3 Questions with John Cheese

So John Cheese, comedy mastermind behind the now-defunct laughtastrophy supersite "John Cheese's Magic Pimp Bus" and Cracked writer extraordinaire sent out an open invitation for interviews, and being that he is one of my very favorite internet writers, I beat a path to his door before realizing that e-mailing him might be less creepy.

No but seriously you guys I can't state how huge a thing this is for me. Read some of his articles, you'll understand.

1) A lot of your writing is incredibly, painfully personal. How has this impacted your relationship with friends and family? Have you ever chosen not to write about certain events or subjects out of respect for people in your life?

I don't associate with one side of my family, and I barely associate with the other, so my family has never really been a concern. They had their demons, and they deal with those in their own way. Many of them through sheer denial that there was ever a problem in the first place. I write about my life, and if I could do it without mentioning them, I would. However, in order to make the point stick, I have to bring them up because they were such a huge part of what made me what I was and what I am today.

I do keep certain things out of the public eye. I'll never go into minute details of my kids' life because they're not old enough to have a say in something like that, and I don't want to invade their privacy by displaying their lives the way I display mine. I also won't mention my ex wife's name or personal details about her because I don't think that's something she would want.

And I'll never get into the really, REALLY dark shit that my dad did us. Some of that stuff is so far off the charts of insanity that there would be no way I could bring the article back into comedy territory after going that direction.

2) As someone who spends a lot of time on the internet, what's the worst thing you've ever come across?

Comments sections. That sounds like a joke, but it's really not. If you ever get bored, start scouring the net and read just the comments, and you'll be horrified. You'll find some of the most hateful, racist, sexist, bullshit statements coming out of people. It really is the worst of humanity. Comments sections are the sewer of the internet.

3) With the understanding that it's still on going, what can you tell us about running the JDatE ARG? Where did you go for inspiration? What planning and prepwork was needed to pull it off? Did the players ever surprise you? Any lessons learned for the next go around? Did. . . Did we miss anything major?

We're planning on starting another ARG sometime soon, but it's going to be a lot of work this time around because it's going to be much bigger. There are going to be more real world events if we have our way, which is something we didn't do the first time around (budget and time restraints held us back on that).

The planning is basically Wong and I on the phone, spitballing ideas until we come up with something that makes us both laugh, while at the same time thinking, "Oh, wow, that sounds really cool." What we discovered in the last ARG was that people are much smarter than you'd expect. We'd come up with a puzzle and a set of clues, and then say, "Man, there's no way anyone is going to find this." We'd post it, and three hours later, someone has found the hidden file -- or whatever it was that we were doing that week.

I think the one that surprised me the most was when some people figured out that I (in a video) was playing a nonsensical phrase on my guitar, using the letter names of the chords to spell out the words. Then if you put that phrase at the end of the JDatE URL, it would lead to something or other. I was really impressed by that.

As far as missing anything major, I really can't think of anything. I think you guys pretty much found everything. If there was anything left over, it wasn't much. And I'm sure I would have remembered it because we spent so much time coming up with that stuff that if anything would have been missed, I would have definitely pointed it out after the ARG was finished.

I was quoted in the newspaper.

That's right, I made a stupid joke so mind-numbingly banal and stunted in its execution that a newspaper decided it was fit to print.

No but seriously, the MBTA is awesome, I love that the commuter rail is a thing I can use to just go to Boston for whatever reason. The idea that public transportation needs to be 100% paid for by commuter fees is ridiculous, however. Even private transportation companies are subsidized to an extent. So much of the MBTA's debt comes from the Big Dig that Beacon Hill really needs to get their act together and help them out here.

The Arithmetic of Treatment

Hey guys, if you're ill and your doctor suggests some pills to fix what ails you, trust that they know what they're talking about. The same goes for mental illness. If you let my poem influence decisions you make about your health then I will hunt you down and punch you.

Lithium: One teenager plus thirty miligrams sent earthward daily equals me forgetting what an orgasm feels like. My girlfriends appreciated this, up to a point, with sore jaws and thighs bruised on a heart turned to salt, frustration welled to streaks streaming mascara down her cheeks, I don't know what's wrong with me, unable to feel sorry for her, or any real connection, like I'm suffocating in an insulation cocoon, a thick pink blanket of pharmacology to keep me protected from the world, muting all sensation save the monthly prick of blood tests, “It's important to monitor your sodium levels, or your kidneys could die” the nurses tell me, like one pill a day could do to me what three meals of poverty couldn't, like out of all the negative influences in my life, the one to finally pull the trigger would come in an orange plastic tube monitored by doctors, and this is what's supposed to save me? This equation is unbalanced.

Prozac: The resulting quotient of 20mg feels like plant life in the arctic, like photosynthesis at the bottom of the ocean, like revelation the moment before you wake up and your subconscious is scoured clean by an alarm clock thirty minutes late into your first shift, prozac feels like nothing, no, worse, like a profound loss, like the moment of quiet after the song but before the applause while you're still left hanging on an emotional high but you drop into a gray void of nothing, an endless flat where there used to be sinusoidal life, but that's the problem that got you here in the first place so now you and everything that made you breathe are divisors, this equation is unbalanced, factored apart by the heart-rending tension that sent you to the hospital, split by the thin black line at the bottom of a prescription pad.

Wellbutrin: Will fuck you up. Like Lewis Carroll on Algebra, the world will spin, you will get dizzy on the stairs and fall far too often for it to be accidental, getting out of a chair will become a task worthy of celebration, the world will go flat, like turning a page in a comic book your perception will warp until you are trapped in a world of cardboard cut-outs, or your head spins off and balloons into the ceiling fan, or melts into the hard plastic chair, you will feel bees crawl underneath your skin, you will forget to breathe on occasion, or become obscenely aware of the wet bulk of your tongue in your mouth, swelling, the doctors will explain that depersonalization and derealization are common side-effects of the medication, all the while you are feeling the flesh on your back crawl into the shape of wings while you feel each individual hair follicle twitch on your head, there are other pills that will fix it are others that will fix it, you will realize that they, too, would make the equation unbalanced.

There is help available to those who seek it.

hoo boy poluhtiks!

So for those of you recently released from a North Korean labor camp, you may have realized that many of your favorite sites have "gone black" in a protest of something called SOPAPILLA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.

These two bills enable large corporations and their puppets (the Department of Justice and the Attorney General) to shut down websites guilty of piracy, or even facilitating piracy. For those of you who think that this might not affect you, here is a short list of the three top sites currently facilitating piracy that would get straight-up just prison shanked to bits if SOPA or PIPA were to pass.

If you're online, this affects you.

It categorizes sites as "foreign" or "domestic" based on the nationality of the registrar the website's domain suffix is registered in. For those of you who don't speak Horrible Geek, that means that www.london.org, which is a site run by the Londanian Sacrificial Tourist Aquisition Guild, in London, England, would be considered a "domestic" site and therefore subject to US law because the .org registrar is based in the United States.

No, seriously. And that's not even the worst part! It would also require search engines like Google to make sure they're not linking to any sites that have infringing material on them. Google, the same website that recently indexed their TRILLIONTH concurrent URL. Holy balls!

This very much is job killing regulations of the worst kind. I know that's bullshit dogwhistle politics, but in this case it's actually true.

Basically, if you're reading this site, you're probably well aquainted enough with the Internet to know this is bad. If that's not the case, then hi Grandma! Since you sent that box of oranges, I haven't gotten scurvy once!

First and foremost, you should read up on why these laws are bad news. Here's a letter from 108 professors explaining why this is the worst thing since MIT started offering free classes.

Congrats, you're now better informed than most of your representatives! Now what you need to do is contact your elected officials and disgorge yourself of this precious knowledge, like a mother bird feeding her children. If you don't trust yourself enough with words, here are two form letters you can send to your representatives instead.

Just fucking do something.

WHERE THE ASSHAT HAVE YOU BEEN

So I've been suplex-buggered through the folding table and into the center of the Earth these past few weeks, and I've got some exciting things to show for it. First off is this little beaut, courtesy of my friend Sarah who is awesome so go commission her for some work right now. She's also doing the art for my novel, and if I can help it, every other creative work I produce until the day I die.

Secondly, I'm heading a new WordPlague project in the works, and it's a paying gig! I will keep you posted on the developments, expect the first call for entries by Jan 15th.

Things with Sauced are progressing well, also! Almost have all the contracts.

Also, my book goes on sale Wednesday! Picking them up from the printer today.

But mostly I wanted to show off that bitching cover. I asked for something simple, and the Artgods were all like"aahahahahaha NO." And lo, it was good.

Like father, like son.

When my dad lived in Washington, DC, one of the jobs he held was with a lobbying firm that worked for, amongst other people, the dark lord Satan himself.

That's how my mom tells it, anyway.

I was never told exactly what he did, and I don't want to call out of the blue and plumb the depths of his past (if it turns out we are/were as similar as I fear I'll probably be crushed utterly.) because that's weird and telephones scare me, but while walking down K-street with 2,000 of my new best friends, I realized that life has a weird sort of symmetry to it.

That, and life also has an assload of rain! So much rain. I was set and ready to meet with Sanders today, but it's wet, and cold, and I'm exhausted, and I know he's working for us already, so I'm going to rally my strength for Leahy tomorrow.

Godspeed you crazy dudes.

5 questions for Peter Welch

Forgive me if this seems rushed, I'm sandwiched between video journalists and facebook revolutionaries, and the card reader on this laptop isn't working. I'll probably get around to that when I go home, like all the photos I've promised to post ever HAR HAR HAR.

So I'd like to take this time to welcome the congressional staff and pages from Peter Welch's office! If you see any bad words or objectionable content, pretend you saw something different. It's what my mom does.

Yeah, that's right! I had a quick little sit-down with one of my reps while I'm over at Take Back the Capitol, raising caine and suchlike. Completely forgot to ask if I could record his responses, so here's a rough summary of what transpired. If the esteemed representative takes offense, corrections can be scribbled on to the back of $20 notes and thrown into my window.

To the question "What have you done to spur job growth in Vermont and the nation", he replied that he supported the Dodd-Frank bill, which would split investment and savings banks and help stop the "casino economy" which is an appropriate term if one has ever been said. He also supports credit unions, which lend money to the part of the economy that's actually productive. He also supports public healthcare with a single-payer solution, and he supported bills that would have helped re-establish veterans with jobs. Veterans, mind you, have some of the highest unemployment and homelessness rates in the country. I failed to ask which bills, because I am terrible at journalisms.

When asked the question "What do you think of sequestration?" (a process that would immediately cut 6% off the budget of every national program) he said he considered it "a failure of the congressional process" and that he'd rather pass a budget that had spending on infastructure, netgotiated perscription drug prices, and made the rich pay their fare share.

When told that the Stopping Online Piracy Act would give a 5 year prison sentence to someone who uploaded a Michael Jackson video, compared to the 4 year sentence given to the doctor who killed him, he said he "didn't know enough" about online piracy to suggest feasible alternatives, but he did say he'd support a bill that respected the right of intellectual property creators (like me!) while still maintained an open internet. I sent him an e-mail about it before, so hopefully the voice of the people helped win him to our side.

When asked "Should we be able to arrest Americans & hold them in prison indefinitely?" he said no, because that's a stupid-obvious question. Still a good response, though.

When asked if he would support criminal charges against the banking executives who signed off on fraudulent forecloseures in Vermont and the nation, he said he'd support them in any case when illegal actions were taken. Fraudulent foreclosures "should be prosecuted and punished", which is just awesome mixed with a big honking slice of yes.

Honestly? Peter Welch is the sort of democrat we need more of. Give him a call and let him know you've got his back. Also, keep following up on these questions and more, make sure he sticks to his guns. Democracy only happens so long as we keep vigilant.