In this casual, free-flowing episode of What the fuck was that?, the host chats with Ulysses (a Tex-Mex artist/illustrator living in Mexico). They cover everyday frustrations and charms of Mexican bureaucracy and daily life—endless paperwork delays for passports and citizenship (even for those legally entitled), chaotic roads full of unmarked topes (speed bumps), early-morning fireworks from churches, and the slower, more “cobbled together” pace compared to the U.S.The conversation drifts into personal histories: Ulysses shares childhood road trips through Mexico in the ’80s/’90s, family stories, and cultural memories, while the host discusses their own unconventional upbringing tied to the drug war (parents meeting through weed, arrests, etc.). They touch on broader topics like historical violence (e.g., fundamentalist Mormon sects in Mexico), recent incidents like the Puerto Vallarta Anarchapulco chaos and a shooting at Teotihuacan, media hype vs. reality, and a generally optimistic view that the world has always been messy but isn’t necessarily doomed.The core focus shifts to their collaborative indie project Rootless Renegade—a comic series blending autobiography, anarchism/liberty themes, and adventure. They’ve released small editions like Love at First Smoke Out and Border Crossing. They discuss upcoming crowdfunding (via a platform like Fundme/mechanic) with tiers from cheap PDF bundles to premium merch, signed copies, original art, and even an exclusive dinner experience in Puerto Vallarta. The goal is sustainable funding to produce higher-quality color issues (next one focusing on the host’s early life and family), balance passion work with commissions, build parallel indie culture, and eventually tell more anarchist/activist stories. It’s optimistic, DIY, and emphasizes human-made art over AI, with realistic talk about time, costs, and growth. Overall tone: friendly, rambling, humorous, reflective, and motivated—equal parts expat slice-of-life and creative project update.
Transcript:
Okay, everybody. Welcome to. What the fuck was that? Today we have Ulysses. I do not pronounce this name correctly, and I’m not sure I ever will. But. Yeah. Welcome. We’re here to talk about rulers, renegade, and the next steps of our project. Yeah, I’m excited about that. Actually, the side note, like, I like being here in Mexico because Willis is, like, really easy to pronounce.
People have no issues with like six. So people think I’m lying when I told them my name is for me. Oh, really? Yeah. Like what’s your what’s your like no real. And I’m like no, this one, this one I promise is the real one. Like I promise, you know. Yeah. So that’s a funny thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well your have Mexican though, right?
Yes. Yeah. Officially on paperwork. I am Tex-Mex, I’m part texting and part Mexican. So how’s that feeling? So pretty good. Yeah, I’m a little jealous. Yeah, it feels pretty good. I mean, it’s. Yeah, it’s funny, the Mexican paperwork is. It’s it’s hilarious. And so I went to the main office here and made you a condom, and I’m like, hey, what’s up?
Like, it’s been five months. Like, where’s my salt? And they’re like, oh, well, we’re waiting on receiving and reply from another office in a different state the mom was born in. And so that’s why we haven’t done anything. So I’m like, oh, so you’re waiting. And I’m like, I understand why it takes them so long to get a response because, like, I swear, like I call like 20 times a day, nobody picks up the phone and it’s like, I expect that’s their experience when they call this the office in the other state.
And they’re just like, what? Nobody answered. I guess we’ll try again next week. I mean, okay, so that makes me feel a bit better about my situation because I am not going to be specific on what I’m working on, but I’m working on a thing and I keep Jesus Christ and
Sorry about that. We routed all Amazon calls to my phone and so I will be splicing these two together anyway. That does make me feel a little bit better about my process, because I keep going back and forth between it’s approved and we just have to figure out when you can come in and get your thing to.
There was one more thing that needed to be approved. And like your mom is for sure. Natural born Mexican, you are 100% legally entitled and it’s still taking that long. Yeah, so it’s funny. And yeah, it’s hearing the kind of reactions from my friends in the town, but just kind of like, well, you know, that’s kind of normal, you know, to expect these kinds of delays and the speed of paperwork here in Mexico is on another dimension.
It’s just, I mean, it reminds me of my Mexican dad. He got a bunch of stuff robbed from him while he was going to do something. So he had a bunch of paperwork he would normally have with him and all got stolen. And he’s still seven years later, trying to get certain pieces of that paperwork. He’s still going because he’s in Acapulco and he goes to chill and single like twice a month trying to get that shit.
It’s that’s crazy. And it’s because he’s born in Sonora and he’s old as fuck. Sorry, Gestapo, but he’s old as fuck. And so like, they’re like, do we actually have records of this human being? Because a lot of times births weren’t even recorded back in the days they just happened. And. Yeah.
That kind of gives me hope, though, about Mexico, because it’s like there is this push, like all over the place in, like in the States to do the whole digital IBM biometric everything and stare into the orb to check your weed transfer or your, you know, whatever Sam opens up to. But like, I like that about Mexico, that everything is just a little kind of like cobbled together.
And so, like, I have faith that the system was never going to get upgraded to like, you know, the dream thing where they can be like, oh, we’re going to monitor and survey everybody here. Like, nope, not happening here in Mexico. It’s going to take a while. I mean, they do have a lot of cameras, especially in Mexico City around they are trying to biometric stuff.
And it’s funny because all the people that aren’t here, I see it in just checks and stuff like the vigilance. They’re like, oh, that’s biometrics in Mexico. So we could just never go there again. And I’m like, hey, it’s pretty much all think I’m actually like, yes, a law was passed.
Laws aren’t really laws are suggestions here, you know. Yeah, they do seem like that. Yeah. And and you know, the, the biometric ina and the biometric curb, like I forget the percentage, but it’s like 40% of Mexico doesn’t even have any name. Yeah. They have a birth certificate because they all need an innate for most things. Like you only need an innate for certain levels of bank accounts.
That’s like a voter card for people that don’t know. But yeah, like, okay. I mean, the news is never quite in alignment with what’s actually going on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.
I think it’s, I think it’s a beautiful thing, although it is frustrating, you know, when you’ve paid to go through a process and then like six, seven months later, it’s like, oh yeah, we’re just waiting for the appointment date.
I would just like to not have to worry anymore. Yeah, yeah, that’ll be nice. That would be nice. That one that happens, Yeah. Yeah. My my partner’s like if it happens let’s come with plan B I think she’s a scammer. And I was like whoa hold on, hold on. She’s not great with communication. She being my lawyer.
She’s not great with communication. But she does give a shit. And if she were a scammer, she’d have blocked my ass six months ago because there’s no recourse, you know, like, I can’t go in and tell the government that she took my money and to deliver anything, right? Yeah. But the reality is, when you’re dealing with several people in the middle and you’re trying to, like, find your legal loopholes that are like, you know, they exist here.
There are a lot of legal loopholes here in ways you can become legalized that are slightly complicated, but still legal. Yeah. And that’s kind of what I’m working on. But the problem is, you know, even when you’re not working a loophole, even when you’re just going straight forward like you are here you are, you were told, what, a couple weeks for your passport.
No. Initially I’m like, there was a little office in the town that I live in and they’re like, oh, you could do it there, or you could do it, Morella because Morella, you can get it the same day.
Exactly. And so I think what they were trying to say is if you’re renewing your passport, you can get it the same day in Morelli, but if you’re getting it for the first time, it’s going to. And what’s crazy is, like, I paid for my sister to get her passport because I haven’t seen her in 12 years. And so I want to bring her to Mexico.
Right. She applied for her passport in November. She had her appointment in December. They told her that she would have it in a couple of weeks. It is the end of April. Yeah, and that’s the United States. It’s supposed to take 6 to 8 weeks. We’re at like 15 to 20 weeks at this point. Yeah. I feel like in Mexico, at least, if you can go to the offices there a little bit more like understanding of like, oh, hey, by the way.
Could you look into my thing? Like, I can’t imagine being able to do that in the States, like just strolling into the passport office, but. Oh, hey, can you help me out? Well, she told them that. They told her. Oh, it’s coming. We’re just behind. Yeah, like it’s approved, which does. We don’t have it yet. And it’s like when you pay, like $150.
I mean, it works out because I moved to this new place that we’re sitting in, and I don’t have the money for a plane ticket right now anyway, but like, damn. Yeah, yeah. So life in Mexico is slow, but it’s worthwhile. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So for sure. Especially because of the paperwork stuff, but. Right. What are you doing in the meantime?
Why don’t you just spend some time in Mexico, which is really beautiful and lovely and, you know, just stroll around these little towns and watch, you know, massive festivals and fireworks everywhere. And it’s like the idea of fire safety is, like, minimal in these towns. Yeah. I was waiting, being mocking up at 7:00 in the morning to. That’s probably my least favorite thing about Mexico is that the churches, they love explosives.
And when it’s some day of the Saint, they’re going to pop off five loud explosions at six in the morning. Yeah, yeah, it’s their best bells. Anything like. Oh, God. Yeah. But I mean, much of this, a culture like, I know a lot of people come here and they, like, complain to the government and it’s like that. I mean, don’t be in Mexico.
Don’t want to. If you don’t want to deal with that, it’s still worth being here. But it’s still just like, yeah, this guy was quirks. And it’s very interesting. Each town that I’ve been and has is kind of like separate little noise thing. I do have a question because I know you’ve told me stories about you coming on road trips here as a kid throughout various parts of Mexico.
How much is Mexico changed between when you were a kid and now? Oh, I mean, it’s changed a lot because we basically be driving down the Gulf Coast. So we’d be heading out from like East Texas, and we drive all the way down Brownsville and then through, like very close and Tabasco up into Japanese. And so there was at the time when, like they were starting to build all the major highways, all the characters and all that, the pistons like the toll roads and things like that.
So we didn’t take those roads very often because they’re either on obstruction or is just kind of expensive. And like, my folks are just like, whatever, you know, it’s not worth it, right? So we we would take like the small, the smaller, older routes. And so we’d be going through lots of little tiny towns and yeah, I mean, I don’t remember ever seeing a single oxo, right.
You know, like there was oxo did not exist in like the early 90s, but the Topaz did. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I’m like half of them were unpainted. And then if there weren’t Topaz, they were just massive, like holes in the road. And so. Right. Yeah, there’s, there’s there were a couple of times when the rough roads just, you know, we had to be extra careful with their car because it’d be a minivan.
It was completely loaded with all the kids, all the stuff that we were taking down to relatives and all our luggage. And we had, like, two dark car top carriers. And so we’d see, like, this mountain of a top, and my dad be like, all right, everybody out. So we have to get out and like, lighten the load so that we could slowly drive over.
Oh that’s terrible. That’s terrible. Because here’s the thing for people that don’t know, they say like driving on the free roads because that’s what they call them. There’s the quarter or there’s Libra and the Libra is the roads. He’s talking about driving on the free roads when people are like, oh, it’s dangerous to drive on those. It’s dangerous.
And the only thing that I can find that’s dangerous because that’s how we can talk. We took all of those things. We couldn’t afford to quote those. Yeah. And the only thing that’s dangerous is those fucking Toby’s, because they do things like having a downhill, like with a turn. And right after the turn, there’s a big ass top with no warning, you know, and or unmarked topaz.
Or you could almost always bet that if you saw a mechanical in the distance, he was right after the dope. And the dope is a speed bump, by the way. It’s. And they weren’t. There’s no standard uniform way of constructing puppies in Mexico. It’s just as the people who are there want to do it. And so sometimes it’s like ridiculous.
And it’s just like, obviously you ride a horse because you don’t drive over this thing, right? You have to go really slow. Otherwise you’re scraping. And like they I’ve heard Mexicans call them policemen. Where at those which are dead cops, which, I mean, I love that, but also like the free roads are not worth it for that reason, because it’s literally if there’s a sign of civilization, you could be in the middle of the desert.
And if there is an abandoned bungalow, there’s going to be at least two topaz around it. And if it’s an actual town, it’s like doping. Okay. More doping. Doping. Pothole, pothole.
And it’s brutal. Good to know that those have always been a thing in Mexico. It’s always a good thing. And so yeah, it definitely, definitely have memories of that. Like, I was never old enough to do any of the driving on these types. So I think it was a little bit more like, oh, I’m just having fun.
But I’m sure some of those moments were really kind of like hair raising from the parents because, you know, they’re doing like these little mountain roads. And I remember there be like these massive semi trucks totaling like two trailers of like, you know, petroleum or something like tankers going up and down these mountains. And like, these guys must have been like wired on like meth or something because this is just like, why are you driving that fast on these hills and roads?
Like you’re insane, right? Like, yeah, some parts were really scary. Helping the mountains, specifically Shabbos. I recently with my partner, we went through Shabbos in December from Poland. Well, we went all the way through chapels, but like, we took the road from Polanski to San Francisco de las Casas. And most people, if they’re going to both of those places they fly into to expand, I think, and then they, they bus to San Cristobal and then they fly them to expand to Polanski, because both took Spanish plane cab airports.
That is the way you visit shops. Do not do what I did because it was literally it was maybe like maybe like 100km between the two towns. Yeah. But because there were so many topaz, it was just seven hours of boom, boom, boom. There’s a whole, you know, the whole thing that is that is the thing. Interesting.
In other words, access. And it makes sense. There have been access here as long as I’ve been here, but I’ve only been here for ten years, so. Yeah. So this has been in like the late 80s, early 90s. OXO, by the way, is the most convenient, convenience store in Mexico. You can pay your bills there. You can send people money, you can buy booze like hard liquor and even buy cigarettes.
You can buy snacks, you can buy food. You can buy coffee. Yeah. And they’re everywhere. Everywhere? Well, not everywhere I, I didn’t have enough, so. Yeah. Okay. Oh. But, Yeah. So that’s that’s crazy. I did want to get into that a little bit because you have such a deep history in Mexico before all of, you know, a lot of people that come down for an Poco and they’re like, oh, I’ve never been to Mexico before, you know, like, and you are one of the few people in the community that do actually have experience with Mexico other than simply coming down for America.
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I have lots of really good memories of being a kid and playing with like, all my cousins and my aunts and uncles and like. And if I think back on it, it was just like I was just playing in the streets in the neighborhood, you know, and it wasn’t even like fully paid. It was just like gravel and dirt.
And it was just like, that’s what we play, you know? Yeah, you just go out there and run around and get hot, and then mom yells at you to come inside and put sunscreen on you and things like that. But, you know, that was that was kind of my experience of Mexico. That’s funny because, like, I grew up in a town that had a lot of Mexicans, but in the United States, and like the part of the town, I would say, in which was, you know, to be honest, the trailer park, but probably there were maybe 2 or 3 families in that whole trailer park, like 70 trailers that were not Mexican.
And the rest of them were. And it drove me crazy. We did. Some big kids were always in the streets and they wouldn’t move. He’d be like driving down the road and they just they just stare at him. Yeah, just like, can I just please go to my house? I mean, yeah, so that’s interesting that that is exactly the same here as there.
You know, I clearly didn’t have my childhood here and don’t have a lot of experience with young Mexican children. So that is quite interesting. Quite interesting. Well, I mean, you know, the nice thing about this kind of project that we’ve been working on is because, like, you know, you’re telling your story and all that and it’s, you know, I listen to my folks and their stories, too, because when they met, I think it was like late 70s, early 80s, New Mexico.
And the way they described being a med school in that time was just like absolute, like Paradise, you know, interesting. That was right around right before the cartels got really crazy. Right, exactly. And they were saying they would just wander all over the head, you know, all kinds of adventures up and down like Baja and like, you know, just traveling around in, like a little truck and trailer type of thing and, you know, just going to these tiny little villages and towns and things like that and just having a really great time, you know, before kind of like all this tourism came in and of course, before all the cartel and drug stuff where it
wasn’t safe necessarily to be in some of these places. And they were there before that, which was nice. Where is your mom from and where did they meet? She’s from LA, which is the main city of Chiapas, which is so fly. Yes. It’s not to expand its. Yeah, yeah. It’s like I think there’s a town called an angel or something.
Well, there’s, there’s somewhere like 45 minutes outside of San Cristobal de las Casas. There’s a town, it’s span or it’s a lot, but I think it stood up to the main city. Yeah, that’s that’s it. Because that’s where the airport is. Yeah. To get the same crystal ball. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I don’t know why I thought she was from better booze, but that makes sense.
Yeah. So it was. Yeah. Just the way they were describing being in Mexico and, you know, just running a little spot on the beach, and I forget what each place. But somewhere around, like, you know, the Sea of Cortez bought out or something like that, and just spending the summer there snorkeling every day when they wanted or, you know, it just sounded really, really like, what was your dad doing in nice ago?
He was working for the woman and gas industry, so he was working for Pemex. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So that was that was actually his first job out of university. He gets hired to do some work for Pemex, and I’m like, okay, you need to go down to Chiapas. You’re going to do I forget something with the like recording of Wells or wow, investigating Wells and, you know, taking data from that.
And that’s how it went on. So he was into LA. And the way they say he was, he was driving, trying to find a museum. Right. And then he sees like these three lovely ladies and had big bottles of like liquor with them and vodka. And he’s like, I’m going to try and talk to these girls. And it turns out to be my mom and her sisters that were going to a party and they were bringing supplies.
So that’s what these big bottles of. I come with them and tequila and, you know, apparently three weeks later they eloped, you know, Holy shit. And they’re still together, right? Yeah. Not damn. Yeah. I mean, that is that is pretty cool. Yeah, they they definitely had, you know, a wild story of, like, how they met and got together and, you know, life in Mexico in the 70s and 80s.
That’s. So I’ve been on an interesting rabbit hole. This is this is a side diversion. But I’m curious as to how much you know about this whole thing. But I’ve been on an interesting rabbit hole. Anybody in A knows me knows I have been binging on audiobooks for the last couple of years, specifically memoirs. Like in my audible library, I have 120 books and 100 of them, or 110 of them are memoirs.
Really? Because I’ve been I mean, I’m, you know, this is what the podcast is supposed to be about, but I wanted to talk about actual, like, life stuff too. But yeah, I’m writing my story. So I’m looking at different ways both to write down a story and record it. You know, like one recent audio book that I listened to that I actually loved how they did this.
I don’t know if I can angle my family into doing this, but for certain parts of it, like where there were quotes from family, she got her family like her dad and her friends and her sisters and stuff, to record their voices, saying stuff that they said to her or messages they sent to her. Oh, that’s fascinating. And like, it was brilliant and made me cry.
There was like one point where she was going through heartbreak, and her dad sent her this voice message crying. And I was like, I can’t handle this, and this will ban. Anyway, back to the rabbit hole. Somehow I ended up in in all of this specifically, like the Children of God called the fundamental is Mormon called and specifically the fundamental.
This Mormon called Mexico. And I’m on my second book about that. Yeah, yeah. And like, these motherfuckers were like in the early 60s or late 60s, early 70s. They were worse than the cartels are today of just like if they thought you broke something in the Ten Commandments, they were hunting each other down and fucking murdering each other and like.
And then I got to the point there was like this guy named Orval Larin. And he decided he was right about everything. He was like, really ushered this in. And I’m like, halfway through this audiobook of this girl that he tried to force to marry him, and he was just going into towns and just killing everybody. That wouldn’t become an herbal light.
And it was just like, this is some crazy shit going on. Yeah, in Mexico in the 70s, and I have no fucking clue about. Have you ever heard of that? No. Not actually no. Fucking wild like before. Mexican. They were so bad that, like, these guys would come in and start killing people on the Mexican military would come in and just stand on the side of the road in these towns in Baja and, and just like trying to keep people from white people from killing each other.
Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea, actually. Yeah. Sanity. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of an interesting thought that I think on a lot too, where it’s like, people are like, this is always like this kind of conflicting story about like, oh, the world is so much better now, or it’s so much worse now. And it’s like, really the amount of, like, awful stuff that happened in the past and like amazing stuff that like, don’t really have like good solid take on that.
So I can never really feel like it’s like, you know, oh, this is the best time ever to be, you know, alive in the States or something like that, or it’s the worst time ever. Like it’s just the time to be alive and really. Right. Like there are different challenges, but there are different things that are just easier, you know, like, as far as I know, the Mormons aren’t hunting each other anymore.
Yeah. I actually think one of the sponsors of Antarctica, and I need to talk to him about this because like they sponsored, they have like this phone list clinic and it’s really interesting. And the ritual and he had mentioned that like his family were Mormons in Mexico for a long time. And I was like, okay. And then I got curious and I was like,
I wonder what their last name is? And they go and look at their last name was Lebanon. And I was like, oh, you know, like, what a nice family. Like, I don’t, you know, for my understanding, all of that stuff is done. But like, there are still polygamist sex out there and like it is debatable as to whether or not that’s the right way to be.
But you do have the reason they were in Mexico is you do have, in general, more freedom to just do that shit. And people more or less look the other way, for better or for worse. Right? Yeah. That is an interesting thing, and I am curious to see how things go in Mexico, because before this interview, I showed you this video of this guy talking in Spanish about the reason.
So for those who maybe are aren’t aware, there was a murder situation at Talladega Con in Mexico City, well, outside of Mexico City. It’s like an hour outside the city. That’s the pyramids, the big pyramids that everybody knows about. It’s actually not the biggest in Mexico or even the best in my opinion. Those are in like the Mayan part of the world, in my opinion.
But anyway, that place has always had a real intense vibe to me, especially someone who’s visited a lot of pyramids in Mexico. That one’s you can feel the fear of, like the spirits of people that have died there. And some people say they weren’t actually sacrificing. I’m sorry you don’t find it by a pile underground of skulls, hundreds of hundreds of thousands of skulls if you’re not sacrificing people.
Right. And also, you can feel it in the vibe there anyway, like a week or so ago, some guy, and apparently he’s like a Nazi sympathizer. And all this. There’s a lot of conspiracy theories. I think he might have been sent by the U.S. government. Because a big argument for a long time is like, well, yeah, Mexico is crazy, but at least you don’t have the right to buy shootings like you have in the US.
Like, yeah, well, this was a randomized shooting. This guy went up on the pyramid, he waited for a certain point, and he just started shooting at people. And specifically it was like two one Canadian died. Another Canadian was wounded to Russian people on a Colombian, all more or less with white skin. And like, I’ll be interested to see how things develop within Mexico and the stuff that happened in Puerto Vallarta.
Yeah. This year, during an archipelago, which I know you were there and doing the survival thing, which was like it was kind of a mess, to be honest. But it was one of those things where like, you know, the news is reporting, showing videos or AI photos of planes on fire. Not that didn’t actually happen. You know, that was the craziest thing to me, because I remember the moment I saw that somebody had it on their phone and was like, hey, check this video, I came burning.
I’m like, oh, and there’s people in it, you know, like things are getting like pretty wacky out here in like series. I’m feeling going to be like speak from the or something like that, you know. And yeah, it was it was all fate. It was just an AI thing. Yeah. It’s like that, right? There was the first moment where I’m just like, you know what?
Like it’s just going to create this thing where people just have zero belief, hopefully in like, mainstream media and things that get, you know, viral or something. That is an interesting side effect. There were a lot of people that were like, oh, I’m not going to Mexico. And, you know, like my cousin, I kind of flipped out on online because like, he’s like, yeah, Mexico is always a shithole.
So good. And I was like, I mean, would love shut the fuck up, bro. Like, you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. What about all the mass shootings in your fucking country? Like, what about your pedophile fucking president that you’re kind of gay for, you know, like, this is going on YouTube, so maybe I should add that part out, but I don’t, you know.
It is real interesting to see how that’s all going, in my opinion. I’m very curious. I personally am, and maybe a hopeless optimist, but I am an optimist for the world. Like, I’m very much like there are a lot of people in our community that I notice are very sad. They’re very scared, they’re very angry, they’re very paranoid, like very paranoid.
And I think, I think it’s just not quite as serious as everybody puts it out to be. Yeah. That being said, I was one of the people that kind of like, got the fuck out of Dodge. And to literally the day after it happened, my boyfriend’s like, we’re leaving and I’m like, fucking leave. You know, like they were they were throwing spikes on, you know, the ground to make it so people can drive.
That’s confirmed. Or people that were there for the conference to release. One of them were her rental cars. Tires got fucking popped when she was trying to go somewhere in the city. Yeah. And I was like, I don’t want to deal with all that. And then Jeff was like, oh yeah, we’re leaving. We’re going towards this direction.
And I was like, oh, okay, that’s the direction he wants to go, please let me come with you. And so I literally escaped to following Jeff, Max Eagan and his family. Yeah, in like four cars. But I’m glad that I did because we got turned around so many times. Really. There were a lot of burnt cars. There was a point where we were out in the middle of nowhere, in a particularly burnt up ass tiny town getting gas, and this dude, these and we were told to be careful with people on motorcycles and these two dudes on their motorcycles came in and they were scoping us out, and I was just looking at them like, I don’t like this. You know, this Mustang that is way too nice for that town rolls through there. Now it’s like, all right, y’all are the people that were involved in this part of Mexico. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, it wasn’t as bad as people as saying it was. Yeah. Well, it’s again, kind of looking back to the whole like it’s the worst of times.
It was the best at times type of thing where it’s just kind of like, are these kind of extreme stories any different from the stuff that’s happened in the past? Mainly because a lot of this stuff probably wasn’t imported or, you know, it wasn’t international news or something like that. Right? Like crazy ass blooded tone and Mormon cult in Mexico killing each other like nobody knew about that shit.
Yeah. You know, like this. Historically, I thought Mormons is a little weird. You know, they had their polygamist, they always trying to get pregnant and all that stuff. But I figured I always thought they were more or less peaceful. Yeah, I was wrong. I just yeah, my mind was a little blown with that. Well, I think it’s time we shift focus to talking about rootless renegade.
Yeah. Like, I mean, that whole escape from PV could be a little chapter. Yeah, that’s coming down the line eventually, though, because that’s been one of the hard things with me, is like, I’ve written about a lot of my story and I’m steam it. But one, there’s two things that one, a lot of what I wrote about my story on steam was heavily edited to make my eggs look better.
Yeah, because we had that moment where he read one of the stories and he was like, you can’t fucking publish this. And I was like, what do you mean? And he’s like, I sound like a fucking tyrant. And I was like, you told me, right? What happened? And he was like, not like this. And I was like, oh, my friend, my friend Richard, the Englishman was there.
And he’s just like sitting there with his tea. Just like, this is awkward, you know? But yeah, but the other thing is, like, we wrote that so randomly, I would just jump around in the story for like, what thing I was remembering that day. And so I had all those stories, but it’s like, what the fuck do you focus on, right?
Yeah. But I do get my strokes of inspiration. We do have three. Well, two working on the third edition. Yeah. This one’s the first one. Love it for Smoke Out. It is on the website and PDF. We’re going to figure out how to best sell because I have a stack of like I don’t know, like 70 something on these left.
Yeah. Yeah. But it’s like I don’t know like a 10 or 12 page edition in black and white mostly. But it tells the story of how the fuck I got in that situation in the first place, which is a little bit told on the episode that’s coming before this one, which is my speech. But.
Yeah, it was.
Do we talk about how we got inspired to do this? Yeah, I think so. I mean, for me personally, I think because I am so keen on this whole.
You know, parallel kind of society thinking, parallel markets, alternatives to, you know, the kind of mainstream what’s presented is like, this is the thing that you can enjoy. This is your media. I just kind of like react against that. So it’s just like, okay, well, you know, I have abilities as a designer, as an illustrator. You know, instead of complaining about stuff and complaining about stories that, you know, whatever is getting, you know, speared out by like massive companies that own all the entertainment brands and things like that.
It’s like, well, let me do my own thing, you know? But I’m not. I don’t have myself a writer, really. Right. I like to draw and like imagine images and things like that. So that I want to make media to tell stories that are people that are, you know, in alignment with, like the ideas of liberty and anarchism and agonism, all that super appealing to me because there isn’t you don’t see that out there.
Not too much, at least. Yeah, you see it a little bit, but part of the reason you don’t see it out there is because, you know, a lot of these people, they buck the typical social media things. And if you do that, you you don’t get seen more or less. Yeah. It’s like catch 22. It’s just like, I want to make media.
I want to, you know, share stories and things like that. But like, I don’t want to use any meta products. Well, that’s kind of difficult because everybody’s just like, what’s your Instagram like? I don’t got an Instagram, but here’s my website. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s the thing. Right. That’s that’s definitely a thing.
That’s a balance that we’ve had to kind of achieve with, with this project because we are producing it independently, more or less out of our own pocket, which is really mostly our time. Right? Other than, you know, hosting costs and stuff like that for the website and printing costs about once a year. But it’s, it, it’s interesting of like, where do you go when you have the idea?
You know, the idea is good for me. It was inspired of like, I was really into the band Coheed and Cambria in high school, and I loved how they had the story, which was based off of lead singer Claudio Sanchez. Personal childhood in life, like the characters, Coheed and Cambria are parents, right? But he also was like, okay, I have this story.
Well, I’m going to turn it into a comic series. This is like intergalactic space series, and I’m going to write music about these stories. And I was like, that’s that’s really cool to have, like one story told in many ways. I want to do that. I’m not a musician. I’ve tried to be a musician. I’m not a musician.
I’m not very good at it. I can be good at art. I’m better at art than I am music. But I’m also a good writer. And, so that’s kind of how we’ve come together. You do the graphics, I provide the storyboard. I also provide the website and the attempt at marketing. But it’s also, you know, we did do the release of the Border Crossing last year.
Yeah, I think June 28th was when I was released and we had some people buy and we have our little, our little online store with our clothes and stuff like that, and that’s been pretty decently popular, but it’s been a situation of like, okay, how do we balance doing this passion project, which is time consuming, with paying for life?
Yeah. So that is how we’ve landed at what we’re going to do next with this thing to move forward. I’ve had some people reach out and say, how do I pay you in advance for copies? You know, like for for future editions. Can I pay you in advance? I’m like, well, let me figure out what that even looks like, because I don’t I’m never going to be the type of person to just take money from people and not deliver anything.
Yeah. Or deliver like, okay, yeah, I’m going to take this amount of money and deliver this X thing eventually. I don’t like to do that. So we kind of just started fishing around, and I’ve known for a long time of the voluntary is comments from folded and Jack Lloyd, I think his name is there, an archivist in Florida.
And I knew that they done a crowdfunding thing because when I worked for Avarice Nexus, they would buy pages of like advertising, like, you know, ads to put in the back of a comic, and they would sell spots. And he bought like a certain number of pages and he would section of the pages, and we produce the pages and give it to them.
And he was buying it off of them and making a small profit. But it was, you know, benefiting them. And that’s something that we’ve considered. And that’s something we still might do eventually. But I also like I wanted to looked at the recent comics and I realized there’s crowdfunding platforms just for comics. Yeah. And so that’s what we’re working on.
We do have like the rough levels worked out. We just have to really figure out the printing cost of printing the actual comics. And we were considering doing the same guy again. But I’m looking at some of these and like, that’s real rough edged paper and we want to do it in color. This color would be nice. I think that would be that would I mean, I like this, you know, zine vibe of things.
You know, it feels very kind of like the underground kind of anarchist publishing of things. I love that, but I also want to present something really nice, like as a personal thing, like if I make a story in a comic book, I want it to be fucking good. You know? I have to be good quality. Yeah, exactly. Like I don’t want to.
I don’t want to just kind of have something because I want to make something that will be attracting people an attention to not just our story, what we’re telling here, but like anarchism and these ideas in general and being like, look, there’s this stuff that’s out here, that’s not the mainstream nonsense. Yeah, because I had quite a few people, including Thaddeus Russell, tell me like Your Life sounds like it should be a comic book series.
And I was like, well, I mean, you’re not wrong. There are definitely in quite a few things that are very like chow bang boom, comic book worthy. Yeah. And I like what we’ve done with it. I like the vibe that we’ve established. I like this, like, famous core thing that we’re working on. But yeah, it’s we’re trying to find that balance of basically like, let’s deliver the things, let’s find a way to deliver more and let’s make it.
So it’s actually we can actually afford to do it. Right. Yeah, exactly. But the greatest game of life. So what we’re going to do is we have various levels and they’ll start off with as simple as you can pay $20 and get all the PDFs, or you can get, you know, cover A. We’re going to have two different covers cover A, cover B, cover and cover B, a bundle with this bundle with these, you know, and we’re coming up with the bundles, we’re going to price them and then we’re going to set it up on fund.
Yep. And just start promoting. And that’s, that was kind of the point of this episode of this podcast. We will go on other podcasts, my friends, that I have to talk about the same thing and try to get it out there. You know, we’re not trying to like, get wanting. It would be nice to hear it out to this.
It would be very nice. Yeah. But like we’re not like going to be guaranteeing people we’re not quitting our day job. Right. I, you know, like I did. Yeah. I couldn’t focus on just one project and be happy. I have to have, you know, 17 side hustles going at a new one time. Yeah. It’d be nice to have a side hustle that turned into something where it’s just like, oh, okay, we’ve got lots of support.
We’re going to start making this thing of, you know, something great quality that we’re both really proud of, saying, like, we made this right, you know, because that’s that’s something that for me personally, it’s like if I’m working on a project, I want it to be something, or at the end of it, it’s like, I’m glad I made this.
It’s to a quality that I’m very happy with, right? Yeah, yeah. And for me, it’s, there’s that cathartic thing of like I mentioned a lot of my stories on steam. It were heavily edited. This is my way of rewriting my story as what it really was and finding the balance between, like, you know, do I want to be the victim or do I want to be the hero and like, being the victim?
But the lead of a comic books series kind of sounds like a sandwich. So that’s the interesting part for me is finding that dynamic of like, how do I get there? But, you know, I’m excited for the next issue that we’re coming up with, because I actually didn’t really talk about my own side of my childhood on steam.
It very much. It was mostly focused on our story, our story, my me and my eggs, our story. Right. I’m so I was thinking, okay, what do we even make the next edition? You know, like, because we have this love of first smoke out. This is how I met my ex, right? And then we did the border crossing.
That’s a natural progression. That was actually the first story we posted on steam. It. And it was like, okay, well, where do I go next? Well, I think it’s important to tell the story because most people, they look at my story and they’re like, okay, but why did she have to go on the run to Mexico? Like, why didn’t she just deal with her shit, right?
Well, my entire life has been affected by the drug war since before I was born. My parents got together because my mom sold weed and my dad liked. We’d like sorry to outdo dad for that, but that’s the truth. You know, in the US, it’s whatever. Now, so this is, you know, the iteration of that. I have these here both because they make me happy and because I knew that we were eventually going to do this episode.
Talking about this the early days. That’s my dad. That’s me on the Harley. Because when I was a baby, I couldn’t go anywhere without projectile vomiting. So he got me to get over that by taking me on the motorcycle. That’s a haunted house that I lived in about that age. So this is going to be the story and it’s going to be a long addition.
Yeah, we’re going for like 32 pages this time. Yeah. I mean color. Yeah, yeah. And it’s going to be the story of, you know, those early points of my life. I don’t know how exactly how far I’m going to go with that 32 pages into that, but at least I’m going to tell the story of my parents meeting getting together, which that’s going to be funny because my dad was married at the time and my mom was a single mom, and it was the whole thing, and there were rest and finding out that they were pretty well.
My mom knew she was pregnant when she got arrested and they got arrested together for read, but my dad found out right after he got on jail and I believe I need to double check with him, but I believe this is when he was fighting the Supreme Court of Ohio and one for this weed thing. It is a whole thing.
Like literally, they got caught up by the police because my mom and my dad were trying to go to a party, and my mom was trying to drink her morning beer, and she couldn’t keep it down. Right. And so she kept having to pull over so she could throw up. And he was just like, oh, you know, she’s just sick.
And she’s just like, fuck, I know, pregnant because I can’t figure it out when I’m pregnant. Mrs.. Shit. But she kept trying because, you know, she’s no quitter, right? Yeah. Maybe she was sick. I don’t know, she was not. Yeah, I was, I was, in fact a sickness. Yeah. She said she didn’t really deal with morning sickness unless she tried to drink, which is holy because she kept trying.
But, I mean, whatever, whatever, you know, her body, I mean, I was I was not about that. I didn’t like beer even then, you know. So, but that’s kind of going to be, you know, sharing the detail of that, you know, because I realized when I was in school talking to people and I tell them about my parents, and I realized it wasn’t really common.
And their parents met in high school or in college or work or. Yeah, at a bar or something. But it wasn’t like my mom sold drugs and my dad liked to smoke weed. And so they parted together. And then I came out of it. Yeah. So.
Yeah. So we have a lot of work to do between us. Yeah, we do have a lot of work, but yeah, we have a list and I, you know, started that process and decided to move immediately and then decided, well, not decided. Moving means I need to make more money. So I’ve been trying to balance that. The hope is to have the new sales page under this renegade com.
Yep, done the account with the level set up for fun mechanic, which we more or less have the levels figured out. We need to figure out the exact pricing of the printing copies, because we did find a print on demand option for the actual comics, which I like. Yeah, so we have to figure that out. And then I have the prices already for like, there’s going to be mugs and things like that, the highest level, and there’s only going to be one available and it’s not going to be cheap.
It’s going to be kind of focused around an archipelago in its own way, because the fulfillment will happen in an archipelago. On, because the dinner itself is like $300 at that place. I’m not thinking somewhere between 1500 and 2000, but it will come with a lot of things. Yeah, an exclusive shirt, like a personalized mug, I think I have on there all of the copies digitally and in, you know, physicality, signed copies, just artwork and like that and original like hand artwork from you.
Yeah. We’ve talked about, you might do things. I mean, I started a crochet bloom, which is my character. I started one last year. I got the head done and then I just got stalled because something I realized that she’s kind of a little top heavy, so. And she got a thin little neck, which is cute in the comic, but it’s not so easy.
I’m gonna have to get some sort of, like, wire or something to make it work. Yeah, but I am going to try, especially if we include that in a level. But the and it’s also going to include a dinner at Elizabeth Taylor’s old house in Puerto Vallarta next year. Yeah. That place sounds amazing too, by the way.
It is. So that’s an interesting place because I didn’t know very much about Elizabeth Taylor. I knew she was an old Hollywood actress and stuff, but her relationship with Richard, I forget what’s his last name, but it was Richard, something they it was contemptuous, but it was like that love hate thing. So they literally bought houses across the street from each other and had the Mexicans build a bridge that went between them.
So like when they were fighting, they could be in their own space, but when they were like over it and one could go thing. And so like that bridge is famous there and it’s there like on the bridge. But there’s also this really, really nice restaurants like the Iguana Bar restaurant or something like that. Yeah, very high quality food.
Every Wednesday and Saturday I think they have like the best mariachi I’ve ever heard in my life. And so there will be that experience of being able to go there with us. You’re paying for that level. If you pay for that level will cover your dinner. It’s just you come. And this is for people, obviously, that are coming to an hour for Poco.
Now, clearly you don’t have to have an anarcho polka ticket to buy this, right? But you’re going to have to be in Puerto Plata anyway, so you might as well go to go. It’ll be fun anyways. Yeah, it’ll be fun anyways. Regardless, for people that are going to be in Puerto Vallarta or can get to the to, you know, have the experience to spend an evening with the two of us.
You pick our brains, you get to pick our brains. You could. Yeah. And also give us input as to like, here’s what we’re thinking of doing next in the series. When you what do you want to actually read? You know. Yeah. Yeah. So that I think is going to be very cool. But that’s going to be the highest level.
There will be a few higher options, but most of it’s going to be like 20, 50, 70, $100 options where you know you’re just going to pay for it. I think the campaign flash like three months. I think we can choose. I had to figure that out. But our goal is to have the campaign ready to be launched by June and then to do the campaign for, like three months.
And then after the campaign is done, ideally, by the time the campaign is done, we’ll just have the issue ready to go. Yeah. And we’ll start shipping things, and then there will be certain ones that will be delivered in a go for people. There will be that one level that will there only be one shot available, and then there will be, you know, a couple smaller ones that will also be an archipelago centered but way less expensive.
But the idea is to have all of these completely fulfilled by the end of the year. Yes. And because I think the all the successful campaigns already have their stuff pretty much done by the end of the campaign. The end of the campaign is just to make sure that, you know, we can finance it, to be able to have the time to focus on it.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, being able to get to that point, like they’ll be that’ll be really sweet to be able to say like, great, I can sit down and not worry about, you know, compartment or food or anything like that for like 2 or 3 months. And I can literally just sit down and focus on creating the best comic book that I can.
Yeah. And so that’s the goal. The goal is we will price things. You know, we have the price of like the printing of the things that we will be giving physically, but we will also be accounting into, you know, like we have hosting to pay for, for the website. Every year we have, we’re going to have to get a social media scheduling thing to be able to consistently advertise it.
Your cost of labor, because there is labor involved in time and no AI is going to be used. So that’s really good. I mean, maybe on the website in the actual comic itself. No, but website is there is useful for website building. I just have to say, I don’t build my website that this is a side tangent. And, you know, because you’ve been hearing me complain about this this week.
But like anybody that says AI is just going to replace all human ingenuity like that hasn’t actually worked with AI because it is a lot of hand-holding and like, no, that’s not right. Please try it this way. It’s like a genius toddler. Yeah. That’s like, I don’t know, you know, like, I’ve done this. Hey, but it’s not actually working, you know, because I’ve been experimenting with that with my website building, and I’ve been building websites in a particular way for seven years, and they release an AI thing and I’m like, okay, but if I didn’t know all the terminology that they use, yeah, I would not be able to use to say, I think it’s
not like somebody that’s new to website building can just build the most baller ass website using a the AI tool that this builder has to offer. Because if you don’t know the terminology, you’re going to get some stupid looking shit. Yeah. You know, like I was experimental and I’m like, okay, this doesn’t fucking work. And I was like, what if I just like, load up on the terminology of this program?
Oh, now it’s working. Okay. So you actually have to know what, you know, box rate is and like border radius and all the fucking shit and how to okay I’m Lightbox and on this and that and I need you to you know let me change this alignment of this specific part of this element. You know, like so that being said, there will be some AI used on the website, but never the artwork.
I like the idea that, you know, I think it’ll be it’ll be something that people want. People will want stuff made by people, right? Granted, you want your AI stuff. There’s loads of that stuff out there. If you want to make your own AI stuff, there’s loads of tools out there. But at the end of the day, people I think will retain an appreciation for old fashioned human made, you know, art and media and things like that.
So telling an actual human story, you know, because like, we have kind of fantastical creatures in this, but it all of the stories that will be told and this will be as true as my brain remembers. And of course, everybody has their own spin on their versions of the truth. Right? But, I’m doing my best to make it as accurate as what I remember it to be from having gone through these things.
And yeah, so I’m excited to see how this whole thing goes. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And it’s it’s one of these things where it’s like, you know, this this project is something that I was wanting to do. And it’s, you know, it’s worth my energy and intention to work on anyways. But, you know, if we can make it so that it becomes a little bit less stressful to worry about that and like juggling, like, you know, commissions and other and other work like that, it’s even better, even better.
Right? So that’s kind of that’s kind of my hope and dreams would like this project that turns into something where it’s like, oh, not only can we just continue to tell this story, but expand it and start telling other other anarchists, other activists, other volunteers stories as well, you know? Yeah, that’s where I’d like to take it. Yeah.
To be honest, when I had thought of this idea and I’d like first mentioned it to you a long time ago, I had told you clearly, like, look, we’ll do this when I publish my book, and I get a book deal. And I tell them, hey, I have this idea, and I use money from the book deal to fund it.
And he was like, no getting started. And I was like, fuck, man. But I’m glad that we did, because what we have created is cool and it has proven, you know, that there is like we have a system that’s easy to follow. It’s just about having the time to actually do it. Right. I mean, and so that, that right there is, you know, the essence of everything balancing commission work with being and with being an activist.
Because, you know, I’ve been preparing this podcast to post for three months, right. And I’m actually going to do I’m posting it tomorrow night. Stay at a rooster. It has to happen. The first one and then this one will come out in a few weeks after that, because I can only mentally commit to two per month right now.
But that is the thing of like between the commissioned work, which I’m lucky that the commission work I do is pretty much for people that I respect only. Yeah, and not many people can say that. That being said, I, you know, it is hard to have time for the personal passion projects such as this. You know, I will say another hope for me too is again, because I really do want the whole kind of like parallel market thing to happen.
And I will see that an increasing amount of the jobs and stuff that I’m doing is because of people that have met me at, you know, enter the pool or at Munro topia or like seeing me like hop on monotone or Munro talk with those guys. Yeah. And be like, oh, hey, by the way, I’m also a designer and a graphic designer.
You can find my, you know, find my postings on XMR Bazaar type of thing. And like it’s nice to see that actually starting to grow versus like just kind of, you know, random people reaching out from other parts of the internet. But like other people being like, yes, I like the work that you do, and I want to pay you in crypto for this, and it’s nice to see that kind of growing.
So I hope that this will also help from continue that thing to grow that I suspect it will. I do know that, like when I first started getting into this like whole world of freelance, like I was making like 35 bucks a week, you know, like doing transcription and shit for people on like, trying to teach myself web design and all of that.
But like, I mean, from going from that to like eight years later, I have more work than I can reasonably complete. Sorry to my clients, but I am pretty good about like, okay, I’m not going to take any money from you until I’m actually starting your project. I’m not the type of person to do that, but like, I do have a waiting list of people that want me to build websites for them that are patiently waiting.
Yeah, and I’m lucky for that. But also, like, there’s got to be kind of space for the passion project. And it’s funny to be talking about this. I wrote a post recently, I sent it to you. It was basically like why you shouldn’t monetize everything. But like I realized as I was writing a post that I wouldn’t have found what I’m actually passionate about work wise if I hadn’t tried to monetize everything.
But also there’s that balance of like, it can kill the joy of the thing, right? Like kind of stop crocheting for a couple of years because all I was doing was making the same five plushies over and over again for people. And I’m like telling people on a crochet artist, but I don’t own anything crochet because I don’t have time to make it because I just.
And and it was barely profitable. Like talking like a dollar an hour. Profitable for my labor, you know? Yeah. After you took out the shipping and all the other stuff. But there is that, you know, that hustle thing. But all that to be said, I do have the feeling that if we just keep at it in this buildable, scalable, slow working our way through it way, eventually it’s going to be something that takes up a lot of our time, but also provides what we need to continue to do it, you know?
Yeah, yeah. Because like once, once you have an addition produced, especially with these print on demand options, when people find it, you know, five, ten years down the line, they can go through and buy, you know, everything. And then to print on demand, they print it and they send it out to these people. And yeah, the profit margin is a huge doing it that way.
But it does give people more access to the content and give us more time to focus on just creating more content so well. And this other thing too is like, I really enjoy doing and making like little things and stickers and like, I just that’s my job, that’s my work. And I enjoy doing that and being able to do it for something like this, where it’s just purely like, from my perspective, it’s like I’m just having lots of fun doing all this stuff too, right?
So the idea that we can build up an audience and, you know, a group of supporters that really enjoy it, but that also want to interact and be like, oh, I want to see this thing, or I want that thing is like, I like getting their kind of feedback. Right. Because then for me, it’s like, oh, I’ve got this great idea for a shirt because of, you know, somebody over here said something or somebody over here showed me like, oh, I really like this kind of imagery.
Or have you thought about this? And like, you know, that always just fires something off for me. And it’s just fun to write. Yeah, yeah, I can I can resonate with that. Especially with the website building, like the website I’ve been working on this week for a dear friend of mine, Emma, for her art retreat. They were like, oh, look, we already have this website, but we, we built it on AI and we can’t edit it without paying like $100 for credits.
And we don’t want to do that. And and we also can’t collect money through it and, and and and I was like okay, yeah, I’ll rebuild this shit. And then I couldn’t I was like, what the fuck? I don’t know how to do this, but I did it like it’s almost exactly replicated in some spots, a little cooler than the original.
And I’m like, oh, okay, you know, but you don’t get that without that input from people. And so it will be interesting to see how people give us input in the future. I will start doing like polls on the various social media. It does help that just through all of my Steemit days and from the anarchist series and stuff, I have managed to accumulate like like 15,000 followers between all the various platforms.
Right? That’s gonna help. But I am going to need the help of friends and people that believe in the project also to help me, you know, share this with the world, because if people don’t know about it, they can’t get interested in it. They can’t get involved trying to do so funny. Yeah. So that is where we’re at, I think.
I think it’s about time we close this up, because I am getting hungry, and this cat has made my feet very numb sitting on them. I think we’re. Yeah, we’re just over an hour. Chucky. Chill out. Just my child. Check out her bow tie. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to do this. I think it’s time that we actually get to work on getting things ready.
We will have, you know, mock ups of the various things and the various levels ready and able to be shared and all of those things. Probably not long after this episode comes out, I would suspect. Yeah, I think we’ll probably have like a good, a good chunk of what we need to present sorted out and ready for sharing.
So yeah, because we, we basically we need to finish the cover, we need to make the sales page, which is just updating the home page. And the big thing is going to be setting up the fun mechanic thing, which we’ll we’ll figure it out. So to all of you, thank you for joining us. And until next time. Yeah