Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Save It For Later

"My soul was empty -- and it's up to me to fill it."

That's from Grosse Pointe Blank. John Cusack. During a break in a gunfight, Cusack explains to Minnie Driver -- from the other side of a bathroom door -- why he stood her up at prom a decade earlier and started on a path that led to him becoming a professional hitman. He references his dysfunctional home: a mentally ill mother and an alcoholic father. This isn't an excuse, he says. It's a reason.  "My soul was empty -- and it's up to me to fill it."

I find myself looking down a similar barrel. Minus a lot of specifics.

I have never felt such overwhelming despair. There is my girlfriend. There are my cats. Everything else is darkness. In an uncharacteristic move, I will avoid details. On one hand, making my particular bummers public will only invite more negative consequences. On the other, in a similarly uncharacteristic development, I am too thoroughly bored with my own despair to elaborate. I am always on the edge of stupid, useless tears. There is nothing waiting on the other side of the bad things. There is bad and more bad and sleep and then repeat. 

So here is my response. I will lose the weight and take the pills and stop the binges and work and write. I will keep having the ineffective talks and making the ridiculous schedules and going to the gym. I will budget and save and take my vitamins and drink my water and recycle. 

None of it will mean anything. I will look better. My body will be able to do more. People will like me more and pretend they don't like me more because I look better. Maybe I'll make more money. None of it matters. 

But I have nothing else. Everything is gone. It wasn't flushed -- it wasn't there in the first place. The beacons were never lit. God was always dead. There was never a light at the end of the tunnel. There was never a light or a tunnel. There is nothing more than a yawning void. Everything is suffering and I will keep going because there is simply nothing else to do.

My soul is empty and it's up to me to fill it. I'm not sure what I'll find. Jesus, I hope it isn't Jesus.

Dave Wakeling of The English Beat said "Save It For Later" is about the transition from childhood to adulthood -- like one dude is saying to another dude, "save it for later, don't grow up yet." He also said it was originally about fellatio; as in, "save it fellater." 

I think the interpretation of song lyrics is highly subjective. 

I also think Dave Wakeling is a motherfucking liar. 

Sooner or later your legs give way, you hit the ground
Save it for later, don't run away and let me down
Sooner or later you'll hit the deck, you'll get found out
Save it for later, don't run away and let me down, you let me down

I know what "Save It For Later" is about. I listen to the song every day. And every time I listen to it, I make a promise. It's not a hard promise to keep because I'm a coward. Always have been. Always will be. But still. I save it for later. I keep going. The alternative is unthinkable, as much as my feelings scream at me otherwise. 

Also, just to keep everything above board -- more often than not I listen to the Harvey Danger version from the soundtrack of 200 Cigarettes. I like it better. Don't judge me. Or do. Everything is stupid.


Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Wanna know my secret?

My best pandemic secret is that I didn't need this long, dark night to lose everything. My work already suffered. I already couldn't pay my bills. I already spent most of my time in my apartment. My eating already went to shit. When I look at my scale or my bank account or my employer's latest comments about my job performance, I can lay zero blame at a plague's doorstep. It's all me.

It's not complicated. I just want to eat and sleep until I die. I wake up, I shower, I eat breakfast, I go back to sleep. I sleep as long as I can and once I can't sleep anymore I watch TV and play video games - anything but work. 

I need to work now, but I don't want to work now. I need to write about a comic book character who's going to be showing up in a movie sometime this year or next year or maybe in 2022 or who the fuck knows. But I don't want to. Even though I know nothing's open and I know I can't afford to pay this month's bills, I want to find a store and buy enough chocolate and peanut butter to kill a Klingon. I want to sleep and stay asleep. 

I owe so much fucking money to so many fucking people I may as well be the president. 

My back hurts. My shoulders hurt. All I can do is throw anti-inflammatories in my face and apply heat and ice and icy heat and hope it's enough to help me avoid an urgent care visit I can't afford.

I'm doing things. I'm on meds I can't afford. Maybe I should call the psych NP and ask for better or more meds, but I already owe her for my last appointment. I'm back in OA. I go to Zoom OA meetings. I like them better than in-person meetings actually. I don't know any of these people and haven't learned to dislike them yet. They're all in NYC and LA and Spain and Australia and beyond. I send my sponsor my food. I've lost a little weight. For two days in a row I've gone outside for walks, twice per day. Just like Jesse Owens.

Things have improved enough that when I tell myself everything's hopeless, a tiny sliver of me smells a lie. But sometimes that doesn't feel better. Sometimes hopelessness would be a comfort. Hope creates expectations. Expectations mean less sleep.

I'm not okay. I still haven't figured out any good reason for me to be alive other than someone has to feed my cats. But I'm doing the things I said I would do even though I hate every second.

I have to write about a comic book character now. I'd rather be sleeping. Not going to promise I won't go to sleep. My pillowcases are in the wash, but that won't stop me. I'll sleep with naked pillows. Just like Davy Crockett.  

Monday, February 17, 2020

Demons at my door


The meds seem to be doing their job. I am not crying at every song I hear. I am not crying at every episode of Star Trek I watch. Not every episode of Star Trek.

The depression is dialed down but louder than ever is a constant sense of anxiety revolving around my financial situation. I don't know if I regret my decision to leave the State to become a freelance writer full time. I am a professional writer. I am the thing I always wanted to be. But every dark possibility is always outside my door. What if my car breaks down? What if my cats get sick? What if my frozen shoulder comes back? What if my cancer comes back and I don't even know it?

When I reach deep I find something that tells me that this is my path. It's going to be hard, but it's where I'm supposed to go. But I don't know how to live every day with every demon pounding on my door.

And what's worse is that I don't have a clear idea of why I'm enduring this. What am I hoping for? Because this? This is not enough. But I don't know what is. Getting a full-time writing job at one of these sites so I can go to a medical appointment occasionally? Publishing a novel? Getting a job writing for a sitcom? Ghostwriting memoirs? Or maybe just grabbing onto whatever regular 9-5 job will have me whether it involves writing, filing, or calling up strangers all day to find out if they've considered this miraculous new weight loss drug?

I don't know. I just don't want to worry anymore. Every dark possibility will be there whether I worry about it or not. Fate doesn't need my imagination, and my worry doesn't provide a force field against it. But still I feed it and I don't know how to stop.

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Mick + Meds, Day 1



Outside my psychiatric nurse practitioner's office yesterday, I cried listening to a Jewel song playing in the waiting room. I wasn't even listening to the words. I don't know what she was singing about. I know it was one of her hits and I could find it easily enough, but I don't care. I just cared enough to cry, but I cry at anything.

She gave me meds (my psychiatric nurse practitioner gave me meds, not Jewel). I finally have meds again. A kind I've never tried before. They might work in a week. In a week I'll be happy I started them when I did, today I'm just regretting the absence of a silver bullet. I took my first pill after breakfast and I told myself a hundred thousand times it wouldn't fix everything and I wouldn't feel anything right away and then I didn't feel anything right away and I thought, "this is bullshit."

I'm going to OA again. It's hard. It's hard to be present. It's hard to not be angry. It's hard to grieve my mother and be surrounded by all these my-mother-aged women. It's hard to keep hearing about God and God and God and God and God and God. Someone said they know God is there because when she can't find a parking space she asks God for a parking space and hey, alakazam, there's a parking space. I wanted to ask her where "Higher Power" was when I "put my intention to the universe" for help in the wake of my mother's death and the universe gave me a middle finger, because at the time I strongly felt like I could find my own fucking parking spaces. I wanted to ask her if she's considered traveling to places where people have seen their families chopped up by machetes so she can share with them the miracle of her available parking spaces. I wanted to ask her if she's ever considered she finds the parking spaces because roughly 73 fucking percent of America is fucking parking spaces. Saying any of these things would, I suspect, be frowned upon in a 12-step meeting, I think. So instead I just sat there and hated.

But the meetings help. They do. I don't know how but they do.

When I am writing, I am okay and then I have to go home to my neighbors who are just people but their slightest sound drives me to rage. And the rage only exacerbates the constant, doubtless, torturous sense that everything is wrong and everything is futile and everything is pain.

I just want to sleep. I want to sleep and I want to be warm and I want the world to go away.

I care about myself. This is a revelation. The other day, I mentioned to Jolene that I knew something was terribly wrong because as depressed as I am, I don't want to binge on food. The urge is not there. I don't want to go to the drug store and buy five different "party" or "family" size bags of candy and finish them all before it gets dark. It wouldn't help. It wouldn't even give me a temporary respite, and I know that, but that's never stopped me before. So, I told Jolene, that was a bad sign. Like, I care so little about anything that I don't even have the energy to engage in my usual method of self-destruction. And then I said I was worried I might start using alcohol. Because I'm not immune to that yet. It would give me a couple of hours of comfort. Maybe.

But then I thought about all that yesterday, and it occurred to me that, yes, the alcohol would give me a temporary comfort but I'm not drinking it. So maybe the urge to binge on food isn't there because I care about myself. Because I want to get better. That, in fact, maybe that was the only possibility.

Because things are harder than they have ever been. This is grief but this is also more. This is constant, unceasing despair. There's no break from it, it's always there - there are simply times when it takes me over and times when I'm distracted so it's waiting to take me over and there are times when I'm asleep. So if I didn't care about myself, if I wanted to destroy myself for the sake of temporary relief, I would.

So I give a shit about myself, yay. And that's good. That's great. That's as close to a miracle as I'll get. But I'm still in Hell.

Maybe it'll be better in a week. I think it might be. I feel like it will never be. I hope feelings are stupid.



Monday, January 06, 2020

Mick, Dinosaur News Manager


This is me. There will be typos. I'm not going to edit. I don't have the time.

--

This morning I got on the scale and it told me my weight was "E." You step on it and first it say 0.00 and then it does this cycling thing like it's thinking about your weight and then it should give you a number, but my scale says I weigh "E."

My weight is Extraordinary. Exciting.

I weigh Empty.

Other people weigh numbers. I weigh E.

I don't know what E means. It could mean anything or Everything. I weigh Excellent. I weigh Everyone. I weigh Elephant.

Ask Sesame Street. The fuck do I know.

--

I should be writing. I mean, I am writing, but I should be writing something else. I should be writing about Harley Quinn or samurai or Jean-Luc Picard

(okay, I should mention I am going back and correcting things as I write them, just for full disclosure)

but I'm not because I can't stand to.

Here is a complete list of things I am capable of doing right now:

1. Sleeping.

--

My mom's been dead for over a year and at this point I'm supposed to be fine according to the rules but I'm not. I have not been okay and I am not okay and it is still impossible to imagine I will ever be okay again.

I am supposed to be able to do my work. I was, in May 2018, supposed to be able to get up out of bed and go to work and sort through patient files and sign up people for Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it, so since I was already freelance writing part time on the side, I stopped going to work and started freelance writing full time.

Everyone thinks this was brave. Everyone thinks I made a bold move to realize my dreams. I did not.

There is a show called The Office about a stupid, privileged, self-absorbed moron named Michael who runs an office and there is a character on that show, played by Leslie David Baker, named Stanley Hudson. To most people the hero of the office is Jim, the torch-bearing salesman. Or Pam, the secretary scared of her true feelings. Or worse, the idiot boss himself, or his ignorant survivalist douchebag assistant Dwight. Most people will not tell you this, but Stanley is the true hero of The Office because he is the only sane member of the staff. Stanley doesn't take center stage often. He does his crosswords and weathers his stupid, racist supervisor's idiocy with eye rolls and grunts. Because that's the only sane way to both stay in this ridiculous work environment -- to not care, to do the bare minimum, and distract yourself until retirement.

In season 3's "Grief Counseling," Michael's old boss dies and because in his limited mind everything in the universe orbits his dumb face, Michael makes it all about himself. He insists on running a faux grief counseling session even though few people in the office even knew his old boss. He uses a toy and tells his staff anyone holding the toy must speak about a death in their lives that cut deep. He tosses the toy to Stanley, who refuses and tosses the toy back. Michael insists Stanley share and throws the toy back to him. Stanley, now upset enough that his usual facade of apathy crumbles, throws the toy back at his boss as hard as he can and says

I WILL NOT.

This is Stanley's most naked moment in the series. It's brief and it comes without fanfare, but in this exchange you see Stanley has true grief but this baboon throwing a toy at him is not worthy of its sharing. Michael and his coworkers are not his family, are not close, are not even truly friends, and Stanley makes his boundaries clear.

I WILL NOT.

That's all I did. Except no one was asking me to share my grief at work. My coworkers were good people and so was my boss. But I could not be there anymore because I couldn't help but share my grief because it was all I had left. I spent hours sobbing in my cubicle, trying my best to do it quietly and praying no one heard me even though I knew they had to. I did that for months. And I could see the confusion in my coworkers' faces, that my mother had died in October and it had been Halloween and thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and then January and Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day and I still was a wreck? There was no help. It's not their fault, I don't blame them. It was as if death was as far from them as Mars.

The Monday that I didn't go to work didn't come with courage or boldness. It just came with a refusal. I will not be there today. I will not sob there today or any other day. I will not be enveloped in utter despair and need to act as if it's just another day. I will not. I can't.

I wasn't brave. I wasn't bold. I had the courage of a trapped animal gnawing off its own paw.

--

So now I'm writing full time and all I've ever wanted to do is write for a living and holy shit, look what I'm writing about! Comic book movies and Star Wars and samurai. It's a geek writer's dream come true.

But I don't want to do anything. Here is a complete list of things I want to do:

1. Sleep.

2. Stop. Fucking. Crying. for one. fucking. day.

--

God this is all bullshit and so am I.

--

There is a comic book character named Doctor Manhattan. He does not experience time as humans do. He is simultaneously in the past, present, and future. When he narrates a story, he is constantly going either back or forward saying things like, "It is 1968 and I am killing Viet Cong" or "It is 1985 and I am killing someone in the snow." The main character of Kurt Vonneut's Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim, experiences similar non-linear time jumps.

I feel like I finally understand Doctor Manhattan and Billy Pilgrim, to a certain extent. Often -- sometimes it seems like every few moments -- I am somewhere and somewhen else.

It's July 2018 and I am in my dining room feeling the cold of the air conditioning.

And then it's July 2016 and I am in the hospital with a foot long zipper across my torso, a day after the doctors pulled out my kidney and removed the tumors.

I don't think I'm there. I don't hallucinate. I am not divorced from reality. But in every other way, I am there. I am back in the hospital room and the orderly is cleaning me or my then girlfriend is taking pictures of my scars for her friend. Or it's August 2018 and I've spent 5 hours on my recliner watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine because I'm weak and my side still hurts and even though it's the middle of the night my then girlfriend, Amanda, keeps running outside every hour because I live kitty corner from a church which is a "PokeStop" and every time she leaves I worry about what I could possibly do if someone attacks her because it's the middle of the night (and I don't live in a warzone but it isn't fucking Leave it to Beaver out there either) and I can't because I can barely move and everything hurts and it's all I can do to wash the dishes (Amanda will only wash dishes she uses and not all of them) and feed the cats (which Amanda refuses to do before 10 pm) and change the cat litter (which Amanda refuses to do).

I'm not there, I don't think I'm there, but in every other conceivable way, I'm there.

--

Not long ago, my girlfriend Jolene's cat died. I wish I got to know him better. He was already 18 by the time we were going out, and he lost his sight not long after we started dating. In fact, the few times he let me pet him I was pretty sure because he couldn't see me and so didn't know where to hide.

He died on her kitchen floor and I drove over to help. She was heartbroken and of course she was, and I hated myself because I wanted to be there for her, because this is the time you have to be there for people. It was already late so we were going to wrap him in a towel and Jolene would bring him to the vets in the morning.

I picked him up and put him on a towel. Jolene came over and started petting him, saying sweet things to her sweet boy.

And then it was October 2018 and I was standing over my mother's body. Her hospice nurse was cleaning her with a wash cloth, saying sweet, wonderful things to her. And my mother was not my mother. It was her body and there was nothing of her in it. Deflated. Lost. She was not there she was not in her body she was not anywhere that I could see. And as much as I thought this hospice nurse was sweet and kind, and as much as I was grateful that my mother had her and other nurses to help care for her, I couldn't help but think who the fuck this stupid fucking little nurse thought she was talking to because she was talking to meat. She was talking to a silent stranger. My mother was not there on that bed with her mouth hanging open. My mother was gone. That was not my mother. Who are you talking to?

--

The face won't leave me. The face of this thing that wasn't my mother anymore. This face tells me there is nothing. There is no light. No hope. There is no paradise beyond the veil. There is no fucking veil. There are these years and then nothing. Oblivion. Buried under an avalanche of nothing. Vapor. We are blasted into a million pieces and we are gone. We are flies heading for a wall.

--

I cannot handle this. And I cannot handle life.

Here is a complete list of what I want to feel:

1. At the end of Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow, the main character is on a plane that has to land on or near a frozen lake. He has a lion cub with him and he holds the cub in his arms and he dances and jumps, laughing, across the ice. It's a man joyously defiant in the face of the bleak, cold inevitable.

Two or three times in the past week I have tried to describe this scene to different people, and each time I sobbed before I finished a single sentence of my description. I want that. I want that to live in my heart and my soul and my mind, but all I see is death and utter meaninglessness.

--

My mother is gone. One day I will be gone. What's worth doing? What's worth achieving? I don't want to die, but I don't know what's worth doing while I'm here. Who cares what a fly's wings do on its way do on the way to the wall? Would it be any better if I believed in a magical hereafter?

--

Last night my friend Jen asked me what I believed about the afterlife when I was a child. The main thing I remembered? I was sure that after I died, I'd be able to ask God anything and that excited me because it meant I could find out what happened to the dinosaurs.

--

THE AFTERLIFE

GOD: Come on in, that's St. Peter -- he confirms your reservations. And this is Mick. He lets you know what happened to the dinosaurs.

MICK: Aliens -- no, I know, right? I was betting on an asteroid too. Fucking aliens, man.

--

When I sleep everything is warm. 

Thursday, October 10, 2019

From My Mother's Basement, With Hate: A letter to the celebrities who trash Marvel



Years ago when I was a child, I saw a daytime talk show where the guests were men who preferred larger women. I was surprised by the emotional reactions of some of the "normal-sized" women in the audience. They had no connection to the men on the stage, yet they responded angrily -- sometimes standing up and yelling at the men, and in some cases bursting into tears -- as if these men had betrayed them.

The women's response bothered me because I didn't understand them. After all, how did it impact them that these specific men preferred larger women?

Because I was a fat child and because I was used to people's responses to me, my interpretation didn't take long to form. I figured that these women were told all their lives they needed to do anything and everything they could to be thin, this show's guests had revealed that in fact some men preferred women who weren't thin, and suddenly all the pressure these women had responded to for decades were revealed as lies. They had spent so much time and energy berating themselves for their imperfections, and the fact that these men preferred something different from the unobtainable physical perfection they chastised themselves for not having was too much for them to bear. It didn't seem like they were actually angry at the men -- they were simply shattered. They'd been presented two opposing truths and didn't know how to cope with it.

It is precisely my memory of this talk show and the reactions of the women on it that I remember when I read of yet another celebrity director or actor bashing Marvel movies.

Growing up a fat child and a fat teenager and a fat young man, there was nothing cool about me and there was nothing cool about the comic books I liked. I have to admit to some feelings of envy and anger knowing the pastimes I followed with such passion in my youth -- for which I received only disgust from peers and adults to the point that walking into a comic book shop felt akin to walking into a porn theater (and, honestly, both businesses may have had a lot of the same patrons) -- seem now so universally embraced and encouraged. When I pulled into a local library parking lot last week and saw it was advertising Dungeons & Dragons sessions for kids on an electronic sign next to a busy road, I did not think, "Finally, we are accepted." My response was more along the lines of "Fuck you and Fuck Stranger Things."

Comic books, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Dungeons & Dragons and so much of what now populates a much more chic "nerd" or "geek" culture were not cool. It was more okay to like Star Wars than Star Trek because, well. Let's be honest, because it didn't take as much work to understand Star Wars.

Even among those who read comics, superhero comics were not cool. The only superhero comics that were cool were darker, grittier comics like Batman: The Killing Joke, Watchmen, The Crow, etc. Reading Transmetropolitan and Preacher and Strangers in Paradise and Sandman was totally cool. If you regularly picked up West Coast Avengers, that wasn't so cool. YOU were the reason the actually "cool" comic book readers buying Grimjack and Hellblazer and Death: The High Cost of Living were lumped in with the rest of the man-boy virgins. Even in a world of rejects, you were the bottom.

And then someone let Peter Jackson make three Lord of the Rings movies. And Hugh Jackman learned how to eviscerate black ops soldiers. And Toby Maguire learned how to wall-crawl. And Christian Bale beat up Heath Ledger in an interrogation room. And Robert Downey Jr. lost his heart. And the world changed.

When I read an article about Jennifer Aniston saying there are too many Marvel movies, or Martin Scorsese saying they're "not cinema," or Simon Pegg complaining that they're dumbing down science fiction (presumably in-between takes for the latest of the Michael-Bay-in-Space Star Trek movies he stars in), or Jodi Foster likening Marvel movies to fracking, or Bill Maher claiming Avengers got Donald Trump elected, my objection to every single one of their stupid opinions is simple - I don't think they're actually stating their opinions.

Simon Pegg is a singular case, I think, because you can likely boil down every criticism Pegg's ever expressed about any Marvel movie to "Marvel shouldn't have fucked over my friend Edgar Wright." It's a fine opinion to have and one I happen to agree with, but it'd be nice if he, you know, was honest about it every once in a while rather than making statements about them dumbing down science fiction... on his way to the set of Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

But the rest of them? Jennifer Aniston and Jodi Foster and Martin Scorsese and James Cameron and Mel Gibson and Bill Maher and all the rest? When I read their criticisms of Marvel, I do not read opinions. I hear those same angry "normal-sized" women who suddenly found themselves in a world where what they were told had no merit suddenly has merit. Where what they were told has no value suddenly has value. Where what they were told was uncool is suddenly so very, very cool.

They are the pieces of shit who dogged me every day. They are the ones who threatened to jump me on the way home from school. The ones who tortured me in every classroom and every hallway. Jodi Foster and Bill Maher and Mel Gibson and Martin Scorsese and Jennifer Aniston and James Cameron are the ones who turned me into an insect for the first 20 or so years of my life and turned the world into nothing but cruel little boys with magnifying glasses on a sunny day. They are the ones who told me shut up about my "faggot shit" when I talked about a Fantastic Four/Incredible Hulk crossover I didn't like.

And they are the ones with wives and families and children -- children they have to take to see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and buy all sorts of superhero backpacks and sippy cups and lunch boxes. They're the meatheads who called me a satan worshipper for playing Dungeons & Dragons and now their wives binge-watch Stranger Things and Game of Thrones.

It is, of course, not an insane position to take that Marvel movies do not have the greatest depth of passion. They are more concerned with spectacle than with exploring the human experience. Yet you Scorseses and Peggs and Fosters seem to have a very narrow scope for your targets. You are not saying the same things about the tits-explosions-subtle-racism films of Michael Bay. You do not take aim at torture porn flicks like the Saw franchise or action flicks like Fast & The Furious. You could. You very, very easily could. Yet you don't, and that's what exposes you for the thrashing, elitist, culture bullies you truly are. Because while sure, Avengers: Age of Ultron is no Schindler's List, neither is Hostel or Hobbs & Shaw or Transformers, but you don't mention them. It's as if action movies never existed until Robert Downey, Jr. became Iron Man. As if, before 2008, every single movie was an art house hipster magnet. Commando? Rambo? Bad Boys? Nope. Never existed. Every movie until 2008 was Serpico or Amelie.

You are, like Howard the Duck, in a world you never made, in a world contrary to the one you were promised, and all you can do is cry and yell. You feel betrayed, and all you can do is lash out at the people who are simply smiling and saying, "This thing you hate, this thing you always spit on, this thing you were always told was worth nothing? Actually... we always preferred this."

Martin Scorsese and Jodi Foster and Simon Pegg and James Cameron and Mel Gibson and Bill Maher and Jennifer Aniston.

Go ahead.

CRY.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Skyrim proves Dwarves are better than Elves


I've been playing a lot of Skyrim lately because as a cutting-edge gamer, I just won't play it if it's more than eight years old. Tonight, while strolling through the Dwemer ruin of Mzineceuheffe-or-whatever with my lovely digital wife Jenassa, it occurred to me that Skyrim is yet more proof that dwarves are totally better than elves.

As any Skyrim player could tell you, of the 10 playable races in the game about 563 of them are elves. You can play a cat, a tadpole, a few different kinds of humans, and one of 948 different species of elves. You cannot play a dwarf in Skyrim, however that doesn't stop that swarthy people's presence from being felt in the game. Dwemer, or dwarves, are extinct in Skyrim but the ruins of their vast underground cities can be found all over the ancient land; just waiting for an adventurer to crest a ridge, spot the instantly recognizable towers of a dead Dwemer city, and say, "Oh f--- another f---in' dwemer thing." The steaming, gear-filled dungeons are patrolled by magic robots, still guarding their master's shit after they've been dead for, like, forever basically.

Well great Mick, you scoff. So how does that prove dwarves are better than elves? Well I'll tell you, you scoffing scoffmaster from scofftown.

1--THE DWEMER WERE NOT DWARVES

That's right. Even though the ignorant, goat-farming bigots of Skyrim call the Dwemer "dwarves," they weren't. The Dwemer, as one of Skyrim's many loading screens will tell you, were one of the 3,403 species of elves. They weren't even short. They were just as tall as all the other filthy elves.

Which means Dwarves are so f---ing awesome, the elves of Skyrim couldn't survive without them. They actually had to get together and MAKE UP a dwarf race, even though they weren't really dwarves. Of course, we can't prove that because they're all dead. How convenient.

2--THE DWEMER HAD THE COOLEST SHIT

Dwarf ruins are filled with magic robots so resilient they're still working today, millenia after their creators died in whatever filthy elf way they died.

Also, the full title of Skyrim is Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Do you know where you find the Elder Scroll when you play Skyrim? Not in a shopping-mall-sized tomb filled with viking zombies. Not in a ruined castle where a bunch of bandits are hanging out so they can support each other in walking back and forth in predetermined paths. NO. They put the Elder Scroll -- THE NAME OF THE SERIES -- in a Dwemer ruin. Because that's were all the coolest shit is.

3--ALL THE DWEMER ARE DEAD

How does this help to prove dwarves are better than elves? Well, we already established that the Dwemer weren't really dwarves, but just dead elves no one can prove were not dwarves, and so elves retroactively assigned them dwarfness because they knew their game was balls without some kind of dwarves. And what happened? It killed them all. That's right. Elves are such shit, that when they infected an entire race of dwarves with elfness, it just wiped out all the awesome dwarves -- like introducing the cold to a species that was too awesome for illness, so it hadn't built up a defense.

4--YOU CAN'T PLAY ONE IN SKYRIM

You can play f---ing anything in Skyrim. You can play a cat or a lizard. You can fly on the back of a dragon. You can play any and all of its 673,000 elf species. But you can't play a dwarf. Dwarves are too awesome for Skyrim. Kind of like how in old biblical movies, if Jesus showed up they would never show the actor's face because the studios didn't want to suggest than any single actor could portray Jesus. It's just like that. Bethesda knows dwarves are too awesome and don't want to offend dwarf fans by putting them in their game. Dwarves are the Jesus of Skyrim.