Ironically, I will be celebrating our nation's independence in the federal maximum security facility in Leavenworth, Kansas, where I have been recently moved.  Forget everything you've ever been told and the other things you may have seen on the television about life inside; the reality is utterly different and much more bleak and terrifying.  Yes, the prison is built on an abandoned oil rig in the middle of a flooded quarry and yes we wear magnetic moon boots that can be used, during the sudden eruptions of violence common in the can, to lock us to the steel mesh that covers the floor.  Other than that, though, everything is totally, unexpectedly alien.  Except for the times when groups of youth offenders are paraded through and "scared straight" by our descriptions - both in general terms and in specific detail - of how we're going to fuck them in the ass; it's a good way to get out of a day's work in the furniture shop and is pretty much just as you've seen on TV.  Take my word for it, though, when I tell you that those familiar experiences are the exception.  I mean, sure, the negro inmates are soulful and wise, wary at first to befriend a new fish and only eventually, after sometimes as many as fifteen years, becoming their best pals.  But that's where the similarity to fictional accounts of prison life ends, because - if you can believe it - some time later the fascist guards murder your saintly companion by hooking his testicles up to a car battery.  Then the fat screw - who thinks he's so great because he knows the warden - strolls by your cage at lights out, raking his electic billy club across the bars, and doesn't even look at you but just hisses under his breath, "We iced your nigger girlfriend.  Now do our taxes!"   And you know what?  You keep your mouth shut and you do the guards' taxes, because this ain't no mother fucking million dollar movie and you ain't gonna tunnel your way out with a spoon.  This is hard time brother and you'll do whatever it takes to get over.  Just like everybody else.  Shit, you ain't the goose that laid the golden Eggo™ brand waffle.

A watercolor I painted depicting my
lazy-ass cellmate Leonard Peltier staring mystically into space instead of widening our tunnel.

Our inspiration: Star Trek's rock eating Horta.

Leonard and I eat a lot of eggs to keep us strong.  These are Horta eggs.

Your pal,
erik...

I've replaced my vigorous physical regimen with self reflection and bible study.  Before entering the joint, I'd never read the word of God.  Having now gotten through about sixty pages, I must say: Not bad!   I have formed my own solitary bund and now control the prison's Final Fight machine.  It is one of the few things not nailed down that thankfully won't fit up my butt - though my jailhouse peers have several times threatened to attempt insertion.   I have only one rule: don't put your cigarette on the machine!  I made a sign saying just that and attached it to the faceplate with toothpaste.  I've been slowly playing through the game for the first time in many years, and am enjoying myself immensely.  Every morning I awake prepared to reclaim the high score from a Capcom employee called AKB; the record of my previous day's labors being destroyed nightly at lights out.

Until I'm sprung, Final Fight is my only connection to the world of video games.   I have decided to make the best of it and create a serialized comic strip that combines my current obsessions:  Final Fight, Christian salvation, life inside, and Seanbaby.  I have plotted sixty eight-panel strips and will present one a week until I run out or am released.  The comic can be enjoyed on one level as a rousing, masculine tale of action and adventure within the prison system.   But for those of you wanting to attempt a deeper critical analysis of the work, it is the story of Mayor Mike Haggar's trek across Metro-City presented as a metaphor for the journey of the soul.

Read The Slugger!

At the advice of my good friend and mentor James Lipton, I've always tried to maintain an opaque barrier between my personal life and my art.  Many regular readers would be surprised to discover, I think, that I'm attracted to Seanbaby, undereducated, afraid of chet, and concerned over the coming Christian Apocalypse - actually I'm mostly concerned for my agnostic partner, as the bumper sticker on my desk clearly states: In case of Rapture, office will be unmanned, except for chet.  It was while I was writing our aborted Father's Day special, The Five Worst Motherfuckers in Gaming, that I received the fiftieth piece of mail requesting we report on John Romero's hype hair-care tips, and decided to break the fourth wall and address you all directly as myself. 

In the olden days, before John Romero was obviously aware of our existence, his publicity fiascoes could be approached as guileless exercises in public humiliation.   Now, however, it's a different story.  Romero's no dummy, or at least he's smarter than we are, as evidenced by the fact that we're writing about him.  So knowing that he's fully aware that his antics are going to draw our attention, and knowing that he knows that we know that he knows, the only rational conclusion is that he's plotting something.  What?  If we knew that, the entire staff of Ion Dallas would be in prison.  But as the very nice Texas State patrolman told is in May, "It's not a crime until they actually release Daikatana.  Sorry boys, my hands are tied."  So for now, we wait.  And watch.  You're move, amigacho.  Plus, looking at Romero's glistening mane, does it surprise anyone that he has developed a complex and quite fruity regimen of  brushing and egg washes to maintain it?

Speaking of chicken ovums, it seems that Dr. Derek Smart Ph.D. reacts to negative reviews in much the same way cranky old suburbanites respond to having their houses egged by teenagers: he stands outside in his bathrobe stamping his little feet and muttering to himself for three hours.  Computer Games Online reviewed Smart's life's work, BC3K, giving it a rather generous F- (1.5/5).  Within hours, the good doctor had crafted a multi-thousand word thesis the gist of which is that they should have, like the much more competent reviewers at the print rag Voodoo Magazine, awarded the game an F+ (5/10).  Thankfully, he didn't feel the need to break out his very collectible race card for this piece.  Smart followers weren't so lucky during his impassioned rebuttal to another bad review, in which he helpfully points out that:.  

after a lot of work in the face of some serious competition, adversity, personal attacks on my person, my work, my friends, my qualifications and the very authenticity of my existence in the industry (I think I'm the only black elite game developer in the industry)

Until reading that article, I, for one, wasn't aware of the fact that Derek Smart is a negro.  In light of this new information, I'd like to apologize to him for any personal attacks on his person and state for the record that Battleship 3000 is a pretty good game.  You know, considering...

Seems there's a reason Erik is such a big fan of Everquest.  He was exploring a new personality in his role playing on Everquest, crafting a persona from popular culture and the oldest profession.  Erik was pimping whores on Everquest. While cyber-pimping had been tried before, it had always failed.   No one ever really believed there were women on the other end.  Erik took that problem and ran with it.  His two most popular whores were a man pretending to be John Carmack pretending to be a woman, and a man pretending to be Richard Garriot pretending to be a woman.  Gamers paid in platinum pieces, armor and weapons for the chance to "sex chat" with one of these virtual prostitutes ostensibly controlled by gaming's most eligible bachelors.  This Everquest merchandise would then be converted into hard currency on EBay.

Erik is being charged with counts of providing a prostitute and corrupting a minor.  Our corporate lawyer "Tasty" Dave is petitioning the court to allow Erik to serve only "Virtual" time in jail.  So far Erik has been serving real time in the county lockup, but we'll keep you updated.  If Erik is not released soon, we will be hiring.

+

=

Marvin here.  Regardless of what you may have heard, I've spent the last several weeks touring high schools teaching teenage girls to be ashamed of the hair growing on their arms.  It's exciting, rewarding work, but I'm not going to talk about it today.  The "confirmed bachelors" that run this site have seen fit, in my absence, to launch a childish attack against Kevin Murphy.  If you needed any more proof that the two of them are self-absorbed morons, you now have it.  I've known for some time that the only positive things about this place are the results of the two idiot's random drug testing, but this is a new low.  Don't get me wrong, The Mushroom is terrible. But it's so self-evident that it should remain unsaid. 

Avoid The Mushroom.  If you pick up a used syringe off the ground, avoid jabbing it into your tongue.  Do I need to tell anyone these things?  Is it worth my effort to mention them?  Or your effort to read them?  Just as I don't doubt that God hates fags (note to fags: join the club - I'm from the future, where, as of May 6th, 2012, God hates everyone), I'm absolutely convinced that, two weeks from now, they'll be rimming Murphy like the three of them are long lost brothers.  How do I know?  Remember when erik wrote about how much he despised Penny Arcade?  If not, don't bother looking for the article; it has mysteriously gone missing.  In fact, they're such good buddies now that chet and erik's imbecile analogs over at Penny Arcade sent the OldMan an "exclusive" strip.  I don't endorse it, in fact I think it's fucking terrible.  I'm simply printing it to prove a point: if any of you wants to start a cult of personality, you should probably pick a pair of more consistently hateful tiny despots. 

Oh yeah, scroll to the bottom of the default page sometime.

While waiting to masturbate to Friends last night, I caught some of the President's address.  I didn't have the sound on - Ross's nasally whine kind of ruins it for me - so I'm not sure exactly what was said.   I did notice a caption that read "Peace In Kosovo," and it got me to thinking that maybe it was time for an abrupt end to our own military action.   The Mushroom, by putting up, then sheepishly removing, their response to our attacks, has unambiguously raised an unfunny flag of surrender.  We'd like to land the killing blow, like Mario kicking a supine Koopa Troopa right into the fucking drink, but William Jefferson Clinton is right: It's time for an end to hostilities.  The chance that collateral damage might harm someone we do care about - the children - increases daily.  For instance, thanks to this pointless war, a pair of six year olds searching the internet for Mario hints could skip innocently, hand-in-hand, to this very article, see the phrase "fucking drink", scroll back in confused horror only to trip the psychic landmine that is this picture of my ass, then promptly purchase shotguns at WalMart and blow each other's heads off.

Who convinced this pair of old-time whores to attack that dapper gentleman?   Kevin Murphy.

Kevin Murphy, while attempting some semblance of damage control, has treated countless numbers of our dear readers to entertaining exchanges of email.  And for that, I think we're all grateful.  What did our readers learn?  Just this: For the editor of a satirical e-zine, Mr. Murphy has no sense of humor.   Like Adolf Hitler, we believe Kevin hopes to breed a race of unfunny supermen and would like nothing more than to see the retarded and old melted down and made into candles, their bones ground up and used to prepare the cheap, pulpy paper on which he will furiously scratch the closing chapters of his autobiography, Mein Stylebook.   As Kevin himself said, "The Internet is not all about sharing anymore..." 

Call us dreamers and romantic kooks, but we think that that is exactly what the internet is about, from the Arab housewife sharing her Tabouli secrets, to the Japanese grandfather sharing pictures of schoolgirls being brutally raped, to the Siberian hacker sharing the Japanese grandfather's violent porn site's password.  While the rest of us dance merrily around the internet maypole that is Seanbaby's huge, erect penis, Murphy is feverishly plotting to turn our utopia into his own fascist Final-Fightocracy in which he is Mayor Mike Haggar and each of us is G. Orber.

But the battle is over.  We believe Kevin Murphy, like the postwar Saruman, is now capable only of small mischief, and bid him go in peace.  We beg him, though, to heed these words:

Kevin, you're a professional journalist, so it goes without saying that you are familiar with the journalistic oath, "first, do no harm."  Have you seen Patch Adams?  It's wonderful.  It shows clearly that the power of laughter can heal a sick child, better even than half a bottle of aspirin.  What would happen if a sick little girl visited The Mushroom in a last ditch effort to find some healing comedy?   She'd die before she found any, wouldn't she?  Do you want that on your conscience?  I think if you look deep into your stylebook, you'll find that you don't.  So, please Kevin - and this goes for you too, Budrick - shut down your site.   If not for us, then for the world's sick children; some of whom have cancer, you idiots.  Come to think of it, why don't you both just go to the hospital and, one by one, smother each toddler with a pillow?  Because that's basically what you're doing with your comedy.  Your legal threats are going to seem like a city bus filled with Pokemon dolls compared to the Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of suing that will occur should the two of you continue on your present baby-endagering course.

For you vultures saddened by this end to hostilities, we're currently looking into peacekeeping misadventures at other sites.

Congraturations to the winners.  Sometime within the next 4-6 weeks you'll receive a giant, vibrating box containing your fabulous Intensor Chair.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank some of the people who made this all possible.  First and foremost we'd like to thank the lovely people at BSG Labs for donating the prizes.  We'd also like to thank everyone who entered, and God, and everyone who voted.  

Artist's conception of Kevin Murphy surprised and frightened by the unexpectedly vigorous shaking he has just received at the hands of the Intensor Chair during which his stylebook fell to the floor and slid beneath his mom's refrigerator which is adorned with a piece of construction paper on which is printed, in finger paint, Kevin's handprint decorated with other pieces of construction paper to make it look like a turkey then topped off with a gold star indicating compliance with Mrs. Champe's adult special education stylebook.  Note intensity of vibro lines surrounding Murphy, swastika tattoo on forehead, etc., etc.  

Here's Budrick on himself and his keen powers of observation:
"Now I'm no genius (actually I am), but I can tell when someone is lying. I studied body language in college, and I've also studied it on my own as a personal hobby. The signs are obvious: a flicker of the eyes to the side, a covering of the mouth with a hand in a subconscious attempt to stop the flow of words, a change in eye contact to insure oneself doesn't blink, blinking far too much..."

Hey Rob, look at my picture to the right: there's some body language for ya.

This is the picture in question.  If you look closely, I've added the word IDIOT to Rob Budrick's shirt, thus creating some significant content enhancements and making the photo ours to do with as we please.



Actual funny site:
The Onion

Actual Unfunny site:
The Mushroom
(not even the stolen html is as nice.)



Chet giving back to the community.   Feel free to use this picture of my ass on your site.  Or simply just use it, baby.  No need to link back or give credit; this is my gift to the children of the world.