I first posted this story last year.

I got some good comments from some awesome people.

Now, finally, my brain knows exactly what's going on.

Here's a repost of it, for all of you who weren't here a year ago, while the rest works itself out in my brain and on my notebook.

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            I’m not certain what to do with it.

You see, in one of the boxes that my grandfather left behind was a strange gun, rounded and very rusty. It weighs several pounds and has knobs and dials along the side. If you put your ear against it, you can hear it quietly humming, and on its side is a dark and cracking piece of masking tape, upon which is written “Disintegrator Gun: still dangerous.”

My grandfather worked in a granary since the day he turned twelve and didn’t learn to read until he was forty-five. According to my mother, he’d never been able to change a light bulb without blowing a fuse. He couldn’t have invented this, it’s too complex to be a toy, and it seems unlikely that a man who spent most of his life hip-deep in feed corn would have ever been in a situation to stumble upon something like this.

So where did it come from? I don’t know, but it’s sitting on my desk now. Every time I bring it close to my laptop, the LCD starts flowing and the fans start spinning faster. My cat’s hair stands on end when she gets too close. I set it next to a fountain pen which promptly started leaking ink out of its tip. If I hold it near my head, my fillings ache.

If I hold it in my hand, I feel like the most powerful man in the world.

It’s like a little boy’s dream come true, but I can’t bring myself to so much as touch the trigger. I thought of testing it in on a rock in the back yard, but what if it’s got a really wide beam, or punches a hole in the ground the size of an SUV? What if it explodes in my hand?

What if it does nothing?

So for now it sits on my desk, all but begging me to pick it up.

“Be a hero,” it whispers.

“Be a villain,” it suggests.

“Be whatever you want, so long as you use me to do it.”

I know that I’ll break down soon. I’ll use it on a tree or a wall, a car or a criminal, on a bank or on myself. But I’ll use it.

And I’ll never stop.

I have a Big Idea.
Is it Terribly Ambitious? Perhaps.

But that's what the Things I Can't Draw series has always been about: Naked Ambition.

Emphasis on naked. Allow me to fill you in.

Yesterday, I was taking a shower after taking a crap. I assure you that both were pre-planned, and that the shower had nothing to do with any sort of Explosive Crapcident. I just needed to shower. So, there I am, in the shower, when I was blessed with one of those ideas that you could only think of whilst showering, crapping, or showering after crapping.

I stil have benchilada.net available, and I'm even working on trademarking the word "benchilada." When I purchased it, I also grabbed some web-hosting space, which I've since let expire because my life went crazybusy all at once. I don't think I could currently justify the expensive of having a host again--maybe soon, but not right now--so I started think about "leasing" webspace from somebody who has extra. Oh, and having somebody else help me with the design, because my HTML skills begin and end with "a href."

My point is this: Things I Can't Draw. I've had a lot of people pestering me to make this a regular feature for a while now. And I'm thinking of doing it, plus a little more. I'd like to do a smaller version--like two things I can't draw at a time instead of seven--about two times a week.

In addition, for an extraordinarily nominal fee, like a few bucks plus shipping, I'd love to do commisions of things people want me to not be able to draw. Their family, their house, Chinese New Year, a frog eating a cookie, life on Mars, et cetera. I'd sign the thing, bung it in the post, and they'd get their very own "original" benjamin sTone completely-not-art.

I would probably even Cafe Press some shirts, mugs, et cetera, for drawings people really liked. And buttons. Everybody loves buttons. Or badges, if you’re inexplicably British.

In addition, I could use the website for Sir Reginald compiling, attracting artists for my comic works, collecting other works of fiction, and a resume of works I've done so far and works in progress. I mean, bless LiveJournal and YahooGroups for getting me over 250 people reading my stuff, but there is a point at which I think a website would be necessary. I think that point is now.

Any suggestions from my peanut gallery? Comments? Questions? Please let me know. No matter what, whether I make 50 bucks a month or no bucks a month, I think this is something I really want to roll with.

Project: 2006 Is My Bitch continues apace, and here's your chance to have a say in how it happens.

Comment, my monkeys, comment!

benjamin sTone
Talentless, but an Excellent Swindler

February 2019

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