Perhaps it had something to do with the snow days: What with the onslaught of the Scary Scary Blizzard that Really Mostly Seemed to Be a Lot of Crazy Wind Blowing the Existing Snow Around and Making it Really Hard to See, causing the University (in a completely startling and unprecedented move) to cancel all classes for the last two days prior to spring break.

Highways and interstates shut down, no way in or out, coffee shop closed, poetry reading across the river called off. Couldn't get to where I wanted to be. Couldn't get to where I should have been.

(The snow, you see, keeps taking away the things I've quietly looked forward to. Twice this week already I've been sorely disappointed by snow. Although my disappointments are small overall, and my resentments sometimes petty. Maybe this is why the snow's constant chiding of the too-many things I take for granted feels unwelcome?)

Perhaps it was the vaguely unnerving Thursday night spent monitoring the power repeatedly going off and on, off and on, while the wind pummeled at the windows and doors, roaring and beating its chest, spitefully shaking the wind chimes silly in its careless fists. (Sudden washes of blackness for minutes on end, the quick electric blip of appliances going mute, furnace silent, a long held breath until the unexpected gasp of light and hum and warm air and flashing digits of unstuck time cut through the dark like a sharp blade.)

So imagine my astonishment when I woke up on Friday morning to discover that I'd been turned into a comic:


At first I didn't notice, what with the B-Movie Alien Killer Swamp Fog that (as I've undoubtedly mentioned before) characterizes my early waking hours. My first clue was when I dropped an entire filter of used coffee grounds on the floor on my way to the trash while attempting to get some sorely-needed morning coffee going. Holy fucking shit! What the motherfucking fucktarded fuckass fuck?!?! I said. (Sorry. I know. The swearing. So uncouth.) Only, instead of my usual salty fucknuggety clusterfuck of expletives, it came out: Holy !#$&!! !#$%! What the !@#$& %@!#$ &#!@! !@$&^ !!@$%!!.

At first I was bemused:


But then I began to worry. Was it permanent? Could I go outside, or would my pixellated dots simply dissolve in the snow and wind? Would all my most private thoughts best kept to myself start floating over my head in a trail of bubbles leading up to a hideously transparent thought balloon? !!%&#@!! (I decided it might be best to stay at home until things got sorted out.)

And then I began to wonder. Was this, perhaps, only the tip of the iceberg? Or were there, perhaps, wasps in the crawlspace who, seeking warmer climes when the power went out at night, would begin to swarm my apartment and slip into my ears until my head was full of a "furious Latin" and electric venom so that, upon receipt of a plagiarized paper, or upon having my picture secretly and creepily taken without my permission at the coffee shop, or upon being cornered in a bathroom stall and badgered by an ex at the bar, or upon having my Eeny Meeny Shy Delicate Flower Poet Feelings hurt in one way or another, I would then find myself undergoing further transformation?


But then again, perhaps the additional metamorphoses might not be as dramatic and glamorous as being transformed into Mistress Vespula. Perhaps it might be something more along the lines of finding myself transmogrified into a South Park character who then turns up in Cartmanland, where she ends up getting kind of hammered . . .


before stumbling off to howl at the moon at Stark's Pond?



So stay tuned for these and other developments:

Is my Author Function a comic as well? How about my Doppelganger (who B. saw casually strolling across campus just last week!)?

Will these Instabilities of Identity resolve themselves, or will outside intervention be required?

Will I be able to leave the house without pixel dissolution?

How, for !$%&!'s sake, will I be able to manage without any !&*)#@!-ing expletives?!?!

I dated a cartoon once, or at least a person whose rotoscoped version appeared in a feature film. It was quite the experience. In the end, he accused me of liking his animated self better than I liked his Real Life Self. I couldn't really disagree, as I could never really work out the difference.

Anyway, I agree with the.errancy. Your pixelated comic self is awesome, for goddamn fuck's sake.

I have to agree that it'd be hard to live pixelated, or without recourse to stronger language than $%~!@.

&#@*ing awesome!

B-Cat

I like you in pixelated and cartoon form; my love is unconditional. In fact, I think you should draw several dozen little stickwoman sketches of you and turn them into a flipbook. Perhaps you could be swimming a backstroke, or eating fresh berries. Now wouldn't THAT be mothercocksucking asstard fuckity fuck cool?

Goddamn, you're having a Faces Project kind of day, A.H.!