Tag: bio

The Advice Asshole Saga: Part One

When I read Tim Allen’s autobiography years ago, one of the first passages has always stuck with me.

I’m a Dick. Yes. I am a Dick. My closest friends know I’m a Dick. In fact, my brothers are Dicks, my cousins are Dicks, and my sister—before she was married—a Dick. My dad? One incredible Dick, and the Dick responsible for me being a Dick. Timothy Alan Dick. Some of us are just born lucky.

I’m proud to be an asshole, and I’ve learned from the best. My parents and aunt have always been blunt with their opinions, and they never shy away from saying what’s on their mind. Their wit had a huge effect on me, making me quick on the draw with sarcastic comments. I’ve had a lifetime of observation, and I’ve never shied away from  blurting out what’s on my mind.

The great thing about sarcasm is that the people that get it, get it. Those that don’t, really don’t. There’s no gray area with sarcasm, and the people that don’t get it commonly react by calling you an asshole. They think that you’re trying to be better than them on some level, so they resort to ad hominem attacks when they realize that it’s impossible to outwit you. I used to be offended by this phenomena, and kept my comments to myself. I had enough of keeping it bottled up, and the transition from a closeted to a proud asshole began in my final year of high school.

In 2001, the internet was still mostly in its infancy. The connectivity was still limited, and the software that regulated networks and access to things was rather ineffectual. Troy High’s firewall had a huge exploit of allowing any subdomained url through, so I was a hero when I showed people how to use proxies to load porn sites.

I became a frequent browser of orsm.ii.net (now orsm.net), a personal blog where an Australian guy was posting picture sets and random images weekly. I started going there for the nude girls in high school, but I genuinely enjoyed reading about Orsm’s exploits after I graduated. In 2002, Orsm put out a request for some new ideas. He said the site was becoming mundane, and he wanted things to spice it up. There’s only so many random images and porn sets to publish, so it was high time he reached out for reader contributions.

I came up with an idea where I’d be a dirty Ann Landers, fielding emails from people and  spitting out ruthless advice in a way only an asshole could. Feel free to browse the columns published for Orsm, as they still exist in their original form. I must warn you, these are the ramblings of an unrefined 19 year old asshole. They’re really hit or miss, and honestly they’re mostly miss. Also, don’t open these while you’re at work. Orsm is still a porn site at heart, so there’s lots of naked women in the advertisements.

The Advice Asshole came out of an angry teenager trying to spice up one of his favorite web sites. I didn’t truly understand how to construct funny stories, or how to take my funny thoughts and make them anything other than flat out angry. Still, during the seven months that I did my columns, I amassed a cult following on the orsmforums (forums, remember when they were popular?), and I decided to spin off and create my own site in early 2002.

Basically, I was the Joanie Loves Chachi to Orsm’s Happy Days, except in this analogy, I didn’t fucking blow chunks, and I lasted for more than one season. People understood that I had a raw talent, and they were interested in seeing if I could cultivate my humor into something consistently worth reading. Come back tomorrow, same Asshole Time, same Asshole Channel for part two of The Advice Asshole Saga: The Advice Asshole Rises.

Yes, I’m aware that the Nolan Batman trilogy is Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises. I didn’t think through my parody images before I created them, wanna fight about it? Didn’t think so.

Screen Name History

I’ve had online personas since sometime in 1998, when my family first got AOL on an old ass second-hand computer from my aunt. Part of the fun that first night was gathering around the computer picking out screen names that would represent each of us.

My mother tried to use her old CB handle, Blue Starr, but it was already claimed. She circumvented by prepending her first initial, becoming jbluestarr, a name she still uses to this day. Hit her up, she’ll be thoroughly confused as to why you’re randomly contacting her, but it’ll be entertaining for all of us.

Dad wound up with tazees, a combination of Taz (his favorite Warner Bros. character) and ees (the second syllable of Yankees).

I went through a phase where I thought it was cool to sign all my drawings as KillerKJ, you know, because I was so gangster, but someone equally bad ass already claimed it. The quick solution was tacking on my last initial, so I started perusing AOL chat rooms as KillerKJF.

My name had instant cred, and I wound up with a “girlfriend” my first weekend in the chat rooms. We “dated” for a few months. At 14, this was pretty major. We devoted every waking moment to communicating with each other. I don’t even know what she looked like, past the descriptions she wrote in her emails and IMs, since there were no web cams or digital cameras back then. It didn’t matter, we were horny kids and we were totally into our cyber sex emails. I remember printing them out so I could read them in my room. How awesome is that? I wonder if having printed out cyber-sex emails from a 14 year old is considered child pornography… I should probably find them and burn them.

Anyhow, this is a story about my screen names, not my “relationships.” It’s relevant because she turned into a real psycho after I broke the news that I was on the precipice of getting a “real” girlfriend. We’re talking 10-15 emails an hour, all of them containing a fuchsia, 72pt frowny face, set in the ever-classic typeface Comic Sans (recreation inset right). The easiest solution to this budding problem was telling my parents that my account was hacked, and that they should just create a new screen name for me. I’m pretty sure the spiel I gave them instilled the fear of God, and it was way easier than telling them I was trying to break up with a girl that loved me over the internet.

I liked metal music, and I’ve always had a fascination with frogs, so I wound up with MetalFrog. I’ve had liaisons with two other names, but this is the one that’s always stuck. During the .com boom, I signed up for profiles on every site just to claim the name as my own. There’s nothing more infuriating than going to a new web site and not being able to own MetalFrog. Hell, I signed up for that fucking terrible, broad-filled web site Pinterest just to stake my claim to the name.

There’s only two other names I’ve gone by: TroyHxC and The Advice Asshole. Troycore is a sub-genre of New York Hardcore that’s deeply rooted in our area, and I’ve loved it since I got a bootleg tape of Dying Breed in high school. Our music has been a very big part of my life, and in the early 2000s my screen name was a fitting tribute. My time as The Advice Asshole is deserving of its own post, so check back tomorrow when I break it down.

This is a big test of how compelling my story-telling is, since I’ve just told you a bunch of shit that you don’t care about. Trust me, though, The Advice Asshole story is filled with ups and downs, triumphs and law suits, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It’ll be good! Alright, maybe not sex, drugs and rock and roll, but a lot of masturbation and porn distribution!