There wasn’t much to say, honestly. We’d seen tornadoes and tidal waves, we’d seen crashing cars and The Smashing Pumpkins. We’d seen the best thing since sliced bread, and we’d seen the greatest tragedy yet. We’d seen FREE IPODS and HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA. We thought about where it would end. We like zombie films, but we don’t have very high hopes where that’s concerned. Let a boy dream?
We’d heard about wars in the East, and those Japanese beer-vending machines. And we’d also heard of drugs to try, of music to listen to, shows to watch. We’d heard of dirty politicians and asshole news anchors. Crystal Skulls and Charles fucking Darwin. We like the Hubble Space Telescope, but we don’t know where they take astronaut applications. What kinds of references should we be acquiring?
We’d read about all sorts of cool stuff.
And, honestly, with tired eyes and ringing ears, we decided there wasn’t much left to contribute. Towel thrown.
9/16/08
9/2/08
About two months ago i caught my girlfriend doing something surprising.
To Preface:
Danica is among the smartest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and she had never really taken comics that seriously during the course of our relationship. She is a literature person, always trying to get me to borrow Dostoyevsky and Steinbeck books so we can talk about them. I borrow them or buy a copy and get a few chapters in. And then i get bored or lose the book, that's just the kind of person i am.
And every time i do this it becomes more and more probable that i'm the dumb one. I'm the comedic, dim-witted male who the intelligent, nuanced female puts up with on the family sitcom. My passion is tolerated and, past that, not really thought of. I understood why, and trust me: if I weren't at peace with that I would have given up a long time ago.
So it was the one of the hottest days of the summer and my apartment doesn't have air conditioning. It was late in the evening and I knew that Danica had been in my room napping for quite some time.
I usually don't feel the need to knock on my own door, but i did anyway and called out her name. There wasn't an answer, just a mumbled "humph...". I said her name again. She replied.
"what?"
"you're still here?"
"yeah, come in."
The air in the room was warmer than any of the other stiflingly hot rooms in the apartment. Why hadn't she moved to a cooler place?
Danica was laying on her stomach on my bed, legs bent at the knee and feet crossed in the air, reading a comic book. I can't remember which one, but it was apparent that she'd picked through my shelves/stacks of books to find it.
So a few things went through my head in the next two seconds:
1) I was bracing, ready for the coming judgement for passing up the books she wanted me to read in favor of... this.
2) I wondered what she thought about the fact that i wanted to one day draw picture stories for other people like me.
3) I thought that maybe she taken the day trying to understand and be fair to me, trying to get her head around why anyone over 14 would enjoy and be moved by anything in my collection.
4) I got ready for the moment she would lose respect for me.
I was awaiting and dreading what was about to come: my brilliant girlfriend's judgement of the thing i love.
***
This was when I noticed that, when i knocked at the door and interrupted her, i'd actually pissed her off. She was involved in the story that was being propped up by my pillow. She liked.
And then, seeing that she was annoyed by my presence, only one thought was glowing in my mind.
"This is the happiest i have been in years."
So as i type this in my chair, she sits on the couch and reads the last few pages of Maus. A week ago she was reading one of my Clowes books. She jumped right into the middle of Sandman and enjoyed it. She recommends Scott Pilgrim to people now. She's read books that i own but haven't even gotten to yet. She's gone off and gotten books about comics for herself that i've never heard of.
Now, I'm not saying that she's a "Comics Person" now, I'm not saying I've somehow saved her or re-structured her passions. She still nags me to read The Brothers Karamazov and I'm still too lazy to do it. Not much has changed.
What i am saying is this: As i look back through the past few years, not only have most people reacted the way i feared Danica would, but i've failed to plant that seed in people. I haven't stirred up an interest, haven't inspired a relationship with comics in anyone. And it felt good to finally do it for someone the first time. And, on top of that, someone for whom i care so deeply.
Danica is among the smartest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, and she had never really taken comics that seriously during the course of our relationship. She is a literature person, always trying to get me to borrow Dostoyevsky and Steinbeck books so we can talk about them. I borrow them or buy a copy and get a few chapters in. And then i get bored or lose the book, that's just the kind of person i am.
And every time i do this it becomes more and more probable that i'm the dumb one. I'm the comedic, dim-witted male who the intelligent, nuanced female puts up with on the family sitcom. My passion is tolerated and, past that, not really thought of. I understood why, and trust me: if I weren't at peace with that I would have given up a long time ago.
So it was the one of the hottest days of the summer and my apartment doesn't have air conditioning. It was late in the evening and I knew that Danica had been in my room napping for quite some time.
I usually don't feel the need to knock on my own door, but i did anyway and called out her name. There wasn't an answer, just a mumbled "humph...". I said her name again. She replied.
"what?"
"you're still here?"
"yeah, come in."
The air in the room was warmer than any of the other stiflingly hot rooms in the apartment. Why hadn't she moved to a cooler place?
Danica was laying on her stomach on my bed, legs bent at the knee and feet crossed in the air, reading a comic book. I can't remember which one, but it was apparent that she'd picked through my shelves/stacks of books to find it.
So a few things went through my head in the next two seconds:
1) I was bracing, ready for the coming judgement for passing up the books she wanted me to read in favor of... this.
2) I wondered what she thought about the fact that i wanted to one day draw picture stories for other people like me.
3) I thought that maybe she taken the day trying to understand and be fair to me, trying to get her head around why anyone over 14 would enjoy and be moved by anything in my collection.
4) I got ready for the moment she would lose respect for me.
I was awaiting and dreading what was about to come: my brilliant girlfriend's judgement of the thing i love.
***
This was when I noticed that, when i knocked at the door and interrupted her, i'd actually pissed her off. She was involved in the story that was being propped up by my pillow. She liked.
And then, seeing that she was annoyed by my presence, only one thought was glowing in my mind.
"This is the happiest i have been in years."
So as i type this in my chair, she sits on the couch and reads the last few pages of Maus. A week ago she was reading one of my Clowes books. She jumped right into the middle of Sandman and enjoyed it. She recommends Scott Pilgrim to people now. She's read books that i own but haven't even gotten to yet. She's gone off and gotten books about comics for herself that i've never heard of.
Now, I'm not saying that she's a "Comics Person" now, I'm not saying I've somehow saved her or re-structured her passions. She still nags me to read The Brothers Karamazov and I'm still too lazy to do it. Not much has changed.
What i am saying is this: As i look back through the past few years, not only have most people reacted the way i feared Danica would, but i've failed to plant that seed in people. I haven't stirred up an interest, haven't inspired a relationship with comics in anyone. And it felt good to finally do it for someone the first time. And, on top of that, someone for whom i care so deeply.
8/15/08
8/1/08
so i guess some guy cut a motherfucker's head off on a bus or something.
I MEAN, THAT IS WHACK, RIGHT?
anyway, i've been involved in this really neat little community for a week or so. it's called the Daily Sketch Group, and it's a drawing/painting community. A topic is chosen from a pool (that members can and do contribute to) every day at 9:00 PM, PST and everyone draws that topic.
There are literally DOZENS of people who frequent the site, and a lot of very skilled and talented people who post work there. Anyway, you should check it out, it's the kind of thing that i see evolving and getting quite large in the near future.
So, ya know. Start giving the administrator money. And your art. If you've got any.
If you don't/won't do as your told, then it's a place where you can occasionally see art that i don't post here.
so this post is for those of you who just can't quite get enough of my bullshit.
cheers.
anyway, i've been involved in this really neat little community for a week or so. it's called the Daily Sketch Group, and it's a drawing/painting community. A topic is chosen from a pool (that members can and do contribute to) every day at 9:00 PM, PST and everyone draws that topic.
There are literally DOZENS of people who frequent the site, and a lot of very skilled and talented people who post work there. Anyway, you should check it out, it's the kind of thing that i see evolving and getting quite large in the near future.
So, ya know. Start giving the administrator money. And your art. If you've got any.
If you don't/won't do as your told, then it's a place where you can occasionally see art that i don't post here.
so this post is for those of you who just can't quite get enough of my bullshit.
cheers.
7/30/08
My Posts Number 40, Shawty.
So there's been nothing going on with me. Except a bike wreck.
I sat for about ten glorious minutes and was actually motivated to write some little autobigraphical sketches based on some pictures i'd taken on my cellphone. They're not very well drawn, and the lettering is how i write notes to myself, so it's hard to read. I think that adds something that a clean composition can't really accomplish.
I'd say they are just first drafts, but i like them like this. they have a deadpan Jeffery Brown feeling to them that i really like.
Anyway, i was interrupted and completely lost that groove. Imagine that you've just found a quote in a five thousand-page book that you really liked, and then you dropped the book and the binding let go of all the pages. And now you need to find that quote again in the heaping mess of loose-leaf paper on the floor.
So here they are.
I sat for about ten glorious minutes and was actually motivated to write some little autobigraphical sketches based on some pictures i'd taken on my cellphone. They're not very well drawn, and the lettering is how i write notes to myself, so it's hard to read. I think that adds something that a clean composition can't really accomplish.
I'd say they are just first drafts, but i like them like this. they have a deadpan Jeffery Brown feeling to them that i really like.
Anyway, i was interrupted and completely lost that groove. Imagine that you've just found a quote in a five thousand-page book that you really liked, and then you dropped the book and the binding let go of all the pages. And now you need to find that quote again in the heaping mess of loose-leaf paper on the floor.
So here they are.
7/10/08
Sad Thetans.
So i've come back home for a week. I hadn't really planned to be back here anytime soon and i didn't really tell anyone i was coming back until they were making the final boarding call, so i guess i surprised some people.
Coming back home is i strange sort of transformation for me. I sleep strange hours, i see people i haven't seen in a while, i hear strange news from strange people. I don't feel like myself here, like i've reinvented who i am in my new home. So it makes it a bit of a crisis of self when i come back home and remember the person i used to be, and try to act like that person again for the benefit of all my old friends.
This is sounding awfully teen-aged, i know, but often the corniest/emo-est explanation is the best one. I am not who i was, i have undergone a gradual change in what i think to be a positive direction.
I miss seattle, i miss the people and the weather and the coffee. there's something i could bitch about for hours. the coffee here is absolute garbage.
Here is a list of sex tips i wrote up a little while ago, and i never finished them.
Sex Tips from Allen:
FOR THE GENTLEMEN
1 - When making love to a very special lady, it is important that you never, ever stop yelling your father's name and spitting everywhere. Otherwise she may not think you are truly up for the primal task of coupling with her.
2 - Always smoke cigarettes before, during and after coitus. It will inhibit kissing, and for good reason. there are times to kiss, and there are times to copulate, and the two do not mix well. avoid eye contact like the plague.
3 - During the foreplay period, you should divulge your deepest, darkest desires in the form of impromptu banjo-driven folk music. If you're probably going to need a condom, you are just as likely to need your banjo and overalls. Preparedness is the mark of any eligible gentleman.
4 - The actual fucking should last somewhere between ten and twenty minutes, depending on how attractive the lady is. Your smoking hand should never touch the lady in question, and your off hand should never leave her mouth. This will keep her from embarassing herself and make it possible for you to pretend that her guttural vowel-sounds are actually her attempts at quoting GWAR lyrics, which will no doubt strengthen your manhood from tip to hilt. If she agrees to actually quote GWAR lyrics beforehand, then this maneuver is not necessary.
FOR THE LADIES:
1 - Your name is Kristy. You will respond only to Kristy.
2 - Loon noises, while not reqired, may be appreciated by your partner. Goose noises, however, are right out.
3 - If you could quote some GWAR lyrics while we're doing it then i promise i'll let you breathe through your mouth. otherwise: no dice, sugar.
4 - Men love teeth. It's one of those "i say no when i mean yes" sorts of things.
5 - Twitch violently and often. Also, sleeping after sex is discouraged, so you must stay awake all night and make sure that your partner is still breathing every hour, on the hour. Men love to be woken up every hour. You're a big girl, you should know this.
Coming back home is i strange sort of transformation for me. I sleep strange hours, i see people i haven't seen in a while, i hear strange news from strange people. I don't feel like myself here, like i've reinvented who i am in my new home. So it makes it a bit of a crisis of self when i come back home and remember the person i used to be, and try to act like that person again for the benefit of all my old friends.
This is sounding awfully teen-aged, i know, but often the corniest/emo-est explanation is the best one. I am not who i was, i have undergone a gradual change in what i think to be a positive direction.
I miss seattle, i miss the people and the weather and the coffee. there's something i could bitch about for hours. the coffee here is absolute garbage.
Here is a list of sex tips i wrote up a little while ago, and i never finished them.
Sex Tips from Allen:
FOR THE GENTLEMEN
1 - When making love to a very special lady, it is important that you never, ever stop yelling your father's name and spitting everywhere. Otherwise she may not think you are truly up for the primal task of coupling with her.
2 - Always smoke cigarettes before, during and after coitus. It will inhibit kissing, and for good reason. there are times to kiss, and there are times to copulate, and the two do not mix well. avoid eye contact like the plague.
3 - During the foreplay period, you should divulge your deepest, darkest desires in the form of impromptu banjo-driven folk music. If you're probably going to need a condom, you are just as likely to need your banjo and overalls. Preparedness is the mark of any eligible gentleman.
4 - The actual fucking should last somewhere between ten and twenty minutes, depending on how attractive the lady is. Your smoking hand should never touch the lady in question, and your off hand should never leave her mouth. This will keep her from embarassing herself and make it possible for you to pretend that her guttural vowel-sounds are actually her attempts at quoting GWAR lyrics, which will no doubt strengthen your manhood from tip to hilt. If she agrees to actually quote GWAR lyrics beforehand, then this maneuver is not necessary.
FOR THE LADIES:
1 - Your name is Kristy. You will respond only to Kristy.
2 - Loon noises, while not reqired, may be appreciated by your partner. Goose noises, however, are right out.
3 - If you could quote some GWAR lyrics while we're doing it then i promise i'll let you breathe through your mouth. otherwise: no dice, sugar.
4 - Men love teeth. It's one of those "i say no when i mean yes" sorts of things.
5 - Twitch violently and often. Also, sleeping after sex is discouraged, so you must stay awake all night and make sure that your partner is still breathing every hour, on the hour. Men love to be woken up every hour. You're a big girl, you should know this.
7/1/08
New Drawings!
An avian warrior, who is pissed that you are here. Also, a helmet for one of his smaller, non-military brethren
6/25/08
ESSAY ON PORNOGRAPHY (Episode 1)
It's interesting to think about "Rule 34". If you're unfamiliar with the term, then please stop reading now, close your computer and never turn it on again. If you aren't willing to do this, then please try to hold onto your humanity for the next couple minutes. I cannot promise that you will ever be able to sleep properly again after seeing this shit.
UH, I AM INTRIGUED AND HAVE LITTLE REGARD FOR MY OWN SOUL. CONTINUE ON, ALLEN.
Alright. For those of you who didn't take my advice, Rule 34 simply states that, if one can imagine something, then somewhere somebody has created porn of it on the internet. So, ever thought about what it would be like if Kim Possible and Esurance girl ever had a threesome with Dr. Robotnik? I am willing to bet my life that a picture of that exists somewhere where Google Safesearch won't let you go (and for damn good reason).
Someone - somewhere - is jerking off to this.
Stay with me, i'm arriving at my point pretty soon. We've all heard of Furries and Slash-Fic and Hentai. That shit isn't new to anyone, and it now has a comedic place in the collective conscious of people like us. It's a running joke that we're all in on. Hell, maybe you're at the point where you know what "Vore" entails and can make merry mocking it. If not, a link has been provided to further your scholarship of the depraved. Of course, all of these different brands of fucked-uppedness have melded together and branched apart to claim new ground for pornography. Here is an example:
Pictured: The Cutting Edge of Human Sexuality's Evolution
WELL, THE INTERNET WAS CREATED AS A STEP TOWARD TOTAL FREEDOM, IT WOULD LOGICALLY FOLLOW THAT OUR GENERALLY PERVY NATURE WOULD FLOURISH IN SUCH AN OPEN ENVIRONMENT. GET TO YOUR POINT. ALSO, YOU ARE VERY DAMAGED FOR KNOWING THAT PICTURE EXISTS.
Calm down, this all seems pretty intuitive so far, right? when you remove all accountability, people will be as poisonous and disgusting as they can be, it's a law of nature, and rule 34 just gives it a quantifiable name. The internet can be viewed as a Petri-dish for this kind of thing, growing "cultures" (nudge nudge) where none would have existed. I think it's my role as a blogger to study and make conclusions about those cultures, particularly the culture of pornography.
Pictured: The Blogger, at home
JUST SHUT UP AND SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY. I HAVE TO UPDATE MY SLASHFIC BLOG.
Alright, alright. ladies and gentlemen, i give you:
The most fucked up website i have ever encountered.
(Please do not look at this at school or work)
... WHAT?
no, just keep clicking around. I'll wait.
... I-... IS THAT AN EAGLE?
You tell me, dude.
I... I DON'T THINK I BELIEVE IN GOD ANYMORE.
Yep. Welcome to the party. Oh, you should check out the places where he edited clips from Dragonheart so they'd give him an erection. He also did that to Oblivion and Jaws Unleashed.
YOU... YOU MONSTER. YOU'RE A GOD DAMN MONSTER! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!
No, no, it's not me, i didn't make any of this stuff. I just thought it was really funny and..
GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE, NOW! I'M CALLING THE AUTHORITIES
Wait, i can explain: This is hilarious! if we look at it like an equation, where a= how wrong something is, b= time to adjust to the fact that it exists, and c= how funny it becomes over time, then...
LA LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU. GET THE FUCK OUT NOW, IF YOU SAY ONE MORE GODDAMN WORD I'LL USE THIS BAT, I'M NOT KIDDING! JUST STOP TALKING AND LEAVE ME ALONE!
... it would logically follow that, with time, this could become the funniest thing ever? right? right?
HELLO, OPERATOR? YES, THERE'S A MAN HERE WHO WON'T LEAVE MY HOME. NO, I WON'T HOLD. YES. YES, HE'S ARMED. ARMED WITH FILTH. NO...YOU REALLY DON'T WANT ME TO EXPLAIN. I REFUSE TO EXPLAIN. JUST SEND SOMEONE OVER BEFORE I'M FORCED TO DEFEND MYSELF.
Just calm down, please. It's not a big deal! i'm sure one day we'll laugh about this, right? Don't be such a prude. It's just a raptor, fully realized in 3D, being strapped to a table while a mechanical...
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
*thunk*
OW! OKAY, I'm leaving! I'm so sorry i brought it up! please hold back your brutal beating long enough for me to get out the door...
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
*thunk, crunch, thunk, snap*
Oh god, the pain!
*WEEEEEEEEEEE-oooooooooooooooh, WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-oooooooooooooooooh*
HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!
OH, OFFICER, THANK GOD YOU SHOWED UP IN TIME! LOOK WHAT THIS PERVERT DID!
UH, I AM INTRIGUED AND HAVE LITTLE REGARD FOR MY OWN SOUL. CONTINUE ON, ALLEN.
Alright. For those of you who didn't take my advice, Rule 34 simply states that, if one can imagine something, then somewhere somebody has created porn of it on the internet. So, ever thought about what it would be like if Kim Possible and Esurance girl ever had a threesome with Dr. Robotnik? I am willing to bet my life that a picture of that exists somewhere where Google Safesearch won't let you go (and for damn good reason).
Someone - somewhere - is jerking off to this.ALLEN, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT, I KNOW THAT PORNOGRAPHY CAN GET A LITTLE WEIRD SOMETIMES, I AM A SEASONED GOOGLE USER, AND I'VE EXPERIENCED ALL OF THIS FIRST HAND
Stay with me, i'm arriving at my point pretty soon. We've all heard of Furries and Slash-Fic and Hentai. That shit isn't new to anyone, and it now has a comedic place in the collective conscious of people like us. It's a running joke that we're all in on. Hell, maybe you're at the point where you know what "Vore" entails and can make merry mocking it. If not, a link has been provided to further your scholarship of the depraved. Of course, all of these different brands of fucked-uppedness have melded together and branched apart to claim new ground for pornography. Here is an example:
Pictured: The Cutting Edge of Human Sexuality's EvolutionWELL, THE INTERNET WAS CREATED AS A STEP TOWARD TOTAL FREEDOM, IT WOULD LOGICALLY FOLLOW THAT OUR GENERALLY PERVY NATURE WOULD FLOURISH IN SUCH AN OPEN ENVIRONMENT. GET TO YOUR POINT. ALSO, YOU ARE VERY DAMAGED FOR KNOWING THAT PICTURE EXISTS.
Calm down, this all seems pretty intuitive so far, right? when you remove all accountability, people will be as poisonous and disgusting as they can be, it's a law of nature, and rule 34 just gives it a quantifiable name. The internet can be viewed as a Petri-dish for this kind of thing, growing "cultures" (nudge nudge) where none would have existed. I think it's my role as a blogger to study and make conclusions about those cultures, particularly the culture of pornography.
Pictured: The Blogger, at home
JUST SHUT UP AND SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY. I HAVE TO UPDATE MY SLASHFIC BLOG.
Alright, alright. ladies and gentlemen, i give you:
The most fucked up website i have ever encountered.
(Please do not look at this at school or work)
... WHAT?
no, just keep clicking around. I'll wait.
... I-... IS THAT AN EAGLE?
You tell me, dude.
I... I DON'T THINK I BELIEVE IN GOD ANYMORE.
Yep. Welcome to the party. Oh, you should check out the places where he edited clips from Dragonheart so they'd give him an erection. He also did that to Oblivion and Jaws Unleashed.
YOU... YOU MONSTER. YOU'RE A GOD DAMN MONSTER! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!
No, no, it's not me, i didn't make any of this stuff. I just thought it was really funny and..
GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HOUSE, NOW! I'M CALLING THE AUTHORITIES
Wait, i can explain: This is hilarious! if we look at it like an equation, where a= how wrong something is, b= time to adjust to the fact that it exists, and c= how funny it becomes over time, then...
LA LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU. GET THE FUCK OUT NOW, IF YOU SAY ONE MORE GODDAMN WORD I'LL USE THIS BAT, I'M NOT KIDDING! JUST STOP TALKING AND LEAVE ME ALONE!
... it would logically follow that, with time, this could become the funniest thing ever? right? right?
HELLO, OPERATOR? YES, THERE'S A MAN HERE WHO WON'T LEAVE MY HOME. NO, I WON'T HOLD. YES. YES, HE'S ARMED. ARMED WITH FILTH. NO...YOU REALLY DON'T WANT ME TO EXPLAIN. I REFUSE TO EXPLAIN. JUST SEND SOMEONE OVER BEFORE I'M FORCED TO DEFEND MYSELF.
Just calm down, please. It's not a big deal! i'm sure one day we'll laugh about this, right? Don't be such a prude. It's just a raptor, fully realized in 3D, being strapped to a table while a mechanical...
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
*thunk*
OW! OKAY, I'm leaving! I'm so sorry i brought it up! please hold back your brutal beating long enough for me to get out the door...
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!
*thunk, crunch, thunk, snap*
Oh god, the pain!
*WEEEEEEEEEEE-oooooooooooooooh, WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-oooooooooooooooooh*
HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!
OH, OFFICER, THANK GOD YOU SHOWED UP IN TIME! LOOK WHAT THIS PERVERT DID!
TO BE CONTINUED...
6/3/08
Lowery: A Study
So, i had to do a life-story of a person over the age of 70 for my developmental psych class, and then analyze their emotional development according to Erikson's six stages of life. I took the assignment on a bit of a joyride, as i do with all my papers. I've included the story bit, and not so much the boring "content" of the paper. Yes, i have turned it in, and yes, i do expect a 100%. So here it is, i hope you enjoy it:
Lowery was born in Jordan, Arkansas in 1934, during the Great Depression. He was the eldest of four, with a brother and two sisters. He was an only child until he was 10 years old. His father, Lowery (NAME WITHELD) IV had been an officer World War I and was forty when Lowery was born. Because of the war and the stress it put on him, he did not find a young wife until many years after he came home from the Western Front. The woman he found, June (MAIDEN-NAME WITHELD) (NAME WITHELD), was twelve years his junior. They were married in 1923, when she was in her mid twenties.
Because of the great depression (and a 6 year stint in jail on Lowery IV’s part) they tried not to have any children. Their marriage was apparently not overly passionate. Lowery V was an accident and was apparently birthed in the bed he would sleep in once he was out of his crib. We cry a desperate prayer to our gods that the sheets WERE changed before this happened.
June was a strong woman who believed in God, the Devil and hard work. She did not like Papists, Jews or Negroes and would, if Lowery V is to be believed, remind everyone of these aspects of her character as often as she could. She had “mean eyes” and a nose that hooked downward and widened ever so slightly at the tip, as if she once had a normal nose but it thawed one fateful day in the Arkansas sun and hardened to its new, permanently sinister shape that night. Little is known about the origins of her nose, except that it did not pass to her son. In light of this, we rejoice to our gods in thanks.
Lowery IV was a cold man. His beard was thick enough to shatter razors with as little as a glance. He was from Haven, Connecticut and lived there until he was 20. He joined the army in 1914, to seek glory and honor on the field of battle. Having grown up on the romanticized war stories that were so popular in his days he had a very idealized view of war before he ever took part in one. He imagined himself in the cavalry, charging up a hill with his pistol in hand, as the sun set behind him and sabers clashed as steel bit flesh around him. The army instead cast him into a world of mud and fear - a rodent-like existence in the trenches, bayoneting equally terrified young German men while his friends were carved up around him, facedown in the muck. He rarely spoke of it when Lowery V asked. They never spoke at length or in detail about it until Lowery V himself came home from Korea in 1952. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Lowery IV was a pig farmer, and June worked in the town’s butcher-shop. Lowery IV spent the day kicking the pigs when they’d done nothing wrong and muttering to himself, while June spent her day frowning at customers and chopping at meat that, in all honesty, didn’t need to be chopped anymore. The (NAME WITHELD) household was a grim and strict one, to hear Lowery V tell it. He spent the first few years of his life while the depression was in full swing. His earliest memory was of the parched crab-grass, gently crackling and shifting as a rat attempted to flee to safety, “like a VC, tryin’ to find his foxhole” before it was caught and strangled for dinner by June’s thick-veined, calloused hands. Caked with the filth of the day, the (NAME WITHELD)s ate well that night. He estimates that he was four years old.
As a child, Lowery V did not have a lot of access to books or radio to expand his imagination. He had a King James bible and the occasional food-stamp booklet, which he would read as a famished castaway would eat perfectly cooked steaks. He had a great fear of the Devil, which was beaten into him by his mother, June. You see, he was resented by his parents for being an extra mouth to feed during the dust and squalor that was the Great Depression. When reading the book of Judges over and over by rat-oil lamplight each night, he’d see what he thought to be “The Devil’s Face” flickering in the shadows cast by the small rodential flame. When asked if he felt safe as a child, Lowery V said the following, “If you’d had a daddy like mine you’d feel safe anywhere. Now, he was a mean man, and a gruff man and wasn’t overly affectionate to me. But if there was so much as a taxman comin’ around our house all he’d have to do was step out onto the porch and stare, and the taxman would run his ass off to wherever he came form and never show his face again. That’s the kinda man my daddy was, the kind with the Old Testament God seething behind his eyes. Men crumbled when he looked upon’em. No, I felt safe as long as he was around.”
Lowery was quiet child, who rarely went to his school (which was a five mile walk/pig-ride). In his days at school he would study the Bible and Arithmetic, sometimes History and Racism, which was his least favorite class. He excelled and he showed a lot of imagination at an early age. He was alone with his parents and their loveless, brutish marriage until he was ten years old. He worked on the pig farm, trying to scrape a living from the sun-cracked ground. He dreamed to one day be like his father, a soldier. He’d fashion rifles out of rotted, wind-beaten fence-posts when he’d saved enough buttons and nails up to purchase them from the store in town. Much of the family’s revenue was in chestnut/stick/nail/pig bone/button form, and they had a single five-dollar bank note hidden under the floor to use in case of emergencies. It was pulled off the corpse of a circus-performer in 1938, and stayed under their floor for 7 years.
Lowery’s father continued his service to the army in 1941, when the United States declared war on the Axis Powers. He was a tank commander in the European theater and, once, when a German Tiger tank had disabled his tiny, poorly-armored Sherman outside Lyon, France in the summer 1944, he climbed out the hatch and charged the tank on foot, carrying twin axes of his own design. He jumped up onto the Tiger (the largest tank in the German arsenal at that time) and blew the hatch open with a hand grenade. He proceeded to pull the now exposed passengers out of the tank (which was in motion at the time) smashing their heads and necks with the mighty axes while they were suspended in the air. He was shot in the neck by the German tank commander (after the tank had slowed to a stop, unable to operate without a crew) whose hands he chopped off and wore around his neck as he recovered in the hospital. Unable to continue the fight, the now fifty-year old Lowery IV was shipped home and given the nearly unheard of honor, the “Medal of Violence”. He returned home soon afterward.
Meanwhile, back home in Jordan, AR, Lowery V began his teendom. As a teenager he was much more well-adjusted, working in his father’s stead on the farm and dating girls. He made a lot of friends. His mother changed little while his father was away at war. Being a simple country boy, there was not much to experiment with (save for moonshine, which was, afterall, the Devil’s Drink). His first experience with alcohol was drinking with his father after he returned from France. His father returned a better man that when he’d left, having taken much of his aggression out on the Germans, who stole from him the bright young man he’d once been. He regained a bit of that and, as a result, his frozen marriage to June (now in her 40s) warmed and they had three more children. Aside from the responsibilities of the farm (which was flourishing under his care), he had a lot of freetime. It was a happy time in Lowery V’s life, things looked up where they had looked straight down before. Children meant hope and the success of the farm meant money. There was not much freedom on the farm, or much opportunity in his small town. He felt constricted and confined and soon after the war ended he lied about his age and joined the army in 1950, when war was breaking out between North and South Korea. That, he said, changed him forever.
To hear him tell it, Korea was a hellish and brutal time in his life. A time of confusion and strife, of dead friends and killing in the dark. He was a sniper in the army, just sixteen. He spent a year in the infantry, and did not like to discuss it at all. The following words are the closest thing to a war story I got out of him: “When the sun would go down, the Communists would come over the wall, in The Punchbowl. They’d been pounded with artillery all day. One would come over, and we’d shoot him. Then another, would climb over and fall, belly-up from the top. [he pauses here and his eyes become glassy and unfeeling, the memory of that night clearly stealing him away to another time] They came one or two at a time all night, and they’d fall on our side of the wall. [he begins to stutter and repeat himself a little, grasping for the correct words] The came all night, just like that. Just climbing to the top to die on the other side. I hope never to see anything like it again.” He attained the rank of 1st Sgt., and was made commander of an artillery battery close to the 38th Parallel until his tour was up.
He was 18 in 1952 when he returned home. He met Claire (MAIDEN NAME WITHELD) (NAME WITHELD) that winter. She was the love of his life and they got married after two months together. After Korea he wished to have a normal life and forget the carnival of horrors that had been the last two years. He had no children, but moved to Seattle and went to college at the Universiy of Washington from 1954 to 1958, with a degree in economics. Claire ran a boutique in Ballard for 23 years. He worked as an accountant for forty years here in the city and never returned to Jordan. He’d send money to his parents to try to help them out, feeling a bit guilty that he’d abandoned them and their way of life. His job did not make him happy, just “number-crunching”. He was paid well and was able to retire at age 55 in 1989. Even when he was working, he gained respect in his field and was made partner in an accounting firm. This allowed him to take a lot of time off work and enjoy his leisure time. He feels that he was very successful in his job and enjoyed his time away from it.
His father died in 1967 of a brain aneurism. His mother soon followed him in 1971 from trichinosis, and was one of the five Americans to die of such an easily curable disease that year. “Must’ve been all the pork”, he remarked. When his father died, Lowery says it was among the worst times in his life aside from his tour in the army. Korea was, by far, the worst time in his life that he shared. It was a time of a loss of faith in himself and his ideals, of disenchantment with God and Glory and Duty in his eyes. He recovered gradually over the years, with help from Claire. When asked about the obstacles he had to overcome, he said that his childhood and life of poverty pre-Korea was something he had tried to free himself from and was successful. He needed the city life, the love of a sane woman and the modern comforts available to him as a self-made man. He has many joyful memories of driving across America and traveling around the world since his retirement. He feels at peace watching the world flicker by a car window when his wife drives, and he feels in control of his life when the lines disappear below his wheels when he’s in the driver seat. He likes the adventure of finding new places to explore, the solace of writing about them and understanding the people they house. He does all of this with his wife, who keeps him sane and balanced.
Lowery V looks back on his life with a bit of a smirk sometimes, with tears in his eyes others, and sometimes he’s still dumbstruck by his memories. Overall he gives the impression of being content that he lived life fully and was in control of himself, and never did anything too bad that he’s still guilty about as it draws to a close. Travel and writing make him happy, and he wishes he’d discovered them earlier in his life. Before that it was girls and his dream of being a war hero, of trying to fill his father’s boots. If there’s anything he regrets, it’s trying to live some version of his father’s life instead of his own for so long, of sacrificing his youth to that ideal. One thing he is content with is the fact that he is responsible for his actions, that he decided what would happen to him and what his responses to life were. He isn’t much of a preacher, but I can tell that his story is a bit of advice in itself: to live one’s own life and to be glad your name’s on it after it’s passed. He is not a religious man and does not believe in heaven. He worries sometimes that there’s a hell, believes he’s seen it before and has been working himself away from it ever since. He loves his life and plans to live for eighty more years. If not though, he’s got a hell of a story and, if it ended tomorrow, there’s more than enough in it to be proud of.
Lowery was born in Jordan, Arkansas in 1934, during the Great Depression. He was the eldest of four, with a brother and two sisters. He was an only child until he was 10 years old. His father, Lowery (NAME WITHELD) IV had been an officer World War I and was forty when Lowery was born. Because of the war and the stress it put on him, he did not find a young wife until many years after he came home from the Western Front. The woman he found, June (MAIDEN-NAME WITHELD) (NAME WITHELD), was twelve years his junior. They were married in 1923, when she was in her mid twenties.
Because of the great depression (and a 6 year stint in jail on Lowery IV’s part) they tried not to have any children. Their marriage was apparently not overly passionate. Lowery V was an accident and was apparently birthed in the bed he would sleep in once he was out of his crib. We cry a desperate prayer to our gods that the sheets WERE changed before this happened.
June was a strong woman who believed in God, the Devil and hard work. She did not like Papists, Jews or Negroes and would, if Lowery V is to be believed, remind everyone of these aspects of her character as often as she could. She had “mean eyes” and a nose that hooked downward and widened ever so slightly at the tip, as if she once had a normal nose but it thawed one fateful day in the Arkansas sun and hardened to its new, permanently sinister shape that night. Little is known about the origins of her nose, except that it did not pass to her son. In light of this, we rejoice to our gods in thanks.
Lowery IV was a cold man. His beard was thick enough to shatter razors with as little as a glance. He was from Haven, Connecticut and lived there until he was 20. He joined the army in 1914, to seek glory and honor on the field of battle. Having grown up on the romanticized war stories that were so popular in his days he had a very idealized view of war before he ever took part in one. He imagined himself in the cavalry, charging up a hill with his pistol in hand, as the sun set behind him and sabers clashed as steel bit flesh around him. The army instead cast him into a world of mud and fear - a rodent-like existence in the trenches, bayoneting equally terrified young German men while his friends were carved up around him, facedown in the muck. He rarely spoke of it when Lowery V asked. They never spoke at length or in detail about it until Lowery V himself came home from Korea in 1952. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Lowery IV was a pig farmer, and June worked in the town’s butcher-shop. Lowery IV spent the day kicking the pigs when they’d done nothing wrong and muttering to himself, while June spent her day frowning at customers and chopping at meat that, in all honesty, didn’t need to be chopped anymore. The (NAME WITHELD) household was a grim and strict one, to hear Lowery V tell it. He spent the first few years of his life while the depression was in full swing. His earliest memory was of the parched crab-grass, gently crackling and shifting as a rat attempted to flee to safety, “like a VC, tryin’ to find his foxhole” before it was caught and strangled for dinner by June’s thick-veined, calloused hands. Caked with the filth of the day, the (NAME WITHELD)s ate well that night. He estimates that he was four years old.
As a child, Lowery V did not have a lot of access to books or radio to expand his imagination. He had a King James bible and the occasional food-stamp booklet, which he would read as a famished castaway would eat perfectly cooked steaks. He had a great fear of the Devil, which was beaten into him by his mother, June. You see, he was resented by his parents for being an extra mouth to feed during the dust and squalor that was the Great Depression. When reading the book of Judges over and over by rat-oil lamplight each night, he’d see what he thought to be “The Devil’s Face” flickering in the shadows cast by the small rodential flame. When asked if he felt safe as a child, Lowery V said the following, “If you’d had a daddy like mine you’d feel safe anywhere. Now, he was a mean man, and a gruff man and wasn’t overly affectionate to me. But if there was so much as a taxman comin’ around our house all he’d have to do was step out onto the porch and stare, and the taxman would run his ass off to wherever he came form and never show his face again. That’s the kinda man my daddy was, the kind with the Old Testament God seething behind his eyes. Men crumbled when he looked upon’em. No, I felt safe as long as he was around.”
Lowery was quiet child, who rarely went to his school (which was a five mile walk/pig-ride). In his days at school he would study the Bible and Arithmetic, sometimes History and Racism, which was his least favorite class. He excelled and he showed a lot of imagination at an early age. He was alone with his parents and their loveless, brutish marriage until he was ten years old. He worked on the pig farm, trying to scrape a living from the sun-cracked ground. He dreamed to one day be like his father, a soldier. He’d fashion rifles out of rotted, wind-beaten fence-posts when he’d saved enough buttons and nails up to purchase them from the store in town. Much of the family’s revenue was in chestnut/stick/nail/pig bone/button form, and they had a single five-dollar bank note hidden under the floor to use in case of emergencies. It was pulled off the corpse of a circus-performer in 1938, and stayed under their floor for 7 years.
Lowery’s father continued his service to the army in 1941, when the United States declared war on the Axis Powers. He was a tank commander in the European theater and, once, when a German Tiger tank had disabled his tiny, poorly-armored Sherman outside Lyon, France in the summer 1944, he climbed out the hatch and charged the tank on foot, carrying twin axes of his own design. He jumped up onto the Tiger (the largest tank in the German arsenal at that time) and blew the hatch open with a hand grenade. He proceeded to pull the now exposed passengers out of the tank (which was in motion at the time) smashing their heads and necks with the mighty axes while they were suspended in the air. He was shot in the neck by the German tank commander (after the tank had slowed to a stop, unable to operate without a crew) whose hands he chopped off and wore around his neck as he recovered in the hospital. Unable to continue the fight, the now fifty-year old Lowery IV was shipped home and given the nearly unheard of honor, the “Medal of Violence”. He returned home soon afterward.
Meanwhile, back home in Jordan, AR, Lowery V began his teendom. As a teenager he was much more well-adjusted, working in his father’s stead on the farm and dating girls. He made a lot of friends. His mother changed little while his father was away at war. Being a simple country boy, there was not much to experiment with (save for moonshine, which was, afterall, the Devil’s Drink). His first experience with alcohol was drinking with his father after he returned from France. His father returned a better man that when he’d left, having taken much of his aggression out on the Germans, who stole from him the bright young man he’d once been. He regained a bit of that and, as a result, his frozen marriage to June (now in her 40s) warmed and they had three more children. Aside from the responsibilities of the farm (which was flourishing under his care), he had a lot of freetime. It was a happy time in Lowery V’s life, things looked up where they had looked straight down before. Children meant hope and the success of the farm meant money. There was not much freedom on the farm, or much opportunity in his small town. He felt constricted and confined and soon after the war ended he lied about his age and joined the army in 1950, when war was breaking out between North and South Korea. That, he said, changed him forever.
To hear him tell it, Korea was a hellish and brutal time in his life. A time of confusion and strife, of dead friends and killing in the dark. He was a sniper in the army, just sixteen. He spent a year in the infantry, and did not like to discuss it at all. The following words are the closest thing to a war story I got out of him: “When the sun would go down, the Communists would come over the wall, in The Punchbowl. They’d been pounded with artillery all day. One would come over, and we’d shoot him. Then another, would climb over and fall, belly-up from the top. [he pauses here and his eyes become glassy and unfeeling, the memory of that night clearly stealing him away to another time] They came one or two at a time all night, and they’d fall on our side of the wall. [he begins to stutter and repeat himself a little, grasping for the correct words] The came all night, just like that. Just climbing to the top to die on the other side. I hope never to see anything like it again.” He attained the rank of 1st Sgt., and was made commander of an artillery battery close to the 38th Parallel until his tour was up.
He was 18 in 1952 when he returned home. He met Claire (MAIDEN NAME WITHELD) (NAME WITHELD) that winter. She was the love of his life and they got married after two months together. After Korea he wished to have a normal life and forget the carnival of horrors that had been the last two years. He had no children, but moved to Seattle and went to college at the Universiy of Washington from 1954 to 1958, with a degree in economics. Claire ran a boutique in Ballard for 23 years. He worked as an accountant for forty years here in the city and never returned to Jordan. He’d send money to his parents to try to help them out, feeling a bit guilty that he’d abandoned them and their way of life. His job did not make him happy, just “number-crunching”. He was paid well and was able to retire at age 55 in 1989. Even when he was working, he gained respect in his field and was made partner in an accounting firm. This allowed him to take a lot of time off work and enjoy his leisure time. He feels that he was very successful in his job and enjoyed his time away from it.
His father died in 1967 of a brain aneurism. His mother soon followed him in 1971 from trichinosis, and was one of the five Americans to die of such an easily curable disease that year. “Must’ve been all the pork”, he remarked. When his father died, Lowery says it was among the worst times in his life aside from his tour in the army. Korea was, by far, the worst time in his life that he shared. It was a time of a loss of faith in himself and his ideals, of disenchantment with God and Glory and Duty in his eyes. He recovered gradually over the years, with help from Claire. When asked about the obstacles he had to overcome, he said that his childhood and life of poverty pre-Korea was something he had tried to free himself from and was successful. He needed the city life, the love of a sane woman and the modern comforts available to him as a self-made man. He has many joyful memories of driving across America and traveling around the world since his retirement. He feels at peace watching the world flicker by a car window when his wife drives, and he feels in control of his life when the lines disappear below his wheels when he’s in the driver seat. He likes the adventure of finding new places to explore, the solace of writing about them and understanding the people they house. He does all of this with his wife, who keeps him sane and balanced.
Lowery V looks back on his life with a bit of a smirk sometimes, with tears in his eyes others, and sometimes he’s still dumbstruck by his memories. Overall he gives the impression of being content that he lived life fully and was in control of himself, and never did anything too bad that he’s still guilty about as it draws to a close. Travel and writing make him happy, and he wishes he’d discovered them earlier in his life. Before that it was girls and his dream of being a war hero, of trying to fill his father’s boots. If there’s anything he regrets, it’s trying to live some version of his father’s life instead of his own for so long, of sacrificing his youth to that ideal. One thing he is content with is the fact that he is responsible for his actions, that he decided what would happen to him and what his responses to life were. He isn’t much of a preacher, but I can tell that his story is a bit of advice in itself: to live one’s own life and to be glad your name’s on it after it’s passed. He is not a religious man and does not believe in heaven. He worries sometimes that there’s a hell, believes he’s seen it before and has been working himself away from it ever since. He loves his life and plans to live for eighty more years. If not though, he’s got a hell of a story and, if it ended tomorrow, there’s more than enough in it to be proud of.
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