🎨 Artcow Iconoclast / Jonathan Mack Sweet - The Chris-Chan of Arkansas

[wheat pasta]

In case anyone else somehow missed the bit of writing mentioned by @ToroidalBoat and wanted to read it, I took the liberty of copying and pasting the relevant bits so nobody else would have to dig:

Spoiler

2/15/11-- The Unwritten Rules of a Successful College Relationship
Like many Odd Socks across the Fruited Plain I don't celebrate Valentine's Day Single's Awareness Day, although I do enjoy getting half-off on cheap Valentine's Day candy and wilted flowers (which make for good mulch and potpourri) the day after. I wouldn't say I enjoy single life, but I have come to accept it. I have never liked the bar scene, I have a scrupulous rule about never fishing off the company, academic, or church piers, and being self-conscious about my failing voice I am looking for a relationship where I would have to speak to the young woman as little as possible. This is why a college relationship would be ideal for me; however, you can only have those in college, and as long as this old bat is in power at AS(S)U that will remain an impossibility for the forseeable future.


Of course the college relationship, while on the surface appearing simple and casual, is--like anything else liberalism hath wrought--a roiling minefield of rules, rules, rules. Breaking any one--and my clueless ass broke all four--can make your chances of scoring tail smaller than the steering wheel in a black guy's ride. I've boiled it all down to these four basic tips. If I had had any inkling of these rules thirteen years ago, who knows, my darling Ashleigh might still be with me today.


*The girl calls all the shots. Remember, gentleman, we are in the age of feminism, which means sex and empowerment are inexorably tied. Your girl decides everything.This includes howoften her calls come, how long each lasts, how long she phones you for before she finally agrees to meet in person, where you will meet, and what will happen between you when you do.


*She calls you; you don't call her. This ties into and expands rule #1. You do not call her number. Nor do you send her letters, e-mails, texts, telegrams, telegraphs, or smoke signals to her house. You do not do or say anything to prompt the relationship forward or make the tail wagon move faster. When she reaches out and touches you courtesty of Ma Bell, that's fun and cute; when you do it to her, it's stalking. You have no say in the matter at all. That she deigns to phone you out of the some 5,000 other men on campus is a great honor. Don't start thinking you're special or indispensible in any way.


* Avoid talk of personal disclosure and that "emotions" crap. No, these women do not want to hear about your feelings (what, are you on your period?), your dog Skippy you've had since you were 11, that funny thing that happened in math class today, where you see yourself in 15 years or even your plans for tomorrow, or how sad you are that your grandma or your father or your uncle or your wierd third cousin Charlie with the glass eye or whatever the hell relative of yours just died. None of that. They don't need that drama. They're your girlfriend, not you biographer. When the phone rings, the pants come off.


*Dress for success. This means no loud shirts, no pants in bright or unusual colors (like purple), no flipover shades, no baseball caps with humorous slogans, nonovelty pins, buttons, and no itemin your wardrobe or immediate person which once belonged to a now-deceased relative. No clothing item of yours should have a story atttached to it, and if it does, for the luvvagod, don't tell it.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Pretty much like others have said - Sweet lives in relative poverty and Sweet has complained that his brother uses up the food, so an all-you-can-eat buffet is a luxury Sweet normally doesn't have access to. @ASU pointed out in their earliest posts on this thread that all of the perks of ASU (which were normal perks for universities around the turn of the millennium) would be wondrous to a guy who lives in some impoverished rural town in the middle of nowhere.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

Oh, man, I have seen some weak sauce in my time, but that latest blog wins the prize.

- A legitimate English major and writer would have used "lavish" correctly. Sweet did not.

- Sweet still does not deny Doc's tales of his college buffoonery, just blows a raspberry. Basically, this stuff happened and Sweet can't deny it.

- "They were shooting craps in the bathroom" would've been a far more intelligent way of saying what was happening. We don't need to be informed that gambling in a high school is illegal. Sheesh.

- Finally, when you look at the nature of the post in general, what do you see? "I'm putting my stuff here because I didn't have the foresight, reason, intelligence, or basic competence to put it someplace safe to begin with. I'm inept, ignorant, and scared. As for those stories about me, well, fooey on youey! Those turns of phrase work just fine if you're a clumsy hack like me!" The whole thing is an admission to failure and fear of defeat, culminating in some of the most limp-wristed, weak-kneed defense against an embarrassing story I've seen since the golden days of CWC.

Doc Merkwerkdichlibe beat the crap out of Jon. All there is to it.

Edit: Jon mentions a skate date his avatar has. This is precious. Real Jon has never been on a date in his life.

Edit 2: Switched out "legitimate" for "lavished."

 

[Chan the Wizard]

He's desperately trying to explain the "hot craps" but let's think about it. It took place in a restroom and we know Jon has a fart fetish. It may be legitimate term for the game, but we know where Sweet's mind really was when he wrote that.

 

[Dr. Merkwurdichliebe]

Sweet also addresses @Dr. Merkwurdichliebe (or "Doc Murky" the "Grammar Nazi" in Sweetish) about the whole "craps" deal.

I Don't Know Shit About English wrote: "Finally, a couple of points to make on last week's blog: "crap", in reference to the dice game, is correct if used as an adjective, such as "crap game" or "crapshoot". "Craps" is a noun referring to the game itself and usu. follows a gerund, i.e. "shooting craps", "playing craps". Secondly, although somewhat informal, "lavished with@" is perfectly acceptable, such as in this article about some gal who looks like the singer Rhianna@."

(1) No, the game is called craps. A game of craps is called a craps game, not a crap game and not a game of crap. If crap as an adjective referred to the dice game, this meaning would appear in a book I like to call "the dictionary." It does not. Nor have I ever seen it used in this manner by anyone except your barely literate self. In Vegas, for example -- Danger! Adjectival use of craps rapidly approaching! -- you play at a craps table. Ask someone for directions to the "crap table" and you'll get smacked down by a bouncer who, unlike you, speaks English. Your defense of yet another lapse in diction consists of simply making shit up, as you always do when you can't blame your blunders on someone else. Cite an authority who agrees with your egregiously stupid position. I'll help you get started: Neither Webster's New World nor American Heritage nor any of my slang dictionaries support your crack-brained attempts to redefine the word craps. Don't make me get the OED off the shelf.

(2) Your babbling about crapshoot is another bit of arrant stupidity. The extra s has simply been dropped from this slang term in order to avoid the awkwardness of crapsshoot. Unneeded double letters are often eliminated in portmanteau words, and even in some compound words. You have a lot more free time than I do, so you can spend the next week researching them.

(3) Your contention that the word craps "usually follows a gerund" is astonishingly ignorant, even for you. Maybe you thought we'd see "gerund" and flee in terror. How the hell did you ever get a degree in English? I'm beginning to suspect that cheating on a monumental scale was somehow involved.

(4) Citing another ignorant person who made the same mistake you did in misusing lavish does not, as you imagine, prove your point. Here's what Bryan Garner, the leading authority on American usage, has to say on the subject: ". . . you lavish gifts on a person, not a person with gifts." It's really just that simple. If you wish to engage in the logical fallacy of appeal to authority, you need to first cite an actual authority, not one of your fellow illiterates.

Surprising how Sweets latches on one grammatical error and uses it as his way of being the lord of all smug.

Congrats, Sweets. You took one over us.

Sweets - 1
Kiwis - 2401

Never take Sweet at his word. Everything he wrote about craps and lavish is utterly wrong.

The score is now Sweets 0, Kiwis 2402.

EDIT TO ADD THIS QUESTION: Why is Jon so incensed over someone writing about his quirky behavior at a salad bar? This is a man who has confessed to being "guilty in the eyes of the law" of making terroristic threats and conspiring to have carnal knowledge of a minor. He has shared details of his plot and his preparations for murdering one of his brothers with an ax. He brags about relentlessly harassing people for almost 20 years over a tempest in a teapot at a semiweekly college newspaper in Jonesboro, Ark., during the early days of Bill Clinton's second term in the White House. Why is he so outraged about someone reporting -- quite accurately -- that he once made multiple trips to a salad bar to assemble a single plate of vegetables? This really puzzles me.

 

[WWWWolf]

EDIT: New BelchBlog is up.

Off-topic mini-request: If you're using archive.is, please also give full links. The guy running archive.is is still miffed about his booze getting stuck in our fine nation's customs a month back, so he's blocking the entire country in retaliation. It's a crucial freedom-of-expression issue, see.

Anyway, there's some small hope for Belchyboo.

WHAT IS THIS NEWFANGLED CLOUD STORAGE WIZARDRY?

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Why is Jon so incensed over someone writing about his quirky behavior at a salad bar?

It's odd. It reminds me of how Chris freaked out about that (in)famous GAMe PLACe photo, yet he revealed all sorts of embarrassing stuff himself. It also reminds me of how ADF would go out of his way to avoid Kiwis taking secret pics of himself in public, and then he uploads highly unflattering pics of himself anyway.

 

[AnOminous]

And meanwhile (like I said before), Sweet got out of that experience that college dating begins with the girl randomly calling the guy, and the relationship itself is pretty much just phone sex - not really getting to know the person otherwise.

As was pointed out back on page 13, Sweet even posted that in some dating tips he posted on that 90s-style site he made:

Avoid talk of personal disclosure and that "emotions" crap. [...] They're your girlfriend, not you biographer. When the phone rings, the pants come off.

So basically, no matter what's going on, the moment a girl is on the phone, immediately start jerking off like a zoo ape.

And he wonders why he is a social reject.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

So basically, no matter what's going on, the moment a girl is on the phone, immediately start jerking off like a zoo ape.

Y'know, I think that if Jon thought he could get away with doing that in public ....

 

[ToroidalBoat]

immediately start jerking off

If you read between the lines of Sweet's tips, you can see that Sweet is speaking more or less from personal experience, given his tendency to project. Which means, for example, that once and if "Ashleigh" gave him her phone number, he'd probably be trying to call her all the time, but was frankly told to stop it, and she would call him instead.

Also, as you probably already know, Sweet even drew (and posted online!) what chinaphone dating was like on his end. At least he censored it. And yet he's mad about the Tale Of The Salad Bar Expeditions being leaked.

 

[wheat pasta]

Also, as you probably already know, Sweet even drew (and posted online!) what chinaphone dating was like on his end.

Wait, wait, wait, how do I keep missing this stuff? Where would I find this? I can't help but wonder now.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

If you read between the lines of Sweet's tips, you can see that Sweet is speaking more or less from personal experience, given his tendency to project. Which means, for example, that once and if "Ashleigh" gave him her phone number, he'd probably be trying to call her all the time, but was frankly told to stop it, and she would call him instead.

I would not be surprised in the slightest:

A number of unsuccessful attempts to reach "Ashleigh", aka Jessica, followed. I called the house numerous times a day, always getting a busy signal, or hearing the phone ring and ring about twenty times before the operator cut me off. This went on for hours a night, for weeks.

I grew steadily more frustrated and angry. [...] Why wouldn't she answer her phone or respond to my letters? A very cruel game was being played on me, and I hated it. I demanded closure. I wanted a second chance with her more than anything.


The phone calls continued throughout the summer.

This is from his Lemora blog about "Ashleigh." Say, new folks, would you like to read it in it's entirety (save for the stupid 1990s graphics)?

Spoiler: This is the story of a girl...

S o I believe that if The Herald is the sun around which my emotional universe revolves, then Ashleigh Bainks must be its Jupiter.

The relationship began August of 1997.



It ended six months later.

In the late summer or early fall of 1999 I wrote the first story based on our rather unusual and sudden breakup, "Smitten With Her". It's the story of a couple, the Menteros. Ernest told Joey about the death of a beloved relative with whom he was very close, and she freaked out. They broke up briefly. While they were apart he slept with another woman, Susan Bridgett. In the end he tells her he just found out Susan is dead. She had AIDS, and he contracted it from her. The story ends with Ernest's suicide and Joey struggling to cope with the fact that she may be infected...and pregnant.

The story, with a few changes, is my own. Ashleigh dropped out of my life in January after I told her about my father's death. I met someone else--my own "Susan"--and effectively forgot her.

On Sunday, February 15, after Susan and I had just finished talking, the phone rang again. Curious, I picked up the phone--and was surprised to hear Ashleigh's soft Southern lilt after a month of separation.

For the next couple of weeks I was balancing two girlfriends. I loved Susan for her mind and the way we had so much in common; I loved Ashleigh's passion and her ebullient, unpredictable nature. I couldn't hurt either of them by picking her rival. But neither of them wanted to share me, and each would often snipe at and insult the other behind her back.

Ashleigh and I finally met on the 28th. It was in the south parking lot of the Seminole Twin Towers, the men's dorm on campus. She was beautiful. She wore a green sweatshirt and faded jeans. I wore my flipover sunglasses and my father's army jacket and my old "How do I spell relief? W-E-E-K-E-N-D-S" cap with the decorative buttons.

"What's with the get-up?" she asked me.

"It's my father's old jacket," I said. "I wear it to honor his memory. I was just about to go to breakfast in the caf over there. Would you like to join me? I'll pay for you."

"I have to go take my mom to work," she said. "You can go on and eat, and then meet me back here in about an hour. 'Kay?"

"Okay."

That day she walked out on me for the last time. God had given me an apology present to make up for last year...now he'd taken it away. She was the first good thing in my life since I lost my job, and to lose her right on top of the firing was like piling betrayal on top of betrayal. It was the old tyrant turning around and slapping me in the face.


God to Me--------->

Trust died that day.



A few years later I looked up Ashleigh's address and attempted to get in touch with her, with dubious success. A very rude young woman called me one afternoon and told me that she got my letters, and if I sent any more she would turn them over to the police. She was very adamant about not being the girl I had met ouside Twin, mentioning the name "Carolyn Jones" during our conversation.

I was now more determined than ever to unravel the mystery...and I had a new clue to run with.

In March of 2002 I finally screwed my courage to the sticking-point and dialed her number. I spoke to her father, a lawyer named Joey Fagan. He told me that he didn't have a daughter and hung up.

I quickly phoned him back and informed him that there was a young woman in his house calling herself "Ashleigh Bainks", and that I was trying to get back together with her.

He repeated that he didn't have a daughter, only two sons. He asked where I had gotten his number. I told him this young woman was giving it out to strange men and propositioning them for sex. He told me, in an almost threatening tone, "I suggest you lose this number right quick."

I asked if there were any nieces or girlfriends of one of his sons who might be playing a joke. I even asked him to describe his wife for me, in case she might be sneaking out and fooling around with college men under the guise of a high-school girl. He didn't seem upset, as one would suspect, over the prospect of some strange girl handing out his phone number to men; in fact, the fool seemed almost amused.

Little research into Carolyn Jones, and badda-boom, badda-bing, I turned up a "Carrie Jones" that had attended A-State at the same time as me and as one of Ashleigh's brothers--Jason--and, like Ashleigh, lived in Trumann. I called that number and, after leaving a message on the machine explaining my plight and then calling back a day later, I spoke to her mother. "About five-six, long blonde hair, blue eyes?" she said.

She was describing the girl I met outside the dorm perfectly. "I spoke to your neighbor, a man named Joey Fagan, who lives at the number she gave me," I said, "but he says he doesn't have a little girl."

"He does have a girl," Mrs. Jones told me. "Her name is Jessica."

So! The phantom had a real name! Jessica Fagan! But was she really rich? A Catholic? Was her dad really a lawyer, her mother an aerobics instructor, and her brother a state trooper? Did she really have a dream of modelling underwear? Where was the girl who once said she'd happily leave her family behind and run away with me? Where did lies end and truth begin? And what was Carolyn's part in this dance of seduction?

Kant once said, "Many things may for him possess charm and agreeableness. No one cares about that; but when he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he demands the same delight from others." That's how I felt about Ashleigh. I wanted everyone around me to love her as I did, to embrace my cause, and help me get her back. My family begged me to forget about her, but she was like a drug to me. I needed her at any cost.

A number of unsuccessful attempts to reach "Ashleigh", aka Jessica, followed. I called the house numerous times a day, always getting a busy signal, or hearing the phone ring and ring about twenty times before the operator cut me off. This went on for hours a night, for weeks.

I grew steadily more frustrated and angry. What kind of human being would lie about having a daughter? Why wouldn't she answer her phone or respond to my letters? A very cruel game was being played on me, and I hated it. I demanded closure. I wanted a second chance with her more than anything.





The phone calls continued throughout the summer.



Evenings I like to take a stroll on the highway that runs by my house. The quiet of the night helps me think. I was contemplating my plight during one of these walks when I began to see its possibility as a plot for a story. I thought of Ashleigh's father. I asked myself what kind of sick disgusting monster he must be. Then I tried seeing things from his perspective, and realized what he must think I am. What I envisioned was a very dark psychological thriller about a spurned, homicidal man who spends years chasing after the girl who jilted him. He writes her letters, he calls her daily, and finally he visits her house and shoots her father! And the funny thing is, he's telling the truth--he doesn't have a daughter! I saw a lot of possibilities here.

I had mentioned my situation with Ashleigh to a lady friend previously. She's the same lady friend whom I credit as helping me over the hump with "Dark Hunger" the year before, and whom the character of Rachel "Rocky" Stuart was based on. I described the phone call to Mr. Fagan in detail and asked her what she made of the situation.

"Maybe she was hired help?" she suggested. That theory went right into the manuscript. I completed Tiresias the following spring, 2003. Though I'd been writing psychological disorders as early as "Beautiful Dreamer"--a semiautobiographical story of overreaching ambition and disassociative fugue--this was the first time I'd done it on such a broad canvas. The title comes from the name of a Greek prophet who recieved the gift of seeing the future after he went blind--an apology present, if you will, from the gods. In Oedipus Rex Tiresias later foresaw the fall of the famous King of Crete, whose name is synonymous with incest. The story itself has nothing to do with the seer, at least not as far as prophecy...but it does deal with an obsession for the truth, which was the fatal flaw of Oedipus--and of myself. Who is the blinder man in the tragedy--Tiresias or the king? To be obsessed is to wear a blindfold made of the past.

My background as a psychology major helped a lot with the writing of this one, as I had to paint a much broader cast of characters than I would in a short story, each with varying degrees of some hang-up or another. I've always said half-jokingly I'd like to write a book with not one likable character, and this may be as close to it as I've come. They're all frigging nuts. Though to tell the truth I began it feeling for the shooting victim's son, and by the end of it I did a total one-eighty and was sympathizing with the shooter. An idea is bare bones and clinical...but when you write it down, when you flesh it out and clothe the skeleton, you find that has a way of making it personal. The story comes home for you.



Really, to this day, I know next to nothing about Ashleigh/Carolyn/Jessica. I had hoped to discuss her during my interview with The Herald. I wanted my words to reach whoever she's with now, so they can give me a little information about her. I seek information about her not only for my own personal mental health, but for his sake as well. As noted, my credibility has been damaged by the charges against me, and The Herald won't grant me any interview.

2000

This very dangerous little girl is now a married woman. She has a boy and a girl. I cannot imagine how horribly her carefree, flighty lifestyle will mess up those kids one day. That cheap piece of fishwrap calling itself a campus paper, due to their intolerance and inaction, were the proverbial men who sat idle and let evil prevail, and will one day have blood on their hands.

I have written several stories over the years about Ashleigh built aroundall sorts of nightmare scenarios, and hope they remain solely in the realm of fiction. Yet I do have an uncanny knack for premonition, and what I write sometimes comes frighteningly to pass.

Incidentally, if you're thinking "Hm, Carolyn Jones? Have I heard that name before?", well, you might have. She was a comedic actress, who briefly played a bit part in an obscure sitcom no one's ever heard of:

 

[ToroidalBoat]

I can't help but wonder now.

Autism420 uses it as their current avatar. I forgot what page the entire comic it's from is brought up.

S o I believe that if The Herald is the sun around which my emotional universe revolves, then Ashleigh Bainks must be its Jupiter.

That belief is so half-past '97. 1597, that is. Apparently, no one told Sweet that the Sun is near the edge of one of a vast number of galaxies in an incomprehensibly vast universe that doesn't really have a center (that we know of). Also, he confirms just how obsessed with the Herald he has been. It was even more important to him than "Ashleigh" was.

(*a reference to Sweet's account of the "peanuts under the pyramid" experiment.)

 

[MrsFrizzle]

Whether or not that actual lady was the elusive "Ashleigh Bainks," she was never Catholic, never rich, and her father has never been an attorney.

Which Sweet has to know if he's poked around on her social media enough to find out her children's genders.

Edited to add: there really was a Carolyn Jones who went to Arkansas State in the mid-90s, though. She was in a sorority, even.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

Wait, wait, wait, how do I keep missing this stuff? Where would I find this? I can't help but wonder now.

Oh, you didn't see that, huh?

Spoiler

From his 7/17/15 DA journal. It was an interesting choice for the artist to portray himself as a lobotomy patient through all three panels. And to draw such lousy anatomy.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Remember someone bringing up Sweet's table manners? That first panel in that comic should probably give you an idea of them.

 

[He Sets Me On Fire]

Btw, found this page very recently. Remember the story about the guy with the time portal who wanted to go back to college? The one where Sweet seemed to demonstrate a shocking amount of self-awareness? I believe this is the page that preceded it.

Spoiler: Big image

 

[MarineTrainedTard]

Christ, he's ---->.<------ this close to getting it!

 

[ToroidalBoat]

No one told Sweet that if you don't take that single step, the journey never begins.

Also, is that first panel the Sweet house? It kind of reminds me of 14BLC. And judging by the mess depicted in the comic, I wouldn't be surprised if the Sweet house is trashed inside.

 

[NobleGreyHorse]

Dear Sweet:

I give you this much. Maybe this will help, considering that you have been comprehensively owned with regard to your use of English. (Were you an English major, or a psychology major?)

You have made me feel way better about my own ability to draw cartoony or stylized hands. Hell, hands in general.

With gratitude,
N.G. Horse