Posts Tagged ‘Froggacuda’

So You Think You Can Blog

Posted: March 8, 2011 in Writing
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I get a lot of questions about how to start one’s own website because I am that sort of nerd. This is partially due to the fact that I have owned froggacuda.com for almost 20 years now, and have had a web presence at or around that domain / name / moniker / handle for just as long. As King Fantastic says, “I be go to hell before I fuck my brand up”. I have spent just as long trying to figure out not just what my brand represents, but what I stand for — it’s part of being a human being if you think about it. You have a brand; it is you. You’re unique in this world, and you’re the subject matter expert on you, so you’d better get to work figuring out what that brand is. Maybe you should write a manifesto. I’d just recommend that you do it privately so that you can see how goddamn hard it is to sit down and write a blog post with an audience of 001: you. Because nobody else is really going to care. Ever. Not like you care about it: you expressed yourself. Maybe even like Salt N Pepa.

Status messages, actually, are the new blog. Twitter defined the concept of value in 140 characters or less, and the platform totally suits the sound byte culture of ADHD that is the norm now. I seriously believe that having ADHD is actually an evolutionary advantage, not a “disorder” nor a “deficit”. The beauty of cheating at your blog or your website (they’re interchangeable terms now) is that you can plug your Twitter stream-of-consciousness in as a sidebar (there! module top left!) and it updates your site. That is, if you Twitter more than you blog.

Lady Gaga as Queen of Hearts

Lady Gaga as Queen of Hearts

Here is the fundamental rule for the 21st century: whatever it is you have to say, I’ll be interested if you add value to my life. This is an important concept to catch, because of its corollary rule: Content is King. Certainly, appearance and functionality is Queen, but without valuable content, you can go fuck yourself and your fancy interactive 3D website or application. It does not add any value to my life besides a fleeting and forgotten sense of “that’s sortof cool”. That is Milli Vanilli value — the sort of thing that one-hit-wonders are made of. I’m too sexy for my shirt. I’m on a horse. Where’s the beef?

Poet Philip Larkin

Poet Philip Larkin

Do you know why I write? Because I am fuckin’ good at it. My Mom tells me so. My friends tell me so. My stats, no matter how pathetic, tell me so, because random people are stumbling across my content and commenting on it, and “like” buttoning it, and retweeting it, because by definition, it is original content for free and these entities are finding value in it. One of the most consistently hit posts I have made is a poem imitating Philip Larkin’s “And The Wave Sings Because It Is Moving“. Don’t ask me why, because I have NO IDEA; it’s mediocre poetry for me and that’s ME commenting on my own work. Remember: you are your own subject matter expert. Isn’t that why you got an e-mail address, and a WordPress site, and paid for a domain name, and hosting for the website, and set up your Etsy or CafePress e-commerce, and got a PayPal account and an eBay storefront and a matching Twitter handle; your LinkedIn and Facebook custom URLs are configured to represent that same nickname or persona that you casually developed years ago?

Stats 2011-03-08 at 9.32.08 PM

Stats 2011-03-08 at 9.32.08 PM

So you think you can blog. Well, write something interesting. Post photos that are thoughtful. I want to giggle or WTF or click on your status message and go somewhere I wouldn’t have normally browsed to. Make me LOL, or say WTF, or go “dawww!” Contribute something to me that will make me appreciate you and your unique point of view. Otherwise, STFU; I have a cornucopia of other feeds and stimuli that are working harder to catch my attention. Which has a span of short. I can barely pay it.

Do you know who has a brand? Lady Gaga. I fucking adore her; she is unashamedly her own self-generated brand. She works really, really hard at maintaining that brand, and as a consequence, 40-year-old fans like me are wearing a glow-in-the-dark LGG rubber bracelet on our wrist. OK mine is special: it was given to me by my goddaughter Tyler Rae who commented that although she bought it for me, she didn’t think I’d wear it. I haven’t taken it off yet, not even to shower.  Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta acknowledges that she cannot leave the house without becoming Lady Gaga due to her role in the world at large; this construction is moving and inspiring my godchildren and literally millions of her fans – Little Monsters — worldwide and possibly throughout the galaxy if you’ve seen her latest video for “Born This Way“.  Hahaha! She presents her manifesto!

Lady Gaga + Kermit the Frogg

Lady Gaga + Kermit the Frogg

This is the best example I can make of that ridiculous Supreme Court ruling that a corporation is a person. LGG should incorporate as a single owner ASAP to take advantage of this idiocy that is destroying America as I knew it: she could then hire lobbyists and really get to changing the world. If Arnold can win two terms as ‘Governator” of the most productive state of the union, then Lady Gaga can win the first female presidency. Because she has a brand, knows how to flaunt it, and then leverage the results, both good and bad. She just smacked Target to the curb because of a couple of questionable donations.

Lady Gaga is an over-the-top example because she’s…well, over-the-top. But that does not mean that her example should be lost or dismissed: she is representing herself, her brand, her persona, and — as a matter of fact — I know quite a few people who are actually representing themselves well on the wild blue yonder that is the Interwebz. Here’s a few of them; for other examples, check out any of the Blogroll to your left.

  • My Aunt Flo’s Etsy site, KnowYourFlo, a collections of totally awesome vintage sewing patterns that are one facet of an extraordinary woman
  • Valancy Jane’s CafePress site, Vjanity Faire, which features her signature phrase “hello pigeons” — I’m one of those too; the merit badge is proudly displayed next to my LGG Little Monsters one
  • Kristina Rose proves she’s more than just an “LA Face with an Oakland Booty” on her blog — not that we’re complaining about the latter two, but her street smarts and opinion are just as attractive
  • J.A. Huffman’s venture Surface Furniture, where one man takes visions out of his skull and crafts them in wood and metal and sustainability and dreams
  • J-Moon’s RX Earth consultation creation — he passionately believes we can heal this planet and shift the paradigms now rather than later by being smart about living
  • I also have a couple of other naescent projects up my sleeves that are vaulting on to the stage soon
Table by Surface Furniture

Table by Surface / photo: Jen Jansen Photography

You have no idea, unless you have done it yourself — or attempted to do what it takes to actually run, write, maintain, and promote a simple web address, much less run an entire brand by yourself. It is exhausting, and you can get lost in your perfection and never publish anything. I’ve been there, with a private folder full of ‘drafts’ and too scared that it wasn’t good enough to actually press record — in this case, go ‘live’ and throw some content out there. For an audience of, potentially, one. Everyone wants content, but I imagine that the average person struggles hard when actually trying to produce some. I am serious, this writing that you love takes a lot of love from me: let’s see you do it. I want to come back in a few weeks or months or years and read what I wrote just now and think that, like Eliza Dushku or another one of Josh Whedon’s Dolls, I was my best. What’s in your manifesto?

It is easy to set up a blog nowadays. It gets harder every day to find something worth reading, laughing at, or marveling over. But I think that part of playing things forward is the word-of-mouth status message to alert your peeps that this might be worth checking out. If anyone — even me — takes the extra time to turn it into a blog post, then we should consider this 21st century art. I salute anyone else who is actively participating in the stream of consciousness that is the tsunami of information that is online every second, constantly changing and continually being added to. I just have one request: don’t be afraid to throw some value into the maelstrom: become part of what is being created.

You can blog: now go do it!

You Started This Blog, Now Write

Posted: August 24, 2010 in Rant, Writing
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I can’t count the number of times I have exhorted myself to sit down and write on this damn blog. I sit in front of wonderful technology, with multiple screens, and everything that I need literally at my fingertips, and I can’t do it. As I age, I feel myself becoming more careful, more conservative. I think I have figured out part of it: now that I have a platform that is beyond scribbling in a spiral notebook, or sketching on the beach in an art pad; drawing on big sheets of paper while bored in class or even pecking away at a keyboard into AppleWorks, I am aware that I have an audience. And that’s frightening. I don’t want to let you all down.

And that, my friends, is the problem. This is MY blog, and — as Eminem has deftly reminded all of us — I’m not afraid. This is pretty simple to do: just write.

“Write, and be prolific / Not everything written is monolithic” ~Thee Froggacuda, 1988

That is the best two-line poem ever for Michael. And I wrote it. I have ignored this advice from the past me to the future me, and it is powerfully captured as a nine word reminder. I think everyone can benefit from this. It’s a simple distillation of my “press record” rant. Nike has made an entire multi-year campaign out of “just do it” that everyone loves because everyone needs to hear that repeatedly over their lifetimes.

I have a lot yet to be said. I am Thee Froggacuda. Release Teh Tadpoles!

Ho!

once again it's on

So here’s what I did, relatively present tense: I got a little inebriated, put on the new Chicane album “Giants”(reference: Middle Distance Runner), and reskinned my blog to give it a whole new appearance, even to me. After some WordPress admin tweaking to get the elements in the right places, I hit the button labeled “New Post”. And I sat in front of the screen daring myself to write something — anything — and publish it. Tonight.

I am angry with myself that I let the Kanji-Part-1 blog lay fallow in the Drafts folder for as long as I did. I was waiting for the Muse to strike me with inspiration and that’s not how she visits you or I: thou must seeketh out the opportunities, and if you have a fully functioning blog, just write for no reason, any reason, because you are writing for yourself.

That is the point of a personal blog — [insert legal-compliant disclaimer from professional life] — it’s to be able to write; not about whatever you want, but also not because you have an audience. I’m a Libra; there’s a balance to be struck. This gift of a new album from Nick Bracegirdle even has a beautiful song on it called “Where Do I Begin?” Synchronicity is serendipity. I am learning that restraint is not always care; however, baring my soul is not always as simple as it used to be. That’s why there are archives, and I will never regret being unemployed and casting around for a project important enough to deserve all of that free time, and entering all of those poems and stories and rants you’ll see on the left-hand side month-by-month, year-by-year. There’s some good stuff in there; I am committing to digging some of it back out and throwing it in my face again. Here, on the Virtual Lilypad; you can come along and read if you like, but it’s not for you. It’s for me. Because I can’t help but think that I am actually smart enough to code messages into my content for my future self. Maybe it’s a function of being on the bleeding edge of human evolution because I have ADHD and society and civilization have not caught up to how many threads my brain is processing at any given time.

literally -- burning love

literally: burning love. // Jamie Huffman

I am a single human being trying to make a difference with my life. Everyone struggles with this same thing. I write who I am because at an early age I was inspired by Jared D’nofrio to tear out the back of an old math notebook and try to write poetry. Shit, we were studying Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Pope, in school, and if he could do it; why not me? Well, Jared’s stuff was great, and I never thought I could equal that elegance…but I gave it a shot anyways. It was like drawing block letter names of girls I had crushes on and spending a whole science or math period at Correia Junior High School coloring them in uniquely with fluorescent hi-lighters. Y’know what? I just found that I was good at it.

DJing is a lot easier than writing. You get to express yourself with the beauty of other people’s interactions with their Muses. The problem is this: if you are good at something, don’t you owe it to yourself — and everyone else — to share it? That is why I have a drive to capture things in cages of ink and tape and 010010 and MP3. I think this is fundamentally the human condition; interaction is like breathing to me. I have just forgotten that I can target myself, and that I am my own primary audience.

I cannot depend on messages that I have coded myself in the past unless I make the effort to read them again; to listen to them again, to experience them again. And I certainly cannot pass any of my current wisdom on to myself in the future unless I produce content right now. This is the heroic circle of one’s life, Scar.

The Archangel Michael wields a sword. I’m not so good at the martial arts. I promised my ninja-to blade to my youngest godchild, anyways; Belén is going to be a better Samurai than her Unkle or her Father. But this Froggacuda character has a wicked tongue and sharp teeth, and I’ve been representing as Thee Froggacuda for almost 20 years now. Recognizing that you have a sticker that reads PROTAGONIST over the mirror that you never look at, finally you understand: this is the Muse trying to shake you free. The Muse is me. The problem is that I never look in that mirror: my mirror until now been everyone else except me. All of that is changing.

I am Thee Froggacuda. Ribbit; fuck you.

Viral Bandwagon: 25 Random Things About Me

Posted: January 30, 2009 in Writing
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Here’s the backstory: currently on Facebook, it is all the rage to use your Notes application (read: blog) to write up 25 random facts about yourself, then “tag” 25 other people to make them have to do the same thing. Personally, I think that this was started by the Facebook people themselves as a way to introduce people / drive traffic to the Facebook blog functionality, and since my WP imports via RSS to FB, I figure I’d do it here so that people can get their fix and stop tagging me.

Original rules (as in, I didn’t write this schlock):

“Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)”

25 Random Things:

  1. I am a better human beat box than Justin Timberlake
  2. If you ask me what one word describes me best, I will always reply with “lucky”
  3. I still suffer from ADHD just like I did when I was a child, but I am better at masking it; I do wish, however, that my metabolism had kept up with the rest of the handicap
  4. I have always been in love with being in love, with music, with friendship, with my family, and with you
  5. I have been known to embellish a story or two, but usually it is due to my tendency to describe my friends and acquaintances as movie-worthy comic book heroes, which is born from a deep respect for their individuality
  6. I often wonder what would have happened if Monster Zero had accepted the gig to open up for No Doubt on their first West Coast Tour in the summer / fall of 1990
  7. I would be happy if I could just listen to music, select cool tracks, and play them at loud volume to interesting people all of the time
  8. For some reason, in some election I was not made aware of, I am the de facto communications hub for a bazillion people; you look up Murdoch if you want to randomly communicate with someone who you lost track of years ago, and somehow I have some sort of last known contact info
  9. Possibly the greatest thing I have ever done is the eulogy I gave Chris Feher after he died doing what he loved: rock climbing Half Dome in Yosemite by himself
  10. I hate children, especially babies, but apparently, they love Unkle Mike, and this fact never fails to humble me
  11. Speaking of luck, I was lucky enough to be adopted at birth by the best parents in the world — Diane and Gordon — and what I can piece together about my biological parents is pretty crazy: Mom was from Massachusetts, married, and had three other children, aged 8, 9. and 11 when I was born; her husband was NOT my father; she was short, Swedish, and had blond curly hair; my dad was an Italian steelworker, son of an immigrant shoemaker who woke up one day to find a note from his wife that she was leaving him and half of the closet was gone; Mom’s husband had a nervous breakdown and was committed; this explains a lot of what is running around in my genetic pool — don’t blame the Murdochs
  12. I am the best party liaison this side of Van Wilder
  13. I have three home-produced album to my name under various alter-egos (see Pus & Zero Boy) and one professionally released 12″ single called “Everybody” that I did with Grant Goad and Andres Mijangos
  14. I am still very proud of all the work I did to become an Eagle Scout
  15. I wrote poetry every day for almost 15 years; most of it is available — tagged and searchable even — on my WordPress blog; my current favorites are “Cellardweller“, “I, Ape“, and, of course, “Froggacuda“
  16. I often wish that everyone else could hear the soundtrack and audio effects track that accompanies my life
  17. I am a pack rat, especially for things that provoke nostalgia; for example, I still have many of my childhood toys — Legos, Transformers, Micronauts, etc. — and a box full of the stuff I had pinned / nailed to the walls of my room when I was in high school, such as Fishbone ticket stubs, a referral from Coach T (R.I.P.), and extra pictures of hot chicks I had crushes on from Yearbook class
  18. I have always owned a “strange” pet as well as my beloved cats ever since Linda Nickel bought me my first Emperor scorpion; currently I have Tuonetar Mac Mordenkainen, who is the third Mexican Red-Knee tarantula in a long line of wonderful arachnids I have loved
  19. I don’t code Web 2.0 anywhere near as well as I did Web 1.0
  20. I love jackets; first and foremost is my ska-patched black jacket, which used to be a bomber, but out of all the clothing you can wear, nothing beats the right jacket for the right occasion or situation
  21. I have been a true (4 elements, y’all!) fan of hip hop ever since seeing the Sugar Hill Gang perform “Rapper’s Delight” live on Solid Gold 1979; this seminal moment changed my life forever
  22. There is nothing better in life than having a good conversation filled with enthusiasm, a meeting of the minds, and laughter
  23. Being rejected in junior high school by the popular white folks as a glasses-wearing, uncool, too-smart nerd has served me well; I have good friends and strong cultural ties to non-white communities who have accepted me for who I am from then until the present day; this is one of my greatest sources of pride and what makes me wince when I have to choose “caucasian” on “optional” survey information
  24. I love language, especially since the world is made of it (see the collected works of Terence McKenna), and I have a fierce propensity towards sesquipedalianism just because long, multisyllabic words sound cool and are sometimes the key to doing what Salt & Pepa, Madonna, and Dr Dre during his NWA tenure said best: expressing one’s self
  25. There is nothing I value more in life than my friends; they are the Desiderata of my happiness, the real value in social networking, and many times, the only reason that I keep on keeping on, because I can’t do it all for myself

There we are: 25 random things about me. Feedback — as always — is very welcome. Have at!

Ray of Light

Posted: July 29, 2008 in Rant
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The results of dishonesty

The results of dishonesty

There is a hole in my heart, and I can’t contain the light that is pouring out. This is the brilliance of truth and the refraction of soul. This is the damage that is done to a human being when you are betrayed, blinded, backstabbed, and belittled for trying to be more understanding than is humanly possible to be. The Froggacuda has held his enormous, razor-sharp, whiplike tongue long enough, and the slings and arrows, the sticks and stones, having come from all quarters, determine that the defense of the 360 degrees is back by popular demand, and must be enforced with the unpredictable and uncanny gusto that is the Monster from Red Lake.

This site has been populated with what I once was and, apparently, what I still am made of: not snips and snails and puppy dogs tails, but fifteen years of poetry, ten years of making music, five years of DJ mixes, and one month of unemployment later, I am sitting all froggy on top of a pile of meaningless (to you) shit that perhaps someone will wander through and find a gem or two amidst this midden heap of detritus. Although the catharsis of inputting and then burning all of my available poetry journals is healing, it tears a lot of scabs off of present and historical wounds that should have been viciously expunged with a gallon of Bactine and a scalpel when the damage occurred in the first place. Except that I am a coward.

I don’t know why I am so creative; why I am able to pour my guts out on the kitchen table and read your fortune in them like some sort of Street Shaman or modern-day Gypsy — to help you, only to stuff my innards back into this ridiculously fat and out-of-shape barrel-like body of mine, smile, pat your head, tell you I am alright, and send you on your merry way with a little bit of Murdoch perspective to think about. It’s what I do.

I am so brave when it comes to telling the truth to other people. In my own private hellish closet where the real me lurks and shakes his fist at a world that I never asked to be a part of, I tell myself I am making the best of it. I live, I love, I breathe, I get up in the morning, I go to work (when I have it), I get shanked by friends, family members, acquaintances, business partners, bosses, co-workers, Sunday drivers, wives, fuck-buddies, Internet personalities, and the population at large, and it all it really makes me want to get this thing called life over with. That’s why I am trying to smoke and drink myself to death like a modern day Charles Bukowski. What is the point of all of this happiness and misery, anyways?

Seriously, what is a blog for besides spitting ridiculously self-centered screeds to an unsubscribed and uncaring Internet where my body of work will be lost as another couple of drops in the ocean of half-formed content scrabbling for purchase or publication like so many Lovecraftian half-formed nightmares populating the craptacular pages of the 21st Century’s equivalent of pulp fiction: WordPress.

I was going to wait until I had everything I had ever done (or at least kept and found again, only to be re-humiliated by rediscovering it) pumped into this overblown MySQL database before I started ranting again, but enough is enough, and the tongue must be let loose to rave in the dark as an orgy of one. It is terribly frustrating to understand that the highlight of my life is the eulogy I gave in a shadowy, barely filled cathedral for one of my best friends Bela Feher, who I miss like an arm or a testicle (he’d love that) even now, and I DAMN him for falling off of a big rock and leaving me here to struggle through this bullshit they call life while trying to console myself that I can’t die fast enough and that his wisdom, magic, and sarcasm is still contained within every ray of light from the hole in my heart.

[ original image courtesy of www.basehead.org ]

Burn the Phoenix

Posted: February 10, 2002 in Poetry
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I am thee Froggacuda
And oh so froggy be I
Defined by myself as myself
And marooned is my current cry.
Inside I’m still the same hollow
Green straw puppet carnival black hole
Of pool-soaked poetry pages
Missing something to be whole.
Cobwebbed closets rarely treaded
And rusty hinges, unsafe passage
Basement dwelling, life enshrining
Long decoding of this message.
Love and laugh; live your time
Unwrap an onion and be true
I burn the phoenix of my years
Consumed by seeing myself in you.

Froggacuda and the Necronomicon

Posted: November 1, 1998 in Writing
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[An unfinished start to some sort of crazy adventure]

The sky tore open violently and green lightning splayed skeletal fingers across the black clouds which hung like shrouds over the dark city. A vast peal of thunder which bulldozed across the landscape of concussed concrete and broken stone caused most to clutch their young nearer and pray to nameless gods beyond the sunless sky. In the brooding temple whose obsidian walls were rumoured to be mortared together with the souls of curious cats, the chanting of cowled priests echoed in a cacophony of insane voices pronouncing mantras strange to their tongues. Nothing stirred but the wind, which tore through the streets as if it were searching for its own sanity.

Bowing low and sweeping the limb of a freshly dismembered Elf across a huge intricately carved disk set into the floor, a heavily armored priest stirred the heavy vapor of hanging incense into whorls of mustard-colored smoke. The sonorous drone of the hundreds of faithful surrounding the raised platform was punctuated by shrieks of horrible ecstacy that sounded as if they were being torn from the lungs that uttered them. Open to the sky that still crawled with eerie claws of lightning, the grooves and patterns of the altar seemed to undulate under the weight of the blood that coursed over it, libations spilled to an entity who was not to be named. The priest was bone-tired, but ululated praise in a hoarse voice, aware that she was being watched hawkishly for any sign of weariness. Again she repeated the syllables that she had learned in the stygian depths of the Temple through a tiny door that confined misshapen creatures that had never seen the light of day; again she made the joint-cracking motions that nearly dislocated her spine under the weight of her ceremonial armor. Flinging the appendage behind her to be devoured by the horde of mindless worshipers, she threw her helmet back and screamed from her soul at the thunder-ripped sky above her. The blood on the altar began to boil, and then, from the five-pointed star set into the middle, proceeded to turn a tarry black.

From the shadows of broken architecture high above the slimy mosaicked floor of the Temple, a hooded figure stood at the edge of a crumbling floor and watched the woman howl. Pleasure twisted skeletal features into a rictus grin as shivers travelled through the figure at the sound. Looking past the tops of ruined columns and unfazed by the dizzying height, the figure traced a symbol of Power in the air with the twisted tip of an old staff. In a voice that spoke of the spaces under children’s beds and half-open closet doors, Tarkarthiss M’ang, the self-proclaimed most powerful man in Orkland, began to whisper: “The Book!”

The priestess, hearing his words on a ragged gust of wind staggered, then spun around to face the grovelling assembly. “The Book!” she shouted; the mantra changed to reflect this new instruction. Blackened blood ran freely from the altar, stickying the marble of the platform and steaming with nauseous fumes. The faithful began to chant the word, half retching through the stench of the cloying incense and scorched blood. The fires of the braziers at the four corners of the platform whipped chaotically as the wind combed it into streamers of orange flame. At a motion unseen by those on the floor, Tarkarthiss sent the hanging symbol plummeting into the center of the altar.

An avalanche of thunder tore the sky open, and a bolt of greenish lightning as wide as an elephant impacted the altar, shaking huge chunks of rubble from the ceiling. The cries of the faithful were drowned in the hideous sound of worlds juxtaposing for an instant, a noise like a gigantic ribcage being ripped wide. The braziers, flung from the platform, sprayed burning oil over those present; the blood caught fire and burned with a green flame, engulfing the priestess, who laughed maniacally as she screamed. The lightning struck again, sending tentacles of green electricity scything through the crowded worshipers. Glowing with a white-hot intensity, the center of the altar blinded those who dared to look at it. Tarkarthiss grinned wider, and brought one hand up to shield his sunken eye sockets from the third and final impact that was expected.

The agonized screams of the cultists were cut short by a terrible crack of thunder that sounded from the altar as the bolt struck, sending fist-sized fragments of stone everywhere. Struck deaf, the wailing of the dying was cut short by their bodies melting as a wave of energy pulsed through the Temple, bringing down more of the ruined structure; the nearby mountains trembled in their efforts to produce a riochet echo that slowly died into a low electrical hum of pure Power. Stray branches of the green electricity rippled over a gaping hole where the altar once rested; only the white star remained intact. Materializing from thin air, hovering over the five-pointed symbol, a Book came into existence. Bound in a leathery substance that looked moist, it nearly breathed. A huge lock kept the contents shut. Tarkathiss stepped nearer the edge of the perch and inhaled deeply in satisfaction.

A stray bolt of lightning fell from the sky and hit the white star, winking it out, and something inhuman seized the Book with large-clawed hands. Tarkathiss, taken aback, cast aside his hood, revealing the fireballs that were his eyes in his grey skull, and gaped at the intruder that had suddenly appeared in the middle of his Temple.

“Guys!” gasped the Froggacuda, “I got it! I’ve got the Necronomicon!”

Froggacuda ProFile

Posted: November 1, 1998 in Writing
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May I humbly introduce the Froggacuda. He is a most dilligent and faithful worker. Since signing on to AOL, he has been frequenting a tavern of no ill repute known as the Red Dragon Inn, where I hear his impeccable bartending skills have come in handy. I have known this ambidextrous amphibian for many moons, and his skill with his hands and with his nimble tongue is nigh legendary. Hopefully, this biographical ProFile will shed some additional light on the legerdemain of the notorious Froggacuda.

The Froggacuda was magically created in the mystical and humorous realm of Orkland (no, not Oakland) by an insane and evil Elf Priest of Kali, the Black Earth Mother of Destruction. Mangous Ye, for that was the name of the cleric, was a notorious drunkard and dabbler in the arcane arts of certain Bookes which are better left in the Special Texts sections of the most exclusive libraries. Owing several hundred gold pieces in library fees anyways, and after an unusually intense drinking bout across the street in Rumble’s Tavern with Maldrik the Rabid (a Chaos Dwarf), Mangous Ye embarked upon an incantation that was part theory from the Necronomicon of the Mad Arab Alhazred, part daemonaical prayers to his evil Goddess, part insane lust to create the ultimate Navy S.E.A.L., and part drunken stupor. Only rumors can be referenced to what exactly went on in Mangous Ye’s cramped and cluttered rental room at the only inn in Gnatspit, the Home of the Whopper, and these range in believability from the probable to the ridiculous. The general gist of the matter went like this: Mangous Ye retired to his quarters a little after 7:00 in the evening to meditate on the difficulties he might encounter upon attempting to take over the world. He toyed with the idea of a Frogg as a base life form for his “ultimate warrior”, Froggs being rough, tough and amphibious. After hastily culling several recipes from communing with Kali and opening the Necronomicon to random pages, he lit a small fire in the middle of the floor and drew several thaumaturgic circles of various black magic disciplines around it, roasted a Frogg Egg to the point of hatching, and then proceeded to infuse it with spells and magicks of a horrible and blasphemous nature. In his glee and intoxication, Mangous Ye read every piece of literature he had in his room to his creation during the process. Some say that he had forgotten that he had mistaken the “Mr. Boston’s Bartender’s Guide” at the tavern for his spellbook and hadn’t gotten around to returning it (why would he — he’s evil), and it was on page 3 that the Egg started to glow a noxious green. Mangous, grinning insanely ear to ear, quickly read the rest of the manual to the Egg and, realizing that his incantation were actually working, he consulted the Pnakotic Manuscripts. Reading something that may or may not be within those horrifying pages, he teleported the Egg to several random planes in quick succession. At this point, the interstellar wind which naturally accompanies such magicks blew several items along with the Egg: the Boston Guide, a copy of Grimmtooth’s Faerie tales, the contents of Mangous Ye’s flagon (a very rich Illithid Dark-Side-of-the-Moon double bock lager), a small figurine representing his other idol of worship, Godzilla, and his pet barracuda “The Brain”. The magicks worked something like the telepods in the 1986 remake of “The Fly” (Geena Davis/Jeff Goldblum), fusing all of the elements into one creation: The Froggacuda. The crack of thunder that accompanied the return of the Egg to the Prime Material Plane and Orkland blew the roof off of the cluttered room and knocked Mangous Ye senseless.

Upon finding himself fully grown, the augmented Frogg found himself to be quite different from his Eggmates (Froggs lay 2000-5000 Eggs at one time). Standing 6’5” tall and around 200 lbs., he knew he wasn’t going to be recognizeable to Mom anymore. His skin was a yellowish green, his eyes Frogglike, set on the sides of his large head; his large mouth was elongated, 50% Frogg and 50% barracuda — including the latter’s wicked teeth. His back sported a nifty row of sharp plates like that of Godzilla. His hands were fully functional, the fingers were webbed and tipped with thick talons. Ditto with the feet, which were extraordinarily large. His torso was barrel-shaped but powerful; his skin was slightly moist but not, as some would imagine, slimy or oily. He had no tail, having gone through the Taddpole stage in the blink of an eye, but sported gills on the sides of his thick neck. His hide was tough and sleek, and he suddenly was struck with the irresistable urge to serve people alcohol in a relaxed and merry environment. Leaving the inn by way of the roof, and leaving an unconscious Mangous Ye slumped under the worktable, unnoticed, the Froggacuda crossed the street and served his first Ale — to none other than Maldrik the Rabid. Rumble, the half-Ogre owner of the tavern, welcomed the Froggacuda, knowing quite well how prejudice works against persons who stick out in society, and gave him an apron and a job barbacking. The rest is common history: after several years of tending bar in one of the most popular haunts in the Multiverse, the Frogg scraped up enough gold for a Magical MacIntosh and a dedicated phone line. And now, he is online, hoping to secure a position bartending at the Red Dragon Inn. My wishes are with him, for he is a most honest and faithful Frogg, dedicated to the entertainment and service of his patrons.

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