Max Scoville's Wet Burlap Sack of Unbridled Hatred

I like animals. I think they’re pretty cool. They’re like little monsters who live all around us. They’re so interesting. No matter how mundane life gets, feeding llamas at a petting zoo will always lift the spirit. Anyone who doesn’t feel empowered looking at a picture of a boa constrictor eating a capybara is just a lame idiot.

Maybe that’s just me. I totally love seeing animals fucking each other up. Like just throwing down like, what’s up, and then they’re just going at it and maybe there’s lightning in the background because they’re on a mountain. I think that’s cool, but hey, who knows. Maybe I’m a lame idiot. Anyway, here are the animals I want to fight for my entertainment:

1. Great White Shark Vs. Saltwater Crocodile 

This is the ultimate battle. Some people will try and tell you it’s a bear fighting a shark, or some other equally stupid pairing of a land-animal and a shark. They think they’re funny because the idea of sharks fighting stuff is so goddamn hilarious. These are the people who make Facebook statuses about Shark Week. Assholes. The shark has the edge, in or out of water, so putting it in water with a fucking bear is just cruel. You don’t do that. Maybe you want to make up some bogus leveled-playing field. Zero gravity? Yeah, shut up. We’re being serious here. At least, I am. I wanna see this fight.

Have you ever seen a saltwater crocodile? They’re huge. They’re like the one in Lake Placid (the movie, not the actual lake). I saw this video on YouTube where they had this pig on a chain hanging maybe ten feet out of the water, and they were dangling it over a crocodile like, “Yeah, you want this. You gotta do a trick for it. Do the trick! Do the trick!” and then the crocodile’s like “FUUUUUUCK YOU!” and goddamn rockets out of the water to the point where you can see its hind legs, and it’s just like… Yeah, that’s right, you’re not gonna sleep tonight. You probably thought you were safe from crocodiles because you live in a two story house. Think again. These motherbastard can jump ten feet, and that’s what they’re doing out of water, and for a dead pig. Imagine what kind of air they get off the trampoline in your back yard when they’re trying to get into your bedroom to eat your sweet neckmeats.

So basically, I want one of these salwater fuckers matched up with a great white shark. And I mean a GREAT WHITE shark, not some mediocre beige shark. A big fat one with big teeth. You get these bastards together and pump ‘em full of PCP or something and get ‘em all riled up. That’s good TV right there. Then have the shark or the gator, whoever wins, go after the Kardashians or that Gosselin bitch with all the shitty kids. Give me my Emmy right now. 

2. Grizzly Bear Vs. Mountain Lion 

This one is a classic. This is the equivalent of the last one, but on land. I guess you could make it more multi-cultural if you wanted, and have it just be a regular lion fighting maybe a polar bear. That’d be cool. Like the Olympics, except cruel. That would take more planning, because it’s international.

Grizzly bears and pumas go together just fine. You airbrush them on a shirt or a Chevy Astrovan and you’re going to that Rush concert, and you’re picking up sexy hitchhikers on the way there. You know it. There’s just something about that pair, like, when I said the thing about animals fighting on a mountain and there’s lightning striking too? Yeah, picture that, and there’s also aurora borealis and this giant glowing Indian in the sky. If that was the state flag for Montana, more than twelve people would live there.

Bears and mountain lions are scary shit, and they’ll kill you in the blink of an eye, but somehow you’re not scared of them so much if they’re fighting each other. It’s like at the end of Jurassic Park when the T-Rex starts fighting the raptors. Yeah, you should probably be running for your life, because the animals might eat you, but what’s the point of living if you didn’t stick around to watch the greatest battle on earth? It’s a catch twenty-two, really. 

3. Tiger Vs. Rhino 

Alright, this one I know you’re gonna be like “What the hell are you talking about?” but you should’ve been saying that for a while now. But no, listen — This is hard for me to say, but I have to say it: tigers and rhinos have awesome dicks. Rhino wieners are shaped like lightning bolts, and they’re two feet long, and they’re attached to an animal that can probably flip your car.

Tigers… Well, their junk is covered in friggin’ spines that face… The opposite direction from… how the… um. Thing is pointing. Like a grappling hook, kind of. Do you get it? I should’ve drawn a diagram, but just… you know at Christmas when you’re bringing the tree in, and you’re squeezing it through the door, trunk first? I think it’s like that. And I’m sorry you just read what I wrote. All I’m saying is both of these animals have really terrifying genitals, and I think they should fight to see which is more ultimate.

Hey, I think it’s a good idea, alright? Anyway, they’re evenly matched otherwise. Tigers are agile and fast and rhinos are super-strong and real big. It’s basically like Wolverine against The Incredible Hulk except it’s wild animal penises.

[This was something I wrote for the Santa Rosa Junior College Oak Leaf newspaper several years ago. I have never been heard from since.]

You know, sometimes life is just dreadful. Sometimes it just really sucks. Sometimes you get so lost in your personal perils and pitfalls that you lose sight of the big picture — What is the big picture, anyway? I bet it’s one of those Magic-Eye posters of a dolphin or something. —My point is, yes, sometimes it’s hard to look on the bright side. Those people who tell you to cheer up and look on the bright side are usually idiots, and I don’t want to preachy, but they’re half right… It can always be worse.

This is something I tell myself when I’m feeling down. I’ve thought about it a lot. And this is going to sound completely insane, but I’ve concluded that as long as I’m not being violated by a gigantic spider, I’ll be okay in the long run. This is just my personal philosophy. And hey, if I ever find myself getting molested by a huge arachnid, well, at least it’s not eating a big, greasy pepperoni calzone and getting it all over me while it does terrible things to my body. Only then, If I ever find myself in that situation, am I sure it’s safe to pray for the sweet release of death, because that is just nasty. 

Like I said, this is my worse-case scenario. Everyone’s different. I know most people would hate that situation, but I just really hate big spiders and rapists. I actually have no problem with pepperoni calzones, but I don’t wanna have one dripping grease on me. The combination of those nasty things is my personal hell. I suggest you find yours. Delve into the worst parts of your imagination and find the most outrageous, horrific scenario you can think up, and then be glad that you don’t have to deal with it. By comparison, is it really so bad that your term paper is really late or that your significant other broke your heart? I know terrible things happen to everyone, but you’ve gotta take ‘em with a grain of salt. It can always be worse.

I don’t consider myself a glass-half-full type of guy, I’m just glad the glass contains what I assume is some kind of refreshing beverage, as opposed to dog urine and drano. Nobody ever said what was in the glass. Does that make any sense? Like I said, worst-case scenario. Maybe the glass is half-empty, but at least it’s a glass, and not the hollowed-out head of your favorite pet.

When life gets them down, a lot of people want to escape. Going to your happy place isn’t such a good idea. Sure, it’s nice to imagine yourself on a beach, sipping tropical drinks with Lindsay Lohan, but at some point, you’ll have to come back to reality, and when you do… Ouch. Those everyday problems are a lot worse by comparison. Find your own worst possible situation. (Maybe you like dominatrix spiders. I don’t know.) Maybe your worst case scenario is being forced to do math problems in a dirty port-o-potty by a naked and belligerant Bill O’Reilly, who also wants to verbally abuse you in German.

Force yourself to think about that for a bit, and you’ll find the return to reality is a lovely refreshing feeling. Absense makes the heart grow fonder, right? I hate dealing with reality as much as the next immature idiot who hates dealing with reality, but I’m grateful when it doesn’t involve big, randy arthropods.

Anyway, my apologies if I’ve put too many horrible images in your brain — maybe you can distract yourself by thinking about how crappy your day isn’t.

The following is a list of things that have happened to me that sound totally made up even though they’re actually true.

• The first time I watched the entire Star Wars Trilogy in one sitting, I was at Frank Oz’s house. He played Yoda.
• I set my pants on fire once.
• I met my dad for the first time when I was twenty, after finding his phone number online, and leaving a voicemail asking if he wanted to “do lunch.”
• I used to go to Church with Sam Waterston, AKA district attorney Jack McCoy from Law & Order.
• (I used to go to Church, how weird is that? Have you met me?)
• I once took a piss next to Al Gore.
• One time, I dropped a fifty dollar bill at a party, this kid came up to me and was like, “Hey, is this yours?” I later found out he was Hugh Hefner’s son.

Anyway. Your turn now.

One of the towns I grew up in was West Cornwall. It’s a tiny town in the Northwest corner of Connecticut, about half an hour from both the New York and Massachusetts borders. The town’s got a population of around 1500, and that fluctuates, since it’s a weekend retreat and summer getaway for a lot of New Yorkers. 

One of the things that’s always struck me as surreal in California is how new everything is. In San Francisco, you’ll be hard pressed to find a building that pre-dates the big earthquake of 1906. I’ve lived in houses with wrought iron boot-scrapers built into the granite porch steps, and hitching posts out front. That’s revolutionary war shit right there.

The summer when I was nine years old was without question the best time of my life so far. When people wax nostalgic for their carefree childhoods, they don’t have shit on this. We rode bikes around all day, unsupervised. We ate candy and rented R-rated movies. We climbed trees, built forts, and set plastic army men on fire when nobody was around. We looked at old issues of Playboy in an abandoned bomb shelter. We played hide-and-go-seek with flashlights at night. It was magical.

Cornwall was built along the Housatonic river. Hundreds of years ago, there was a big iron foundry somewhere upstream. Now, there’s just The National Iron Bank, and a lot of slag deposits. Slag is a byproduct of smelting. If you’ve ever welded, or cut metal with a torch, it’s the crud that accumulates on areas that have been heated. That’s small scale. On the scale of a foundry, massive quantities are produced. In some cases, it looks like burnt moonrocks or lumps of rust, but sometimes, chunks of beautiful colored glass get created.

As a kid, I used to go splashing around in the Housatonic with friends, looking for this stuff. We’d find small streams feeding into the river, and we’d follow those up into the mountains to look for slag. We’d find it, too. I had a large shoebox full at one point. I probably still have a few pieces in storage somewhere, but rock collections — no matter how colorful — don’t survive moves too well. 

Technically speaking, slag is industrial waste. It’s pretty harmless, but people usually seem pretty wary of this story when I tell them about it. Everyone knows how exciting it was to find a perfectly round stone, or an arrowhead — Imagine how exciting it is to find a neon orange rock the size of your fist. 

Of course, collecting slag because it was pretty only lasted so long. Eventually, someone got the idea to sell it to tourists, who were constantly passing through town on summer weekends.

I’ve spent most of my life hating tourists. Cornwall attracted a lot of stupid New Yorkers who wanted to look at leaves or the covered bridge. Sonoma attracted a lot stupid Mid-Westerners who wanted to drink wine. San Francisco attracts a lot of stupid foreigners who want to ride the trolley and lean off the side with their backpacks still on.

Selling slag to New Yorkers only made us about five bucks, but probably spent that on Airheads and Carmello bars at the video store. Probably rented Beverly Hills Cop 2 or something.

You can find a lot of stuff in a river that people have lived near for a few centuries. I found a pile of old rusted-together scissors once. I’m assuming the foundry made scissors, or else a truckload of scissors crashed or… Well, there are only so many reasons you’d find a lump of old rusty scissors. 

Most people don’t know what slag is, and if they do, they don’t know that it comes in pretty colors. Most people, unless they’re big into fishing, also don’t know what a hellgrammite is.

When I describe hellgrammites, people don’t believe me. Hellgrammites are the most horrible animal I’ve ever seen up close, and for reasons that escape me, I used to catch them in the wild.

Around April and May, you’ll find them under rocks on riverbanks. They’re about two to four inches long, and those pincers aren’t just for decoration. They bite. The ugly fuckers are the larva of the dobsonfly, which a slightly less terrifying animal, but it can fly, which makes it more icky because it has the ability to land in your hair. Also: bigger pincers.

Along the Housatonic, fly-fishing is really big. I used to live next door to a fly and tackle shop run by a dude who drove a BMW Z3 and had a big dog named Weezer who once crapped on my front porch. That guy sucked. I can understand regular fishing, but fly-fishing just seems convoluted and pointless. Something for nutty rich people to spend money on.

I wish I remembered more about our strategy for catching the hellgramites, but I think it was as simple as one person kicking over rocks and holding a container, and the other person grabbing them. You know those metal or plastic trays you use to paint with rollers? We filled one of those up with hellgrammites, and then sat on the steps in front of a pottery shop and sold them to passing fly-fishermen tourists for fifty cents each.

Most kids set up lemonade stands. I caught monsters and went treasure hunting to pay for my candy bars and comic books.

1. A grappling hook
2. A utility belt
3. One of those deactivated army surplus hand grenades
4. A Super-Soaker that has a reservoir you wear on your back
5. Night vision goggles
6. Blue raspberry Blow-Pops

I’m sitting outside a coffee shop right now, dicking around on various social networks and chugging ice coffee. Couple dudes walked up. Older Asian guys with graying hair, backpacks and sleeping bags. Sandals and cargo pants and parkas.

The one sitting closer to me asks if I mind if he smokes, I say no. He then points at his jacket and says, “Look what I got at Goodwill.” I tell him it’s nice. A couple seconds pass.

“You know, if you’re writing a book you should do it… In number eight… Times Helvetica. Like that book Shogun. Doesn’t even matter if it’s a good book, you write it like that, it’ll sell a million copies. The font takes people somewhere else.”

He asks if I smoke, I tell him I just quit.

“You know what they say, they say it’s harder to quit than heroin. They’re right.”

Good to know.

“Nah, man, they put me on Qualuudes — Look at my eye,” he shows me a scar under his right eye. “I got hit with shrapnel from a suicide bomber, the female prime minister of Syria personally removed it. Pumped my head fulla drugs, it was like swords in my brain.”

He shows me a brown spot in the white of his other eye. 

“I’m going blind, but I don’t care. I’m schizophrenic. You’re not, you’re normal. What’re you, Irish?”

Tell him I’m white. He says he’s half Japanese, and everything else.

“Not German, though. The Japanese… They were with Hitler. Nobody knew they had nuclear power till that earthquake, they coulda nuked us sky-high—”

Other guy goes, “Hey man, let’s get going.”

First guy says goodbye and they walk away.

I love talking to crazy people. If I was full of shit, I’d say “You can learn so much.” No, not exactly. But you can at least hear some interesting stories.

Dear Diary,

This weekend, Jenn and I went to Tahoe. This is interesting because we never do anything, really. One of Jenn’s friends had reserved a room with her boyfriend, but she and her boyfriend broke up… So… Describing the logistics and circumstances of this trip really isn’t that interesting.

The plan was to depart with Jenn’s friends Kent and Anna, and Kent’s brother Kevin at around six on Friday, but nobody got their shit in gear until around eight. They called us when they were outside, and we carried our stuff downstairs. Literally the second Jenn’s foot hit the sidewalk in front of our house, she rolled her ankle.

So incompetently clumsy girlfriend and I got in car, and we went to Tahoe. On the way there, I played some Pokemon. I got it into my head that I should catch an entire team of Gothitas, and name them after Suicide girls. You see, this is funny because Gothita is the first goth chick Pokemon.

Unfortunately, I spaced out and wound up catching twelve of them, in addition to the one I already had. So yeah. I now have thirteen goth chick Pokemon. I was actually better at this game when I was twelve. Now I’m just stupid.

We rolled into Tahoe around midnight. The hotel was in South Lake, near stuff. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was hoping it’d be a little more secluded. Again, free Tahoe trip, can’t complain. 

I grew up in New England, and I’ve seen a lot of fucking snow. I live in California because I don’t like snow, so the whole idea of driving three hours just to see snow is something that’s a little hard for me to comprehend. The last time I saw snow was Christmas two years ago, when I went up to Big Bear. Before that, I hadn’t seen any since I lived in Connecticut, back in 2001.

I got out of the car and kinda walked around kicking some snow and slush. Some crazy guy with a shopping cart walked by, looked at me, and muttered “YOU got money.” I’m used to dealing with SF crazies, but this motherfucker was pushing a shopping cart around in the snow at midnight, so for all I know he was a Wendigo.

Went into the hotel lobby and was surprised to hear Iron Maiden being played. There was one dude working the front desk, so I’m guessing he got to pick the jams. The hotel itself was pretty nice. Lots of rustic cedar and stonework, like you’d expect for a hotel in the mountains.

Decided it was too late to drink, and Jenn’s friends were getting up early to ski anyway, so the five of us piled into two beds and went to sleep.

The next day we got up at eight, which is a strange thing for me to do on a Saturday. We drove an hour to Kirkwood, where Kent, Anna, and Kevin were going skiing/snowboarding. Jenn and I took the car and drove around for a while.

I friggin’ love scenic grandeur and shit. I’ve pretty much always wanted to be a cowboy, and going places like this is exciting for me. This is the Wild West, it’s God’s Country. It’s Amuricuh, dangit. 

In other news, I sort of quit smoking a couple weeks ago. That is, haven’t soberly smoked cigarette that I paid for myself… I’m now one of those social-smoking assholes who bums cigarettes at parties. Step in the right direction, I guess. 

Of course, I’ve still got the pathetic smoker’s lungs that give me the endurance of a malnourished infant. Being over a mile above sea level in the mountains means I’d periodically lose my breath for absolutely no reason. I’d put on one of my shoes and have to stop to take a rest.

I wish I was one of those crazy Incan messengers who ran around in the Andes mountains in nothing but a loincloth, chewing on performance enhancing coca-leaves.

Actually, I don’t think that’s a real thing. I’m pretty sure I just invented that whole scenario. Here’s a dumb video.

I ate a chicken-fried steak at a diner. I love chicken-fried steak because it’s the most American food ever, but I make a point of not ordering it unless I’m out of town, because I would turn into Boss Hogg if I ate it on the regs.

Jenn and I picked up the snow-creatures at the ski slope, and we had giant nachos. Got home last night and watched cartoons.

…So basically I just told you a long-ass story with no point to it, and made you look at my fucking vacation photos. TAKE THAT, INTERNET.

What’s up guys.

I used to be on Tumblr, I imagine some of you knew that. But then I deleted it because I was afraid it was too incriminating, and also it felt like a fucking Urban Outfitters with the amount of tastefully ironic shit everyone was posting. I get it, you like photography. How about doing some of your own instead of reblogging someone else’s pictures.

Anyway. I’m back now, mostly because there’s stuff I wanna talk about that’s too wordy for Twitter and too much of an impulse-rant for the Destructoid community blogs. Love the community on there, but sometimes I just want go in the backyard and hit an azalea bush with a rake for twenty minutes because I’m pissed off. You know, metaphorically. Cblogs require too much patience to do that properly.

First order of business — Fucking Christ, I hate YouTube as an online community. I mean, obviously, there are a lot of little shits on there who just go around spewing hateful things.

More specifically, though, I hate how hard it is to properly reply to a specific comment and have it be visible. Responding to a comment from two hours prior means you just posted an @mention followed by something totally out of context. It makes me think of that Seinfeld where George keeps thinking up really good insults/comebacks after the fact. You know, like “I should’ve said that!”

It’s not that you can’t reply to people on YouTube, it’s the fact that the comments on there are such a churning maelstrom of dick-punchingly irrelevant drivel that any well-conceived rebuttal is completely drowned out, like a fart at a WWE Pay-Per-View event.

Also, YouTube did that absolutely buttfuck retarded thing a while back where they linked their accounts with Gmail accounts, and they can’t be unlinked — I have like, four fucking Gmail accounts and two YouTube accounts. I’ve actually started using Internet Explorer again just because I hate logging in and out between accounts. GUHHH. I love YouTube, I love Google, but for the love of me not swearing myself to death, someone should fix this.

So yeah. Hi, I’m Max. This blog will be a lot of me foaming at the mouth over something someone did or said on the internet that I disagree with.