[11:26 pm, SATURDAY]

Name: Maxwell Horiguchi.

Nicknames: Max, Stax, Staxwell, Maxwell Staxwell, etc.

Age: 252 (in dog years).

Gender: Alpha-male.

Race: First place.

Work history: I choose not to dwell on the past.

Strengths: Ability to take boxed meals like Mac & Cheese and make them better with *super-secret* ingredients (chef’s private recipe); inability to say no to anything (constant “yes-man”).

Weaknesses? Now that one stumps me. Weaknesses, weaknesses…nothing? Nothing.

Weaknesses: Many have tried to determine, all have failed.

Accomplishments: Completed speed run of Toomba video game on PS1 in 1 hour 19 minutes, 38 seconds; co-authored comic book: Zombieman (4 issues, 5th pending).

Why should we hire you?: Because if not, mommy and daddy will get mad at me and take away all my toys.

I HIT SEND ON THE JOB APPLICATION and take a spin in my computer chair. That’ll get the ‘rents off my back, and there’s no way anyone will hire me with such a bullshit application. Not only that, I bet no employer in their right mind will even call me. When mom or pops ask if I’m looking for work, I can honestly say that I filled out a bunch of applications.

“I guess no one is hiring a guy with my particular skill-set at this time,” I’ll say.

Perfect. Now back to my board meeting with Captain Crunch and Mr. Trix Rabbit. Signing off.

[8:45am SUNDAY]

EDIT: Someone did call me! I’ve got a job interview today at 10am at some kind of ritzy new restaurant called, Kid Café. Not only that, the lady on the phone said they were excited to meet me. Excited? After that mess of an application? How do I sabotage this one, dear subscribers? Ooooh, I like that one, rizkizler808: I will wear a cape to the interview. Keep the suggestions coming in the chat.  Will post results in later post.

[10:40 am, SUNDAY]

Okay, so you will never believe what happened: good ol’ Maxwell Staxwell got the job! I did everything you guys suggested, too. Did I wear the cape? Hell yeah I wore the cape, I even put out my arms and flew into the interviewer’s office, too. I think it was—let’s see—oliver_tha_oragami_king who suggested copious amounts of hair-gel? Well yeah, I went in there looking like a bad street-performer Superman, and yes, I even chewed bubblegum! I blew bubbles, made popping noises, all of it, and none of that bothered anyone. I know I set out trying not to get a job, but I think I may have struck gold at this place. Has anyone ever been to Kid Café? I doubt it, since most of you probably don’t live on Maui, or if you do, you probably don’t make it out to Napili often. This place is something else. For starters, it’s on the golf course, so you know I’ll be making great tips. Honestly, I wouldn’t care if I didn’t, though. Let me walk you through everything I’ve seen so far.

So I get on the elevator with a few people, and dude! They’re sword fighting when I get in there! Not with swords, obviously, but like, little chef knifes. Why do they have chef’s knifes, and why are they little, you ask? Because the chefs themselves are little. I couldn’t tell, but they may have been children, like maybe pre-teens or something. I told one of them to watch where he’s swinging his knife, and he goes, “aren’t you a little too old for a cape?”

I tell him no, “I’m only 36, but aren’t you too little to be a chef?” and how does he answer? He farts on me. Normally I’d be mad, but this was, like, hilarious comedic timing. I couldn’t help but laugh, and then when I did, I farted, too, and the whole elevator ride turned into a multi-butt fart war! Gross, yes, but you have to see the hilarity there.

Anyway, the interview was a formality, to say the least. The lady, her name is Sedona, she looks me over and says, “You are exactly the missing link this restaurant needs.”

I ask her what she means by that and she says something about how I seem like a guy who knows how to have fun; of course it all adds up to be the perfect opportunity to gain another Zombieman fan.

“Thanks,” I say, because let’s face it, she’s right, and I know how to take a compliment. “Yeah, I try not to take myself too seriously. Why should kids be the only one’s having fun? It’s kinda funny that you’d call me the missing link. I, uh, don’t know if you saw on my application, but me and a buddy of mine, a little while back, we wrote a comic book, and our main superhero is the missing link, in a way, too. Get this: he’s a zombie, but he’s a vegan. Eating brains isn’t really his style, so he’s kind of like the link between humanity and monsterkind.”

“I love that!” She exclaims, and then she gives me some paperwork to fill out. “Well Mr. ‘Monsterkind’, Can you start right away?”

I’m guessing some of you have jobs, so like, that means I’ve got the job, right? I mean, she’s not just testing me, to see if I can handle it? Or getting free labor out of me for one day, and then tossing me to the side with no pay the next day like some sucker? Listen, I know most of my subscribers are gonna catch this and think ol’ Maxwell’s gone crazy, but maybe the working life isn’t so bad after all. That reminds me, I’ve gotta head back! I said I was going to the car to get my birth certificate. Not sure if I’ll get a break or anything, but stay tuned. More to come, or maybe you’ll just have to wait until my shift is over. As always, my name is Maxwell, and you need to clean your back smell. Later.

[1:09 pm, SUNDAY]

Hey everyone! I decided to do a video this time around, because, well, I’m in a massive hurry. I’ve only got a quick-fifteen, then it’s time to head back, but I just had to show you this uniform. What the hell is this? How am I supposed to work in this, let alone show my face in public? I know most of you out there would call this a Hawaiian shirt, but we call them Aloha shirts here; so then what about the matching shorts? Do I call them Aloha shorts? I certainly don’t. I call them dipshit drawers. I mean look at this! You can see my butt-sweat! What kind of dummy designed the work uniform and then decided silk was the appropriate fabric to be sweating in all day? It’s like a child designed them, which would explain why everything fits so tightly. I feel like I’m a person drawn in crayon, come to life from the coloring pages of a kindergarten! All I need now is a little rainbow cap with a twirly propeller on top, and my transformation to 36-year-old man-child would be complete.

Speaking of adolescence, that’s what’s really, really weird about this place: everyone is a child. I mean, shit, I probably should have known just by the name, but I thought Kid Café meant it was a café owned by a Chef named, like, Alberto Kidd or something. Nope! The customers are kids, literally. I don’t know if their parents drop them off so they can go play a round of golf or what, but most every table is full of impatient little bean sprouts! Since clocking-in, I’ve really had to hit the ground running; Sedona put me to work running food out to tables immediately.

Like, get this: so I go to deliver chicken soup to this one dude (I say dude because at this point, I’m thinking he’s a grown man) and he starts screaming at me, saying, “I wanted my soup thirty minutes ago! Not now!”

When I get back to the kitchen and check the time with my trainer, we see that the soup had been ordered just four minutes earlier, not thirty.

Every damn table has been like that. One little princess calls me over to examine a steak I had delivered earlier, and in the most condescending tone, she asks me, “What the hell is this?”

I take a look and tell her straight up “it appears to be a half-eaten, medium-well-cooked steak, miss.” Truly, the steak has like, the smallest amount of pink in it that you could possibly imagine, but no, not to her.

She says, “It’s so rare I can hear it breathing!” and that I’m going to bring her another one, right away, in a togo box, and that she is not paying for it.

Like seriously? After she’s practically eaten the whole damn thing? So I take her plate and I tell Sedona about it and she kind of just runs away from the situation!

She just goes, “do whatever you want!” and then leaves me to handle it on my own.

Of course, the server is nowhere to be found, so what else can I do? I decide to ask my trainer how to handle it.

She’s busy talking to one of the cooks about spring break or some shit, I don’t know, but she’s clearly useless to me, so I have to ask the chef myself. Great. I go, “hey Chef, this lady out here says her steak is under-cooked, so I need another steak, medium-well, togo. Please.”

That seems reasonable, right? Well, not to him, it doesn’t! He takes the steak from the plate, looks at it, and—swear to god—throws the thing against the wall. For a minute, I just stand there, not really knowing what to do while he curses up a storm. Juicy meat fats are, like, fully dripping down the wall behind him, but no movement on the re-fire steak. Cautiously, I ask him if he’s gonna remake it and he tells me to “shut the fuck up.” Alrighty, I think to myself, another child! Am I supposed to cook it myself? Am I training for my position, or do I have to be chef now, too?

That’s another thing: a few hours back, Sedona told me I’d be training to be a food-runner. Eventually, it would be my job to run food from the kitchen to the dining room, but today, I’m just supposed to be shadowing a girl named Kerryanne. Well Kerryanne hasn’t fucking done shit! She’s been on her phone literally the whole shift, looking at Instagram, shopping around for the best place to get her nails done, texting her little friends and God-only-knows what else. It pisses me off! Don’t we come here to work? Damn!

Finally, after a couple of hours of running around the restaurant, not really knowing what I’m doing, I just snap. I ‘ve got a window full of entrees that need to be delivered to tables, I’ve got a fired up, angry little Chef Boyardee yelling at me that “food is dying in the window!”, every guest in the entire restaurant needs more ketchup, and then when I get there with the ketchup, they need something else! I’m struggling badly, and there’s Kerryanne, on her phone, leaning against the counter and laughing at some dumb YouTube video.

I go, “Kerryanne, are you going to train me at all today? Or are you just going to stand there like some lazy idiot with your fingers up your ass!?”

Well I shouldn’t have said that, apparently, because she starts literally crying. She falls to the ground and she starts sobbing like a banshee, with snot running down her lip and everything! Two punky little kid-waiters see it; they come over and start shoving me, calling me a bully, and it’s the first time in my life I seriously consider hitting a child. I picture myself busting out a wild tornado kick like Ken from the Streetfighter games, and I even start to prepare to do it when Sedona comes and grabs me by the arm.

“Maxwell! Kerryanne! My office, now!” she barks, and then we have to go talk about our feelings and about how name-calling is against the rules.

“You know, Maxwell,” Sedona says more gently, “I think if you knew how much you and Kerryanne have in common, you two would get along like best friends.”

I go, “oh yeah?” and she says yeah.

“Kerryanne likes monsters and goblins, just like you. Maxwell, why don’t you tell Kerryanne about your comic book?” Sedona suggests, so I go ahead and tell Kerryanne about Zombieman.

I say, “It’s a comic book, I dunno. It’s about a zombie superhero, right? But get this: he’s vegan!” and Kerryanne says nothing for a minute, then rolls her eyes and asks about his superpowers. “Public speech and persuasion are the only weapons he wields.” I say, and of course it hits like the set-up to the punch line it is. “He goes around giving seminars and life-coaching sessions, and, you know, tries to convince other zombies to stop eating brains and start eating bran!”

Now, I know you guys love the idea, because you’re always asking me when the next issue is coming out—and I hope it’s soon, I do, I’ve just had some bad writer’s block lately—but Kerryanne does not get it at all. At least she isn’t crying anymore.

She wipes her nose with her arm and says, “Well if that’s his strength, what is his weakness?”

I just don’t get it! Why is everyone so obsessed with weaknesses? Zombieman is like me, he has no weaknesses. Why does he need to have weaknesses? It’s the job application all over again.

That brings me to now. Sedona is over-the-moon with excitement, telling me that maybe Kerryanne could be my new writing partner to help me “develop my character”, and I don’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean. Zombieman is developed. He’s fine. Right? Anyway, I think I’ve got to end the video here. I’m supposed to be “catching some fresh air” to help “clear my head.” It’s bullshit…

Welp! Seeya laters, beans and taters! I’ll catch you up with a podcast, or maybe just another little ditty on the blog-page soon as I get home. Maxwell, out!

[5:22 pm, SUNDAY]

Sweet, sweet, internet family! I cannot begin to express how surreal it is to be back online, in the comfort of my computer chair, logged in and creating a new post for you all. I am a broken man. My feet are sore, my legs feel tight, my back is killing me, and my sweaty body is so sticky, I could probably catch mosquitos just by standing in place.

Firstly, I know you guys are going to roast me, and I welcome it. You’ll say I’m privileged, that I’ve never worked a day in my life, and probably something about how much harder the working life gets, and you’re right—about all of it. I’m a lucky sunnuvabitch, I get that now. Mom’s interior design and Dad’s concrete business have paved the way for me to have an easy life; so easy, that working for a living could very well just be a personal experiment, if I wanted it to be. Thing is, I don’t know what I want anymore. Everything I thought I knew has been called into question. Why am I so confused and beaten down, you ask? Well let me tell you about my day, starting from where we left off in the video.

Where were we? Oh, right: Kerryanne. Do you want to know what kind of discipline befell her, for being such a useless trainer? Ha! You’re going to like this. I get back up to the restaurant and the place is in a frenzy. There’s order tickets lining the entire window, and a row of new tickets hangs out of the printer like a chain onto the ground.

Sedona is there, and when she sees me she says, “oh good! You’re back! Can you take over? Are you fine with working by yourself?”

Regrettably, I tell her yes, and ask where Kerryanne went.

“I sent her home for the day,” she says. “She was really hurt by the names you called her, plus she has an appointment to get her nails done. So you’ll be good, right? Good. I’m going back to the office.”

Suddenly, I’m on my own and I have not even the slightest idea where to begin.

“What are you, on break!?” Some spikey-haired, pimple-faced waiter says to me. “Table 44 has been waiting over twenty minutes for their salad! Can you take it out to them, please?” He says as he grabs and eats some fries off of another plate.

I go, “what about you, man? Can’t you see how overwhelmed I am? I just got back from break. Can you run out your own food while I work on the next order?”

But no, he tells me he already did his job, and that he gets to relax now that the orders have all been taken. So I shoo him away and tell him to stop eating the customer’s food, and I take the damn salad out to damn table 44. Mysteriously, there is nobody at table 44, so I’m about to return to the kitchen when the customer flags me down, says he decided to move. Oh, is this musical chairs? I’m thinking, but I give him the salad and try my best to get out of there, when he asks me for extra ranch. I blitz back to the kitchen, get the ranch, return to the guy, and he has the audacity to ask for more ranch! Like, why couldn’t you just tell me you wanted two sides of ranch!? I get the little dude his damn ranch, and he knocks over a full glass of sprite trying to snatch the ramekin from me. A bubbly puddle cascades his table and drips onto the opposite seat.

“I think I’ll just move back to the other table.” He proclaims matter-of-factly. I’m thinking of the next three or four orders I have to run out, so I just unfold and lay one of the linens down and shrug it off. The bartender calls me over.

Yeah? I ask and he goes, “hey, you’re new here, right?” I tell him I am and what does that have to do with anything, and he says “I’ll let it slide this time, but food runners are supposed to fill up the well with ice. Can you go get some ice for the bar please?”

I look around the bar to see that he doesn’t have a single customer, and there aren’t any new order tickets printing from his machine. “Can’t you get it? I’m busy,” I tell him.

“Well I could, but it’s not really my job, new-guy. Besides, the bucket’s way too heavy for me. Look at me: I’m small. Now look at you: you’re huge!  I’ll wait here. Get me some ice, I need two buckets. Two buckets. One-plus-one is two. Two buckets. Giddy up, c’mon!” He roars like a fake-maverick.

Are you kidding me!? I’m thinking, but I do it, I get his stupid ice. By this time, people are attempting to flag me down, the cooks are screaming so loudly that you can hear them from the dining room, and the servers are just making conversation with each other leisurely, as if the restaurant isn’t going down in flames.

I’m about to head back into the kitchen, but two servers are blocking the door, and when I ask them to move, they tell me to “hang on a second.” I’m completely at a loss for what to do, so I just throw my arms up in defeat and say fine. I’m thinking, like, I guess I’ll just wait here, then! I’ll wait, even though I have a million things to do!

“Why are you doing this to me!? I need money!” One of them—a short, bossy-looking girl with a black ponytail—wails.

The other one, a red-haired boy with the facial hair of a full-grown man, he goes, “if you needed the money so bad, why didn’t you help me?”

She retaliates, saying that she did, and all that.

“You said we were going to split the party! You needed help, you’re the one who couldn’t handle a 12-top on his own, and I helped you! I did half of the work, I deserve half of the tip!” At this point, tears of rage are flowing down her cheek.

Redhead boy smiles. He’s loving the emotional reaction. What a petty little bastard. He goes, “Leilani, you did not do half of the work. You took one single drink order and left me stranded. You want a tip? Fine, you can have 2-bucks. That’s all you deserve. Get out of my face!”

Everyone in the restaurant watches as she storms away crying, and like a herd of blood-thirsty baboons, the customers all start clapping. Like, really? Is this entertaining to you?

The door now unblocked, I head back to the kitchen to see what kind of mess awaits me. I make several trips out to the dining room, running back and forth—not thinking, not stressing, just working—and eventually, things start to seem like they’re under control. That’s when the manager, Sedona, comes to me.

“Heyyyyy,” she says in the type of voice people use when they want to ask you a ridiculous favor. “I’m not sure if you’re up for it, but one of our servers, like, just quit, and we need someone to take over her section. I’ll take over on food-running. Would you feel comfortable waiting tables? Can you maybe take over Leilani’s section? It’s fine if you don’t.”

“Sure”, I say, as if I had a choice. She hands me a writing pad and a keycard, and gives me a brief tutorial on how to ring things in using the computer terminal. Everything on the screen appears as a picture, so I feel like anyone could understand, but she tells me anyway.

“Press the picture that looks like spaghetti if you need to order spaghetti, press the little Coca-Cola button if you need a coke or like, any other drink, press the little icon that looks like a cheesecake if your table needs a cheesecake. Got it?”

I tell her I’ve got it, and she indicates which tables will be mine.

Much to my surprise, I kill it at being a waiter. Does that come as a shock to any of you? They don’t call me Maxwell Staxwell for nothing, you know. Thing is, I know exactly how to stack them tips, and I stack them so well. Turns out, it’s all about being patient. For instance, one of my tables, these three girls, they tell me they’re ready to order, and then when I get there, they have no idea what to get.

“What’s good here? No, don’t go, we’re ready, we’re ready. Um, do you have anything gluten-free? God, there’s too many choices. Mele, what are you going to get?”

Before I have to listen to a single more word, I tell them that I eat gluten-free, too, and to “trust me. I know exactly what to get for you.”

Truthfully, I hardly even know the menu, but I’m good under pressure. I order them each a bungalow salad with salmon added, and they love it. Easy. Each table is kind of like that: clueless little numbskulls who have no idea what to order, and so I tell them.

Everything goes pretty smoothly to a point, but then we start running out of things in the kitchen.

“What do you mean we’re out!? You told me we were 86 burgers, you didn’t say shit about being out of chicken, and I just sold four of them,” I yell at the chef.

He shrugs his shoulders and just laughs at me. It gets to the point where we don’t even have lettuce for the salads. What the hell am I supposed to do? It’s my first day of work ever, and all of these curve balls keep coming my way.

Then, one table wants to order entirely off of the menu. It’s right around here that I start to feel the fight slipping from my body. I’m done. Against the ropes, losing vision, hands dropping, eating punches to the breadbasket—nothing I can do about it.

“Can you make fettuccine alfredo?”

“Sure.”

“Dinosaur shaped nuggets?”

“Yeah, we can cut your nuggets into whatever shapes you want.”

“Can you do the pork-chop, but with the sides that come with the chicken, and the sauce you use for the halibut?”

“Yes, yes and yes.”

Everything starts pilling up and I realize that I am not killing it. Whatever it is, is killing me. Table 21 wants a flight of milkshakes (even though we don’t do flights), table 22 brought their own kosher meals; table 23, out on the patio, is very clearly smoking a joint, and the six-top at 24 only knows one English word, and that’s “pizza.”

We don’t have pizza.

For me, that’s the point of total KO. The uppercut has landed, and I’m down for the 10-count.  I’m back up but I’m on wobbly legs. Ref, you’ve gotta stop it! The kitchen is pissed at me for saying yes to things we don’t have, the customers are ready to shoot me every time I say we are out of something, one of my guests keeps insisting that I watch a video on his iPad, and absolutely no one comes to my rescue.

I pass by table 24 and six different people say pizza? a thousand times until that’s all I can even think about: pizza. I panic and barrel through the front doors, ignoring cries from the hostesses that say “hey, can we seat you another table?”

I know I saw a Little Caesar’s in one of the shops on the lower level. I locate it with the haste and fear of a man disarming a bomb.

“Do you guys have hot and ready pizzas?” I say as I fall through their doors.

 I’m shaking and sweating and feeling like I’m about to pass out, when the words “yeah, we’ve got plenty” brings me back to life.

“Pepperoni and plain cheese. How many would you like?” A man in a black visor and matching apron says as he waits for me to catch my breath.

I have to use my chin to hold the stack of pizza boxes in place as I run my ass off, back to Kid Café. I use the back door so that nobody sees me. Sedona is livid. She starts scolding me for leaving the floor without telling anyone. She’s asking me about all the boxes of pizza, she tries to tell me about a table that left, but I’m not listening to her. Instead, I’m taking slices of cheese and pepperoni pizza, putting them on plates, and lining them up.

“I’m sorry!” I tell her. “Please, please, take three plates and follow me. Kids love pizza. I’ve got enough here to feed the whole restaurant.” I’m out the door before she has time to ask anything else.

The Koreans at 24 are so happy, they start cheering the word—you guessed it—“pizza!” I bow my head to the other tables, and I explain to them that we ran out of what they ordered, but would they be willing to accept the pizza with a discount? Most accept. Are they happy about it? Well, no, because they’re fucking children, and they don’t understand that sometimes, you just run out of things. I choose to avoid Sedona for the time being, and I print up checks for each table.

Everything after that is boring work stuff that you wouldn’t care to hear about, but let’s just say that from there, the day goes by without incident. I mean sure, I don’t do so well at bussing tables when one of the bussers asks me to help out, but what’s one measly tray’s worth of broken glasses? The kids all think it’s pretty funny, and that might be the only time all day that everyone—from the children who call themselves waiters, to the pipsqueak bussers, the miniature, make-pretend hosts and hostesses (who, by the way, have no idea what the hell they are doing all day long), and all of the whining brats seated at tables—is happy about something all at the same time.

My shift ends at four, but I find out it isn’t like on TV, and I can’t just leave now that the hour has come; I have cleanup and restocking duties. Isn’t that wild? Like sure, you’re off, but you’re not off yet! I roll a bunch of silverware into linen-napkin tubes, polish some water glasses, clean the soda fountain, and then at long last, I’m free to go—talk to Sedona in the office, that is.

“So, how do you think you did?” she says in a tone of voice that’s entirely too cheerful for the circumstance.

“Okay, I guess,” is all I can say for myself because I know that’s probably it for me; sayonara!

Shockingly, she tells me I’m being hard on myself, and that I did great. I’m sitting there thinking, like, you must be joking, right!? She’s not though. She even goes on to tell me that the pizzas were a fabulous idea and, get this, that it was a “brave executive decision befitting of a manager.”

A manager! Right as my sly-ass self gets the idea in my head that she’s giving me an immediate promotion, she says “maybe one day you will be.”

Then, she takes out a printed copy of my application. She looks it over and scans her eyes to about the bottom of the page. She goes, “here we go! Strengths! You said here that you’re a yes-man. I’d say that’s for sure. With pretty much no training at all, you took over the line all by yourself and ran food without any mistakes. Congratulations! That’s really impressive!”

“Then, when I had nobody else to turn to” she continues, “you jumped right onto the floor and started waiting tables. That’s seriously amazing! There’s no way even I could have done all that. You’re really something special, Maxwell!”

She pauses for a minute, then asks me if I know what she’s going to ask next, but I’m stumped.

“Well,” she says, “you wrote down that you don’t have any weaknesses. Do you still feel that way?”

Just like the first time, this question really troubles me. Is it a weakness not to be able to see your own weaknesses? I tell her honestly that I can’t think of anything. She looks me over long and hard and then playfully slaps my shoulder.

“Come on, silly! Isn’t it obvious!? Your strength is also your weakness! You did not need to have such a hard first day. You could have told me you weren’t ready when I asked you if you could run food all by yourself, and you could have said no when I asked you to wait tables. I feel like I saw you doing at least three other people’s jobs, and you could have said no to them, too. You have to learn to say no when you’ve got enough on your plate. You’re weakness is that you are a yes-man; you’re too much of a people-pleaser!”

Huh. Go-figure. I never thought that the attribute that helps you kick the most ass could also be the attribute that kicks your ass the most. Anyway, she reminds me what a good job I did, and I’m sitting there waiting for her to say something like but unfortunately, you weren’t good enough when she asks if I can come back tomorrow—as a full-timer! I think about it and then I ask her if it’s okay if I have a day off to recover.

“Of course! And look, you’re already overcoming your weakness! You said no to something that wasn’t in your best interest. Bravo!”

I’m thinking to myself, like, this lady is bonkers, man, but then again, she might be right. I get up and shake her hand, and she asks me if I have any more questions. I say no and turn to walk away when the most obvious of obvious questions hits me.

“Why is it that you mostly hire children? And why are there no adults accompanying our guests?” I say, and stand there waiting for some kind of revelation, half-hoping that today just happened to be a fluke (or a school field-trip or something).

She doesn’t say anything though, not in the form of an answer anyway. She goes “what do you mean?” I glance at a poster on the wall behind her of the Invader Zim cartoon while she looks to me for understanding.

I take a moment and just come out and say it, “the waiters are crybabies, the chef and his staff are arrogant pre-teens, the customers are the most badly behaved little monsters I’ve ever seen, and there I am, the lone food-runner, the only adult (other than you) in the whole damn restaurant. What is this place?”  

She looks at me, tilts her head like an inquisitive beagle, takes a quick breath in and goes, “I think I’m finally starting to get your sense of humor. You’re a real joker, aren’t you, Maxwell?”

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!? Like, lady, are you blind!? My god and hot-damn! What a crazy day…but I guess I’ve got a job now? Did you ever think it would happen, dear subscribers? Ol’ Maxwell Staxwell’s got a day-job. That reminds me: I made nearly 80 bucks in tips! Sure, I paid about 50 of my own money for the pizzas, but that got me out of a serious bind. Not bad huh? If you think that’s the end of the good news, you’ve got another thing coming.

I don’t know how many of you subscribe because you like my daily updates—podcasts, videos, blogs and stuff— or how many of you are here because you’re fans of the comic book, but for the latter group, get this: I’ve got an idea. See, all of this talk of weaknesses made me realize something: Zombieman can never progress if Zombieman doesn’t find a worthy nemesis. I’ve got to call Izzy and see what he thinks, since he’s the co-creator, but I’m probably going to start the outline without him.

Here it is: I’m thinking Zombieman’s nemesis should be called the A/V Avenger. He goes around in a variety of disguises and finds his way into the audio-visual team at Zombieman’s speeches. He fucks with the lighting and the sound and ruins our hero’s chances of converting brain-eaters to bran-eaters by sabotaging every aspect of the presentation. Zombieman can’t preach the raw diet if no zombie in the audience can hear him preach it. Pretty cool right?

I’m also thinking about what Kerryanne asked. You remember her, right? The bad trainer who went home after I hurt her feelings? Well Zombieman needs a weakness, and like his creator, I’m thinking his biggest weakness ought to be his strength. See, he goes around, convincing Zombies to stop trying to eat people, as we know. Well, in doing so, he saves a lot of human lives, right? With the zombies no longer hungry for their brains, there’s no reason for zombie hunting resistance bands. They disband. Peace between the two phases of life settles in, and some even try to marry and have families. That’s right: zombie-on-human romance, because, well, people are stupid and lonely, and way too forgiving. Infertility strikes the land in more ways than one (zombies and humans can’t make babies, duh!), and food shortages spread the whole world over!

What do you think of this as a title for the upcoming fifth installment?

“Zombieman V: Population Crisis!”

Sound off in the comments section and let me know what you think! That concludes probably the stupidest, shittiest, and yet, best day of my life. Goodbye writer’s block, goodnight internet friends, and farewell to the first day Max is paying his own taxes!