So this video progressed mostly like any other in this subcategory. It begins with a lady cat and one or two males of varying species disrobing, and then they retreat into some structure that we, from outside the venue, witness rocking off its freaking foundation because freaking so intense is taking place within its interior that it takes a visual metaphor to convey (because I assume they’re not *actually* collapsing the stones of an ancient and clearly well-constructed abode). When it’s done done done, the satisfied lady cat stumbles away — hella more on that later — and to her home, where we learn that she’s married to a buff simpy AF tomcat.

From there these stories unfold from there in various ways, often involving pregnancy; these we will discuss again. This is one of many where the cuckolded tomcat lives. It is even one of many that involves the other man hiding under the bed to avoid detection from hubby.

Never before, however, has it ended with the married couple having sex while the other man hides under the bed — which repeatedly smacks him on the head as it bounces up and down from the sex happening atop it. And… finito. THAT IS HOW IT ENDS. But that’s also why I watch these. Hilarity. Full marks. Ouch.

On January 25, 2004, I first launched Scary-Crayon. From the description I wrote long ago (that needs updating, since it mentions guest contributors and I’ve had at least one more since I penned that intro):

Scary-Crayon (dot com) is an eldritch Internet chronicle of random crap in the vein of such wildly popular sites as X-Entertainment and I-Mockery, but with fewer Flash ads, much less traffic, and arguably even less structure in terms of content. For example, whereas you’ll find pieces ranging from in-depth reviews of Japanese horror films to criticisms of television commercials in the Spectare section, in Print Reviews you’ll find snarky magazine analyses, discussions of children’s books, and serious critiques of philosophical treatises. We’ve got formidable collections of haikus and webcomics that span topics from the juvenile to the socially conscious. In short, no matter what you’re looking for — fiction, culinary experiments, or something else altogether — Scary-Crayon likely has a feature to make you chuckle, make you gag, or make you think.

I’ve not written nearly as much to Scary-Crayon in recent years, as I kinda fell off once I started doing academic tutoring. Scary-Crayon was *very* much a part of my public persona in all contexts — I was genuinely excited about the content I produced, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to want to talk about articles I’d posted or was working on or even media etc I thought might make for great content — and I came to worry that I’d get in trouble and potentially lose my job if I said anything that led students to the site. After all, Scary-Crayon may be pretty tame compared to much on the internet, but not everything there is PG and over the years I’ve voiced opinions that others might find controversial/objectionable. (Students did find the site — it’s not that hard to find, especially if one communicates with me via my personal email address — and I did ultimately lose that job, and I’m not entirely sure that Scary-Crayon *wasn’t* somehow in the mix, though I don’t think it was the primary reason since my employers had been aware of it since before they hired me and sometimes even had encouraging things to say about the articles.) I don’t regret having shared what I shared on the website, to the extent that — in an era where folks are being urged to scrub their online pasts for fear of cancellation and ridicule — I have a hard rule about not deleting content, even though I don’t agree with many of those old opinions and understand that folks today could come after me for things I wrote back then. (There is only one piece I ever removed from the menu structure, and it’s still *there* if one made an effort to find it. It’s not worth looking for. :P) It was, in part, an attempt to be a humor website, and the humor of a socially isolated twentysomething in the early 00s isn’t always a great fit for today.

But Scary-Crayon was meaningful to me. It’s still meaningful to me. It costs me money to maintain, and these days I don’t have much, but I’d sooner die today and let all of the money I might have spent on food/gas/toiletries/existing go towards keeping it online for another year than let it fade away. (Maybe exaggeration, but also maybe not.) To the extent that LLMs and AI are swallowing up everything on the internet, I *want* my content and my voice in the mix — even at my absolute worst in my younger years, we’d do so much better to have an AI basing its decisions on my input rather than so much of the awfulness and awful people on Reddit and Twitter and the like. I have always been me; I have always been curious; I have always wanted to introduce people to novel content and concepts. And I have always strived to make people *think* and to encourage them to find entertainment and genuine delight in doing so, even when those topics were heavy and challenging.

Not that they need always be heavy or challenging — I’ve been very happy to post recently to the Scary-Crayon blog about my obsession with AI cat videos. People have so much negative to say about GenAI content (and I don’t even disagree with all of their opinions), but I am genuinely fascinated and amused by these things. Scary-Crayon does have donation links — I added them because at one point a handful of people asked me how they could contribute to the site upkeep; no one has ever used those links beyond that early handful of people — but I have never sought to monetize it because it has never been about that for me. I wanted to entertain, and I wanted to put my thoughts on media out there, and I hoped that others would derive some benefit from encountering my unique viewpoint. Scary-Crayon was always a way for me to share myself with the world, and I started it when I really didn’t have many opportunities to do that. I was a suicidal pariah and shut-in when I launched the site, and it’s only been really recently that the vast majority of people I encountered didn’t respond to me with hatred and revulsion. There have been countless occasions where focusing on Scary-Crayon — whether creating content for a new piece or watching media/attending events with intent to write about them or spending hours upon hours scanning PHP code or MySQL database stuff trying to make the site functional — distracted me from going through with killing myself. I don’t entirely know that it wouldn’t have been better for me or for the world (or for the former friends who’ve abandoned me over my AI stances) if I hadn’t had Scary-Crayon to keep me plugging away at base camp rather than ascending the summit and parasailing into oblivion.

That latter bit was a reference to a dear friend’s recent musical theatre project (which was excellent, and which made me so proud and emotional and okay I’ll not go on), which I wanted to close on because it was actually Scary-Crayon that motivated our initial encounter: I was at a comic convention that had a speed dating event, and I figured I’d check it out, and after learning that it had a $20 fee (I’m cheap AF; that’s a huge deterrent) I went through with it largely because I thought it might make for a neat Scary-Crayon article. I didn’t make a romantic connection, but I did make a friend who ultimately encouraged me to audition for a play… and now community theatre is a huge part of my life. Not every connection I’ve made via Scary-Crayon has ultimately proven so impactful, and I’ve fallen off (and out, sadly) with a number of folks I met through the site, but I have made *so many* friends over the years as a result of Scary-Crayon and I am truly grateful for the good times we had and the value they’ve added to my time on this miserable rock. Scary-Crayon did that. Scary-Crayon facilitated those connections. Scary-Crayon connected us. And I’m sorry I haven’t always been the best person to know, but I’m glad we’re here together.

Happy Birthday, Scary-Crayon.

This is the face of a cat who’s lost everything.

So there one of the more appealing things about the AI cat videos is that there are “trends” — much like so many Lifetime and Hallmark movies feel like the same scripts rehashed endlessly with different actors and minimal changes, the same scenarios will repeat again and again with different cats and slight tweaks. For example, there are a number of videos in which a perpetually-on-the-phone mama cat cooks, burns, or otherwise injures her child via neglect; part of the fun of these is seeing the various dishes she’s cooking and the way they come to fruition. (My favorite involves a mama cat pouring a bunch of items, including fish and whole shelled eggs, into a vat, only for that vat to be placed in an oven and a pizza to be ultimately retrieved.) Also, sometimes the parents commit suicide. Sometimes the cops are called. Sometimes the child doesn’t end up hurt via neglect at all — sometimes everybody escapes the meal unscathed and even does a little dance at the end. The various reveals are part of the appeal.

Anyway, back to the video at hand. There’s a new trend of videos that goes like this: an evil street cat has cornered a glamorous lady cat in an alley. She’s terrified. He kisses her roughly. Flash forward to the street cat walking away with a smirk on his face as he adjusts his belt. Behind him, her clothes now tattered — which generally denotes rape in AI cat world — the lady cat crouches and weeps. At this point, a good Samaritan tomcat arrives on the scene and rushes to the lady cat’s aid. He calls the cops and waits with her until they arrive. And then… she fingers him for the crime. He protests; sometimes he tries to run, but he’s always caught and hauled off to jail for a crime *we* know he didn’t commit.

Things don’t go well for our good tomcat from there. *If* he’s released from jail — sometimes he’s bailed out (the cop and the lady cat who falsely accused him split the money); other times the short ends with him still behind bars — he’s greeted by the lady cat he tried to help. She laughs at him, calls him an idiot, and drives away in the fancy car she’s presumably paid for via previous illicit schemes. When he gets home, his wife and child leave him. His coworkers point and laugh at him when he arrives to work, and then he’s called into his boss’s office and promptly fired.

In the end, the good tomcat is all alone. His life has been ruined, seemingly overnight (though it’s hard to say how much time passes between scenes in AI cat world). He finds himself walking down that same alley that set him on this series of unfortunate events. And what does he see? What fresh torment awaits these eyes that have so lately shed so many tears?

He sees the lady cat that he tried to help — the lady cat who went on to falsely accuse him and profit from her misdeeds — passionately making out with the street cat who supposedly raped her some unknowable number of nights prior.

His horrified expression gradually softens, ultimately — inexplicably — morphing into a smile. He’s thoroughly broken; everything he cherished is gone; nothing matters anymore. He’s wholly and forever out of the business of having fucks to give.

The tomcat says, “Ha ha.”

“She had multiple affairs so her baby born multiple faces.” Makes perfect sense. This is what we’re working with. BUT WAIT — there’s more.

Even though two-headed people seem fairly common in this world — like not SUPER common, but it’s certainly a known condition — this affair-havin’ cat mama was NOT happy about the state of this baby. (Not that the two heads was necessarily the reason; AI cat mamas are notoriously prone to neglecting, killing, abandoning, or otherwise abdicating care for their offspring.) So this baby ends up getting left in a landfill…

…where it promptly feeds itself, puts on a diaper, and then marches down to the local construction site and asks for a job. And because child labor laws are apparently nonexistent in AI cat world, a newborn baby that apparently isn’t even potty trained does indeed get hired and gets right to work moving bricks and cement where they need to be to facilitate the building of a company headquarters or something. It was hilarious the first time I saw it, but now it’s a legit feature of this universe. Workin’ babies. HARD-workin’ babies. Amazing.

Another thing I love about the AI cat videos: the signs they use to communicate information. Again, it’s a thing that’s ostensibly for the viewer’s benefit — in the more recent videos that incorporate speech, the signs are less prevalent — but wow do I find it hilarious to contemplate a world where they break news in this manner. I can just see catfolk squinting at that single sheet of paper in a doctor’s hand as he slowly approaches from the end of the corridor, just straining to see if the overhead lights shine just bright enough to induce transparency and let them glimpse the shape of the words.

And the phrasing! “Your baby is no more!” Sure, it’s got shades of “All your base are belong to us” — but it’s far less awkward and therefore that much more believable. This is important: this is how they refer to death. “Your son is no more.” “She is no more.” It’s so blunt and dispassionate. AI cat doctors are monsters. I love it.

Did you know Scary-Crayon has a Facebook page? It did, and then it didn’t — somehow the algorithm (or some offended reader?) decided that S-C violated the community guidelines and shut us down. I couldn’t even share links to old articles in private chats; any messages containing hyperlinks were flagged as harmful and blocked. But now that the pendulum on internet safety has swung back the other way, Scary-Crayon is off the shitlist! (Too bad our community theatre troupe remains banned on YouTube, because Shakespeare is super harmful stuff that advocates violence or something. I really love the sense and thoroughness of our internet censors.) It’s been off the shitlist for at least a couple of months now. And, this week, I decided to finally try posting a thing.

I don’t know if anyone saw it. (Actually, I’m sure that *someone* saw it, since the page lost one of its few remaining followers.) S-C historically never had *much* engagement on FB; it was mainly just an easier way for me to share articles I wrote with my acquaintances while still retaining some distance from the content. Now it’ll probably be a way for me to write about AI cats without continuing to hemorrhage friends on my personal account. (I’m probably approaching 20 folks who have unfriended me because I don’t shun all things AI, though I acknowledge that there are problems with AI usage and that it shouldn’t be used in a number of contexts.) I really love these AI cat videos, y’all.

So have the meat of the two posts I shared on FB recently. Expect, at some point, longer articles here about specific videos and trends. I don’t know that this’ll constitute a full return to posting like the old days — though it might, since in the old days I tried to keep major articles 2-3 weeks apart. Different time, y’know? This rapid-fire inundation with short posts just isn’t my style. Anyway — expect more AI content here, because it’s a legit fascination of mine. Also expect lots of writing *about* said AI content to accompany the posts, because it’s still me and I don’t do anything without a whole bunch of (arguably, but not IMO) excessive thinking. Cat post time.

Note what this screencap reveals: some AI cat men shave their legs but stop above the calf, such that they retain their fur in a natural knee-high sock configuration. Amazing. (more…)

Quick blog entry, since today is Scary-Crayon’s 13th birthday!! I’m about halfway through a new article, so there will definitely be content in the next few days. No promises on whether there will be regular updates — I hope there will be, but I always hope there will be — but we’ll see. I do have several articles in varying states of completion, though, so they’ll undoubtedly end up on the site at some point.

Anyway, since I imagine only longtime readers will stumble across this, thanks for stopping by and sticking around! I don’t post nearly as much as I’d like to these days, but I remain incredibly proud of this eldritch corner of the web. 🙂

The occasional article post notwithstanding, it’s been a really long time since I’ve delved into the inner workings of the site and/or viewed articles when not logged into the control panel… and apparently a whole lot of stuff broke around here behind the scenes. I don’t know that I have it in me to fully update the site for 2016+ now — I’m presently not all that concerned with tailoring the site for mobile browsers, for instance — but I’d like to keep the site functional and at least somewhat aesthetically pleasing! So please drop me a line if you see anything that looks super broken or just weird around here.

Also, although I have no plans to ditch Scary-Crayon as is (I’m rather fond of the look of it) and perpetually hope to get back into posting articles at least semi-regularly, I now totally understand why so many other webmasters have just started up new sites and relegated their existing sites to archives. Converting an entire site to the new order seems like a nightmare. x_x

So, um, if anyone’s still out there… what’s up? 😛 Among the things that broke was some stuff involving the comments, so feel free to respond and help me confirm that at least that’s working. (Also it’d be cool to hear from any remaining readers. ‘Cause… yeah.)

Hey — so Scary-Crayon isn’t dead! The blog’s probably a bad place to be focused if you’re keeping tabs on the site (I *really* haven’t used it much since I’ve been posting articles such that folks can comment directly on them; Facebook or Tumblr are probably better for updates), but I’ll still post here from time to time. Like now! If you missed the most recent article, here’s a link to my impassioned defense of Batman v Superman.

In other news, since I just watched Unfriended, here’s a super-quick film review! The movie was… actually pretty decent. The gimmick — the entire movie unfolds on the computer screen of one of the characters: all character interactions take place on Skype and Facebook/Gmail messages, all flashbacks are done via YouTube and Facebook memories, etc. — was surprisingly effective, all things considered. There’s not a lot of depth here in terms of story or characterization, but somehow that just makes the result that much more impressive. There’s even a fairly pronounced anti-bullying message!

I can’t imagine having watched this in a theater, though; I’d wager that the film plays much better — or at least seems more convincing — on a computer (and perhaps even better on a laptop).

All for now, kiddies. I say this every time, but seriously — there’s more content on the way. One word: Booyakasha.

I was pretty exhausted last night, so I didn’t get around to posting the second part of Thrift Store Thursday #1 — but here we are now! And remember what I wrote yesterday? This feature can go up whenever! Even though it’s Friday now, it’s still Thrift Store Thursday. ANY DAY CAN BE THRIFT STORE THURSDAY.

So let’s recap.

Last time, we glimpsed three bags of thrift store toys and took a look inside one in particular — which we bought not because of the ginormous Rodney Copperbottom or the two G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra Snake Eyes figures within, but because of Lieutenant “Gears” Mecaniks of the Major Powers & the Star Squad line. And since we bought her precisely because she looks like somebody (we used to know?), we took a closer look at Lieutenant Gears and invited readers to speculate as to her resemblance.

Feel free to keep speculating — we’ll reveal our thoughts on the matter at the end of this post. 😉 (more…)

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I’ve been buying a lot of junk from thrift stores this year. It’s a really cheap way to acquire fodder for customs (even though I haven’t found uses for the bulk of it yet), and in any case I come across a lot of wild stuff I’ve never seen before. For instance, who knew that — way back in 1997, no less — Disney released a Hercules figure with a highly detailed sculpt and respectable articulation even by today’s standards?

I’m sure somebody knew about it, mind you, but I certainly wouldn’t have had I not stumbled across the figure in a plastic bag with a colored tag stapled to the top of it. 😛 (more…)

Please stop buying action figures; removing/replacing the BAF parts, accessories, bases, and sometimes even the figures themselves; and then returning the taped up packages to the store. THAT IS STEALING.

Look, I know it sucks that companies expect you to buy an entire figure just to get a small item you want or to rebuy a figure you already paid for because it has minor changes/improvements. But stealing what you want out of the package doesn’t stick it to the man: it just makes you a bum and a scoundrel and a thief who steals toys of all goddamned things. It might also bring unhappiness to the retail workers who lose their jobs when the chain’s profits go down due to losses from vandalized merchandise; to the children who tear open their toys on Christmas morning only to find that Batman’s batarangs have all been removed; and to your fellow collectors who, being in a hurry and not noticing the missing items from the package, are now unable to display certain figures due to missing accessories or are unable to complete the BAFs of waves they did buy in their entirety because your scumbag ass stole the right arm.

Your actions also ensure that you’ll spend eternity roasting in darkness amidst action figure packages that, from a distance and in the dim light, look like awesome new figures from that wave you’ve been anticipating since last year — yet when you finally reach the figure after hours of stumbling across searing coals and white-hot spikes, you’ll find packages empty of all contents with Post-It notes affixed to their surfaces. The notes will read, “Ha ha! Got first.”

Please consider this impending punishment before you commit your next reprehensible crime against the retail establishment and toy-loving children everywhere and the toy collecting community at large.

Your pal,

Wes

Hey, folks! Just wanted to post something to let y’all know I’m not dead… which, with comment threads now being included in articles, is probably the kind of thing the blog will end up being used for. 😛 Also, I wanted to make clear that I haven’t forgotten about the SDCC content. It might end up being fashionably late, but it’s coming! And hopefully it’ll still be interesting no matter how timely it is.

I was planning to post a couple of SDCC pieces tonight, but then I got kinda sidetracked (for HOURS) fooling around with gallery plugins and image layout and whanot. Probably won’t end up changing too much visually, but it’ll greatly simplify things on my end — which will ideally mean more and more frequent posts in the long run, since it’ll take me less time to put them together. Anyway, here’s a preview of the next SDCC-related article in the queue (it’s entirely possible I’ll post a really quick review of something else before I get it up).

(more…)

Hey, all — just a quick note to say that I’ve returned safely from my trip to SDCC 2012. Apparently the trip really tired me out — I’ve been doing a lot of sleeping since my flight landed on Thursday morning (I even sadly slept through half of The Dark Knight Rises, which I’m guessing was the good half because what I did see was kinda weak) — but I’m starting to recover my strength and will be posting more SDCC content in the coming days.

Also, once I get done with that, I’ll have reviews of some of the items I picked up at the convention! In the meantime, though, here’s an article highlighting the toys I brought home from the con. It’s cool stuff, but I’m still kinda miffed I couldn’t get Zecora and the Marvel Legends Uncanny X-Force set. 😐

Hey, guys! I’d hoped to have more SDCC 2012 content up on the site — the working conditions here haven’t been ideal at all — but I hope you’ve enjoyed what I was able to get up. Anyway, with the con ending tomorrow and me having some pretty eventful days ahead, I probably won’t have a chance to post more coverage until I return home late this week… by which time the con will be over and much of what I post will already have been reported thoroughly by other sites.

Still, if you’re here, I’m hoping you’ll appreciate my unique take on the repeat info. In any case, I’m sure I’ll have at least a handful of con perspectives and products and companies and individuals to spotlight that you won’t have heard much about from the larger and infinitely more popular news and review sites.

Anyway, take care — and thanks again for reading Scary-Crayon! I’ll see you again real soon. 🙂

Hey, guys!

So it’s been a few weeks since I posted an entry to the blog, but hopefully you haven’t missed out on the updates we’ve had since then! If you’re only subscribed to the blog RSS feed, you might want to consider liking our Facebook page or following our tumblr feed. I’ve been less inclined to add a new blog entry for each update since modifying the features to include comments, but I have posted about them via those channels! (Sorry to bug you with that again; it’s just a suggestion. 😉 ) But if you have in fact overlooked those updates, we’ve posted A Crayon Haiku #139, A Random Lunch #12 (yep, it’s back!), a review of A Series of Unfortunate Events (the books, not the movie), and, today, Dusty Plastic HELLside #38. Check ’em out! (more…)

Hey, SC readers — and happy Father’s Day to any dads stopping by! To mark the day, we’ve got a couple of quickies for you: A Crayon Haiku #138 and Dusty Plastic HELLside #37, the latter of which also has a few notes about the selection process I used when organizing the group. Not super exciting, but I figure that kind of thing belongs on the content pages now since that’s where folks will be commenting.

Anyway, enjoy! We’ll see you next time. 🙂

Hey, all! We’re back again — and in less than a month, w00t! — with Dusty Plastic HELLside #36, in which the Shredder and Loki compare spears to earn bragging rights. The title I chose is stupid as hell, but it made me giggle madly for some reason. Yes.

Link plugs! I mentioned this on our tumblr, which should also have sent it to our Facebook page — but in case you’re not watching either (why not? ;___; ) I’m mentioning it here as well. The good folks of Interrobang Studios are participating in a small business grant contest of sorts (see this comic for the rundown and some backstory), and Internet voters get to choose which entrants are eligible for the money. Apparently IS is already way over the qualifying threshold, but why not lend ’em your support anyway? Or — if you’re like me and are hesitant to support something you don’t think is neat — click the studio link above and browse their archives. I’m sure you’ll find something you like enough to justify taking a minute to vote.

Also, here’s a link I stumbled onto via a site comment (see, if you people comment you might get PLUGS! 😛 ): shezcrafti. ShezCrafti (I suppose the individual is distinguished from the site title by the capital letters?) posts a whole bunch of articles about stuff, and far too often for any one person to keep track of! But there are quite a few nifty and entertaining pieces and links on the site, so it’s worth a shot. Frex, I’d never have found out about the Saved by the Bell YouTube game if it weren’t for ShezCrafti’s post about it on shezcrafti! (See, that’s how it works.) Heck, I didn’t even know there were YouTube games. What will they think of next? And I’ll be posting a full-length response to this piece soon — it was simply going to be a comment, but then it got too darned long. So if nothing else, read that and await the Scary-Crayon rebuttal. 😛

And that’ll do it for this SC blog entry. There’s more content on the way — and actual articles at that! — so please stay tuned. 🙂