Welcome back to the final installment of Tom’s tale.  We left Tom in quite a pickle last week.  Let’s step inside and see where our friend is now.  As a side note, thank you to everyone for the kind words concerning this story.  I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

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What does that title have to do with that picture?  Nothing.  What does it have to do with this whole article?  I’ll get to that.  You see, this is my turn to helm the column Opinions Vary.  Today you’ll be stepping into my fun house to play with my magic mirrors.  Wipe your feet and keep your grubby hands off the glass..

I love to laugh.  Nothing makes me happier … literally.  What gives me a raging funny boner?  Random shit.  The more random, and more macabre (hence the title) the more I like it.  Even as a small child I was chastised for laughing or joking about horrible things.  I was met by the age old adage “There is a Time and a Place for Jokes.”  I agree with that statement, and here we get onto the crazy train that is my opinion.

The Time and Place for Laughing or Making Jokes are Always, and Everywhere!

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Welcome back to “The Dude hates things that are cool.”  That’s the unofficial title of Mutual Understanding.  I’ve had the pleasure of being sick for the past few days so instead of my normal, systematic break down of why I don’t understand something, I’m going to take a load off and just lob this one out there.  Hit the jump to play along.

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Scanners wasn’t wrong. Inter-facing with the Omega Space-Ship through the circuitous telephone network is difficult. As we speak, the hemoglobin slithers down my nasal cavities. My sclera pool into murky, red misery.  I do this for you, my friends. Seldom are the days when you get the pleasure of knowing the gentle-man at the other end of an exchange is a fugitive. Yet today, you have this pleasure. The modern-man with his fascist government attempts to hold me-you-us down, insisting that digitally interfacing with a Slurpee machine with our digits (along with other mushy parts) is against some sort of law. Embrace the disembracement of the flesh, let us love all matter within the known Cosmos.

Or just let me fuck my Slurpee machine in peace. It loves me so.

Quickly now, let us not waste time. While Spring is close, it is still nipply out. Running out of the 7-Eleven as I was chased by the Illuminati’s thugs, I wasn’t able to retrieve my pants. So I am balls-out, warbling nonsense into the last known pay phone in my town. Soon I’m going to need to take the quarter out from underneath my tongue to continue this man-phone-internet-Word-Press exchange thanks to the cost of communication. And once I lose my Tuning Coin, who knows how things are going to go.

This is Monday Morning Commute. I’m going to tell you the things I wish I was doing instead of being on the run from the Trilateral Commission’s goons. You’re going to tell me what arts and farts you’re enjoying this week.

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Hello dear friends.  Welcome back to part 2 of The Sad and Short Earthbound Life of Tom Marshall.  For those of you who missed last week’s post, feel free to catch up before continuing.  For those of you eagerly awaiting to see what happens to Tom next, hit the jump.

[Part 1: Bad Breaks and Good Breaks]

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A few days ago, while intoxicated on cough syrup and jalapeno flavored cheese doodles, I ran across a novel on Amazon’s kindle app.  For a paltry two dollars American I downloaded it and immediately began reading it.  The novel is Ex Umbris: Step into the Light by Gregory Peterson.  (You can get it right here by the way).

Greg has chosen the ballsy move of self-publishing.  As someone who is also interested in publishing works and getting cashy money for it, I decided to try to get in touch with him.  I searched high and low for literally minutes before finding his email address and firing off a few questions.  Immediately I was met with a response and a picture of him in nothing but a bathrobe (Which I’m keeping by the way).

Preamble.
When Eduardo Pluto first tasked me with writing this column, I was very much the-excite. I viewed it as an opportunity to pull apart my cheeks and bathe a litany of things in my steaming hate. It was a bona fide excuse to wield a hate-katana, slicing at the various things for which I held contempt. However, I began to waver in this task the more I thought about it. Slathering stupidity over a variety of topics in an effort to rile up the masses went against the very grain of OMEGA LEVEL, a site whose unofficial motto I’ve always felt was, “LIKING THINGS IS AWESOME.” So that’s not what I shall be doing here during my turn at Opinions Vary.

No, no it shant be.

Instead, I’m aiming to pump-up the pectorals of various things I enjoy. Specifically, the ones that have themselves been kicked in the pink goodies until they were mush. I’m going to prop the ground beef genitals of emaciated movies, books, video games, and sexual positions that I enjoy.

Strap in, and strap on. I’m about to blast your g-spot with positivity. When you’re done throwing rope, I’m going to kiss you upon the head and leave you be.

The first topic whose chest I’m going to rub with Hot&Cold?

The arts themselves.

Relax everyone, the arts are still beautiful.

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Hello there ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to rock?  It’s time for me trolling yet another thing that I don’t quite understand.  Look on the bright side however.  I’m actually searching for enlightenment rather than just petty name calling or pigeonholing.  So hit the jump and enlighten my ignorant ass.

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Mother Nature must be feeling guilty for those of us in New England. Friday morning I awoke to an onslaught of the Slushy Shit. It was draped across my car, down my driveway, coating the streets. What had been proposed as four inches of snow had turned into two feet of nightmare whilst I slept. Perhaps feeling a smidgen bit cruel for this deceit, Ole Lady Nature has turned the last two days into full blown Spring. You know you’ve been double-fisted by the Winter when forty-degree days are a salve on your soul. A balm on the chapped balls that weather has wrought. I’ll take it, and mix it together with some Daylight Savings Time. Despite the bullshit that is yanking an hour of weekend slumber out from underneath our feet, the bonus sunlight at the end of the day is bueno. As someone who is known to eat chapped stick in single bites while screaming at passersby when my sadness overwhelms me, any extra rays are salvation. They burn away the delirium that the Darkness brings.

Enough about me. How the fuck are you gals, guys, and every other combination? This is Monday Morning Commute, the column where you and I share the various happy happenings in our lives on a given week. The ointments that help soothe the irritation of the grind.

Let’s do this.

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[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

I want you to consult your medium.

And I’m not talkin’ about that gargantuan-racked Gypsy babe you met at the bus stop. Do I think it’s righteous that she wore a revealing shawl and was jambox-blastin’ an Among the Living cassette? Yes. Do I think that she actually has psychic powers? No. Unless you like waking up in another state to find that you’ve been drugged, robbed, and’re wanted on an arson charge, you’re goin’ to want to stay away from her.

Trust me, I know from experience.

Anyways, the sort of medium we’re dealin’ with today ain’t of the supernatural variety. Well, not literally (we’ll come back to that). See, the word “medium” comes from the old-tyme Ancients’ expression for “in the middle.” As such, there’re a whole mess of ways to apply the term. Yes, that’s why when you go to Dunkin Donuts, the serving size of hot dirt-water that’s larger than the small but smaller than the large is called medium!

Ta-dah!

When takin’ a stroll across the Arts & Entertainment Dance Hall, we need to look at media as the ways in which creators express themselves. In a sense, any given medium is the means by which a transfer occurs from the mind of the Creator to the mind of the Viewer. It’s actually an alarmingly simple process: an idea is in the Creator’s mind, the Creator shapes some sort of artifact, the Viewer experiences said artifact, and now the same idea is in the Viewer’s mind! Voila!

Stephen King describes the process in On Writing:

Look — here’s a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.

Do we see the same thing? We’d have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do. There will be necessary variations, of course…

I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all, especially that blue eight. We’ve engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy.

That’s right, you degenerate broads and bastard boozers clinging to the railing of Spaceship OL — every time you read a book or listen to an album or play a video game, you’re on the receiving end of some genuine telepathy! And when you find it in your soul to create some art? When you show someone the landscape you painted or the sonnet you penned? Yeah, you’ve got it — you’re on the transmitting end of the thought-transfer!

So what’s this all gettin’ at? Well, simply put, I want every goddamn one of you to declare your medium-allegiance. At the end of the day, in which art form are you most invested? Which mode of expression sweep-picks your heartstrings? What is it about this medium that gets your blood pumpin’ and spirit swirlin’?

[What is your medium of choice?]

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