Levi's Blong!

Hi! Greetings from Levi’s World! How’s tricks? First off, thank you, if you’re reading this… Please bear with me, as I’m not nearly as adept with words as I am with silly doodles or comics. I guess I’m actually going to post this, so off to the races we go…

You will commonly see me refer to this as a “Blong”. There’s a reason for that. You’ll find there is probably a (slightly dumb) reason for many of the things I write, draw, and think… But out of the gate, I have to address that.

Back when I got my first “modern” computer in 2006, there was this site called Myspace. Some of you older folks may remember it. For the younger generation, it was a lot like Facebook, but you could customize your personal page with fun features like auto-playing, annoying music that screamed at you as soon as you clicked on someone’s personal page, glittery comments, and backgrounds that flashed enough to give you a seizure… Oh, and you could rate your “friends” by number of who you felt was important. How fun. Anyway, they had a feature on there (I think Facebook has it too, but no one uses it.) where you could write what were very similar to blog posts. I didn’t have an actual blog at the time, so this was fun. I really didn’t want to write super personal stuff, as anyone could read whatever you wrote, so I went back to the way I used to write my journals back in high school. In a thinly veiled, stream of conscious, usually caffeine-induced mess. These sounded like they were either written by a Madman, or someone very very high on some substance… so my “blog” posts were quickly deemed “blongs”, similar to bongs, I suppose.

It was a crazy time for me. My wife and I had just parted ways the year before. I was learning how to scan and digitally color art on the computer for the very first time. I was working 12 hour days, running a printing press 5 or 6 days a week, and had my daughter each weekend. Myspace, and the blongs, (and eventually my own Blogspot page) were pretty much my only social life to speak of. Which, really isn’t saying much… although Myspace did lead to my first date as a Single Dad, I can’t say I have fond memories of either. (The woman I dated was fantastic comic-book fuel tho. I will say that. Anyone who has read my version of Peri Toth’s See-Thru-Baby should know that the baby’s mom in the comic, Mommy Cindy is entirely based off of this person… so I guess that part was worthwhile. Dating her, I got no less than two traffic tickets, and smashed the back end and window out of my Jeep Cherokee. I couldn’t afford to replace the back window, and drove with plastic taped on with duct tape on it for two entire years…Good times.)

I’ve saved all of the posts I wrote back then, but here’s one that was never posted for whatever reason, Enjoy…

“I light a cigarette, and he smells like pot. Yucky… at least it
didn’t TASTE like it. I’d probably puke like i almost puked when i got
my hand caught in the press this week. It was scary, but also my own
fault for trying to save time by almost crushing my hand. It was my
left hand at least. I …draw with my right, so THAT’s okay if i
crushy crush my left. It’s better now. There was no gore, only
bruuuuze.

I’m working on coloring new comics. I like new comics. They make me
feel like a damn genius. As you can tell, i think i am quite clever
today… but i’m probably not even HALF as clever as i think i am.
Good thing i listen to the voices. They tell me happy things… at
least, they do today. I don’t always listen to them. Sometimes they
tell me to take my pants off while i am running my printing press and
then run around the shop singing “The green grass grows all around all
around, the green grass grows all around!!!”. I don’t think anyone
other than myself would enjoy that… but i fear a few of the weird
guys might join me. YUK!

This other time, they told me that if i tied a towel around my neck
like a cape after i stepped out of the shower, i would be able to
fly… but only if i wore only the towel. I couldn’t decide if i
should try it, so i just went to bed. And i dreamed of a yellow teddy
bear who said he was NOT Pooh-bear.

…and then, once they reached the top of the mountain, they saw the
other side. It was covered in candy corn as far as the eye could see.
They were SO excited that they both had heart attacks and died… and
7 ravens ate their eyes.

Those 7 ravens were actually 7 GOBLINs, who were transformed by the
witch after a horrible accident involving a rake and two Centaurs… I
won’t go into details, but let’s just say that the Centaurs STILL
haven’t stopped laughing.

Anyways, after the ravens ate the mountain-climbers’ eyes, they all
shouted at the same time, “LET’S FORM VOLTRON!”, and they did… but
with raven-parts instead of robot-lions. Then they flew to the home of
the witch, and sliced her in half with their blazing sword! The two
halves of the witch formed TWO WITCHES! Those two witches then cast a
mighty spell on the Raven-Voltron. The spell was to make him forget
all about the witch(es), and go to the home of a weird cartoonist in
Ypsilanti, Michigan, and try to get him to discontinue his natural gas
service with Detroit Energy, and switch to a company he’d never heard
of.

When they knocked on the cartoonist’s door, he farted on them, and
told them to BEAT IT! Then the Raven-Voltron was completely confused,
and just sat in the middle of the street until the ice cream man came
by.

After Susan finished her glass of wine, she looked deeply into the
bathroom mirror and said, “Boogeyman, Boogeyman, …Lettuce!”. The
Boogeyman was angry that she had tricked him again by not saying his
name three times so he could rape her sock monkey again. The sock
monkey was really glad tho…

At noon, the town whistle blew for an entire hour due to an electrical
malfunction, and Old Lady Treacle never heard anything ever again.
This actually made her very happy, as the rowdy neighbors next door
made a lot of noise and played Garth Brooks all nite long on their car
stereos. With her new life of silence, she was able to finally finish
the novel she’d been writing all of her life, only to discover she’d
somehow re-written the Bible with all of the “mysterious” parts
explained in full detail. However, when she took her manuscript to the
publisher, they told her that it was just too “last year”.

Roofing nails, a pair of pliers, and a handful of nickels in the mixer
makes a wonderful, wonderful mess… If you like chaos, that is. Billy
certainly did, and he tried this combination each and every time his
mom bought a new mixer.

Gan was a mutant. He had four ears, twenty-seven eyes, and two mouths.
One of the mouths was on his left shoulder, and only spoke Spanish.
Once a month, he would go to the local Mexican restaurant, and feed it
bean burritos.”

So, there you go. That was what a “Blong” usually was for me. How clever, huh?… :/ But I guess it’s a peek into how my brain usually works. I’ll add my crummy profile pic from Myspace too, just so there’s a picture in this post.

I also had an entirely separate Myspace account for my alter-ego, EVIL-LEVI. Mostly just to amuse my friends. He was the part of me who said, and very often complained about anything I needed to complain about… Like I said, it was a pretty crazy time. No social life will do those sorts of things to you.

That’s it for this time around… I think next time, I’ll finally explain to people why you keep seeing THIS GUY all over the Don’t Ask Comics Universe, and what he means to me. His name is GUILT-BUG! (My logo, AND cartoon representation of my sub-conscience!)

“Insanity is a virtue!”