Artist Entry: The Abominable Iron Sloth's Justin Godfrey loves that 'H'

"I've been addicted to H for the last 4 years"

It almost seemed innocent at first. A few hours here and there, every other weekend, it wasn't anything I needed except when I had to pass some time. An experimentation, an experience.

That's all it was until I went to Portland. I found out my friend Jayson was in the game and then he showed me what had been in front of my eyes all along: Online multiplayer. So it started with Halo 2 in that winter of 2004 and it continues today with an almost daily indulgence.

Times have changed, and of course Halo 3 is now the standard, but the fundamentals of the game, the guiding lights of competitive shit talking and gang tea bagging still burn as bright as ever in my soul.

So I admit that I am an addict, and I just can't find it in me to change.

Artist Entry: The Indomitable Iron Sloth main man Justin Godfrey sees the mark of the beast in Scrooge McDuck

The Iron Sloth cometh
Art by: Jake Estes

So it occurs to me that I don't have any real inspiration -- when it comes to music at least.

I just know how I arrived here, and the pivotal moments that nudged me in this direction. Sometimes I think it was because the time that all the neighborhood kids were piling into the suburban to go see the "Duck Tales" movie, "The Treasure of the Lost Lamp" for Christsake!! I'd been waiting at least a year to see this movie, and considering the fact that I was only 7-years-old, that was like 15% of my lifetime. But oh no, "Lost Lamp" implies that a Genie might be inside and of course everyone knows that genies are a form of black magic, and God is not into that at all. A tear rolled down my face as the Suburban backed down that driveway.

I eventually saw the movie a couple of years later after the genie embargo had been lifted, since Mom was a Robin Williams fan and his groundbreaking role in "Aladdin" opened the door to cartoon witchcraft for me.

But the damage was done, the invisible hand of fate, guardian of life's backroads and dead ends, pushed me further down the path of destruction that had begun years earlier with a commercial for deaf people. The end of the commercial featured the sign for love, which when attempted by my 5-year-old digits, looked more like the devil horns. I was physically informed that I was never again to make the sign of the devil, but the real underlying message was already planted in my mind. I ran upstairs to hide in my closet, but I knew it was no use, I prayed for forgiveness, still I knew in the back of my mind there was no hope for me. No amount of being a good boy in God's army could ever outweigh the transgression of making the goat horns, swearing an unspoken oath to Satan. I had no future beyond this life. I was going to go to hell.