Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

For those of you who have never read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, I suggest that you do so. Though it’s definitely not for EVERYONE, there are a lot of things in there that pretty much anyone will really read into and probably laugh their ass off at. There’s a lot of shit in there that even the writer mocks as being very typical, angsty prose, but there’s a very fluid thought process behind it. Not only is the material in JTHM very funny, but the small tidbits that are added in help keep you interested. Some of the material is senseless, but it’s made that way for a reason.

The foreward is really great, but it’s way too long to type out, so I suggest that you get a copy of the director’s cut if you want a quick and enjoyable read, though the actual comics have lots of things in them that it the director’s cut lack. I wish that I still had the full comics, but as my luck has it, half of my issues are being borrowed(along with every other Jhonen comic that I own) and the other half were stolen from me by someone I was nice enough to lend them to.

Anyway, these are my favourite quotes and pictures from Nny(Johnny’s nickname in the comics). I know that it might be kind of hard to follow without knowing the full plot, but that’s even more reason for you to read it. :D

PS- italics are titles of certain segments and (stuff in parentheses inside of the quotes is the stuff in side bubbles). Sorry if the pictures suck, but I had to use my scanner.

“Well, I’d really hate to miss Oprah Windy, but this whole mutilation thing is pretty upsetting, so ask away.

(Next, men who eat human waste, and the women who love to kiss them!)”

“Does this look like heaven?”

His house number is 777. :)

“Movies, books, T.V., music- they’re all just entertainment, not guidebooks for damning yourself!”

“Johnny the Suicidal Maniac: Another 2A.M.

Oh. It’s such a beautiful night. I think I’ll kill myself. … Another one of these nights.”

“Things That Make Noise

They make so much noise. I try to wait until I’m out of the room before I start laughing. … A blur of sweating, screaming, crying, human drama. But, every once in a while, they say things that sound like words. They make me think about what I’m doing. The noises make me so uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that sometimes I wonder why I just don’t get myself a pair of earplugs.”

Goth Girl(Tess): “ Why is it whenever were not talking about being discriminated by people for the way we look we make fun of other people? I mean, what makes you any different from those jock-holes who were laughing at your hair that one time?”

Goth Guy(Dillon): “It’s not like we talk about anyone important. Some people just ask for it … Besides, if we talked about anything else, we might expose the fact that most of our arrogance is based on exploiting a fashionable alienation, rather than on anything substantial.”

Tess: “Oh yeah. HEY! Look at that fat girl!!”

Johnny: “We all assign a voice to the aspects of ourselves and I remember you always being there from the start. So you’ve seen what I’ve seen. Felt it all. The people laughing … and living their petty lives.”

Nailbunny: “A world defined by its daytime talk shows.”

Johnny: “Ohhh… *sniff* …I wish … I wish someone would just switch me off and … fix me. Bunny?”

Nailbunny: “Yes, Nny?”

Johnny: “I’m not happy.”

“Dear Diary, I seem to be dead.”

“Sometimes you can cry until there is nothing left in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray all you want to whatever God you think will listen. And, still, it makes NO difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent … It would not be because it cared.”

These are the renditions of God and Satan in JTHM. They make me giggle. Satan also shows up again in a different form, but you’ll have to read it to see it. :DDDD

“There is a disturbing association in your mind, between feeling and weakness. … Your body screams for INPUT!! I am the sun on your face, the touch of soft skin! The feel of real cotton! I am the rope around your neck, a feather across your back! Blood and toothpaste! I am the sensation of all of these things!”

Johnny: “I am a slave to nothing …!”

Obey: “There is no choice. You’re always a slave to something.”

“Dear Die-ary, The passions that drive us should be the ones we respect and admire. To feel contempt for one’s own motivations is a vulgar thing. Too often, it seems, I’ve succumbed to less than admirable compulsions driven by this furiously reprehensible machine of mine. So many things inside that I can do without- desires and urges and whatnot. So extraneous. By the time I write in this book again, I hope to be as cold as the moon that lights this page.”

"Dear Die-ary, There’s nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. … I can’t say I’m very pleased with where my life is just now … But I can’t help but look forward to where it’s going.”

Fear and Loathing: Part 2

About their attending the Drug Conference:
"But this time our very presence would be an outrage. We would be attending the conference under false pretenses and dealing, from the start, with a crowd that was convened for the stated purpose of putting people like us in jail. We were the Menace--not in disguise, but stone-obvious drug abusers, with a flagrantly cranked-up act that we intended to push all the way to the limit ... not to prove any final, sociological point, and not even as a concious mocery: It was mainly a matter of life-style, a sense of obligation and even duty. If the Pigs were gathering in Vegas for a top-level Drug Conference, we felt the drug culture should be represented."

"'As your attorney, I advise you to tell me where you put the goddamn mescaline.'"

vomiting = "doing the Big Spit"

From Lucy's fictional trial:
"'... I use the word kill with all due respect for the fear and loathing I'm sure it provokes in every one of you when you reflect that these degenerate rapists used this galaxy of narcotics to completely destroy the mind and morals of this once-innocent teenager, this ruined and degraded young girl who now sits before you in shame ... yes, they fed this girl enough drugs to scramble her brains so horribly that she can no longer even recall the filthy details of that orgy she was forced to endure ... and then they used her, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, for their own unspeakable ends!'"

"Indeed: KNOW YOUR DOPE FIEND! YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT! You will not be able to see his eyes because of Tea-Shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can't find a rape victim. He will stagger and babble when questioned. He will not respect your badge. The Dope Fiend fears nothing. He will attack, for no reason, with every weapon at his command--including yours. BEWARE. Any officer apprehending a suspected marijuana addict should use all necessary force immediately. One stitch in time (on him) will usually save nine on you. Good luck. -The Chief"

As a side note, I've been watching a lot of PBS lately and the kids shows on there are crazy, especially when you have an awesome smoking session prior to watching. Ashleigh- I've been watching Arthur and it's awesome when you're really stoned. Also, the sewing and painting and cooking shows are also insane. Moving on...

Talking to Alice, the maid:
"'The only way you'll ever know is if something really serious happens and one of them will contact you in public, with the password.'
'What is it?' she asked.
'One Hand Washes the Other,' I said. 'The minute you hear that, you say: 'I fear nothing.' That way, they'll know you.'"

"The press is a gang of cruel faggots."

My rating: 4.5 out of 5, only because it loses it's hold on me near the end.
I'm also confused by all of the ellipses? Did he cut things out of the story or did he just use them really often? I think it would be beneficial to read more of his books to understand more of his character.

Fear and Loathing: Part 1

Since I have so many quotes that I want to post from this book, I figured I'd cut it into parts, the way it was written. I'm almost done with it, so Part 2 is coming soon. :D

"'He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.' -Dr. Johnson"

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like 'I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...' and suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals."
That is the best opening to a book that I have ever come across.

"The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. ... Not that we needed all of that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."

"The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into the rotten stuff pretty soon."

"'KILL THE BODY AND THE HEAD WILL DIE' This line appears in my notebook, for some reason."

Circus-Circus
"Ether is the perfect drug for Las Vegas. In this town, they love a drunk. Fresh meat. So they put us through the turnstiles and turned us loose inside."

"'I hate to say this,' said my attorney as we sat down at the Merry-Go-Round Bar on the second balcony, 'but this place is getting to me. I think I'm getting the Fear.'"
This scene and the lizard scene are my two favourite scenes in the movie.

Back at the Hotel
"Now off the escalator and into the casino, big crowds still tight around the crap tables. Who are these people? These faces! Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used-car dealers from Dallas. But they're real. And sweet Jesua, there are a hell of a lot of them--still screaming around these desert-city crap tables at four-thirty on a Sunday morning. Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last-minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino."
I really love the last line of this quote. "I went into the men's room to eat mine

On his first time taking LSD
"I went into the men's room to eat mine. ... [I] spilled the rest on the sleeve of my red Pendelton shirt ... I saw one of the musicians come in. 'What's the trouble,' he said. 'Well,' I said. 'All of this white stuff on my sleeve is LSD.' He said nothing: Merely grabbed my arm and began sucking on it. A very gross tableau. I wondered what would happen if some Kingston Trio/young stockbroker type night wander in and catch us in the act. Fuck him, I thought. With a bit of luck, it'll ruin his life--forever thinking that just behind some narrow door in all his favorite bars, men in red Pendelton shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know."

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."

That's all for Part 1. I'll do some real reviewing when I finish!

First day of college?

I dunno about you yet.

When I finish Fear and Loathing, there will be a nice long post of the many quotes that I find amusing. There are quite a few of them.

Kid in my Chemistry class: "I don't think I've ever seen a girl reading a Hunter S. Thompson book before. That's pretty rad."

Oh, college kids. So very amusing...
Also, smoking before an 8am? No dice.

January 9, 2010

My mom's birthday!
We went to Half-Price Books and I made $10.75 and bought three cassettes for Tilly. (I'll probably have photos later?) I'm now hooked on building my collection, especially when they're a quarter a piece. I wish it were easy to build a record collection, but all of the good stuff, people want to keep and everything else is relatively expensive, for what it is.

I can't wait until I get to do stuff. I just want to get the hell out of here for a day or two and have an adventure. Another thing to add to my lists: adventure more.
I also can't wait to blog about Fear and Loathing. I'm only on page 63 and I have 9 pages marked. :D It's awesome.

lodge

(lŏj) n. A cottage or cabin, often rustic, used as a temporary abode or shelter: a ski lodge. A small house on the grounds of an estate or a park, used by a caretaker or gatekeeper. An inn. Any of various Native American dwellings, such as a hogan, wigwam, or longhouse. The group living in such a dwelling. A local chapter of certain fraternal organizations. The meeting hall of such a chapter. The members of such a chapter. Had a good night.

Message from Anthony

Hi, umm, Mrs. Carter, this is Anthony, umm, Lili's friend Ashley's Brother. I just, umm, wanted to talk to Ashley ...

LMAO. Obviously not word for word, but he really did call me Mrs. Carter and made the explanation of who he is that complicated. Made me smile, wish I wouldn't have deleted it. :/

Prozac Nation

"While they like to talk everything through, to analyze and hypothesis, what I really need, what I'm really looking for, is not something I can articulate, It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it."

"I'm never supposed to say, to Jack or anyone else, What makes you think I'm so rich that you can steal my heart and it won't mean a thing? Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead."

"Story of my life: I am so self-destructive, I turn solutions into problems. Everything I touch, I ruin. I'm Midas in reverse."

This quote reminds me of the opening lines of a Relient K song. I'm sure pretty much everyone thinks they are retarded, but they really aren't too terrible. Especially considering that they're pretty Christian and I tend to thoroughly dislike what I dub "Jesus Music."
"Falling Out" - Relient K
"I'm falling out
Of grace with the world
They say I've lost my Midas touch
What turned to gold now turns to rust."

"And it took all the strength I could muster to purchase a ticket, get on board, get a seat, buy some magazines for the road even though I couldn't concentrate on anything at all. ... The only thing I could do was go blank. And I remember thinking: This is it, This is the pain you've been waiting for all your life. Heartbreak straight up. I remenber thinking things couldn't be worse."

"I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word madness to describe my condition. Now and again, it slips out, but I hate it. Madness is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in it's connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression."

On Sylvia Plath, in reference to madness/depression:
"Think, instead, of the girl herself, of the way she must have felt right then, of the way no amount of great poetry and fascination and fame could make the pain she felt at that moment worth suffering. Remember that when you're at the point at which you're doing something as desperate and violent as sticking your head in an oven, it is only because the life that preceded this act felt even worse. Think about living in depression from moment to moment, and know it is not worth any of the great art that comes as its by-product."

About her mother after a mugging:
"She's always been a trouper. She doesn't even like having a Demerol intravenous because she's one of those stoic antidrug people who aren't even comfortable taking aspirin for a headache. She's one of those people--bless their souls--who don't complete the Percodan or codeine prescriptions that they get after surgery. Can we possibly be related?"
(^I laughed a lot at that one.^)

There's a part where she's talking about her perfect suicide(lights out in a tub full of water, cutting), where she even talks about the music she'd like to listen to while she does it and it's a fantastic paragraph, but it's just that: A PARAGRAPH. So, I'll leave that out for the time-being.

"It's funny, but when I was little, before I'd go to sleep my mom would do this routine with me where she'd tell me to think of pretty things. ... Nothing all that extraordinary, but when you're four years old, it's cats and dogs that make life worth living. And I kind of think it's maybe not so different now."

"No one shoots himself in the head because he's had a bad fishing season or because the Wall Street Journal's editorial page says mean things about him. Depression strikes down deep. The fact that depression seems to be "in the air" right now can be both the cause and result of a level of societal malaise that so many feel. ... Every person who has experienced a severe depression has his own sad, awful tale to tell, his own mess to live through. Sadly, Kurt Cobain will never get that far. Every day, I thank God that I did."

The Epilogue and Afterword were far more profound to me than the whole rest of the book, but that was because they confirmed things that I had already guessed about depression. Mainly the fact that medications for depression are sometimes prescribed without good reason and our society is, in general, obsessed with not being okay. The memoir part of the book is also fantastic and I would definitely recommend it if you have the patience for a long and depressing book.
Out of 5 stars I'd give it about a 3.5


The sections in italics are, from what I've concluded, entries from her journals, while the rest was written for the sole-purpose of the book.