EAR RAT MAGAZINE

    (Click here to view/download)      "We had to move fast," I said aloud to myself, a nervous tic more than anything. I noticed my finger nails as I tightened one of the final nuts on the board I was putting together. They're filthy, the dirt under them is caked so much that I can't even scrape it out. Grime is all that exists for me now.   I flip over the module and press the toggle switch that I used for a power button. It hums, the fan inside spins. The phone display I rigged up boots up; it's working. I've made a computer, here at the end of the world. I'll need to do a lot of work still, but command line is more than enough for now.   I hear foot steps ringing the catwalk down the ridge. I grab my binoculars and look. Raiders. I lay down and very slowly cover myself with my dark grey tarp. If they saw me, I'm dead in two minutes. If they saw me, this existence of pain and toil finally ends. I close my eyes and accept whatever fate may befall me.

    ( Click to view/download )   The days have been dark around here. For me, at least. I've kept my eyes closed for the past fifty nine days and nights, wandering around my house trying to learn by feel as my arms and feetses poke and prod regular things that now feel magical; the book case, the utility ladder, the pile of rotting corpses. Take away a sense and it's all new and exciting.  (I've been moving around in a state of self-imposed blindness in an attempt for a Guinness World Record™. The good folks at the Guinness World Record™ Book told me that keeping your eyes closed for consecutive days is not a record that they track. They also told me that dead people do it all the time and have me easily beat anyway. I asked the person on the phone what happens when we die. They said we turn into bagels. I hope I become an onion bagel when I pass.)  * * * * * * * Please join me in a celebration of life, vision, bagels, and all things crusty and beautiful for Ear Rat Magazin

(Click to view/download) In high school I used to really focus on trying to be "cool" but I was just in high school; whatever I thought was cool was objectively not cool. It was the early 1890's and my town just got it's first electrified street lights, I was routinely drinking half a dozen cocaine-laced Coca Cola drinks to keep me going through the day. I would go to school and then go to my job at night; I was a murderer for hire. Business back then was good, it was too dark to see anyone because there were so few electrified lights. Things are different now, but I'm still working at my old job. They say if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. I don't think this is really good advice, I think we should all go around killing one another and ingesting cocaine and living abnormally long lifespans because of a curse that was put upon your entire family ages ago. Maybe I'm a traditionalist, I don't know. * * * * * Welcome to Ear

  (Click to View/Download)   Some days you wake up, brush your teeth, drink your coffee, re-brush your teeth, receive your information packet via Brain-Wire download, hop into your local transport tube and head off to work for your regular 22 hour workday and everything just fuckin' jives. You're chugging free coffee and pounding your keyboard way harder than you need to, reports are getting generated and emailed and you're cracking jokes about how bad Steve from Accounting's tie looks today.  And then your doctor calls you, his breath ragged and his voice getting louder and softer sporadically. Wind is rushing through his phone and you can discern that he must be running. "Jake, Jake I'm sorry! I'm not a doctor," you hear him scream to you through the phone, sounding far away. "I was never a doctor." You wake back up, you've fallen asleep at your desk again. The long days are getting to you. You wipe your eyes and head over to the kitche

  Click above to view/download.   At a time when literally no one asked for it, Ear Rat Magazine returns for a second issue. With more artwork than ever and a new Art Director at the helm, this is our best looking issue ever! We've got more single panel comics and artwork than you'll know what to do with. Print them out and cover your walls in them, laying on more and more layers, your walls thick and heavy with wallpaper paste. Do it. You know you want to. Oh, what's that? You wanted words, not pictures and doodles and such? No prob, I got you covered, man. We're going to look back on days of yore, time travel in an otherwise impractical car, listen to some kind of mad scientist ramble on about stuff, contemplate everything in existence, and feel totally out of our comfort zone as we try to interpret the meaning of a poem without getting it wrong. Ear Rat Two, babes. Let's do this.

Words by Mike V. Art by Harr B.   Henry checked his watch as he waited in the break room. The Keurig machine whined and moaned as it injected hot water through a tiny, unrecyclable pod of plastic and shit coffee. The machine barfed into the waiting vessel below; a promotional mug for "Protoxamil B" the new product Henry's company launched recently. Henry's watch was five minutes fast, but it didn't change how late it was to be in the office: 7:27 PM. The Keurig finally quieted, Henry grabbed his mug and started power-walking down through the hallways to his desk. Every cubicle on the way was empty. Even George from accounting, who had an alternate work arrangement where he could come in later than usual for the next few months as long as he stayed later as well, had left already. Henry's eyes scanned through the cubicles as he passed, his coffee sloshed back and forth in his mug but never tipped over the edge.   As Henry rounded the corner to the hallway where