Alien Penetration Erotica. Yes, someone typed that into Google today, and Mr. Google passed them along to us. I’ve started a Category, Search Engine Terms, for collating all the bizarre references that bring people here.

As an aside, whoever typed in Alien Penetration Erotica, I can help you. No, serious. I don’t know if my readers are aware of Mandy Morbid, but you should be. She’s a gorgeous porn star, with tattoos and a pink mohawk. I wish I could make that up. Her body is refuckulous, in the same way that Christina Hendricks’ is. As in, she’s pale, with curves that defy logic.

And, oh yeah! She   made her own real life Alien Tentacle rape. It’s odd. Morbid is awesome enough to give away scenes free at her website’s archives, which can be found here.

You know what’s fucked up? Someone searched Alien Penetration Erotica, and I could help them. Because I’ve watched it.

Yes. Someone, somewhere in the world searched for “The Dark Knight Masturbating” yesterday. Just think of that. Seriously, someone did it.

And then Google brought them to us. I’m horrified and honored.

Looking ahead to the next few weeks’ comic releases, I realized that September 2^nd brings the first issue of Strange Tales Max. This three-issue miniseries is composed of short stories by some of the most acclaimed creators in underground comics, many of whom have seized the opportunity to run amok with Marvel’s more recognizable characters.

On the one hand, I think this series could be great for all involved parties; the creators gain exposure that their usual work does not afford them, Marvel gets to tout a badge of artistic merit, and the readers get their filthy paws on some unique work. If all goes to plan, Strange Tales Max could be responsible for quite a few Eisner-nominations.

However, such an endeavor also runs the risk of choking on the vomit of its own novelty. Comic book fans are, on the whole, not a group who like their mothers’ apple pie recipes fucked with. If Marvel runs a story about Peter Parker giving up the superheroics in favor of free-form dance, then they might just shoot themselves in the foot.

Quirky or novel are not always synonymous with successful. Just ask DC’s Wednesday Comics — despite heavy promotion, its first issue was only the thirty-sixth best selling comic of July (with subsequent issues faring worse). And even though I think it contains some of the best story-telling I’ve read lately (Kerschl/Fletcher’s The Flash/Iris West, Pope’s Strange Adventures, & Busiek/Quinones’ Green Lantern comes to mind) even I can’t get over the shitty newsprint material. In my opinion, such beautiful art shouldn’t be folded over and printed on gray toilet paper.

Perhaps Wednesday Comics may work better once it’s collected into an absolute edition. Maybe Strange Tales Max will be unappreciated until collected into a full anthology. Either way, both should be commended for the ways in which they strive for something else.

Strange Tales #2's cover is from Peter Bagge's "The Incorrigible Hulk"

It’s Saturday night and the gang of villains, molesters, and deviants that I call best friends are hanging out in my basement. Per usual our attention is divided between sparkly movements on the slab of plastic my consoles are hooked up to, and my computer. This is simply the way things have been, are, will be, as long as my friends and I hang out. One could only hope. Maybe someday there will be children and recitals and stoic boredom, but for now, our rituals are complete and typical.

It makes sense then, that I was showing my friend Bags the latest Diablo 3 videos that evening. For like my room, like our vulgarity and flatulence, Blizzard itself has become rote in our lives. It’s funny that I can say our lives, meaning my friends — all of them. You see, Bags doesn’t play Warcraft. Neither does my friend Jesse. Neither does Pepsibones.

But after listening to what has to be hundreds of hours of talk about raids, and dungeons, and Molten Core, and various bullshit going on in Vent while they were over, all my friends   have a working knowledge of the Blizzard universe. It has become ingrained, ritual, a part of our lives.

My girlfriend turns to me during the weeknight:

“Do you have to raid tonight?”

I remember explaining World of Warcraft and my uh…addiction to it when I first began dating Sam. I wasn’t aware of the extent of her nerdiness at the time. You see a beautiful blonde girl obsessed with fashion and you think one thing:

“I’m burying this lifestyle as deep as possible.”

I was living in the Warcraft closet. I mean, she knew that I played videogames. That was common hat. But as anyone who plays WoW seriously knows, WoW eschews being a video game and becomes a lifestyle.   Telling your new girlfriend you play videogames is one thing. Telling this to your girlfriend is another:

“Yeah, you see…On Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday…I sort of have to…like…every night I have to be online at 10 o’clock. Yeah. Like, I just have to be. I need to raid.”

“What’s raiding?”

“You see that’s a good question…”

And the conversation spirals from there. Luckily my girlfriend likes to get human amounts of sleep. You know, eight hours or some shit. I’ve heard about that. Sounds neat. I prefer going to bed at 1:30 am and waking up in time for class, whenever that may be. So it works out. She sleeps, and I continue the caffeine and sleep deprivation cycle that is ultimately going to kill me.

But now she gets it, now she knows. And now she asks me if I’m raiding on evenings.

As I said, it’s ingrained, it’s never ending. If you know me, it’ll infect you eventually.

Saturday evening again and we’re still peering over the videos. One of my best friends, Dave, walks over from the plastic slab where Madden is being played to the computer. We’ve moved on from the Diablo 3 videos. Now we’re watching the trailer for WoW: Cataclysm. The next expansion. The newest drug to snare us. It’s never ending.

Every couple of years Blizzard dangles new content in front of the junkies to get us excited, to keep us playing. New characters, continents, abilities, experiences. They know their clients well, they know how to keep us engaged. We’re watching the trailer and of course I’m losing my mind. It’s new WoW! Holy fucking shit!

Dave and I have been the comrades in Blizzard arms since 2000. Nine years now. We have spent a third of our lives plowing through hordes of demons. Dave’s the pusher, really. He got me into Diablo 2 back in the day, and the rest is history. I often tell the story of how my senior year of highschool was all Diablo 2 and Wendy’s.

For hundreds of hours during my senior year, Dave and I, parked across the city from one another, would play Diablo 2 until the wee hours of the morning. I remember with a nostalgic grin the only thing that could bring a stop to our gaming. One of us would inevitably say:

“Fuck, I’m hungry. Want to go to Wendy’s?”

But of course the trip to Wendy’s, the conversation at Wendy’s, the conversation from Wendy’s was all and only raving Diablo 2 madness. Holy shit mana leech ring blah blah Cow World blah blah Mephisto run.

And of course, the only logical conclusion is that we went back to our grinding on our computers immediately upon our return.

Dave, staring at the monitor, staring at Blizzard’s newest drug, rubs a palm against his eyes and says with a laugh:

“Fuck, I’m never going to be able to quit this game.”

But what would we do, if we quit the game? Or specifically, if we quit Blizzard? It sounds so pathetic when I type it, I’ll admit that. But to our defense we have full lives filled with nights with friends, madness at diners in the early mornings, I have tricked a girl into dating me. But there is this other side of us, punctuated by Blizzard. Always Blizzard.

You know you’ve been involved with Blizzard for too long when you can identify parts of your life by the product of theirs you were playing. It’s like asking your Dad what he was doing by asking him to talk about various seasons of his favorite sports team.”

“The 1982 Bruins? Oh yeah, I was…”

I can do the same thing with Blizzard. It freaks me out.

Diablo 2? Senior year.

Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction? Freshmen year of college, DT’s new album, Lord of the Rings.

WoW? We decided to play it during New Year’s Eve, 2004. I got it for my birthday.

WoW: The Burning Crusade? I spent the better part of it addicted to sleeping pills.

WoW: Wrath of the Lich King? The midnight release at Gamestop. Playing it until 3 am. Going to class the next day.

And so on, and so forth. It’s comforting and it’s ritualistic. I look forward to being able to associate future events with points in my life. Who knows what I’ll be doing when Diablo III hits? Finishing my Master’s Degree? What will I be playing when I have my first kid? Will I have to rearrange my honeymoon to fit the release of Galaxy of Starcraft or whatever they drop on us next?

Just kidding. I wouldn’t do that.

Wink.

In ten-thousand years, when they are harvesting the ashes of our remains from whatever sort of self-inflicted calamity we end ourselves with, I hope they find this video on some server somewhere. I hope they play it, look at one another, and then say:

Yeah, that about makes sense.

Kid Cudi is mainstream hip hop’s next potential savior.

Ok, let me step back and add a preface — I’m a twenty-two year old, white & nerdy (-6 points for the Weird Al reference) suburbanite who grew up listening to metal and drumming in a prog-metal band. With that being said, I truly believe that Kid Cudi is going to be next great, worthwhile hip hop act.

“Well, Pepsibones, what makes you think that?”

Well, three key points (which, for my sake, can be conveniently listed) stand out:

1) Exposure — This dude is getting pushed hardcore. As I said, I generally keep my ear turned to the harder hitting scenes/bands. And yet, I can’t help but hear about the sickness that is Kid Cudi. Between the Day’n’Nite single receiving continuous (or is that incessant?) radio play and features such as that in last month’s Spin, Cudi seems to be sneaking into the (pop) cultural consciousness. I mean, fuck, when I loaded up OL today the guy popped into the banner at the top and said hello to me.

In short, Kid Cudi is getting the media push needed to help hip hop. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m sure there are plenty of better (whatever that means) underground rappers — but without the exposure their words aren’t going to reach the masses. While I might have hoped for last year’s Esoteric vs. Japan: Pterodactyl Takes Tokyo! to have received more attention, I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t blow up and change the game; the exposure just wasn’t there. With Kid Cudi, it is.

2) Stylistic Plurality — When I subject myself to the radio or MTV, I usually find myself balking like the old man on the block, “Bah! All this rubbish sounds the same!” In the era of five-second ringtone hooks and a reliance on autotuner that makes Kirk Hammett’s wah-pedal use look like occasional experimentation, anything that breaks the mold is greatly appreciated. Not only does Kid Cudi bring a different, more earnest perspective, he presents it a number of different ways.

The A Kid Named Cudi mixtape features mellow, introspective numbers like 50 Ways to Make a Record & Man on the Moon (which shares its name with Cudi’s full-length), the danceable stoner’s love song that is Maui Wowie, a couple of more freestyle-feeling showcases such as Cudi Spazzin’, and hometown anthem Cleveland is the Reason (it is shocking that I’ve yet to see this track supporting a montage of King James dunks).

If Man on the Moon makes use of even half of the styles found on Cudi’s breakthrough mixtape, we’re all in for a treat. Again, between the exposure and success of Day’n’Nite, the people are already going to give his shit a chance — and when they see that he offers something for everyone, they’ll be hooked.

3) Inspiring Kanye to Stop Sucking – Up until November 2008, Kanye West was a hero of mine. In spite of the fact that he is one of the most arrogant pop culture figures of recent history, I couldn’t help but love the guy. Every interview and appearance found him talking all sorts of crazy shit, but I would just laugh it off, preferring to bob my head rather than shake it.

Maybe it was the fact that at his best, Kanye managed to truly inspire me to look past the preconceived paths laid before me and carve my own way through the brush of life.

[Good Morning]

Look at the valedictorian scared of the future

While I hop in the Delorean.

Scared-to-face-the-world complacent career student,

Some people graduate, but be still stupid.

They tell you read this, eat this, don’t look around…

For a time, even Kanye’s most heedless lyrics were awesome in their own ridiculous, hilarious way.

[New Workout Plan]

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and get them sit-ups right &
Tuck your tummy tight & do your crunches like this;
Give head, stop breathe, get up, check your weave
Don’t drop the blunt and disrespect the weed.

Yes, it’s hard to defend such songs as having any sort of deep literary merit, but they made me smile & laugh, and that certainly counts in my book.

But then Kanye broke up with a girl and lost his mind. Or something. The result: the dismal 808’s & Heartbreak which contains neither the mindful insights of personal empowerment nor humorous musings about girls and weed and drinking and all that other awesome shit. No, all that 808’s provides is autotuned ramblings about lamenting love.

[Coldest Winter]

Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?
Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?
Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?
Goodbye my friend will I ever love again?

Brilliant. And for those apologists that claim “It’s a heartfelt track about love!” I offer two counterpoints: 1) How heartfelt and raw can words be when processed until they sound like a robot? 2) Just because something is heartfelt doesn’t mean it’s any good.

But now we have Kid Cudi, carrying with him the inspiration to restore Kanye West to his former (admittedly arguable) greatness. Kanye enlisted Cudi to help him with 808’s & Heartbreak and the product was the slightly less reprehensible Welcome to Heartbreak. Since then, Kanye has dedicated himself to crafting tracks for Kid Cudi’s debut, including the reworking of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face into the much more overt lauding of oral sex that is Make Her Say. West even went as far as to contribute a verse, returning to his old jovial, fun-loving form in the process. Again, it may not be mentally dazzling, but even being entertaining is an improvement at this point.

Sure, the idea of Kid Cudi helping elevate Kanye back up to the plateau he once reached is wishful thinking. But even if this doesn’t become reality, Cudi’s good enough on his own to make a long lasting impression on the mainstream rap world that is, in my opinion, suffering from the fatigue of thematic repetition. Mark my words, Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon is going to be the relevant rap album of 2009.

That is, of course, until Lupe Fiasco puts out Lasers in December.

Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. But whoever Billy is, I want some of dem pills.