Hey everyone. Meet my banana slugs. I think you’ll find them delightfully personable. Maybe even relatable. In fact, they’re really just like you and me. Except they’re slugs. Banana slugs. Allow me to introduce them:
Meet Tim. He thinks of himself as the ringleader of the bunch, but only to compensate for his social anxieties.
This is Tim’s sister, Penelope. Don’t mind her, she’s kind of shy.
Peekaboo! I can see you, Jane!
Dave is kind of an ass. He’s always picking on Penelope, but that’s because he loves her and doesn’t know how to show his affection in an effective manner.
This is Gustav. He looks kind of intimidating, but really, he’s a sweetheart if you get to know him. Which most people don’t.
Here is my foot for comparison. Say hi to my foot, Gustav! Hee hee. Gustav is afraid of feet.
Philip is taking a nap. He’s kind of lazy. Hey! Phil! Get back to work!
This is Jose. He’s trying to spell his name. How cute.
No, Jose! It’s a J, not an I. Bad, Jose! Bad!
John is the four-time stick-hurdling champion of the South Peninsular Region. But he really wanted to be a concert pianist.
Barry is pretty aggressive. If only we understood why.
Don doesn’t really like his job very much, but he won’t realize it until about ten years from now. It’s not wasted time, Don. It’s character building time. Character building.
If only Beatrice were prettier, then maybe people would make an effort to get to know her. But then, maybe she wouldn’t have been able to use adversity to develop such a wonderful personality. A personality she would gladly trade for beauty.
Don’t worry, Elizabeth. Sometimes I want to curl up in the fetal position and make it all go away too. But it won’t. You have to deal with your problems head on, Liz. And even then, they probably won’t go away.
Kim is happy, but complete idiots usually are.
We can never be truly sure if our desires are our own, or just internalized manifestations of our parents’ desires. Here is John’s father, Ulysses. He was never a great stick-hurdler, but he’s so proud of his son. So proud.
You hurdle that stick, Ulysses. You hurdle it good.
Is this all there is, Peter? Is this all life has to offer? For you, yes.
This is not a banana slug, although I wish it were.
You have no idea you’re the reason Elizabeth is crying, do you Hubert? Sometimes the most hurtful thing you can do to someone is not realize that you’ve hurt them. Her suffering is on your hands, and you have no idea. Just like the rest of us.
I hope Sarah likes flash photography! It really brings out her acne. Just kidding, Sarah, you haven’t had acne in years! The scars are purely emotional now!
Sometimes we have to accept that the things in our life we might not have chosen are the things in our life we were meant to have. It’s not the best fern in the world, Eric, but it’s a good fern.
Some slugs don’t have ferns. How did they get that way though? Nobody is born into this world imaginging themselves to be fernless someday, but alas, it happens. It could happen to you.
There Beth lies waiting on her bed of moss for her unnamed lover that never was. Some slugs were just never meant to be happy.
Jack was short and stout before he got into drugs. He still is short and stout, but nobody mentions it anymore.
You’re a good slug, Cheryl. But from the standpoint of greatness, the difference between mediocre and good is negligible.
Are you really just the sum of your likes and dislikes? Are you nothing more than your actions? Of course you aren’t, but not that it matters. Nobody will ever know you in a way you’ll find satisfying, Rebecca. Except for that stick. But that, too, will perish.
Oh Anne, remember the dreams of your youth? You had so much potential, to squander it on the sensuous curves of your lost dignity. It’s okay, honey. If you convince them you love them, maybe they’ll tip better, and you’ll finally be able to pay for college.
Are you concerned about your out-of-body experience whenever you make love to your wife, Alex? You should be. Are you afraid that it means you don’t actually love her, and you made a huge mistake in committing your life to her happiness? No, it’s not that. It’s just years and years of sexual repression forcing its way between you and something you were brought up to fear.
You don’t always have to be on the outside looking in, Jeff. All it takes is courage. The courage you will never have.
Why would God put you here only to deny you the security of faith, Juliet? Why create you so that you may writhe in the flames of eternal damnation? If God exists, then he is cruel. If he does not exist, then from atoms you came and to atoms you will return.
The dialectic between action and non-action, being and non-being, the binary relationship between the state of all things, what does it mean, Bobby? What does it mean?? Holy shit, this is intense!
No amount of cowering will hide your shame, Martha! Take not solace in the leaves that cover your wretchedness, but rather take solace in that we are all as wretched as you. Let us lift ourselves up beyond the leaves, for sinners we are, and sin we shall. Yes, sin, Martha, for you can know no other way.
At what point does fantasizing about suicide make you suicidal, Charlie? How can you be so sure everybody doesn’t think about it as much as you do? You’re just a completely normal person with a completely normal psychology, who absolutely doesn’t need help. Who’s to prove otherwise? You can’t know how other people think and feel.
Please stop crying, Abby. When your father told you he wished you were never born, what he really meant to say was that he wished HE were never born. See, don’t you feel better already?
Doctor Quack 