Sketch Gutter: Teenagers

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

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Watch Short Films Here!

SKETCH GUTTER: Cup o Joe.

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

Buy Satanic Killer Chicken Here!

Watch Short Films Here!

Pig's Good Day

We should eat animals, but, show them a good time first. We have broken a sacred trust with these animals. The cow, the chicken, sheep, and duck. Factory farms are an abomination. A $.99 cheeseburger is not worth the cruelty.100 chicken nuggets for five dollars is a joke. No respect for life there. Yes, eat an animal, just don't be such a jerk about it.

My ideal would be this. All animals are allowed to live on that perfect farm we all have in our heads, implanted there from watching cartoons. Red barn. White fence. Hills of green sun-kissed pastures and shady trees. All farmers should have straw hats, blue overalls, and should at all times have a stalk of wheat tucked in the side of their mouths. In this environment, animals are allowed to roam and play. Meet someone special. Fall in love. Have some babies.

Only after that, as say the pig grows to middle-age and is content to rest under a tree in a cool puddle of mud, do we send in the counselor. The counselor is expected, the pig knew this day would come, but it is okay. The counselor sits with the pig and through some sort of technology that has yet to be invented, talks with the pig about its life, are there any regrets he has, anything left undone?

With this information, the counselor takes the pig out for the time of its life! No dream left unfulfilled! A festival of dancing and song and clandestine rendezvous. Pure magic. A lifetime of joy crammed into 12 hours.

Then, as the sun sets on the farm, pig and counselor sit on the high hill and watch the sky turn a golden vibrant pink and orange, like fire painted across the heavens. The counselor holds the pig's hoof, asks if the pig had a good day. The pig watches the sunset. A tear forms and its eye, making it sparkle, and the pig takes a breath, and says, "This was the most perfect day of…" He never finishes. A man in a long black coat, wearing black leather gloves has been standing behind him the whole time, waiting for this moment. A pistol with silencer pointed to the back of the pig's skull. "This was the most perfect day of… " The trigger pulled. It's all over. The pig sleeps. That is how bacon should be made.


SD

SKETCH GUTTER: Butcher

Picture Day

-SD

Stay Stupid

 

Stay stupid. That's my advice. Go not into those hallowed halls of knowledge. Do not wander into the enlightenment. Dumb is better. Wonder is better. Making your own answers is better. Connect the dots with any uninformed magic line you can draw. The more ungrounded in reality the better. Don't end up like me.


Sure, I was like you. I wanted answers. I wanted facts. I needed measurements, and charts, and graphs. Show me a picture, write me a book. It didn't matter how big or small the subject. I had to look, know, feel it. The world owed me an explanation, and I got it. Oh boy. Now look at me!


The body changes. You are not the you from yesterday. No. The same name, the same shoes, the same clothes. But all that you learn takes you further from yourself, and deeper into the mad dangerous visions of strangers. Strangers with strange minds get in and blanket your brain with all those measurements, and facts, and biographical histories. Whatever your brain had tried to grow is now smothered. The light cannot reach you anymore. The wind is blocked by the rabble of expert opinions. A neat and tidy facade covering the great unknowable.


In such a poisonous environment, the body will change. Each little fact working and distorting. The cells will change. Every seven years the cells have replaced themselves. Who are you? Whose ideas have nurtured your new growth?


Sure, this brand of mine is a tower. This skull of mine fortress. The cells multiplied to accommodate all the new strangers who moved in. A tenement. I'm never lonely. But to look at the night and know terror again. To eat hard candy with the same relish as I do steak. To look and not know. What I wouldn't do to have that back.

Underbite

Moved to Hollywood. Got dreams, Baby. Going to be seeing lots of me. Get ready. I am the cypher that gives you hope, happiness, belief in self. Doing what I do on that big screen, gives you strength to do what you do. You inspire me, old salt, so I inspire you.

Agent said "Great, great, great, but fix that underbite. Nobody wants to dream through a snaggle toothed werewolf." It hurt, but I'm thick skinned. Gotta be in this biz. I took his reference, made an appointment, sat in the waiting room, and read Wired Magazine until the nurse called me back.

Oh and ah is what the nurse said feeling around my gumline. Oh and me is what the orthodontist said running gloves over my jaw. Not going to be cheap. Not going to be easy. Lot of pain involved. A lot of tears. No Insurance? A lot of bills. 

I never went to college. This would be my education. Pass through the membrane. Blast the hole with credit. Doing what you love takes sacrifice. What would Daniel Boone do it faced with reconstructive dental surgery?

They broke my jaw. Off. Accident they said. Accidents happen. More surgeries. More money. Couldn't audition. Face wrapped in drool soaked gauze. Couldn't read lines. They hammered and sawed on my face. Months and months. I worked stock jobs, mail rooms. Out of the spotlight. Painful to be in the shadows. 

Doc got me straight, though he could never completely erase the underbite. Threw in a free whitening. Agent didn't recognize me at first, but now, I have auditions lined up for weeks. The head shots don't lie.  The underbite gives me character, humanity, approachability. Perfection doesn't sell Pepsi.

I-Snail

I don't splurge on myself. Like to keep my money. Post consumer, that's me. Give me silence. That's all I need. Sleep and silence. However, when I heard that Apple had released the first wearable quantum computer, how could I resist?

I owed myself a luxury. This is why I work all these long hours, right? To indulge once in a while is fine. Is healthy. Is human. So off to the I-Store I went.

The line stretched out through the mall's double doors into the parking lot. The time was 5 AM. Everyone had been anticipating this latest advancement in personal bionic enhancement for years. Now, the day was here.

By noon, I had passed through the wide mouth of the I-Store. A genius took my measurements and asked how I would like my unit configured. I told him that I wanted to know what everyone's opinion of me was at all times of the day. If someone thought about me, I wanted to know. But only the positive. Please block all constructive criticism. Also, if I could listen to music, that would be great.

The genius smiled at me and then took a shiny white crate down from its high shelf. "Now once this goes on", he said, "there's no turning back." I thanked him, and kept thanking him, all the while he wrapped me in heavy black plastic. I am now a proud owner, if you couldn't tell, of an I-Snail. It even has a calendar.


Fight Evil

SD

JABBER: Office Drone

I wake up. Drink coffee. Comb my hair. Make polite conversation with the mirror. Practice smiling. Think about a word for the day. One word can start me on a new train. Nothing pops up. The books are empty upstairs.

First one in the office. Janitors just leaving. The air-conditioning is so loud when no one is here. It's like being in the sinuses of a whale practicing yoga. Exhale. I still don't have a word for the day. Exasperate? Nope.

Boss arrives. High fives the team and then calls me to her desk. She asks if I slept in the office again. No I say. Just got here early. Very early. She wants to know what I do all morning. I don't tell her about my word of the day. The mirror conversation. The deafening air conditioner. This and that is what I tell her. Still no word. Interrogation? No. That won't help me.

Lunch shows up, but I can't eat. My coworkers run out for sandwiches. I stay in. Too many choices on the menus. I stick to the vending machine. 803. Cheetos. I have Cheetos at 2 PM. Not doing that is as bad as not having a word.

Blowtorch. Is that two words? It will have to do. The train starts. I hop on. Faster and faster it barrels down the tracks. Blowtorch. All aboard. I feel the wind in my hair as I stick my head out the window. I can't hear the air conditioner over the whipping mountain wind around me. Blowtorch sets me free. The day ignites with color.

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Sketch Gutter: Baby On Bot

FIGHT EVIL
Sam Drog

Clown Versus Monkey! Check It Out Here!

Buy Satanic Killer Chicken Here!

Watch Short Films Here!