Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “Cherish Is the Word I Use – To Destroy You!”

* Part 3 of 7 of the REDemption storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “Cherish Is the Word I Use – To Destroy You”! These titles are atrocious and I’m about ready to punch a hole through my comic book…on my computer screen. In the previous installment, there’s an unexplained and rather inane flashback where a flight attendant hits on Jason Todd while he’s on his way to Hong Kong, then he fights a fat lady in Hong Kong, then he flies to the Himalayan Mountains to be sad at Ducra. Then he beats up some zombies and the rest of his team joins in. At first he didn’t really like these two, but they’ve grown on him in the last three days.

It’s dumb. Let’s keep going!

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [January, 2012]
Written by: Scott Lobdell
“Cherish Is the Word I Use – To Destroy You!”

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3

Cover art. Jason Todd puts on his Robin suit and starts fighting as Robin? K.

SOMEWHERE IN THE HIMALAYAS IN THE CHAMBER OF ALL. There’s a really gross, small, bald, half-naked baby-faced man sitting with resplendent decadence on some very fluffy pillows and surrounded by hookahs. He looks like he has a harem of 400 women who hate having to fuck this weird 4’ tall man-child adorned in jewelry. I hate how he looks. He looks like he smells bad.

“The little guy here is called S’aru the Proctor,” Todd narrates for us, the captive audience, “Don’t be fooled by his boyish demeanor. S’aru is over four millennia old. Thereabouts.”

Sounds like an awful existence. I’d want to die by the age of 200.

Jason is lucky he was allowed to get within ten feet of this guy. Especially since he has a very big gun, too. Typically, the All-Caste keeps everything and everyone away. Up until a half hour ago, that is. The All-Caste were slain by the Untitled. I still don’t know what either of those things are, so I’m unaffected. Let’s get back to jailbait over here.

“He’s so gonna shoot this kid – you watch,” Roy whispers to Starfire. She tells him to zip it.

Jason Todd narrates and introduction of the three of them again like it’s Issue #1. It ain’t Issue #1. Here’s Issue #1. Don’t bother clicking that.

He’s not here for revenge, at least not yet. What he’s here for is figuring out what the Untitled want so badly as to eliminate the All-Caste in one fell swoop. Also, since Jason was trained by the All-Caste, he feels like… well, revenge is such a strong word ain’t it? I guess you were right.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3

Not at all. I just wanted to comment on how stunningly gorgeous you look today, my liege.

“Fine,” says Sa’ru as he lifts a finger and produces some blue whispiness, “but I’m responsible for holding onto your most cherished memories as collateral. You can have them back – if you return.”

And, lo’, S’aru takes their most cherished memories. Jason Todd getting reamed by Batman. Koriand’r winning her 7th grade spelling bee. Roy Harper eating a huge pile of McDonald’s hamburgers. “Behind that door,” S’aru points to a door, “everything awaits.” He says this about the door. The door he points to. They have to go through the door now.

“Take a deep breath and hold it,” Todd says about his companions that also went through the door after he went through the door. “The Chamber of All can be a little overwhelming at times.”

Yeah, that’s a fucking understatment. The room looks like a M.C. Escher Clown Circus. “This is your old stomping ground, huh?” Roy asks, looking around in every direction. “No wonder you’re so screwed in the head.”

Yes, yes, ha ha. Jason explains that this place has twisty paths that can lead you anywhere and any time in history that you want to go to. The problem is that he has no idea where or when he’s supposed to go to. Per the Ducra, just start walking somewhere. Good advice. The other two are less than reassured.

Back outside the nexus, as the nightmare room is called, S’aru lazily juggles the three memories in his hand and becomes quite curious at its contents. You mean after four millennia these three blowjobs are interesting enough to breach some rules. Go suck a lemon.

Hmm, well, he’ll just look into Koriand’r’s. She’s an alien so it’s not really against the rules. Maybe there’s some sex stuff in hers, that’s always fun. It takes a while to penetrate the orb, but he eventually succeeds and sees a poor little sad slave girl in shackles trudging through some mud. The most cherished of memories!

A PRISON RUN BY THE CITADEL, CONQUERORS OF THE PLANET TAMARAN. We’re going to see a young Starfire really fuck some shit up, I think. Hoo boy! Buckle up!

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3

HEY, YOU! What did we say about splushing?!

A giant blue beast with a giant orange gun tells her to get up after she falls like a damsel in distress. “I was a pod your age once,” he says, likely feigning sympathy. “You should be running free, young princess. I am sorry on behalf of all my people.”

Sounds good, I’m all muddy and sore, but thank you for your sympathy. That and a quarter will buy me a horsey ride at Target. “DROP DEAD YOU SANCTIMONIOUS PUSS,” Koriand’r shouts while shoving her fist in his chest. A bright, magenta light emanates from his chest. His eyes shoot bright beams like headlights. He looks like he’s screaming, but you can’t hear comic books you silly goose! Come on, now.

A few similar beasts step forward and warn her to keep still else ya get a face full of gun bullets.

The end! The memory fades away and S’aru is left with his own thoughts. And it looks like he’s not used to that. “Urp. That was… disturbing. That was her most cherished memory?” he asks with an expression of uneasiness. “Just how screwed up is this trio?”

Ha! Me likey. Back in the chamber, they come across what Todd was looking for. Presumably. The three of them enter a cavern with a lavish walkway. At the end is a pedestal with a glowing artifact. Just like a video game. Scott Lobdell’s inspirations are paper thin.

“How do you know that is what the Untitled who slayed your friends left here, or even why?” Starfire asks, and she’s dumb if she expects a real answer.
“They’re taunting me – leaving bread crumbs I’m sure I’m meant to follow.”

See?

Starfire has a bad feeling about this and urges her companions to get the hell out of here. This is a setup. Roy Harper disagrees, and although he doesn’t want S’aru tonguing his memories invasively, he thinks Starfire is overreacting.

I should start calling Roy by his “superhero” name (and I use the term loosely) so that I can try to start remembering it for reasons that aren’t actually clear to me right now. It’s Arsenal. Jason Todd is Red Hood, that one should be easy to remember! And they’re all Outlaws! Now we’re all on the same page.

Anyway… sure enough, with a SPL-TANG, dozens of jagged, razor-sharp spikes pop up from the floor in a mess of crazy angles. Arsenal and Red Hood hang on, unharmed, to two particularly big ones. It’s up to Koriand’r to scope things out and figure out what’s going on. She’ll put those 7th grade spelling bee skills to good use, I’m sure.

The jagged spikes are actually on the head and back of an enormous, and gross, monster creature. It’s sickly green with green eyes, a head shaped like an Astro Boy Jabba the Hut, a twisty green tongue, and it has large fangs. It looks like MY WIFE, AHH HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! gets handed divorce papers

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3

Ah, so this replaces the one where you humped a toilet at age 14 so that the cum goes right in the toilet? Are you sure?

They fight and make their various “witticisms” (and I use the term loosely).

“Untongue me, creature!” Starfire yells after it wraps its awful tongue around her. I think Arsenal heard the same thing the other day. Then it tries to eat here. And then I’m pretty sure it does.

We’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming after this. S’aru continues to reek of boredom and decides to pry into Roy Harper’s toilet-jack-off memory. What’s the harm? He already broke one rule. What are they gonna do about it? Kick him out of the Chamber of All? Pfft.

Roy is in a fist fight with a big crocodile on two legs. It’s wearing slacks. They’re exchanging uppercuts and noogity noogs. Roy drops something red and it breaks, I don’t know what it is. The crocodile is wearing slacks.

“S’at all you got?” Roy slurs as he gets beaten up worse than the crocodile.
“Enough boy!” yells the lizard. “Why won’t you stay down?!”

And the answer to that is all “I’m Roy Harper”! And he’s bleeding profusely like a geek.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3

Don’t wriggle out of this one, Lacoste. You started it!

The crocodile stops. He realizes that Roy Harper wants to die, but he’s too much of a chickenshit to stick his head in the oven, or jump off a bridge, or put rocks in his pockets like Virginia Woolf and walk out into the river. Roy Harper calls it a genius move!

“No,” the crocodile (wearing slacks) responds as he tenderly holds Roy’s shoulders, “‘genius’ would be to pull your head out of your butt and figure out how to get on with your life, Harper.”

“Is this really how you want it all to end? Beaten to death on a rooftop in Hell’s Kitchen?” Croc continues. I mean… fuck yeah? By a crocodile? Wearing slacks? That sounds pretty cool.

The reason for Harper’s suicide ideation is that he lost all his shares in Q-Core, and I don’t know what that is but he must have had quite a lot of shares. Enough to kill himself like it’s 1929 or some shit.

Anyway, what a touching moment. I wonder if S’aru is barfing up his 4000-year-old stomach.

After assuring Harper that would love to snap the guy in half at a moment’s notice, he tells Harper to do his own dirty work. “You want to kill yourself? Leave me out of it.”

He’s still holding onto Roy Harper in a nice, warm, cold-blooded embrace. “For a monster…” Roy says woozily, “…you’re not such a bad guy.”

“YOU WON’T THINK OF THAT NEXT TIME WE MEET.”

And…. scene.

I predict that Jason Todd’s precious memory is going to be when Batman tells him that’s proud of him. sniff Batman was always like the dad he never murdered.

Oh my god, S’aru isn’t puking. He actually finds this memory kind of sweet. He has this hazy, smiley look about him. Like 4,000 years of being alive hasn’t made him irrecoverably jaded for some reason.

But he still calls it pathetic. Because even skinny, baby-faced, shirtless, immortal beings gotta get their jabs in one way or another.

Meanwhile, Roy is miffed that this giant, spiky turd-shaped monster ate the hot one, so he’s going to try to save her. “She’ll be ok,” Red Hood assures his pathetic jack-off-memory friend, “Just keep aiming those arrows.”

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3

Visit Colorado! They have a barn!

While havoc continues being wreaked and the room around them continues being crazy and the large, fat monster continues glorping and glooping, Red Hood scales the stalactite-y remnant of a pillar where the pedestal with the glowing artifact sits. He’s almost there…. Almost… he’s gonna make it… just… a… few… more… feet… and…

A snowglobe! A St. Elsewhere snowglobe! Advertising Colorado? Why, that’s one of the most rectangular of the states! The United States!

Roy continues trying to bust Starfire out of the monster’s belly, but she doesn’t need him. She does it herself. “Those were unacceptable accommodations for a princess,” she says while the monster cries in pain from exploded stomach syndrome. And then they boogie on out of there. Roy discusses being emasculated by not being able to actually help, so this is the point where I finally make a decision that Roy sucks. I know, I know, should’ve been a long time ago.

The trio hath boogied. S’aru is quite surprised to see them back, I’m positive that he expected these three to get smeared across the floor like peanut butter on a cracker! And that sounds pretty good right now! So hand back over those sexy, sexy memories!

Before that happens, Red Hood has some questions that need answering! Namely “what the fuck is this snowglobe for, Baldy?” And S’aru does not know. And he hands back over the memories.

Red Hood is salty. He doesn’t want his memory back.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 1), Issue #3

I don’t need it where I’m going: Chuck E. Cheese! Time to make some new kickass memories!

Hey, we end with a scene over at Wayne Manor! Looks like a flashback, perhaps a great memory, of Jason Todd’s stint as Robin. Alfred asks Bruce for some help; Robin has the flu and he looks sad. He’s all geared up and ready to go patrolling with Buddy Batman, but Alfred doesn’t find his involvement in the night’s festivities reasonable. Smack some sense into that kid, Brucey!

Pffft, FUCK you Alfred. Bruce Wayne says he’s coming along, flu or no flu. 105 degree temperature or no 105 degree temperature. Prolapsed anus or… you get the picture. Just kidding! Sit this one out. There will be many more days of clown hunting and penguin snatching and sewer diving. Promise.

“Yes, sir. Hmph.”

So Jason is holed up in the manor with a very red alcoholic’s nose. Oh wait, that’s right, he’s sick. Alfred comes into the room to comfort him, but he doesn’t wanna hear anything that THE BUTLER has to say!

Then a maskless Batman (it’s Bruce Wayne, spoiler alert) enters the room. “Taking a night off once in a while isn’t a crime, Jason,” Bruce says, cozying up next to the 10-year-old on the couch. “So, what are we watching?” he says as they both settle down for an evening of Shasta McNasty on UPN! Look it up.

Jason rests his head on his hero’s shoulder.

Final Thoughts

Yeah, those new Chuck E. Cheese memories are a good replacement! Jason made the right call.


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To the Bone (2017)

Tagline:
Don’t fade away.

Wide Release Date:
July 14, 2017

Directed by:
Marti Noxon
Written by:
Marti Noxon
Produced by:
Bonnie Curtis, Karina Miller, Julie Lynn

Starring:
Lily Collins
Keanu Reeves
Carrie Preston
Lili Taylor
Alex Sharp
Liana Liberato

To the Bone

PREGAME THOUGHTS

I know nothing about this movie. No context, no preconceived notions, no thoughts going in. I was scanning Netflix and I jumped right in. I barely even know what it’s about. Lily Collins is cute. Let’s go.

To the Bone - Susan's Cake

I found your cure for anorexia! A big fucking hamburger cake.

THE 450(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Ellen (Lily Collins) has anorexia. It’s affecting her health and her relationship with her terrified family. She’s a 20 year old artist who dropped out of college, and previous psychotherapy methods, inpatient programs, and attempts to force food down her gullet haven’t worked. Her stepmother Susan (Carrie Preston) doesn’t want her around the house, so she signs her up for yet another inpatient program led by Dr. Beckham (Keanu Reeves). He, as you might imagine, is VERY believable as a fucking specialty doctor.

In the program Ellen goes! She is surrounded by depressed young women and teenagers with eating disorders, plus one flamboyant dude named Luke (Alex Sharp) who exists to trick the audience into thinking he might be gay and inspired by Ellen’s art only to find out later that he’s, of course, in love with Ellen and will make a rather rude move on her later. Luke is very outgoing and appoints himself as the savior of the other program’s patients; trying to motivate and bring out the best in everyone and all that garbage.

To the Bone - Luke's Chocolate

Come on, Ellen. Eat the poop! Ellen! Eat the poop!

Ellen’s dad is not present in the movie, perhaps because he doesn’t want to be involved in his ailing daughter’s life, so there’s no surprise when he doesn’t show up to family therapy. Her mother Judy (Lili Taylor), who abandoned Ellen almost two years ago, is there with her lesbian partner. Ellen’s step-mother and younger sister is there too. The family therapy session goes extremely poorly! It is revealed later that some artwork Ellen posted online motivated a girl to commit suicide, which prrrroooobably didn’t help Ellen’s mental health.

As the movie goes on, Ellen eats less and less even though she starts bonding with the other patients and warming up to Luke. Dr. Beckham makes a point to tell Ellen that her name doesn’t suit her, which prompts her to unofficially change her name to Eli. I was going to call this reference to Elliot Page, but this predates that and I’m quite wrong. In any case, this is the only time that Ellen/Eli shows any type of gender fluidity and it isn’t expanded upon whatsoever later in the movie. It felt tacked on. Because it was.

Following the aforementioned rude move that Luke makes, Eli loses that gained trust. Then another patient named Megan has a miscarriage due to excessive purging. That’s also mentally debilitating, and Eli runs away from the home to return to her mother’s house. There’s a weird scene where her mother rocks her while feeding her from a bottle that I’d rather not remember anymore.

To the Bone - Ellen's Hallucination

Yo, Ellen, that’s not your bed. You missed it by about 850 yards.

Eli takes a walk that night and passes out from malnutrition. She has dreams and visions of kissing Luke and seeing her dead, naked, emaciated body from high up in a tree. Waking up from this terrifying hallucination breathes new life into her, and she agrees to continue her treatment.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — These Women Aren’t Skinny Enough

Oh, go fuck yourself. I’m not here to display some sort of misogynistic societal view of the unhealthy, unrealistic standard the Western world places on women’s bodies. I’m here to say these women aren’t skinny enough! See what I mean? Of course you do.

Maybe that’s unfair and short-sighted, right? Maybe a movie about anorexia shouldn’t have its actors become legitimately anorexic in order to maintain the realism. Maybe this is a bad topic and I’ll move on from it.

To the Bone - Ellen

Sorry, Lily Collins. I didn’t mean to request that you had dropped an additional 30 pounds for the role. It won’t happen again. Say hi to Phil Collins for me.

TOPIC 2 — Fuck the Romance Plot

God, this is the literal worst. Why on Earth can’t it just be a platonic relationship? That would’ve been cute. That would’ve been nice. A young man can still care about a young woman without wanting to bone her. Bone her To the Bone! Why couldn’t it be a movie about Ellen’s physical and mental struggles and just leave it at that?

I could tell the story was leading to Luke eventually making an inappropriate move. I knew it when she first met him. I could see it in his eye twinkle and his ugly British teeth. The movie was decent enough until the cheesy Rain Room scene, which kicked off the nagging feeling that we were starting to phone it in and focus more on the needless romance subplot instead of the main eating disorder stuff. It’s almost a slap in the face to the overall message the movie was presenting: that anorexia is a serious problem with serious psychological implications to the sufferer and his/her family members. In a movie that passes the Bechdel test 80 times, why shoehorn this shit in with one out of only two male characters? Which brings me to the next topic:

TOPIC 3 — Keanu Reeves

It’s so strange to me that the people involved with writing and directing To the Bone decided that a no-nonsense male specialist with altruistic intentions, the second of the two male characters, should be the savior. In a house full of women, no one drives Ellen to reach her full potential other than Dr. Beckham and Luke. The women barely even try! Well, her mother tries by feeding her breast milk, but I don’t count that as anything worthwhile or sane.

Keanu Reeves’ character speaks entirely in hollow platitudes and trite motivational tactics. There may as well have been a scene where he sits backwards in his chair to “rap” and then tells Ellen that she needs to tell the nagging voice inside her to fuck off if it tries to tell her to keep being anorexic. Ha ha, wait, yeah, that scene basically happened anyway.

I guess it just sucks that this character couldn’t be a woman. There’s nothing really to gain in 2017 by schlepping a narrative where the older, wise man saves the troubled, young woman. I hate it. Get Kathy Bates in there telling Ellen to straighten up a fly right. Now there’s a movie!

To the Bone - Dr. Beckham

Whoa.

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Lily Collins and Marti Noxon suffered from an eating disorder in the past.
I’d suffer an eating disorder too if my dad was Phil Fucking Collins. I’d do it on purpose.

Lily Collins worked closely with a nutritionist both during filming, and for several months afterwards, to ensure her health during her weight loss and subsequent weight gain.
I wonder if Christian Bale worked closely with a nutritionist when he became a skeleton for The Machinist? It probably went a little something like this:

Nutritionist: punch

Netflix bought the film for 8 million dollars.
Yeah, and thanks for doubling my subscription cost over the last four years, you pieces of shit.

Lili Taylor and Brooke Smith were both on Six Feet Under together.
Uh huh. Looks like we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here already. Moving on.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

To the Bone is rife with problems. I personally wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re really interested in a vapid love story disguised as an insightful mental illness awareness story.

Plus, that breast milk feeding scene? That was fucking weird, man.

To the Bone - Breast Milk

Hmmm. Maybe I should’ve just eaten the poop.


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The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 18: “The Caemlyn Road”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

When it comes to fantasy books where a group spends the entire book traversing a map, there are two flavors of the “going down the road” sections: 1) The group does a lot of talking amongst themselves for 15 pages. The more knowledgeable characters fill the more ignorant characters in on worldbuilding-related matters. 2) The group gets ambushed by dogs or wolves or baddies and must fight and/or run away for 15 pages. I think the first type is interesting. I think the second type is boring. Chapter 18 was of the second type.

On the Caemlyn Road, heading toward wherever, the troupe of eight starts hearing battle horns in the distance behind them. Lan breaks off to investigate and discovers about 500 Trollocs advancing on them within the hour. Horns are now heard in every direction. Horns as far as the, uh, ear can hear.

They rush to make a decision on where to go from here. Lan suggests a place where Trollocs can’t go. A mysterious magical place with candy and toys, but Moiraine says NO! Instead, they battle an army of Trollocs that ambush them from ahead.

Lan cries “For the Seven Towers!” before entering the fray. Being a couple of lame mimics, Rand and Perrin do their own battle cry: “Manetheren!” yells Rand. Mat Cauthon says this: “Carai an Caldazar! Carai an Ellisande! Al Ellisande!” He doesn’t even know what it means, where it came from, why he said it, or why he even knows it. Egwene admits that it sounded familiar to her. Moiraine recognizes it as an ancient Manetheren war cry, so that means Mat did one better than his comrades in the war cry game.

Moiraine does some of that useful Aes Sedai sorcery and causes ripples in the Earth and throws the Trollocs and the Fades away from them. Then she creates a large wall of fire between them, allowing the group to continue riding north to safety. You see, an Aes Sedai is like all the Captain Planet Planeteers rolled into one! The climax of the novel will be the reveal of her Heart power, the most dumbshit of all the Planeteers’ powers.

Once the war horns are heard again, Lan insists on going to where the Trollocs can’t go. Moiraine agrees, and they come upon the ruins of a gigantic city. It used to be called Aridhol, named after Manetheren’s buddy. Now it’s called Shadar Logoth. The chapter ends with that revelation as if it’s a cliffhanger that’s supposed to mean something to me, but it means nothing to me. It means literally nothing, just like the words “trolloc” and “aes sedai” and “rand” and “wheel” and “time”.


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Paper Girls, Issue #12

* Part 2 of 5 of the Paper Girls Volume 3 storyline *

Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Paper Girls, Issue #12! In the previous installment, the girls try to figure out where in time they might be. It’s either very far in the past, or very far in the future. Hard to tell.

Mac encounters a wild woman near a river who attempts to sort of try to kill her with a bow and arrow. A very large beast emerges from the woods and knocks Mac into the river. KJ jumps in to try and save her.

The issue ends with a futuristic woman, Dr. Qanta Braunstein, who time traveled successfully to her destination: 11,706 BCE! And she’ll be meeting up with the girls before you can say boo.

BOO! Did I scare you?

Sorry.

Paper Girls, Issue #12 [March, 2017]
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan

Paper Girls, Issue #12

The cover shows Mac is dead. She died of river cancer.

Wild Woman was able to extract her arrow from the tree that it had been wedged within. “JAN CHARA!” she shouts while pulling back her bowstring. I think I had a neighbor named Jan Chara once.

She lets the arrow loose and it plunges right into the very large beast with a simple “fwick”. The beast collapses immediately to the ground.

What an ordeal. ♪♫ Let’s go get some ice cream! ♫♪♫

Oh wait, not yet. Wild Woman slowly says some Wild Woman Words before her eyes roll back in her head and she starts to collapse herself. “Grab her kid!” Tiff shouts as the woman keels over.

Tiff is able to catch the woman before she hits the ground, and that’s rather impressive considering Tiff is a 12-year-old Arkanoid player and this Wild Woman is some jungle lady who probably has heavy muscles and, oh yeah, also a baby.

Speaking of the baby, Erin grabs the baby as requested while the woman continues being dead weight in Tiff’s arms. “It’s ok, little guy,” Erin says calmly as the kid screeches in her hands.

Paper Girls, Issue #12

I believe the technical term for that is “the vapors”.

Tiff asks what happened, but after Erin gives her a very Erin-like answer to that question, Tiff goes “Whatever. We have to go after Mac and KJ.” The river could’ve already taken them to Lake Erie by now! THROUGH CLEVELAND! Gross!

Hold your horses, Tiffany! They can’t just leave Baby and Baby-Mama here to be eaten by another Bigfoot Yeti creature! “Well, I’d ask if they want to tag along, but I don’t exactly speak cavewoman, do you?”

Tiff with the sarcasm! Zip zip zing! On fire today! Do not underestimate Erin Tieng. She may be meek and weird and destined to a future of antidepressants, but she knows how to steal one of those translator collars from her future self if she needs to! And she needed to! And she did! And here it is! And they should use it! “As soon as it came off, that clone girl started talking a completely different language.”

Aha! Yes yes yes. So if we put the choker on the baby, we’ll hear “waaahh, I’m hungry, I need some titties”. But that won’t be helpful! So let’s put it on the Wild Woman. She might say the same thing! But at least she’ll also eventually say some other things.

After exchanging some Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references about the Babel fish, Erin sighs and wishes she actually did have a guide to the galaxy. It would really help them right now. I disagree. It would just tell them that they’re on Earth. Done. Unhelpful.

“And I sure as shit didn’t bring a towel.”

Very good. Well done.

I wanna see what the River Girls are up to. KJ comes to the surface with a limp, assuredly waterlogged Mac, whom she drags to the riverbank. “Please don’t be dead,” she pleads to the girl who’s going to die anyway, so what’s the point? We’re all gonna die someday, slipping into blissful oblivion until the end of time and then some.

Uplifting! Here’s what else is uplifting: Mac, being lifted up by KJ. Then down again, because it’s mouth-to-mouth resuscitation time.

Mac doesn’t take well to it.

Paper Girls, Issue #12

I, too, wish there was less perversion in CPR. My workplace is just lousy with CPR training sex offenders!

Mac coughs. KJ is taken aback. “Excuse me for saving your life,” she mutters, annoyed. “Nobody asked you to, dipstick,” Mac continues coughing, “Unlike me, you’ve probably still got a nice long life to live.

Mac’s last cigarette has been ruined. Now there’s a tragedy.

The news of Mac’s inevitable cancer was something KJ wasn’t around to hear about in the first place, but Tiff filled her in on it. “Just because the Ghost of Christmas Future shows you something doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll come true right?” she asks, leaning down to help Mac up from the ground. Mac doesn’t allow KJ to do this either. “Great, now the Jewish kid is gonna lecture me about Christmas.”

OK, now we’re gettin’ pissed! “You’re a total asshole, Mac.”

Uh huh, we all knew that already! Where’ve you been, KJ? Living under a rock? Living thousands of years in the past? Dimwit.

Silence is broken! HARROOOOO! The noise is coming from inside the forest. Based on the noise… yes… it must be Richard Nixon’s head! Arrroooo!!

Mac grabs onto KJ, scared. The noise goes away. Complete silence. Scared hugging continues.

Morning comes. Tiff and Erin have Wild Woman sleeping with head resting on a Cleveland Preserver newspaper bag (just in case you forgot that these four are paper girls, after all!).

The Wild Woman wakes up and looks around. Newspaper bag. Erin holding her baby. Two girls wearing weird clothes from thousands of years in the future. All this is already weird and terrifying.

“What the holy fuck?!” the woman exclaims. The collar works!

Paper Girls, Issue #12

I wish I had my own swear collar. I’d say some of the rudest cusses!

“Don’t kill my baby! We only came to this place because I… I thought it’s what you dream women wanted!”

Ha! OK, now we’re cooking with gas! …well, not yet. What’s this now? Dream women? The only Dream Woman I know is Audrey Tautou as Amélie! And neither of these two fit the bill!

“Kid, no one is going to hurt your… kid,” Tiff tells her as reassuringly as she can muster. I forgot the Wild Woman is supposed to be a Wild Child. They thought she might not be much older than them.

“You mean… you people aren’t from the stony stream?”
“Wait, Stony Stream?” Erin asks, surprised and confused, “That’s what you call this place?”
“That’s what the women who bother me in my sleep call it,” Wild Child responds, taking her baby back. She goes on about women talking to her once she became pregnant and how she had to follow a fallen star to the clearing in the forest. “They said if I wanted my boy to live, I had to receive their lost treasure from the three men.”

Great, now the Wild Child is gonna lecture them about Christmas. And, I– whuzzat? Yeah, that sounds awfully familiar, right? Jesus? In the year 11,706 BC? You do know what “BC” stands for, correct? Jesus didn’t live to be 11,739 years old! I mean, I don’t know, maybe he did. He WAS, like, a really hot wizard.

Tiff recognizes this right away as well. Fuckin’ Jesus, man. Erin is skeptical, but Tiff has to admit that it’s pretty close. Except for, again, the being nearly 12,000 years ahead of schedule part of it. “I mean, a pregnant woman follows a star to get gifts from three wise men?”

Paper Girls, Issue #12

Moe, Larry, and Curly? Ted Danson, Tom Selleck, and Steve Guttenburg?

“The three men are not wise,” Wild Child says with utter contempt in her voice. She calls them murderers! Savages! Republicans! Awful, awful men, these three. Just the worst God has to offer. They used to be part of her guild, but then they did some unspeakable things. Like vote for Mike Huckabee! Now they “dwell downstream”. Like salmon.

Oh snap! Those two friends of theirs whom they just met two days ago are downstream right now! KJ is trying to kiss Mac there! Oh dear god no!

Wild Child offers her condolences. Their friends are probably dead and she’s sorry! Definitely dead. Ripped apart by three unwise men.

Hey, remember futuristic Dr. Qanta Braunstein? She’s chilling in the woods right now, literally. It’s cold. She wants to add an entry to the Captain’s Log, Stardate 8675309. This message is for her sister: the air is beautiful here in A Lot of Years in the Past. So crisp and clean, bereft of toxins and carbon emissions and smog and Elon’s musk.

Her sister is named Shusha. Qanta mentions in her audio blog that she’s experiencing a sense of déjà vu. You know, that feeling you get when you’ve definitely been in the Land of the Lost.

Paper Girls, Issue #12

Oh yeah, Chuck E. Cheese. It doesn’t get any more crisp, clean, and fresh than that. The ball pit is not at all filled with the urine of 1,000 children.

Qanta remembers a split second in the Mouse Restaurant where “the concept of time as a line suddenly felt very real”. It was a moment of existential crisis. She felt very insignificant. And now, finding herself smack dab in the middle of people-are-barely-even-people times, Qanta feels even less significant. No one is important. Everything is irrelevant. People are going to go extinct someday. We are no more special than any other biological entity that will also go extinct some day. The heat death of the universe is inevitable. Entropy is always increasing.

Sorry, almost all of that is a projection of my own existential crisis.

Qanta finds some poop on the ground and then investigates the poop. It definitely looks like poop. Definitely not from a wolf. That’s as far as her investigation takes her. Kinda looks like a human turd, actually.

Crazy stuff, though. There’s not supposed to be anybody here. Her computer machine tracker simulation device console told her that the place is supposed to be deserted! Bereft of men and women and children and Elon’s musk!

“…a software update is required.”

Oh please, that doesn’t help at all. Are you telling me that nothing is functioning properly? Fuck, man, here: hits the big, red software update button

Well, that didn’t work. Now what? Qanta starts panicking, but I’m not exactly sure why yet. Perhaps she hates people AND the poop that goes along with them? It’s entirely possible that she has had a really awful experience when it comes to people and poop. Chuck E. Cheese comes to mind again…

Paper Girls, Issue #12

Man, shunking arrows? This is just not my day.

An arrow narrowly misses the Mohawked One. “SHENTOG!” yells a large caveman, running toward her. He’s covered in mud. He has a big square painted on his chest. He certainly doesn’t look like he can even hold a bow, let alone shoot an arrow with it in any competent manner without accidentally gouging out his own eyeball and impaling his brain. So let’s see if he does just that…

…rats, no such luck. I guess Qanta’s going to to have to blast the motherfucker with her Star Trek phaser. So let’s see if she does just that…

…cool, it worked, but now Qanta regrets doing what looks, incriminatingly, like a murder here in the year 11,000,700,000,000 BCE. A couple of fellow “SHENTOG!” cavemen come out of the woodwork (“woodwork” here means “the woods”) and clubs her in the back of the head. One has an upside-down triangle painted on his chest. One of them takes her phaser and her helmet and starts playing Space Marine; he has a power symbol painted on his chest.

Some more Apple-related shenanigans, I see.

Meanwhile, the Not-Dead KJ and Mac are chilling on a beach downriver. Most of their clothes are hanging to dry on a nearby branch. KJ kicks the sand in a frustrated, rather undignified manner. “I don’t think they’re coming for us.”

Mac isn’t expecting anyone to come for anybody. In fact, SCREW Erin and Tiff. She wants to go look for that red shooting star. Or at least what looked like a red shooting star. Mac calls it a “comet-thing”. It was most certainly Dr. Qanta McNulty “Jeff” Braunstein’s capsule descension. Or whatever the real opposite of “ascension” is. Someone look that up for me, I don’t have Ask Jeeves on my computer!

KJ absolutely, positively does NOT want to investigate the possible crazy time machine with some possibly crazy and/or homicidal futuristic boogeyman within.

This is a completely inopportune moment, but Mac notices that KJ is bleeding down her leg, signaling a moon’s blood given rise to her bountiful womanhood. Good luck with that right now, getting your first period a million years in the past. They made tampons out of cattails back then, but don’t take my word for it. I don’t have AltaVista on my computer.

Paper Girls, Issue #12

It’s less of a period and more of an exclamation point! Hahahaha! C’mon KJ, isn’t that funny??

Of course, Mac interprets it as something else because these kids are 12 years old. “Did you cut yourself rescuing me,” she yells, alarmed, like a wide-eyed, innocent Dennis the Menace, “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

Just shut the fuck up, Mac. Seriously. And now Mac is panicking because periods are not only gross, but, like, come on.

“Oh shit,” Mac says, turning away.

“I mean, congratulations?”

Awkward.

Final Thoughts

Looking forward to almost everything going on here! The pursuits of Dr. Qanta Fitzsimmons “Roy” Braunstein! The further bonding of Erin, Tiff, and the Wild Child from hella in the past!

Not so much the period blood.


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The Eye of the World (Book 1) – Chapter 17: “Watchers and Hunters”

The Wheel of Time - Book 1 - The Eye of the World

Gaiety abounds in the Stag and Lion common room! Why, Thom the Gleeman hops around the room like a loon regaling the clientele with fanciful legends and tales like The Great Hunt and The Great Cunt and Larry the Bard’s Trip to Disney World. Then he grabs a flute like Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull and everyone dances! Oh, the joy! The fun! It feels good to live life to the fullest again! I’m sitting here jealous that I can’t enjoy an evening of dancing to some child molester’s flute playing. I really was born in the wrong time.

Several times during the dancing, Rand notices a man with a large scar across his face sneering at him. Mat noticed the man as well. Lan tells them he’s a spy for the Whitecloaks, and that’s going bite them all in the butt come morning. Forget about that now, it’s time for bed. Rand goes to the kitchen to get some milk and runs into a Fade on the way back to his quarters. It scares the shit out of him. He thinks he’s gonna die, and he almost does! But then the Fade tells Rand that he belongs to the Great Lord of the Dark, which sounds like the alter ego of some goth teenager named Brian.

It totally sucks, man, that this Fade showed up at the Stag and Lion in the middle of the night. Lan ain’t havin’ it, and they prepare to leave forthwith! Moiraine implores Mister Fitch the Innkeeper Extraordinaire that his inn is in danger, but he will hear none of it! Darkfriends! Darkfriends! They’re gonna come getcha.

The party leaves. Nynaeve joins them because she still intends to shepherd these kids back to Emond’s Field even if they all die a horrible death doing so! Plus, she doesn’t want to leave them alone with this bitch over here points to that Moiraine bitch

They all reach the gates leading out of the city and get ambushed by a group of Nazis. I mean, Whitecloaks. They get all up in Lan’s face, but he remains stoic. Moiraine gets attacked when they learn she is an Aes Sedai, which makes her grow about ten feet tall. All like “RAAWWRRR GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!” It works, they retreat a bit, and the party leaves through the gate with none the wiser!

If Moiraine being an Aes Sedai didn’t freak the kids out enough, this event was even freakier. Is there no end to what the Aes Sedai will do in front of them?! A menace, to be sure. Especially since, get this, the Stag and Lion has been attacked and is now on fire and she wants them to continue on without looking back! Whomever attacked the inn thinks the three boys are still there, so it’s all their fault. Nynaeve yells at Moiraine to go back and help, but Moiraine tells her go eat dirt.

So Nynaeve eats dirt. They continue on with their journey.


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