I’ve been having a really hard time at work lately. Like REALLY hard. Something about getting paid to do a thing that you thought you were good at, then getting hired to do a thing that isn’t really what you usually get paid to do, but you’re hired anyway—under the pretense that it’s close enough to what you theoretically do—and then feeling like a hack—a fraud!—the whole way through can really impact one’s psyche. I almost wrote one’s psylocke. Feeling like a hack can really impact one’s Psylocke. That works too.

The most recent episode (issue? volume? I guess it’s volume) of Choice is Yours had me thinking about rap, as I am wont to do. I decided that my favorite super-depressed-ultra-violent rap couplet—that’s right I said couplet—is the following. By one Rick. Dearly Deported.:

Hoes ass kiss cause I’m like Jason, vision
Releasin’ me a basket case from prison – Pissed

I got all excited about it and tried to find a video to post here, but alas. There wasn’t one. Oh well. I then started thinking about everything between the lines in a pair of lines like that and decided that I wish I was a werewolf. I wish I knew what it felt like to metamorphosize into some sort of uncontrollable animal that rampaged through the countryside at cheetah-speeds (or, well, wolf-speeds) and plundered anything and everything that got in it’s way. That got me thinking about ‘Of Wolf and Man’ off of everybody’s third-least-favorite Metallica album, and also ‘Before I Forget’ from Slipknot’s totally underrated-but-who-cares-because-it’s-Slipknot-and-they-have-a-DJ-album ‘The Subliminal Verses’ and caused me to wonder if—were I actually to wake up a man-wolf—I would still like this music. And, also, in addition to, would I still be able to draw some sort of weird parallel between turning into a beast and being released from jail.

And then—of course—I started to half-think about Spider-Man and half-think about being buried alive. And what it might feel like to be buried alive. Actually, as oddly morbid and lame as it is to think about that, how awesome would it feel to—a la The Crow—dig yourself out of you own grave and then go on to exact some sort of wily beast-like rampage. See above. I guess.

After that I sort of lost my train of thought. What—in the world—am I trying to say? How—in the world—can I justify writing whatever this is here, for you, to read or not read? Why?

I have no idea. I guess if I were to find other people out there who fantasized about being an OG-Web Of-clad werewolf buried alive wearing an eyepatch, it would be here. Not that I—at all—suspect that anybody else thinks about that sort of thing on the treadmill after a long day of feeling like a well-paid hack, but, well, this is who I am.

- Hateball