By Skink Splinterthumb, Junior Apprentice to the GNN Cultural Grievance Desk
My stepdad, Greg, knocked on my burrow door four minutes ago to ask if I wanted "tater tots," as if fried potato cylinders could possibly extinguish the furnace of raw, feral, skins-on-fire yearning currently liquefying my ribcage.
Knock knock, Skink, dinner's in ten.
Shut up, Greg! You aren't my real sire, and you have no concept of the primal, throbbing tension required to take a 12-millimeter bent gouge to a block of kiln-dried basswood while listening to slowed-and-reverb Deftones tracks until your knuckles bleed!
Every single adult in this cursed warren acts like I’m supposed to just sit quietly with my hands folded while my bloodstream is 94% weaponized testosterone, monster energy residue, and the aching, unbearable desire to be touched by literally anyone who understands why early-2000s post-hardcore is a spiritual necessity.
Instead, the GoblinLife Municipal Parish took away my router privileges after 10 PM. Fine. Fine.
If you lock a caged beast in a room with nothing but his own howling libido and a five-piece BeaverCraft whittling set, don't act shocked when the wood shavings start piling up like the ashes of my wasted youth.
Look at these photographs. Look upon the physical manifestations of a soul too scorching for seventh-period geometry, captured in raw, unvarnished grain because my body is a prison and pine is the only thing that screams when I cut it.
Image credit: GoblinLife Vault
Subject: Hand-Carved Boutique Cube Facial Tissue Dispenser (Kleenex Brand, Upright). Media & Dimensions: Eastern White Pine, 4.5" x 4.5" x 5.2", finished with 400-grit sandpaper and my own forearm sweat.
Do you see the curvature on that top-dispensing poly-shield slot? Do you see how the single, emergent wooden tissue rises from the dark, cavernous slit of the box like a tongue begging for moisture in a desert of suburban hypocrisy?
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Read Full Investigation >>I carved that ruffle at 2:40 AM while thinking about how Brenda from the apothecary internship looked at my cargo shorts and sighed—not a good sigh, a sigh of pure administrative dismissal. Every micro-chisel mark along the perforated cardboard seam represents a scream I swallowed so Greg wouldn't come downstairs and lecture me about "saving my allowance."
The corners are mitered to a sharpness that could draw blood, much like the cold, clinical indifference of the universe. Notice the subtle floral embossing on the side panel. I spent six hours relief-carving those daisies while my hormones tried to claw their way out through my tear ducts. It isn't just a box of tissues.
It’s a monument to every fluid—tears, sweat, and the unspeakable—that this repressive society forces us to wipe away in the dark.
Image credit: GoblinLife Vault
Subject: Scale Replica of a 2024 Tesla Model X Dual-Motor All-Wheel Drive Crossover SUV (Doors Deployed). Media & Dimensions: Black Walnut & Butternut laminate, 11" length, rubbed aggressively with raw linseed oil.
Society tells you to suppress your urges. They tell you "Skink, stop staring at the ceiling and breathing like a bellows," or "Skink, why have you locked yourself in the tool shed for nine hours?"
Because I was articulating the dual-hinged Falcon Wing rear passenger doors out of solid walnut, Mom, and if I didn't get the panel gap tolerances down to a millimeter of agonizing, skin-tight friction, I was going to put my head through the drywall!
Look at the aerodynamic drag coefficient of 0.24 captured in dead timber. That panoramic windshield flows backward into the roof-line with the exact, merciless arch of a spine bending in the backseat of a car I'm not legally allowed to drive yet.
The front fascia has no grille—it is smooth, mouthless, suffocating, trapped behind a veneer of sleek Silicon Valley efficiency while a high-voltage lithium-ion battery pack of pure, ungrounded teenage voltage threatens to thermal-runaway in its undercarriage.
I rubbed the rear quarter-panel with linseed oil until my palm blistered. Does that scare you, Greg? Does the sight of a seven-seater electric family crossover rendered in tight-grained hardwood make you uncomfortable? Good. Welcome to my twisted mind.
Image credit: GoblinLife Vault
Subject: 1997 Belkin 6-Outlet Surge Protector Power Strip (Switch Set to 'RESET'). Media & Dimensions: Spalted Maple, 9.5" x 2.1", unfinished, stained slightly with Monster Pipeline Punch.
Six holes. Six grounded, three-prong receptacles waiting—begging—to be filled with high-amperage draw, yet forever empty because the prongs of my existence have been bent by an uncaring educational system.
I gouged those grounding slots with a 2-millimeter micro-veiner while my pelvis felt like it was being magnetized toward the Earth's core. The fungal spalting running through the maple looks like the veins on my temples when someone tells me "it's just a phase." It is NOT a phase.
The little rocker switch at the top is permanently carved into the RESET position because there is no turning this off.
I am 1,200 joules of clamped, surging hormone spikes with nowhere to ground out except a block of rotting maple and a sharpening strop.
Image credit: GoblinLife Vault
Subject: Whirlpool Refrigerator Lower Humidity-Controlled Vegetable Crisper Drawer (Half-Open). Media & Dimensions: Basswood, 8" x 6" x 4", burnished with the back of a stolen cafeteria spoon.
Nobody talks about the humidity slider. Low for fruit. High for leafy greens. What setting do you put the slider on when your entire nervous system is a greenhouse of trapped, rotting tropical heat and nobody will even hold your hand behind the bleachers?!
I hollowed out the interior cavity of this drawer using a hook knife until my tendons locked up.
It is empty inside. Just like Sunday nights. Just like the promise of adulthood.
I burnished the acrylic-style viewing window with the back of a metal spoon for three hours in total silence while staring at my wall poster, channeling every ounce of unspent biological imperative into making a piece of soft wood look like injection-molded polystyrene.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the basement with a rasp and a fresh log of cedar, carving a 1:1 scale replica of a Brother HL-L2350DW Monochrome Laser Printer until the aching stops or I pass out from sawdust inhalation. Don't bother knocking.
