffy" Buffington
That born-again Christian. "I plan to save myself for marriage," she liked to say. "I'm not going to cheapen God's gift of physical love."
In 2001 at age 27, she married her longtime boyfriend and fellow born-again Christian, 29-year-old Stephen "Preacher" Beecher. They were still virgins. Due to what she considered a shared and equal lack of interest, they never consummated their marriage, which lasted eight months before he ran off with the local periodontist, 41-year-old Dr. Morris "Google" Dornsife (a Unitarian), and filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences." A month later, she signed the divorce papers. The next day, she lost her virginity at work, in her office, on her desk, to 35-year-old Adam "Bomb" Grutenstein, a married coworker she'd suddenly started lusting after half an hour earlier when she'd invited him in to review the company's latest quarterly report. They had on most of their clothes during sex. He used a condom from the three-pack she'd bought on a whim two months earlier at the drugstore and hidden in her briefcase. She didn't think he could tell she was a virgin; she augmented her orgasm by writhing and moaning like the women in those late-night Eurpoean softcore films she'd stumbled across alone on cable TV a few dozen times during her marriage, plus she'd lost her hymen already anyway in a bicycling accident at age 14. After having sex that one (and so far only) time, she and Mr. Grutenstein started avoiding each other by unspoken agreement. Today, she spends her $700-a-month alimony on Jewish (or at least circumcised) male escorts. She doesn't know or care if her ex-husband's still a virgin.
December 9-10, 2003--fiction
People You Knew in High School Who Have Had Much, Much More Sex Than You:
Robbie "Horseface" Doyle
That self-described "commodian" in your ninth-grade shop class, where his nonstop wisecracks would amuse everyone except you. "Hey, you get hammered last weekend? Hahaha!" "I gave a good screw to your mom last night! Hahaha!" "Yo, I got some wood right here! Hahaha!"
His face isn't the only horselike part of him. Hahaha. Ha.
December 1, 2003
I Am Someone!
Have you ever felt as if someone has decreed you unacceptable for human contact? As if someone has proclaimed you too incompatible for "normal" society? As if you're that someone?
November 28, 2003--fiction
What You'd Miss out on Seeing If You Committed Suicide Immediately after Reading This Blog Entry
Your family, who hadn't spoken to you in years, having a long, tearful argument about who deserves what from your library: a black garbage bag full of paperback techno-thrillers (The Mondrieth Compact, Cyberhostage 2040, etc.) you bought in airports, fell asleep halfway-through on countless business flights, and never bothered to finish reading or to haul down to Goodwill.
Your true love, whom you never met and vice-versa, marrying the junior director of a pro-globalization lobbyist group, turning into a weekend alcoholic, joining Scientology, giving up drinking, getting a divorce, marrying a cousin of Tom Cruise's lawyer, and turning into a seven-day-a-week alcoholic, all within a one-year period.
The government locking up Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, William Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, and Oliver North for being too liberal, on the eve of Gulf War IX.
November 22, 2003
One More Update
Latest statistics for the hepatitis-A outbreak: 575 people infected, three dead from liver failure. The largest hep-A outbreak in U.S. history. Everyone infected had eaten at the now-closed Chi-Chi's in Monaca, PA.
Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said green onions from Mexico had caused the outbreak. The hep-A virus spreads through oral contact with fecal matter; somebody must have had poopy hands, only not at the restaurant.
My sister has just about recovered from the disease and will return to work on Monday the 24th. Her boyfriend has left the hospital; he presumably doesn't have the virus.
November 13, 2003
Don't Tell Booker T. and the MGs
The hep-A count has reached 340. The Pennsylvania State Department of Health is looking into the possibility that a contaminated shipment of green onions, and not a poop-handed restaurant employee, caused the outbreak.
November 12, 2003
Not-So-Fine Dining Deux
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, 300 people now have hepatitis A, either from eating at the local Chi-Chi's or coming into contact with someone who has. The lone death (so far) in this outbreak died from liver failure on November 7. My sister still has the disease but now feels a bit better; she's started driving around again in her Akron-sized SUV. My sister's boyfriend, who had had a liver transplant earlier this year, entered the hospital two days ago with symptoms of the disease. My supervisor hasn't developed the hep-A virus.
Just think, this fatal outbreak probably occurred because a Chi-Chi's employee had neglected to wash his or her hands after defecating...thus giving new meaning to that Shakespeare quote "Eat shit and die."
November 8, 2003
Not-So-Fine Dining
My October 17 blog entry, "Fine Dining," made a passing reference to coprophagy. Anything for a laugh.
Since then, 185 people--including my sister--have developed hepatitis A; one person died from the disease yesterday. According to today's Beaver County Times, the "virus spreads through oral contact with the fecal matter of an infected person."
The outbreak's source is a Chi-Chi's restaurant at the Beaver Valley Mall in Monaca, PA, a restaurant where my sister and many of the other people afflicted had eaten early last month. Her boyfriend (who had received a kidney transplant this past spring) and my supervisor had eaten with her.
I'd eaten there only once years ago, finding the McMexican food so characterless and expensive I never returned.
More medical news as it develops.
November 5, 2003
Good News--I Don't Blame the Inventor of Post-It Notes!
I blame the Republicans; their so-called foolproof plans for invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, North Korea, France, Sweden, Denmark, Canada, and Michael Moore's beach house on Long Island have overlooked the creation and marketing of commemorative T-shirts.
I blame the Democrats; their support of taxpayer-subsidized pantyhose for black transvestite potheads has contributed billions to the national debt..
I blame the Greens; Ralph Nader's drab, off-the-rack wardrobe has poisoned their image, setting back the cause of progressive politics 697,405 years.
I blame all the desirable heterosexual and bisexual females in the world; how can anyone not find my ectomorphic looks and my three-digit IQ alluring?
November 1, 2003
What Makes Life Worth Living?
The warmth of the sun on a beautiful spring day.
Much more of that gaseous ball to love now that the ozone layer has almost disappeared. Too late to repair the damage, though--too inconvenient for the market. Might as well fight melanoma the Republican way, via tax cuts for the rich. Tax cuts for the rich can cure almost any affliction, from altruism to morning breath.
The smiles and laughter of young children.
Why care about the asinine jokes and shrill cartoon characters that make children happy? Why care about children at all? They can't mix a good cocktail, can't inhale when smoking the finest stogies, and know nothing about the best low-wage countries for outsourcing employment.
A committed relationship with someone you love.
Until that someone starts developing a conscience, compelling you to seek carnal pleasure from a much younger partner who actually appreciates Dennis Miller's witty putdowns of peace activists.
Are you being sarcastic?
No, Smedley. I actually enjoy skin cancer.
Sarcasm is for losers like you too stupid to make money. And at least Dennis Miller loves this country.
Warmongering equals patriotism. Gotcha.
That's it! Hope you like Guantanamo Bay!
[Department of Homeland Security forces burst in and drag Mr. Sarcastic away, who starts sobbing out of the realization that he'll probably never see another bukkake tape ever again.]
October 25, 2003
A Sid & Marty Krofft Production
I don't remember much about my life from infancy to early childhood, but I don't mind (so to speak). Few adults have perfect memories stretching back to birth anyway (or before birth--Velveeta-and-Ritz-cracker soirees with the fetal glitterati!), plus how many babies intend to write about their lives decades later for untold millions of worshipful readers?
For some reason, though, I wish I remembered more about the infancy and early childhood of my youngest sibling, a brother born in 1971 when I was six-going-on-seven. I do remember my father saying, while driving me past a local playground, that my mother would soon have another child. (My father can't remember now if I'd noticed her condition, nor can I remember if I'd been too self-centered to care.) Then my memory jump-cuts to the day I return home from school to find my mother has returned home from the hospital; she lies in her bed and cradles my newborn brother in her arms, one of the few remaining times she'd look happy in front of me. Then another jump-cut a few years later to one Saturday morning when my mother, my sisters and I go about our business separately in the living room, a Sigmund and the Sea Monsters rerun playing on TV, while my brother does something (legal) he'd probably prefer I not reveal to my tens of fans.
Why can I remember the TV shows I watched, the comics I read, the toys I had as a young child, but not many of the moments (for good or bad) I spent with my family?
October 21, 2003 (revised October 25, 2003)
Pixel Stupor...or Multiple Sclerosis?
Coke...or Pepsi?
McDonald's...or Burger King?
Republicans...or Republicans?
A minute with your family...or a minute and one second with your family?
Ben Affleck making long, sweet, passionate love with Jennifer Lopez...or Justin Timberlake making long, sweet, passionate love with Cameron Diaz?
Lucy Liu...or that young female Asian-American cashier with the jutting cheekbones at the mall music store who treats you with queasy politeness whenever you make small talk with her about the weather, the latest and hottest indie-rock bands, the stylishness of her tortoiseshell eyeglasses, etc., making you wonder why people can barely tolerate you as you ride the bus home to the apartment you share with a former high-school classmate, someone you hoped you would never see again when you graduated ten years ago, a carbuncled lout you feign friendship with because he pays most of the rent and steals uncut and uncensored Japanese porn DVDs for you from the adult video store where he works as night manager and (to your disgust) earns more than you do at your much more respectable way of making a living, auctioning off your rapidly-dwindling collection of Pee-wee Herman memorabilia on eBay?
Sorting through your late grandfather's belongings and finding a shoebox full of color Polaroids of nude, scared-looking preadolescent boys displaying their anuses to the camera...or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's multimillion-dollar entertainment empire?
October 18, 2003 (revised October 25, 2003)
Aim for Only Slight Imbecility!
Has this country produced any revolutionary, noteworthy, innovative, subversive or bitchin' awesome movies, music or TV series so far under George W. Bush? Whatever their merits, at least Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Nirvana's Nevermind, and Jerry Seinfeld's Seinfeld tried being different from that era's vacuous entertainment and helped distract some people (who considered themselves nonvacuous) from the dismalness of George Bush Sr.'s administration.
By contrast, how can anyone create even only slightly imbecile cultural products in this country today, where the government and news media demonize anyone only slightly to the left of C. Montgomery Burns? (The Simpsons--another unique King George I cultural product.) A citizenry scared by "terror alerts", perma-war propaganda, disappearing Constitutional rights, and the prospect of domestic internment camps tends to repress itself, to avoid innovative thinking whether in political analysis or in scripting the latest guns-'n'-gore, multiplex-'n'-DVD blockbuster flick.
Oh, and I wouldn't consider myself a huge fan of Reservoir Dogs, Nevermind, Seinfeld or The Simpsons, but I don't dislike them either and would rate them higher than I would, say, any Ann Coulter book not containing full-color photos of her deep-throating Fidel Castro. And I know that the "different" Reservoir Dogs allegedly rips off plot points, dialogue, and shots from the 1987 Hong Kong movie City on Fire; at least Tarantino allegedly ripped off something out of the usual for the time. And I know the characters the Simpsons first appeared on The Tracey Ulmann Show also in 1987, during the Reagan administration. And I know some citizens find "terror alerts," perma-war propaganda, and fascism soothing, dare I say arousing.
October 17, 2003
Fine Dining
How much of myself should I reveal on this blog? I do care about what other people think about me. I endured enough ridicule growing up from my peers and certain family members; I know I shouldn't care about what my detractors think, but I don't want to provide more grist for their Matth-bashing festivities. Plus writing too honestly about my foibles, my political views, etc., might repulse potential friends or girlfriends; a few months ago, a woman I've never met in person broke off her e-mail relationship with me, saying her possible deeper interest in me had vanished due to what she'd considered a lack of discretion (not about her) on this site.
Of course, I could pull a Salinger and retreat into seclusion, writing only for myself (as I assume he does for himself, if he still writes). At some egotistic level, though, I want the world's admiration, or else I wouldn't post anything on-line for Netheads to swoon over after they've finished pleasuring themselves to the latest and hottest anorexic amputee she-male coprophagy live webcasts.
So should I tell you lovable folks (if you even care) what female celebrities I find appealing, what pretentious and empty Brit-rock I listened to at college, why I sometimes despise myself, et cetera ad infinitum.
October 15, 2003
I Contribute to a $22.7 Million Opening-Weekend Gross, Baby!!
Every so often for anthropological purposes (and out of masochism), I act like a normal American by seeing a well-budgeted, well-hyped, major-studio entertainment-style cinematic product during its opening weekend. Thus, three days ago--Sunday--I drove to the local multiplex and saw writer-director Quentin Tarantino's first entertainment-style cinematic product in six years, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, a touching study of human blood in all its spurting, spouting, spattering specialness. He calls this his "grindhouse movie," a near-simulacrum of the 1960s-1970s spaghetti western, martial arts and samurai flicks he'd grown up watching.
Note near-simulacrum. Tarantino excludes any fashions or pop-cultural references beyond 1979 but then breaks the hermetic seal by putting in cell phones, wirework stunts, readable yellow subtitles and a gory anime sequence. Of course, those old flicks never had the modern-day (though not necessarily better) equipment and film stock Tarantino has, and wouldn't have used Dolby 5.1 Surround Audio Orgasm 2000 (or whatever) for the soundtrack. Picky, picky. Still, I like my entertainment-style cimematic products as anachronism-free as possible.
October 11, 2003
"Vatican: Condoms Don't Stop Aids" (The Guardian, October 9, 2003)
I wonder what my Catholic father and two Catholic sisters would think of the above article, not that I'd actually show it to them and thus risk precipitating a theological argument. Anyway, at least my father and sisters aren't Papist zombies.
I may have zero interest in spiritual matters, but I don't mind if people use religion to lead what they consider wothwhile lives. I do mind when religion induces ignorance and intolerance in its believers, and when those believers want to spread their ignorance and intolerance to others. Religious fanaticism, as any God 101 student (or AIDS patient) knows, often has fatal consequences, from the Vatican's every-sperm-is-sacred sexual policies, to the Bush administration's abstinence-only sexual policies. And let's not forget George W. Bush's bonkers belief that God told him to slaughter Afghanis and Iraqis.
October 7, 2003
Would You Love Me if I Eschewed Self-pity?
Would you love me if I didn't have graying hair?
Would you love me if I wore Brooks Brothers suits?
Would you love me if I considered George W. Bush the legitimate president of the United States?
Would you love me if I started watching one or more of the following popular American cable-television series: The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Trading Spaces, While You Were Out, Biography, Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, or Stripperella?
Would you love me if I I knew how to dance the hully-gully?
Would you love me if I looked like the comedic actor Steve Guttenberg?
Would you love me if I'd lost my virginity at age 12? If I'd lost my virginity last week? If I were still a virgin?
Would you love me if common barnyard swine could review Proust's Remembrance of Things Past for Amazon.com?
October 4, 2003
Why I've Never Paid for Sex and/or for Sexual Acts
1. Doing so is illegal in every state except Nevada. I want to avoid acquiring a criminal record.
Sheesh--the 21st Century may have arrived, but Puritan fanatics still run this country. And we still don't have hovercraft station wagons or zaftig robotic maids or three-day, four-night getaways at Six Flags over Jupiter.
2. I prefer having more than just temporary business relationships with my co-copulators. Call me a monogamist.
3. I can't afford paying for sex and/or for sexual acts. I need money for food, clothes, car insurance, health insurance, vintage stereo-demonstration LPs on colored vinyl, etc.
If I did buy my boffs, I'd want the finest-quality boffs, and those cost big bucks.
Yes, I realize sex workers need to make a living too, and that some people prefer temporary business relationships in matters carnal. Why criminalize consensual acts between adults? At least prostitution dispenses with the pious hogwash that accompanies state-sanctioned, heterosexual-only married fucking.
October 2, 2003
The Absence of Fooling
Since childhood, I've cultivated an exceedingly-acute sense of self-awareness. I used to think I could distinguish myself from the neighborhood masses by forever improving myself, by shaping myself into an individualist bohemian devoid of any prole/lowbrow/middlebrow tendencies. Thus, I'd upbraid myself internally for any words or behavior that would fall even slightly short of my Olympian artistic, educational, and sarcasm standards--well, Olympian standards when compared to those of everyone else around me.
I know only too well my faults, alleged (mostly alleged?) or otherwise--lack of artistic skill, lack of initiative, lack of confidence, lack of financial success, lack of sex appeal (though a few women have considered me desirable--no fooling), et cetera.
My self-esteem has improved over the past several years, at least. No fooling.
September 30, 2003
Hi, Bob!
My friend Lauren (whom I've known for nine months) estimates that due to what women perceive as my demanding standards and my imposing persona, I've inadvertently sabotaged sixty percent of my dates in the past 20 years.
Ha--shows what you know, Lauren. I've been dating for only ten years!
Have I really sabotaged whatever chances I've had for what that swinger dentist on The Bob Newhart Show would call meaningful relationships? Consigning myself, inadvertently or advertently, to sexless nerdhood doesn't quite count as one of my stellar accomplishments, just as this blog entry doesn't quite count as the most effective means to attract the double-X-chromosomed crowd.
August 10, 2003
Thirty-Six Thirty-Three on Eight-Nine-Oh-Three
Yesterday afternoon I visited a Pittsburgh comics shop and spent $36.33 (after the shop's ten-percent discount and the city's seven-percent sales tax) for The Acme Novelty Date Book, a hardcover collection of sketchbook drawings by one of my favorite cartoonists, Chris Ware.
And I have the nerve to complain about spending $120.26 on two prescriptions to cure my infected ears--prescriptions that worked, by the way. (My protest over how overpriced medicine is in this country still stands, though.)
I also wouldn't eat bugs on Survivor, but I think (almost) nothing of crushing them. I don't eat meat, but I wear leather belts, shoes, and watchbands out of distaste for synthetics. Hypocrisy, maybe, though if I did buy synthetics--i.e., petroleum-based fabrics--I'd only encourage Bush and his fatcat pals to invade additional oil-rich countries. Of course I could spend extra money for hemp-based shoes and stuff, man, but that would cut into my funds for highbrow funnybooks.
July 22, 2003
One-Twenty Twenty-Six in the Twenty-First Century
Two days ago I went to the hospital to have my ears checked; they'd felt stuffed for several days. The doctor diagnosed an infection in both ears. Cost of filling his two prescriptions (one of them generic) for my ailment, at the supermarket: $120.26, after my health insurance discount. I would have paid $153.98 otherwise.
I shouldn't have to spend $120.26 or any other exhorbitant amount to hear clearly. I shouldn't have to worry if my insurance will cover my 75-minute hospital visit. Maybe I should move to Canada, land of inexpensive medicine and birthplace of the great William Shatner, before Bush and Ashcroft start cracking down on anyone with brain waves. Or maybe I should find a better job (miracle of miracles in this economy) so I can afford the very best in health insurance. Or maybe I should do as many Americans do and try never, ever to get sick or injured.
July 10, 2003
Nyah, Nyah, Mr. Death
Two nights ago, while driving home in a fierce thunder-and-lightning storm, visibility almost nil, my attention beyond nil, I drove over what I thought at first was a downed tree branch, but that I quickly realized was a downed power line; a luminescent yellow glow appeared behind my car, and I heard a dull buzz. I received no shock, no injuries. Up ahead I slowed down for a man, apparently a lineman, directing traffic with a flashlight. I rolled down my windshield. "You're one of the lucky ones, " he told me. "You made it over."
When my drive resumed, I marveled for a few seconds over my dumb luck, then spent more than a few seconds wondering what would have happened without it. I'm 37 going on 38. What legacy would I have left if the wire had fried me a few moments earlier?
There in my scuffed-up Buick, I could think of only two great--well, passable--accomplishments I've performed:
1. I've had sex, with more than one woman (but not at the same time).
2. I've founded this website.
Not much compared to, say, the latest selfish Alpha male jerk to appear on Survivor and eat insects (something David Vegan Matthews could never do) and capture the attention of tens of millions of viewers around the world.
Then, playing devil's advocate so to speak, I wondered if divine intervention had helped me escape Crispy-Critterdom--a natural reaction, considering my experience. Did that god named God actually exist, and did he save me (as he allegedly did that amusing murderer Jules in Pulp Fiction) so I could embrace him and spread his word?
A few seconds later, I returned to my senses. I'd just experienced dumb luck, not a favor from some man-made deity (redundant, I know) who inexplicably cares about puny humans. In the unlikely event any god really exists, he/she/it would be the ultimate absentee parent.
So, has that live wire changed my life? I don't know. I want to achieve greatness, but I'd wanted to do that already. I still have no interest in religion. I still wish to have sex again.
Hey, there's another accomplishment--owning a Buick.
Keep on truckin' to DVMpire and Home.
� 2003, 2005 David V. Matthews