Sickness (Back-to-School Supplies)

Greetings.

The Animatrix is playing in the background as I write this in between sips of coconut water. No, I'm not at the beach, I'm actually nursing a pretty serious cold and my mom always said that coconut water is nature's medicine. I'm too sick to fact-check that right now, so I'll just have to take her word for it.

Anyway, today's comic introduces another new character: Shooty McSchooly. I think you can guess what his thing is. Yes, making fun of school shootings is kinda morbid, but anyone who knows me in real life can already guess where this fascination with the subject came from. Naturally, I'll assume that you don't know me, so here's some context: I was a fucked up teenager.

There were only two things that kept me from turning into one of these Columbine-wannabes. First, I made real friends and that motivated me to deal with my empathy problems (depersonalization is a bitch). Second, I lived in Brazil and guns weren't exactly easy to acquire back then. So from my perspective as someone who was into this kind of cringy shit, school shootings seem like a naturally ridiculous concept.

I mean, teen angst is never going away, but this kind of thing never used to happen around here until our incompetent ex-president made guns easier to buy. I may be just a silly dude on the internet, but I think it's pretty clear what the problem is. That being said, if any potential school shooters are reading this, I have some advice for you: get laid and go to therapy (not necessarily in that order).

Anyway, do you folks remember how good The Animatrix is? Peak early 2000s vibes. I think World Record is my favorite segment, but almost all the shorts are great. I'm biased, of course, as The Matrix is sort of my comfort franchise (even the last one), but it works even better in animated form.

Oh, did I mention that I've been trying to get back into Anime? I blame Persona 5 for my renewed interest in Japanese media (but the Ultraman manga didn't help). I'm not even that much of a nipponophile, I think I'm just sick of western tropes.

And speaking of being sick, I should log off and make some ginger tea. Hopefully, the internet will still be here tomorrow (although I might not be if I don't get any better). Thanks for reading this far, and I'll be back soon with more shitty-ass doodles.

Chainsaw cheers,

- Optiluiz

PS: Oh God I'm in so much pain right now.

PPS: This week's song was recommended to me by my old blog partner Max. Thanks, Max!

A Return (Man's Best Friend)

Hi there.

I'm Optiluiz. You might know me from my articles on Bloody-Disgusting or my pre-Elon-verified Twitter account.

What you might not know is that I used to have a blog.

I made it with a friend back in 2010, during the last days of the "old internet". For the younger ones out there, this was before three parent companies owned everything you see online. We posted poorly-drawn comics, vented about high-school and shared our silly teenaged opinions. Over the years, that blog evolved, I started posting by myself and sharing things about my life in college and beyond. While I was never a consistent writer (or artist), I was posting on/off again until early 2020.

 

Then the pandemic hit and my life went to shit. 

It's 2023 now and a lot has changed. I think the Optiluiz who created the ECB is dead now. Maybe that's for the best. Sometimes I miss him, though. I mean, the guy was a piece of shit, but at least he had a place to write about silly things and post homemade doodles. I guess this is my long-winded way of saying: I decided to start a new blog.

Like the old one, this will mostly be for my own amusement, but maybe other people will find it interesting too. Of course, I don't expect you guys and gals to just put up with my stupid rambling, so I'll be including some comics (both old and new) - completely free of charge! I'm too busy to draw proper strips right now, so I'll start off with some stupid stuff I drew during a depressive episode back in 2021. These were all done in tiny notebook pages which I later scanned for another project.

Today's post features Devil-Dog. I came up with him after watching that Sons of Sam docu-series and hearing about how the murderer claimed his neighbor's dog was possessed by Satan and telling him to kill. I later found out that this was the same idea behind Mr. Pickles, which made me feel a lot less clever.

Anyway, I read about the so-called "Cosmic Death Fungus" today. It's clearly paranoid channer bullshit with very little basis in peer-reviewed science, but I still think it makes for a curious thought experiment. I mean, the idea that nearly all human infirmaties can be traced back to a (possibly extraterrestrial) apocalyptic fungal infection is so absurd that there must be some truth to it. Here's a link if you're interested in conspiracy theories (God knows I am) - just take it all with a sizable grain of salt. This sort of thing should be consumed as entertainment, not legit source of news.

I guess that's all for today. I'll try to talk about some new weird shit every time I post. Maybe it'll be fun. But for now, please don't mourn the old Optiluiz. The new one is much cooler. He's also a complete chad that goes to the gym semi-regularly. Oh, he's also married now (it's a long story involving immigrational bureaucracy).

Chainsaw cheers, 

- Optiluiz. 

PS: It feels good to be back.

PPS: I've been listening to this absolute banger from the Miami Vice soundtrack, check it out: