A Pixelated Mind

Memo to all Pixel Inc. Associates

Due to continued time shortages and increasingly pessimistic economic projections, Pixel Inc. has decided to lay-off some associates. Therefore, we will be reposting all positions and asking current team members to reapply. We understand that this is a hassle, but hope to give everyone a fair shot to keep their position as Pixel Inc. goes through this very terrible restructuring.

Therefore, if you are an associate looking to return to your position or consider yourself able to advance, we encourage you to submit your resume and cover letter to submissions@pixcapacitor.com. We have openings across the board, including:

• True Friend
• Good Friend
• Buddy
• Friendly Acquaintance
• Byte-sized Acquaintance

Positions open at the time of the restructuring will stay open until they are filled. These positions include

• Girlfriend
• Best friend
• Hacker friend
• Gay friend
• Stoner friend
• (The jock friend position has been eliminated)

So please, if you’re an associate, contact us immediately about your position. If you are looking for work, now may be your time to be considered a member of our wonderful family. In any case, we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you,

Pixel Q. Styx III

My ten-year high school reunion is coming up in five years, so I’ve already started working on my lies. As you may know, the secret to a good reunion lie (or lie in general) is that it has to be believable, yet make an impression. Now, I could easily tell the same old, tired “I’m a millionaire super genius married to a super model” story, but then people might quiz me on the taste of caviar and catch me lying.  So, to create a believable fake story for my reunion, I’ve crafted a fake life up until now.  What do you think?

My (fictional) life story since high school:

• Year One: I graduated high school and entered the local community college, moving in with my best friends. After failing the first semester, I resolved to not let that happen again only to get kicked out my second semester for plagiarism. Then my roommates got together and moved without telling me: selling all of my stuff.
• Year Two: I started working full-time washing dishes at Pot Belly’s pizza before the IRS audited the owner and shut down the place on account of it just being a meth lab in disguise.  I spent a good portion of the year giving depositions and almost went to jail, but managed to get free by convincing them that it was humanly possible to be that ignorant.  I left the job and got hired at a video store, which was so great because I got to see every movie that came out
• Year Three: I finally decided to make it big in life and moved to Las Vegas with my manager. However, after three months of not finding any singing work on account of my looks, my manager left me and took all of my money. I spent the next nine months paying for the debt he’d incurred gambling in my name.  I even tried to get into the adult movie business: being in two movies before my first suicide attempt.  When I got out of the hospital, they wouldn’t let me get into any movies anymore, so I gave up.  It was sad, too, because I had finally built up enough credit to make the switch to heterosexual porn.
• Year Four:  I moved back home with my mom and went back to work at the video store.  I got a night job as a bouncer in a punk-themed bar.  I finally reconciled with my former best friend and began making money.  I met a girl at the bar and we started dating, but she got pregnant within two months and we had to have a shotgun wedding.  Despite it all, I was happy.  The child was born premature and I had to sell my car to pay for the hospital bill, but it was worth it.  We named the kid Frank after my best friend who was also the godfather.
• Year Five:  I left my wife after six months together after I caught her cheating on me with my best friend.  Actually, I let that one slide, but the next month I found out that she’d been contacting sexual partners on the Internet.  I tried to leave and take our child, but she told me it was actually my best friend’s and kept it.  I tried killing myself again, but failed, so I was in the hospital when the judge awarded her full custody and child support that was two-thirds of my pay check.  Now I’m living back with my mom again, but am glad I went through it all because it made me who I am today.

I think I’m out of ideas of what the absolute saddest life story could be.  Does anyone care to suggest something?

“GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Grad school apps are not going well. Also, in case you were wondering, I registered temptationtoilet.com. I can’t believe nobody beat me to it! I’m thinking of turning it into a Web comic. My former co-writer and former artist already said they want to participate, so I’m expecting this to be great…

Allow me to give you a teaser courtesy of Jonathan B. Trust and my old Pix Capacitor files:

When we last left our contestants, it was decided that Joey is gay even though he is married to Nicky, Alex was kicked out of the show for not being charismatic enough, and Ash won a boxing match. Let’s see what happens now:
Mieke: In home country…
Jan: Shut your noise-hole! No one wants to hear about your home country.
Joey: Listen, everybody. We already figured out that this is a basement…
Ash: Have we?
Joey: I dunno, I just kinda assumed. Anyway, if we’re in a basement, then there needs to be a door going upstairs, right?
Mieke: …we have latch with iron lock to keep wolves from eating precious babies.
Nicky: Hey guys, do you suppose that that’s the door up there? At the top of the staircase? With the golden door knob? And the big red sign that says “Kitchen Door”?
Joey: It’s worth a try. Why didn’t we see it before?
Mieke: I saw it last Tuesday.
Jan: Well, let’s go. I’m still dying for a cigarette.
Ash: And I still have to go to the bathroom, although I think I lost my window of opportunity…
Nicky: Wow! This kitchen is %$#@&^% huge!
Joey: I got dibs on the master bedroom!
Ash: Umm, Joey, I think you have to share it with Nicky.
Nicky: Noooo way! Just because we’re married!?!?!
Jan: Actually, it’s one of the rules posted on the fridge.
Joey: Ahem, rule number one is: “Do not talk about Temptation Toilet Two.”
Ash: That’s not one of the rules!
Jan: Rule number one: “Joey has to sleep with Nicky no matter how gay everyone thinks he is.”
Joey: Well, that’s a bummer.
Nicky: What’s implied by “sleep with”?
Mieke: That mean you make babies… long time.
Nicky: %$#@
Mieke: Ezactly.
Ash: What’s that? I thought I felt someone’s presence here.
Joey: Oh cool. Are we in a haunted mansion?
Jan: No, rule number three says we can’t bring in ghosts, poltergeists, or any other paranormal visitors without proper authorization.
Nicky: Ohmygod! There’s something written on the wall!
Ash: “You will feel my wrath!” Huh, I wonder what that means.

Temptation Toilet was a mock reality show we published in out viewspaper some years ago. Since it was in print, the joke was that all of the characters were of ambiguous gender. We’ve been toying with turning it into a comic for years, but now I think we might actually do it. As you can imagine, this makes me happy.

Does anybody know of any good, free ways to host a Web comic?

After going through the whole process of applying to grad school, I’ve decided to write a ‘how to’ for people who are looking to get their Master’s degree… to look at while feeling destitute.

1. Start early. I say this advice knowing full well it will be useless to everyone. Nobody looks for advice until really late in the game. But you should have started early nonetheless. Really early. Ridiculously early. It’s not out of the question to come out of the womb working on your statement of purpose.
2. Work on your writing sample early. Specifically, you want to finish it long before anybody has any deadlines to meet. If you finish it during the summer (like I planned), the people reading it will procrastinate until October before sending you comments (like it happened).  While this doesn’t change the result, it does make your readers feel awfully guilty and that’s better than anger any day (except for Ash Wednesday).
3. Letters of Recommendation: I say you just forge them. It’ll be less stressful to both you and the writer. But if you can’t, make sure you investigate the deadlines of each department you’re applying to so you can give your writers a deathly list ahead of time.  Again, this is for guilt purposes only.
4. Take your GREs during the summer before you apply. You want to study for at least a month before you take the test. Trust me, I studied for two months straight and I’m much smarter than you. I had a friend who asked me what the test was like and whether she should worry about it on a Sunday. She had signed up to take the test that following Wednesday. Needless to say, her head exploded. We had a closed casket funeral. It was catered by Quizno’s. It was very sad. Don’t be like my friend, treat the GREs like your life depended on it. Here is a brief math equation I have been working on:
   • PSAT = 2(ACT)/3
   • ACT = (SAT)/2
   • GRE = 2(SAT)s + a swift, yet powerful, kick to the groin
5. Transcripts. Do well in college. If you have not, I say transfer to a better college and start again. Pay no attention to the fact that you were only a semester away from graduating, think of the wasted four years of your life as valuable lessons in the value of a dollar and real reasons to avoid sorority girls.
6. Research. Indiana Jones couldn’t navigate most graduate school Web sites.  So make sure you allot sufficient time to look through them.
7. Panic. You’ll do this anyway, but I think it helps to view it as part of the process. I try to have two hours of panic for every one hour of actual work on my applications. It keeps me motivated.

I hope this advice has proved as useful to you as it was to me: namely, not very. I got excellent advice when I started, but it didn’t feel real to me then, so I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. Now that I look back and… damn.  That was silly.

It’s a meme! A second generation meme, that is. I wish I’d thought it up, but as it is, credit goes to Ashley. And since I’m only against fifth generation memes and greater, here we go!

There’s this girl I know. She’s in the class I go to, so I always see her and talk to her, but she’s usually busy afterward, so we never go eat lunch or hang out, we just say we’ll call each other and never do. Earlier this year, I sent her a random text message asking how she was and whether she thought the sky was as wonderful as I did, or if she was just stupid. She wrote back, saying her father had just died and she was crying herself to sleep nights. Friday, I ran into her again and found out, in much the same way, that her best friend had just died the week before. Today I was supposed to bring her a cookie to cheer her up, but I didn’t wake up and missed the meeting. Now I’m just going to do the mature thing and just avoid her forever. I don’t want to see her again because I’ll just be a moron again and things will be awkward.

Here are some more things that are awkward:

• turtles
• my friend Claire
• “presidential candidate” Mike Gravel
• stripping
• meeting parents
• explosive diarrhea
• cover letters
• racists
• Scientology
• Mormonism
• proper nouns
• letters of reference
• latent psychic powers
• big to-dos
• stiletto heels
• first dates
• dates in general
• holding hands for the first time
• Friends season finales
• discussing politics at work with a person that hasn’t been hired yet
• water accidentally splashing on your crotch before a big date
• vomiting on a foreign leader
• assless chaps
• chaps in general
• coffee at 6 a.m. at IHOP
• sitting next to prostitutes
• breast feeding
• puberty

and finally,

• Knock-knock jokes during a eulogy.

I’m going to go watch Heroes now because I want to have all of Matt Parkman’s babies… I hope that’s not as awkward as it looks.