Mark the Middle-Aged Wolfman

during football season. 

the great bop-it debacle of 2013

summer is always a cleansing and beautiful time of the year for me. 

particularly summer evenings and nights. 

we skated/ unicycled to the closet park with our friend wil the other night and enjoyed some twilight swinging. i watched stars appear through the waining light. it was great. 

summer nights always give you renewed hope that great adventures are coming. 

at the beginning of what promised to be a productive and memorable summer the lovely miss rachel and i were getting ready for a wonderful night of beers and dancing when she spotted my original bop-it sitting on a shelf.

i loved my bop-it. 

i had kept it in good shape since '96. 

minimal throwing of the bop-it occurred due to my rad bop-it skills. 

rachel pulled the dusty toy from it's designated place and began to finagle it back to life. 

i hadn't used it in a little over a month or so, and it was a popular item at cook outs. 

but this time things went HORRIBLY WRONG. 

after playing a solid game or two the bop-it began to malfunction by failing to sense the toggles when pressed, pulled, or twisted. 

it then proceeded to have what i can only call a technological seizure. 

rachel handed me the toy and we both stared sadly at the dying relic of childhood. it was a painful reminder that time, and new generations, have been erasing the simplicity of toys over the decades; and this is one battle we will never reclaim. just like betty spaghetti and the skip-it (pour one out for your homies). 

we spent a good minute or so staring at the poor thing when i let out a plaintiff "nnoooo. it can't die!" when the thing started to let out other sounds. 

for those who aren't familiar with the preset recordings of the bop-it i will tell you now that most of what is to follow isn't one of those recorded automatic responses.

the damn thing recorded my voice and started playing it back to me in the form of a dying screeching electronic. 

rachel and i FLIPPED OUR SHIT. we began to legitimately believe that my bop-it had been possessed by something far beyond our understanding and we were literally playing with forces beyond our control. the bop-it began wailing wildly while playing the preset drum crashes in a continual loop. 

at this point we were late to meet everyone and our sheer panic had rendered our reasoning abilities completely useless, so we asked my housemate jo to watch it while i was out. jo set the toy (which at this point had become inexplicably quiet) on his kitchen table and turned out the light as he left the kitchen. rachel and i started out the door when suddenly the bop-it screeched back to life and wailed into the darkness; presumably wanting the souls of orphans. 

jo caught us and asked if i was playing a joke on him. i explained that i believed the bop-it to be haunted and couldn't deal with such a daunting task as i had beer and punk music throw downs taking up my roster. 

so jo isolated the bop-it to a chair on the deck. 

it screamed into the night until i came home hours later and took the batteries out. 

it remains in it's place on my shelf without batteries. 

i'm still too afraid to replace them. 

    

  

drivers ed

we all have those days.
the ones where you can't drive your car for shit. 
it's ok. 
it's just a part of modern life. 

there is only one inalienable truth:

it's everyone else's fault. 

passion of the flies

justin and i have started devoting tuesdays as our "drunk" day. our tuesday is like a normal working person's saturday.
i swear we aren't functioning alcoholics. not yet anyway. 

today we had a deep conversation about how vast the conscious existence could be of the average insect. 

justin is much more skeptical on the subject than i am.

lately he and his brother have been turning their attention to online gaming. the living room has been filled with battle cries and blood spray effects for days. 

his current teammate is CAPTAIN NECKHOLE. 

in other news swimminginjello traveled to the Dandelion EcoVillage for community dinner last night. if you live in the bloomington area, and generally like super eco efficiency living and/or community gardening; you should check these dudes out. they're pretty rad. 

http://dandelionvillage.org/

DIIINOOO DNA!

sorry this has taken so long. i've been busy. 

this post has been in the works for a while beecausssee:

justin and i got married!

yay!

but we want everyone to be able to share a beautiful wedding where your family embarrasses you and your drunk uncle says something inappropriate, so vote for equality kids. 

annnndd we're back. 

back when i was promising this post it was my brother kurt's birthday and around the re-release of Jurassic Park remastered for 3D. as a kid i loved those movies. as an adult they scare the living hell out of me. 

and so for my brothers birthday i thought i would share a stroll down memory lane.

kurt looooovvveeddd jurassic park; almost as much as batman. he had TWO sets of all the action figures associated with the movie. literally everyone i knew became infatuated with dinosaurs when that movie hit HUGE.

i can remember everyone talking about how fucking cool dinosaurs are and that it would be sooo cooooolll if Jurassic Park were real. 

i used to steal my brothers action figures so i could play "dinos" and be cool like him. 

well....

this happened. 

i cried for days. 

i think this may have been my breaking point and for the rest of my life i haven't been able to watch those movies without yelling in horror at the tv.

there is nothing great about newman's fate, other than the irony. 

one day while kurt was at school, or something, our mom decided to mow the lawn. she failed to see a Dr. Ellie Sattler action figure laying in the direct path of the mower. 

her fate was sealed. 

when kurt found her he came in the house screaming. 

ellie's arms were up in a "help me!" sort of state.

it was a truly horrific scene. almost as horrific as the time his rat Lillith broke her tail off in his hand as a defense mechanism. it wiggled. 

HAPPY BIRHTDAY BUB!

also this. 

i couldn't help it. 

recent developments

hey guys! some of you have been asking some things about stuff. 
i will gladly answer any questions you may have about the blog and merchandise (yes merchandise is in the works) at:
 roygbiv.carlson@gmail.com

here are some quick answers. 

Q: why don't you post regularly?
A: swimminginjello was a way for me to continue my delusions of becoming a comic artist. sadly i got a real job. 
also i have an illness that doesn't always allow drawing. 

Q: are you going to have merchandise?
A: we're trying!

Q: are you going to start posting more shorts?
A: i would like to start posting daily short stories or at least a doodle now that we've acquired a wacom tablet! testing of this will commence shortly. 

also a few months ago i announced that swimminginjello was becoming a member of a collective. while we are now working with ravenwood cards we have also been in talks with other local (and not so local) artists about designing tangible objects. if you would like to be part of this please email me (kris) at the above address.

lions are dumb.

muthafuckin breadcrumbs.

sup guys. 

exciting things are afoot! spring has been bringing the promise of warmer weather. 

SHORTY JORTS 2013! whoop whoooopppp!

my buddy jeremy and i were talking about summer related things the other day. he mentioned that he and some friends went camping for spring break. camping in indiana for spring break is about as fulfilling as vacationing in kansas during tornado season. SO MANY THINGS GO WRONG. 

the weather was really nice at first but then a cold snap hit. jeremy told me a really great little story about farting in his sleeping bag all night to keep himself warm. 

it's not camping unless you fart your way to warmth!

later i was thinking about other summery things. one of my personal favorites is to open the windows at night and throw on a planet earth segment. 

after some intense yearnings to watch nature documentaries, i watched a short on the serengeti.

african plain animals are kinda awesome, and REALLY ugly. But something i really have come to note about myself is my growing dislike of lions. Male lions is particular. 

WHY THE HELL ARE THEY CALLED THE KING OF THE JUNGLE?!

they don't even live in the jungle. they live in prickly ass grass with flies swarming their drooling mouths.

and let's be honest... male lions are lazy as shit and have droopy balls.

so maybe you're all "well what is the king of the jungle, asshole?" cause you love lions, and that's dumb. 

I'LL TELL YOU! 

if you were going to make a giant ass deadly cat the "king" of the jungle it should be a tiger. at least they live in the jungle and are known for stealing children from their huts. 

but they're being hunted to near extinction which doesn't exactly scream ruler of all super dangerous and deadly animals. 

my vote for badass jungle animal is the elephant. 

you're probably like "kris, that's the dumbest shit i've ever read." 

but for real the elephant is badass. they have been used as vehicles of mass destruction in wars.

that shit is legit.

you know in a fight your war elephant would be all "fuck your arrows man imma crush the shit out of you!"

war tigers just maul their trainers just like a pissed off shamoo at sea world. some animals can't be trusted man. 

in all reality the real winner would be spiders. 

they're advancing. they eat birds now.