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What with Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin teaming up to put some more theocracy in America’s democracy, and anti-Islamic sentiment at record highs since, like, The Crusades — all because we elected a black president — our country’s looking a little backwards these days.

If this was on a t-shirt, wouldn’t you look super cool in mirrors? Just thinking out loud here. You’d be like an ambulance — people might see you in the rear view mirror if you were chasing after their car, and think “huh, cool shirt,” or more likely, “why is this crazed man chasing after my car, is this guy a Terminator or something?” …since that’s pretty unusual behavior, after all.

Come to think of it, I better register gelbeb.com…

Been playing around with a lot of t-shirt design concepts lately. Not too sure about any of these in particular, but it’s a sentiment that belongs on the chests of a generation all the same.

Not saying I’m not included. That’s kind of the point.

Time to shit or get off the pot. Nobody likes a faker. Authenticity is…

There comes a time in any independent person’s life, when, in the absence of a boss, or parent, or other authority figure, they must hold themselves to an exacting standard simply because nobody else is. Choose not to, and willingly fade into obscurity in the land of lost potential. Conversely, hold yourself to that standard, and you may still fade away, but it will be as the last embers in a blistering bonfire do — with great effort and time, and only then, because there’s simply nothing left to burn.

This post is going up a bit later than usual because Comcast can suck my balls.

Many of the headlines on this website are references to movies or songs. Today’s, however, is also the title of an incredible LucasArts computer game from the early 90s. Day of the Tentacle was an old school adventure game, which focused mainly on talking to weird characters and clicking every conceivable object in the frame in an attempt to solve puzzles that progress the storyline. Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sick amount of time I spent trying to figure out the game’s puzzles as a child is to blame for my ongoing obsession with tentacles and tendrils of all kinds.

And look, it doesn’t make me a nerd because I played Day of the Tentacle when I was a kid. What makes me a nerd is the fact that I was born in 1985, when cool video games where you could dismember people and swear didn’t exist yet.

Despite how low resolution the graphics were, they were actually really well illustrated — full of humor, style, and detail. Which was nice of them, considering how long you could get stuck staring at a given screen, hopelessly trying to figure out one of the game’s puzzles.

Another big selling point? This shit had time travel. Time travel, tentacles, and uh… funny jokes. Who needs more than that, am I right? Sure, “funny jokes” doesn’t start with a “t,” so that kind of fucked up the thing I had going, but whatever.

And of course, the choices you made in the past could affect the future (i.e. your present)… you know, just like in real time travel. Unfortunately, it seems nostalgia is the closest I’ll ever come to traversing the temporal superhighway. And I know it must get annoying for me to always gripe about how things from our youths were better than things are today, but come on, it’s kind of true.

In honor of the cause of my indolence yesterday, and the coming weekend… my latest achievement in doodling.

Depending on your level of tolerance, which is often directly correlated with experience, blunts and booze can sometimes have ill effects. Ill meaning a variety of things here — “totally awesome”, and “nightmarish carnival ride” included. Unexpecting tokers, more willing to take part in recreational drugs after several inhibition-debilitating cocktails, will often get swept away by the spins. At this point, holding on tight really is the only option, whether it be the cushions of the couch, or the rim of the toilet. And chances are everything in between will be clawed and grabbed upon as well — walls, doorways, inexpensive yet pointless Ikea space-fillers, unlucky house guests, pretty much anything more stable than the wiped-out party goer, which actually happens to be pretty much everything.

Tolerance, and — you got it — experience has told the Dedleg faithful that the only way to beat the spins is by deliberately poisoning yourself with these aforementioned substances, at the same time, as often as possible in order to fully master their precarious combination. Just don’t tell the guys at the ER where you got that advice when you’re giggling uncontrollably after projectile vomiting all over the attending. Life lessons, that’s all I’m trying to give you guys. Now get out there and get stupid.

Sometimes the simplest drawings end up being the trickiest to color. Usually the case when your first idea ends up looking like a bag of assholes and you’ve got to improvise at 1:30 in the morning.

Sucks too, I was really looking forward to spending the night vegetating on the couch with my favorite vegetable and some video games. But no, instead I had to be productive. Pff. What a nerd.

After yesterday’s reading of A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Hermit, I figured this illustration would be more than appropriate.

It’s not quite the hard, fast and dirty lifestyle that’s so cool with the kids these days, but sometimes — and this is far from a hard, fast and dirty rule — safe is smart. Sometimes! Like when dogs, sometimes, try to eat you on while you’re riding your skateboard. Or when you’re sometimes not sure if the random guy offering you a joint just dipped it in PCP. Or how sometimes the special somebody you drag home from the bar on Friday has gonorrhea. These things happen, you know, sometimes.

Nevertheless, speaking of popularity, anybody else remember this jam back from back in like the 7^th grade?

And speaking of living in a bubble, that high school was so white I practically had to shield my eyes. You might be a quarterback, but I’m going to wager your basketball team isn’t making it to the finals this year, guy.

Believing that aliens will swoop down in flying saucers and save humanity with their benevolence, intelligence, and vastly advanced technology is a common false hope in the 21^st Century. It’s almost as bad as that one about the old guy who lives on a cloud and is worshiped by billions of people, worldwide.

If it wasn’t 1:30 in the morning, I could devote some space here to discussing cool conspiracy theories about ancient astronauts, whose intervention may have changed the face of human civilization. But it is 1:30 in the morning, and I’m just going to have to let this more-entertaining-than-informative Discovery Channel documentary do the job instead.

Learning hasn’t been this funny since the last time somebody farted in class.

On Wednesday, the powers of secularism and intelligence momentarily defeated the dark forces of religion that seek to turn this country’s population into white-washed bigots who hate everyone except Jesus. Prop 8 was overturned by a federal judge who carefully decided that Mormons are dumb, and for a few moments, the metaphorical glass containing our miserable universe looked almost half full. Enjoy it while it lasts, rational people of the world.

Nonetheless, this hardly constitutes a defeat of bigotry at large, which stubbornly persists even in relatively “liberal” subcultures. This issue came to the forefront of my mind recently, when I got in a brief conversation with a young skateboarder, who was griping about how he was trying to skate a spot and the “gay parade” and music from an ice cream truck were really fucking his shit up. He was complaining about the ice cream truck music, for fuck’s sake. What’s the deal, are we trying to raise children to be evil on purpose now or something?

Why is homophobia a prevailing issue in skateboarding, a community that readily encourages thinking outside the box and going against the grain? Granted, any male-dominated subculture is bound to have its share of dickheads (duh), and plenty of vibing, sizing-up, and unfriendly competition along with them. Then, consider the fact that perhaps the largest demographic within skateboarding is dudes in high school, and not grown-ups who think for themselves, and you’re suddenly deep into the treacherous woods of the thoughtless mob mentality jungle. All the same, when you get down to it, what does somebody’s sexual orientation really have to do with skateboarding? Unless your sexual orientation is “bestiality”, in which case you don’t belong on a skateboard… because you belong in jail.

More than anything, I’d just like to settle the score here — screwing up a trick is not “gay”. A man having sexual intercourse with another man is gay, however. Do people hate this gay thing because they don’t actually know what it is? If homosexuals actually affect somebody’s ability to ride a skateboard, I think that says more about them than homosexuals. After all, skateboards are inherently phallic in appearance, and we lust after every opportunity to ride on them for extended periods of time. If that’s too distracting for the ignorant neanderthal inside of certain people, perhaps they should just quit already. Maybe become a Jamaican citizen or go to prison, you know, find some hobbies that suit their worldview a little better.

Anyway, nobody likes a political rant — except for Glenn Beck, I guess, but he deserves to be decapitated in public. All I’m saying is, in general, we’ve got to dial the hostilities down. When was the last time a gay dude snaked your line at the skate park? Exactly. But what about a BMXer? Yeah, so, let’s get our priorities, uh, straight, for lack of a better word.

This drawing basically sums up everything that I could possibly say about said drawing.

Pessimism … is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play. — Thomas Hardy

Although, things would be significantly more terrifying if there actually were eyeballs with bat wings flying around out there — so at least we’ve got that going for us.

Introducing the newest member of Dedleg’s premiere skate team — Death himself! Dude drove a hard bargain, but we’re confident signing The Bone Daddy is a solid investment since, let’s face it, skateboarding loves skeletons. But make no mistake, this is most definitely not the guy you want lurking at the skate spot. The incentive to land your tricks would be plenty strong, at the very least, but nothing kills a session like having to make funeral arrangements.

From this point forward, I will be officially referring to my skateboard as my scythe. It just sounds tougher than “shred stick”. Not by much, though.

Before I go — my Malaysian sweatshop employees just informed me that small tie-dye t-shirts are sold out, but a bunch of asphalt still exist. Just sayin’ is all

Another day, another skull.

Oooh, imagery evoking mysticism, the occult, and space monsters and shit? Man, I’ve got this “cool” shit down to a science.

Yeah… hard science. Like, literally, it’s hard work. Does that mean I’m doing it wrong?