Tommy “The Creator Unknown” Mack

New #music from Xzay’s album, whispering as it washes ashore when the tides are sound and the waters sway time:

Stolen from someone on Substack who stole it from someone somewhere who stole it from someone who probably stole it from someone and… What Makes You a Writer? — Ryū Murakami 村上龍 Ryū Murakami (1952–2026) was a teacher to all outsiders, especially us brats in Japan. If a 13-year-old came to me and said, “I want to become a writer,” I would probably advise them, “Writing is the last profession left to us. If you really want to become a writer, you can do so at any time, so for now, you should turn your attention to other things.” There are doctors who became writers, teachers who became writers, journalists, editors, bureaucrats, politicians, scientists, businesspeople, former convicts, gamblers, and sex workers who became writers. There are as many paths to becoming a writer as there are writers, but apart from a handful of writers who became politicians, hardly anyone has gone the other way. In other words, almost no one becomes a doctor or a teacher after becoming a writer. This is not because writing is such a sweet job that once you start, you can never quit, but because it is the last job, with nowhere else to go. Writing is the only profession open to prisoners, hospital patients, death row inmates, exiles, criminals, hikikomori, and homeless people alike. There is only one requirement for being a writer: having something that must be said and is worth saying, whether to society or to someone in particular. When you have something that must be said and is worth saying, and you feel that writing is the only way of life left to you, that is when you should become a writer. — Ryū Murakami, A Career Guide for 13-Year-Olds and Anyone Willing to Try (2003)

Must be one of those days. I’ve mentioned Scatterbrain on multiple occasions… already… and it ain’t even lunchtime yet. youtu.be/dN7yby3Zuuk?is=EGvx…

When I say that Deicide isn’t the same without the Hoffman brothers, I mean, the labyrinthian riffs that somehow still have tons of groove and that border on sounding like they were ripped from twisted nursery rhymes and the unhinged evil sounding lead guitars are just gone, gone… 😢

Off to see the Blizzard with a three armed cowardly lion…

Congrats to @KristinaArtsy for getting this page and a few other Create Your Monster: The Comic pages accepted in the 2026 Biennale of Illustration in Sofia. It’s one of my favs! Who said a comic and an album can’t get married, unknowingly feed the trees nanoplastic-contaminated water, and fly to a stolen meatpacking plant in a winged van?

Deicide has never been the same without the Hoffman brothers. No matter how soaring and melodic the leads are or how groovy the riffs have been, they’ve only ever been decent without them… at best. 😮‍💨

Fuckin’ Igorrr!

Not a single Substack fucker liked this joke. I can’t say that I blame them, but maybe they could learn to award an A- for effort. I get that it’s a little rough and tumble, but what ain’t and who isn’t? Grow a pair, maybe, or remove the ones you got without the assistance of governmental insurance. Jeezus! Who am I to preach? This is a joke. I’d try to explain it, but you might laugh, and we can’t be having that. Not at this early or late of an hour. Not on this day. Life isn’t supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be shelled. If you laugh too much, it might result in a jiggling underbelly and an elevated mood. An elevated mood could be mistaken for happiness. Happiness might lead to writing. Writing might lead to success. Success is for losers. Success is for the weak. Writing is for weak losers who don’t know how to bleed from their ears and speak telepathically to a pseudo-catfish living in a plastic tub at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Why don’t pet food manufacturers target dogs with fish flavors? Dogs like fish as much as cats. Dogs like killing smaller animals, too. Trimethylamine, amines, and aldehydes are good for fish. This is the middle of the joke right here: It is 6:43 AM, and my kitten, Toxoplasmosis, aka Toxie, is perched on a plastic clutter-killing tub manufactured in China, watching a hermit crab with no name look for a new bigger shell. Since the other hermit crabs died while already buried, the one remaining hermit crab has been happily (actively) exploring a 200-gallon fish tank that has no fish or tanks and has been repurposed for one solitary bottle cap sized crab’s new job that mostly involves packing on pounds. The crab likely has no concept of death. The crab is happier (more active) with the other crabs being in crabby heaven or hell. I’m not making a value judgment, but the other crabs spent months on end buried. I’m assuming they were dreaming. Dreaming is the old gooning. And everyone knows that gooners go to hell. And every gooner knows that hell is the opposite of gooning. Hell is writing. Writing is for crabs living in hell. The lone fat hermit crab would be dead within minutes if Toxie had her way. Why don’t pet food manufacturers promote Impossible Burgers™️ for cats? Any cat worth its weight in crabs would eat a bag of Impossible Burger™️-flavored bits made from the reconstituted words of happy human people writers. Writers are gonna write. People can’t help but people. Dogs aren’t cats, but they could be. Cats aren’t crabs, but they probably wish they could be. You are what you eat. Whether by physical force, charity, accident, or getting a real job and paying other people to people the people out of a meat source, all become dead meat. Toxie isn’t hungry for crab meat. Toxie wants to become the crab. Toxie is the crab. Welcome to the Age of Trans-Speciesism, probably. This is the end of the joke. The brother of the plastic clutter-killing Chinese tub drowned on its journey through one of a million 13,000-foot-deep American cervixes. Miles deep, the corpse tub has become home to a roughscale grenadier that would be named Kitty on account of his whiskers, but only if human peoples could use telepathy at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Whiskers should sell plastic-flavored cat food, is what I’m saying. Cats and catfish love plastic just as much as humans. Is this the end of the joke? I sure hope so. I didn’t laugh one time. And I’m tired of being a writer, and I’m about to do my real job of cooking an opulent double-honey-lacquered ham with a tropical elixir, brown sugar crystals, and butter-enriched gooey sweetness. It’s a candy. It’s a meat. It’s a sweet dead meat. Aren’t we all? The moral of this story is that I’m rooting for you to become a telepathic catfish in hell, protected well enough by a plastic tub to enjoy the freedom of pretending to be a dog that knows how to write with its whiskers. CC/ @GeladaaComics Is it that bad?