as told by Morgan Pielli
and illustrated by Jasmine Chapgar

Warning.. the following events may not have happened...          Every day people expect me to be funny. “Hey Morgan, do that thing with your uvula,” they’ll say, or “hey Morgan, do the one about that guy from that show,” and “hey Morgan, be funny.” Well, I’m tired of it. Sometimes I just feel like being morose or morbid or even Melrose (an adjective meaning to brood, conspire, or act very poorly). Sometimes I like to just wrap myself up in the thick warm night and huddle amongst the shadows like a some sort of forlorn soul, or heavily-inked super hero.          My roommate walked in on me during one such mood. The lights were off, save for the neon glow my screen saver (even a being of the dismal night requires 6 to 10 hours of Netrek like anyone else), and I sat huddled on the floor in a far corner of the room, brooding. Not expecting to see me in a mood that is so far from funny, he could only blink and ask, “hey, Morgan ..why aren’t you funny?”          Understandably furious at such compounded insolence, I let out a horrific squeal; like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers; and shouted “Cross not this line,” indicating the chalk line I had drawn around me, boxing me into the corner, “for to cross it is death!”          He giggled like a schoolgirl, “hee hee...you’re so wacky.”          Of course the above is but just simply only merely one such example of the expectation of funny placed upon me. Oh sure, sometimes funnitude comes to me rather naturally; wearing a lampshade on my head when I am perfectly sober and more than capable of holding coherent conversation; the comedic urge to slip not on a banana peel in reality, but instead to slip on the peel’s potential slippage; making unicycle jokes not because the unicycle is funny, but because it would alienate most everyone associated with this e-zine. Nonetheless, I sometimes need to be dark, depressing; to suck the life out of a party as Megatron sucks energy from a black hole to power his big gun (read the box, Transfans). Sometimes I just need to be taken seriously....if only for the sheer comedic value. “Dad, what’s the point of this story?” -Bart “I like stories.” -Homer

Who is Morgan? Who is Morgan, you ask! Born on the planet Krypton, Morgan was sent to earth upon the planet’s destruction. Unaware of the powers that the yellow rays of the sun afford him, Morgan was raised by a team of musicians on a small artist commune. I like long underwear.

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