The Almighty Jacks

I met God today. I wouldn’t say he was ugly, but he certainly wasn’t attractive. He was wearing a T-shirt with a wolf howling on it. And it was tucked into his jeans.

Heaven’s OK. Everyone was just playing Jacks. The most Jesus could get was twosies. I felt bad for the guy, you know, having died brutally for our sins only to go to Heaven and play Jacks. But I kinda think “Good, I’m glad he got crucified”, because he’s a poor loser. And I just can’t stand poor losers.

What Ryan's listening to: "Death" by White Lies

My last post...

... makes me look completely fucking crazy. 

Oh well! 

Sleeping with Ghosts

I don't sleep in my bed anymore. One night I could've sworn someone crawled into bed with me but when I woke up there was no one there. I remember being in that really tired state where you give in to anything that people ask.  

That memory scares the shit out of me. 

A couple weeks ago the same thing happened. I sleep with with my dog, and I remember one night she got up, and I felt her around my knees and she kept moving. She'd just circle around, bumping into me. It was irritating as all hell. Finally I sat up and yelled at her to "Knock it off!"

I stopped. My dog wasn't there. I turned around and she was on the couch. She lifted her head and looked at me like, "What the hell?"

I'm not much of a believer in the paranormal, but I am aware of cosmic energy. How the Universe spends its time balancing everything to make sure that human beings don't step out of bounds and completely wreck space and time. I also believe in signs from the Universe. Evidence that you're on the right path (not good or bad, but the path that's right by you.)

I also believe in the dead. Not ghosts. Not spirits. But people who travel in a different plane of existence. Too dead to the world for the living to notice. 

When I find myself stuck in place, unable to move forward, I think of these static people. I hope to never get to the point where the dead keep climbing into my bed and I can no longer explain that there is someone still alive sleeping in it. 

What Ryan's listening to: "Despite what you've been told" by the Two Gallants 

coming soon to a website near you

Aaron and I are starting a webcomic for the Offine... although it won't be called Offline Webcomic.

I've been re-teaching myself how to draw. It's not like riding a bike or a horse or a horse shaped bike.

So look out for that in the not so distant future...


What Ryan's listening to: "Don't Forget Sister" by Low VS Diamond

I want to believe...

I don’t believe in God. I tried. I prayed. I attended church. God just never really stuck. He went away with Santa and the Boogeyman.

I’m not saying believing in God is wrong. Far from it. I think he’s a big comfy security blanket for a lot of people out there. With God comes Heaven, angels, eternal happiness, chocolates on your pillow, um… magic beans, a goose that lays golden eggs – you know, all the good stuff.

There was a time where I did have faith in religion. In church I was fascinated by older women who would stand, eyes closed, arms outstretched, offering up their spirits to God. Later though, that fascination and wonder would be choked and left for dead when perception came into play. The gift of awareness.

The Bible has some pretty neat stories and some wicked good messages, but when it comes to interpretation, especially when people get together to become a group –or a community- then everything gets completely turned upside down. Messages are lost. Essence and meaning fall away and it’s always the scum that rises to be presented in its simplest form. The dumb version.

The Bible does its best to tell us stories about how to live our lives the best we can. Only now, the way people have taken it is that they need to believe in God so they can get into Heaven. I was told once, by a believer, that the world we live in, this life, that’s Hell.

Fuck that.

This is Hell? We’re given complete freedom to live our lives the way we want. We have choice. We’ve been given brains, and limbs, and lips, and armpits, and assholes, and hearts, and intestines, and earlobes. We’re a living masterpiece. Every human being is a well oiled machine. The only flaw is that it’s temporary, and that scares people. They become insecure and afraid. With that fear, people turn to God and spiritual immortality.

This is Heaven. The whole point of existence is living and loving. We breathe and sneeze and think because we have a chance to do good things. To do what’s right. To make the best out of skin and bones. You’ll never be happy if you live your life believing you’re in some fleshy Hell.

It’s good to have faith, but why not have faith in yourself? Why feel the need to validate the things you feel with a group or a title or symbols?
Believing in God is easy. Believing in yourself, that’s what people should be striving for. That’s why people should gather together.

I don’t have a problem with the idea of God, it just takes the fun out of everything. It takes the wonder and magic out of living. Creationism? Is that really what people want to believe? That God just made the Earth like a second grade science project? Like we’re sea monkeys or something? Isn’t it a lot more magical and amazing that the Earth is the way it is by evolution? The idea of nature and life exploding into each other and creating something really fucking unique and cool?

You guys can do whatever you want, but I think that’s what I’ll believe in.

What Ryan's listening to: Asthmatic by Windmill

A grim day in blog land...

Hello internet friends. I trust that the Universe is treating you all well. Sadly, I must report that the Powers that Be are not so friendly to me. It seems my life has taken a dip into a downward spiral, right into a puddle of mud and dragged around by its testicles until they were eventually pulled off. My brother went to prison for dog rape on the same day that my mother was skin-pinched to death while the girl that I sometimes love up and left me for a muscular version of Ryan B. Doyle.

Living is as cruel a venture as cruel ventures go. It feels like I’ve been stabbed in the heart. But my heart is so black and lifeless that I can’t even feel how terribly painful it is. My soul is stomped mush. My brain is achy and stuffy. My toes are… itchy.

My future seems bleak. I feel like a nobody in a world full of somebodies. It must be because my insides have been reduced to rubble and hollowed out only to be put inside a piñata so women of the world can whack it with sticks.

How can a person with such darkness inside ever fully go on living? Why, oh why have I been cursed? Will I ever learn to smile again?





… If my blogs ever sound like this somebody fucking kill me. Treat me like Old Yellar and blow a shotgun sized round through my skull and put me out of my misery. The internet has offered society two things: Midget Porn and a voice. The most frustrating thing is most people will use that voice to complain endlessly about movies, music and everything else under the sun. The other half spends their time expressing to others how hard living is, or how sad they are, or posting their shitty poetry.

I’m all for freedom of speech, but when you use that freedom to spout out the most useless information to the world it just becomes a waste. It’s also self pitying and pathetic. Get a journal. Buy a diary. Confide this information to your friends. Stop wasting time getting people to feel bad for you. Find your sense of self respect, because you’re not adding anything new, you’re just encouraging weak behavior.

The Universe isn’t fickle or vengeful. The Universe helps you become a stronger person. Just when you think that you’ve conquered one problem it throws another at you, yes, this is true. The reason it does that is because it finally knows you’re strong enough to get through it. To keep going. We live to strengthen ourselves and to be better people for the ones we care about the most.

Pain shouldn’t be used as a rod to fish for compliments. Pain is a tool you use to educate others, or to help people out when they're down. The reason we feel is to understand others when they’re feeling blue. No pain is the same, but you have to keep going. Take another step. Don’t stand still and watch things crumble, be strong enough to stop the collapse.

You have to keep going in life, face things dead on, and fuck, stop complaining all the time!


What Ryan's listening to: "Splinter's Out" by Golden State

Growin' Up Hellboy

I’m a huge fan of “coming of age” films. The Graduate. Reality Bites. Garden State. All about characters trying to find their place as grownups in the world. That doesn’t sound much like a summer blockbuster to me. As it turns out, Hellboy 2 is just that.

This isn’t your average superhero movie. And I know that sounds more like a vague review coming from some moron who just uses some throwaway sentence that doesn’t reflect how he/she really feels. But it truly isn’t your average superhero movie.

It starts off with the worst scene in the movie that will no doubt cause everyone to wince, groan and hope to God the rest of the movie will be worth the price of admission. It opens in 1955 with a young Hellboy begging his father (John Hurt) to tell him a bedtime story. The young Hellboy makeup looks like it was left over Who prosthetics from Ron Howard’s The Grinch, only with horns and it being painted red (of course.)

After this excruciatingly painful exposition scene is delivered the movie finally kicks in. And it kicks your ass. We pick up, I’m guessing a couple months after the last Hellboy ended. Liz (Selma Blair)and HB (Ron Perlman)are having relationship issues, adjusting to living together and all. While Abe (Doug Jones – doing his own voice work this time around) and Hellboy and the rest of the group struggle with going on destroying the creatures that go bump in the night without having their father (or a father figure) present.



At its core, this is what the films all about. Struggling to be adults and having adult relationships. Becoming a HellMAN. All the characters are left, eager to grow up, unable to find the proper guidance or the understanding to do so.

I have to admit, I wasn’t completely sold on the film until they went to the Troll Market. It’s an underground bazaar for the bizarre. Some of the best looking creatures you’ve seen put on screen that weren’t completely CG. This is where writer/director Guillermo Del Toro shines. He creates worlds and creatures that seem tangible. Using practical effects and CG together to enhance the illusion. It’s a beautiful scene for those of us who miss the old puppets of Labyrinth, Star Wars and the Dark Crystal. It’s a scene that not only invokes old school fantasy films but also expands the entire Hellboy universe. You’ll constantly wonder “What else is out there?”



That’s half of the fun. The other half is watching these odd characters take on very familiar feelings. Watching Hellboy and Abe get drunk off cheap beer and singing love songs is a blast, especially realizing that we’ve all been there. Or Hellboy getting into a jealous locker room fight (literally, in the locker room) with the new man (don’t even want to spoil it) they bring in to be their leader. And I think that’s what surprised me the most. Relating to the characters. Watching them make poor, selfish decisions that you know will kick their asses later (a hint at Hellboy 3 perhaps?)

It’s a surprisingly touching film with plenty of cheesy (but strangely beautiful) moments. I know its cheese. The actors know its cheese. Del Toro probably knows its cheese. But dammit, sometimes I like me some cheese. It’s cheese with heart.

This film is pure entertainment. It makes you giddy. Smiley. A happy shiny person. And it holds you there until the very last (and hilarious) freeze frame. It feels like The Graduate with wise cracking creatures, and I couldn’t ask for anything more out of a comic book movie.



As Guillermo Del Toro would say “Tell your fucking friends!”


What Ryan's listening to: Loan Shark by Voxtrot