Welcome to the point of diminishing returns! After I got a step beyond my straight-up terrible initial drawing skills, I got to what I would call just "bad". This is always a frustrating step to take. When you go from zero skill to a tiny little bit of skill, the difference is immediately apparent. After this, it gets harder and harder to not only upgrade your skills, but to notice the improvement between each step. In the almost-month since the last update I've posted, I made a lot of drawings. The trouble is, most of them have been mediocre even by my current standards; I don't want to throw crap at you, no matter how hilarious the subject matter actually is.
Since a lot of that stuff is still being hammered out, I thought I would put up something I wrote with the intention of submitting it to Cracked. They're a website that accepts submissions from pretty much anyone as long as they can follow certain guidelines. One of my favourite comedy writers, Seanbaby, writes for them, and given the quality of some of the articles on there, I thought I might actually have a shot. Unfortunately, only the featured columnists like Seanbaby and a few others are allowed to write about whatever they want. I wasn't put off by this at first, because the guidelines didn't seem too silly. However, after reading further, it was a dealbreaker. "Big fan of pop culture?" they ask. "Like to write about the quirkiness thereof? Send us a list of quirky things about star wars or some other nerd shit!" At this point it's hard to describe how tired I am of internet pop culture. I got the old man hipster burnout or something, because these days I just like to read the ridiculous shit that happens on 4chan and call people assholes on reddit. I got started on this piece before I knew about the cracked submissions guidelines, and I didn't want it to go to waste. So, here you go.
The Bus Creeper classification system:
Taking the bus is something more of us should do. We can reduce emissions, congestion and noise on our roads while ignoring everything around us in favour of our completely odious iPod playlists. Every time you ride around on a bus, especially those fancy-panted bio-diesel ones, you earn a little
bit of a right to some smugging around. Guy driving an SUV? Smug at him. Pass a guy filling up his pickup and spending enough to purchase one small human? Spread some smug. Multiple-car pile-up? Call Jonathan Frakes, because this situation calls for some Riker-level smug.
Don't get me wrong, there are some giant downsides to bus travel. Like what? Well, for one, the smells. What's that one smell? Oh, it's piss. What's that other smell? Oh right, the aforementioned bio-diesel engine smells like a fish cannery that ate too many boiled eggs. What's that other other smell? Jesus, it's more, different piss.
Then there's the more present and difficult challenge the bus throws at us. All we want to do is get it over with and get to our job/school/bum fight in peace, but the bus has the audacity to be filled up with a bunch of assholes! These people never seem to realize that you are an important person with important person things to do, and also insist on getting to their own unimportant job/school/alcohol poisoning! We are all this asshole at some point, because that's just my cranky "I didn't sleep well last night" pile of resentment that sits in all our hearts while commuting to work. The real problem is bus creepers. If the bus was just a bunch of quiet people silently stewing in polite misery, I could ride my all BTO playlist all the way to Valhalla in my mind, but these jerks can't respect the Randy. Usually I myself am not the target of your typical bus creeper, but it is the women on the bus, usually the younger ones, who will get the most use out of this guide.
CLASS 1 - Not their fault
It's a sad/hilarious fact that there are a lot of people in the world who come off pretty bizarre. It's not their fault, that's just the way they're wired up. They want to be our friends and deserve our respect, but jesus christ they can be off-putting. This category can cover everyone from the "lizard people have infiltrated the government" lady to the "gubbmint controls our minds via chemtrails" fellow, and even the good ol' "I really, genuinely enjoy the music of Limp Bizkit" guy. All of these opinions can be explained by some sort of mental imbalance or deficiency, and can often reside within the mind of a totally decent person. But, holy shit dude, don't talk about Fred Durst so loudly, I don't want people to mistakenly think I like him too. Also, I hear if you say his name three times, he appears in a puff of smoke and poops in your ears. Anyway, these folks will latch on and rattle off their psychoses for as long as you let them, but overall they are the lowest risk group for serious creepin.
CLASS 2 - Kind of their fault
This person is what you would expect to be the endgame of the Andrew WK lifestyle (which Andrew himself is exempt from because I'm pretty sure he's some sort of demi-god), wherein a lifetime of partying too hard has left their brain in a state pretty similar to a class 1. You might find this guy lounging across a few seats, shirtless, maybe with a leather jacket, with torn up jeans and really frizzy, long hair. He is clearly approaching 60 and doesn't seem aware of it. Usually smelling of booze and continually indulging his coke sniffle, he has no qualms about approaching women embarrassingly younger than him. With stale-beer breath and all the subtlety of a nickelback song, he will proceed to flirt with her in the only way he knows how; opening his jacket enough to show off his gut, singing Bon Jovi songs, and talking about all the coke he does. I personally have never seen this tactic elicit more than pity/disgust, but there must have been the one guy that pulled it off once, or else why would they all keep trying? These guys are a mid-tier creep, because although they creep hard, you can't help but feel they may have been a normal person at one point. One point, like maybe in the 70's. Maybe.
CLASS 3 - TOTALLY THEIR FAULT
A class 3 is an emergency situation. This is a guy who has every reason to know better, but just doesn't. He may be a pick-up artist, he may be a brony, he may just be a full-on asshole; whatever the case may be, consider the cleansing power of flame. I'm not saying this guy is necessarily a rapist; I'm just saying that if there was some kind of rape epidemic, this guy would be first on the suspect list after you convince me that there's no such thing as an unstoppable robot designed to forcefully penetrate anything resembling a hole. Are you standing while on the bus? You might feel a very uncomfortable sensation on your buttocks. That is because a class 3 is staring at your behind with the ferocity and desperation of a starving dog. For the love of god, don't make eye contact, because this will be interpreted as the go ahead you slowly look you up and down (with uncomfortably long pauses on your chest and crotch) followed by a tip of the fedora and some horrible lewd comment. It is here where the class 3 seems the most like a class 1, because he genuinely believes that this is an appropriate way to meet women, and that seems like something that only a severely unbalanced person would think. But no, this is an otherwise normal person who is determined to be icky. When you rightfully tell this person that you feel like dropping some fancy knife moves on him, you will be labeled a bitch, lesbo, etc. This is a desirable outcome because now this person will go home and tell reddit about how all women are bitches who don't like nice guys. And honestly ladies, I'm with you on that one. Nice guys are basically the worst thing.
