According to legend, Jonas Kyratzes was first discovered under a cabbage leaf in Wiesbaden, Germany, where his parents were working as spies for the International Socialist Conspiracy. Alarmed by the German weather, they used a soup-powered rocket to escape to Greece, where Jonas proceeded to grow into a hairy biped of some kind.
Growing up, Jonas was primarily influenced by his psychic link to the spectre of Karl Marx, which was haunting Europe. Another major influence was a mutant turtle that hovered above his bed every night, singing Leonard Cohen songs. Sometimes the members of Iron Maiden would perform concerts on the turtle’s back, with Bruce Dickinson wearing particularly interesting trousers. Ziggy Stardust sometimes appeared as well, but rarely sang.
A major event in the young artist’s life occured when Joe Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5, travelled backwards in time from 2011 and implanted a chip in Jonas’s brain. For two years, the chip caused his mind to expand considerably, ultimately allowing him to invent air (one of his most popular inventions) and giving him the ability to make Greek Orthodox priests catch on fire by looking at them. The latter ability proved particularly useful in his vicious campaign against the Archbishop of Athens.
Unfortunately, in his sixteenth year, the chip began to malfunction; due to its interference, Jonas became convinced that he was a game designer. Much to the consternation of the civilized world, he actually began developing games, releasing one every two hundred years. Scholars attribute the long gaps between games to the fact that much of his brain is dedicated to the art of eating things.
A chance encounter with a giant slug in 2003 led him to move to Germany to study. He began by studying English and “Theatre, Film and Media Studies” at the prestigious Goethe University in Frankfurt. Much to his surprise, the latter field turned out to be primarily dedicated to the works of Theodor Adorno, a 20th-century hypocrite and follower of Zuul, and to films released prior to 1908. Shocked and disgusted, he decided to concentrate on English and American studies. This field, it turned out, was dedicated to all aspects of the German language and the sexual fantasies of a Jewish-Austrian neurologist called Schlomo.
Still hoping to get something for the money he was paying for his education, he spent much of his time in the fields of postcolonial literature and Native American studies. The focus in postcolonial studies on studiously avoiding all contact with reality ultimately made him abandon that particular field. His adventures in the world of native America came to an end when the last professor who believed in the existence of native populations retired due to not being paid. He is scheduled to be replaced by a painted watering can that says “everything is a discourse and the Indians are extinct” when peed in.
When not learning about the ways in which literature can become further removed from reality and enjoying the mud-like qualities of modern academic theory, Jonas worked to support himself. He began by sending spam for an unscrupulous cousin, and soon graduated to working in a call center. He quit both jobs on the verge of insanity and started working for a slow-witted bird with a clastic head, doing pointless tasks. He quit this job after the bird squawked at him in an unexpected way. He then spent several years in the English Department’s Writing Center, helping people who should never have become teachers unleash their evil upon helpless children. He still prays to Sky Cat for forgiveness.
He also worked for a professor at the university, but felt forced to quit that job due to the presence of a giant slime monster and his age-old fear of the Blob.
Another fascinating aspect of the life of Jonas Kyratzes is his participation in the unholy rituals of the Chaincourt Theatre Group, a black magic society dedicated to backstabbing and self-promotion, which he accidentally joined one silly evening, believing it to be a theatre group. There he met his wife-to-be, Verena, and several of his best friends – all of whom had been lured into this dark group as potential recruits or sacrificial victims. Despite helping the group to some of its greatest successes, he and his wife were ultimately forced to leave to avoid the constant urge to vomit. Soon after that they were amusingly accused of committing heinous crimes against people they cared nothing about, but luckily escaped serious harm (other than the damage to brain cells commonly associated with indirect contact with such individuals).
They were greatly disappointed to be accused of being criminal masterminds for crimes they had never committed, when all their true achievements in the service of evil did not go recognized. Their biggest disappointment came when they stole the Statue of Liberty and replaced it with a pile of spaghetti but no-one noticed, mainly due to liberty having recently been outlawed in the United States. They also tried to steal and replace an iconic German symbol of liberty, but found that Germany has no such symbols.
Jonas and Verena got married on July 23rd, 2009, in the presence of their closest friends and a strange person made of bricks. They went on a honeymoon to the Dominican Republic, where Jonas communicated with blue crabs and green lizards, and was frequently mistaken for a monkey, a species which – he had to explain – is not endemic to the Dominican Republic. The explanation often earned him delicious bananas.
When he’s not working, Jonas rides the solar wind and plots with a small black feline. He once saw Jesus kick Ayn Rand. Jesus apologized, but Jonas isn’t sure that he meant it.