Use Bombs

By Josh Allen on Saturday, May 29th, 2010 for Volume 5 - Issue 5

Dr. Seuzz is the children’s literary figure that is known through his multitude of work the world over.  He has written and illustrated dozens of books that have caught the feeble hearts and supposed imagination of kids for almost half a century.  But who is the man behind the stories?  What is he really like?  What does he do behind closed doors?  What does he eat and drink?  Does he ever go out on dates?  Is he married?  Does he have any regrets?  This piece will answer those questions and more as we delve through the life and experience of probably the most well-known children’s literature creator of all time.

Dr. Seuzz was born Phillip Andrew Zaius (ZAY-us) in 1946.  His father was a nurse in the second Great War.  Upon returning to civilian work at The Lady Betwixt Our Legs Hospital & Gentlemen’s Club, he immediately had a tawdry affair with the primary surgeon, of which Dr. Seuzz was the product.  He was born eight months later in that same room.  His mother and father eventually married even though they had nothing in common outside of the medical profession, so it was an average marriage.

During the first couple years of his life, Dr. Seuzz was diagnosed with what was dubbed “Hereditary Battle Fatigue (HBF),” due to a circumstance underwent by his father shortly before his discharge from service.  There was an ambush by the Japanese at his M.A.S.H. unit.  The attackers brutally murdered all of the doctors and nurses except him, deciding it would be more devious to allow him to suffer with his profession than to remove him from it.  This tragedy, being felt deeply within the loins of Nurse Zaius, was passed on to his son.  This illness, coupled with his gender confusion issues derived from his nurse father and doctor mother, set young Dr. Seuzz on a very unique and somewhat disturbing course in life.

A page from the Seuzz personal diary.

Dr. Seuzz’ childhood was relatively uneventful.  Due to his inherited trauma and filial gender issues, he was significantly more timid and dull than most children, so he was bullied and picked on all throughout his educational experience, even by most of the teachers.  After high school, he enrolled at National Community College and took journalism classes.  For his first story, he published one of the entries from his personal diary (shown), which the teacher read aloud in class.  While the class erupted in derogatory laughter and blatant insults, Dr. Seuzz took this as high approval of his work.  Being underpaid and overworked, the teacher didn’t care correct either the rest of the group’s devious ridicule or Seuzz’ misunderstanding of journalism, so this continued on for the next three years.

After graduating, Dr. Seuzz started working at the day care center* at the college, keeping a diary of descriptions and illustrations of his tenure there. While a good portion of this time at the runt center is unknown or deemed classified by the courts, some of the events can be pieced together from his books which were basically his diary entries with more organization and better drawings.

Dr. Seuzz sold his first book, Two Pants, One Dance, to Pedovilla Publishing in 1972.  This is when he became known as Dr. Seuzz.  As a child, he always mispronounced his last name and his parents could never get him to correct himself. When the editor called him to get his name and information for the book, he introduced himself as Dr. Seuzz, the “Seuzz” being the transcribed spelling the editor noted based of his pronunciation and the “Doctor” comes from the fact that he had longings to have a child.  The editor, being unaware of the true source of Seuzz’ writings, assumed they were aimed at children, due to the goofy drawings and the nonsensical rhyming language, but the not-so-subtle innuendo was completely ignored.

For years, Dr. Seuzz continued publishing his personal writings as books.  He put out such regarded works as Let’s Tuck It and Pretend!, Peter Pees a Poo?, and The Pricklydickly Secret.  So much truth can be gathered from his writings, truth that I can’t directly point out due to the State Supreme Court decision.

Even with his success, Dr. Seuzz remained a bit reclusive.  It’s not documented that he had any friends or girlfriends, outside of the little idiots he took care of.  He had never been seen on a date or even going to the grocery store.  No one at Pedovilla Publishing has actually claimed to have met with him in person.  The only one who ever spoke to Dr. Seuss was the editor, Richard Bibbler.  I had intended to interview him, being one of the few who has spoken with Dr. Seuzz, but he had passed away with many others in a freak accident at the Rainbow Family Club in 1978.  I can find no records of anyone else he may have dealt with in the past.  No one knows his parents’ names, as since he was a very dull and sexually confounded child, they basically kept him hidden.  Any other names are tied into that court case, which are all confidential and/or expunged from the record.

A page from Two Pants, One Dance.

Dr. Seuzz did not stop making books until 1993, when his HBF started manifesting itself physically.  Apparently, he would drop what he was doing and proceed to yell at passers-by from his window, usually raging on about how two sets of parts are always better than one.  Upon bestowing bewilderment upon his target, he would swiftly run outside, pull their pants down, and glance at their genitalia, only to be overcome with an inexplicable fear which would send him darting into any nearby brush or large shrubbery.

As there was no cure, Dr. Seuzz was eventually restricted to his home and was taken care of by his android servant, Steve.  For the last year of his life, he was bedridden and he used this time to record himself coughing to gospel music with the help of Steve.  While the sales were poor, it did have a key influence on some of today’s artists, such as the Grisselbottom Ripticklers and Green Day.  Death came swiftly in 1996 when he was molested, sodomized, drugged, poisoned, hanged, electrocuted, drowned, shot out of a cannon into a flaming brick wall with spikes, fed to piranhas, lured into a giant centrifuge, suffocated in a burning wig shoppe, emotionally and psychologically oppressed, baptized, and subsequently murdered with a salad fork by an ex-con circus bear named Andy.

Dr. Seuzz may be gone now, but his legacy still surrounds us.  Millions of little dink children around the globe continue to read his books and then push them off onto their children.  Always pushing, always choking.  Because kids never want to read something that might, I don’t know, develop a skill, or at least something that’s a bit more tangible to real life.  This defected pervert builds a following around his inane Lisa Frank diary entries in which spelling is old hat, grammar is a perceived sin, and the English language is strapped to a watering board to test its limits.  And here I sit with all intellectual grace and emotional profoundness of a googleplex of Socrates, yet I’m swaddled in clothes that have ripened for a week, I put my deodorant on by holding chunks of its remnants in my hand, and I’m about as positively influential as the irradiated water I have to filter to drink. Fuck you, Dr. Seuzz, fuck you in the neck.