I spent most of my day (poorly) photoshopping stuff like this:

I was inspired by this story in the New York Times (via The Stranger) 

Long ago, I would hop on Cafepress at the drop of a badly manufactured trucker hat.  Anytime I had an idea I thought would be funnier if I could show it on a t-shirt, or a baby bib, or whatever, I’d just toss together a quick graphic and upload it onto my favorite piece of shoddy merchandise.  It wasn’t that I was trying to get people to buy it, it was usually just part of the joke (e.g., beer steins with a Star of David on them and the phrase “You can’t spell “Hebrew” without “Brew”)

It goes without saying I was spending most of my time on internet forums back then.

Anyway, if you want to get in on all the hot, hot, print-on-demand action that is Cafepress…or if you just feel weirded out that the Republicans keep trotting out an 18 year old drop-out as a paragon of the New American Family Doing The Right Thing…check it out, yo.

Run Levi Run

Did I happen to mention I’m writing video games now?

It’s nothing much really.  [Looks at ground, shuffles feet bashfully]  I’m only contracted for a couple of months.  Shucks.  ‘Tain’t much to brag about no-how.

I’m lying of course.  It’s fucking awesome.

We moved to Seattle because Jay was hired by a video game company that wanted to make a legitimately funny game.  Jay happens to be a man who knows his fucking funny. And it turns out the video game industry, unlike the publishing industry, is NOT a dying dinosaur slowly being eviscerated by the cruel, instant-gratification savagery of the internet. 

So it was a good move.

Jay’d been working with this company for nearly a year (half while we were still in New York), when a DIFFERENT video game company came looking for the funny.  Since the first company needed someone to do sundry edits and write a couple additional scripts for missions and stuff that got added on after Jay left, they asked him to suggest a replacement.

They DIDN’T tell him it had to be someone he has sex with, but lucky for me, Jay included that criteria himself.  Even luckier for me, all the other people Jay has sex with are crappy writers.

 Awesometown.

 Anyway, it’s been going well, though I’m nowhere near as disciplined as Jay when it comes to working from home.  Especially since I keep claiming that any day I spend playing video games is “research.”  Considering the game is an open world adventure game with lots of sex, driving, partying and fighting, my marathon Bookworm Adventures and Peggle sessions strike Jay as rather specious at best.

 That said, I’m booting along, and so far everyone seems fairly happy with my work.  If nothing else, I think I’m a pretty fair hand at matching Jay’s style - mostly because I tried so hard to imitate it when I was first starting out.  Though it turns out I can be dirtier than he is (the title of this post is a direct quote from one of the game’s producers).  However, I think the team is almost pleased with that. 

“You know that horrible thing you wrote that no one with any respect for women, other cultures, or the mentally AND physically challenged would ever dream of saying?  Now if we get in trouble for it, we can say a woman wrote it!”

It’s good to be a chick.  And it’s even better to be a video game writer.  Hopefully I can keep it up.  Unless I have to go to rehab for Peggle or something.

(I’m halfway through the Challenge Levels!  Woot!)