Billy Dogma and Me

So y'all know Billy Dogma right? Billy Dogma is a fictional cartoon character that the ingenious Dean Haspiel, Brooklyn comic maestro, created in the mid-1990's based on me in the future, i.e. now. Oh sure, Dino got a few things off: my girl is blonde and I have dark hair and I still hate jazz and love punk rock, but the important things are there. Billy Dogma is an outlaw wanted on four counts of criminal negligence. 1) Trafficking an unsolicited belief system. 2) Panhandling for purpose. 3) Comprimising Self-Dignity. 4) Day dreaming of a better tomorrow. We are as confident as we are confused. We wanna love and be loved. Comprimise is the greatest sin which we partake in only to come back less compromising than before. Example: Punk rock and the playing of punk rock. I can not stop. I am an addict. Life would be so much easier without practicing and gigging and carrying and recording and paying all for nothing except the glory of 1-4-5. No market. No market. That is why it is so important. Nobody cares! Except for me I care too much all the time. The world is set up to make you not care, so you don't. I do. It is cool to care. Just having oppinions doesn't mean you care. Man, I am desperate, that is no question. That's why I fight, that's why I use weapons. That is one reason why I win.

"Jane, when I was young I'd cover my whole body with my blanket before going to sleep. I was afraid that animated mannequins with no faces were coming to kidnap me. The only way to avoid them was to hide."

"Hmm. You know, there was a hall that seperated my bedroom from the bathroom. I remember being afraid of a giant monster-hand that lived in the hall. When I had to pee at night, I would leap over the hall floorboards onto the bathroom tiles so the monster-hand wouldn't wake up and grab and crush me."

"Despite our boogeymen, we conquered all obstacles. Back in the day I could eat sugar-coated cornflakes for breakfast, a rainbow-pop for lunch, and cuban meat patties for dinner. I could climb trees and slide down hills with nothing but a few scrapes to show for it."

"Eventually you realize that the fear is all in your mind. As an adult you learn to sleep without the safety of your blanket and walk non-challantly across those once dreaded hall floorboards."

"And that's when your knees start to ache. Your stomach can't digest what it used to. Mommy and daddy go away. Your friends get flesh eating diseases. You don't even have a buck to buy a comic book."

If you can't find hope in that there is no hope for you.